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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Combat as War and Combat as Sport - defined by the presence or absence (respectively) of the strategic layer. Is that definition enough?

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    When creating a dichotomy, one should strive to create definitions which encompass, at the least, the *majority* of the space described, as well as covering the most common / popular / visible / well-known portions of that space.

    The original descriptions of Combat as Sport vs Combat as War left a lot to be desired. Eventually, fed up with people's inability to recognize this fact, I spoofed the article to drive my point home, and wrote what at the time I believed to be much clearer, cleaner definitions for the terms.

    Except… what I wrote, while better, was still pretty vague. And, recently, it has been demonstrated that my "not definitions" may not necessarily hold up to edge cases in a meaningful way.

    So, for reference

    Spoiler: the original
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    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?


    Spoiler: My spoof
    Show
    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?


    Spoiler: recognizable axises
    Show
    [list][*] whether / the extent to which the GM builds balanced encounters[*] Strategical impact[*] Tactical impact[*] Player competence[*] Following rules vs going outside them[*] GM malice[*] Player confidence issues (over, under)


    My original contention is that the only axis that matters in evaluating CaW vs CaS is the ability of the players/PCs to use the strategic layer to manipulate the specifics (including and especially the difficulty) of the encounter.

    At the player level, in CaS, the onus is on the GM to create balanced encounters that are "sporting"; the onus is on the players to not break the encounters / not engage the strategic layer. This is pretty much "beer and pretzels", "kick down the door" fun.

    CaW, OTOH, demands that the GM "play it honest", letting the players manipulate the strategic layer to modify the challenge. The onus is on the GM to let the players actions have logical consequences; the onus is on the players to make the encounter… survivable? Fun? "5D chess" is an extreme example of CaW.

    One rather misleading thing about the terms is their focus on Combat. I hold that this is true for any encounter (including the ability to *reframe* an encounter as combat / social / stealth / puzzle / whatever).

    There is also the question of whether encounters are mandatory or optional under each paradigm.

    Doubtless, there are other edge cases where my minimalist definitions might begin to show some strain.

    So, what do y'all think? How *should* CaW & CaS be defined?
    Last edited by Quertus; 2020-10-27 at 04:30 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Presence or absence of tactics is completely irrelevant to the distinction.

    It's really all about the mindset with which you go into a fight, and the expectations of how battle is conducted.

    Games with the d20 systems are usually considered the most prominent examples of Combat as Sport: Both sides meet on a level playing field, both with a limited set of approved and "legal" moves, with the expectation that they have a contest to determine which side makes the better thought out use with the moves that are available to them.
    Players go into a combat encounter anticipating to be challenged by the GM, and looking forward to test and show how well they understand the abilities on their character sheet and the rules of combat in the rulebook. Combat as Sport is a logic puzzle that can be solved analytically. Using methods that are considered to be "cheesy" is frowned upon as it goes against the spirit of the game.

    Combat as War is a very different approach. In Combat as War, there is no expectation that a combat is fair. The odds are stacked against the characters and the GM is expected to pull all kinds of nasty tricks. The challenge for the players is not to find an optimal solution to how the basic combat moves and the special abilities of their characters can lead to victory in an even fight, where the enemy is fighting the same way.
    Fairnes and using the rules as they are intended is not the expectation in a figt that is Combat as War. The only goal is to win, by whatever means necessary. Using cheesy exploits in the rules is not considered bad sportsmanship, it's regarded as the right way to play. The way that the game is supposed to be.

    In Combat as Sport, the players and GM have a gentlemen's agreement and mutual understanding that the enemies the characters face will not be too difficult to defeat, and that the players play the game according to the spirit of the rules.
    In Combat as War, both the players and GM try to constantly outsmart each other by coming up with unusual and unexpected setups and outlandish improvisation.

    Combat as War can be very tactical, but generally we find this approach to combat in games with very general and vague rules. Improvisation and thinking outside the box are the name of the game. You never really know what to expect and players are supposed to think on their feet when they are thrown into situations they've never had to deal with before.
    Combat as Sport is more common in games with very elaborate and specific rules that aim to cover as many probably cases as possible. In these games, players have extensive to full knowledge of all the factors that can come up in a fight.

    Sport has rules, and when people don't stick to them there is little point to even play.
    In war, everything is permitted if it helps you win.

    In my experience, Combat as Sport requires much more attention to the details of an encounter and careful deliberation of every move. Combat as war tends to be more of a fun romp where you go wild. Because when the rules are flexible, players don't have certainty of what a die roll will mean exactly. Things rely much more on the GMs judgement if an action sounds clever and sensible and whether it should work out because it was a great idea, or make little difference because it was pretty dumb.
    Last edited by Yora; 2020-10-27 at 05:16 PM.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Those examples seem pretty biased to me. Combat As War implies to me that both sides are doing their utmost to win within the rules. Scry and Die is met with Glyphs, Symbols and other traps. Everything escalates as the DM and party try to one up each other.

    Combat as Sport implies to me that the party and the DM agree combat is largely distinct from the setting, so they act within the settings' expectations of behavior. Maybe the Druid turns into a bird to scout, but the party doesn't Planar Bind the most detection free creature they can find to scout and then assassinate the enemies. The enemies hide in evil lairs instead of demiplanes, and don't use bomb strapped civilians as hostages wherever they go. It's an agreement that both sides will abide by setting expectations, basically. Swordfights using swords instead of ice assassins, or plague infected mice swarms, or whatever the particular metaweapon is.

    Edit: Not that the former is metagaming per say. Just that there is always discrepancies between mechanics and setting, and finding the most mechanically efficient system will always veer somewhat from the setting. Harry Potter is a notorious example where the characters often look like idiots because they are supposed to look and act like anachonistic wizards, but their mechanics leads to semi-deific nested subspaces ala Doctor Who or Myst.
    Last edited by Tvtyrant; 2020-10-27 at 05:21 PM.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Fairnes and using the rules as they are intended is not the expectation in a figt that is Combat as War. The only goal is to win, by whatever means necessary. Using cheesy exploits in the rules is not considered bad sportsmanship, it's regarded as the right way to play. The way that the game is supposed to be.
    I disagree on this point. The "combat as war" mindset can be done as a character choice and still be played within the spirit of the rules. You might say the players are doing "combat as sport", just from a slightly more zoomed out perspective where the rest of the world and underhand tactics are part of the game. So your players in the bee fight won't use rule exploits (and might even not use particularly optimised builds) but will use owlbears and mud and fire to win the fight.
    I refer to the characters which don't try to do this a simple thinkers - They see a problem and they work out how to solve it with the tools they have. They fight a monster using their best skills, weapons and tactics, but aren't looking to change the world so they don't have problems (or the problems are easer to solve).

    If you're exploiting the rules ruthlessly, your players are also approaching it as "conflict as war".
    Heavily optimised characters walking into a fair fight might even be characters approaching combat as (high stakes) sport with players playing CAW
    Last edited by Duff; 2020-10-27 at 07:31 PM.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    The one thing I'll add is that it's a spectrum, not a binary.

    Duff's example is just closer to the center.

    There's also the factor of broken rules to consider. CaS functions because that Gentleman's Agreement keeps the DM and the players from digging those outside edges where the game-mechanic physical laws break down. CaW, on the other hand, may either exploit those boundary spaces, or the DM and players might try to patch them pre-game as best they can. (Even in CaW, the players may expect a good challenge and not rocks-fall-everyone-dies level DM BS.)

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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    *Assume DnD for ease of reference.

    Combat as Sport - All encounters are built using the proper challenge rating, PCs NEVER face opponents outside the accepted challenge rating.

    Combat as War - No encounter is built using challenge ratings, it simply up to DM whim what the PCs face.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I see two aspects to this division and I think neither is about difficulty.

    1) how much planning went into a specific fight on the dms end. In combat as war (CAW) the pcs have a lot more control over how they engage a target this might mean the fight is harder or easier it certainly makes it harder for the dm to make plans ahead of time. Combat as sport (CAS) the dm has more control the pcs are going to arrive in a fight with a fairly predictable power.

    The advantage here with CAW is the pcs have more freedom; the advantage here with CAS is the dm can design interesting encounters.

    2) a second aspect while not directly part of the equation is the fight fun? In CAW the general answer is no a fight is what happens when you failed to plan properly. In CAS the answer is yes otherwise you wouldn’t be playing the game at all because fighting is fun.

    Ask yourself this which is more appealing to you having an epic battle with the dark lord in a volcano lair as the lava slowly seeps closer to you forcing you to continue to climb to new heights to avoid burning or death. Or would you prefer to trick the dark lord into a mine shaft and then collapse it on him while he wails in impotent rage. That is the difference between CAS and CAW and which one appeals more is a matter of opinion.

    I think people get so hung up on which one they like they can’t help but make it a pejorative. The fact that this particular forum tends to have an extremely hostile opinion of anything that even hints of the dm directing play, pushes some to bash CAS which requires it to a degree.
    CAS can have hard fights; a fight the pcs are designed to lose so they can get captured is still CAS. It can have easy fights either to introduce the pcs to a mechanic that will be important in a latter harder fight, to give a neglected pc an opportunity to shine or just because.

    I would also argue that most games are not wholly CAS or CAW but a little bit of both. Getting silver for the werewolf fight and picking off some sentries before the main battle but then fighting the werewolf in pre-scripted burning warehouse would be a bit of both.
    Last edited by awa; 2020-10-28 at 12:01 AM.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Anyone else noticing that the server seems to be having issues?

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    CaS certainly requires the Goldilocks-approved "just right" difficulty. "Too hard" is certainly one implementation of CaW; however, what about "too easy" - where does that fit in?

    My contention is that CaS accepts exclusively {"just right"}, whereas CaW accepts {"too hard", "just right", "too easy"}. Those who care about the Challenge aesthetic will doubtless tend towards "too hard" when playing CaW, but I don't think that CaW inherently cares about the default difficulty setting of the encounter.

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    Strategy is not a synonym for tactics.

    When I discuss "engaging the strategic layer", I am talking about actions designed to change the difficulty of the encounter. "Contracting ursine lycanthropy", "hiring/consulting a beekeeper", "animating / becoming undead" - these are examples of strategic decisions designed to reduce the difficulty of the encounter with giant bees.

    Ever see threads or hear GMs complain, "man, the party did X, now how can I make Y challenging?"? That's the kind of actions I'm taking about. (And those GMs that make those comments have clearly adopted the challenge aesthetic, and rejected CaW (at least, according to my understanding of CaW)).

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    I think that the earliest example of a CaW mindset is the earliest gamers, who believed that if the dice came out, you had already lost. If possible, everything should be resolved at a level where there is no chance of failure - in the bees example, that includes things like smoke to make them docile, or DR beyond their ability to deal damage.

    These are not "drown healing" exploits - they are how the world legitimately *should* operate.

    However, just because you aren't cheating from the PoV of pulling infinite loops or breaking game physics doesn't mean that CaS won't cry foul.

    If the GM had created a series of CR-appropriate bee fights, and then the players came in invisible, used smoke to make the bees docile, or even just brought extra combatants to change the difficulty of the fights, I can certainly see them being accused of "cheating" (or, at least, "unsportsmanlike conduct") from a CaS perspective.

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    The next most classic example of CaW is, IMO, the Schrödinger's Wizard: perform sufficient Divinations to always prepare the perfect loadout of spells for every encounter. When you always have the right tool for the job, and access to near-infinite tools, or tends to greatly affect the Challenge of, well, challenges.

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    3e is not inherently CaS.

    The DMG encounter guidelines expect GMs to routinely / randomly provide challenges of up to ±4 EL from the party's ECL, and the XP table expects characters to face individual creatures of up to ±7(8?) CR from their ECL (with no limit to *how many* of those creatures one can earn XP from in a single encounter).

    This is pretty far into CaW territory. (Although it is interesting evidence of the notion of a spectrum, I, personally, have difficulty conceptualizing a spectrum of valid answers to the binary yes/no questions of, "are the PCs allowed to engage the strategic layer to change the Challenge of encounters?", and "is the GM responsible for ensuring that all encounters are 'fair fights' that the party can survive?".)

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    EDIT: awa, I agree with a lot of what you said; however, I contend that CaW is capable of *more interesting* encounters than CaS because it is not constrained to make them "balanced". Just look at how much more interesting the 2e Wild Mage is than the 3e counterpart, or all of 4e for examples of how constraining things to be balanced makes them less interesting. Or just use the trivial logic of "CaS encounters are a subset of CaW encounters; all CaS encounters could be used in a CaW game. However, the reverse is not true. So, if the imbalanced encounter is more interesting, it can be played in CaW, but not in CaS.".

    Granted, it *may* be more likely that PCs in CaW will engage the more interesting encounters in uninteresting ways… jury is still out on that one.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2020-10-28 at 12:54 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #9
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Seems to me you are seeing DM choices as reactive, but the world can also be proactive. If you make a big enough name for yourself too quickly you die because more powerful individuals get involved. That would also be Combat as War, it just doesn't assume that only the characters use their brains. If you foil the Dark Lord's minions you might not get a slow escalation but a hit squad of Wraiths, or an army that uses dogs and Dancing Lights to find you.

    Tucker's Kobolds is also CaW, it just runs the opposite direction. Or Goblins that use Lycanthropy to give them an edge, etc.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
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  10. - Top - End - #10
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Seems to me you are seeing DM choices as reactive, but the world can also be proactive. If you make a big enough name for yourself too quickly you die because more powerful individuals get involved. That would also be Combat as War, it just doesn't assume that only the characters use their brains. If you foil the Dark Lord's minions you might not get a slow escalation but a hit squad of Wraiths, or an army that uses dogs and Dancing Lights to find you.

    Tucker's Kobolds is also CaW, it just runs the opposite direction. Or Goblins that use Lycanthropy to give them an edge, etc.
    Not at all! To simplify matters (because it's easier to discuss), I am actually looking at a world that is neither *reactive* nor *proactive*, but entirely static and prescripted ("there are bees here - what do you do?").

    So, afaict, such variables are completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2020-10-28 at 12:51 AM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I'm not a fan of the distinction, as it is usually used by CaW fans to insult CaS players. CaW is for smart, strategic play, while CaS is for dummies who charge at at every monster.

    Having played war games that cover both strategy/operational and tactical scales, I find that using both is boring - if you do well at strategy, the tactical battle is too easy.

    I prefer CaS, as you usually have interesting tactical battles, while CaW is mostly about having the right spell for the job, or fast-talking the DM into letting you win without a dice roll (eg. setting the goblin caves on fire so they all immedately die from smoke as the adventure doesn't specifically mention ventilation).

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by GeoffWatson View Post
    I prefer CaS, as you usually have interesting tactical battles, while CaW is mostly about having the right spell for the job, or fast-talking the DM into letting you win without a dice roll (eg. setting the goblin caves on fire so they all immedately die from smoke as the adventure doesn't specifically mention ventilation).
    While it could play out like this, it is not mandatory.

    For me, CaW at it's best is all about leveling the playing field. You have to act on the strategic layer to even have a chance for winnig. That's why CaW does not preclude tactical insteresting encounters.

    Red Hand of Doom is very much a CaW campaign done right: many of the major sites have strong enough opposition that, when combined, will crush the PCs or at least make it a very costly fight.

    As such the players are encouraged to act on the strategic layer (taking out isolated enemies before the fight, sneaking/moving into favorable positions, aquiring allies, trying to fight the enemies piecemeal, using the environment, scouting and perparing etc.) in addition to perform well in the actual combat.

    To me that makes the whole experience more meaningful in contrast to when it would be clear to me that I, as a player, can't do anything to shift the scales and that I also don't have a need to because the encounters are already tailored.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Zombimode View Post
    For me, CaW at it's best is all about leveling the playing field. You have to act on the strategic layer to even have a chance for winnig. That's why CaW does not preclude tactical insteresting encounters.
    I think we might actually have the same idea, but I would not call it levelling the playing field. I'd call it stacking the odds in your favor.

    Quote Originally Posted by GeoffWatson View Post
    I'm not a fan of the distinction, as it is usually used by CaW fans to insult CaS players. CaW is for smart, strategic play, while CaS is for dummies who charge at at every monster.
    Combat as War is roleplaying,
    Combat as Sport is roll playing.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    The different parts I see are

    (1) Does the concept of "encounters" is significant? How much link does exist between a single encounter and the overhaul campaign.

    A CaS proponent will usually express its distaste for out-of-the-encounters effects having significant impact on the encounter (like extensive preparation), or in-the-encounter effects having a significant impact outside of it (like permanent injuries). All of those effects are disturbances that ruin the fun of the fight. In its more radical case, a CaS proponent will push for taking a long rest between each fight, as the concept of attrition war is not something he/she enjoys participating to.
    A CaS DM will try to balance encounters so that every fight is interesting by itself, even if that mean cancelling the bonus/penalties from previous fight. (Have a rough day? Let's nerf the enemies. You rolled over the previous encounter? Let's buff the enemies.)
    CaS does not mean that every fight is evenly matched. But it means that when building a non-level-appropriate fight as per CR, there is a backed-in solution which is level appropriate (like running away), and explicitly presented to the players so that they don't blindly go into the fight.

    For a CaW proponent, the fights are a mean, not a goal. Cancelling the bonus from victories by making later fight harder would feel like robbing them from the entire point of winning a fight, and disregarding the effects of preparation as removing their agency to outsmart the enemies.
    A CaW DM will expect the players to try to manipulate the encounters they take part in, and will punish lack of anticipation skills from the players but reward unorthodox approaches at solving problems.

    CaS players with a CaW DM will result in frequents TPK, or at least frequent moments when the players complain about the DM being unfair or adversarial. CaW players with a CaS DM will result in a feeling of lack of agency / railroading, or the DM growing more and more frustrated than his fight doesn't go as planned and enjoying less and less being a DM (depending on how much the DM tries to force CaS onto the players).

    (2) How many conventions the table has, aka how much "good sportsmanship" is expected. E.g do monsters finish of dying PCs?

    This question is quite different from CaS vs CaW, but often gets lumped into it. It is totally possible to play CaS with very few conventions other than respecting the limits of the combat encounters. And it is totally possible to play CaW where the DM applies a very strict "you can only die from your own mistakes" or "player equipment is sacred and cannot be lost/stolen".

    (3) A question of expected gameplay.

    It's not unusual for players to come with expectation like "I have this cool power I want to use". Assuming quick level up (often the case with milestone level up) or rare gaming sessions (so the player rediscover their character each time), the players have an expected gameplay for their character, and will feel frustrated if the challenges in front cannot be solved with their expected gameplay.

    At the contrary, if that's the 10th fight of the (real life) week you're doing with the same character and not significant changes of powers available to your character, you will appreciate having a fight that cannot be summed up by "I use the standard tactics".

    PS:
    I am firmly CaS. I don't like to anticipate. I usually follow the path (or the rails) to discover what is happening and react to it, and find it very tiring to have to actually take initiatives. I have a very weird relationship with loots, as while I do enjoy loot, there are a lot of kind of loots that I actually find more tiring than enjoying. (In particular, I don't like at all the fact that wizards loot their spells).

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Distinquishing between games focused on tactics versus strategy is useful, but calling this distinction "combat as war versus combat as sport" is not. For one, it is misleading because sports do not universally or even generally lack strategic layers; if you engaged in any sport to compete even at a low amateur level, you'll know this.

    For two, if people know and understand what words "tactics" and "strategy" mean, you can just use those words. Seriously. The need to define idiosyncratic colloquialisms like "combat as war" strictly is a self-created problem. It's a simple analogy most people with two brain cells could get from the original description. In any situation where the original description is not enough, the correct solution is to ditch the analogy and find better words to describe your point. In this case, the exact terms already exist and eliminate need for the analogy.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post

    EDIT: awa, I agree with a lot of what you said; however, I contend that CaW is capable of *more interesting* encounters than CaS because it is not constrained to make them "balanced". Just look at how much more interesting the 2e Wild Mage is than the 3e counterpart, or all of 4e for examples of how constraining things to be balanced makes them less interesting. Or just use the trivial logic of "CaS encounters are a subset of CaW encounters; all CaS encounters could be used in a CaW game. However, the reverse is not true. So, if the imbalanced encounter is more interesting, it can be played in CaW, but not in CaS.".

    Granted, it *may* be more likely that PCs in CaW will engage the more interesting encounters in uninteresting waysÂ… jury is still out on that one.
    A good CAS dm can ensure interesting encounters simply by designing them to work that way, they know what the pcs will be fighting and when and thus can design interesting combos, interesting terrain and work out their interactions ahead of time. While a CAW dm could attempt the same the inability to know where or when the pcs are going to do something wildly increases the difficulty of doing so and thus they rely a lot more on luck for an interesting encounter to occur.

    If I design a CAS fight in a burning building I can decide ahead of time how the fire reacts how fast it spreads, what the difficulty to open a blocked door is, if and when a floor/ ceiling will collapse and design a very cinematic fight. In a CAW scenario i have much less control to make certain the pcs end up in that burning building and thus I either run into a situation where my planning time might be wasted if they avoid the burning building or find a away to negate the or I have less time to plan and polish the fight worst case I might be having to do it all on the fly.

    on an unrelated note
    I would also argue that CAS works better at lower levels, assuming you dont allow wacky shenanigan to work their are simply less effective levers the pcs can apply and going in and stabbing some dudes may very well be the only effective choice. Where at higher levels particularly with casters they have so many options you either need much greater buy in or a much more significant amount of railroading to get them to engage with the planed encounters in the expected way.

    As a short mini example lets say you plan an encounter where a giant troll bursts out from under a bridge causing the bridge to collapse into a partially dry river bed, you draw out the terrain on your map, mark down what the varying levels of water, mud and incline have on the fight. Work out the difficulties of leaping clear of the collapsing bridge ect. A low level party is almost certainly going to cross a bridge they have no reason not to, a high level party well no telling what will happen, did they decide to memorize a flight spell for the whole party? Teleport? Will the barbarian just pick up the party and jump across the river? They have so many options that it becomes much harder to predict what they can and will do.

    That said I suspect most games are on a spectrum of CAW and CAS with more games being pure CAW then pure CAS.

    To Vahnavoi) I am also not particularly enamored with the terms, combined with a tendency for proponents of CAW denigrating CAS, the terms at least in my mind seem to be implying that CAS is inferior to CAW. As some one who enjoys the tactical game from both sides of the screen I dislike that.
    Last edited by awa; 2020-10-28 at 07:54 AM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I think one of the best examples of what the distinction is is still that in combat as sport you can fight multiple groups of enemies (from the same faction) in the same smallish dungeon. Yes, in combat as war you might be able to catch the goblins by surprise and split up into different groups, but there's no way that group 1 is fighting you in the first room while group 2 is patiently waiting for you to finish in the next. Group 1 will call for help, or execute a tactical retreat, or group 2 will just plain hear the fighting, or... And most of the time a dungeon has a pretty observable entrance, so they'll have a sentry report your approach and they all man an ambush for you, not wherever the fight would be the coolest, but wherever it would be most advantageous for them.

    So on one hand combat as war places a burden on the GM to think things through a lot further than combat as sport, on the other hand it that very thinking it through also blocks a lot of options.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    i really, really don't like those definitions. they are arbitrary, and they try to set up dichotomies where they need not be.
    for example, at my table using ganks and strategy and everything you can do get the drop on the enemies and stack the fight in your favor is absolutely fair game, and that's something you define as CaW. on the other hand, we'd not want to exploit rule loopholes, which you'd define as CaS. Nor could you place us half-way, because halfway would entail a bit of anything, not being strongly stacked on one side of the definition for one aspect, and strongly on the other side for the other aspect.

    furthermore, your bias against casual players is evident in the way you describe the CaS scenario as a bunch of bumbling morons.

    it would be a much better definition to have "combat as problem solving", where you try to use strategy outside of combat to improve the chances, and "combat as charOP", where you try to optimize your character to be stronger, and "combat as tactics", where you stumble into the fight and then try to use your resources at best to win. and possibly even more axes that i'm not thinking about right now.
    then your example of bumbling morons would score very low in all those axes. or they'd just be bad at it.

    and you'd also need an entirely new axis for "RAI vs RAW", describing how much you would use the letter of the rules to abuse loopholes. Or a "roleplaying vs RAW" to describe how much your interactions are defined by the result of a diplomacy check and how much by using established elements of the story. Also a "RAW vs homebrew" for the charOP axis: if your wizard is incompetent and does nothing but casting fireballs even when she's level 15, do you show her an incantatrix build and let her retrain, or do you drop a staff increasing her fireball damage in the loot? both have the same purpose and results, but they use very different means.

    ultimately, you can't just divide all the various styles of gaming along a line. And you should be especially wary of your own prejudices to avoid grouping the extremes of that line as "the cool guys" and "the dumb guys"
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    In CaS, the goal is that the encounter itself is interesting. As pointed out, the GM can ensure an interesting and balanced encounter. Often/generally, the players won't choose what encounters they go into. The assumption is that the encounters will be balanced, and players can approach them with what they have and what is in the encounter.

    This doesn't mean that tactics are irrelevant. It does mean that, generally, each encounter is a "closed set" and is designed to be "beatable" given what's on hand.

    In CaW, the combat itself is not the interesting bit. Pursuing goals is. Combat is just a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. As such, having an "interesting" encounter isn't valuable. What is valuable is having an objective that can be attained in multiple ways, and a complex situation that gives players options both in terms of what encounters to engage in, what encounters to bypass, and how to engage in encounters.

    That's one of the areas that the CaS/CaW examples usually fail in, is that they both presume that the encounter is happening. Encounter selection is a huge part of CaW, and so ignoring that misses a ton.

    I'd also say that CaS lends itself more to more linear games, while CaW lends itself more to more open games.

    And that's probably a big part of the problem is that people talking about these terms are probably more used to one style of game than another, and so interpret them from a framework that is primarily based on one or the other, and so exaggerate the one that they're really doing (since they think what they do is "normal" and therefore the term being used must express something "more"), while shoving the other one's square peg into the round hole of their expectations.

    I do think the terms are valuable, as they, in many ways, capture the essence. In war, you want things as unfair as possible. The goal is not to show off how good you are at fighting, the goal is to either completely avoid fights, or to make them so one-sided that one side has to retreat immediately. The best fight in a war is boring. The goal is to arrange the situation so that you have as lopsided of a situation as possible. That doesn't mean that having people good at fighting, or good at tactics on the micro-level isn't helpful or important.... but it's the secondary factor.

    In sports, however, we want to see teams that are fairly evenly matched (though in RPGs we generally want things to be tilted in the players' favor). We want a thrilling game between well matched teams where the result is up in the air. That doesn't mean that people in sports "play dumb". They play as smart as they can, but they ideally start on a roughly even playing field. They can get an advantage by "good play", but they can't get an advantage by putting twice as many people on the field. Sometimes you'll get some advantage outside of the strict boundaries of the sport (home field advantage, advantage from being used to different types of weather, etc.), but the primary emphasis is on a "fair" fight between two reasonably even sides.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2020-10-28 at 10:27 AM.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Distinquishing between games focused on tactics versus strategy is useful, but calling this distinction "combat as war versus combat as sport" is not.

    if people know and understand what words "tactics" and "strategy" mean, you can just use those words. Seriously. The need to define idiosyncratic colloquialisms like "combat as war" strictly is a self-created problem.
    Yes and no? I mean, my initial "definition" was the trivial, "is the strategic layer accessible?".

    The issue is, the terms CaW and CaS have baggage - and that's the point. There are numerous behaviors that grow from the decision whether or not to allow Strategy to affect the Challenge.

    Many people foolishly attempt "no wealth 3e", to disastrous effect. If anyone gets all of the surrounding rules changed, and makes a good CaS game out of it, then I expect them to give it a more descriptive name, to distinguish it from the general fail case of "doing it wrong". Same thing here. CaW and CaS are both valid playstyles; but they need names to explain that they are thought-through playstyles, not just kneejerk, "can we use strategy, yes or no".

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    The different parts I see are

    (1) Does the concept of "encounters" is significant? How much link does exist between a single encounter and the overhaul campaign.

    A CaS proponent will usually express its distaste for out-of-the-encounters effects having significant impact on the encounter (like extensive preparation), or in-the-encounter effects having a significant impact outside of it (like permanent injuries). All of those effects are disturbances that ruin the fun of the fight. In its more radical case, a CaS proponent will push for taking a long rest between each fight, as the concept of attrition war is not something he/she enjoys participating to.
    A CaS DM will try to balance encounters so that every fight is interesting by itself, even if that mean cancelling the bonus/penalties from previous fight. (Have a rough day? Let's nerf the enemies. You rolled over the previous encounter? Let's buff the enemies.)
    CaS does not mean that every fight is evenly matched. But it means that when building a non-level-appropriate fight as per CR, there is a backed-in solution which is level appropriate (like running away), and explicitly presented to the players so that they don't blindly go into the fight.

    For a CaW proponent, the fights are a mean, not a goal. Cancelling the bonus from victories by making later fight harder would feel like robbing them from the entire point of winning a fight, and disregarding the effects of preparation as removing their agency to outsmart the enemies.
    A CaW DM will expect the players to try to manipulate the encounters they take part in, and will punish lack of anticipation skills from the players but reward unorthodox approaches at solving problems.

    CaS players with a CaW DM will result in frequents TPK, or at least frequent moments when the players complain about the DM being unfair or adversarial. CaW players with a CaS DM will result in a feeling of lack of agency / railroading, or the DM growing more and more frustrated than his fight doesn't go as planned and enjoying less and less being a DM (depending on how much the DM tries to force CaS onto the players).
    Sounds good.

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    (2) How many conventions the table has, aka how much "good sportsmanship" is expected. E.g do monsters finish of dying PCs?

    This question is quite different from CaS vs CaW, but often gets lumped into it. It is totally possible to play CaS with very few conventions other than respecting the limits of the combat encounters. And it is totally possible to play CaW where the DM applies a very strict "you can only die from your own mistakes" or "player equipment is sacred and cannot be lost/stolen".
    Eh, I would *not* include this in CaW vs CaS - it seems to muddy the waters, as both could do either.

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    (3) A question of expected gameplay.

    It's not unusual for players to come with expectation like "I have this cool power I want to use". Assuming quick level up (often the case with milestone level up) or rare gaming sessions (so the player rediscover their character each time), the players have an expected gameplay for their character, and will feel frustrated if the challenges in front cannot be solved with their expected gameplay.

    At the contrary, if that's the 10th fight of the (real life) week you're doing with the same character and not significant changes of powers available to your character, you will appreciate having a fight that cannot be summed up by "I use the standard tactics".
    ... I'm not following how this has anything to do with CaW vs CaS. Care to explain what I missed / how this ties in?

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    PS:
    I am firmly CaS. I don't like to anticipate. I usually follow the path (or the rails) to discover what is happening and react to it, and find it very tiring to have to actually take initiatives. I have a very weird relationship with loots, as while I do enjoy loot, there are a lot of kind of loots that I actually find more tiring than enjoying. (In particular, I don't like at all the fact that wizards loot their spells).
    Heresy! Looting spells is, like, what drew me to D&D in the first place. (no, seriously, why would anyone *hate* on that? )

    Quote Originally Posted by awa View Post
    A good CAS dm can ensure interesting encounters simply by designing them to work that way, they know what the pcs will be fighting and when and thus can design interesting combos, interesting terrain and work out their interactions ahead of time. While a CAW dm could attempt the same the inability to know where or when the pcs are going to do something wildly increases the difficulty of doing so and thus they rely a lot more on luck for an interesting encounter to occur.

    If I design a CAS fight in a burning building I can decide ahead of time how the fire reacts how fast it spreads, what the difficulty to open a blocked door is, if and when a floor/ ceiling will collapse and design a very cinematic fight. In a CAW scenario i have much less control to make certain the pcs end up in that burning building and thus I either run into a situation where my planning time might be wasted if they avoid the burning building or find a away to negate the or I have less time to plan and polish the fight worst case I might be having to do it all on the fly.
    That... is *mostly* true, but... even engaging the tactical layer could result in you needing to railroad to maintain your intended cinematic feel.

    Quote Originally Posted by awa View Post
    on an unrelated note
    I would also argue that CAS works better at lower levels, assuming you dont allow wacky shenanigan to work their are simply less effective levers the pcs can apply and going in and stabbing some dudes may very well be the only effective choice. Where at higher levels particularly with casters they have so many options you either need much greater buy in or a much more significant amount of railroading to get them to engage with the planed encounters in the expected way.

    As a short mini example lets say you plan an encounter where a giant troll bursts out from under a bridge causing the bridge to collapse into a partially dry river bed, you draw out the terrain on your map, mark down what the varying levels of water, mud and incline have on the fight. Work out the difficulties of leaping clear of the collapsing bridge ect. A low level party is almost certainly going to cross a bridge they have no reason not to, a high level party well no telling what will happen, did they decide to memorize a flight spell for the whole party? Teleport? Will the barbarian just pick up the party and jump across the river? They have so many options that it becomes much harder to predict what they can and will do.
    This seems very D&D-specific for a system-agnostic discussion.

    But, to generalize, yes, players with more tools are better equipped to go off the rails. Yes, Railroading is harder when the players have more Agency. (Yes, it is harder to set the scene when the players are allowed to and have the tools to engage the content differently.)

    Quote Originally Posted by awa View Post
    That said I suspect most games are on a spectrum of CAW and CAS with more games being pure CAW then pure CAS.
    One of the big questions that my definition had to scratch its head about (figuratively speaking) was whether "skipping the Troll encounter entirely because the party is flying" is / should be valid in CaS.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lvl 2 Expert View Post
    I think one of the best examples of what the distinction is is still that in combat as sport you can fight multiple groups of enemies (from the same faction) in the same smallish dungeon. Yes, in combat as war you might be able to catch the goblins by surprise and split up into different groups, but there's no way that group 1 is fighting you in the first room while group 2 is patiently waiting for you to finish in the next. Group 1 will call for help, or execute a tactical retreat, or group 2 will just plain hear the fighting, or... And most of the time a dungeon has a pretty observable entrance, so they'll have a sentry report your approach and they all man an ambush for you, not wherever the fight would be the coolest, but wherever it would be most advantageous for them.

    So on one hand combat as war places a burden on the GM to think things through a lot further than combat as sport, on the other hand it that very thinking it through also blocks a lot of options.
    Kind of?

    So, this gets into "what should the definitions be" territory. Awesome!

    IMO, you can have a CaS game where the goblins "act intelligently" and "sound the alarm". Problem is, you have then totally borked the "level-appropriate challenge" aspect. Unless "show good enough tactics to not let them sound the alarm" was the Challenge that the party failed.

    And you could certainly have a CaW game where the goblins never think to clump up - there just are groups of 10-600 throughout the caves.

    Anyway, I am not completely convinced that the line belongs exactly where you have placed it.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    i really, really don't like those definitions. they are arbitrary, and they try to set up dichotomies where they need not be.
    for example, at my table using ganks and strategy and everything you can do get the drop on the enemies and stack the fight in your favor is absolutely fair game, and that's something you define as CaW.
    Yup, you're CaW.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    on the other hand, we'd not want to exploit rule loopholes, which you'd define as CaS.
    No, this has nothing to do with CaW vs CaS. Either technically could allow or disallow rules loopholes (granted, only at the tactical layer for CaS).

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    it would be a much better definition to have "combat as problem solving", where you try to use strategy outside of combat to improve the chances, and "combat as charOP", where you try to optimize your character to be stronger, and "combat as tactics", where you stumble into the fight and then try to use your resources at best to win. and possibly even more axes that i'm not thinking about right now.
    then your example of bumbling morons would score very low in all those axes. or they'd just be bad at it.
    Oh, interesting. I'll need to stew on this - poke me if I don't get back to this in a few days.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    and you'd also need an entirely new axis for "RAI vs RAW", describing how much you would use the letter of the rules to abuse loopholes.
    Agreed, this is entirely outside CaS vs CaW, just like "choice of system" is.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    Or a "roleplaying vs RAW" to describe how much your interactions are defined by the result of a diplomacy check and how much by using established elements of the story. Also a "RAW vs homebrew" for the charOP axis: if your wizard is incompetent and does nothing but casting fireballs even when she's level 15, do you show her an incantatrix build and let her retrain, or do you drop a staff increasing her fireball damage in the loot? both have the same purpose and results, but they use very different means.
    I'm pretty sure that these are irrelevant to the CaW vs CaS distinction, too, yes (although someone could disagree with me here).

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    ultimately, you can't just divide all the various styles of gaming along a line. And you should be especially wary of your own prejudices to avoid grouping the extremes of that line as "the cool guys" and "the dumb guys"
    Agreed. That's no small part of why I've made this thread, because the originator of the terms failed at this spectacularly. And I've only spoofed them, not given it serious scholarship.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    In CaS, the goal is that the encounter itself is interesting. As pointed out, the GM can ensure an interesting and balanced encounter. Often/generally, the players won't choose what encounters they go into. The assumption is that the encounters will be balanced, and players can approach them with what they have and what is in the encounter.

    This doesn't mean that tactics are irrelevant. It does mean that, generally, each encounter is a "closed set" and is designed to be "beatable" given what's on hand.

    In CaW, the combat itself is not the interesting bit. Pursuing goals is. Combat is just a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. As such, having an "interesting" encounter isn't valuable. What is valuable is having an objective that can be attained in multiple ways, and a complex situation that gives players options both in terms of what encounters to engage in, what encounters to bypass, and how to engage in encounters.

    That's one of the areas that the CaS/CaW examples usually fail in, is that they both presume that the encounter is happening. Encounter selection is a huge part of CaW, and so ignoring that misses a ton.

    I'd also say that CaS lends itself more to more linear games, while CaW lends itself more to more open games.

    And that's probably a big part of the problem is that people talking about these terms are probably more used to one style of game than another, and so interpret them from a framework that is primarily based on one or the other, and so exaggerate the one that they're really doing (since they think what they do is "normal" and therefore the term being used must express something "more"), while shoving the other one's square peg into the round hole of their expectations.

    I do think the terms are valuable, as they, in many ways, capture the essence. In war, you want things as unfair as possible. The goal is not to show off how good you are at fighting, the goal is to either completely avoid fights, or to make them so one-sided that one side has to retreat immediately. The best fight in a war is boring. The goal is to arrange the situation so that you have as lopsided of a situation as possible. That doesn't mean that having people good at fighting, or good at tactics on the micro-level isn't helpful or important.... but it's the secondary factor.

    In sports, however, we want to see teams that are fairly evenly matched (though in RPGs we generally want things to be tilted in the players' favor). We want a thrilling game between well matched teams where the result is up in the air. That doesn't mean that people in sports "play dumb". They play as smart as they can, but they ideally start on a roughly even playing field. They can get an advantage by "good play", but they can't get an advantage by putting twice as many people on the field. Sometimes you'll get some advantage outside of the strict boundaries of the sport (home field advantage, advantage from being used to different types of weather, etc.), but the primary emphasis is on a "fair" fight between two reasonably even sides.
    This seems like an awesome explanation of the two. Kudos!

    EDIT: so, you are clearly on the side of "skipping encounters entirely - including by choosing which encounters to engage (and which missions to take?) - is CaW territory"?

    Quote Originally Posted by GeoffWatson View Post
    I'm not a fan of the distinction, as it is usually used by CaW fans to insult CaS players. CaW is for smart, strategic play, while CaS is for dummies who charge at at every monster.
    Quote Originally Posted by awa View Post
    To Vahnavoi) I am also not particularly enamored with the terms, combined with a tendency for proponents of CAW denigrating CAS, the terms at least in my mind seem to be implying that CAS is inferior to CAW. As some one who enjoys the tactical game from both sides of the screen I dislike that.
    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    furthermore, your bias against casual players is evident in the way you describe the CaS scenario as a bunch of bumbling morons.
    I am amazed how many people a) were unable to comprehend that the initial article was biased, even when I said so repeatedly; b) are seemingly¹ unable to comprehend that my spoof of the article is intended to make that bias plain by putting it on the other side. I suppose I am glad that people can see bias mono-directionally at least, rather than being bias-blind? Maybe? Still, I am surprised that bidirectionally bias enabled sight is so rare.

    Yes, I happen to prefer CaW. But I could have still written my spoof even if I had preferred CaS, because the spoof is about showing bias.

    The point of this thread is to try to work past the bias, and create and evaluate a definition of the terms that actually explains them in a neutral light.

    (EDIT: historically, due to the horrifically biased source, it was actually primarily to exclusively CaS proponents denigrating CaW)

    ¹ unless there's a lot of posts somewhere that I haven't read / don't remember where someone is actually taking such a stance.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2020-10-28 at 01:12 PM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I think there is a false dichotomy in regards to the use of strategy/tactics and CaS vs CaW. Strategy/tactics can an should be applied in both situations.

    However I do see the usefulness of using the CaS vs CaW distinction in regards to how combat is handled within the game.

    If players assume CaS and the DM is running CaW, the dreaded TPK is much more likely to occur. Players who expect a "fair" encounter won't be inclined to retreat or use extra caution when engaging in combat.

    On the other hand players who assume CaW, when it's CaS, may find they are disappointed with the "fairness" present in encounters.

    IMHO, it really comes down to the kind of combat one wishes to experience. Personally I cannot stand CaS combat. If I wanted a "fair" fight I would play a minis combat game or some such. All of the fun of CaW combat comes from the fact that any encounter is a crapshoot and it keeps the tension high. If I know that every fight will be a "fair" fight it sucks all of the tension right out of the experience.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by zarionofarabel View Post
    I think there is a false dichotomy in regards to the use of strategy/tactics and CaS vs CaW. Strategy/tactics can an should be applied in both situations.

    However I do see the usefulness of using the CaS vs CaW distinction in regards to how combat is handled within the game.

    If players assume CaS and the DM is running CaW, the dreaded TPK is much more likely to occur. Players who expect a "fair" encounter won't be inclined to retreat or use extra caution when engaging in combat.

    On the other hand players who assume CaW, when it's CaS, may find they are disappointed with the "fairness" present in encounters.

    IMHO, it really comes down to the kind of combat one wishes to experience. Personally I cannot stand CaS combat. If I wanted a "fair" fight I would play a minis combat game or some such. All of the fun of CaW combat comes from the fact that any encounter is a crapshoot and it keeps the tension high. If I know that every fight will be a "fair" fight it sucks all of the tension right out of the experience.
    As I come from a wargaming background, I cannot help but be in agreement with your sentiment about fair fights. If the only component to the game is a series of "fair fights", I would rather use a better system for fair fights, of which there are numerous.

    Then again, RPGs *do* have more things than tactical combat - like role-playing. However, I find having to metagame and curtail my role-playing so as not to break CaS irritating.

    If, in addition to appreciating Challenge, you also have the Abnegation and Narrative features (which I don't), you could appreciate the story you're being told, interspersed with a series of "sporting fights". But, if you appreciate Exploration/Discovery - and, in particular, utilizing those tools in creative ways (as I do), you'll still struggle with breaking CaS.

    So, I think that there are ways to engage CaS that aren't strictly inferior to war gaming - they just require different tastes than I possess.

    I am, however, curious how you view strategy as a valid element in CaS. How can strategy not break the game under a CaS paradigm? (EDIT: *tactics* are available in both)
    Last edited by Quertus; 2020-10-28 at 12:55 PM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I am, however, curious how you view strategy as a valid element in CaS. How can strategy not break the game under a CaS paradigm? (EDIT: *tactics* are available in both)
    CaS =/= railroad. Strategy allows you to pick different fights (and under different conditions). It doesn't (in CaS) generally allow you to win those fights without fighting. Unless you talk your way out of them, of course.

    Most of the time IMX, CaW devolves into finding loopholes and playing the DM, not actually playing the game. It's completely independent of the characters and only depends on the players...like chess. Which is not how I like to roleplay.

    Basically, the strategy involved in CaS[1] is about getting the DM to create encounters that are favorable to the play-style you have/want, rather than avoiding fights entirely. Because there's a wide range of "CR appropriate" fights. And CR is such a rough measure that you can bend quite a ways. And no one holds strictly to the "all fights are exactly balanced" extreme.

    For example, take one of the 5e published modules (Princes of the Apocalypse). These are all as CaS as things get. But in one section, you could fight your way up a certain tower room by room (facing a bunch of penny-packet fights). Or you could do what we did, which was parley our way up to the top, then fight everything all at once. That "strategy" produced a very different set of fights than the other option. Heck, we went and did the same sort of thing (rush into the middle and blow them all up at once) in another part of the module, where you could have lured out and defeated them in detail.

    [1] I hate these terms, because as used they're basically pejoratives. CaS == you guys don't want to think. CaW == we're so smart and "realistic". When in reality, the DM only doesn't win because he chooses not to. Neither is "fair" or "earned"--the DM is always building things that can be defeated. Because otherwise you get rolled at level 1 and TPKd, because the DM holds all the cards.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Sure was great to start this thread out with two sets of biased examples, rather than just retaining the positive framing for both extremes. Only to be further improved when the OP called their slant "better," implying it's the more correct view on something so subjective!
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anyways...

    There's benefits to both. Just like with playing stronger PCs, having increased ways to resolve or avoid encounters can only increase the complexity of challenges PCs face in the broad scale. E.g. I don't think Combat as Sport would be good for a game looking to address issues of socio-economics, especially not in a game without some form of "social-combat" mechanic (and even in those, being unable to maneuver outside of 'encounters' would be detrimental).

    However, there is also merit to scaling things down to an individual encounter, asking how the players would solve it, and reiterating that question with increasingly more restrictions placed on the players. It's why hard modes and variant runs of video games are interesting. Could you win this combat with these sets of starting parameters? What about while with restricted builds? Can you make a party of "takes-all-comers" who can solve a series of set encounters with minimal ability to change the parameters of those encounters before engaging in them?

    Combat as War games offer more ability to resolve big-picture problems and allow more freeform expression of character. Combat as Sport games are puzzles that disallow "cutting the knot" to bypass them entirely, and allow expression of character through how they respond to the limitations set.

    Most games will use both. Even in a system where crunch is divorced from fluff, in the interest of promoting engaging, tightly tuned, tactical combat (D&D 4e; Lancer), the strategic maneuvering of the party outside of those tactical portions should have import on the narrative and therefore what they face in combats. A completely pure tactical game would be context-less encounters or a wargame. A pure strategic game would probably be abstracted form the individual encounters.

    I agree a lot with the poster who said their ideal is a game where the players need to use strategy to ensure their viability on the tactical layer for major encounters/scenes (and this goes for everything, not only combat). I'll also agree that "Combat-As-Sport" is a thinly veiled pejorative, and its use should probably be discontinued.
    Last edited by RifleAvenger; 2020-10-28 at 01:46 PM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    After sitting through preferences, the distinction is really one which social contract is used/preferred. The idea that one or the other is somehow more mentally challenging is a bit laughable - RPG rule sets are written in good faith, often by disparate authors, with varying production values, and subject to a staggering range of GM and player interpretation without any real authority to recourse to. Being able to break them in one manner or another really isn’t an intellectual distinction for either CaW or CaS. It may be an illusion of personal competence to pretend one or the other is somehow more OOC challenging.

    As to CaS/CaW as a social contract, that is where the difference lies.

    A CaS social contract implies that the GM will give the players a “fair” range of encounters (be they fights or fast taking your fantasy meth dealer). The players can expect that so long as they behave in a semi-reasonable fashion, they will not suddenly get hammered with a “GOTCHA!” about not explicitly packing their healing potion, or being wiped away with a hellfire from an unanswerable drone 30k feet in orbit with no chance to do anything about it. In turn, the GM expects the players to keep the plot moving without infinite paranoia and preparation, and that they try to solve the issues they encounter in good faith. That doesn’t mean the answer to every guard is a stabbing - bribing, sneaking, seducing, mind controlling etc. are all fine so long as players are not deliberately trying to break the encounter. And this can honestly be a very low-stress way to play a game about doing cool things in cool places. The players know that if they are genre savvy their fun isn’t going to be an illusion, and the GM knows that he may have to plan a world, but at least it won’t be one that players are trying to break. It can also be seen as stifling by some, who feel that they are being inadvertently railroaded, or that social conventions at the table are guiding their actions more than they would like.

    CaW is a different form of social contract. The players have no expectation that anything about it will be fair. “ROCKS FALL” is a possible outcome from seeming to follow the narrative arc. The GM plays the opposition to the limits of their resources...and maybe a little more. The players in turn are expected to find every trick they can, IC and meta, to win. Even if this means going knowingly against the theme of an encounter or generic table conventions.
    This can, on one hand, be highly liberating. You are free to legitimately tricks those players into an ambush that they as real world people didn’t see coming, and then machine gun their helpless characters! You are free to solve the GMs elaborate Kobold Dungeon by flooding it with poison gas and sealing the cave mouth! It can also be obnoxious for some people - it can slow down a table as people try to cover every possibility, it can frustrate players when they thought an obvious social cue like “talk to the elaborately described NPC in the corner” should not immediately lead to “shot in the head”, and frustrate GMs when for real or imagined possible IC reasons a plot grinds to a halt or is entirely discarded.

    To use a non-combat example, let’s look at a quest/mission/shadow run/whatever.

    In a CaS contract, there is an understanding that “taking the quest” is going to be the generally done thing. You’re in front of the duke, he wants you to solve the goblin problem, and you know that the GM probably has tonight’s events planned around solving the goblin problem. Oh, you may be betrayed, ambushed, lied to, reneged on, drakes, run out of town and so forth as a result of all this, but these are narrative components that come with a bit of plot insurance from the GM. Since it’s part of the contract that you’ll take the quest, his side of it is that the act of accepting the job isn’t going to be fundamentally game ending.

    In a CaW contract, you’re still in front of the duke who wants you to solve his goblin problem. You have every right to tell him to pound sand; you don’t like the feel of it, you think he’s treacherous, he won’t pay enough, the goblins sound extra tough, whatever. The GM has to deal with that. However, if you take the quest and the Duke betrays you, you’re getting shot twice in the back of the head as you come out of the goblin cave. Roll a new character and do better client research next time. Caveat emptor. The player has to deal with that.

    Done right, either contract can bring a whole lot of fun to a table. Done wrong, and well the potential weaknesses of each are pretty glaring.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I wouldn't call it interacting with the strategic level per se; to me what's important is the way in which the PCs interact with the game world. For example, if the party is trying to clear out a cave full of kobolds and one of the players suggests diverting a nearby river so that if flows into the cave and everything drowns, will the other players be on board or will they feel cheated because they didn't get to fight the kobolds? Does the game system reward them, punish them, or neither reward nor punish them for choosing to deal with the problem this way instead of entering the cave and fighting it out?
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    I would say :

    CaS : The combat is supposed to be the fun and exciting thing. And the important thing. The in-game reasons why people fight are of little importance and further consequences of the fight don'T really matter either. It is all just a setup to have the fight and to bring an interesting bunch of combatants to the arena and have fun there.

    CaW : People have a reason to fight and the consequences of the fight are really important. How the fight actually happens does not matter much, only the outcome matters. If it is interesting and fun that is good. But if it is short and forseeable and the right side wins, that is even better. That does not mean that cheating or cheese is welcome, but stacking the deck in your favor and seeking unfair advantages through not broken rules is welcome.


    Usually CaW is also more immersive.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2020-10-28 at 04:07 PM.

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    Sure was great to start this thread out with two sets of biased examples, rather than just retaining the positive framing for both extremes. Only to be further improved when the OP called their slant "better," implying it's the more correct view on something so subjective!
    Hooray! You just made my day! At last, someone has finally explicitly stated that the original origin of the terms is biased! You have no idea how boggling it was getting responses of "no it isn't" from all the fanboys who held that article on a pedestal. Sigh. (Syndrome's voice) And then you had to go and ruin the ride.

    No, I never claimed that my spoof was better than the original¹, horrifically biased example. I claimed that "the distinction between CaW and CaS is whether one can engage the strategic layer to affect the Challenge of the encounter" is better than that pile of trash.

    I included both as a history lesson. And so that people didn't have to ask, "what's CaS/CaW", Google it, only see one biased explanation, and become as intractably biased as many of my former conversational dance partners. And as an admission that I have never previously engaged the topic with any serious scholarship, only with maximum snark in a war against oblivious incomprehension of the bias of the origin.

    ¹ aside, you know, from being a spoof, and therefore clearly "better" for it to have that level of bias

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    There's benefits to both.
    Agreed.

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    Just like with playing stronger PCs, having increased ways to resolve or avoid encounters can only increase the complexity of challenges PCs face in the broad scale. E.g. I don't think Combat as Sport would be good for a game looking to address issues of socio-economics, especially not in a game without some form of "social-combat" mechanic (and even in those, being unable to maneuver outside of 'encounters' would be detrimental).
    Eh, I don't think we need to limit CaS to games with a weak tactical layer - I think it's perfectly fine to play CaS in highly complex environments. I would argue that MtG could be a very successful example of such play (playing the metagame notwithstanding).

    I think, for your example, you may need to ask, "what is an encounter?", and build the game from there to make CaS viable. But don't take my word on it, I'm more CaW.

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    However, there is also merit to scaling things down to an individual encounter, asking how the players would solve it, and reiterating that question with increasingly more restrictions placed on the players. It's why hard modes and variant runs of video games are interesting. Could you win this combat with these sets of starting parameters? What about while with restricted builds? Can you make a party of "takes-all-comers" who can solve a series of set encounters with minimal ability to change the parameters of those encounters before engaging in them?
    Emphasis added.

    Before that last bit, I thought that that was a better description of CaW than CaS. That confusion on my part is likely what I made this thread to discuss.

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    Combat as War games offer more ability to resolve big-picture problems and allow more freeform expression of character. Combat as Sport games are puzzles that disallow "cutting the knot" to bypass them entirely, and allow expression of character through how they respond to the limitations set.
    Mostly agree? It's really interesting looking at it from an Expression PoV. But I think that, because of the bias of GMs, CaS is actually more likely to result in resolving "big picture" problems.

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    Most games will use both. Even in a system where crunch is divorced from fluff, in the interest of promoting engaging, tightly tuned, tactical combat (D&D 4e; Lancer), the strategic maneuvering of the party outside of those tactical portions should have import on the narrative and therefore what they face in combats.
    I haven't seen it. That might contribute to why I dislike 4e so much.

    That said, what you describe is, IMO, CaW.

    Which means (at least under my definition) one could arguably run even war games as CaW (multiple rounds of fighting and rest/repair/reman; who you choose to injure / replace / level up / spend money on / whatever is a strategic level choice, and nothing past the first engagement is guaranteed to be "sporting", for example).

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    A completely pure tactical game would be context-less encounters or a wargame. A pure strategic game would probably be abstracted form the individual encounters.
    Abstracted from? Abstracted form of?

    I agree with your assessment of what a "pure tactical" game would look like.

    Question: suppose every component, every build choice, every option was actually *perfectly* balanced. I would still want to build my MtG deck, build my Battletech mech, build my D&D character. Does that violate a "pure tactical" game?

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    I agree a lot with the poster who said their ideal is a game where the players need to use strategy to ensure their viability on the tactical layer for major encounters/scenes (and this goes for everything, not only combat). I'll also agree that "Combat-As-Sport" is a thinly veiled pejorative, and its use should probably be discontinued.
    A vote for "not just combat". Cool. Do you think that the words "combat as…" are needlessly confusing in that regard, or are they fine?

    CaS as a pejorative is rather… odd… given that the originator of the terms was so clearly in the CaS camp. Given the value of the term, "a sporting challenge", it's tough to replace - do you have an alternative nomenclature for consideration?

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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    CaS as a pejorative is rather… odd… given that the originator of the terms was so clearly in the CaS camp. Given the value of the term, "a sporting challenge", it's tough to replace - do you have an alternative nomenclature for consideration?
    I'd vote for "don't". It's not a meaningful distinction except as a pejorative. Say what you mean directly, without using a shortened phrase that carries hidden assumptions and meanings.

    I feel that way about a lot of "forum terms". RAW. RAI. Etc.
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    Default Re: Revisiting Combat as Sport vs Combat as War

    @Quertus:

    The number of tactical decisions in a game starts from zero and can go arbitrarily high.

    The number of strategic decisions in a game also starts from zero and can go arbitrarily high.

    In case of a typical game, neither number is zero. Games focused on tactics still involve some degree of strategy and vice verse. That's why trying to sort games into just two camps is ridiculous. You are outlining stereotypes, not doing useful analysis. The "baggage" you adore consists of conflating other issues with analyzing levels of tactics and strategy in a game - issues such as player preferences over game difficulty, player respect of game rules, player preferences for immersion and players' motives for playing. It's not clear at all that any of these correlate with preferences about tactics and strategy to the degree implied by your posts and many others.

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