Combat in RPGs

The Grimoire Forever thread and the Fantasy Economies news thread have both gone off topic to discuss RPGs and Combat.

This is one of the oldest discussions around that goes to the heart of "What is and Role Playing Game"?

Some key points have been made once again differentiating between an Adventure Game and an RPG. Also, pure Role Playing games and LARPing have been brought up.

The Puzzle Game/RPG Hybrid has leant itself to the discussion thanks to the game's choice of replacing any combat with the puzzle.

Its been pointed out by Magerette that its not a game without combat and I've made the point that without some sort of combat the games are actually unfun and developers know this.

Horace and DTE are poking holes into each other's belly with +5 short swords and even Dhruiny's made a comment or two.

I have to laugh at the idea that early RPG was about "plotting the tactics of an army or squad." No way. Gygax' original book talked about that and dungeon crawling both, but not in any cohesive way. His book was unedited and ambiguous. It didn't actually make sense. You just took from it what you could.

It was the part about dungeons, monsters and fighting that got our attention. RPGs are set in dangerous worlds where you need to be armed and ready. There's ogres and stuff. That makes them much more interesting than the real world.

Lucky Day said:

The Grimoire Forever thread and the Fantasy Economies news thread have both gone off topic to discuss RPGs and Combat.

This is one of the oldest discussions around that goes to the heart of "What is and Role Playing Game"?

Some key points have been made once again differentiating between an Adventure Game and an RPG. Also, pure Role Playing games and LARPing have been brought up.

The Puzzle Game/RPG Hybrid has leant itself to the discussion thanks to the game's choice of replacing any combat with the puzzle.

Its been pointed out by Magerette that its not a game without combat and I've made the point that without some sort of combat the games are actually unfun and developers know this.

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I agree it's an interesting topic that deserves its own thread, Lucky. It was actually Skavenhorde that brought up the idea of it not being an rpg without combat--I more or less agree, but I wouldn't go so far as to say " it isn't a game unless you have combat"--there are lots of fun games that don't include combat, or when they do, one wishes they didn't... (like Emperor, for instance.) I know it's splitting hairs a bit, but obviously you can have a game that's enjoyable in other ways. I just don't know of many crpgs that follow that pattern.

IMO combat (in crpgs) is all too often just an easy way for the devs to put the carrot in front of your nose and lead you through the game--you fight, you get goodies, you become godly, so you can fight the end boss-- game over. There's no need to write pages of dialogue, have branching paths, create personalities for npcs, or even have a decent story if the combat is addictive enough. There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea, and we've all played games that we rate highly that have this mechanic, but it gets old when that's all there is to the game and it spawns endless dreary carbon copies of the games that do manage to do it well.

I agree the concept of combat is tied in to crpgs very strongly, and that it's a hard element to remove without taking the fun out of the process. However I can visualize a role-playing experience that replaces or at any rate reduces the automatic combat/level/loot mechanic, and think it could be an improvement. There could be alternate ways to resolve most issues through dialogue, negotiations and other sneakery, and combat could be saved for significant encounters.

That would be using violence more as a last resort, and when it happens it would take a lot of resources, mental and physical, so that it provides a feeling of resolution when the player succeeds...but that means the devs have to step up to the plate and build a game that works on all the other levels and that could be significantly harder, more expensive and more time-consuming.

My view? RPG's and combat go hand-in-hand. IMO, the defying characteristic of (c)RPGs is character development. To have that development apparent to the player, you must have a way to showcase it - that is combat, in most cases*. Therefore, if you don't have combat, you don't have a character development, and hence you don't have a RPG - you've got an adventure game.

Of course, that doesn't mean RPGs are all about combat - in fact, lots of genre classics focus little on combat (Fallout, Torment, Baldur's Gate - they're all about story first and combat second), but still, combat is an integral part of them (Planescape: Torment without combat is a book, not a game).


*Well, you could always remove combat skills and make a RPG based only on conversation-like skills, but I'm not aware of any such games (without combat too!).

Oops, Mage, I meant to mention Skav's "to me its not an RPG without combat" because that's when the topic got fun. It was you who said the combat was a game element and without it or puzzles it stops being a game.

credit where credit is due.

I was actually put more in the summary but with those two threads going on and on and sometimes repeating themselves it became too much.

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A major point to this topic is the ol' "What is an RPG". Corwin made a point to distinguish cRPG's from PnP RPG's. Is it still an RPG if you take combat out of it in PnP but doign that on a computer game it becomes an Adventure game?

I pointed out that Colossal Caverns Adventure was made 2 years before D&D was officially published. Tolkienesque features were added later though.

There is a subset of Adventure games that are indeed a lot like RPGs. Outcast, Kings Quest 8 (Mask of Eternity), come to mind most prominently. There are also adventures that are nothing like RPG (Lucas Arts classics, e.g.). Probably Outcast and Gothic have indeed more in common than Monkey Island and Tomb Raider, or Planescape Torment and Oblivion although the former were both called "adventures" and the latter both called "RPG". I just really hate it when people try to impose their own "pure" view of what the genre should be to something so vague and all encompassing as these genres. Saying, like horace did, "they really like adventures" is idiotic because adventures are really just as fuzzy a category as RPGs, plus furthermore the distinction between both has long been blurry. The backbone of a RPG story is always an "adventure" and any adventure that allows some sort of character-generation, -advancement, or -statistics naturally incorporates RPG elements. Just deal with it: RPG means a hundred different things to a hundred different players.

As to the core question of combat: I think there could be a CRPG without combat, but it would be very hard to make. But if it had character stats (with an impact on how the game progresses), skill progression, story, choice, but locked me into the role of a pacificst, or had only situations that involve no combat - I would probably call it a RPG. It could even be a rpg that redefines how stats can be used in innovative ways. Combat IS a natural part of RPG's, but it's not by itself genre defining.

A pure adventure game (Monkey Island for example ) doesn't have real combat in it. Therefore, a game with combat is not an adventure game. Can you have an rpg without combat? Yes, but who would want to play it. What an rpg usually offers, is CHOICE about how to solve a problem, something adventure games don't do. I like to avoid combat where possible, but I expect to fight a LOT when playing any rpg. I don't anticipate any fights if playing an adventure game. Sure there are hybrids, Quest for Glory being the best, but they are seen as hybrids and no-one would consider them to be either a typical rpg or adventure!!

I agree 100% that there's definitely a problem with categories and terminology in the game world. Everything is so fuzzy in rpg land now that I don't see an end to the games it's being applied to--strategy games, RTS hybrids, you name it. And what it seems to mean in a generic sense to people who market games is exactly what you mention, GhanBuriGhan--"character stats (with an impact on how the game progresses), skill progression, story, choice..." in a somewhat simplified format of stats, skills, and level advancement. If some character generated in the game has the ability to improve its stats in some way--even if that character is a lead drone in a unit brigade used for swarming the next outpost--then "rpg" gets slapped onto the description somewhere.

AFA making what might be called a 'hardcore' crpg with minimal combat, I think it could be approached through the quest system. Instead of receiving 80% of your experience from gratuitous combat encounters and 20% from problem solving quests, you could reverse it, and get a viable method for character progression and leveling to develop an alternate variety of appropriate skillsets. Obviously if you're talking or thinking your way out of situations, you have less need for both the +5 Sword of Holy Smiting and the Smite skill itself, so you'd have to replace those working elements with something else.

I don’t think it’s ambiguous at all. These games cast the player in roles like the ones in the books that inspired them, books by J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Edgar Rice Burroughs. That’s RPG.

Lucky Day said:

Horace and DTE are poking holes into each other's belly with +5 short swords and even Dhruiny's made a comment or two.

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Quick correction before I chug thru the new thread--horace and I are actually on the same side of this discussion. We had a pretty good scrap over whether Wiz8 is a character builder with well designed combat or a combat machine with well designed character development, but that was prior to our off-topic being pulled off-topic.

I think one of my previous posts will make a good jumping-off point, so I'll just copy it over. Responding to Ubereil's theory that the RPG genre has broken into too many sub-genres to really speak to roots and branches, I offered up this terribly insightful answer:
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I think you can simplify your factions down some. You've really got 2 groups: "build a better killing machine" (focusing on combat and character optimization) and "tell me a story" (focusing on....wait for it....story and interactions). I think you'll find that you can slot all of the factions you mention into one of those two groups. Now, that's not to say a game can't dabble on both sides of the street, but I'd say any given game will aim for one or the other. I'm not passing judgement on either group--although my taste lies pretty firmly on one side, that certainly doesn't lessen the value and validity of the other.
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Horace's theory, which I'm mostly supporting, is that the "tell me a story" family of RPG has more in common with adventure games than old skool RPGs.

Hey guys,

I guess I'm the one that caused this mess I didn't know that this discussion would take on a life of it's own. I just always assumed that a roleplaying game had a story, a character with some kind of skills to increase and creatures that want to take your head off.

Games like Diablo have taken the character part and combat of traditional RPGs to the extreme while mostly getting rid of the story. It still has one but it is paper thin. While games like The Witcher, Planescape:Torment and Betrayal at Krondor have tried to mix a healthy narrative with the combat and character development.

All of these games have had all three parts. If you get rid of the combat then you're heading in a whole new direction. If the RPG is on the computer then getting rid of combat turns it into an adventure game. If it is P&P RPG then I haven't a clue as to what it would be because my P&P rpg experience is only limited to the more traditional D&D fare.

I like both adventure games and RPGs and you could argue that adventure games are "role-playing" games because you are role-playing a certain character like in the King's Quest games. To me role-playing games will always have all three components. Let me repeat this just in case someone misinterprets my meaning again. From my point of view any role-playing game that I want to play will have all three components and any adventure game that I play will not have combat.

After all is said and done it really just comes down to "How do we label certain games?"

dteowner said:

I think one of my previous posts will make a good jumping-off point, so I'll just copy it over. Responding to Ubereil's theory that the RPG genre has broken into too many sub-genres to really speak to roots and branches, I offered up this terribly insightful answer:

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Acually, it was Alrik who said that...

What I don't like about your definition is that it completely neglects (the forgotten element, not just here) puzzles.

skavenhorde said:

All of these games have had all three parts. If you get rid of the combat then you're heading in a whole new direction. If the RPG is on the computer then getting rid of combat turns it into an adventure game. If it is P&P RPG then I haven't a clue as to what it would be because my P&P rpg experience is only limited to the more traditional D&D fare.

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It wouldn't really change the fact about wether it's an RPG or not. Roleplaying without combat (makeing it fun, that is) is fully possible in PnP RPGing, allthough the worlds in whitch your adventure (that word again ) takes place is usually quite a dangerous place, so combat is usually a part of it. Combat for it's own sake is usually included in PnP RPGing though (at least not if the DM knows what he's doing...).

And I agree with Horace's general idea, the story in itself doesn't make for a good cRPG, and that it needs some gameing element to acually be fun. What I disagree with is that this gameing element by necessity has to be tactical combat, because even tactical combat gets old if that's all you do in between the storyelements. This is where puzzles should enter the equasion IMO. Rarely it does though.

Übereil

You probably won't like me, even tell me not rt be a "real" RPG player,
but I play RPGs NOT because of the combat. Not at all.

I always call my style of playing "the explorer type".

I play RPgs for exploring the in-game world, solving a few puzzles, yes, but NOT because of combat.

Since Adventure games are traditionally too much bound towards riddle-soving, there are no games out there which support my style of play - except role-playing games.

And they too often do try their best to jhinder my playing it "my way" : Through letting me run into some random combat I don't want.

So, I'm an Rogue, an outsider, I'm actually between both "classes" of games. Nothing really suits my style of play, I don't really fit into any of these groups.

Recently, I've proposed in the forum of dtp (German publisher of Drakrensang) that what I'sd like to see as the ultimate adventure game (explorer style) would be a game with an as open and as free environment like to be found in Far Cry or in Legend: Hand of God (of which I had played the demo back then).

But interestingly, no-one does this, except Outcast maybe, or Gothic. (Zanzarah is a special kind of game.)

So, adventure games are still being made bound to a limited "stage" and shooters and RPGs are the only "free movement" games out there (I mean in 3D).

So, that's why I'm so much against the proposition that a "true" RG should contain combat, or then it ain't no "true" RPG.

If an RPG only consists of combat, then I'd call it an "combat-game", and erect a new order of games.

And finally: I agree with Magerette that we desparately need a new set of terms describing all of the RPG variants.

Every single revision of DnD rules ever written, and I'm guessing every other PnP gaming system ever written, not to mention every board game/collectible card game ever created, was based on hard thinking about the rules of the system and what makes that system fun.

Primarily that means meaningful options, as much simplicity as possible within those options, and balanced development within the context of combat or other easily quantified bits of the game.

Every new revision of every rule book has changes in it from the previous edition strictly in service of that. It's a subject that game designers toil over endlessly and which players debate endlessly. Because it MATTERS, and because it's difficult to do well.

What is to stop a bunch of people from gathering around a table and playing make believe anyway?

Why is that not as fun as doing it within a rule system?

Fans of "CRPGs" that don't care about the development/combat system (which in most cases comprises 99% of the game system as a whole) need to think about the answers to those questions, in order to understand how CRPGs of these days are falling short.

horace said:

Every single revision of DnD rules ever written, and I'm guessing every other PnP gaming system ever written, not to mention every board game/collectible card game ever created, was based on hard thinking about the rules of the system and what makes that system fun.

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Since we're talking about RPG's I've no idea why you even bring those up.

horace said:

Primarily that means meaningful options, as much simplicity as possible within those options, and balanced development within the context of combat or other easily quantified bits of the game.

Every new revision of every rule book has changes in it from the previous edition strictly in service of that. It's a subject that game designers toil over endlessly and which players debate endlessly. Because it MATTERS, and because it's difficult to do well.

What is to stop a bunch of people from gathering around a table and playing make believe anyway?

Why is that not as fun as doing it within a rule system?

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The only thing required for playing a roleplaying game is a DM and players. The players usually gets characters (which they have or have not made themselves) who they then roleplay, but they might as well play themselves. I've played scenarios that didn't include any rules at all, and where no single dice toss was made. The only real rule system you need is the character you play (meaning rules in the way of 'if you play Darth Vader you NEVER give candy to kids'), who defines what you're 'allowed' to do. The other rules are just brought along to enchant the experience (if you play a campaign where you're bound to run into combat sooner or later it's probably a good idea to figure out some way to deal with this).

The reason the rulesystem matters is because unrealistic/slow rulesystems makes combat boring. If you have to indulge in it, you might as well make it fun. But I have a friend who's trying to develop a system where combat is reduced to nothing more than one dicetoss. Why would he do that, horace? Maybe because combat might not be what's fun about role playing games after all?

Now, you might say games without combat are merely adventure games, but the difference between an adventure game and a cRPG is that in the cRPG you can choose how you solve your problems, based on your character. In good cRPG's that is. In bad cRPG's the problem's complexity are reduced to monsters attacking you, who you have to kill to get further in the game.

Übereil

I think we should get the first things straight and keep them straight and not worry so much about how everything’s labeled.

Computers are thinking machines, but today they think too much about how everything can be represented graphically. That’s fine for arcade games, but aren't there plenty of other considerations to make for role-playing games? Aren't there better ways to authenticate RPG worlds?

Alrik has the right idea, IMO. Not for dissing combat, but because what he cares about and talks about really matters. It’s the stuff—the good stuff—the stuff that delineates and defines RPG. It’s not stuff that’s easily represented graphically. It needs to be depicted differently.

Today’s RPGs aren’t doing much of that, and that’s why they’re all seeming more and more alike. They’re shallow and strong suited. They interpret and emphasize everything the same basic way.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

You probably won't like me, even tell me not rt be a "real" RPG player,
but I play RPGs NOT because of the combat. Not at all.

I always call my style of playing "the explorer type".

I play RPgs for exploring the in-game world, solving a few puzzles, yes, but NOT because of combat.

Click to expand...

Ditto. Since 1982, and still loving it. Combat is something I like to avoid a a player, and I'm not very fond of combat when I'm the GM, either. 'Adventure' all the way!

Corwin said:

A pure adventure game (Monkey Island for example ) doesn't have real combat in it. Therefore, a game with combat is not an adventure game. Can you have an rpg without combat? Yes, but who would want to play it. What an rpg usually offers, is CHOICE about how to solve a problem, something adventure games don't do. I like to avoid combat where possible, but I expect to fight a LOT when playing any rpg. I don't anticipate any fights if playing an adventure game. Sure there are hybrids, Quest for Glory being the best, but they are seen as hybrids and no-one would consider them to be either a typical rpg or adventure!!

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Just thought I'd chime in really quick in regards to your remarks, Corwin, as they rather...irked me. No offense.

As many others have pointed out in this thread, the core issue that keeps us from differentiating between the need for combat and its place in the RPG genre is a matter of definition. Yours, as I've gleaned from your remarks, places combat as a strict necessity in the list of traits every RPG should display. I refer to two lines in particular:
"Can you have an rpg without combat? Yes, but who would want to play it."
That is where I must disagree. Furthermore, it is the point at which I would counter with my own definition and a quick example.
I suggest that the following definition be adopted, that an RPG need NOT have combat, but it must have conflict in which the player can participate. (that means no passive situations that are resolved without PC-input, such as by cut-scenes). As an example of a game that could be developed utilizing this definition as the standard for an RPG, while foregoing combat, imagine a diplomatic-based game. Irregardless of setting, the PC would be an ambassador of some sort, engaging entirely in negotiations of various sorts (from quests regarding mundane matters such as the price of certain exports, to more heinous things such as the deportation of immigrants, criminals and so forth, perhaps even underhanded deals involving narcotics, police stings, etcetera). With a little imagination myriad quests could be invented that could (or could not) be tied to the character's base statistics of charisma, political savvy, knowledge and so forth, all of which would allow the player access to further lines while in discussions. For the "loot" lovers out there, the player would be able to acquire all manner of wardrobe items, which would play a part in their reception during discussions. See where I'm going with this?
In short, combat is not necessary, nor are games required to have such in them in order to be "fun," as the first person to give me a game like the one I described can look forward to at least one purchase...mine.

VPeric said:

My view? RPG's and combat go hand-in-hand. IMO, the defying characteristic of (c)RPGs is character development.

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Character development is the core of the RPG tag but that includes so many different things, including Hack&Slash like Wizardy 1, Action RPG like Dungeon Master or Diablo. Or Action RPG like System Shock or Deus Ex. There are even simulation/game management RPG, like Citadel, Wargame RPG like Heroes of M&M, even some RTS can be put in the general RPG category.

That said, it's probably better to focus on RPG that aren't in any sub category. That's what most think of when they talk about RPG and grin that Diablo isn't RPG.

VPeric said:

... To have that development apparent to the player, you must have a way to showcase it - that is combat, in most cases*. Therefore, if you don't have combat, you don't have a character development, and hence you don't have a RPG - you've got an adventure game.

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I see your point. For sure it's not easy to imagine a RPG without fights. That said, why not?

It's sure that it's not easy to imagine a character development with a game based on puzzles. If the puzzles are solved by the character development there's a problem. Puzzles are a game physical tough to manage that makes the problem tough to mix with character development.

So yes the solution for character development without any combats is tough to find.

VPeric said:

*Well, you could always remove combat skills and make a RPG based only on conversation-like skills, but I'm not aware of any such games (without combat too!).

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Well dialogs are very far to have the complexity that can have combats, tough to base a game only on that.