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== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGs]] ==
* This is one of the common complaints in NPC-heavy areas of the [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]] ''[[City of Heroes]]'': not only are player characters unable to push NPCs out of the way, NPCs are perfectly capable of pushing player characters around. This is not as bad as it could be, since NPCs are generally constantly in motion. The henchman-centric Mastermind class compounds the problem, although they can command the henchmen to move out of the way using the "Go To" command.
** However, Controller/Dominator pets cannot be given commands at all and a trio of Fire Imps can still clog a narrow doorway. At least some pets like Singularity and Dark Servant are intangible, making this problem irrelevant as you can walk ''through'' them.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' was specifically made with no character collision to avert this. So instead of a few dozen players standing in front of a set of doors preventing others from entering or exiting, you get a few dozen players ''standing in the middle'' of an NPC others might want to click on/interact with. Yay.
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* There is an area in ''[[Guild Wars]]'', near the broken wall, with a narrow path. You can't see to the end so if you like to explore (as I do), you will walk down it and your hirelings will follow behind..Not too bad since you can walk through hirelings, but I was a Ranger-type...And your pet is solid! I was trapped on a narrow ledge, no way back, and my pet would not move. I had to teleport back to town and it was a good distance away.
* Averted in ''[[Star Trek Online]]'': Most NPCs are effectively insubstantial (or their collision-detection boundaries are ''incredibly'' small); you can essentially run ''right through'' anyone in your way.
* ''Crossfire RPG'' allows to push characters standing on the way (which also allows to move encumbered characters faster). But there is some jamming - as [http://crossfire.real-time.com/guides/survival_guide/interesting_techniques.html Survival Guide] explains:
{{quote|[[Mook Maker|Wildly-reproducing]] mice are usually a hindrance, but they may be used sometimes to your advantage: you can slow down a fast enemy by letting the mice reproduce out of control. Once they are everywhere the enemy will wait for the mouse in front of him to move before advancing on you; he won't think of harming the mouse to get at you. This leaves you with the ability to get past the enemy or around him/her by simply slashing through the mice (assuming you can slash your way through the mice faster than the enemy can pound the cr@p out of you as you pass him) }}
== Real-Time Strategy ==
* In general, this is a great tactic to use to protect your more fragile units: use larger, tougher units to block off enemies while your ranged units and [[Squishy Wizard|SquishyWizards]] go at it.
* Odd example: in Blizzard's RTS title ''[[
* ''[[Supreme Commander]]'' has some serious routefinding issues, among them workers who stand in the way of the unit they are assisting. It makes it look like the ACU plays soccer when <s>pushing</s> kicking an Aeon tier 1 engineer out of the way, but slows things down a lot.
* In ''[[Sacrifice]]'' this becomes a real problem for larger armies, especially for melee-using flying units who need a lot of room to manoeuvre and do uninterrupted attack runs. Dragons, in particular, become almost useless in groups larger than two.
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'''Jay:''' Are you STILL here?! }}
* Averted in ''[[Might and Magic]] 6-8''. Friendly NPCs can block your way but there's a special command (Yell) that will make them move out of the way. This does create an interesting situation in the 7th game, when you get to the City in the Sky and have to shout "MOVE!" at angels...
* ''[[
* An NPC in ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]]'' will try unsuccessfully for a few minutes to nudge someone out of the way, then whip out their sword and callously murder the obstacle. "Radiant AI" apparently means "Don't fuck with me."
** In ''[[Morrowind]]'', if there was a drone jamming your doorway, you were out of luck. The community made a mod out of necessity that forces the pathfinding algorithm to roam.
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* ''[[Animal Crossing]]'' allows you to push townsfolk around by walking or running into them—especially useful if they've randomly fallen asleep outside. However, they'll get mad at you if you shove them too much.
** The best part is in the Nintendo DS version of ''Animal Crossing: Wild World'', the "normal" personality will get upset and may even say a line about how you could have just asked them to move if you wanted them to move, making this something of a Lampshade.
* In the game ''[[
* Inverted in ''[[Magicians Quest Mysterious Times]]:'' While NPCs will usually move out of the way if you try to walk into them, if you stand in ''their'' way while ''they're'' walking, they'll get mad at you for blocking them.
* Most every critter in the tile-based ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' takes up one whole tile when they stand in it. However, any number of creatures can lie down in the same tile. To pass in narrow corridors, one dwarf/kitten/dragon/whatever lays down and lets the other crawl over it. Optimizing fortress layouts to avoid the resulting traffic jams caused by people having to lay down and stand up over and over again was at one point a fairly important part of fortress efficiency.
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* ''[[The Sims]]'' had this problem when two or more Sims would attempt to leave through the same door, resulting in horribly annoying traffic jams. The problem was fixed in subsequent Sims games, and now the Sims can filter easily in and out of doors, even if there are multiple Sims using it at once.
* NPC freight ships are the bane of entrepreneur-type players in ''[[X (video game)|X3]]'', because they have an annoying tendency to clog up docking ports on player-owned stations (particularly ones that produce Inexplicably Popular Goods like computer parts). It's so annoying that somebody wrote a [[Game Mod|script]] to force them to undock.
* ''Almost'' averted in ''[[Spore]]''. All NPCs can be easily pushed out of the way. . . with the exception of your crew-members in the Galactic Adventures expansion who never walk unless they're following you, which provides a bit of a Dronejam catch-22 if you find yourself wedged between a crew-member and a wall (or between two or more crew-members). They won't move unless you move, and you can't move unless they move. You can sometimes get out of this with a high enough jump ability, but quite often they end up blocking you from doing that as well.
== Sports Games ==
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Used in-'verse in ''[[Dungeons
* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' card game has a card called [
* Common in many older Avalon Hill games, especially the tactical games such as ''Panzer Leader'' and ''Panzer Blitz'' where it was often a good strategy to use a weak unit, or even empty horse-drawn carts, to block entire columns of tanks on road in the woods.▼
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has various rules that limit deployment, including allowed range to hostile units. Which led to the [[Memetic Mutation/Tabletop Games|famous]] "Kroot Konga Line" incident: one player put everything in reserve and did not deploy anything on turn 1, so eventually another player in response took enough of cheap scouts to block the entire long side of the table — that guy could not deploy at all and lost.
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== Turn-Based Strategy ==
* Dronejamming is a good tactic for this genre in general. Even if you can't stop an enemy unit completely, you can still force them to take a less direct route to get to your more vulnerable units. Whether they waste a turn or just go for a unit that can take a hit, it's a good thing you blocked the way.
**
* In ''[[Civilization]]'' 2, this could get extremely annoying because this game had the concept of ''zone of control'', which made it impossible for all but a few special units to move adjacent to squares surrounding an enemy unit, meaning that a rival civ could jam large portions of land with cheap mooks controlling not just their own square but all squares surrounding them, and you cannot get past them without sparking a war or negotiating a right-of-passage agreement. Naturally, you cannot utilize this rule [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules|because it only applies to the player]]; computer-control civs can ignore zone-of-control all they want without consequence. Thankfully, zone-of-control was not a concept which remained in the series past this game.
* In the ''[[X-COM]]'' series, when fighting aliens in a Terror Zone (or later-game equivalents), NPC civilians would occasionally block a doorway or stairwell, preventing the passage of your soldiers. Fortunately, this being ''X-Com'', you have several options aside from just waiting for them to move. You can shoot them (and lose points), stun them (avoiding loss of points, AND ensuring that they won't get a [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong]] and end up converted to Chyrssalids), Mind Control them out of the way (which is where a bug kicks in: it turns them
* In a bit of a reversal, the drawbridge during a siege in ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] III'' would stay ''open'' one of your people is standing on one specific tile, and if they die there, their body will hold the gate wide open for your opponent!
** Gates in ''[[Age of Empires II]]'' were similar. At least you could lock them shut if you needed them to stay that way.
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* In ''[[Advance Wars]]'' this is how you guard your [[Glass Cannon|indirect units]].
* A huge problem in the ''[[Combat Mission]]'' series, if you make the mistake that telling a large number of units to go in the same direction. Even if they start off in a well spaced and orderly line, they will inevitably dogpile around a choke point, and they will resort to taking ridiculously long routes around the blockage (instead of simply waiting a moment).
* ''[[Advanced Strategic Command]]'' has a milder variation: allows units to bypass each other depending on circumstances, and certainly if they are on different height,
▲* Common in many older Avalon Hill games, especially the tactical games such as ''Panzer Leader'' and ''Panzer Blitz'' where it was often a good strategy to use a weak unit, or even empty horse-drawn carts, to block entire columns of tanks on road in the woods.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Dronejam]]▼
[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]
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