Combat as My Balls

    There are a few terms in OSR spaces that really grind my gears. One of them is the eternal mentioning of Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport. As far as I can tell, the term was originated in this thread, discussing the two main diverging cultures of play; put simply, in this hypothesis, Combat as Sport people want a fair challenge on a relatively level playing field (think 4th Edition, or more recently games like Pathfinder 2E or Draw Steel). Combat as War people tend to prefer creating (or evading) unfair odds. The original post uses the example of collecting honey from bees, and how Combat as Sport would fight them while the Combat as War folks would smoke them out.

    As always happens when this sort of distinction gets used, people inevitably try to find the "Best" one (see Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist theory), but I feel that kinda loses the original point of trying to describe two groups wherein combat has different appeals. With that in mind, I'd like to try and propose a little bit of extra taxonomy for games with combat. Of course, the question of whether you have combat at all in your game is a personal one, but for our purposes we're going to be talking about games about enforcing your will upon the world more broadly, and where wanton assault and murder is normal and tolerated.

    Again, I just want to emphasize, this is not about finding the best way to enjoy combat. I hope all the OSR freaks reading this blog have a very good time with their stuff. Rather, I'm hoping to help designers and game masters figure out why they're including combat at all, and then what kind of information they need to add.

Combat as Characterization

    So, in the original post, Daztur summarized by saying Combat as Sport was the flynning shenanigans of the Princess Bride while Combat as War was Indiana Jones capping a swordsman. But in both cases, I feel like what's actually happening here is that we're learning about the characters. As many of my fellow writers can attest, putting blorbos in predicaments is where we can learn a lot about them. How do we react to stress, to violence, to other random nonsense? My most recent example is Superman (2025) where every single one of Superman's major fight scenes is much more about him trying to keep the people around him safe (even the bad guys), than whether or not he can win. My favorite example of this in RPGs is 7th Sea (2nd Edition), where every check is by and large about PCs figuring out their priorities of what they want to accomplish. With this in mind, Combat as Characterization could do well by including motivations for individual combatants, figuring out where their priorities are. Morale in OSR games is a great way to accomplish this, to be quite honest. This can even be found in some classic Appendix N fare; in Conan's very first story, he allowed himself to be hit because he didn't want to kill the guy trying to kill him. Not very Combat as War there, eh?

Combat as Puzzle

    This to me is the true thing of Combat as Sport. Rather than a low stakes sporting match (Greyhawk Grognard talks about rearming disarmed foes???), for me at least the fun of Tactical TM combat is looking at the map, the abilities, and the enemy, and trying to figure out how we're gonna do this with a minimum of casualties and resource expenditures. This is the appeal of games like XCOM, or in modern tabletop parlance, Lancer, Pathfinder 2E, or Draw Steel. Their combat is first and foremost games of teamwork and resource management. Combat as Puzzle requires opponents with simple easy to understand abilities for the GM to use that can alter the flow of battle, throwing a spanner or two in the best-laid plans of the players.

Combat as Entropy

    Speaking of resource management, to me this is where a lot of the OSR's value in combat really is. Rather than War, combat is a continual pressure and drain on resources, a light choking on the back of your neck when you're deep in a dungeon and a long way from home. Combat functions largely as a way to prevent calm, methodical exploration from being too simple or too boring. Kobolds attack? Better hope your torch doesn't go out, or your lantern breaks, or they down the cleric who had the only healing spell left. Honestly at some point I feel like there's gonna be a game that goes all-in on this and runs combat as a single round of skill checks to determine what gets lost, because otherwise man that's a lot of rules in otherwise rules-lite systems. 

Combat as Spectacle

    But screw all that attrition nonsense. Sometimes you just wanna drop the moon on Odin. Combat as spectacle isn't something I've seen all that often in roleplaying games. Ryan Macklin's Mythender is the only real example I can think of. In that game, the PCs play those destined to slay the pantheon, assuming they don't fall in the process. The mechanics involve handfuls of dice, tokens that are supposed to be heavy enough to land with a satisfying thunk, and the GM is encouraged to address players as "My Lord Mythender." All of this is built to encourage the feeling of extreme, uncompromised power that is dangerous to hold. This kind of spectacle is probably the hardest for a book to pull off because it requires extra work in realspace that they have no control over. It also requires players who are into it; in a Deathwatch game a few months ago, when I saw all the fucking Skaven we had to clear out across a long table of miniatures, I looked down at my bolter and sighed. 

Combat as Horror

    Scientists have recently discovered that people trying to kill you is scary. At the beginning of its combat rules, Unknown Armies lists a ton of ways to avoid entering a fight, from running away to conceding, etc etc. The inherent mechanics of combat can be used to reinforce that tone, forcing players to sit in the feeling that yes they are trapped in this situation and they cannot guarantee they can get out (because of like, dice and stuff). 

Combat as Story

    I'm kind of a fan of procedural storytelling. I love me some Rimworld, some Dwarf Fortress, some random charts in my rpgs. The mechanics of combat, then, through using randomization and rules, can tell a story all their own of what happened. Its why I love hit location tables even as I hate hit location table, because they can tell you what happened. This is kind of inherent to any system that uses randomization in combat of course, but that kind of simulation can be a lot of fun to play around with.  

Conclusion

    This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, nor some kind of tierlist, nor invalidating the old approaches. I'm just a simple country blogger who believes that when steel is drawn, everyone at the table should know what they as a group are here for. Otherwise you get arguments like in the old zine days about how people roleplaying/playing suboptimally for the sake of their characters were ruining the game. So talk to your players, figure out what everyone likes. I know right, talk to your players, the hottest take of the century.