Yes, but I don’t know if you read @Gus L’s post, but there’s been a divergence since the early 00’s. They’re not necessarily synonymous anymore. Certainly Shadowdark isn’t described in that way. Cairn isn’t.
D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts
- Thread starter TiQuinn
- Start date
Remathilis
Legend
Just so. It was absolutely a rejection of the notion that combat should be fair, balanced, and assumed. Especially it was a rejection of 4e putting combat front-and-center via the power-system and their early dungeon design which was set-piece to set-piece. And like most anti-establishment arguments, it has less to do with being a cohesive ideology as it is a rejection of another. It was a rejection of Challenge Ratings and the notion combat should be balanced around the PCs winning. (An absurd notion since D&D has always attempted to make challenges fair). While not everyone obviously subscribes to it, it's become enough of a truism that the OS movement has attracted the sadist/killer DM label to it and some wear that with pride.
This is probably why I can’t get past some reviews and comments on the space.
MGibster
Legend
I sometimes have sessions where there's no combat as well, but the majority of the rules and the abilities of the player characters all revolve around combat. Has TSR or WotC ever released a scenario that didn't have a fight in it?
Wasn’t Wild Beyond the Witchlight supposed to be a potentially no-fight campaign? Radiant Citadel?
Edit: Also Beyond the Crystal Cave really emphasized that diplomacy versus fighting would get a party a lot farther.
Gus L
Adventurer
NSR is one fragment of the post-OSR. In as far as it's a style of design, it's not my own, but I respect what people are doing in the space, and I appreciate that the NSR community (because it's still more a community then a design style) are one of the various groups/scenes making claims to the OSR label.
Clint_L
Legend
Yeah, they don't release anything where fighting isn't a frequent option, and I one that I assume most players will take given the nature of heroic adventure, but WotC and other designers increasingly offer other options, explicitly.
Which is great. More options is usually good.
Remathilis
Legend
Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Beyond the Crystal Caves are both adventurers that allow more diplomatic and explorative options to bypass combat and complete mission objectives, but I don't necessarily think they are combat free. The former basically gives most encounters an alternate wincon to appeasing most major villains, while the latter is a very RP heavy scenario where combat is actively discouraged.
Some of Golden Vault is setup for stealthily bypassing encounters during heists as well, but that's a little looser and more group-based.
DarkCrisis
Let her cook.
Modern D&D doesn’t want the players to be scared of the dungeon and monsters. It’s why charging in and going nova works so well. Superheroes!
I had my group of mostly 5E players try AD&D and OSR games and they quickly learned you don’t have to fight everything. Sometimes the reward isn’t worth the risk.
They also learned tactics and just charging in isn’t always the best way to handle combat.
I had my group of mostly 5E players try AD&D and OSR games and they quickly learned you don’t have to fight everything. Sometimes the reward isn’t worth the risk.
They also learned tactics and just charging in isn’t always the best way to handle combat.
Getting back to this, I would say in contrast to D&D, these two games have much more strongly focused, niche genres they desire to reproduce. CoC made design choices to differentiate it from other games that used the same system (Runequest etc), even though it's a very classic game. Mothership wants to deliver outer space horror that modulates its goals through the game session; it forgoes particular mechanics players would expect to have access to in a horror rpg e.g. stealth.
Like Charlaquin mentioned, it's an assertive statement (one can say hyperbolic) that's intended to push emphasis towards finding or discovering answers fictively. The example someone above gave of the default that beginning or inexperienced players sometimes do is: Can I (persuade) the hostile creature to not attack me? They lean on their understanding of how the mechanic of the skill (Persuasion) functions to provide the answer, rather than instead, seeking an answer first in the scene: I speak in the hostile creature's language, and try to tell them nicely that it isn't a good idea to attack me. Then seeing through the emerging play loop, which possibly could involve a die roll, how the moment resolves.
Is interfacing with the game the first way, a way to play? Yes. Is it fine? Yes. Might trying the other way lead to other discoveries? Yes!
Let me give an anecdote with something that happened recently in a Vaesen session, but I feel is applicable here. Besides a limited skill list, Vaesen encourages equipment use, as doing so typically gives you bonus dice on rolls to accomplish tasks.
The player went to a newspaper's office after hours, which was located on a cobblestone street that was in need of repairs. They wanted to see if the office had old copies which had articles pertaining to a region they would be traveling too.
When they arrived, it was closed; the office's door was locked. However, they saw someone was still there, because there was light behind a curtained window on the second floor.
At that moment out-of-game, the player was stumped. They spent a minute or two looking at their character sheet to see if there was something on it they could use to achieve their objective. They were insistent on not trying to break in, as this was something their character would feel bad doing, and, they didn't want the risk of possibly being caught by the law.
Finally, they remembered the terse description of the street the office was located on. Is there a small rock or a pebble nearby I could pick up?
I smiled. Yes, you find one rather quickly. What do you intend to do with it?
I want to try to fling it at the window, to see if someone in the room above notices.
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