What you're about to read was first posted by me as a comment to the video (linked above) by the folks over at Extra Credits called Non-Combat Gaming.
It's a fantastic video exploring combat (and options for noncombat) in games, but it also sparked a conversation about non-combat experiences in D&D. It grew to be a discussion of noncombat in tabletop games in general and I knew the moment I began posting my comment that it would be something I wanted to bring here. Not just to share with you fine folks on tumblr who seem to love tabletop games as much as I do, but also to see what your thoughts were on the subject.
So here it is, direct copy/pasted (so please forgive any errors, I didn't want to edit here and leave it raw there) including the ending which actually alludes to my posting it here on tumblr.
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No worries, I know how messages can become "lost in translation" online. I think this is topic is rich for thorough discussion as there are a hundred ways I agree with you and just as many ways that I don't. We've already got a discussion started that I find immensely interesting, and please don't read anything I write as argumentative, but more so my attempt to share my own experiences in hopes that you (and others) will do the same. I think a well-designed tabletop RPG is an incredible thing. And I think the best way to truly appreciate what it is capable of offering players is to actually break down its title. Tabletop + RP + Game. I could write a LOT about each of those, but I don't want to force anyone to read a novel (though I sense this will be a long post, sorry browsers) so I'll try my best to be succinct. First, Tabletop: this is one of the central pieces of this discussion as Tabletop has always been able to do what many other forms of entertainment cannot. The players become artists, authors, creative directors capable of shaping, reshaping, and personally defining the experience in ways that books, movies, even other forms of games (like Video Games) simply can't yet match. It is a medium through which the player becomes creator, capable of defining the purpose for play, its goal, its measure against which to judge its success. If you want the game to be about killing monsters, then that is what it can become. If you want the game to be about negotiation, or just generally about building, maintaining (and possibly demolishing) social relationships, then a well designed tabletop game will be malleable, welcoming players to shape it to their purposes without the boundaries and limitations of other entertainment. Second RP: The player is able to play an imagined role, to give life to an entity (in/and) a fictional social space, to fill that character with personality, emotions, motivations, goals, desires and fears, and to imagine how the things they want can be blocked by obstacles, and even maintaining their ideal self-image can be challenged. I feel this could go on forever (I love RP), so let me just say that a player's character could see a goal as freeing the land from a ravenous band of orcs that (they decide) must be killed and so the challenge becomes trying to kill them and the measure of success is whether they were killed. Another player's character could see as a goal freeing another character from depression over a child that was lost in a war and so the challenge becomes trying to end the other character's depression and the measure of success is whether the depression is ended. There is, however, one central piece missing and that is HOW do we determine whether success (or failure) has occurred? That's where the final, third piece comes in... Game: I'm sure there are many definitions of "game", and so this point can be contested, re-envisioned, molded, and all that but for my part I propose a simple element of a broader definition which is this: a game provides the mechanics, the means to determine whether a success or failure has occurred, and in the best cases the degree to which that was achieved. A good game has a way of offering you the mechanism by which you can determine if a goal was met, a challenge overcome, an action occurred and what the reaction/outcome might be. Alright, so a lot of words on a topic that requires a lot more, but I hope I've said enough to draw you into my mindset so we're on the same page when we evaluate what a Tabletop RP Game is able to achieve. And in that vein, we can explore what I said earlier about D&D being "a robust gaming system that is well-equipped to handle combat excellently, should that be your gig, but its systems are certainly capable of handling noncombat games for noncombat-oriented players." As a tabletop it is able to offer a malleable medium, welcoming players to shape it to their purposes without the boundaries and limitations of other entertainment. An example of how I know this is via my freedom in roleplay. I can create a character that wants to kill orcs, and I can create a character that entertains a crowd with a song and dance and makes friends by buying a drink,and so on and so on with nearly limitless possibilities (made even more open when you realize how many tools are given to a DM to create anything they want that doesn't already exist in the published work). I think making a claim that D&D is neither tabletop nor a role-playing experience would be difficult. I am open to and stand to be proven wrong via a different perspective, and I welcome that insight into your thoughts. So I choose instead to mention the third aspect towards which it is often evaluated: it's value as a game. Does D&D offer mechanics by which to measure (degrees of) success? And herein I think is where a lot of players begin to see D&D as a combat-oriented game. Why? Because if one were to go through every published source book for D&D I would wager at least 80% of the content is devoted to rules covering the various ways to engage in combat. Flip to any random page and chances are you will find some rule that applies directly to dealing damage, movement on a battle grid, protecting yourself or others, determine how much damage is dealt, or whether or not one character is able to take a certain action in a physical (often hostile) space. When you try to find content exclusively useful to non-combat scenarios it gets a little trickier. In fact, most of the skills and mechanics that work for noncombat scenarios (perform, knowledge, diplomacy, etc) have somewhere been used in some way that contributes to combat. This is true and it would be difficult to argue that fact. The game, over several editions, has gotten quite good at offering some mechanic to determine success in every possible scenario. But this doesn't mean that D&D is only fun if combat occurs (either immediately or eventually). What this means is that, when combat occurs, there are a ton of options to handle it, and expertly so. Likely more than any other Tabletop RPG. Whether or not combat is necessary is entirely dependent on the players. For example: - The challenge to overcome is dealt with via combat because the DM selected combat. - The DM (usually) selected combat because that is how they, or their players, are entertained. - The players want combat because that's what they enjoy, it's what they've come to expect, or it's the only way they know. That final point is why I'm writing any of this. I am saying there is MORE to D&D. There are a MANY ways to create encounters, characters, stories, goals, challenges (etc) without ever resorting to physical combat (with intent to cause physical ham). And when one is open to that the begin to realize how the three, Tabletop + RP + Game can work together marvelously. Because (Tabletop) there is no right and wrong way to play + (RP) the players get to decide their goals, challenges, motivations + (Game) the wide range of mechanics cover combat expertly well but also work just as well for noncombat scenarios. The game provides explicit rules to do that, but just like its mechanics for combat the writers (designers, etc) were smart enough to always include gentle nudges for DMs who want to use mechanics in different ways to cover an even wider range of scenarios. There are many resources, both published and shared by the community, that show examples of how this has been done successfully. To begin exploring noncombat as extensively as most have for combat, remember that ideas of how to do that were among the topics covered in the Extra Credits video "Non-Combat Gaming". And... wow. This got much crazier than I hoped. I hope that's a meaningful contribution to the discussion and not just a lot of words. But this discussion really interests me. I think I'll be taking it to my Tabletop RPG blog to see what others think. Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts. :)
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