Depends on how you want the game to play.  Throw kobolds in formation with second rank polearms and using flanking at them and watch the PCs die.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931203Depends on how you want the game to play.  Throw kobolds in formation with second rank polearms and using flanking at them and watch the PCs die.

I shall take your cobold formation, Glorious General, and retreat in order until we get to a corridor without holes in the walls to allow flanking. Then we shall meet them with javelins and flaming oil, and our own polearms set to break their charge:).
Caltrops, too, if we can spread them, and if all else fails, the wizard would cast his Sleep spell;)!

Screw all that nonsense. I use my fluency in the kobold tongue to negotiate a settlement favorable to both parties. "Now, I don't want to kill you, and you don't want to be dead..."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931203Depends on how you want the game to play.  Throw kobolds in formation with second rank polearms and using flanking at them and watch the PCs die.

I'll freely confess I'm not the best tactician and still need to work on that.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931225I'll freely confess I'm not the best tactician and still need to work on that.

This is well worth talking about with your players, too.  The tactics I want when playing Star Wars are not necessarily what I want when playing comic book superheroes or D&D.  And some people want D&D combat to be like Princess Bride, whereas I prefer something like Game of Thrones except nasty and brutal.

Talk, talk, talk about it!  If you're all having fun you're doing it right!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931226This is well worth talking about with your players, too.  The tactics I want when playing Star Wars are not necessarily what I want when playing comic book superheroes or D&D.  And some people want D&D combat to be like Princess Bride, whereas I prefer something like Game of Thrones except nasty and brutal.

Talk, talk, talk about it!  If you're all having fun you're doing it right!

How do you see the tactics being different between those three choices. I think I have a very good idea of your D&D tactics, so I guess I am asking what's different about tactics in the other two settings.

Quote from: Spike;930969Sweet baby Jeebus!  I stopped asking the damn question... this is what I should have been thinking!   Seriously: I've had too many disconnects with my players because I'm very hardcore about sandboxing and player agency... and yet I've never really thought about how much harder it is for even my regular players, in my regular setting, to get invested enough in the game to meaningfully answer the question.

Talk about a D'oh! moment.

Yep. My approach nowadays is to toss stuff in an adventure and see if the player bite. If they want to join the Asskicking Mercenaries, great! If they don't I drop the Asskicking Mercenaries, (maybe save them for a later adventure) and come up with another idea.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931226This is well worth talking about with your players, too.  The tactics I want when playing Star Wars are not necessarily what I want when playing comic book superheroes or D&D.  And some people want D&D combat to be like Princess Bride, whereas I prefer something like Game of Thrones except nasty and brutal.

Talk, talk, talk about it!  If you're all having fun you're doing it right!

I agree with that message:D!

Quote from: Bren;931230How do you see the tactics being different between those three choices. I think I have a very good idea of your D&D tactics, so I guess I am asking what's different about tactics in the other two settings.

I think I can imagine part of the superheroes answer, and maybe part of the swaschbuckling answer.
But I also want to hear the full answer to that;).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931197I do have a better understanding of this truth nowadays, but it should be noted that a lot of younger players are so familiar with the basics from video games that they can handle more complexity up front.

What part of the experience do you feel video games supply? Clearly a lot of them use a bunch of D&D dungeon tropes, and they teach things like "the tactic you used on the monsters in room #1 won't work on those in room #2, be prepared to retreat before you are dead, regroup, and take a guess at the right tactic before going back (if you do at all). Still, the inherent limitation of video games is that you can't say "can I negotiate with the kobolds?" unless that's a mechanic in the game.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931203Depends on how you want the game to play.  Throw kobolds in formation with second rank polearms and using flanking at them and watch the PCs die.

In my earliest games, we had a similar see-the-light situation. The DM had the Bandit King's men (human "tucker's kobolds" in his campaign) use flaming oil (the rest of us not knowing this was a thing you could do with oil, because, y'know, 8 year olds) and TPK'd us. After that, we did a lot of thinking about traps, tactics, negotiation, and not just swinging of swords and casting of spells. I'm guessing if we ran into this specific situation instead of the one we did, we would have 1) died the first time this happened. 2) had a big long (2 minute) fight about how my Halfling can't wield a polearm but kobolds apparently can. 3) realize that the gloves are off and everything is going to try to rip you apart and the DM is going to use a bunch of tactics you hadn't yet thought of, and start playing more cautious.

I think even at that age, and without video games (I guess Adventure, King's Quest, and Zork would have already existed, but we didn't know of them), all it takes is the players and DM being on the same page about what the game is, and then you pretty quickly start discovering what is possible and what works. I think the wide choices in a bounded environment observation is spot on.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;931289What part of the experience do you feel video games supply?

I find it easier and faster to set up scenes for players who already have a large library of "dungeon and dungeon-like scenarios" in their heads. This allows me to jump into new/weird/complex stuff sooner and more often.

Quote from: Bren;931230How do you see the tactics being different between those three choices. I think I have a very good idea of your D&D tactics, so I guess I am asking what's different about tactics in the other two settings.

Look at the source material.  In 4 color superhero Comics Code comics, which is what I think of when I say "comic book superheroes," basically you have everybody ganging up on Ultron or Doctor Doom or something, OR you have a series of one-on-one duels between super types.

In my head D&D derives directly from CHAINMAIL mass combat; I want tight formations, watching the flanks and rear, positioning, etc.

Star Wars is closer to superheroes than D&D; the PCs kick ass until they run into the tough villian.

That's a preliminary sketch, I can probably explain further if this inspires questions.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931332I find it easier and faster to set up scenes for players who already have a large library of "dungeon and dungeon-like scenarios" in their heads. This allows me to jump into new/weird/complex stuff sooner and more often.

Not if your world doesn't work like a video game.  If the PCs try to "pull" one guard from a group in my game, they will be very unhappily surprised when the guard falls back and sounds the alarm.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931506Not if your world doesn't work like a video game.  If the PCs try to "pull" one guard from a group in my game, they will be very unhappily surprised when the guard falls back and sounds the alarm.

I was going to say that nobody is that stupid. But knowing the world doesn't work like that, I'd say instead that nobody I've played with has been that particular strain of stupid:).
Some players have referred jokingly to trying to "pull aggro", but they got the hint when I, as the Referee, answered "this game ain't got an AI to exploit, I'm running it with Natural Intelligence".

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;931505That's a preliminary sketch, I can probably explain further if this inspires questions.

So is the expectation that the GM and the players will have their characters use genre appropriate tactics rather than running genre savvy characters who subvert the tropes and typical tactics of the genre to increase the probability that they succeed/defeat their opponent/i.e. win?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931116Fuck off Vulmea, I learned what I needed to from that lesson.

Did you really?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931197I suppose I was vindicated to some extent . . .

Were you now? The adventure was better simply because you set it in a giant fucking tree?

Or was it because of this?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;759843Nothing you clowns are describing is hard. Doing it well can be. But the thing is, the exact same thing is true of working with familiar tropes. Fun is fun, and boring is boring, no matter how you dress it up. . . . Until you understand what makes a great game-setting great, none of the rest of this shit matters, and if you do understand what makes a great game-setting great, then it matters even less.

That should've been the take-home lesson from that thread. I have my doubts that's what you learned, if you're claiming to be "vindicated."

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;931197. . . though I wish I could trade that dubious satisfaction for the comfort of not having a forum enemy.

GROW. THE FUCK. UP.