Two strategies in war and dungeons

Been reading Clausewitz, and his modern interpreters the US Marine Corps. Extremely interesting and useful. Here's a question prompted by reading MCDP 1: Warfighting, by the marines: when we go dungeon delving, are we using a strategy of annihilation or erosion?

Let's back up a bit, because not all of my readers will be familiar with Clausewitz or Delbrück.

A portrait of Carl von Clausewitz

Clausewitz says that war is the continuation of policy by other means. (It's not the end of his thought, it's a stage in a dialectic. But it's right on the money.) We go to war to achieve something, and if we are wise, that thing can be achieved by going to war. Military action should serve policy.

Our overall aims in war are achieved via the execution of military strategy. The marines outline two very general strategic approaches in war:

There are two ways to use military force to impose our will on an enemy. The first is to make the enemy helpless to resist us by physically destroying their military capabilities. The aim is the elimination, permanent or temporary, of the enemy’s military power. This has historically been called a strategy of annihilation, although it does not necessarily require the physical annihilation of all military forces. Instead, it requires the enemy’s incapacitation as a viable military threat, and thus can also be called a strategy of incapacitation. We use force in this way when we seek an unlimited political objective, such as the overthrow of the enemy leadership. We may also use this strategy in pursuit of more limited political objectives if we believe the enemy will continue to resist as long as any means to do so remain.

The second approach is to convince the enemy that accepting our terms will be less painful than continuing to resist. This is a strategy of erosion, using military force to erode the enemy leadership’s will. In such a strategy, we use military force to raise the costs of resistance higher than the enemy is willing to pay. We use force in this manner in pursuit of limited political goals that we believe the enemy leadership will ultimately be willing to accept.

From  Warfighting 2-4 -- 2-5.

A portrait of Hans Delbrück, who coined the distinction cited above

So, when we go dungeon-delving, are we trying to utterly destroy the enemy as a military threat, or are we trying to erode their will so they will accept our terms? Are our political goals limited or unlimited?

I suggest that most of the time they are quite limited; we're just here for treasure, and we want to get it the easiest way we can, with the least risk on our part. We usually don't need to eliminate or relocate the enemy.

And yet in almost every game I have played, listened to, or read about, we have almost always pursued strategies of annihilation. When we fight an enemy, we aren't content to seize a little bit of territory, to steal just a bit of treasure, and then make peace. (If the enemy is much stronger, we might steal treasure and then escape, but that's not the same thing.) Instead, we try to clear dungeons and utterly destroy our enemies.

So I think it's time to change our tactics a bit. We should act more like bandits than traditional adventurers. When we fight our enemies, we should make our goals clear to them: we want treasure, and we'll fight you until you're tired of fighting us, and will give us treasure to make us go away. And after that, we won't fight you, seriously.

Adventurers won't be able to take this tack if referees don't understand what they are doing, so referees, I'm talking to you, too.

I have argued previously that we routinely allow unacceptably high levels of casualties in dungeon-delving. If the enemy thinks they will lose 20% of their fighting power, they should be quite willing to negotiate. They should even send out delegates to negotiate. From their position, they are under siege, and they will do what they can to end the siege.

How much should a goblin lair pay the adventurers to end their raids? It's hard to say, because as a play community we have not developed any doctrine on this front. I have no ground to go off of, and I would really like suggestion.

Here's my current spitballed take. I think the enemy should estimate how many men they would lose, if they gathered all their forces and attacked the adventurers. They should put a monetary value on their combatants' lives. The Frankish Salic Law from 500 AD gives a penalty of 200 shillings for the killing of a free man; that sounds fine to me, as a starting point. Your typical goblin lair might not have that much money, but they should scrounge up what they can.

I'm going to try 200s/head in my next game. If the numbers don't work out, I'll try 50s/HD/head. I'll let you know how it goes!