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<blockquote data-quote="knasser" data-source="post: 6957634" data-attributes="member: 65151">I've never heard the phrasing &quot;combat as sport vs combat as&nbsp; war&quot; views on the game, but now that you highlight it to me, I think it really is a fundamental dichotomy for many players or DMs. For me and my group, combat is always a means to an end. If you can find a way to win it more easily, avoid it, change the conditions of it - that's something you do because you're at war and ends justify the means. But if you're a group that views combat as the end itself, that it's a sport to be enjoyed as is - then doing such things are cheating or spoiling the game or breaking it. Such people WANT it to be like that and thus for them, complaining about how the system breaks or doesn't work makes no sense. It's like people turning up to a football match and then not playing football. They don't see the point. But to us, the football match is a means to an end. We don't want to fight the evil necromancer, we want the evil necromancer to be stopped.Story focused games, realism-focused games - these are naturally inclined to the &quot;combat as war&quot; approach because your goal is not combat, it's whatever the goals of the story or character are. Fascinating way to put it. Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport. I will remember that! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />If you can't tell, my group has always been very much the first one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="knasser, post: 6957634, member: 65151"] I've never heard the phrasing "combat as sport vs combat as war" views on the game, but now that you highlight it to me, I think it really is a fundamental dichotomy for many players or DMs. For me and my group, combat is always a means to an end. If you can find a way to win it more easily, avoid it, change the conditions of it - that's something you do because you're at war and ends justify the means. But if you're a group that views combat as the end itself, that it's a sport to be enjoyed as is - then doing such things are cheating or spoiling the game or breaking it. Such people WANT it to be like that and thus for them, complaining about how the system breaks or doesn't work makes no sense. It's like people turning up to a football match and then not playing football. They don't see the point. But to us, the football match is a means to an end. We don't want to fight the evil necromancer, we want the evil necromancer to be stopped. Story focused games, realism-focused games - these are naturally inclined to the "combat as war" approach because your goal is not combat, it's whatever the goals of the story or character are. Fascinating way to put it. Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport. I will remember that! :) If you can't tell, my group has always been very much the first one. [/QUOTE]

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