In April 2020 my column was titled “Is Fighting Evil Passé?” Readers pointed out that it was a misleading title, and that's because the editor changed it [Ed note: Yep!]. My original title was “Is Fighting Evil the Focus of Your Campaign?” This time I want to address what my proposed title suggested.
I’ve modified the question from “fighting” to “combat,” because fighting is going to occasionally occur in the lives of special characters who often have military-style training, if only in a bar-room or as part of the typical love triangles and other expressions of lust and greed.
So, is combat now passé? Keep in mind that virtually all of the original D&D players were wargamers. We were accustomed to playing games where there was a battle if not many battles. I’m using the term "combat" here to mean deadly skirmishes rather than scuffles, events where people/creatures get killed rather than they get a bloody nose or a broken limb.
But now the vast majority of new D&D players don’t play wargames; they may not play other (non-RPG) games at all. In that case it’s easy to imagine that many players are not much interested in combat. This reminds me of something my wife said the other day (keep in mind I met my wife through D&D and she played for about 15 years). She prefers the first book of the Lord of the Rings because she’s not interested in the battles that occupy so much of the other two books. Even in Moria, the Fellowship’s purpose was to get through without a fight, not to fight the Balrog.
Perhaps the change in science fiction and fantasy we’ve seen since 1980 has also made a difference. Stories now are far more often about people and their motivations and daily difficulties, more about shades of gray rather than black and white, and much less about Adventure with a capital “A.” That has conditioned people not to look for battles.
In a well-realized setting/world, there ought to be lots of things to do, including lots of conflicts, that don’t end with life and death fighting. Politics, business success, greed and lust (which seem to power most of the dramas you see on TV), exploration, there are lots of alternatives to adventuring and killing. This might not be satisfactory to the old guard D&Ders but may be fine for newer players.
Another approach is to have frequent battles that could theoretically result in death, but virtually never result in player character death, only the death of the opposition. I suspect that’s where a lot of campaigns have gone, just as the rules of the games have gone that way. I remember playing in the “D&D Essentials” games with the Fourth Edition rules, and being shocked when a couple of player characters died, because it was so, well, difficult to die! Yet Fourth Edition was all about combats and little else. (I always try to make sure everyone in my party (as a player) lives unless they do something really stupid, but I guess these two were behaving so foolishly I had to ignore them, or I might have somehow saved them.) When I first read the Fifth Edition rules I noted the rules and spells that made it difficult for anyone to be killed, such as the third level cleric spell Revivify. It’s “a far piece” from how it was with original D&D where you had to husband every hit point and often had to decide to run away or even leave the adventure for lack of hit points.
How does it work in your campaign? Let me know in the poll and in the comments.
I’ve modified the question from “fighting” to “combat,” because fighting is going to occasionally occur in the lives of special characters who often have military-style training, if only in a bar-room or as part of the typical love triangles and other expressions of lust and greed.
So, is combat now passé? Keep in mind that virtually all of the original D&D players were wargamers. We were accustomed to playing games where there was a battle if not many battles. I’m using the term "combat" here to mean deadly skirmishes rather than scuffles, events where people/creatures get killed rather than they get a bloody nose or a broken limb.
But now the vast majority of new D&D players don’t play wargames; they may not play other (non-RPG) games at all. In that case it’s easy to imagine that many players are not much interested in combat. This reminds me of something my wife said the other day (keep in mind I met my wife through D&D and she played for about 15 years). She prefers the first book of the Lord of the Rings because she’s not interested in the battles that occupy so much of the other two books. Even in Moria, the Fellowship’s purpose was to get through without a fight, not to fight the Balrog.
Perhaps the change in science fiction and fantasy we’ve seen since 1980 has also made a difference. Stories now are far more often about people and their motivations and daily difficulties, more about shades of gray rather than black and white, and much less about Adventure with a capital “A.” That has conditioned people not to look for battles.
In a well-realized setting/world, there ought to be lots of things to do, including lots of conflicts, that don’t end with life and death fighting. Politics, business success, greed and lust (which seem to power most of the dramas you see on TV), exploration, there are lots of alternatives to adventuring and killing. This might not be satisfactory to the old guard D&Ders but may be fine for newer players.
Another approach is to have frequent battles that could theoretically result in death, but virtually never result in player character death, only the death of the opposition. I suspect that’s where a lot of campaigns have gone, just as the rules of the games have gone that way. I remember playing in the “D&D Essentials” games with the Fourth Edition rules, and being shocked when a couple of player characters died, because it was so, well, difficult to die! Yet Fourth Edition was all about combats and little else. (I always try to make sure everyone in my party (as a player) lives unless they do something really stupid, but I guess these two were behaving so foolishly I had to ignore them, or I might have somehow saved them.) When I first read the Fifth Edition rules I noted the rules and spells that made it difficult for anyone to be killed, such as the third level cleric spell Revivify. It’s “a far piece” from how it was with original D&D where you had to husband every hit point and often had to decide to run away or even leave the adventure for lack of hit points.
How does it work in your campaign? Let me know in the poll and in the comments.
Or "fights." Tolkien uses the word "affray."
