Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

[animorte]

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

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

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

[Pex]

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

I know what you did there.

[Vahnavoi]

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

---



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

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

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

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

CaW meets RPS(LS)

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

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

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

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

[Duff]

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

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

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

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

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

[icefractal]

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

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

[Vahnavoi]

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

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

CaW meets RPS(LS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[animorte]

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

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

[Vahnavoi]

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

[kyoryu]

CaW meets RPS(LS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[zlefin]

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

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

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

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

---



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

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

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

[kyoryu]

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

I think he expressed his point poorly.

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

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

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

Now, you can have RPS at multiple levels.

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

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead gods, have I ever failed to communicate!

Ok, let’s try this again:

The party is rock = melee troops. Period.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

I think he expressed his point poorly.

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

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

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

Now, you can have RPS at multiple levels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Vahnavoi]

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

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

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

[kyoryu]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[icefractal]

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[kyoryu]

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

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

[Vahnavoi]

Combat-as-puzzle is NOT combat as war. You are using words badly.

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

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

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

Where did you get that idea ? A huge part of CaW is that the opponents are acting as strategically sound as they can to achieve their objectives with no regards to balance. They are basically only pasive if they literally can't move or lack the required knowledge to act or are defending a position. Opponents are generally as often acting as PCs. Both sides trying to get information, obscure their own movement/forces and try to outmanouver each other before the confrontatin is n important part of the game.

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound familiar?

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

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

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

if you want combat to be an entertaining puzzle,

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

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

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

[Vahnavoi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

So stop talking about war when you mean puzzles.

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

New thread?

[Satinavian]

I still disagree, but i am not particularly interested in discussing semantics, that generally leads nowhere.


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

[Quertus]

I still disagree, but i am not particularly interested in discussing semantics, that generally leads nowhere.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

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

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

Indeed.

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

For example: all the pressure plate “traps” that the Rogue disables? They track the (non-random) movement of patrols. As more and more “scheduled signals” are missing, HQ can track the party’s movements / defeated patrols. Which means three things:

• There are two things that produce the same output (disabled pressure plates & defeated patrols), and the opposition might conflate one for another.
• The opposition knows which way the PCs are coming, and can assign defenses accordingly (unless the PCs avoid both traps and patrols).
• Since the patrols don’t know that they’re being tracked, the PCs are highly unlikely to “win” (this portion of) the information wars.
  
  • However, the PCs could “loose differently” by not having a Rogue, or by learning from the patrols that the “shifty floors” don’t do anything.

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

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