Thread by @AlexandraErin

My solution as a game runner and game designer to the tension Alex talks about here between character choices and game design based around balanced combat encounters is: balance combat, on the fly if needed, for "the combatants", which may not be the same as "the party".

https://twitter.com/AxeloftheKey/status/1482955067078676482

A little game design disclaimer here: saying that the game runner can fix a problem with a system doesn't mean the problem does not exist.

But I think there is a culture problem in D&D that exacerbates the problems with it being designed around combat that is narrowly balanced.

I've talked about this on here before over the years, how one of the big name "White Nerd Guy What Hates Stuff He Likes" video guys made a loooong video about the hated trope of early WOTC-era D&D games: the Conga Line of Death.

The Conga Line of Death is what happens when every character on a battle grid decides to leverage the flanking rules introduced in third edition, and you wind up with, say, 6 player characters and 6 enemies fighting each other in a straight line 30 feet long.

Everybody but the people at the (current) ends of the conga line are being flanked and nobody wants to move because they'll get two attacks-of-opportunity from their flankers.

And it looks silly and it feels silly and once it forms it's hard for the combat to become anything else, which limits the tactics that can be used for the rest of the combat.

And this guy made a video about how ridiculous and silly it is and how much he hates it, then concluded with,

"But... you've gotta do it."

Because if you don't, you're ignoring that +2 flanking bonus, and why wouldn't you want the +2 flanking bonus?

You can amend the rules to make the benefits of flanking incompatible with such a line, but honestly all it takes is the person running the game to decide "no, these goblins aren't going to get in the line" and it doesn't happen.

But the prevailing attitude in D&D game running, at least the parts of it that have been organized online in communities, is that "realism" and "being in character" as the NPC enemies demands you constantly metagame to the fullest extent possible.

The logic is:

1. If these people were real, they would want to win a life-or-death fight.
2. Whatever concrete in-story advantages these metagame tactics represent are things they would know about.
3. So I've got to metagame to the hilt or the whole thing is fake.

And I think closely related to that attitude is another one, which is best summed up by the disdain inherent in the phrase "quantum ogres", which is the idea that the game runner adjusting encounters on the fly is cheapening the experience, if not cheating.

A "quantum ogre" is specifically an encounter/obstacle (doesn't have to be an ogre, or even a fight) that the game runner has prepped and then just places wherever the players decide to go, instead of having it attached to a specific location (or moving through such locations).

And the objection here is: well, if the [ogre] was only at the tower because I went to the tower and they would have been at the bridge if I'd gone to the bridge, that's not how things work in real life, so this breaks verisimilitude.

Sometimes it's phrased in terms of "That means my choices don't actually matter.", but the players didn't decide where to go based on knowledge of the ogre. From their point of view it's just as arbitrary either way.

And the same attitude of "But how is it REAL then?" also crops up when you suggest dropping or adding mooks to a combat encounter based on which PCs shows up.

"Either there are eight hobgoblin warriors guarding the throne room or there aren't. Or is this all just MAKE-BELEIVE?"

And the answer is: yes, it absolutely is all just make-believe. Rope it in, Rona Jaffe. Settle down, Jack Chick. The stakes aren't actually that high.

The specific example of a character who has lost their powers or is having a crisis of faith or feels honor bound to not participate in a fight... you could have a portion of the fight roughly representing their own contribution peel off and just taunt them.

"Is that realistic?"

It's plausible. It's certainly no less realistic than having every character in a fight act like they're dealing with the same level of abstractions and same assumptions as the people at the table.