Directness of Conflict
Conflict can be prosecuted with varying degrees of directness. The most direct conflict places the two combatants face to face at arm's length; whether they are punching each other or insulting each other, their conflict is about as direct as it can get. But conflict need not be so simple; recourse to indirection can often yield more interesting possibilities.
The simplest step here is to increase the physical distance between the two combatants. Guns do this admirably well; but there are plenty of so-called “indirect weapons” that project an explosive to a distant location. I still recall the great satisfaction I felt while playing Doom, sending a rocket into a distant target. The bad guys were just a few moving pixels. The rocket approached, exploded, and the pixels were motionless. Ah, success…no muss, no fuss.
Even more indirection is achieved when the combatants cannot see each other. The attacker tosses a grenade through a window and then imagines the consternation of his victims as they realize what is about to happen. But why stop there? What if the attacker sets a time bomb and then escapes to a distant location, checking his watch to confirm the bomb's detonation? Such conflict may be less direct than watching your victim's blood splatter all over you, but it can be equally satisfying to pursue. An even greater degree of indirection can be attained with a booby trap; as the attacker, you don't know when or whom you'll nail with your evil device, but you are still applying lethal force.
Another form of indirection can be implemented through agents. Instead of shooting the bad guy yourself, the player provides strategic control of an agent who makes the tactical decisions about whom to shoot and when. In effect, the player commands an army of robots who fight under his generalship.
The highest degree of this form of indirectness arises when the player's identity is distributed among several agents. The best example of this kind of indirection is Jim Dunnigan's brilliant design, Russian Civil War, which was described in Chapter 2, “Some Milestone Games.”
There is also indirectness of approach to consider. Sure, you can directly kill the enemy, but what if you shoot the rope holding the big weight under which he is standing? Frederick the Great of Prussia executed such indirectness of approach better than any general in history. In one campaign, he maneuvered his army down one road, which threatened his enemy's supply lines, so the enemy repositioned himself to a safer location. Frederick again marched to the side, again placing his enemy in a vulnerable location. This process continued for several months until the enemy found himself trapped in an impossible situation, at which point the enemy surrendered. Frederick had won a campaign without firing a shot.
Indirectness of approach need not be confined to spatial dimensions. The German submarine campaign during World War II was an indirect approach to defeating England's armies by starving them of supplies. The USA has done much the same thing to Iraq since 1990 by establishing a trade embargo that strangles Iraq's economy, thereby crippling its military potential while also, in what is known as “collateral damage,” starving its population. Since around the year 2000, the USA has gone on the financial offensive against terrorists, freezing their bank accounts and thereby incapacitating them; the USA's ability to intercept their telecommunications has enervated them. These are all supremely indirect approaches in a vicious war.
Note that, in general, indirect approaches tend to be less violent. They are also more subtle and often take longer to achieve their goals. Those hotheads who wanted to “nuke Osama” in the fall of 2001 would certainly have been gratified by the immediate demonstration of power and the big explosions, and they would have succeeded in rearranging the rocks on various Afghan mountainsides, but in practice, pulling the teeth of the Al-Qaeda network has required years of slow, patient effort and is still not completed.