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Yora
2020-10-16, 06:48 PM
This is a really hazy idea that I have not really been thinking through much. But there's always great thoughts, advice, and suggestions from a lot of people here, so let's see where this is going.

Having run and often played various versions and adaptations of D&D for literally decades now (two of them!), I feel like I have reached the limits of what I can get out of these games. By which I mean in general games that are primarily a combat system, in which adventures are structured around a sequence of combat encounters, and character advancement revolves around improving combat abilities to take on increasingly more powerful foes. It's not really any mechanics specific to D&D. It's the underlying assumption of adventurers being people for which fights to the death with monsters and bandits are a regular part of their daily routine.
I find that these days I am much more interested the players interacting with the characters populating the campaigns, establishing relationships, and having a real sense of meaningful consequence following how they approach and handle confrojtations.

Looking at other games, there's Runequest, Warhammer Fantasy, Dungeon World, Fantasy Age, Barbarians of Lemuria, various Conan games, to some extend Legend of the Five Rings, and many more that all have different mechanics, but still more or less follow in the path of "classic fantasy heroes", who can very well be described as adventurers. Who fight monsters in old places and return with magic treasures.

I had considered altering the typical models of greedy treasure hunters and brave defenders of the kingdom to shift dungeon asventures from combat more towards exploration, and the thread on that topic got a big number of very extensive replies. But it also led me to believe that shifting the morivation of the player characters towards quests for knowledge isn't really going to change the outcome very much in the ways that intrigue me.

There are of course plenty of fantasy games that don't follow the typical adventurer approach. But at least to the extend of my knowledge, these fall into styles of fantasy that are quite different from the worlds within the sphere of High Fantasy. Which is medieval inspited worlds with elves, goblins, and dragons, that exist on their own and not as a magical otherworld connected to contemporary planet Earth, and which have a scope and internal consistency that separates them from fable and fairy tale worlds.
Now some of these have been build from the start for the sole purpose of being stages for typical adventures of fighting monsters and discovering ancient treasures. And those created for big epic novel series were set up as stages for big quests about the fate of the world. But as big and expansice many of these worlds are, there surely must be plenty of space for the stories of people who don't come back covered in blood every time they leave town?

I've been thinking about many of my favorite works of fiction, which are admittedly dominated largely by adventure fiction, and took a look at the characters I find really compelling and who aren't one-man-armies who have killed too many people and monsters to count.
What I found was that most of them could generally be described as supporting characters, very often in stories of protagonists who are regular fantasy heroes. Lots of healers and sages who can't really comtribute much in the kinds of battles the heroes are fighting, but still follow them far into grave danger to provide logistical and moral support during these hardships. And that got me really interested in how a fantasy game could look like in which the players don't play the likes of Thorin Oakenshield and Luke Skywalker, but Princess Leias and Bilbo Bagginses. Characters who we usually see appear as sidekicks than the big dashing heroes. I am also thinking of the friend of Indiana Jones Sallah, or Geralt of Rivia's infuriating best bud bard Dandelion. They are great characters who are smart and show great courage in the face of great dangers that come into their worlds, but in their stories it falls to the more heroic types to actually defeat the villains and solve the crisis.
But I think such characters could make for great parties, and have amazing adventures of their own. In which their courage and cleverness is enough to save the day and it does not have to come down to a contest of arms against a legendary warrior, sorcerer, or demon.

How? I really don't have any idea yet. This is a direction that is very different from anything I've ever done with RPGs, or any of the games that I am familiar with. So I am turning again to you all fine people to see if you have any wisdom what could be done with this very vague line of thought.

Satinavian
2020-10-17, 02:43 AM
I have experienced stuff like that a lot. But half the time it was coincidende because significant part of the players built support characters because they liked them and then the themes of the games shifted. The other times it was theme groups anyway.

I have never done or seen it with D&D. D&D is basically a combat game and bad at everything else. You need a system that actually cares about all the support and out-of-combat stuff and maybe revolves around skills. As you are in Germany, both TDE and Splittermond are options. And of course you can always use GURPS. SIFRP could work but is a bit focussed.


As for campaigns to push the game in that direction, i found that two campaign themes that work well :

- Base buiding : You automatically get place and time for all the crafters and something to make the players care about. And lots of NPCs and their problems which tend to be not combat related.

- Politics : The game is focussed around social interaction and while things might escalate to combat that is not something the PCs have to do themself. They can just send their underlings.


As for your examples :

Leia instead of Luke works because Leia is presumed to be a somewhat competent politician and would easily get main character status whenever that matters. Dandalion would not work because he is mostly comic relief and damsel in distress. While he is not bad as a bard it is hard to find scenarios where everything depends on a song quality for the whole group. Even in a non-combat group he would probably remain a support character. Bilbo ... is fish-out-of-the-water most of the book and in a very traditional adventure. Most of what he achieves is through coincidence/author fiat and that is not good for RPGs. It is in the shire where he feels at home most and where most of his skills belong. But shire everyday life is not super interesting and he does not really do much there as well. Would not use him.

KineticDiplomat
2020-10-17, 11:26 PM
You might try the mouse guard rules.

opaopajr
2020-10-18, 07:45 AM
You may want to look into Adventures in Middle Earth (AiME) for its adventure journey structure mechanics. It helps make the outline for encounter phases accord with a typical narrative buildup. And it advises how to play up the non-combat characters' contributions as integral to the journey... basically how to play up the neglected play pillars as dramatic development.

But it all means nothing without player buy-in. You are better off finding that core cadre who not only are willing to play along, but pro-actively interact and immerse into the setting. Players working on the same page as your desire is priceless here.

Cluedrew
2020-10-18, 08:19 AM
Honestly you just need two things:
Players who want to do more than combat.
Rules that support more than combat.
And you can still have some of the combat rules and combat characters, at least there has been at least one in all the campaigns of this type I have run and been in. But the expectation changes, because combat is a smaller part of the character skill set people think it is going to be a smaller part of the solution. It still shows up because action scenes are great, but it usually isn't the thing that really solves the problem.

I've played with financers, leaders and researchers who had no combat ability beyond... making almost improvisational use out of a weapon. But still they found other ways to contribute and it was a lot of fun. (For rules suggestions I've done the most of this style in a friend's Powered by the Apocalypse system which still hasn't been released. So I can't really recommend it.)

Yora
2020-10-18, 11:34 AM
Is it Blades against Darkness? It was brought to my attention today and it was really quite hard to find any material on it, even though it was announced back in 2016. I found the 2019 version, which is quite a lot to read, though I've not gotten around to that yet.

I've been reading Blades in the Dark this weekend (on multiple recommendations) and under the streampunk criminal empire sub-systems, there seems to be a really solid and simple universal RPG system. It's a lot less esoteric than Apocalypse World but keeps what makes that one such an interesting game.
It looks like it's super easy to hack by removing the turf war mechanics and replacing them with something else to reflect other kinds of settings and campaign styles.

Characters are really defined by only two things mechanically, which is their rating (skill rank) for the twelve basic actions, and special abilities that players pick from a list that fits the playbook (character template). The twelve actions all use the same mechanic and the same advancement system, and only one of them is specifically combat. I like that as being "combat is there for when you need it, but it's one ability among many equals".

It's also a very survivable system in which character death is basically a deliberate decision. Instead of hit points, a character can have up to two minor injuries, two moderate injuries, and one severe injury, and each injury is a specific type of damage to a specific body part. (Picked by the GM based on what caused the injury. Failing in a sword fight probably means getting stabbed, failing at jumping to another roof probably means a broken or sprained leg.)
Players also can always chose to reduce the severity of an injury by one step by accepting a buildup of stress. "You fall of the roof and land on your leg, which hurts terribly and might be broken." "I check and it seems to be still in one piece, only badly sprained." You can always use this option, but if it pushes the stress to 10 or higher, the character collapses and is out of the fight for the adventure, with the experiencing leaving a lasting mark.
Stress seems like a really neat mechanic. You can also accept stress by adding extra dice to one of your rolls, or to the roll of another character. (2 stress for pushing yourself, 1 stress for helping someone else.) And you can also gain stress from being exposed to supernatural effects and beings.
The only way you can die is if you already have a severe injury and do something that causes another serious injury. Or you have one severe and two moderate injuries and get another moderate injury. But if you're dragging your broken body across the ground to do something that could cause significant injury, you really know what you're doing to yourself.

I think this seems like a pretty good basic system for all kinds of games where fighting is just one thing among many that not all characters need to be fully participating.

Cluedrew
2020-10-18, 06:57 PM
Is it Blades against Darkness?My friend's system? No and as far as I know only the creator and I have ever run it so I would be surprised if you have heard of it.


I've been reading Blades in the Dark this weekend (on multiple recommendations) and under the streampunk criminal empire sub-systems, there seems to be a really solid and simple universal RPG system. It's a lot less esoteric than Apocalypse World but keeps what makes that one such an interesting game.A system I really want to play but have been unable to get a group together for. I am surprised you would describe it as "less esoteric" because... I suppose it is a bit looser on the character side but the rules have numerous things that decide the pacing of the game so it feels like the types of games you can run with it are very narrow. Without tearing rules out you can't even operate legally because you will just get attention from the police as an automatic side effect of (almost) every score.


Characters are really defined by only two things mechanically, which is their rating (skill rank) for the twelve basic actions, and special abilities that players pick from a list that fits the playbook (character template).And the gang they are in - remember that gangs can change your stats - so you might need to come up with new organization templates or figure out how to mix those modifiers into the character templates. The other trick is because of how the resistance ratings work the number and groupings of the action ratings might have to stay the same. So in the end it might be a bit harder to modify than Apocalypse World because of some things like that which have to align

Or maybe just take their core resolution system and run with it. I have no idea what to call it as it is the weirdest dice-pool system (that uses standard dice) I have ever seen.

NichG
2020-10-19, 02:01 AM
For that kind of thing, I think campaign design has to step in and take over for the void left in mechanics design. What I mean by that is that its a lot easier to make hard mechanics for direct contests, but it's much more difficult to do for things like leverage and opportunity that tend to underlie the victories of more clever than combatative archetypes. Often the mechanics end up being a refluff of combat anyhow if you try so hard.

I'd focus on the idea that things happen above a character's ability to directly fiat based on that character possessing some kind of leverage. Then I'd figure out what kinds of leverage there might be, and what I'd need to do to design the campaign such that there are opportunities for those different kinds of leverage to be generated and to matter.

- What sorts of things can characters in this campaign use as leverage to influence outcomes? What is the way in which that leverage is used up, and how can characters get more of it? How will players understand the importance of such forms of leverage, and can they reason about how much it's worth, how to generate it, etc?

- Information and knowledge as leverage? Can you organize the campaign so that there are places where proper understanding alone is enough to be 'powerful' in the sense of being able to achieve an intended outcome? Is knowledge itself a valuable resource and form of power; for example, are there more martially powerful NPCs who would take actions differently depending on knowledge that a PC could provide or withhold?

- Relationships as leverage? Are there organizations, families, etc where membership could represent power and influence above and beyond what a PC could do directly? How clear are these incentives, and will it feel like the PC's initiative or just watching NPCs do things? For example, is there a way for this to give rise to leadership challenges where the PC has been given (or has taken) some responsibility and has been granted command of (some portion) of the organization towards it. How will success or failure or other outcomes be determined by how the PC leads, versus the resources invested?

- Opportunity as leverage? Can there be things in the campaign that have a 'right place at the right time' characteristic, so a PC demonstrating a burst of prowess can accomplish what someone trying to force things would need to sustain that level of prowess over many many conflicts or circumstances? It's a fairly common trope for the hapless non-adventurer to 'just have to beat this one foe' or 'just have to do this one difficult thing' in order for everything to work out. For that trope to make sense, you need points where the person who happens to be there at a particular moment, doing a few important things ends up having a disproportionate influence. Is 'opportunity' something the PCs will be able to intentionally manufacture?

And so on... these different kinds of leverage each suggest different kinds of plots, and could be mixed and matched to make things complex.

Quertus
2020-10-19, 03:45 PM
Well, I'm struggling with this thread. Because most of my characters - including most of my D&D characters - are what you would call the supporting cast, are the Bilbo "fish out of water", the healers and buffers and "not main character material".

And you absolutely *can* play such characters alongside "main" characters. In fact, I would argue that it is generally *best* to do so, as provides the clear contrast for the character.

So, *most* of this thread is simply an issue of building skills and changing perspective.

That just leaves the question of the "all support" party.

Newer editions of D&D might struggle with such a concept, but in 2e and earlier it could be perfectly fine.

Beyond that? CaS and CaW suggest different approaches.

CaS requires the GM to tailor the content to the party, to make every encounter "sporting". This means, at the very least, easier combats, but possibly also more out of combat action.

CaW says, "what's there is there - deal with it". This means that there will be much *more* strategic-level gameplay, as the party works to avoid conflicts, and/or give themselves every possible advantage before entering combat.

Really, I'm not seeing much that you seem to want that isn't solved simply by moving to a CaW mindset.

BRC
2020-10-19, 04:42 PM
But I think such characters could make for great parties, and have amazing adventures of their own. In which their courage and cleverness is enough to save the day and it does not have to come down to a contest of arms against a legendary warrior, sorcerer, or demon.

How? I really don't have any idea yet. This is a direction that is very different from anything I've ever done with RPGs, or any of the games that I am familiar with. So I am turning again to you all fine people to see if you have any wisdom what could be done with this very vague line of thought.


So, one question is, what sort of stories are you telling here?
Are you going for "How do we stop an evil necromancer and his undead horde if we're not warriors and generals", or "it's a high fantasy setting, how do we deal with rebuilding this city after a dragon attacked it". Is this Adventurers but Low-Powered, or Non-Adventurers dealing with non-adventurer problems in a high-fantasy world.

Another thing to consider is that, unlike a party of adventurers, a given party of non-adventurers is less likely to all be involved with a specific solution. A Doctor, a Musician, and an Accountant may be able to work out a way to defeat the evil pirate lord, but the Accountant isn't necessarily going to have anything to do.

These sort of "Courage and Cleverness" problems also often come down to the players ability to read the situation and come up with ideas, which can be a lot harder to arbitrate than rolling dice about stabbing swords. Before I started such a campaign, I'd play a round or two of Baron Munchausen with my players to get a sense of how good they are at thinking on their feet.

The other issue is the tension cycle. Unlike a combat system, where the tension neatly sits during the combat itself, most of the tension here often lies within "Can we think of a good enough plan". Sometimes the plan is good enough, and the tension just kind of falls out of things.
And sometimes players trying to think on their feet just kind of...can't think of anything, which is a real bummer of a way to end a campaign. "Oh, you guys were not clever enough to get out of that...oops".

What I find works best is an approach that gives players plenty of downtime, but includes details that no plan is perfect. It works best if you have a group that is highly engaged outside of the session itself.

First, either start, or (Sometimes ideally) end your session by presenting the PC's with a problem they need to solve.
The goal is to give them plenty of time to chew the problem, and their various capabilities, over in their heads to think of a solution, rather than being put on the spot to come up with something brilliant.

Ideally, there should be some sort of group-chat where the players can discuss various plans, as well as ask the GM to sanity-check their solutions. Since the GM is the ultimate arbiter of the game's reality, they should be willing to answer "Would this plan work, given what we know right now".
It's not fun to put a lot of work into a plan, only for the GM to say "Oh, that would never have worked because of X,Y, and Z".


Then, once the Players have their plan concocted, the GM should think of some complications, not reasons the plan WON'T work, but some uncertainties that need to be worked out before the plan will work. Something to make a session's worth of dice-rolling about. Ideally, failure on any one point shouldn't make the whole plan fall apart, but should make things more difficult or otherwise expensive to achieve. I find that the inclusion of some sort of meta-resource works wonders for this sort of thing. The plan just failing due to a bad dice roll sucks, with the addition of meta-resources, the question becomes not "Will this succeed", but "How much will this cost us to succeed", which can provide a source of tension for the players without letting the whole session derail.

Belac93
2020-10-19, 05:09 PM
I moved away from D&D a while ago, but I play this game called Quest (https://www.adventure.game/) nowadays that might have some of what you're looking for.

This game uses roles, each role has 5-7 learning paths (for example, the ranger gets Story and Song, Survivalist, Pathfinder, Hunter, and Friend), each path has 3-5 abilities in it, and you start with 6 abilities. Every character is 'suited' for adventure, but in very different ways. For example, with the ranger, only Hunter and Friend have any combat utility, which means you can play a character with the other three paths and just act as a guide and social character. You can take 13 abilities as the Ranger before you have to pick up *anything* that gives you fighting capabilities. Or you can just go full hunter at the start.

Once you start mixing and matching archetypes, it gets real fun. My group had a Magician that was completely useless in a fight, so they were always finding ways to trick or help out in other ways. The Invoker was decent in a fight because they could Smite (which kills almost anything), but their real specialty was protection and investigation. And then the Spy just had a gun that was an instant-kill.

But characters are still flexible enough that you can get the abilities you're missing. The magician eventually got Bedazzle, which let them shoot prismatic bolts, and the Spy took persona to get good at infiltration and social stuff. It lets you simulate a heroic journey where a character expands out of their comfort zone. Or you can stay in your comfort zone, and just get really good at one thing.

TL;DR, read Quest, it's good and can tell a lot of neat stories.

Duff
2020-10-19, 06:45 PM
For that kind of thing, I think campaign design has to step in and take over for the void left in mechanics design. What I mean by that is that its a lot easier to make hard mechanics for direct contests, but it's much more difficult to do for things like leverage and opportunity that tend to underlie the victories of more clever than combatative archetypes. Often the mechanics end up being a refluff of combat anyhow if you try so hard.

This. So you get Burning Wheel's social contests and Song of Ice and Fire's Intrigue system. And there's nothing wrong with making "social combat" have enough moving parts that there's tactical decision making and different character builds who can win in different circumstances. You may even want this if you want more than just a single skill roll for a social encounter Or you can just roleplay it out - whatever works.

But I think what you want is not really about the rule system, it's about how the game is run. So for example, you could run a D&D game and say up front "Good plans will give you +5 circumstance bonus on all the rolls for an encounter. A great plan where you've arranged multiple advantages can get you +10 or even more".
All of a sudden your D&D game becomes a game about building advantages with cunning plans.

But then you need to give the players enough info to seek those advantages. There's a sliding scale on how to do this. At one end you create a vast amount of information for the players to pick through and decide which bits to use. at the other end, the players say what they want to have and you decide how much to give.

I ran a song of Ice and Fire game. I did a fair bit of homework for my game, so the players had a list of all the members of neighboring houses (so a list of head of house, spouse, heir, other important people, and then a list of who has how many sons and how many daughters). They were looking for a couple of brides for some young men in the house, so any unmarried/widowed daughters/granddaughters got fleshed out a bit more. A few local mover-and-shaker houses and all the immediate neighbors had all members laid out - name, age, demeanor, and known areas of skill and interest. Local house "character sheets" (mostly accurate and often current) were made available.
Each month I provided a "News report" of local and wider events.
That gave the players enough info about the local environment so they could decide who to reach out to and how to approach them, as well as who they could try to pick off.

But the same game could have been run with (for example) me saying "The best bride for your character is..." and only creat the bride's father for negotiation, then create the bride when she meets the party or joins the family
The party could say "We want to put together an alliance against our weakest neighbor" leading to me running a series of encounters to try to get the alliance together, only fleshing out 7 or 8 characters.
Depends on how much you want to prepare, how deeply you want your players thinking

Cluedrew
2020-10-20, 07:57 PM
Well, I'm struggling with this thread. […] And you absolutely *can* play such characters alongside "main" characters.I think this is the issue here, not that your statement is wrong but I think I have a better way to frame it. It's not about side or main characters, it is about how traditional (for P&P/TT games) their skill set is. (After all anyone you focus on is a main character.)

As an example, imagine a campaign where Quertus (the character) is the big hero because the campaign hinges on whether the PCs can put together enough information of an invasive plant that is killing the crops to get rid of it (or eat it, then you can farm it). Its some sort of fantasy plant and even with extra workers the farmers are barely keeping it at bay. I don't know of a system that gives research enough depth for that but even with some basic related skills and some off the cuff rulings you might be able to do it anyways.

Now that is an extreme example, if they made a movie about that story it would probably hide the science under excessive personal drama. But still even so there are a lot of heroes who's primary skill is not their ability to defeat countless foes. It's often in there somewhere because it makes for great action scenes, but it is often paired with something else. In fact on the Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War scale I would say this is way passed that into Combat as Event. As it is combat is an event that may or may not occur in the story, mixed in with everything else.

It feels like it has been a long time since I last quoted you.

Bohandas
2020-10-21, 01:30 AM
SJ Games' Paranoia perhaps

Firest Kathon
2020-10-21, 04:21 AM
I recently played some 7th Sea (https://www.chaosium.com/7th-sea/) and I think this system is good at telling the kinds of adventures you are looking for. Granted, it does not assume the PCs are "regular" people, they are very much the main character of the story that is told. However there is no requirement to have them the classical combat-themed characters. To take your example, the system supports a Luke as well as a Leia, and lets them all contribute to the story. The main setting of Théah is 17th-century non-Europe, but you can easily transpose it back a few years if you prefer a more medieval setting.

There are free basic rules and a starter adventure available if you want to have a look. Just be aware that the Quickstart is based on a beta ruleset and has some differences to the main rulebook (this was quite confusing to me :smallannoyed:).

aglondier
2020-10-21, 06:40 AM
7th Sea was a lot of fun. Our very mixed bag group (a lost heir to germany, a spanish fire mage, a french duelist, a huge scottish warrior, and an itallian fop)* ran all over the countryside doing a Mr. Black where our reputation was travelling faster than we were. Plenty of fights, but they were backdrop to the story we were weaving around the sorcerous talents we supposedly each had. (We ended up referring to the campaign as the Rise of the Sorceror Kings). Cinematic terrain and brute squads...lots of fun...

Otherwise, have you heard of the D&D 2nd ed Birthright setting? The characters are the actual rulers of nations, by divine right of their bloodlines. You don't need let them have a nation each, have then be the ruler and lieutenants of a single nation, or even just the lieutenants...politics, trade, religion, war, subterfuge...plenty of scope for a completely non combat game...






* sorry, too long ago, can't remember the country names...

Quertus
2020-10-22, 01:58 PM
I think this is the issue here, not that your statement is wrong but I think I have a better way to frame it. It's not about side or main characters, it is about how traditional (for P&P/TT games) their skill set is. (After all anyone you focus on is a main character.)

As an example, imagine a campaign where Quertus (the character) is the big hero because the campaign hinges on whether the PCs can put together enough information of an invasive plant that is killing the crops to get rid of it (or eat it, then you can farm it). Its some sort of fantasy plant and even with extra workers the farmers are barely keeping it at bay. I don't know of a system that gives research enough depth for that but even with some basic related skills and some off the cuff rulings you might be able to do it anyways.

Now that is an extreme example, if they made a movie about that story it would probably hide the science under excessive personal drama. But still even so there are a lot of heroes who's primary skill is not their ability to defeat countless foes. It's often in there somewhere because it makes for great action scenes, but it is often paired with something else. In fact on the Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War scale I would say this is way passed that into Combat as Event. As it is combat is an event that may or may not occur in the story, mixed in with everything else.

It feels like it has been a long time since I last quoted you.

Indeed, it does feel like it's been a while. I even remember not seeing you at all for a bit.

So, I think that there's several different ideas here (whether that's "in this conversation" or just "in my head") - let's see if I can tease them apart.

It seems to me that one could be "not a main character" for a variety of reasons; these include wrong skill set wrong personality completely overshadowed
If we look at movies, we wouldn't expect a noncom to be the main character in The Avengers. Nor would we expect to follow a pacifist who doesn't mind aliens invading New York, or generic guard #7 / cop #3.

At the same time, we do somewhat follow the underpowered Hawkeye and Agent Coulson. Banner certainly doesn't want to be there. But everyone has a role to play.

Then there's The Hobbit. Bilbo arguably fails all 3 tests, with no skills, no desire, and Gandalf easily overshadowing everyone.

So I'm *really* struggling to find criteria for characters who cannot be the focus of the story, even for stories about invading aliens or the repeated home invasions that adventurers are known for.

Which, in turn, means that one *could* focus on Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) in a movie about a traditional adventure. Instead of casting people like The Rock or Jackie Chan to play his companions, you could try to find actors with less "presence", and focus more on… Quertus' inner thoughts and motivations, and his desperate struggle to be useful / to learn? His longing to go back to his lab, and his occasional thoughts of "this will be fun to experiment with / on"? His growth as he develops spell after spell, in an attempt to reach a "there's an app for that" state?

But, just because you *could*, that certainly doesn't translate into Quertus being the "main character" in most games. He's generally a sage & toolkit for the more combat-oriented stars of the show in most games. And that suits me just fine.

-----

On "combat as event"… I think, first, we need to revisit CaS and CaW.

So, since *you* haven't been quoting me enough recently, I suppose I'll take up the slack :smallwink:


Now, technically, I only promised myself I'd ridicule and spoof the article if someone held it on a pedestal again, but I also didn't promise myself *not* to do so otherwise.

So, here's the part of the article that I think makes sense:

People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) evenly matched sides. They hate “ganking” in which one side has such an enormous advantage (because of superior numbers, levels, strategic surprise, etc.) that the fight itself is a fait accompli. They value combat tactics that could be used to overcome the enemy and fair rules adhered to by both sides rather than looking for loopholes in the rules. Terrain and the specific situation should provide spice to the combat but never turn it into a turkey shoot. They tend to prefer arena combat in which there would be a pre-set fight with (roughly) equal sides and in which no greater strategic issues impinge on the fight or unbalance it.

The other side of the debate is the Combat as War side. They like Eve-style combat in which in a lot of fights, you know who was going to win before the fight even starts and a lot of the fun comes in from using strategy and logistics to ensure that the playing field is heavily unbalanced in your favor. The greatest coup for these players isn’t to win a fair fight but to make sure that the fight never happens (the classic example would be inserting a spy or turning a traitor within the enemy’s administration and crippling their infrastructure so they can’t field a fleet) or is a complete turkey shoot. The Combat as Sport side hates this sort of thing with a passion since the actual fights are often one-sided massacres or stand-offs that take hours.

Then here's the example:

I think that these same differences hold true in D&D, let me give you an example of a specific situation to illustrate the differences: the PCs want to kill some giant bees and take their honey because magic bee honey is worth a lot of money. Different groups approach the problem in different ways.

Combat as Sport: the PCs approach the bees and engage them in combat using the terrain to their advantage, using their abilities intelligently and having good teamwork. The fighter chooses the right position to be able to cleave into the bees while staying outside the radius of the wizard’s area effect spell, the cleric keeps the wizard from going down to bee venom and the rogue sneaks up and kills the bee queen. These good tactics lead to the PCs prevailing against the bees and getting the honey. The DM congratulates them on a well-fought fight.

Combat as War: the PCs approach the bees but there’s BEES EVERYWHERE! GIANT BEES! With nasty poison saves! The PCs run for their lives since they don’t stand a chance against the bees in a fair fight. But the bees are too fast! So the party Wizard uses magic to set part of the forest on fire in order to provide enough smoke (bees hate smoke, right?) to cover their escape. Then the PCs regroup and swear bloody vengeance against the damn bees. They think about just burning everything as usual, but decide that that might destroy the value of the honey. So they make a plan: the bulk of the party will hide out in trees at the edge of the bee’s territory and set up piles of oil soaked brush to light if the bees some after them and some buckets of mud. Meanwhile, the party monk will put on a couple layers of clothing, go to the owl bear den and throw rocks at it until it chases him. He’ll then run, owl bear chasing him, back to where the party is waiting where they’ll dump fresh mud on him (thick mud on thick clothes keeps bees off, right?) and the cleric will cast an anti-poison spell on him. As soon as the owl bear engages the bees (bears love honey right?) the monk will run like hell out of the area. Hopefully the owl bear and the bees will kill each other or the owl bear will flee and lead the bees away from their nest, leaving the PCs able to easily mop up any remaining bees, take the honey and get the hell out of there. They declare that nothing could possibly go wrong as the DM grins ghoulishly.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

And here's my spoof:

Combat as War: The PCs make knowledge checks, and prepare for the encounter, using their abilities intelligently, and having good teamwork. Realizing that bears raid honey trees in nature, one character contracts ursine lycanthropy, while another prepares Summons spells to summon bears. They also consider how to utilize the smoke that beekeepers use to collect honey, and, while discussing holding their breath and establishing escape routes even in smoke, realize that Undead have DR, and neither breathe nor can be poisoned. With cooperation, and every advantage, they roflstomp the encounter, without taking damage, and reconsider their plan to kill the Queen Bee. Instead, they leave her alive, and vow to return to get even more free money later. The GM congratulates them for a game well played, and for exceeding both his expectations on how much they'd net (given the lycanthropy strength boost, and that the undead added their carrying capacity to the party), and his expectation of this being a one-shot cash cow.

Combat as Sport: the party blunders straight into the encounter as always, declaring that nothing could possibly go wrong as the DM grins ghoulishly, but there’s BEES EVERYWHERE! GIANT BEES! With nasty poison saves! The PCs don't even consider running for their lives, or that they don’t stand a chance against the bees, because they know that the GM will make everything a fair fight. But then the Fighter stowed his magical sword in favor of his hammer, because nobody uses swords against bees IRL, and hammers smush bees, right? The barbarian decides now, while he's distracted and won't be expecting it, is the perfect time to take revenge on the Wizard, and power attack leap attack shock troopers him into a thin red paste. On a series of unlucky rolls, aided by their poor tactics, the Fighter and Barbarian succumb to the poison. The Rogue, who was hiding the whole time, attempts to flee, using a zigzag pattern (because bees have problems with zigzag, right?), and dies to the maximum number of AoOs. The GM face palms as the party suffers yet another TPK on an encounter his 7-year-old brother was able to solo.

Sound familiar?

Point is, at its heart, CaS vs CaW is, afaict, whether or not there exists a strategic layer, whereby the party can attempt to obtain advantage, or whether by social contract such a layer is off-limits, to allow the GM to provide a "sporting challenge".

But the author of that article shoved a great many unrelated things under each side.
So, how many good, identifiable axes/meters/stats get grouped together in that article about CaW vs CaS? whether / the extent to which the GM builds balanced encounters
Strategical impact
Tactical impact
Player competence
Following rules vs going outside them
GM malice
Player confidence issues (over, under)

And there's doubtless others.

Now that we've revisited the source of the terms, it occurs to me that they should probably be updated. Because it isn't just the presence or absence of the strategic layer *in combat* - it is, IMO, the presence or absence of the strategic layer *for any encounter* that defines the CaS/CaW distinction.

That out of the way… what do you want to say about Combat as Event?

farothel
2020-10-22, 03:13 PM
If you want to have more focus on non-combat skills, take systems where combat skills are treated like any other skill. That way you can put emphasis on the non-combat over the combat skills.

Example: Alternity. It's an older system and it does support combat, but you can create a character without any combat skill whatsoever and you can make adventures that have no combat in them. In fact, it's an extremely lethal system where you can be lvl 20, but a lvl 1 character with a pistol who gets lucky and shoots you in the head will still one-shot you. So you mostly try to avoid combat.

The Darkmatter setting feels a lot like X-files, with mystery and strange things happening. While that can include combat, you can easily run it as in investigator style game where the characters have to search for clues to figure out what is actually going on. I haven't seen a lot of the X-files, but I know that while Scully and Mulder know how to use a pistol, there aren't all that many gunfights in it. And they only use pistols, not assault rifles or things like that (again, as far as I know).

Cluedrew
2020-10-25, 09:10 AM
So I'm *really* struggling to find criteria for characters who cannot be the focus of the story, even for stories about invading aliens or the repeated home invasions that adventurers are known for.There isn't any beyond "has a story focused on them someone wants to tell."


But, just because you *could*, that certainly doesn't translate into Quertus being the "main character" in most games. He's generally a sage & toolkit for the more combat-oriented stars of the show in most games. And that suits me just fine.Well yeah, but most of the time "main character" is a straight white neurotypical gender-boring male who thinks with his fists/a gun. Things are improving and I'm not going to make a particular case for diversity at this time beyond: I think there are a lot of people you could tell interesting stories about who usually don't get their stories told. I've heard the traditional stories with the traditional heroes before (many of them were good) and I have no fear I will not hear them again. So why not mix in some others? In D&D the sage is probably the back-up for the warrior, but in Ars Magica the warrior is back-up for the sage. I'm not saying that makes Ars Magica better than D&D, I'm saying that doesn't make D&D better than Ars Magica.


That out of the way… what do you want to say about Combat as Event?I suppose by inventing the third option I'm not actually addressing the main point of either Combat as Sport or Combat as War, but rather some of the assumptions built into both of them. That is the central conflict will be combat. Now if you view all three as discussing combat's role in the game it does go Sport, War then Event going from high importance of the combat to low. Even in combat as war things are generally framed around a combat (usually as by rigging it) but in the event model the central focus could be anywhere.

I once ran a campaign (with combat) that was centered around convincing people they needed to leave. They were in a dangerous area and needed to get out, but believed they needed to say. The fights in the story did save a couple of lives, but the social negotiations and traveling saved so many more (including the people that combats had kept alive for this long).

I don't have a clear-cut thesis for all this but it is something like campaigns don't have to be structured around traditional adventuring which means it is actually very easy to feature characters that aren't traditional adventurers.

Also yes, I haven't been posting much recently. A bit of a shift in focus but also not many threads have caught my eye lately.

Quertus
2020-10-25, 05:08 PM
I suppose by inventing the third option I'm not actually addressing the main point of either Combat as Sport or Combat as War, but rather some of the assumptions built into both of them. That is the central conflict will be combat. Now if you view all three as discussing combat's role in the game it does go Sport, War then Event going from high importance of the combat to low. Even in combat as war things are generally framed around a combat (usually as by rigging it) but in the event model the central focus could be anywhere.

I once ran a campaign (with combat) that was centered around convincing people they needed to leave. They were in a dangerous area and needed to get out, but believed they needed to say. The fights in the story did save a couple of lives, but the social negotiations and traveling saved so many more (including the people that combats had kept alive for this long).

I don't have a clear-cut thesis for all this but it is something like campaigns don't have to be structured around traditional adventuring which means it is actually very easy to feature characters that aren't traditional adventurers.

I would contend - perhaps incorrectly - that, even going with definitions limited to handling combat, engaging the encounter as a combat is required in CaS, but it is optional in CaW. That is, if the GM went to the trouble to prepare a sporting encounter, it is only good form to actually engage the encounter as intended in CaS, whereas, in CaW, what's there is there, and if you want to negotiate your way out of the "final epic battle", or eliminate it entirely by breaking a dam, that should be fine.

Except… I can see a game where the GM doesn't care *which* encounters the PCs engage, only *how* they engage them (in particular, that they engage them in a sporting manner). And I think that that would fall under the CaS umbrella.

So I guess I think that the definitions need to be revisited - with a bit more clarity and universality, and a bit less snark - than the originator or I showed before I could adequately evaluate the value and niche of the new term.

Senility willing, perhaps I will create such a thread.

Satinavian
2020-10-26, 01:44 AM
But, just because you *could*, that certainly doesn't translate into Quertus being the "main character" in most games. He's generally a sage & toolkit for the more combat-oriented stars of the show in most games. And that suits me just fine.

It is about games where there are no combat-oriented stars. Only supporters and advisors as characters.

Quertus
2020-10-26, 09:57 AM
It is about games where there are no combat-oriented stars. Only supporters and advisors as characters.

Well, yes.

This brings up my hidden fear. See, just because you remove all of the former main characters, that doesn't guarantee that all of the former supporting cast will suddenly step into leading roles. When Gandalf left the party, did Bomber suddenly become as important as Bilbo?

My fear is that the OP believes that this is a magic bullet that will solve all spotlight sharing issues. It is not. If anything, it might make matters worse, because now, instead of playing supporting cast to a real hero (or group thereof), you could find yourself playing supporting cast to the supporting cast.

Yora
2020-10-26, 11:50 AM
Well, no... :smallwink:

The idea that I had was not to have the sidekicks take the role of heroes in the same kind of adventures that heroes go on. But instead to consider what kinds of different adventures such characters would have if they were on their own. The main point of the idea is to have different adventures. And I think reconsidering the starting conditions by reimagining what a Player Character might be could be a good starting point.

I was primarily thinking about personality, but I now feel that mechanics also play a major part. (System does matter.)

In any edition of D&D, character creation begins basically with picking a race and class, which determines your basic chance to land hits, the amount of hits you can take, your ability to resist harmful effects, how many spells you will have, and your spell list. Then as a second step (or first if you want to roll them) you assign your character's attributes, three of which are most important to determine the modifiers to your combat abilities, and the other three determining (depending on edition) how hard your hostile spells are to resist for enemies.
In older editions, character creation already ends here. Newer editions also let you assign some skill points, but this comes at the end of the process, after your combat and spells have already been fully defined. Skills are a separate branch of abilities from combat and magic, and they are the one that comes last after everything else is already set.

Having a system that is not "combat abilities + miscellaneous" is a good way to start thinking about adventures that don't revolve around combat.

I'm currently reskinning Blades in the Dark, and the character archetypes I am working with are alchemist, town elder, guardsman, herbalist, magistrate, stargazer, and trapper. That's already a very different starting point than picking from fighter, rogue, paladin, and warlock.

Quertus
2020-10-26, 05:04 PM
Well, no... :smallwink:

The idea that I had was not to have the sidekicks take the role of heroes in the same kind of adventures that heroes go on. But instead to consider what kinds of different adventures such characters would have if they were on their own. The main point of the idea is to have different adventures.

Although I can see how you could infer that I was saying that, it's not something that I ever intended to imply. I am with you thus far; my concern was whether you had considered the herbalist playing second fiddle to the magistrate.

You'll be in less-chartered area here - you'll likely have to develop your own tools for spotlight evaluation & sharing. It might not be quite as trivial / quite well received as giving a pity artifact to Captain Fighter.


And I think reconsidering the starting conditions by reimagining what a Player Character might be could be a good starting point.

I was primarily thinking about personality, but I now feel that mechanics also play a major part. (System does matter.).

Changing the focus in character creation is an interesting tool to help set the tone of the game.


alchemist, town elder, guardsman, herbalist, magistrate, stargazer, and trapper.

Looking at some of my "non-adventurous" supporting characters, we've got… a movie student, a sentient potted plant, a telepathic vampire merchant, and a(n epic) academia mage. Left to their own devices, I suspect that they would get up to entirely different hijinks than the shenanigans an alchemist, a town elder, a stargazer, and a trapper would.

So I think you've put the cart before the horse here: it matters little what generic secondary characters would, in general, do, if you're actually working with a very specific, bounded subset of character archetypes.

Personality and system will both still be big factors. Quertus the alchemist and the guards who killed 7 with one blow will likely engage different stories than Edward and Alfonse.

So… I'm not sure how much this thread can actually help with the specific question that you asked.

Cluedrew
2020-10-26, 08:50 PM
[What if we consider Combat as Sport and Combat as War as tactical and strategic levels of conflict.]

Senility willing, perhaps I will create such a thread.Yeah that would work, I could stretch and say some things I might say in this thread.


Having a system that is not "combat abilities + miscellaneous" is a good way to start thinking about adventures that don't revolve around combat.Yeah I actually have part of an opening post to a thread on this topic. I'll save the deep dive for that thread other than to point out there isn't any reason you couldn't build mechanics for any activity to be the center focus.


I'm currently reskinning Blades in the Dark, and the character archetypes I am working with are alchemist, town elder, guardsman, herbalist, magistrate, stargazer, and trapper.Wait are you actually just reskinning it? Like to those archetypes line up with Leech, Spider, Cutter, Lurk, Rook, Slide, Whisper and Hound? Herbalist & Lurk in particular doesn't feel right. Blades in the Dark has a lot of mechanics tied up in its game loop and setting so I feel like you would have to do some modding to so much as take it out of Dusk (or create a suspiciously similar city).

Yora
2020-10-27, 03:47 AM
A bit of hacking is also involved.

Action ratings, attributes, position, and effect are a totally generic base system that work for any genre.

Stress, trauma, vice, rituals, and crafting can easily be reflavored with no mechanical changes.

The rules for the crew, factions, and heat can be dropped entirely without really impacting the core mechanic. You still have a fully playable game without them, though coming up with something campaign specific can of course enhance a campaign. But it's not necessary.

Playbooks are really just XP triggers, three dots in action ratings at the start of character creation, and a list of suggested special abilities. Making new playbooks is trivial. They exist to help players get an impression what kind of characters are expected to fit well into the campaign, but you could also just let them come up with their own XP triggers, put all seven starting dots in whichever action ratings they like, and take special abilities from the whole set of abilities.
Removing some special abilities from the game and adding new ones to better fit the style and tone of the campaign can obviously help a lot.

But other than the factions and crew, it's really a very generic system.

Cluedrew
2020-10-27, 07:18 AM
Have you kept anything other than (most of*) the central resolution mechanic and the structure of one of the playbooks? You seem to be dropping the gang playbooks, have you kept spirit playbooks? Also on the character playbook are you keeping the strange friends and gather information sections? Are coin, stash and retirement the same? Have you kept the load and item system? Wait, you can't have kept the item system because item quality keys off of gang tier. OK so what are you doing instead of that?

I think Blades in the Dark is generic in the way Apocalypse World is, which is to say it is not but there is a generic framework. In Apocalypse World's case that lead to Apocalypse World Hacks and then the Powered by the Apocalypse system/family and D&D (to simultaneously go furthered afield and bring things closer to home) has the d20 System. I say this because you might be underestimating the work you will have to do and if you do all of that calling it a reskin is actually underselling it.

* You might want to think of a heat replacement just because that is portrayed as a fallback cost if nothing else applies. I don't know how often that comes up as I haven't yet put a campaign together. I don't know what your campaign is about but I am sure there is a global problem you could make a little bit worse.

Yora
2020-10-27, 07:44 AM
I'm still working on it. I have not made the playbooks and I don't know yet how I want to implement coin and load.

I've been thinking of replacing the crew and its lair with some kind of mechanic for a cabal and its main base, but I don't feel my concept really calls for numerous cabals competing for dominance.