D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

Ruin Explorer said:

I do specifically mean the player arguing "You allowed X, why aren't you allowing Y" rather than general shenanigans - but presumably that's what you mean - i.e. the DM allowed something silly like surfing down a river on a shield, and then a player wanted to use their cloak as a wingsuit or something, and argued precedent on the basis of the shield surfing or something?

I've seen plenty of arguments over jump distances and angles, but never on the basis that something else was allowed. Usually it just comes down to "does this odd jump attempt count as a standing or running jump", which is an easier ruling.

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Yeah, it was usually a callback to a previous ruling that the player thought was similar or at least in the same spirit.

Edit: Interesting now that I look back...it almost always seems to be someone wanting to argue over physics. I wonder if that's a good way of catching oneself, whether it's a GM or a player; ask yourself "Am I arguing about the physics? If so, remember this is fantasy, and carefully reconsider."

The Firebird said:

...I want to bring in another idea (which TiQuinn alluded to) of real-world physics, and implicit rules more generally. All RPGs have a pretty extensive set of implicit rules which are widely understood to be at play but never stated explicitly. Typically these are just our understanding of how the world works. The book doesn't have to say 'when there is nothing supporting your weight, you fall'; we all know that...

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There are well-made games that don't employ implicit rules (e.g. any game set in outer space can contradict or upset our popular notions of how stuff should work). Additionally, there are well-made games that intentionally challenge the implicit rules/play expectations we may have about how particular games are played (e.g. Brindlewood Bay).

The Firebird said:

There is something to be said about different tastes here. I played Fiasco once and absolutely hated it. It wasn't that it was lacking drama--but that drama had no real sense to it, there was no structure. (Bryce Lynch also has a somewhat crude tirade about Fiasco, at the end of this interview). For a game to work, it has to present the player with meaningful choices. And for those choices to be meaningful, there has to be enough structure so that the outcome of different choices is, to some extent, determined beforehand. They can be randomized (i.e., if we go here, roll on table A, if we go here, roll on table B), but if table A and table B are both 'make it up', then there is no meaningful choice.

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I highlighted these parts because they feel like an emphasis made on the particular aspects you enjoy, married to what a game needs to work.

I'd advocate that an rpg works when 1) it presents some things a player desires to play at present, 2) offers some set of rules that encourage those some things player wants to play, 3) offers play that feels meaningful in-the-moment to that player; that can be with a die roll, or fashioned on the spot.

I did look over Lynch's telling of Fiasco play; I haven't played it myself but it seems from the interview and retrospective it wasn't at all the right game at the time he chose to play in 2010/11?

A kinder Bryce Lynch might acknowledge with the right kind of table i.e. a stable set of players (not a con, though Fiasco certainly does work as a choice at cons as some have told me), are good friends, who're invested in serious, improv play (which he notes, requires some set up initially), he might've enjoyed the experience more, and possibly would have had fun.

Rather, he admits he was a jerk.

TiQuinn said:

If so, remember this is fantasy

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I mean, if it is fantasy.

I did have to repeat "water is incompressible" a number of times in a relatively hard sci-fi game a while back to explain a point. There are lines you don't cross!

I’m not an active OSR participant, but I find a lot of what the OSR folks do very interesting and often aligned with what I aim for in D&D. From that perspective, I think “combat is a fail state” is probably overstating the sentiment. The real underlying idea seems to me to be that combat ought not to be something the PCs actively seek out, but rather one possible means of resolving conflict with monsters, which themselves ought to be obstacles to the PCs’ goals. It’s not so much that if you get into combat you’ve messed up, but rather that combat is dangerous and there are often safer ways to accomplish your goals.

Likewise, I think “the answer is not on your character sheet” is overstating the case a bit. Obviously the character sheet can provide answers to problems. But I think the intent behind the adage is that the character sheet ought not to be the first place the players look for solutions to problems. Sure it’s where your stats live, but it’s generally more in the spirit of the game to take a more fiction-first approach. Imagine yourself as your character, in the world, and describe what you would do or try to do in a their shoes; the character sheet will help in figuring out what happens as a result.

Ruin Explorer said:

I mean, if it is fantasy.

I did have to repeat "water is incompressible" a number of times in a relatively hard sci-fi game a while back to explain a point. There are lines you don't cross!

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nods approvingly in principle of relativity

Piperken said:

Rather, he admits he was a jerk.

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Yeah, he's behaving like I was too smart to actually behave (but nearly did) when I was 17 (c.f. Castle Falkenstein), but he must have been in his what, 40s? Good christ. I'm not a fan of Fiasco but he was absolutely causing big problems there and in the 4E game he describes, intentionally. That's terrible form. It's fine to dislike or even hate a game, but it's your job to say "Sorry, I'm not into this" and leave that game, rather than staying and causing problems, which is literally behaving like a petulant teenager.

Piperken said:

I did look over Lynch's telling of Fiasco play; I haven't played it myself but it seems from the interview and retrospective it wasn't at all the right game at the time he chose to play in 2010/11?

A kinder Bryce Lynch might acknowledge with the right kind of table i.e. a stable set of players (not a con, though Fiasco certainly does work as a choice at cons as some have told me), are good friends, who're invested in serious, improv play (which he notes, requires some set up initially), he might've enjoyed the experience more, and possibly would have had fun.

Rather, he admits he was a jerk.

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I suspect you're right. In the different context he might describe it more as Not For Me, although that's not always within his shorthand idiom, when in review or rant mode. In this 2016 interview he retroactively describes 2010/2011 him as being a jerk, so it seems like in retrospect he was acknowledging that the fault lay in himself.

Ruin Explorer said:

Yeah, he's behaving like I was too smart to actually behave (but nearly did) when I was 17 (c.f. Castle Falkenstein), but he must have been in his what, 40s? Good christ. I'm not a fan of Fiasco but he was absolutely causing big problems there and in the 4E game he describes, intentionally. That's terrible form. It's fine to dislike or even hate a game, but it's your job to say "Sorry, I'm not into this" and leave that game, rather than staying and causing problems, which is literally behaving like a petulant teenager.

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Sorry, where do you get that he was causing problems? I don't see anything in that account indicating that he misbehaved at the table (apart from that one thing in the 4E game).

Fiasco is a game which is intended to play out like A Simple Plan or Very Bad Things, Fargo (except Marge wouldn't be a PC) or what have you, where bad people make bad choices and come to darkly funny bad ends, right?

His game recap seems like an animated description of how they played out such a scenario in a Lock, Stock setting, and he participated fully and decided he hated it. But the only hint I can see that he might have treated the other players with anything less than camaraderie was his deriding them at the start as being hipsters. Which is suspect, sure. But it seems like he played out a normal game. All the angry ranting seems to be about how he figured out that he didn't like GMless story games, preferred a different framework, and venting about how he basically had an epiphany that he had been lying to himself about how much he liked these games. When he retrospectively describes himself as being a jerk it seems like he's talking about his past self's mindset and attitude, not that he mistreated people.

Maybe I'm missing some details somehow?

Charlaquin said:

I’m not an active OSR participant, but I find a lot of what the OSR folks do very interesting and often aligned with what I aim for in D&D. From that perspective, I think “combat is a fail state” is probably overstating the sentiment. The real underlying idea seems to me to be that combat ought not to be something the PCs actively seek out, but rather one possible means of resolving conflict with monsters, which themselves ought to be obstacles to the PCs’ goals. It’s not so much that if you get into combat you’ve messed up, but rather that combat is dangerous and there are often safer ways to accomplish your goals.

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Well said.

Angry GM (who I haven't looked at for a while for... reasons) had this interesting take on the subject (apparently a couple few years ago now!):

Charlaquin said:

Likewise, I think “the answer is not on your character sheet” is overstating the case a bit. Obviously the character sheet can provide answers to problems. But I think the intent behind the adage is that the character sheet ought not to be the first place the players look for solutions to problems. Sure it’s where your stats live, but it’s generally more in the spirit of the game to take a more fiction-first approach. Imagine yourself as your character, in the world, and describe what you would do or try to do in a their shoes; the character sheet will help in figuring out what happens as a result.

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Very much this.

Just tell me, the DM, what your character wants to do and how they're trying to accomplish it. I'll let you know if we need any numbers off your sheet. Of course, please do study your sheet... between sessions... to more fully understand your character's abilities and strengths and equipment. But, in general, lean more on your - and your team's - imagination than on your character sheet when we're at the table.

Piperken said:

There are well-made games that don't employ implicit rules (e.g. any game set in outer space can contradict or upset our popular notions of how stuff should work). Additionally, there are well-made games that intentionally challenge the implicit rules/play expectations we may have about how particular games are played (e.g. Brindlewood Bay).

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Hmm. I agree with your examples, but not that they imply there are games which don't employ implicit rules. An outerspace game follows physics that are different than the physics of an earth game, so it has a different set of implicit rules. But we'll likely assume things like "humans need to breathe" and "electricity requires a power source" and "momentum is conserved".

Piperken said:

I highlighted these parts because they feel like an emphasis made on the particular aspects you enjoy, married to what a game needs to work.

I'd advocate that an rpg works when 1) it presents some things a player desires to play at present, 2) offers some set of rules that encourage those some things player wants to play, 3) offers play that feels meaningful in-the-moment to that player; that can be with a die roll, or fashioned on the spot.

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Yeah there is definitely some subjectivity here. I like Defcon's description of rpgs existing on a line. But the two extremes of that line--gaming and improv, are I think clearly distinct. To the extent that RPGs are games (and not improv) there need to be aspects that are not wholly improvised. There must be something firm to grasp onto and use to make decisions.

Piperken said:

A kinder Bryce Lynch might acknowledge with the right kind of table i.e. a stable set of players (not a con, though Fiasco certainly does work as a choice at cons as some have told me), are good friends, who're invested in serious, improv play (which he notes, requires some set up initially), he might've enjoyed the experience more, and possibly would have had fun.

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I think there is something to the right place at the right time. But there's also something to the wrong system for any time. At least personally; once I got how ephemeral the details of this kinds of narrative games are, I lost all interest in them. I don't think the right group saves that.

Ruin Explorer said:

Yeah, he's behaving like I was too smart to actually behave (but nearly did) when I was 17 (c.f. Castle Falkenstein), but he must have been in his what, 40s? Good christ. I'm not a fan of Fiasco but he was absolutely causing big problems there and in the 4E game he describes, intentionally. That's terrible form. It's fine to dislike or even hate a game, but it's your job to say "Sorry, I'm not into this" and leave that game, rather than staying and causing problems, which is literally behaving like a petulant teenager.

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Yikes. Reading that Bryce Lynch interview. The part where he's talking about hipsters and posers playing Fiasco, and I was thinking to myself, "What do you call a guy who likes to hear himself talk for hours, Bryce?"