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Greywander
2022-09-07, 10:07 PM
I was thinking specifically of how a lot of strategy games have a triangle of infantry-cavalry-archers, where infantry armed with polearms beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers, and archers beat infantry. However, this can also be applied to the warrior-thief-mage trio, where the warrior's armor protects them from the thief's blows, the thief is able to get the jump on the mage and take them out before they can cast a spell, and the mage's spells can blast a warrior before they get close.

It kind of surprises me we don't really see more of this in D&D, considering it started as a modified wargame where you control a single soldier instead of whole armies. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this. I think it works best when it's an emergent property of the mechanics, rather than specifically giving bonuses or penalties to certain characters. For example, cavalry are typically an emergent counter to archers simply because their faster speed lets them get into melee range to butcher the archers, especially when the archers are mechanically represented as glass cannons. But often pikemen have to be given special bonuses that specifically target cavalry instead of it being emergent based on more general traits that they have.

I was thinking about this specifically in the context of D&D 5e, possibly for a homebrew project, but as I was reading through the TV Tropes page on this subject (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TacticalRockPaperScissors) I saw this blurb:

Nonmagical combat in 3rd Edition has a subtle version of this. Most Uberchargers (characters who rely on massive speed and damage) lose to Lockdown tactics (combining long-reach weapons with Counter Attacks that halt movement), which in turn has little defense against ranged combat. Other combat styles have less consistent properties, but are generally weaker.
My knowledge of 3e is fairly sparse, but I'm intrigued that there seems to have been shades of this rock-paper-scissors arrangement, and specifically one that matched pretty well with the infantry-cavalry-archer triangle. 5e seems like it has some of the pieces to recreate this, but a lot of it is locked behind feats (PAM and Sentinel for the Lockdown characters, GWM and maybe Mounted Combatant for advantage for the Ubercharger, and so on).

I think I mostly just want to explore this topic and see how it might be handled in other systems and what sorts of tweaks one could make to D&D 5e to make this a bigger part of the game. And again, I'm more interested in when these tactical counters arise as emergent aspects of the rules; X doesn't get a bonus against Y specifically, it's just that X gets a bonus that happens to make them particularly effective against Y. For some good examples of what I'm talking about, you can look at the Slayer class (forum thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643467-Laying-the-groundwork-for-a-Slayer-class), homebrew doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CuLTlDGicypXOmUUZxvKxszYcwXnS2AjaxbedcoPeIk/edit?usp=sharing)) that I wrote up a while back (still WIP); the Demon Slayer gets zero bonuses against demons or fiends, the Dragon Slayer gets zero bonuses against dragons, and the Goblin Slayer gets zero bonuses against goblins (the Witch Slayer is admitted a bit more targeted specifically to spellcasters). But look at the bonuses they do get, and why those bonuses might make them more effective at fighting their chosen prey. (You can probably skip reading the base class and go straight to the subclasses if you just want to see how they counter those types of enemies.)

I'm not saying it has to be just like that, but that's one example where the character being good at fighting a specific type of monster is more of an emergent property of the bonuses they get, instead of getting a bonus specifically against that monster. Charging into a line of pikes is still a bad idea even if you're on foot, it just so happens that it does a particularly good job of countering cavalry whose whole strategy is to run up to enemies really fast and stomp them.

animorte
2022-09-07, 11:05 PM
This is also relevant in every almost every Pokemon game to some degree. Runescape did this fairly well with archer's leather armor providing reliable magic defense, but not as much defense otherwise. Meanwhile a melee character's armor put all their magic (offense or defense) in the negative. Mages just had no real armor of any sort.Many other games have attempted it with varying levels of success.

I don't dislike this idea necessarily, rather don't really see how it could work. The concern is where spell casters (mages) in general have some way to deal with just about every possible scenario. They just get access to far too many resources for there to really be a consistent way to counter them.

We do have a few examples of a typical martial class being able to close in on the mage or even steal a mage's spell, but none of this is broad or consistent enough. Of course, while I have been playing TTRPGs for nearly a decade, I haven't played many different ones, so I wouldn't be able to provide a great variety of input either way. I'm interested in other, more experienced, well-read individuals' opinions on the matter.

Duff
2022-09-07, 11:08 PM
You can have this emerge from:
"Light" fighter makes multiple attacks and their dodging works as well against spells as against blows
"Heavies" have damage reducing armour that makes the multiple attacks much less effective, but armour protects poorly against magic. Their big attacks can cripple the squishy light when they connect
Mages defend using defensive spells. A spell will stop a given number of attacks, no matter how much damage they do, so they're quite good against the big attacks of the heavy but quickly worn away by the light

Psyren
2022-09-08, 12:38 AM
Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?

And the PCs blur these lines too. Cleric was one of the first spanners in the Fighter/Mage/Thief works, but it's only gotten worse since then - Druids, Rangers, Bards/Red Mages, Monks, Artificers etc have all served to muddy the waters on the player side too. You have classes that can close the distance quickly and fight from range, or ranged classes that can defend themselves against chargers with ease. RPS just doesn't cut it for modern D&D, and the prior editions had even more convoluted tactical permutations.

animorte
2022-09-08, 12:46 AM
Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less.

I was thinking this as well for an entirely different reason. Unless, there's a lot of PvP type stuff going or you strictly use class based opposition for the PCs, this design isn't particularly relevant.

Satinavian
2022-09-08, 01:28 AM
It kind of surprises me we don't really see more of this in D&D, considering it started as a modified wargame where you control a single soldier instead of whole armies. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this. I think it works best when it's an emergent property of the mechanics, rather than specifically giving bonuses or penalties to certain characters. For example, cavalry are typically an emergent counter to archers simply because their faster speed lets them get into melee range to butcher the archers, especially when the archers are mechanically represented as glass cannons. But often pikemen have to be given special bonuses that specifically target cavalry instead of it being emergent based on more general traits that they have.
That is relatively simple to answer :

The more your combat has rock-paper-scissors elements, the more the important action becomes about deciding combat pairings. Which means, you need really robust movement rules, you need a battelmap and most of the stuff both sides do suring combat is moving around and denying enemy movement, competing for advanatages positions.

In a wargame that works well. For a tabletop-rpg it is a significantly less good fit.

Another problem would be that if enemy groups are not internally balanced, you will always have certain PC types that are utterly useless in the encounter and others that are the star of the show. That is not ideal either.

Pauly
2022-09-08, 03:52 AM
Modern wargames have moved away from rock-paper-scissors design and mostly utilise the tank design triangle. The tank design triangle is that a tank can have mobility, armor or firepower in a zero sum environment. If you want to increase mobility you have sacrifice firepower and/or armor. Modern wargames are more about how do you bring your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.

Martin Greywolf
2022-09-08, 07:46 AM
The greatest problem with this RPS idea is that, for the progenitor of pike-horse-bow, it... does not work like that. At all.


All of the infantry, ranged and cavalry can have equal armor, and did have equal armor historically. Whether or not a particular individual had full plate was the question of whether or not he could afford it, not some restriction on archers not being able to function in full plate. At worst, archers opted to go without visors, but so did infantry.

https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/8527/1000

Which means that defensively, they are all equal, unless we're concerned with early and high medieval periods, where archers can't use shields as well as other two. But even then, they can still opt to use them. The mostly didn't do so because they didn't need the shields.

The thing is, archers and infantry are deployed together. First two to four ranks of a shield wall are melee troops, the rest are archers, and archers can then fire between the heads of their friends and be covered from return fire by the meat and shield wall in front of them. This was a formation so effective, it was used at least from early medieval all the way to late, where it was replaced with other formation models that still combined melee infantry, archers and gunners.

This combined arms infantry block is almost impervious to frontal cavalry charge - the very heaviest cavalry will probably break it, but suffer horrendous losses, anything less will get torn to pieces. The role of cavalry is therefore twofold: 1) look for infantry that is badly equipped, out of formation and/or has low morale and frontal charge them to rout them, or 2) wait until the enemy infantry is engaged and then charge their flanks or rear. The third role is an emergent one from the enemy having their own cavalry - find said cavalry and kill it.

The only time you see archers operate separately from melee troops is when they have constructed some sort of fortification that will make it difficult to get to them (e.g. flanking archers at Agincourt and Crecy), because that small advantage is all they need. These archers are, after all, armored as heavily as anyone else, and sword is as good as a pollaxe when you are fighting three on one.

So, cavalry beats everyone, but only barely and often with losses that are too bad, and archer+infantry block wins in theory if their nerve and equipment is good enough and they don't get flanked.


So, if you want to have a game that has some sort of verisimilitude, you either have to assign arbitrary bonuses, or set up mechanics very specifically (and risk them falling apart). The tank triangle is a tad better, but you need to make it into a mobility-power-defense-cost-training time pentagon. You can have a soldier that has great attack power, excellent defense and good mobility, but the costs for his training and time required will be horrendous - because we're talking about European knights, or Mongol Keshiks at that point.

What all of this means is that, if you're running a game that tries to be somewhat realistic, you need to forget about RPS units, and start to think about RPS tactics and strategies. If your enemy rolls up and starts to capture your cities, you can try attacking their foraging parties, but it will leave you open because your troops are now dispersed, but if you have strong enough castles that may not be a problem because you have a month until you need to relieve that siege, and can make that month suck for the besiegers by starving them.

DnD is pretty good at doing this with caster-like classes (Tome of Battle is technically not casters, but...), you select your spells and can never have all of them ready, and if you do (sorcerers), there is some other drawback to it. If you are geared to fight things immune to fire, you can be badly surprised if one of them summons something that is immune to ice, if you have setup your spells to counter magical defenses, you will be far less effective against brute force opponents.

Where frustration happens is with builds that can't change their tactics well enough. If you have someone optimized to do bucketloads of fire damage and are confronted with a fire elemental, you may be out of options and resort to being far less effective. This is both a bug and a feature, a bug because it can be intensely frustrating, a feature because it makes the build you use matter more. Well, in theory. That also means you tend to see this less in DnD (outside of fairly highly optimized builds) because it requires your players to actively make a heavily specialized build for it to be apparent.

Psyren
2022-09-08, 08:20 AM
^ Adding to Martin's great post, D&D introduces further wrinkles:

"constructed some sort of fortification" - the beauty of magic is that most parties can easily do this without needing to prepare the battlefield in advance the way those medieval archers would have had to. Even very rudimentary battlefield control like grease, entangle and web count as "fortifications" to protect a party's ranged - which means they need a frontline of infantry a lot less. Buffs like Levitate or Mirror Image also count as "fortifications" in this context. The options grow exponentially as the characters level up, and that's when they don't simply conjure "infantry" (summons/pets) out of thin air.

"heavily specialized builds" - you really don't see these often in D&D since there's very little reward for doing so. You'd have to really go out of your way to be a "fire mage" or "healer" who can do nothing at all else - and why would you? Even if your backstory or something says you have an affinity for fire, in game terms that doesn't make non-fire spells any harder for you to learn, nor ineffective. You might get a feature of some kind that says you can do more with a specific kind of spell, but very few of those force you to be weaker with the others. Similarly, even the healbot-iest cleric to ever healbot knows his entire spell list and can whip out a spiritual weapon etc with at most a day's notice. And their power is even higher in previous editions.


In short - this paradigm doesn't work in D&D for a lot of reasons, and trying to reintroduce it would likely entail changing too much about the classes and system for it to be worthwhile.

animorte
2022-09-08, 08:32 AM
The one thing to note between fictional and non-fictional examples is the inclusion of magic and how the entire system and expectations must be changed to accommodate.

kyoryu
2022-09-08, 10:09 AM
Points on RPS games.

1. Consider the frequency at which the RPS decision is made - the more frequent, the better. Being a "rock" and entering a "paper" dungeon is an un-fun experience. Taking "rocks" to a "paper" encounter isn't great either, and will shift the focus of the game to "figure out what kind of encounter it is, when possible". Making a "rock" move that loses to a "paper" move is no big deal, you can adjust your strategy next turn.
2. For RPS to work, the choices must be simultaneous. Most RPGs work sequentially.
3. You can have the basic idea of simultaneous, blind choices with different payoff matrices. That's what Burning Wheel and related games do.

Khedrac
2022-09-08, 10:20 AM
This is also something that D&D has tried a few times - and generally given up on.

AD&D (1st Ed) psionic combat was basically this, though a bit more complex. It was also a problem because if you didn't have all the powers,, it became a case of "do I have the right ones for this fight or not?" and there was nothing the player could do about it.

BEMCI gold-box Immortal rules power combat was exactly this. OK it wasn't one of the main reasons why Wrath of the Immortals totally re-wrote the Immortal rules, but it's not exactly fun to play when you consider the rest of D&D as a comparison so it is not surprising it is one of the things that got ditched.

Rock/Paper/Scissors is generally too simplified to be a fun decision tool in a game - there's too few options for players (not characters) to try to get sneaky or even just be innovative - you are better off choosing by rolling a dice!
And if characters do not automatically have all three options available it's that horrible case - a "you lose if you try this" feature - a.k.a. a good reason to play a different game.

Quertus
2022-09-08, 10:26 AM
Where frustration happens is with builds that can't change their tactics well enough. If you have someone optimized to do bucketloads of fire damage and are confronted with a fire elemental, you may be out of options and resort to being far less effective. This is both a bug and a feature, a bug because it can be intensely frustrating, a feature because it makes the build you use matter more. Well, in theory. That also means you tend to see this less in DnD (outside of fairly highly optimized builds) because it requires your players to actively make a heavily specialized build for it to be apparent.

I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.

Totally Guy
2022-09-08, 10:47 AM
I have made a Rock-Paper-Scissors style TTPRG.

Characters have approaches that interact Rock-Paper-Scissors style with other characters or the GM's Failure Complications.

If you have higher stats in these approaches you can win less favourable match ups although it's always got some risk. The game is about the conflict between being yourself, doing what you're good at and being secretive and closed, not letting anybody in. Its also about becoming a powerful wizard centring from this conflict.

I think the game does a good job of balancing the power of using your best stats and the temptation of acting randomly by the advancement mini-game. You gain traits and specialities by using skills and stats in enough different ways and you kind of want them to be on a mix of high and low stats and skills to keep them working optimally. Knowing you genuinely does make it easier to fight you.

I'd a rules light but strong game where there's no randomness in the game and no metacurrencies beyond marking experience boxes. It's all on you.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/373473/Mannerism-Diceless-Fantasy-RPG

warty goblin
2022-09-08, 11:09 AM
In a wargame, each side usually has a lot of pieces of the board, like 10 or 20 or more. Things like range and movement speed and morale are important. And either side is supposed to have a reasonable shot at winning, albeit with losses.

In an RPG each player gets one piece, there's only like 4 players, and the DM probably isn't controlling 20 orcs either. Morale ge really isn't modeled at all, and the general trend towards activated player special abilities generally makes maneuver less important. Most importantly, the players are supposed to win, the monsters are just there to provide an enjoyable obstacle, meaning one that every player can contribute to overcoming.

These are not design considerations that favor RPS style balancing. If I'm playing an archer, I probably don't want every fight to consist of like 2 dudes I totally body, 2 dudes I'm indifferent against, and 2 dudes who absolutely wreck me given half a chance, because I'm gonna end up getting wrecked sooner rather than later. I want to be effective against, and durable against, most threats on the board, because that gives me the freedom to use my fun special abilities.

I think the modern tendency in RPGs away from harsh penalties for things like shooting a ranged weapon while threatened make it abundantly clear that nobody wants RPS balancing, precisely because it shuts down characters. It's right up there with throwing a beholder into every encounter, so that there's a counter to the wizard - the whole point of playing a wizard is you want to wizard things, not contend with intelligently employed anti-wizard assets all the time.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-09-08, 11:10 AM
Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?

And the PCs blur these lines too. Cleric was one of the first spanners in the Fighter/Mage/Thief works, but it's only gotten worse since then - Druids, Rangers, Bards/Red Mages, Monks, Artificers etc have all served to muddy the waters on the player side too. You have classes that can close the distance quickly and fight from range, or ranged classes that can defend themselves against chargers with ease. RPS just doesn't cut it for modern D&D, and the prior editions had even more convoluted tactical permutations.


I was thinking this as well for an entirely different reason. Unless, there's a lot of PvP type stuff going or you strictly use class based opposition for the PCs, this design isn't particularly relevant.

Yeah. RPS is basically entirely a "PvP" or "Wargame" model. Or at least one where every creature fits nicely into one of the boxes.

kyoryu
2022-09-08, 11:19 AM
Rock/Paper/Scissors is generally too simplified to be a fun decision tool in a game - there's too few options for players (not characters) to try to get sneaky or even just be innovative - you are better off choosing by rolling a dice!

Not actually true.

Random choice is a Nash Equilibrium in RPS, but it is not necessarily optimal strategy - a NE just means that "neither player can do better unless one player changes their strategy." The problem is that humans are very poor randomizers, which is why there are countless bots that will destroy a human in RPS.

So if one side is using true random strategy, it's true that the best you can do is random (actually, it doesn't matter at that point). But if another player has a bias to play the thing that beat them last time (they lose to paper playing rock, they're more likely to then play paper), you can exploit this and get an advantage. It's fairly easy to even think of how to mechanize this to take the GM out of it - some kind of randomization that would pick strategy for NPCs, where the NPC had certain strategies available for them. "Oh, golems play rock half the time, so when fighting them you should use paper more" at a trivial level, or "golems always play what would have won their last round" or so on and so forth.


And if characters do not automatically have all three options available it's that horrible case - a "you lose if you try this" feature - a.k.a. a good reason to play a different game.

Yes, that's a terrible design, but not quite as bad as it first seems. If someone doesn't have rock, you know scissors is always safe, but they'd also know this and so they'd play scissors a lot to counter that. Which is fine if "don't lose" is the goal. But if you want to win, you'd probably want to throw in some rock, which would be vulnerable to them playing paper.... I'd have to work out the exact strategy, but I think that the non-rock player would be at a disadvantage but not necessarily an automatic loss, presuming that "not losing" isn't sufficient.

Actually, thinking about it slightly more, it might not even be that - optimal strategy might just end up being a coin flip between the options you do have - the player that has rock would never want to play paper, since the best that they could do is tie.


I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.

Having options isn't the problem. Having the frequency of making choices be so low as to lock you into a choice long after it's obvious that it's a poor choice is the problem. At the extreme level, it's one round of RPS that just takes months to play out.


Yeah. RPS is basically entirely a "PvP" or "Wargame" model. Or at least one where every creature fits nicely into one of the boxes.

I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.

So it would look more like "defend/attack/feint" as the RPS elements.

A lot of play by post games did similar. At a basic level, each character could have ratings in each of those maneuvers (or whatever you chose). When there's an exchange between characters, each one picks a maneuver secretly and both are revealed - the winner gets an effect equivalent to their rating.

This also creates some more interest, as the big bruiser that does attack will need to be defended against (assuming defend beats attack)... but.... since they KNOW this they also would want to do some feinting on occasion to beat the obvious counter to their strong move.

Telok
2022-09-08, 11:43 AM
I’ve never understood why some people respond to this with trying to make everyone frustrated, by thinking that “having options” is somehow the problem that needs to be solved.

Well mostly its the D&D hyper focus here combined with WotC's unyeilding insistance that "Thog 8-int 8-cha 8-wis", whose only abilities are hit-with-stick & bag-of-hp, is supposed to be an equally useful & relevant PC in a level 20 magic users & auto-yes skill rogue game. Once you accept it isn't an issue in most other games and start ignoring WotC's cranial-rectal inversion game design habit you can design so nobody accidentally ends up as a incompetent lump of hit points.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-09-08, 11:46 AM
I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.

So it would look more like "defend/attack/feint" as the RPS elements.

A lot of play by post games did similar. At a basic level, each character could have ratings in each of those maneuvers (or whatever you chose). When there's an exchange between characters, each one picks a maneuver secretly and both are revealed - the winner gets an effect equivalent to their rating.

This also creates some more interest, as the big bruiser that does attack will need to be defended against (assuming defend beats attack)... but.... since they KNOW this they also would want to do some feinting on occasion to beat the obvious counter to their strong move.

At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.

kyoryu
2022-09-08, 12:00 PM
At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.

It all depends on the overall design of the game, though. If there's less fiddly modifiers to worry about, and specific spacing is less of a concern, then it may not impact speed too much, especially if you reduce the average number of turns to complete combat.

I'd have to see how it actually played out. But, if you were to do such a thing, I think that's how it'd have to be handled. (Again, note that Burning Wheel does something similar, so clearly it can work)

Telok
2022-09-08, 03:00 PM
At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.

So like D&D then? Because it really starts sucking up time at about 10 participants in a combat. This is, of course, assuming the participants get meaningful reactions.

You see it if you take a party of 4 vs a boss with 3 legendaries and 3 mooks. Four player turns can trigger up to 7 reacting rolls from the monsters, then the monsters can trigger 4 reactions with rolls plus any free/non- action reactions from the PCs which can also involve rolls. And of course some of the reactions can call for further rolls like saves or checks.

Heck, a system with a single opposed attack a turn and nothing like lucky hasted battlemasters & counterspell chains could be significantly faster.

NichG
2022-09-08, 03:38 PM
It's probably more useful to think about ways to drive nontransitivity in games in general, rather than specifically copying RPS. That is to say, the situation where strategy A beating strategy B and B beating C does not imply that A beats C.

There's a general shape of games of skill, where at first nontransitivity between strategies increases with skill as people understand the possibilities better, up to a turning point at which the nontransitivity of strategies decreases until there is ultimately one dominant strategy.

Duff
2022-09-08, 07:03 PM
Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?


This can be a problem or a feature.
If you want to design a dragon that is equally dangerous for all the classes, that's fine. It doesn't matter whether the party are all theives or if they're a mix. And I'd call that a strength because a dragon is always dangerous to all parties.

The idea that other monsters are more or less skewed toward the center or the different corners of the RPS triangle is part of the diversity. The GM needs to consider that their mage BBG is going to be very tough work for the party of all fighters and maybe they get great value from recruiting a thief for this mission.

Other classes not occupying a corner also doesn't have to be a problem. If one player's druid character turns into a bear and fights like a fighter, or stays human and fights like a mage, that's fine, as long as the game design understands that that flexibility should be coming at a cost and the GM understands that they need to take that into account when planning encounters

If you like this R-P-S interplay, you could even build in several. Ranged-heavy-light. Religious-Arcane-Psionic Wolf-eagle-rat earth-wind-fire-water



At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.

Even if the targets all have different ACs, unless you're making all your attacks on the one target, you have to individually roll.
Even if you're attacking the same target, unless there's no chance you're going to want to switch targets after killing (or putting an effect on) target 1 you're going to roll them individually.
So this is less of a change than you might think

Nepenthe
2022-09-08, 07:15 PM
Everyone should definitely check out Mouseguard/Torchbearer's conflict system (it might be the same in Burning Wheel, I haven't read that though).

Pex
2022-09-08, 08:04 PM
Rock Paper Scissors won't work in D&D because Rock players will complain about Paper, Paper players will complain about Scissors, and Scissors players will complain about Rock. RPS accepts being strong in one area and weak in another area as balance. Those who don't like RPS want balance to mean everyone is equivalent. You can have your specialization where you're the Best at this Thing, but no one is helpless at another character's Thing he's Best at. For example, a major issue in 3E was people complaining about having a poor Will save. In 5E it's Wisdom save. Spells attacking that cause someone to Lose A Turn, effectively. People do not want to lose turns. They're fine with such spells existing, mostly, but refuse to accept anyone being weak against it. Let Enchanter be the Best at Lose A Turn spells, but no one may almost always Lose A Turn because of it. It's why people are always encouraged to take Resilient (WI) feat.

To clarify, D&D is certainly capable of having RPS rules and many players will likely enjoy it and be happy. The issue is there are enough players who won't like it and complain about it, it leaves doubt D&D did the right thing.

As a matter of personal opinion, I don't think I have a personal opinion on the matter. I'm more caring about the final result of the rules whatever they are rather than the philosophy of which version of balance is better. I don't worship balance. As an example I utterly reject the Tier System of 3E as a guidance for anything about 3E D&D. It was and only will ever be one person's personal opinion, not gospel.

Greywander
2022-09-08, 08:21 PM
Wow, that's quite a bit of discussion. I won't reply to everyone individually, or else this post will turn into a 60 page thesis, but I'll try to cherrypick quote that highlight the main points being discussed.


Part of the problem with this kind of "RPS design" is that even when you can get the PCs to fit neatly into these categories, as you get to higher levels it applies to the monsters less and less. For example, what would you consider a Rakshasa to be - Fighter, Mage, or Thief? What about an Ancient Dragon? How about a Planetar? Or a Marut? Or a Death Knight?
The only reason you would need to slot players or monsters into categories is to give one category or character a bonus or penalty against another category. Which I suppose is functional (Age of Empires does this, e.g. with spears doing bonus damage to cavalry), but it's kind of boring. So instead of putting characters into limited categories, I think it makes more sense to give them sets of abilities. One ability makes you good at one thing, and another ability is able to counter it, though not necessarily directly. For example, the ability to fly is a huge benefit when all your enemies are melee attackers, but a ranged attacker more or less negates that benefit entirely, and not because ranged attacks have any special interaction with flying creatures (though in some systems they do).


Another problem would be that if enemy groups are not internally balanced, you will always have certain PC types that are utterly useless in the encounter and others that are the star of the show. That is not ideal either.
This can work, but it will require player buy-in (like many things in a TTRPG). If the players go into the game expecting to be useful in every encounter, then of course they're going to be dissatisfied when an enemy counters their abilities. But if they understand and accept that sometimes an enemy will counter them, then they'll be able to enjoy the thrill when they counter the enemies, and be content to let another player shine when the enemy counters them. Not only that, but it can be seen as a challenge to try to find unconventional ways to still contribute to combat when an enemy counters you, particularly strategies involving teamwork.

So I think it could be a lot of fun, but it isn't for everyone. Some people would love it, some people would hate it, but above all they'd have to know that this is what they're getting into beforehand.

It's also worth pointing that players can change strategies. In a lot of strategy games, an archer will continue shooting their bow, even in melee, but in an RPG you can drop the bow and pull out a sword. You might not have as many bonuses when using a sword, but it's still better than using your bow in melee.


Modern wargames have moved away from rock-paper-scissors design and mostly utilise the tank design triangle. The tank design triangle is that a tank can have mobility, armor or firepower in a zero sum environment. If you want to increase mobility you have sacrifice firepower and/or armor. Modern wargames are more about how do you bring your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.
Yeah, this is a good idea. You can use this in conjunction with other forms of RPS mechanics, so you don't need to limit yourself to just this. D&D nominally does this, but I think the problem is that it isn't balanced. 5e is a bit notorious for combat devolving into rocket tag, were damage output is king. But if you can perfect the balance this can offer a simple and intuitive way to customize a character in a meaningful way.


The greatest problem with this RPS idea is that, for the progenitor of pike-horse-bow, it... does not work like that. At all.
??? You literally proved my point?

The point of using mixed armies like that is because different units have different strengths and weaknesses. By having all three of pikes, horses, and bows, you're able to cover the weaknesses of your other units and counter anything your enemy has. So it's not so much about who has which units, but rather the deployment of those units. If the pikes let the enemy cavalry get behind them and wipe out the archers, then you've made a huge blunder. You had the counter to those cavalry, but you put them in the wrong place.

And yes, the counters aren't always clear cut. A heavily armored knight can take on just about anything, but you won't have a whole lot of knights, and you won't want to risk them by throwing them at a line of pikes if a better option is available. Infantry have to orient their defense in a specific direction, whether that's pikes, shields, or both, so you if you can attack them from a different angle you can grind them into dust. And cavalry are great at attacking from unexpected angles. Archers can wear heavy armor and carry a sword, which can make them formidable in melee, but not as much as someone carrying a polearm. Anything smaller than a greatsword is a backup weapon, not a primary weapon, and the lack of reach will put them at a big disadvantage. Full plate would mitigate a lot of that disadvantage, but you'll find it gets pretty expensive to gear up all your archers in plate.


"heavily specialized builds" - you really don't see these often in D&D since there's very little reward for doing so.
It depends what you mean by a "heavily specialized build". A longbow fighter built around maximizing their ranged damage is heavily specialized, but damage is broadly applicable. A sorcerer who only takes fire spells is also heavily specialized, but in a different way.

Also, the math of the d20 mechanic means that it's actually more effective to stack your bonuses on one type of roll. For example, if an enemy hits you on an 11 that's a 50% chance to be hit. If you gain +1 AC then now they only hit on a 12 or better, which is a 45% chance to hit. That's a 10% reduction in the number of hits taken. But if an enemy needs a 19 to hit you (10% chance), and you gain +1 AC, now they can only hit on a 20 (5% chance). That's a 50% reduction in the number of hits taken, from the same +1 bonus. The same math applies to anything that uses a d20 roll. For example, you're better off maximizing one or two saving throws instead of trying to balance them all. So the math behind the d20 roll really does reward specilization.


The one thing to note between fictional and non-fictional examples is the inclusion of magic and how the entire system and expectations must be changed to accommodate.
True, but this is overstated sometimes. If all your mages can do is shoot magical bolts, then they're just fancy archers. A lot of what magic does is introduce a method by which more modern forms of combat can be realized in a medieval setting. For example, Fireballs as artillery. In such cases, the tactics used might more closely resemble those used in a real life modern setting. Things don't really go off the rails until you start adding things that even we can't do yet with modern technology, such as invisibility, teleportation, or summoning.

In some settings, magic might also be rare, but powerful. You might be able to count all the wizards in existence on one hand. In such a case, magical beings are more mythical, and it isn't really pragmatic to build your military with fighting those beings in mind. When the time does come that a military force has to fight one, then it's going to look like, I don't know, Armageddon, or Godzilla, or Independence Day, or something. We have lots and lots of movies about some sort of monster or natural disaster threatening the world and the military throwing all their might at it and barely making a dent. And usually the solution ends up being a hastily assembled specialized task force that takes a much more calculated and precise strategy instead of brute force.

In settings where magic is both common and powerful, then yeah, it's going to result in a lot of fundamental changes to things in that setting. And a lot of D&D settings are this.


Most importantly, the players are supposed to win, the monsters are just there to provide an enjoyable obstacle, meaning one that every player can contribute to overcoming.
This sounds like a Combat as Sport mentality. Personally, I prefer Combat as War, which might explain a lot about where I'm coming from in this thread. Combat should be deadly, and you should want to avoid it when possible. When it isn't possible to avoid, you should stack every available advantage you can to insure the fight is unfair in your favor. It should be understood that an encounter might not be balanced according to your level; if you go to the ancient dragon's lair at 1st level, there's still going to be an ancient dragon there. It's the players' responsibility to decide when to fight and when to run; the DM doesn't need to save them if they pick an unwinnable fight. But by the same token, if the players are creative they can find a way to down a superior foe, e.g. using explosives to collapse a large rock onto the ancient dragon's head.

So I think whether you want Combat as Sport or Combat as War will make a big difference. If the wizard prepares nothing but fire spells and runs into a fire elemental, the Combat as Sport player will say, "That's unfair, you knew all my spells do fire damage," while the Combat as War player will say, "Dang, I prepared the wrong spells today. Let's retreat for now so I can prepare new spells." One isn't necessarily more correct, it's just a matter of what the player is expecting out of the game.


I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.
This exactly. You can have a number of different tactics you could use (not all of them, but more than a few), but these are mutually exclusive with one another so you have to commit to just one. Sometimes this is because of the action economy, e.g. the wizard can cast Fireball or Hypnotic Pattern, but not both on the same turn. Sometimes the tactics themselves requiring doing mutually exclusive things, e.g. the paladin can stand next to their allies to buff them with their auras, or they can engage the boss in a Compelled Duel and keep them away from the rest of their party. If the situation changes, you can change tactics on the fly. For example, the GWM barbarian can pull out a longbow if you get jumped by flying enemies. He won't be great with a longbow, but it's certainly better than standing there impotently holding his greataxe.


One thing I think D&D 5e does pretty well is the relationship between ranged attacks and movement speed. A faster move speed gives a natural benefit against ranged attackers, while a slower move speed suffers a natural penalty. But a slow character doesn't just instantly die when facing an archer. Imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks while a hostile creature is within 5 feet further reinforces this relationship, meaning that getting into melee doesn't just mean that you're able to start attacking the archer, but just existing at melee range with the enemy archer causes them a huge penalty. Thus, getting into melee range of an enemy archer faster becomes much more valuable.

One thing I will say is that high HP values do make it a bit too easy to just walk up to an archer and bonk them, so archer supremacy over melee is only really a thing at low levels. You really need something like flight to elevate a ranged player/monster to a true melee counter, or maybe a strong control ability that makes it much more difficult to approach you. And there's basically no relationship between infantry/polearms and cavalry.

Psyren
2022-09-08, 10:32 PM
The only reason you would need to slot players or monsters into categories is to give one category or character a bonus or penalty against another category. Which I suppose is functional (Age of Empires does this, e.g. with spears doing bonus damage to cavalry), but it's kind of boring. So instead of putting characters into limited categories, I think it makes more sense to give them sets of abilities. One ability makes you good at one thing, and another ability is able to counter it, though not necessarily directly. For example, the ability to fly is a huge benefit when all your enemies are melee attackers, but a ranged attacker more or less negates that benefit entirely, and not because ranged attacks have any special interaction with flying creatures (though in some systems they do).

The point though is that in the pursuit of those categories you remove very iconic things from the game on both sides. For example, saying that you can't fly and be good at ranged or melee means no druids, no vampires, no dragons... It's fine for a different game but not D&D.



It depends what you mean by a "heavily specialized build". A longbow fighter built around maximizing their ranged damage is heavily specialized, but damage is broadly applicable. A sorcerer who only takes fire spells is also heavily specialized, but in a different way.

Fire sorcerer is much closer to what I was talking about than longbow fighter. A longbow fighter is not heavily specialized; in situations where the bow is not useful, they can grab a scimitar and shield just fine and still be above baseline effectiveness. Extra Attack, Action Surge, their proficiencies and Dex all still apply.



Also, the math of the d20 mechanic means that it's actually more effective to stack your bonuses on one type of roll. For example, if an enemy hits you on an 11 that's a 50% chance to be hit. If you gain +1 AC then now they only hit on a 12 or better, which is a 45% chance to hit. That's a 10% reduction in the number of hits taken. But if an enemy needs a 19 to hit you (10% chance), and you gain +1 AC, now they can only hit on a 20 (5% chance). That's a 50% reduction in the number of hits taken, from the same +1 bonus. The same math applies to anything that uses a d20 roll. For example, you're better off maximizing one or two saving throws instead of trying to balance them all. So the math behind the d20 roll really does reward specilization.

That kind of specialization is dependent on the availability of said bonuses. Sure in 3.5 there's a smorgasbord you can stack onto one check, but not so much in 5e.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-10, 08:12 AM
If you want to do rock-paper-scissors-like dynamics, you have to understand what makes rock-paper-scissors work. In this case, even the Wikipedia article for the game goes a long way, explaining its relevant qualities and how it's possible to use skill to gain an edge over a human opponent (etc.)

The key trait of RPS that you likely desire to preserve is the lack of a dominant strategy. For this to happen, the following condition has to be satisfied: even when you know what your opponent is trying to do and all their options for doing it, there is no one thing you could do that would be better than all others. This leads to "I know you know I know" information metagame, where the degree of second-guessing yourself and your opponent becomes relevant.

From existing games, Pokemon provides both a good example and bad examples; good in the sense that it shows how to translate principled of RPS into a more compex turn-based game with lots of different dynamics, bad in the sense that individual Pokemon show how you can screw the dynamic up with overly centralizing player options. Going through, say, Smogon metagame and forums will tell you a lot about what works and what doesn't for implementing the desired dynamic.

On the tabletop, I echo Kyoryu in that the proper placement for the RPS dynamic is on the level of moves, not character builds. More technically, each throw-equivalent should happen on per-turn basis. Each character should have a number of choices to select from, with the final choice of throw being made when the character enters a contest with another.

Mechanically, some of the easiest ways to do this include playing an actual round of RPS between players of the contesting characters (such as a player and the game master), or dealing cards from hand and revealing them at the same time. You can do this with dice, but to avoid everything becoming just a random roll-off, I suggest using a pick from intransitive dice.

The important thing is that even in a turn-based game, the player who choosed last shouldn't know what moves those before them have made, as that trivializes the game for them, being equivalent of a robot using a high-speed camera to see what throw a human is making, then choosing the winning throw faster than the human can react. For a game master, this means there has to be a commitment to secrecy and willingness to accept they don't know what the players will being doing before they do it.

Another thing is that the game master of all people can't be the kind of person who always plays rock, because rock is the best. They have to be willing to mix and match what non-player characters do and can do, otherwise the game is trivialized. The players being that sort of persons is slightly less of a problem, but a problem nonetheless. The players have to understand that they have to switch what they are doing from moment to moment, or they will just lose.

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EDIT: "The players are supposed to win" is a really poor counter-argument for implementing RPS dynamics. Reason being, it is very easy to deliberately play poorly and let players win most of the time. The (only) real problem with that is that it messes with player understanding of how the game works, versus how the opposing player works. As in, if the game master always throws rock, players will start to complain "paper is OP, plz nerf".

zlefin
2022-09-10, 05:07 PM
For 5E, the core problem is simple: it's not the design goal. 5E is specifically designed to be simple; whereas emergent RPS requires lots of complexity and choices.
It's not surprising you don't see much tactics in 5e; as not everyone wants a highly tactical and complex wargame.

There's also a big decision problem: RPS depends on both sides making decisions. But the DM has a lot more decisions to make, unless monsters have somehow automated attack routines; it's also harder to setup good systems that have information hidden from the DM, and hidden information is often a key part of RPS systems.

The nature of upgrade systems also presents a challenge; it's hard to have upgrades uniformly affect all parts of a character. There also inherently tends to be choice in builds; that is, people choose how to build their characters. Thus, even if the system is carefully balanced and designed so that flexibility is more optimal; some players will simply choose to build a character that does one thing very well. If one player simply built to always do rock, then there isn't a lot of choice, rock either works or it doesn't. 3e has a fair bit of this; in that some stronger builds are often based on picking one thing and doing it very effectively. counter-counter-measures exist. So instead of trying to do every type of thing, you take abilities that counter your counters, so you can stick to your core strategy. Ofc 3e also has the problem that some abilities are so broad that it's not so much rock/paper/scissors as rock/paper/scissors/nuclear bomb.


Thinking of how others game handle this; some videogames occur to me, which presents the challenge that what works well in a videogame is quite different from what works well in a TTRPG. In part simply due to how many dice/rolls and units are involved.

The dominions series has lots of complexity and various interactions that lead to certain units being good/bad against others; and it could be adapted into an rpg, though I'm not sure those interactions would work well there, as part of the complexity comes from having so many units to choose from. There's also the inherent warfare choices of how much to commit to each theater/where and when. Whereas in an RPG it's typically more 'this is the battle'.

Poker Quest RPG (a small indie videogame) has a number of emergent counters, though they do tend to fall into certain clusters. The basics of the game is it's you vs 1 monster at a time; and it uses a deck of playing cards with no duplicates. Each round the deck is shuffled and the players gets some cards, and the monster gets a mix of face up and face down cards. Each monster has a variety of attacks/abilities it may use (in a deterministic order) based on what cards it gets, note that the amount of cards 'spent' on an ability can be anything from 0 up. Some monster abilities require specific comboes the monster is unlikely to get, but are powerful when they do (eg requires a full house, or a black jack), against such monsters expensive abilities that let you manipulate their hand are quite effective. There are other monsters who have lots of hidden cards, or who have abilities that are'nt that dependent on the particular cards, against whom hand manipulation is less effective. Damage block abilities are strong vs monsters that are predictable, but less so against some others. Ofc a good portion of the strategy in the game is choosing the path to take, so that you fight monsters that your char does better against, as well as factoring in the many tradeoffs along each path. Something which doesn't tend to translate to TTRPGs where the set of foes to face is usually much more set.

Combat as war doesn't mesh well with RPS gameplay; because the core rule of combat as war is that you don't fight RPS fights, you only fight when you're going to win, if at all possible.

kyoryu
2022-09-10, 05:45 PM
I also heavily disagree that "the players should always win" is a necessary design goal in RPGs.

The only issue is if "losing" and "death" are synonymous, it probably needs to be (effectively) true. The answer is, of course, don't make "losing" and "death" synonymous.

animorte
2022-09-10, 08:58 PM
I also heavily disagree that "the players should always win" is a necessary design goal in RPGs.

The only issue is if "losing" and "death" are synonymous, it probably needs to be (effectively) true. The answer is, of course, don't make "losing" and "death" synonymous.

Getting trapped, losing resources, pushed farther away or held back from your goal, losing friendly or valuable NPCs. There are lots of ways to punish PC mistakes or bad decisions without paying the ultimate price. Or worse, expelled.

Pex
2022-09-10, 11:52 PM
Getting trapped, losing resources, pushed farther away or held back from your goal, losing friendly or valuable NPCs. There are lots of ways to punish PC mistakes or bad decisions without paying the ultimate price. Or worse, expelled.

I know what you did there.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-11, 05:11 AM
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Combat as war doesn't mesh well with RPS gameplay; because the core rule of combat as war is that you don't fight RPS fights, you only fight when you're going to win, if at all possible.

This a nonsense statement, missing the entire point of RPS dynamics.

"Only fighting when you're going to win" is just another way of saying a player is looking for a dominant strategy. What makes RPS dynamics appealing is that there is no dominant strategy, creating a situaton where victory is uncertain and is reliant on correctly predicting an opponent.

In a competently designed game, this extends from tactical level to strategic level just as well. In simplest possible terms, evading a fight may win some scenarios but loses some others, meaning a player always has to make their pick and commit to it to take action.

This fits "combat as war" just as well as it fits "combat as sport". Or is someone here under the impression that in warfare there is always a clear dominant strategy, as opposed to multiple opposed strategies from which one has to pick based on uncertain information?

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I also heavily disagree that "the players should always win" is a necessary design goal in RPGs.

The only issue is if "losing" and "death" are synonymous, it probably needs to be (effectively) true. The answer is, of course, don't make "losing" and "death" synonymous.

Loss and death shouldn't be considered synonymous at all. Even in an actual RPS competition, constestants play multiple rounds to determine the victor, such as best out three or best out of five. It is utterly trivial to design a game where a single match-up doesn't decide any character's life or death.

This said, multiple lost match-ups leading to character death is no more exotic than a character dying due to a series of bad die rolls. Ditto for player loss. It's true that there is no overarching rule of roleplaying game design that actually mandates player invincibility. It's just fine and perfectly normal to make a game where the players can lose, and will, if they don't pay attention or otherwise play poorly.

Quertus
2022-09-11, 07:06 PM
This a nonsense statement, missing the entire point of RPS dynamics.

"Only fighting when you're going to win" is just another way of saying a player is looking for a dominant strategy. What makes RPS dynamics appealing is that there is no dominant strategy, creating a situaton where victory is uncertain and is reliant on correctly predicting an opponent.

In a competently designed game, this extends from tactical level to strategic level just as well. In simplest possible terms, evading a fight may win some scenarios but loses some others, meaning a player always has to make their pick and commit to it to take action.

This fits "combat as war" just as well as it fits "combat as sport". Or is someone here under the impression that in warfare there is always a clear dominant strategy, as opposed to multiple opposed strategies from which one has to pick based on uncertain information?

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Loss and death shouldn't be considered synonymous at all. Even in an actual RPS competition, constestants play multiple rounds to determine the victor, such as best out three or best out of five. It is utterly trivial to design a game where a single match-up doesn't decide any character's life or death.

This said, multiple lost match-ups leading to character death is no more exotic than a character dying due to a series of bad die rolls. Ditto for player loss. It's true that there is no overarching rule of roleplaying game design that actually mandates player invincibility. It's just fine and perfectly normal to make a game where the players can lose, and will, if they don't pay attention or otherwise play poorly.

Um, I’m pretty sure that games that advertise dead players as a feature will be extremely niche at best. :smallamused:

That aside… I don’t think either of you are looking at this the same way I am.

CaW meets RPS(LS)

Really old school CaW: “if the dice come out, we’ve already failed.”

Really old school CaW meets RPS: “if the throw of RPS is called for or matters, we’ve already failed.”

A proper Drow-paranoid RPS CaW strategist would assume that every enemy always plays super morphing Rock-Scissors-Paper; that is, they would assume that every play would always be the element least favorable to their victory, and ask, “under such conditions, how do we win?”. They would proceed to stack the deck sufficiently that, even if they lose every throw, they still win the encounter.

So, sure, we’re all melee, and our opponents are all archers. We won’t engage unless our AC and HP are sufficient, and range of engagement adequately close, that our victory is assured. So… an ambush, for example, is the way a CaW veteran overcomes such RPS deficiencies.

Duff
2022-09-11, 11:20 PM
If you want RPS moves, rather than RPS characters, without increasing the GMs load too much, you could look at having a number of monsters who are RPS types. "Trolls always throw rock". Then the players know their challenge is throw enough good paper

That could then make a part of the challenge of an unfamiliar monster more interesting.

And then make an exceptional individual of the species stand out more. "Who ever heard of a troll throwing paper?"

D&D has this to some extent. More for magical attacks "What are it's bad saves?" than for others, but "Immune to slashing damage" is a thing.

If you wanted to increase the amount of this in D&D, you could simply get into the habit of adding a vulnerability and a resistance to most monsters. Depending on your system, that may be harder or easier

icefractal
2022-09-12, 04:31 AM
A proper Drow-paranoid RPS CaW strategist would assume that every enemy always plays super morphing Rock-Scissors-Paper; that is, they would assume that every play would always be the element least favorable to their victory, and ask, “under such conditions, how do we win?”. They would proceed to stack the deck sufficiently that, even if they lose every throw, they still win the encounter.Depends whether the RPS is only at the tactical level or the strategic level. In the latter case, "spending resources to stack the deck" or "avoiding a foe" are also RPS moves you're playing at a strategic level, and will sometimes but not always be the right ones.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-12, 05:29 AM
That aside… I don’t think either of you are looking at this the same way I am.

Sure. You are looking at it from the perspective of a player wanting to cover all their bases. I'm looking at it from the perspective of a game designer and strategist with the understanding that the relevant dynamic can make it literally impossible to for a player to cover all their bases.


CaW meets RPS(LS)

Really old school CaW: “if the dice come out, we’ve already failed.”

Really old school CaW meets RPS: “if the throw of RPS is called for or matters, we’ve already failed.”

Those pithy statements are completely useless and irrelevant because they start with the assumption that you can avoid committing to your pick, when reality is that you always have to commit to a pick. Your error is thinking of a round of RPS as mere replacement for a die roll, when I'm talking of absence of a dominant strategy throughout a game.

In other words, whatever strategy or meta-strategy you employ, it always happens in the context of the throw; no strategy or meta-strategy allows you to circumvent the throw. A good meta-strategy lets you win more throws, but no strategy nor meta-strategy exists that will let you win despite of the throws. The equivalent for a dice game would be that you can hedge your bets but you cannot avoid rolling the dice.


A proper Drow-paranoid RPS CaW strategist would assume that every enemy always plays super morphing Rock-Scissors-Paper; that is, they would assume that every play would always be the element least favorable to their victory, and ask, “under such conditions, how do we win?”. They would proceed to stack the deck sufficiently that, even if they lose every throw, they still win the encounter.

So, sure, we’re all melee, and our opponents are all archers. We won’t engage unless our AC and HP are sufficient, and range of engagement adequately close, that our victory is assured. So… an ambush, for example, is the way a CaW veteran overcomes such RPS deficiencies.

The paranoid premise in the first paragraph is idiotic and does not lead to good meta-strategy in a game with no dominant strategy. Take a closer look at it. The paranoid player is simultaneously assuming that the enemy will always pick the right counter-strategy on one level, but will somehow fail to do so on the second level. Once you do away with the implicit self-contradiction, you're left with "whatever strategy I pick, my opponent will pick the right counter strategy" and the only possible conclusion in such a scenario is "there is no condition under which I can win".

The group in the second paragraph is not engaging in any cutting-edge "combat as war" strategy that somehow circumvents their weaknesses; they are changing their strategy from "melee charge" to "ambush" in the hopes of beating the enemy's "archery volley", just like a player in RPS might change their pick from "paper" to "rock" because they anticipate their opponent will thrown "scissors". Victory can only be assured if there is no counter-strategy the opponent can employ, which would go against the core design principle we're discussing.

Now, for a given game, a dominant strategy might exist on one layer even when none exist on others, which might allow winning a war despite losing battles. But this cannot be assumed. It has to be verified for each game specifically. However, which ever way it goes for a given game, it has nothing to do with "combat as war" versus "combat as sport" split. Again: is someone here under the impression that in warfare there is always a clear dominant strategy, as opposed to multiple opposed strategies from which one has to pick based on uncertain information? Or is someone under the impression that sports do not have strategizing analogous to what your melee dudes are doing?

animorte
2022-09-12, 05:50 AM
I'm looking at it from the perspective of a game designer and strategist with the understanding that the relevant dynamic can make it literally impossible to for a player to cover all their bases.

I like this. I think it’s cool to have a versatile character, but there’s no reason you should need to be able to do everything. That’s only for greedy people and those who have a severe lack of trust in their fellow players/DM. Which is entirely its own problem.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-12, 06:44 AM
I don't mean exactly what you think I mean; in a game designed around RPS dynamics, each character may carry all of rock, paper and scissors. The point is that at the moment of contest, they still have to pick, and it's always possible the opponent will pick their counter. Hence nobody can unilaterally decide course of the game regardless of what their opponent does.

kyoryu
2022-09-12, 10:21 AM
CaW meets RPS(LS)

Really old school CaW: “if the dice come out, we’ve already failed.”

Really old school CaW meets RPS: “if the throw of RPS is called for or matters, we’ve already failed.”

A proper Drow-paranoid RPS CaW strategist would assume that every enemy always plays super morphing Rock-Scissors-Paper; that is, they would assume that every play would always be the element least favorable to their victory, and ask, “under such conditions, how do we win?”. They would proceed to stack the deck sufficiently that, even if they lose every throw, they still win the encounter.

So, sure, we’re all melee, and our opponents are all archers. We won’t engage unless our AC and HP are sufficient, and range of engagement adequately close, that our victory is assured. So… an ambush, for example, is the way a CaW veteran overcomes such RPS deficiencies.

To say what others have said, but maybe using different words:

The whole point of CaW is shifting the important moves away from the turn and up to the tactical. To use your example, you don't win the "melee charge vs. archer volley" encounter (RPS or not) by doing better at melee charge vs. archer volley - you do it by not doing melee charge vs archer volley, and instead doing an ambush.

That could be seen as a form of RPS, just at the encounter rather than the move level, especially if the ambush has its own counter strategies.

(Note, of course, that if you know the enemy is doing an archer attack, then it's not really RPS any more as RPS requires simultaneous hidden choices. Any RPS-like mechanic tends to fail horribly when applied to a sequential game).

zlefin
2022-09-12, 11:02 AM
This a nonsense statement, missing the entire point of RPS dynamics.

"Only fighting when you're going to win" is just another way of saying a player is looking for a dominant strategy. What makes RPS dynamics appealing is that there is no dominant strategy, creating a situaton where victory is uncertain and is reliant on correctly predicting an opponent.

In a competently designed game, this extends from tactical level to strategic level just as well. In simplest possible terms, evading a fight may win some scenarios but loses some others, meaning a player always has to make their pick and commit to it to take action.

This fits "combat as war" just as well as it fits "combat as sport". Or is someone here under the impression that in warfare there is always a clear dominant strategy, as opposed to multiple opposed strategies from which one has to pick based on uncertain information?

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Loss and death shouldn't be considered synonymous at all. Even in an actual RPS competition, constestants play multiple rounds to determine the victor, such as best out three or best out of five. It is utterly trivial to design a game where a single match-up doesn't decide any character's life or death.

This said, multiple lost match-ups leading to character death is no more exotic than a character dying due to a series of bad die rolls. Ditto for player loss. It's true that there is no overarching rule of roleplaying game design that actually mandates player invincibility. It's just fine and perfectly normal to make a game where the players can lose, and will, if they don't pay attention or otherwise play poorly.

it's not a nonsense statement at all; you just missed the point of it entirely; Quertus already explained the point. And you seem to be ignoring the point being made and talking past it; so there's clearly no useful discussion to be had, or rather, there's no discussion being had at all; merely two unrelated monologues. You're not helping or creating a discussion.

kyoryu
2022-09-12, 11:50 AM
it's not a nonsense statement at all; you just missed the point of it entirely; Quertus already explained the point. And you seem to be ignoring the point being made and talking past it; so there's clearly no useful discussion to be had, or rather, there's no discussion being had at all; merely two unrelated monologues. You're not helping or creating a discussion.

I think he expressed his point poorly.

I think that there are decisions that can be made at multiple levels:

1. Single move/action
2. Encounter
3. Scenario (roughly per session)
4. Arc
5. Campaign

... roughly speaking. Ultimately, CaW is about "de-emphasize the decisions at the move level, in favor of ones made at the encounter level".

Now, you can have RPS at multiple levels.

1. Attack/feint/defend
2. Ambush/avoid/etc. (typical CaW stuff)
3. Spell/equipment loadouts (memorization, etc.)
4. Not sure - maybe what supplies you take with on a journey?
5. Character build (in most systems)

Quertus is saying that move-level RPS is incompatible with CaW. And this is 100% true.

Vahanavoi is saying that that is 100% true, however RPS can still be applied at the encounter level. IOW, even if you're playing CaW-style, there shouldn't be a single CaW tactic that works. "Ambush everything" leads to boring gameplay, as you always do the same thing. "Ambush" if done from an RPS could be defeated by the enemy scouting.

Realistically, I think that typical CaW gameplay is closer to a puzzle - there's a scenario in front of you, and you have to figure out how to get past it. "Flaming barrels" may be a great tactic, but only will work if you actually have said barrels available. That prevents it from truly being a dominant strategy or trivializing gameplay, because you can't rely on it.

Also, RPS presumes an active opponent, and typically in CaW your opponents are closer to (but not entirely) static. At least, that's historically true - there's some goblins in a camp, maybe some patrols, what are you going to do about it? Getting found is often pretty close to a fail state. It'd be possible to imagine a game that focused on that level of game, where the enemies (probably multiple camps/groups) were an active opponent, but it'd have some stuff not often found in games today.

Quertus
2022-09-12, 01:53 PM
Depends whether the RPS is only at the tactical level or the strategic level. In the latter case, "spending resources to stack the deck" or "avoiding a foe" are also RPS moves you're playing at a strategic level, and will sometimes but not always be the right ones.


Sure. You are looking at it from the perspective of a player wanting to cover all their bases. I'm looking at it from the perspective of a game designer and strategist with the understanding that the relevant dynamic can make it literally impossible to for a player to cover all their bases.



Those pithy statements are completely useless and irrelevant because they start with the assumption that you can avoid committing to your pick, when reality is that you always have to commit to a pick. Your error is thinking of a round of RPS as mere replacement for a die roll, when I'm talking of absence of a dominant strategy throughout a game.

In other words, whatever strategy or meta-strategy you employ, it always happens in the context of the throw; no strategy or meta-strategy allows you to circumvent the throw. A good meta-strategy lets you win more throws, but no strategy nor meta-strategy exists that will let you win despite of the throws. The equivalent for a dice game would be that you can hedge your bets but you cannot avoid rolling the dice.



The paranoid premise in the first paragraph is idiotic and does not lead to good meta-strategy in a game with no dominant strategy. Take a closer look at it. The paranoid player is simultaneously assuming that the enemy will always pick the right counter-strategy on one level, but will somehow fail to do so on the second level. Once you do away with the implicit self-contradiction, you're left with "whatever strategy I pick, my opponent will pick the right counter strategy" and the only possible conclusion in such a scenario is "there is no condition under which I can win".

The group in the second paragraph is not engaging in any cutting-edge "combat as war" strategy that somehow circumvents their weaknesses; they are changing their strategy from "melee charge" to "ambush" in the hopes of beating the enemy's "archery volley", just like a player in RPS might change their pick from "paper" to "rock" because they anticipate their opponent will thrown "scissors". Victory can only be assured if there is no counter-strategy the opponent can employ, which would go against the core design principle we're discussing.

Now, for a given game, a dominant strategy might exist on one layer even when none exist on others, which might allow winning a war despite losing battles. But this cannot be assumed. It has to be verified for each game specifically. However, which ever way it goes for a given game, it has nothing to do with "combat as war" versus "combat as sport" split. Again: is someone here under the impression that in warfare there is always a clear dominant strategy, as opposed to multiple opposed strategies from which one has to pick based on uncertain information? Or is someone under the impression that sports do not have strategizing analogous to what your melee dudes are doing?


To say what others have said, but maybe using different words:

The whole point of CaW is shifting the important moves away from the turn and up to the tactical. To use your example, you don't win the "melee charge vs. archer volley" encounter (RPS or not) by doing better at melee charge vs. archer volley - you do it by not doing melee charge vs archer volley, and instead doing an ambush.

That could be seen as a form of RPS, just at the encounter rather than the move level, especially if the ambush has its own counter strategies.

(Note, of course, that if you know the enemy is doing an archer attack, then it's not really RPS any more as RPS requires simultaneous hidden choices. Any RPS-like mechanic tends to fail horribly when applied to a sequential game).

Dead gods, have I ever failed to communicate!

Ok, let’s try this again:

The party is rock = melee troops. Period.

They know that they will lose to… no. They know that they will be at a severe disadvantage against Paper = ranged foes.

That’s an important distinction: RPS design need not be “X always loses”; if it is, “muggles always lose to casters” should be true, because muggle players whine and PvP too much. “Muggles always lose to casters” might let us get back to playing the game.

Anyway, the properly Drow-paranoid CaW strategist assumes every encounter is at disadvantage; ie, Paper to their Rock; ie, ranged troops that their melee-only party is weak against. Thus, they won’t engage until they Create an Advantage (at the layer above the RPS throw) sufficient to overcome the anticipated worst case scenario of always being out-thrown.

If you move the RPS to the level of individual moves, the CaW strategist won’t engage until they can win the engagement while losing every single throw (“even if I parry with my face, you still can’t win”). Or they will find a way to burn their opponents’ Paper (“hard to use that bow without any arrows”, “hard to use that breath weapon under water”, etc).

If you move the RPS to the layer of “charge” / “ambush”, the CaW player will move to playing the layer above that, leading to “picking Wizard at Character Creation = win the game”, which we all know is hailed as the best thing to ever happen to RPG strategy.

If you make RPS auto-win, the RPS strategist will quote references to nuclear war and Fatal: the only winning move is not to play.

And I think “making the choice between CaW and CaS into a RPS strategy” is a rabbit hole no being who isn’t prepared to give themselves over to Chaos and Madness should consider. :smalltongue:

Quertus
2022-09-12, 02:01 PM
I think he expressed his point poorly.

I think that there are decisions that can be made at multiple levels:

1. Single move/action
2. Encounter
3. Scenario (roughly per session)
4. Arc
5. Campaign

... roughly speaking. Ultimately, CaW is about "de-emphasize the decisions at the move level, in favor of ones made at the encounter level".

Now, you can have RPS at multiple levels.

1. Attack/feint/defend
2. Ambush/avoid/etc. (typical CaW stuff)
3. Spell/equipment loadouts (memorization, etc.)
4. Not sure - maybe what supplies you take with on a journey?
5. Character build (in most systems)

Quertus is saying that move-level RPS is incompatible with CaW. And this is 100% true.

Vahanavoi is saying that that is 100% true, however RPS can still be applied at the encounter level. IOW, even if you're playing CaW-style, there shouldn't be a single CaW tactic that works. "Ambush everything" leads to boring gameplay, as you always do the same thing. "Ambush" if done from an RPS could be defeated by the enemy scouting.

Realistically, I think that typical CaW gameplay is closer to a puzzle - there's a scenario in front of you, and you have to figure out how to get past it. "Flaming barrels" may be a great tactic, but only will work if you actually have said barrels available. That prevents it from truly being a dominant strategy or trivializing gameplay, because you can't rely on it.

Also, RPS presumes an active opponent, and typically in CaW your opponents are closer to (but not entirely) static. At least, that's historically true - there's some goblins in a camp, maybe some patrols, what are you going to do about it? Getting found is often pretty close to a fail state. It'd be possible to imagine a game that focused on that level of game, where the enemies (probably multiple camps/groups) were an active opponent, but it'd have some stuff not often found in games today.

Excellent post, I very much agree with the parts I bolded.

For the rest… yeah, I think it’s fair to say that CaW would like to move the game up to the layer where the opponent is static rather than active?

Oh… Dagnabbit, I guess I’m not saying “CaW is incompatible with RPS”, any more than I’m saying “CaW is incompatible with dice”. I’m saying… CaW avoids the layer where such is used like the plague. So forcing dice or RPS is antithetical to CaW.

Maybe I’ll clarify more later, thought this was important to say now.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-12, 02:23 PM
Quertus is saying that move-level RPS is incompatible with CaW. And this is 100% true.

It's 100% false. Even Quertus's own example takes for granted that an RPS dynamic exist on a move level. His error is assuming that the dynamic doesn't exist on the levels above that. As a corollary, since the dynamic can exist throughout a game, defining "combat as war" as focusing on one layer over the other doesn't suddenly mean RPS dynamics are incompatible with it. It just means a proper implementation of the dynamic would exist between choices on the level the game's focused on.

Indeed, given Quertus's last post, I'm willing to proclaim neither he nor zlefin have a workable definition of "combat as war", because nothing about warfare suggests that players can always manage to avoid making uncertain decisions. Neither "combat as war" nor "combat as sport" games need to have dominant strategies that assure victory, both can enforce fog-of-war, simultaneous moves or other factors that directly lead to RPS dynamics, and many of the mechanics that contribute to such dynamics not only exist in classic wargames, they were pionereed by them.

kyoryu
2022-09-12, 03:04 PM
It's 100% false. Even Quertus's own example takes for granted that an RPS dynamic exist on a move level. His error is assuming that the dynamic doesn't exist on the levels above that. As a corollary, since the dynamic can exist throughout a game, defining "combat as war" as focusing on one layer over the other doesn't suddenly mean RPS dynamics are incompatible with it. It just means a proper implementation of the dynamic would exist between choices on the level the game's focused on.

Indeed, given Quertus's last post, I'm willing to proclaim neither he nor zlefin have a workable definition of "combat as war", because nothing about warfare suggests that players can always manage to avoid making uncertain decisions. Neither "combat as war" nor "combat as sport" games need to have dominant strategies that assure victory, both can enforce fog-of-war, simultaneous moves or other factors that directly lead to RPS dynamics, and many of the mechanics that contribute to such dynamics not only exist in classic wargames, they were pionereed by them.

Well, I'd probably be more accurate to state that "interesting gameplay derived from RPS at the move level is incompatible with the goals of CaW". That's probably more accurate, since the goal of CaW is to win at the encounter level, and that relying upon success at the move level is, effectively, a failure state. Really, I'd define "CaW" and "CaS" really as an emphasis on the encounter vs. move level of decision making in the game, as a basic, first-pass definition. CaS games usually spoon-feed encounters for that reason - they want the move-level decisions to be important, and that's easy to trivialize if you allow success at the encounter-level to significantly impact what resources are brought into an encounter.

(Note that by "encounter level" I really mean something more like "encounter selection and approach")

So really, as a game concept it wouldn't make sense to add Move-RPS to a CaW-focused game. Really, in a CaW-focused game, the resolution of an encounter should probably be as quick as possible, since the "real" game is at the encounter level and higher. There is, of course, nothing preventing you from doing so, it's just a bit odd as pushing a lot of interesting decision-making and influence to the move level kind of is at odds with the conceptual goals of CaW.

RPS can absolutely exist at the encounter-level, however it typically does not (currently) as commonly conceptualized, since the opposing side is usually fairly static. Implementing CaW-RPS would be an interesting design exercise.

And, yes, neither style needs to have dominant strategies. And I'd argue that true dominant strategies shouldn't exist in any game, as they trivialize the game.

My only other point was that RPS isn't necessarily required for CaW to avoid dominant strategies, as usually the available pieces, and the lack of reactivity, turn it into more of a puzzle rather than a game in most game-theory definitions.

icefractal
2022-09-12, 04:21 PM
If you make RPS auto-win, the RPS strategist will quote references to nuclear war and Fatal: the only winning move is not to play.
How many people really follow that though? Most campaign premises contain more than the minimum possible danger for the PCs, and even in pure sandboxes, pretty much everyone I've played will voluntarily accept some danger rather than playing it maximally safe.

Maybe that means we're not true CaW players, but if that's the definition then it seems like only a very small niche of players do qualify.

I'm not talking about "you have a coin-flip chance to die" here, but there's a huge middle ground between that and "I only start fights that I've already won"

Quertus
2022-09-12, 05:03 PM
It's 100% false. Even Quertus's own example takes for granted that an RPS dynamic exist on a move level. His error is assuming that the dynamic doesn't exist on the levels above that. As a corollary, since the dynamic can exist throughout a game, defining "combat as war" as focusing on one layer over the other doesn't suddenly mean RPS dynamics are incompatible with it. It just means a proper implementation of the dynamic would exist between choices on the level the game's focused on.

Indeed, given Quertus's last post, I'm willing to proclaim neither he nor zlefin have a workable definition of "combat as war", because nothing about warfare suggests that players can always manage to avoid making uncertain decisions. Neither "combat as war" nor "combat as sport" games need to have dominant strategies that assure victory, both can enforce fog-of-war, simultaneous moves or other factors that directly lead to RPS dynamics, and many of the mechanics that contribute to such dynamics not only exist in classic wargames, they were pionereed by them.

I’ve been rather loose with my words, and with my weasel words, and at least the latter seems to have been lost in translation.

So, there’s “Combat as War”, there’s the “Combat as War mindset”, and there’s my “maximally paranoid CaW veteran”. Unsurprisingly, you seem to be conflating the three, as I’ve put forth minimal effort to differentiate to which I was referring.

@Kyoryu (going from memory, sorry if I spelled that wrong) is correct regarding classic CaW - the objective is to “solve the puzzle”, and make individual tactical actions irrelevant in the face of the “solution” strategy. CaW wants the turn to turn action to, at worst, involve snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (“how did undead-using ursine lycanthropes utilizing smoke lose to a bunch of bees?”).

The CaW mindset is where the phrase “if the dice come out, we’ve already failed” comes in. Engaging in the tactical minigame is a fail state for the CaW mindset - it indicates that you’ve failed to solve the puzzle.

The paragon of Drow-level paranoia, steeped in CaW mindset, would simply continue taking the game up a level until they had obviated the dice / RPS minigame - even if that meant changing system, or changing GM.

So, to make a RPS system compatible with a CaW mindset, one must ensure that there exists a layer above where RPS mechanics are being used, such that the players can “solve the puzzle” at that layer, without resorting to RPS. RPS is only to be used in CaW as a fail state, when the solution to the puzzle was incorrect.

I hope that clarifies my position somewhat, so that I can stop encountering replies that have nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

Quertus
2022-09-12, 05:21 PM
How many people really follow that though? Most campaign premises contain more than the minimum possible danger for the PCs, and even in pure sandboxes, pretty much everyone I've played will voluntarily accept some danger rather than playing it maximally safe.

Maybe that means we're not true CaW players, but if that's the definition then it seems like only a very small niche of players do qualify.

I'm not talking about "you have a coin-flip chance to die" here, but there's a huge middle ground between that and "I only start fights that I've already won"

There’s a reason I referenced a maximally paranoid Drow, to indicate I was talking about the extreme end of the spectrum.

Yes, “real” CaW players / characters have some level of perceived risk that they’ll accept, and, obviously, that’ll vary by individual. Sure, they’ve burned their opponents’ paper, but do they really need to burn down their opponents’ forests, and Mindrape / Balefire / whatever the very concept of Paper out of existence before engaging? Probably not… unless they’re that maximally paranoid Drow CaW strategist.

At a completely different vector, there’s also the question of how much the group enjoys the “war game”. I’ve played with war gamers (and, you know, been one), and I’ve gamed with people who would happily “roll combat” as the extent of the tactical minigame.

So, while I love approaching things in CaW puzzle-solving fashion, I also love when the dice come out. I’m easy that way. Heck, the module where, apparently, everybody and their brother goes CaW and floods the dungeon, my party didn’t, we just waded through the foes like they were humans, so take that as you may. Similar to how my characters often attempt diplomatic solutions to problems… and often fail, and end up in combat anyway. (Yeah, I’d love for “you are my quest” to have been a (successful) line from one of my characters, rather than a quote from “Kuba and the two strings”, but that’s not the worlds I live in.)

kyoryu
2022-09-12, 06:52 PM
To be clear, while I think that most current conceptions of CaW do involve more puzzle-solving, I don't think it's inherently necessary. You could absolutely do an encounter-level game that was RPS based. Would people that like current CaW like it? Dunno, but I think it could be a fun game either way.

The big problem with RPS mechanics at all is there's a lot of people in the RPG space that really presume they'll win all the time, and RPS definitely isn't geared for that.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-13, 05:29 AM
Combat-as-puzzle is NOT combat as war. You are using words badly.

Sure, if you want combat to be an entertaining puzzle, then it makes sense for there to be (at least) one correct solution that bypasses any randomness. But even combat-as-puzzle is not incompatible with RPS dynamics, because RPS is not random.

The error in your thinking is that, since every strategy defeats one and is defeated by another, you have at best 1-in-3 chance of winning against an opponent who picks randomly. But it's not a given that an opponent picks at random, and a non-random opponent can be predicted, leading to significantly higher fraction of wins. There's an entire genre of tactical puzzles based around RPS mechanics where the solution to the puzzle is realizing there is a sequence to moves made by your opponent, and then exploiting that sequence. Virtual training battles in Shin Megami Tensei IV would be a good example.

Considering engaging the tactical level as a fail state is hot nonsense - there's no reason why the correct solution to the puzzle would or should free a player from actually making the correct sequence of moves. Tactics is the implementation of strategy, not something orthogonal to it.

So now that you've succesfully clarified that what you mean by "combat as war" is not in fact combat as war, and is instead combat-as-puzzle, do everyone a favor and excise "combat as war" from your vocabulary.

Satinavian
2022-09-13, 06:54 AM
Also, RPS presumes an active opponent, and typically in CaW your opponents are closer to (but not entirely) static. At least, that's historically true - there's some goblins in a camp, maybe some patrols, what are you going to do about it? Getting found is often pretty close to a fail state. It'd be possible to imagine a game that focused on that level of game, where the enemies (probably multiple camps/groups) were an active opponent, but it'd have some stuff not often found in games today.
Where did you get that idea ? A huge part of CaW is that the opponents are acting as strategically sound as they can to achieve their objectives with no regards to balance. They are basically only pasive if they literally can't move or lack the required knowledge to act or are defending a position. Opponents are generally as often acting as PCs. Both sides trying to get information, obscure their own movement/forces and try to outmanouver each other before the confrontatin is n important part of the game.

Puzle games where opponents just wait around for the PCs to find their weak points and attack them tend to feature in CaS as part of clearly manufactures challenges.

Quertus
2022-09-13, 08:04 AM
Where did you get that idea ? A huge part o CaW is that the opponents are acting as strategally sound as they can to achieve their objectives with no regards to balance. They are basically only pasive if they literally can't move or lack the required knowledge to act or are defending a position. Opponents are generally as often acting as PCs.

Puzle games where opponents just wait around for the PCs to find their weak points and attack them tend to feature in CaS as part of clearly manufactures challanges.

Well, the most quoted depiction of CaS vs CaW has a rather “static” target:

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.

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?

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?

Namely, that of some “mindless” bees, unaware of the existence of the PCs.

So, while I don’t disagree with you per se, history casts your statement into a different light.

Khan may have been doing the best he could, but he was still limited by thinking in 2 dimensions - a fact CaW Spock exploited. The only reason for the GM to break to the tactical minigame wouldn’t be to roll dice or play RPS, but to see if Spock’s player was dumb enough to blunder into the plane Khan was searching, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.


if you want combat to be an entertaining puzzle,

Nope, wrong already. I mean, yes, I’m a war gamer, and I want combat to be entertaining. And “puzzle monsters”, that make combat entertaining by making combat a puzzle are a (much derided) thing.

No, what I’m talking about as CaW is making the information gathering and preparation and strategizing before combat a puzzle. One that one can “win” sufficiently to obviate the need to use the “combat” minigame.

EDIT: or, to maybe put it into related terms perhaps more commonly understood, “5d Wizard chess”.

Satinavian
2022-09-13, 08:36 AM
Namely, that of some “mindless” bees, unaware of the existence of the PCs.Well, i rarely use mindless monsters. And i don't really think of them in a CaW/CaS distinction. The latter precisely because they can't gather information or adapt strategies to their opposition. They behave less like an enemy in a CaW setting and more like an environmental hazzard. And unsurprisingly they get handled in a similar way, that is where the puzzle stuff comes from. Most environmental hazards are trivial when you have figured them out.

Vahnavoi
2022-09-13, 09:09 AM
Nope, wrong already. I mean, yes, I’m a war gamer, and I want combat to be entertaining. And “puzzle monsters”, that make combat entertaining by making combat a puzzle are a (much derided) thing.

No, what I’m talking about as CaW is making the information gathering and preparation and strategizing before combat a puzzle. One that one can “win” sufficiently to obviate the need to use the “combat” minigame.

The only kind of game where figuring out the best strategy obviates the need to use the combat "minigame" is the one where entering combat, at all, is always the wrong choice. That's not "combat as war", that's "combat strictly disincentivized".

In any other kind of game, even after figuring out the best strategy, the player still occasionally has to enter combat and still has to make all the relevant moves, because tactics is how you implement strategy.

And that is how RPS dynamics actually play out. You gather information on your opponent, choose your meta-strategy and prepare for the contest (such as by coding an algorithm or building that high-speed camera) and then you show up and make the winning throws. The correct solution lets you win more throws. It doesn't let you win despite of the throws. It certainly doesn't let you win if you don't actually show up.

And, like I've explained several times by now, this situation can recur throughout a game. You may have multiple ways to gather information and your opponent may have multiple ways to stop you; there may be multiple competing strategies; there may multiple mutually exclusive ways to prepare - so on and so forth. And nothing about combat as war suggests that there should always be a certain solution. That is domain of combat-as-puzzle, or, more generally, strategy-as-puzzle.

So stop talking about war when you mean puzzles.


EDIT: or, to maybe put it into related terms perhaps more commonly understood, “5d Wizard chess”.

That's not a commonly understood term with a firm definition, at all. If anything, the common use is as mocking descriptor of games that are absurdly complex.

Online RPG lexicon is full of words that don't actually do any job better than plain English or terms from actual game theory would.

Quertus
2022-09-13, 10:23 AM
Well, i rarely use mindless monsters. And i don't really think of them in a CaW/CaS distinction. The latter precisely because they can't gather information or adapt strategies to their opposition. They behave less like an enemy in a CaW setting and more like an environmental hazzard. And unsurprisingly they get handled in a similar way, that is where the puzzle stuff comes from. Most environmental hazards are trivial when you have figured them out.

Well, you having such a view of what CaW means? That’s on you. The classic example (presumably by the originator of the terms?) - which, for years, no one around here but me would accept or describe as anything other than perfectly representative of CaW vs CaS (at least in any of the threads I participated in) - is about mindless bees.

If you want to redefine the terms, by all means, make a spoof and start threads about it like I have. I’m not opposed to the definition of CaW that you use so long as it does not preclude [the classic / my] usage, but I’ll not just hand you acceptance of your aberrant definition until it’s gone through a proper Playground vetting process.

Can you play CaW against someone who is also actively playing CaW? Intuitively, I believe that the answer is “yes”, but that’s a very different kind of game than the one described in classic CaW, and describing one as the other, I can foresee claims of “bait and switch”. As your surprise at my (and the original(?)) definition evidences.

So, CaW definitely includes gathering information and adapting capabilities and strategies based on a static target. Claiming otherwise is invalid. Can it include doing so against a dynamic target? Unknown. But that’s not what I was talking about / not what I used as examples (I think - darn senility), so presumably it’s an interesting but ultimately irrelevant side discussion to the matter at hand.

New thread?

Satinavian
2022-09-13, 10:45 AM
I still disagree, but i am not particularly interested in discussing semantics, that generally leads nowhere.


But to come back to Rock-Paper-Scissors in RPGs, i think it would be best to consider how all of that works with dynamic opponents, not static ones. As those are ImE far more common.

Quertus
2022-09-13, 11:21 AM
I still disagree, but i am not particularly interested in discussing semantics, that generally leads nowhere.


But to come back to Rock-Paper-Scissors in RPGs, i think it would be best to consider how all of that works with dynamic opponents, not static ones. As those are ImE far more common.

You disagree… about the origin of the term, that bees are mindless / static, that it’s valid to talk about CaW in the context it was originally presented in… I’m struggling to find a way to translate “I disagree” here. :smallconfused:

That said, I disagree. :smallamused: By which I mean, IME, highly reactive foes are the exception, not the norm. The only examples I can think of off hand are bad examples, of the Ed Greenwood Halls of the High King “assume he’s immune to anything the PCs do” level bad. Have you seen a module where this wasn’t the case? Where the bulk of the opposition realistically adapt their strategy to the known strategy and capabilities of the PCs?

And, frankly, GM’s generally lack the roleplaying chops to do much better with their own content, messing up “who knows what how” and “what they do with their knowledge and ignorance” questions all the time.

I’d say the only realistic Information Wars you’re likely to see is PvP, but I’ve seen GMs mess that up more often than not, too.

Also, realize that a true dynamic opponent who is aware of your existence is likely trying to “burn your paper”; ie, to limit what options you can play against them, to control your turns. There’s a reason such decks in MtG are referred to as “negative play experience”, and it isn’t because of how fun the minigame is.

So I disagree that dynamic opponents are good to discuss… unless it’s for laughs, or as a tale of what pitfalls to avoid.

Satinavian
2022-09-13, 11:58 AM
That said, I disagree. :smallamused: By which I mean, IME, highly reactive foes are the exception, not the norm. The only examples I can think of off hand are bad examples, of the Ed Greenwood Halls of the High King “assume he’s immune to anything the PCs do” level bad. Have you seen a module where this wasn’t the case? Where the bulk of the opposition realistically adapt their strategy to the known strategy and capabilities of the PCs?And yet i experience them as the norm. As for modules, a lot do come to mind but those basically boil down to "this is what the NPCs can do, this is what they know, this is what they want to achieve, GM has to figure out the rest". Obviously you have to basically abandon the idea of scripted encounters if everything evolves dynamically.

Also, realize that a true dynamic opponent who is aware of your existence is likely trying to “burn your paper”; ie, to limit what options you can play against them, to control your turns. Indeed.

The only way to have such dynamic opponents playing on a similar strategic level as the PCs and still have the PCs regularly win instead of finding themself in hopeless situations bereft of any option is to make opponents significantly weaker than the PCs. Which works well.

Quertus
2022-09-13, 01:45 PM
And yet i experience them as the norm. As for modules, a lot do come to mind but those basically boil down to "this is what the NPCs can do, this is what they know, this is what they want to achieve, GM has to figure out the rest". Obviously you have to basically abandon the idea of scripted encounters if everything evolves dynamically.
Indeed.

The only way to have such dynamic opponents playing on a similar strategic level as the PCs and still have the PCs regularly win instead of finding themself in hopeless situations bereft of any option is to make opponents significantly weaker than the PCs. Which works well.

Interesting. So… hmmm… I’ve never seen, but I can imagine writing… not “Tucker’s Kobalds”, but a… scripted, location-based dungeon… where the opponents are weaker than the PCs… but “gather intelligence” as able.

For example: all the pressure plate “traps” that the Rogue disables? They track the (non-random) movement of patrols. As more and more “scheduled signals” are missing, HQ can track the party’s movements / defeated patrols. Which means three things:
There are two things that produce the same output (disabled pressure plates & defeated patrols), and the opposition might conflate one for another.
The opposition knows which way the PCs are coming, and can assign defenses accordingly (unless the PCs avoid both traps and patrols).
Since the patrols don’t know that they’re being tracked, the PCs are highly unlikely to “win” (this portion of) the information wars.
However, the PCs could “loose differently” by not having a Rogue, or by learning from the patrols that the “shifty floors” don’t do anything.

Similarly, monsters in “adjacent” rooms to where the party is fighting could be written to gather intel (peek through keyholes, listen at the door, etc), and act according to their model of the PCs (joining the fight, ambushing the PCs, hiding, fleeing, or somehow actually changing which of RPS they’re prepared to throw (opening spells, dragon breath vs full attack vs using a bow maybe?)).

But I’ve never seen a module with enough opponents to be worth using the word “most”, where most opponents are written to be playing CaW in any meaningful way. No, Flamsterd level “assume he’s immune to anything the PCs do” / Hessalo level has no spells or items to do this “but is immune anyway” absolutely don’t count!

Satinavian
2022-09-13, 02:38 PM
For example: all the pressure plate “traps” that the Rogue disables? They track the (non-random) movement of patrols. As more and more “scheduled signals” are missing, HQ can track the party’s movements / defeated patrols. Which means three things:
There are two things that produce the same output (disabled pressure plates & defeated patrols), and the opposition might conflate one for another.
The opposition knows which way the PCs are coming, and can assign defenses accordingly (unless the PCs avoid both traps and patrols).
Since the patrols don’t know that they’re being tracked, the PCs are highly unlikely to “win” (this portion of) the information wars.
However, the PCs could “loose differently” by not having a Rogue, or by learning from the patrols that the “shifty floors” don’t do anything.

Similarly, monsters in “adjacent” rooms to where the party is fighting could be written to gather intel (peek through keyholes, listen at the door, etc), and act according to their model of the PCs (joining the fight, ambushing the PCs, hiding, fleeing, or somehow actually changing which of RPS they’re prepared to throw (opening spells, dragon breath vs full attack vs using a bow maybe?)).
Yes, that probably fits. That is how most GMs run opposition, both with their original creations and with official modules (where the opposition is just assumed to act this way, even if that means encounters happen completely differently). It is imE so common that hardly any GM gets the idea that this was not the intended default method and that all players generally assume that the opposition is active, that their gathered information might be misdirection or that the enemy might have discovered them and changed their strategy.

One of the best sessions i GMed (in a wartime campaign) had the PCs intercept secret communication between their opponents. Including a huge portion of the plans of their next offensive. But that interception had been a tad too easy. Otoh, if the operation launched as detailed, the players side would likely lose the war, if they did not prepare specific counters and moved their troops differently. Also it included a betrayal of a somewhat suspicious neighbour.
So, what to do ? Trust it or not ? Move troops or try to verify the content first ? Also it seemed likely that the enemy might learn that the message was intercepted, would that change anything ? How to handle the neighbour, guarding against him might sour relations if the plan was fake.

2 days later enemy troop movements were reported. Seemingly according to the stolen plan, at least where the players had positioned spotters that could see them...

Now the players agonized 3 hours about what to do, fully knowing that a mistake might cost them the campaign or would at least result in a critical setback. They later told me that this had been an incredibly intense and fun session.



But I’ve never seen a module with enough opponents to be worth using the word “most”, where most opponents are written to be playing CaW in any meaningful way. No, Flamsterd level “assume he’s immune to anything the PCs do” / Hessalo level has no spells or items to do this “but is immune anyway” absolutely don’t count!Now, admittedly, i really rarely play D&D, and of the D&D i have played nearly none is an official module. Mainly because nearly all my former GMs found those quite boring.

On the other hand, more than half of the games i have played recently were about corutly intrigue and politics.

KineticDiplomat
2022-09-13, 07:21 PM
It depends if it is truly tactical, or if it is just meta and build based.

The first is really a matter of player active involvement. If dodging is the right answer sometimes, and ripostes are sometimes, and trying to land an attack off the back foot is sometimes, and all of those have their own strengths and weaknesses, that means players can actively alter the outcome of their own individual combats by clever decisions without relying on their build. That is not only good, but an active design target. Or, in other words, if you can absolutely beat spears with cavalry with the right tactics, then the system is doing it right.

If it becomes a simplistic "one archetype always beats other ones, barring very unlikely scenarios" that is not. It both emphasizes meta gaming over gaming, and it pre-pigeon holes players in any encounter.

gbaji
2022-09-13, 08:24 PM
I think that in most RPG games, having some element of RPS is always going to be present and useful, but I prefer game balance rules that limit things somewhat. I'm not a fan of "if I pick correctly, I win" (or "if I pick incorrectly, i lose") dynamics. Having some strategies and some combinations of decisions give an advantage to the outcome is great, but it should only be one factor, not everything. This really depends very heavily on what sort of game system (and game genre) you're playing in the first place.

Assuming there's some form of advancement track for PCs, then experience/levels/whatever should really be the largest factor. A 10th level fighter wielding a dinner spoon should be able to defeat a 1st level archer, for example. So RPS considerations should be relative benefits/disadvantages in any given encounter, not absolute. Again, assuming we have a somewhat complete game with multiple layers of skills, gear, tactics, terrain, etc, all weighing in as factors to outcomes.

As to the CaW/CaS discussion, I honestly find the entire thing somewhat silly. How the players approach things and what is successful can be two very different things. And I guess that as a GM I tend toward the same "give some advantage, but not make it absolute" approach for these concepts. In the CaW example of the bee hive, for example. Sure, if the players come up with a clever way to do something, I will give it to them. But I also consider the game world as a dynamic thing, not just a static puzzle to be solved. If they can think of it (and they just did), then a zillion other people already had the same thought, and the game world would have already had to come up with a way to defend against such things. Gee. There's a convenient Owlbear near the Bee hive. It's not like the Owlbear just magically appeared there, and never existed until the players came along to solve their puzzle, right? If we assume Owlbears like honey (a given in the CaW "solution"), how might said bear and bees managed to live in close proximity in the past? Maybe the Owlbear clan has an agreement with the queen bee to leave them alone in return for a specific amount of free honey. Heck. Maybe they see the bees as their friends (cause they give them yummy honey), so when the oh-so-clever players attempt to trick the Owlbear into running to the bees, this instead warns the bees of an enemy, the Owlbear loops around and gives his clans call to battle, and dozens of Owlbears join the fight, now doubling the number of opponents the players have to fight. And they're all covered in mud and heavy cloth which hinders their ability to fight. Great plan!

There is absolutely such a thing as over-clevering yourself in a game. But most overly clever solutions, when applied within the construct of a game world that is assumed to have actually survived intact up until the point the players arrived, should not work as well as the players think.

Don't get me wrong. I do give lots of points for truly clever play and ideas. I just don't hand them out like candy. The "normal" way of handling things exists for a reason (most of the time). It's because the cheap and easy ones don't actually work. And if they did in the past, they wont today cause someone already did it. You'd better come up with something far more clever and dependent on skills/abilities/items/spells/whatever that are far more rare and exceptional than "mud, heavy cloth, and the ability to run".

I suspect that's why we see CaW tactics used far more in CCRPGs than in TTRPGs. Static programming is just an invitation to "solve the puzzle".

Laserlight
2022-09-17, 11:29 AM
Archer Jones (The Art of War in the Western World) argued that it's not a tactical triangle, it's a square, with light cav > heavy infantry > heavy cav > foot archers > light cav . In more modern terms, tac air > infantry > tanks > artillery > tac air. I'm not convinced it's quite as neat as that, but there's at least grounds for argument. Obviously a square gives you more options and combinations than a triangle.

kyoryu
2022-09-19, 11:03 AM
I think that in most RPG games, having some element of RPS is always going to be present and useful, but I prefer game balance rules that limit things somewhat. I'm not a fan of "if I pick correctly, I win" (or "if I pick incorrectly, i lose") dynamics. Having some strategies and some combinations of decisions give an advantage to the outcome is great, but it should only be one factor, not everything. This really depends very heavily on what sort of game system (and game genre) you're playing in the first place.

RPS is a simultaneous turn game - most games are NOT RPS, though they bake in some form of "counters".


Assuming there's some form of advancement track for PCs, then experience/levels/whatever should really be the largest factor. A 10th level fighter wielding a dinner spoon should be able to defeat a 1st level archer, for example. So RPS considerations should be relative benefits/disadvantages in any given encounter, not absolute. Again, assuming we have a somewhat complete game with multiple layers of skills, gear, tactics, terrain, etc, all weighing in as factors to outcomes.

Sure, as a simple example, we can imagine a game that looks like this:

At level 1, each character has 3 hit points, and each has a move (attack, defend, feint) rated at one. In combat, you pick a move, and if the move you do beats your opponent, you take away hp equivalent to that rating.

Each time you level, you get 1 additional hp, and also get to increase one move by one point.

So a 10th level character would have 12 hp to get through, and would, on average, be doing 4hp per win. The 10th level character would (on average) need to win once to defeat a 1st level character, while the first level character would need to win 12 times in a row to defeat the 10th level character.

Even with the absolute at the per-turn basis, the overall battle is not "absolute" and the level 10 character would win almost every time.

Now, if you mean on the "fire mages beat ice mages" level, then yes, RPS at the unit-selection level I think is pretty bad with RPGs, and absolutely terrible if it's absolute.


Don't get me wrong. I do give lots of points for truly clever play and ideas. I just don't hand them out like candy. The "normal" way of handling things exists for a reason (most of the time). It's because the cheap and easy ones don't actually work. And if they did in the past, they wont today cause someone already did it. You'd better come up with something far more clever and dependent on skills/abilities/items/spells/whatever that are far more rare and exceptional than "mud, heavy cloth, and the ability to run".

Well, most war does boil down to "get there first with the most men" and "claim tactical advantage". In general, you don't fight unless you don't want to fight unless you have an overwhelming advantage. But..... that makes it kinda boring when you have all of these cool abilities and you don't get to use them. So if you want those cool decisions to be made at the tactical/move level, you need to make sure that the encounter-level decisions matter less.

CaW is less about "clever" solutions, and more about "how do I gain every possible advantage in this fight to minimize risk?"


I suspect that's why we see CaW tactics used far more in CCRPGs than in TTRPGs. Static programming is just an invitation to "solve the puzzle".

My experience is quite the opposite.

gbaji
2022-09-19, 05:10 PM
Now, if you mean on the "fire mages beat ice mages" level, then yes, RPS at the unit-selection level I think is pretty bad with RPGs, and absolutely terrible if it's absolute.

Yeah. That's the style I was talking about. As a combat/conflict choice resolution methodology, RPS as a weighting factor is useful. But it should never be more than a modifier in most games. Especially RPG games. As you slide towards the more tactical games, it's going to be far more prevalent, obviously. Correct combat order and positioning is key in those types of games. But in more RP games? Fun game play can often occur as a result of overcoming less than ideal objective comparisons of ability types going in to an encounter.



Well, most war does boil down to "get there first with the most men" and "claim tactical advantage". In general, you don't fight unless you don't want to fight unless you have an overwhelming advantage. But..... that makes it kinda boring when you have all of these cool abilities and you don't get to use them. So if you want those cool decisions to be made at the tactical/move level, you need to make sure that the encounter-level decisions matter less.

Yup. Although there's a lot to be said about a group of characters encountering something they weren't expecting, and then having to figure out how to use their skills/abilties/items/whatnot to muddle their way through. Some of the most enjoyable table experiences are when the group is put into such a situation, and players are scanning their character sheets for something that might help. And then someone finds something. Some obscure item/ability that they never use because it's just not that powerful/useful, but in this one specific situation it might just turn the tide in their favor.


CaW is less about "clever" solutions, and more about "how do I gain every possible advantage in this fight to minimize risk?"

Yeah. Was responding to the example given. But I have a general dislike as a GM for players overthinking an encounter. Planning things out is nice and good, but I think we've all had the situation where that one player is asking endless questions about the environment, the opponents, how things interact, what other things might be there, and is otherwise endlessly trying to come up with just a slightly better way of dealing with the situation at hand, and you feel like just telling them "Dude. You have a ton of stuff written down on your sheet, any number of combinations of which are capable of handling this minor encounter. Just use them".

I blame this on TV shows and films (I blame a lot of stuff on this) that insist on having the protagonists come up with often ridiculously over complex solutions to problems when a simple one would do. I even get *why* they do this (dramatic tension and whatnot). It's "interesting" when Picard and crew figure out how to take advantage of an old cloaking system on the Klingon ship to force its shields to go down so they can destroy it. Um... But the reality is that you are in a massive battleship, while they are in a small scout ship. Even if they've managed to bypass your shields via some trickery (a necessary tactic on their part, given the massive disparity in power at hand), you should be able to just destroy them in a volley or two without bothering with trying to bypass their relatively pathetic shield technology. Just fire at them. Of course, that's a "boring" (but realistic) methodology for concluding the encounter in a story. Hence, why writers fall towards different "clever" ones instead.

But RPGs are (again depending on exactly what type of game you are playing) more about simulating realistic interactions between the PCs and the NPCS (and world) around them. And yeah. Sometimes the correct answer isn't something fancy, but just hitting it with a hammer until it's destroyed.




My experience is quite the opposite.

Yeah. I re-thought about that after posting. Scripted CCRPG games are not common areas for CAW tactics. But when they are used, we usually call them "exploits". I was thinking more about MMORPGs, in which there are massive efforts made by players to bypass or trivialize content. I was actually thinking of the classic "train a group of hostile NPCs into the target group of NPCs to get them to fight so you can get through, steal the chest, whatever" tactics.

But yeah. GM run tables can be subject to this too. But see my statement earlier on how I often react to it. If it's reasonable and sensible, that's great. But I've literally run into players who will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to "rig" every single encounter. It can be exhausting to run. It's like they want to use everything that's *not* written on their sheet to resolve an encounter, which creates massive amounts of extra work and headache for the GM running things.

So no. Not a fan of that style of play at all. Again though, it's all a matter of degrees.

icefractal
2022-09-19, 10:06 PM
How many people really follow that though? Most campaign premises contain more than the minimum possible danger for the PCs, and even in pure sandboxes, pretty much everyone I've played will voluntarily accept some danger rather than playing it maximally safe.While I still think this is usually true, I have to admit it's not always the case, because an example did come to mind where inability to bypass the resource management did/does un-sell me from a system -

13th Age's rest mechanic. You can't refresh resources until you've done a certain number of encounters - amount of in-game time that passes is moot. If you're completely unable to continue and have to rest early, negative consequences are guaranteed.

The fact that it's so absolute just rubs me the wrong way, even though having it cause significant issues is a somewhat niche situation we might not even run into during a campaign.