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  1. - Top - End - #61
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

  2. - Top - End - #62
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    WolfInSheepsClothing

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    It depends if it is truly tactical, or if it is just meta and build based.

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

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

  3. - Top - End - #63
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. - Top - End - #64
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Laserlight's Avatar

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Archer Jones (The Art of War in the Western World) argued that it's not a tactical triangle, it's a square, with light cav > heavy infantry > heavy cav > foot archers > light cav . In more modern terms, tac air > infantry > tanks > artillery > tac air. I'm not convinced it's quite as neat as that, but there's at least grounds for argument. Obviously a square gives you more options and combinations than a triangle.
    Junior, half orc paladin of the Order of St Dale the Intimidator: "Ah cain't abide no murderin' scoundrel."

    Tactical Precepts: 1) Cause chaos, then exploit it; 2) No plan survives contact with...(sigh)...my subordinates.

  5. - Top - End - #65
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I think that in most RPG games, having some element of RPS is always going to be present and useful, but I prefer game balance rules that limit things somewhat. I'm not a fan of "if I pick correctly, I win" (or "if I pick incorrectly, i lose") dynamics. Having some strategies and some combinations of decisions give an advantage to the outcome is great, but it should only be one factor, not everything. This really depends very heavily on what sort of game system (and game genre) you're playing in the first place.
    RPS is a simultaneous turn game - most games are NOT RPS, though they bake in some form of "counters".

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Don't get me wrong. I do give lots of points for truly clever play and ideas. I just don't hand them out like candy. The "normal" way of handling things exists for a reason (most of the time). It's because the cheap and easy ones don't actually work. And if they did in the past, they wont today cause someone already did it. You'd better come up with something far more clever and dependent on skills/abilities/items/spells/whatever that are far more rare and exceptional than "mud, heavy cloth, and the ability to run".
    Well, most war does boil down to "get there first with the most men" and "claim tactical advantage". In general, you don't fight unless you don't want to fight unless you have an overwhelming advantage. But..... that makes it kinda boring when you have all of these cool abilities and you don't get to use them. So if you want those cool decisions to be made at the tactical/move level, you need to make sure that the encounter-level decisions matter less.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I suspect that's why we see CaW tactics used far more in CCRPGs than in TTRPGs. Static programming is just an invitation to "solve the puzzle".
    My experience is quite the opposite.
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"

  6. - Top - End - #66
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Now, if you mean on the "fire mages beat ice mages" level, then yes, RPS at the unit-selection level I think is pretty bad with RPGs, and absolutely terrible if it's absolute.
    Yeah. That's the style I was talking about. As a combat/conflict choice resolution methodology, RPS as a weighting factor is useful. But it should never be more than a modifier in most games. Especially RPG games. As you slide towards the more tactical games, it's going to be far more prevalent, obviously. Correct combat order and positioning is key in those types of games. But in more RP games? Fun game play can often occur as a result of overcoming less than ideal objective comparisons of ability types going in to an encounter.


    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Well, most war does boil down to "get there first with the most men" and "claim tactical advantage". In general, you don't fight unless you don't want to fight unless you have an overwhelming advantage. But..... that makes it kinda boring when you have all of these cool abilities and you don't get to use them. So if you want those cool decisions to be made at the tactical/move level, you need to make sure that the encounter-level decisions matter less.
    Yup. Although there's a lot to be said about a group of characters encountering something they weren't expecting, and then having to figure out how to use their skills/abilties/items/whatnot to muddle their way through. Some of the most enjoyable table experiences are when the group is put into such a situation, and players are scanning their character sheets for something that might help. And then someone finds something. Some obscure item/ability that they never use because it's just not that powerful/useful, but in this one specific situation it might just turn the tide in their favor.

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

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

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



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

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

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

  7. - Top - End - #67
    Troll in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

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

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

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

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