Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

[AdAstra]

I gotta agree with some of the other posters in this thread, CaW and CaS seem to primarily exist as ways for people to say that they're playing better than other people. It's like Realism. The term could have meaning, but it's largely just used as a way to praise or decry a way of doing things, and often has nothing to do with how well something meshes with reality.

The closest thing I can see to a definition of CaW and CaS comes down to flags. Certain flags are associated with CaS, others with CaW.

-Enemies surrendering, retreating, and otherwise being clearly concerned with their own lives is usually more associated with Combat as War. Really this is more of a matter of how the DM chooses to roleplay the enemies.

-Enemies not behaving "optimally" by the judge's estimation is usually associated with Combat as Sport. This is despite the fact that people in real wars very much do not behave optimally all the time, and people's definitions of optimal tend to vary. And of course, behaving optimally and behaving as if your life has meaning as noted above can conflict with each other.

-Cheap shots and tricks, from either the players or the DM, is usually seen as a CaW thing. Of course, any DM can pull the ultimate cheap shot of fiat, and cheap tricks can often be seen as more of a beer-and-pretzels thing ("hey look at how many attacks my character can do with this build"), rather than an attempt to wring every possible advantage out of the rules.

-Enemies having clear goals independent of the players is usually seen as CaW, but it's honestly pretty rare to see foes that solely exist to antagonize the heroes. Most of the time even the cheesiest 2-dimensional villains have plots and goals that are the reason why the heroes take action in the first place.

[Duff]

I think also, if your GM is trying for a realistic world, it will look more like CAW. The bandits that shake you down could be well over your level, or well under it. There's no reason you can assume your random encounters are your level in a realistic world, nor in CAW.
This isn't a hard and fast rule, CAW worlds don't have to be built to be realistic and a good CAS GM can simply say "The bandits aren't dangerous enough to be worth fighting" or ensure the party know they are fighting their way *out* of the ambush, not trying to save the rest of the caravan.

But the quote "Not everything in going on in the world is at your level" fits better with CAW

[Mechalich]

-Enemies surrendering, retreating, and otherwise being clearly concerned with their own lives is usually more associated with Combat as War. Really this is more of a matter of how the DM chooses to roleplay the enemies.

There's a big mechanical element to this as well. In order for retreat, surrender, and similar mechanics to work the game has to prevent them as mechanically viable options - attempting to run away or surrender has to not only be more likely to work than simply fighting to the bitter end, it also has to preserve more resources for the party. This gets complicated in a system that allows for the dead to come back, as you end up with math that winning with all but one party member dead may still be superior to surrendering.

This also runs into the problem of certain types of enemies. D&D in particular has a very large range of implacable, merciless, tireless monsters that you can't surrender to or viably runaway from. If you really want to make encounters commonly end with something other than everyone on one side in a bloody pile, you have to restrict what can constitute a side.

[Tessman the 2nd]

I think the difference between these two is the setting

In combat as war creatures simply exist in their habitat in the most realistic manner for those creatures and are not certain combatants. Most of combat as war is done outside of combat: determining how to get the most benefit for the least Risk, with combat as war combat itself should be a decision with weight.

[AdAstra]

There's a big mechanical element to this as well. In order for retreat, surrender, and similar mechanics to work the game has to prevent them as mechanically viable options - attempting to run away or surrender has to not only be more likely to work than simply fighting to the bitter end, it also has to preserve more resources for the party. This gets complicated in a system that allows for the dead to come back, as you end up with math that winning with all but one party member dead may still be superior to surrendering.

This also runs into the problem of certain types of enemies. D&D in particular has a very large range of implacable, merciless, tireless monsters that you can't surrender to or viably runaway from. If you really want to make encounters commonly end with something other than everyone on one side in a bloody pile, you have to restrict what can constitute a side.

I was speaking in terms of how the enemy acts, and not how the players act. Enemies surrendering/retreating doesn't necessarily have to be common for people to label a game as CaW, and I personally disagree that it's valid reasoning.

These are purely things that I've seen other people use to characterize CaW/CaS games, not things I think separate the two. Because again, I think the labels are mostly buzzwords.

[Duff]

With the retreat/surrender side, I kinda agree it comes under CAW.

As in, if every monster is going to fight to the death*, you're probably doing CAS.

* assuming not every monster you fight is a non-retreating kind. Fighting against the Golem King, you might expect no retreat.

Also, this is definitely not an either/or. A GM can set up fights which, once the party has been as clever as they can to stack odds, will still be an interesting fight. They can have the fights along the way to curb-stomping the BBEG be interesting. So quite significant elements of both can go in a single story. Also, the balance between the two can vary if that's what the GM and players want. One stroy where the players have lots of options to CAW, then the next one, the structure of the adventure limits the player's options to allow CAS
OTOH, in more story oriented games, maybe neither apply so much. Maybe what's more important is how the party behave in the fight - who helps who and style over substance.

[Morty]

-Enemies surrendering, retreating, and otherwise being clearly concerned with their own lives is usually more associated with Combat as War. Really this is more of a matter of how the DM chooses to roleplay the enemies.

Yes, I had enemies run away, retreat and surrender to the players in Dungeon World - and neither the system nor my take on it have much to do with what's usually bandied about as "Combat as War".

[Pleh]

With the retreat/surrender side, I kinda agree it comes under CAW.

As in, if every monster is going to fight to the death*, you're probably doing CAS.

* assuming not every monster you fight is a non-retreating kind. Fighting against the Golem King, you might expect no retreat.

Also, this is definitely not an either/or. A GM can set up fights which, once the party has been as clever as they can to stack odds, will still be an interesting fight. They can have the fights along the way to curb-stomping the BBEG be interesting. So quite significant elements of both can go in a single story. Also, the balance between the two can vary if that's what the GM and players want. One stroy where the players have lots of options to CAW, then the next one, the structure of the adventure limits the player's options to allow CAS
OTOH, in more story oriented games, maybe neither apply so much. Maybe what's more important is how the party behave in the fight - who helps who and style over substance.

I'm going to give a possible counterpoint to this.

For the start of one campaign, I had my players begin by being chased by a chemically mutated Rancor. They were low level (hadn't even earned Heroic Levels yet, so they weren't even level 1 yet). I told them up front there was no hope for fighting this thing and they needed to run.

They were on board and it was a fun little romp through a building while the beast tore the place apart trying to kill them.

I feel like this scenario definitely still falls under CaS, because the challenge was curated to be specifically a FAIR challenge, when players follow the rules (don't fight, just run).

My point being, Sport implies there should be a fair contest, assuming all parties involved are following the expected rules.

CaW, on the other hand, implies there are no rules and fairness isn't even really a part of the equation. You encounter X, and you are expected to take whatever actions optimize your own outcome.

I tend to see myself as a CaS style GM. I see this as placing a high priority on players consistently receiving the games expected difficulty, as long as the players are following an anticipated course of action. Because at the end of the day, we are playing a game, even if our characters are not. Games should be run fairly.

The reason, in my mind, to NOT be a CaW style GM is that I have an unfair advantage over my players in this fight, if we treat it as a war. I can kill their characters by fiat and win immediately at no risk to myself. That seems the optimal solution, so that is what treating it as war would advise me to do.

So I begin to see that in this thread, I am outlining that an optimal TTRPG will probably want to Simulate CaW within the context of the PCs and NPCs, but at the meta level for the players, it should remain CaS. We want Sportsmanship from each other as players, but we want their characters to behave as if dealing with a life or death, CaW scenario.

That is where people seem to get confused. As real world players, we must strive to be fair to one another. Our characters, on the other hand, have absolutely no such constraint (quite the contrary, they have every incentive to avoid any kind of fairness in combat).

This is where, in my own GMing, I've devised the concept of consciously dividing the GM roles: The Referee and the Antagonist (there are more roles, but this is the part that most pertains to CaS/CaW). The role of Referee requires that I be absolutely impartial and ensure the meta game is run as fairly as possible. The role of the Antagonist compels me to use any advantage available to me to win and defeat the party. The best players I've had at my tables operated this level of separation of mental states as well, never getting angry when they lose, because they recognize the fairness of the game, but also being able to adapt and devise clever solutions to scenarios because they are able to think in the CaW mindset.

The issue I've seen from people talking about it online are people who get these roles confused at some point. CaS gets called out for inhibiting a player's ability to outwit the problems standing in front of them (or makes the game too easy by having enemies ignore obviously advantageous tactics). CaW gets called out when the players stumble into an encounter that is far beyond their capabilities and rips the players out of their immersion to wonder exactly what the GM was thinking by putting such deadly enemies within reach of the party (or again, making the game too easy by getting the party stranded in miles of goblin territory in every direction, so every encounter is the same, trivial goblin stomp every time).

Ultimately, I've settled on the best Balance point for Fairness is Communication of Information.

Yes, the Meta Game should be set up to be balanced around a certain degree of fairness that makes the game most fun for the whole table as much as possible. But part of what makes the game exciting is having some degree of uncertainty, too. If we already know every fight will be scaled to be exactly the right challenge rating, some of the excitement of the discovery is lost. On the other hand, players don't like getting TPK'd for making the "wrong choice" when there wasn't any indication that a wrong choice could be made, much less that so much was at stake for it.

For both CaS to work on the Meta Game AND CaW to work within the game's inner narrative, what players need is a solid flow of information about the game. They need to know ahead of time if the encounter should be expected to be harder or easier than the Expected Difficulty, on the CaS Meta level, as correctly discerning this from clues is part of the reward of winning, and further this informs how much extracurricular work they might want to prepare for the CaW aspect. If you anticipate the fight to be easier, you can tactically choose to save your spells for harder fights later. If you anticipate you will struggle to win, you can devise retreat plans ahead of time and cast buffing spells before initiating the encounter. This is Information allowing players to interact with both the Sport of the Meta and for their characters to demonstrate proficiency in the War of the Game.

[Quertus]

Yes, I had enemies run away, retreat and surrender to the players in Dungeon World - and neither the system nor my take on it have much to do with what's usually bandied about as "Combat as War".

In what way is your game not CaW?

Games should be run fairly.

Agreed. Strongly agreed.

The reason, in my mind, to NOT be a CaW style GM is that I have an unfair advantage over my players in this fight, if we treat it as a war. I can kill their characters by fiat and win immediately at no risk to myself. That seems the optimal solution, so that is what treating it as war would advise me to do.

It is not you vs the players in CaW.

So I begin to see that in this thread, I am outlining that an optimal TTRPG will probably want to Simulate CaW within the context of the PCs and NPCs, but at the meta level for the players, it should remain CaS. We want Sportsmanship from each other as players, but we want their characters to behave as if dealing with a life or death, CaW scenario.

Yes, the players should not read the module, or assassinate the GM or kidnap the GM's sister to "win" the game. The game is CaW, not the metagame.

That is where people seem to get confused. As real world players, we must strive to be fair to one another. Our characters, on the other hand, have absolutely no such constraint (quite the contrary, they have every incentive to avoid any kind of fairness in combat).

People get confused here?

This is where, in my own GMing, I've devised the concept of consciously dividing the GM roles: The Referee and the Antagonist (there are more roles, but this is the part that most pertains to CaS/CaW). The role of Referee requires that I be absolutely impartial and ensure the meta game is run as fairly as possible. The role of the Antagonist compels me to use any advantage available to me to win and defeat the party. The best players I've had at my tables operated this level of separation of mental states as well, never getting angry when they lose, because they recognize the fairness of the game, but also being able to adapt and devise clever solutions to scenarios because they are able to think in the CaW mindset.

Again, yeah, if you don't want your players cheating, or blackmailing the GM, or whatever, then this is obviously correct.

The issue I've seen from people talking about it online are people who get these roles confused at some point. CaS gets called out for inhibiting a player's ability to outwit the problems standing in front of them (or makes the game too easy by having enemies ignore obviously advantageous tactics). CaW gets called out when the players stumble into an encounter that is far beyond their capabilities and rips the players out of their immersion to wonder exactly what the GM was thinking by putting such deadly enemies within reach of the party (or again, making the game too easy by getting the party stranded in miles of goblin territory in every direction, so every encounter is the same, trivial goblin stomp every time).

OK, maybe I myself need some help getting back on the obvious path, but... If the GM broadcasts (implies) a "sporting challenge", I've been known to counter with "what were you thinking?!".

In fact, even in a CaW environment, I will ask, "what were you thinking" when I can see no way for the party to successfully engage / survive / enjoy a particular bit of content.

Even in CaW, the content should be designed with the intent that it should be fun, because this is a game.

Or, at least, that's my stance on things.

Ultimately, I've settled on the best Balance point for Fairness is Communication of Information.

Yes, the Meta Game should be set up to be balanced around a certain degree of fairness that makes the game most fun for the whole table as much as possible. But part of what makes the game exciting is having some degree of uncertainty, too. If we already know every fight will be scaled to be exactly the right challenge rating, some of the excitement of the discovery is lost. On the other hand, players don't like getting TPK'd for making the "wrong choice" when there wasn't any indication that a wrong choice could be made, much less that so much was at stake for it.

For both CaS to work on the Meta Game AND CaW to work within the game's inner narrative, what players need is a solid flow of information about the game. They need to know ahead of time if the encounter should be expected to be harder or easier than the Expected Difficulty, on the CaS Meta level, as correctly discerning this from clues is part of the reward of winning, and further this informs how much extracurricular work they might want to prepare for the CaW aspect. If you anticipate the fight to be easier, you can tactically choose to save your spells for harder fights later. If you anticipate you will struggle to win, you can devise retreat plans ahead of time and cast buffing spells before initiating the encounter. This is Information allowing players to interact with both the Sport of the Meta and for their characters to demonstrate proficiency in the War of the Game.

Hmmm... I can't really think of a good way to phrase my full response, so I'll just give the snarky, "but what if 'the GM just tells us stuff' is a 'Win Button', taking away the 'figure out the difficulty' minigame that I was looking forward to?".

So, while in general I agree about information and informed choices, I have to counter with, "why not just hand the players the module at the start of the game before they even make / select their characters?".

I think that where this line gets drawn, how the players receive what information, is not so trivial a question that "give all info always" is the correct answer.

[Morty]

In what way is your game not CaW?

Answering this question would dignify the categorization far more than it deserves. Furthermore, I suspect this is a "you run challenging combat encounters, so obviously you're doing CaW" situation.

[Spiderswims]

People get confused here?

People seem to get confused everywhere.

Still War and Sport don't really cover all the styles of games. So War and Sport are more vague short-hands.

Sport: A light more fluffy, much less serious game where things are tipped way in the players favor and the GM and the players each agree to not do dozens of things to muddy up the game. For example the GM agrees to not have foes or monsters attack the PCs when they are not ready or at a huge disadvantage; and the players also agree not to do that to foes and monsters.

War: a more dark and gritty, a much more serious game where anything can happen to the players, and there is no hint of any agreement. For example the PC rest for the night and the GM has some assassins come over and kill the helpless sleeping PCs. TPK. No chance of the players doing anything except watching their characters die. The end. And the players can do any such thing to defeat or kill a foe or monster.

How the GM runs encounters really shows War vs Sport to me. It's not binary, so there are some shades in between, but not so much you can't tell them apart. Like on the ten scale:

1:The players need never even think about worrying about anything ever. So when the players have their PCs camp for the night they just say so: the GM has sworn to never ever attack the PCs at night or when they are not ready.

5:The players only give a vague worry about things as it is assumed the PCs know what they are doing and select a defensible campsite, post guards, have guard shifts, don't make a big easy to see fire, and so on. Here the GM only has a night or not ready attack once in a while. And still the GM will most often give the players a hint that it is coming. And the GM agrees to not take "too much" advantage. And, often, gives the PCs some free time, even if surprised, to get ready.

10:Anything goes. It's 100% up to the players as to what their characters do. The player gets no 'help' from the character or even the rules. The players, using their real life skills, must make a defensible camp site. Any simple blunder by a PC here can lead to disaster or TPK. Here the GM has night attacks or attacks when the PCs are not ready often...about as often as they are used in real life....and that is All The Time. And here there is no agreement about anything.

And this provides another example of how the scale does slide. A LOT of GMs will say they run their games in the style that makes sense. So things that happen in the game have no judgement, it is all based on what would/should happen naturally. But then look at night attacks: by that definition most foes should use night attacks. But here the GM will alter things a bit and say either no or few night attacks. The GM is making the choice here to not have foes and monsters attack when the PCs are wounded, out of armor and out of spells, charges, and daily uses.


In a War type game the players have to take time to prepare for things that might happen. Wizards have an extra spell book or tattoo themselves with spells, clerics have a extra holy symbol, warriors have armor and weapons that teleport on to them, they rest in extra dimensional spaces, and they provide protection for animal allies. Just to name a few. In short the PCs must expend resources to prepare to survive.

In the Sport type game, the GM agrees not to target the PCs in the above ways. The wizard never has to worry about their spellbook, and everyone will always be fully equipped for every encounter. And the PCs don't need to overly worry about mounts and animals. In short the players are free to make any build they wish without "wasting" abilities, money, items and spells to prepare for things that might happen.

Both games are fun, but they are radically different.

[Pleh]

Hmmm... I can't really think of a good way to phrase my full response, so I'll just give the snarky, "but what if 'the GM just tells us stuff' is a 'Win Button', taking away the 'figure out the difficulty' minigame that I was looking forward to?".

So, while in general I agree about information and informed choices, I have to counter with, "why not just hand the players the module at the start of the game before they even make / select their characters?".

I think that where this line gets drawn, how the players receive what information, is not so trivial a question that "give all info always" is the correct answer.

Thankfully, that wasn't what I was advocating anyway.

Rather, you can't "figure out the difficulty" if the GM gives you nothing to work with. "Giving the players info" isn't meant to suggest dispensing answers or conclusions, but data and clues relevant to their decisions.

"You find a set of footprints. Your level of skill can determine that they are Small sized humanoids (not referring to mechanical Humanoids), but you can't determine the race beyond that. It may be a harmless group of Gnommish Nomads, or a hunting pack of Goblins, or even a savage group of Halfling Barbarian Bandits. But you know there are approximately a half a dozen of them traveling together that passed through here no more than six hours ago, meaning they could be six hours travel ahead of you, unless they stopped to rest or turn off the road before then."

Probably, the desired response from the players is, "look for more clues before we encounter them," but now they have a reasonable expectation that the worst they might encounter is a pack of Goblins or an angry tribe of barbarians. Expectation of difficulty has been discovered by winning the Challenge Deduction Minigame, even if there are still pieces missing that leave some element of surprise.

[Duff]

I'm going to give a possible counterpoint to this.

For the start of one campaign, I had my players begin by being chased by a chemically mutated Rancor. They were low level (hadn't even earned Heroic Levels yet, so they weren't even level 1 yet). I told them up front there was no hope for fighting this thing and they needed to run.

They were on board and it was a fun little romp through a building while the beast tore the place apart trying to kill them.

I feel like this scenario definitely still falls under CaS, because the challenge was curated to be specifically a FAIR challenge, when players follow the rules (don't fight, just run).

My point being, Sport implies there should be a fair contest, assuming all parties involved are following the expected rules.

CaW, on the other hand, implies there are no rules and fairness isn't even really a part of the equation. You encounter X, and you are expected to take whatever actions optimize your own outcome.

I tend to see myself as a CaS style GM. I see this as placing a high priority on players consistently receiving the games expected difficulty, as long as the players are following an anticipated course of action. Because at the end of the day, we are playing a game, even if our characters are not. Games should be run fairly.

The reason, in my mind, to NOT be a CaW style GM is that I have an unfair advantage over my players in this fight, if we treat it as a war. I can kill their characters by fiat and win immediately at no risk to myself. That seems the optimal solution, so that is what treating it as war would advise me to do.

So I begin to see that in this thread, I am outlining that an optimal TTRPG will probably want to Simulate CaW within the context of the PCs and NPCs, but at the meta level for the players, it should remain CaS. We want Sportsmanship from each other as players, but we want their characters to behave as if dealing with a life or death, CaW scenario.

That is where people seem to get confused. As real world players, we must strive to be fair to one another. Our characters, on the other hand, have absolutely no such constraint (quite the contrary, they have every incentive to avoid any kind of fairness in combat).

This is where, in my own GMing, I've devised the concept of consciously dividing the GM roles: The Referee and the Antagonist (there are more roles, but this is the part that most pertains to CaS/CaW). The role of Referee requires that I be absolutely impartial and ensure the meta game is run as fairly as possible. The role of the Antagonist compels me to use any advantage available to me to win and defeat the party. The best players I've had at my tables operated this level of separation of mental states as well, never getting angry when they lose, because they recognize the fairness of the game, but also being able to adapt and devise clever solutions to scenarios because they are able to think in the CaW mindset.

The issue I've seen from people talking about it online are people who get these roles confused at some point. CaS gets called out for inhibiting a player's ability to outwit the problems standing in front of them (or makes the game too easy by having enemies ignore obviously advantageous tactics). CaW gets called out when the players stumble into an encounter that is far beyond their capabilities and rips the players out of their immersion to wonder exactly what the GM was thinking by putting such deadly enemies within reach of the party (or again, making the game too easy by getting the party stranded in miles of goblin territory in every direction, so every encounter is the same, trivial goblin stomp every time).

Ultimately, I've settled on the best Balance point for Fairness is Communication of Information.

Yes, the Meta Game should be set up to be balanced around a certain degree of fairness that makes the game most fun for the whole table as much as possible. But part of what makes the game exciting is having some degree of uncertainty, too. If we already know every fight will be scaled to be exactly the right challenge rating, some of the excitement of the discovery is lost. On the other hand, players don't like getting TPK'd for making the "wrong choice" when there wasn't any indication that a wrong choice could be made, much less that so much was at stake for it.

For both CaS to work on the Meta Game AND CaW to work within the game's inner narrative, what players need is a solid flow of information about the game. They need to know ahead of time if the encounter should be expected to be harder or easier than the Expected Difficulty, on the CaS Meta level, as correctly discerning this from clues is part of the reward of winning, and further this informs how much extracurricular work they might want to prepare for the CaW aspect. If you anticipate the fight to be easier, you can tactically choose to save your spells for harder fights later. If you anticipate you will struggle to win, you can devise retreat plans ahead of time and cast buffing spells before initiating the encounter. This is Information allowing players to interact with both the Sport of the Meta and for their characters to demonstrate proficiency in the War of the Game.

First off, the Rancor chase sounds like an amazing start to a campaign. Well done!
I think that encounter sits outside the CAS/CAW dichotomy. It could fit equally well in a campaign which sits anywhere on that sliding scale (though if you're running more at the CAS end, you're right to tell the players what the encounter is about, whereas CAW you'd expect the players to work that out themselves.

2nd, You're absolutely right about there being an important difference between player CAW and character CAW. I would say if you want to do player CAW, stick with boardgames, but different people will enjoy different games and that's fine.

3rd, I can't imagine a GM actually playing CAW. I consider myself to have been a fairly CAW GM*. I threw my players problems that I didn't know how to solve. I ran evil overlords who had read the evil overlord book, who responded rationally but who had limited resources to use. So the BBEG would send what they thought was enough force to deal with the threat the PCs had shown at the time with little regard for the power of the party.
I can see a short campaign maybe where a GM says "I'm going to use only level appropriate threats and I'm going to try for a TPK" as the most CAW GMing that could work. And I might well play that game. Since the GM only has to win once, it will be a short game and I'd only enjoy it as an interlude. It wcould be very much like the boardgame descent.

And I think your last paragraph gets into why it isn't as much a sliding scale as it can seem - elements from different points on the line can be combined, even within the one encounter.

* In retrospect, I should often have been less so since some of my players were not up for that sort of challenge and some probably needed a heads up that that was how I was going