# Why is realism "lame"?



## Derren (Nov 17, 2012)

I just wonder. Games add more and more over the top stuff to appeal to their target audience and I can't really understand why this is necessary.

Somehow "down to earth" or even "realistic" stuff has become so lame in the mind of the current generation of gamers that they do not want to do anything to do with it. For fantasy this means among other things armor has to be non-functional and covered in spikes and swords have to be giant slabs of metal no person could wield.
Why is that? It can't be because of escapism. We do not live in a medieval/fantasy world so a "down to earth" setting would be equally effective in that.
And when you look back at the worlds history, especially at how other cultures than your own developed it is easy to see that a lot of interesting things happened there which would inspire your mind equally, if not more so than the usual fantasy cliches we get instead.

So what went "wrong"? When did save the world from ultimate evil plots, spikey armor, buster swords and fights against huge numbers of enemies which you easily dispatch with your superpowers become the norm? And why?


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 18, 2012)

As with many things, it tends to go back and forth.  It could be that it's "high fantasy's" turn to do stuff.

It could be that you're simply looking in the wrong places for the "realist" feel that you crave?  

Tastes could simply change, or it could be power inflation?


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## griffonwing (Nov 18, 2012)

And it also depends on what it is you mean when you say "realism".  That word means different things to different people. It could be:

HP vs Wounds
Healing times
AC vs DR (this is a huge one)
Attacks per round
Rounds vs Seconds

Does weapon reach factor into who hits first?  What about facing? Do I constantly see 360 degrees around me at all times during battle?

Do you want Realism, Escapism, or a mixture of both? or perhaps something else entirely...


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## gamerprinter (Nov 18, 2012)

TV, movies, video games and other mass media, and the designs created from those, impose what is cool to mass market audience. As budgets for various fantasy epics get put to film, trying to look 'bad ass' creates those overly ornate armors and swords, wilder looking monsters, etc.

When fantasy stories were limited to the written and spoken word, our own imaginations tell us what things looked at. As one blockbuster movie or game follows another each visual examples of what came before, so each one tries to be bigger, badder, more ornate - until we get to where we are now.

We're letting the costume artists, special effects artists, makeup artists of the blockbuster media products determine for us what something should appear. As if the human imagination was not enough on it's own.

I don't agree that all fantasy RPGs follow this paradigm, but targetting the mass market audience to sell your products, sometimes following what the media is doing helps sell things. At least, I think that's where that concept is coming from...

I don't think all game designers follow that paradigm. For my Kaidan (Japanese horror) setting for PFRPG, my goals have to be a close to reality/history as it pertains to Japanese occupations (classes), social castes, clothing, armor, weapons, items, everything. Elements of Kaidan are based on true historical examples of everything possible. Even the unrealistic aspects are based on pre-modern Japanese legends, folklore and ghost story tradition. I think the reality of feudal Japan is exotic enough, not to have to create a more exotic katana, for example. 

The big companies (WotC, Paizo's of the world) seek the most common denominator - the easiest path to profits, and following the mass media renditions of what that looks like is the easiest way. Its the job of the small game publisher to deviate from that if its the better way to go. While we too want to make money, it doesn't require us to circumvent our own creativity to follow the current mass market idea of what that is.


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## Balesir (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> Games add more and more over the top stuff to appeal to their target audience and I can't really understand why this is necessary.



I think you might be conflating "games" (or even just "roleplaying games") with D&D and its clones. "Realism" has never been "lame" - it's just not the only type of game, and D&D specifically is very poorly suited to it.

For "realistic" can I suggets GURPS, Hârn (and the HârnMaster system), Chivalry & Sorcery and/or Traveller? All of those, I think, handle "realistic" far more simply and straightforwardly that D&D has ever done.

Speaking for myself, using those other systems for "realistic" games and not trying to do "realism" with D&D has brought me back to D&D with a renewed appreciation for what it _does_ do well - which is gonzo heroism with strategic underpinnings.


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## amerigoV (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> So what went "wrong"? When did save the world from ultimate evil plots, spikey armor, buster swords and fights against huge numbers of enemies which you easily dispatch with your superpowers become the norm? And why?




I blame Tolkien and the Matrix*


* I knew we were in trouble when I saw a commercial for Charlies Angles and its was all Matrix-like.


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## Derren (Nov 18, 2012)

Balesir said:


> I think you might be conflating "games" (or even just "roleplaying games") with D&D and its clones.




Actually I am more talking about games in general, RPG or also video games and also the movie industry.


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## Nytmare (Nov 18, 2012)

gamerprinter said:


> TV, movies, video games and other mass media, and the designs created from those, impose what is cool to mass market audience. As budgets for various fantasy epics get put to film, trying to look 'bad ass' creates those overly ornate armors and swords, wilder looking monsters, etc.





I would argue that at the same time, although from a much different angle, audiences are influencing and imposing their version of "cool" on those same exact companies.  I've been in on far too many creative and concept meetings where people are being dragged along behind the latest poll numbers and responses from test audiences.

It's a constant give and take between the two groups.  Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.


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## Reynard (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> Actually I am more talking about games in general, RPG or also video games and also the movie industry.




This sounds like a case of selection bias. "Realism" gets plenty of screen time in video games (modern military shooters are all the rage) and movies (for every Avengers there's an Argo). Moreover, kewl powers and giant swords isn't a new thing. Gilgamesh, Beowulf and the Knights of the Round Table were all super heroes dealing with magnificent, otherworldly threats.

And I disagree with the above statement that D&D doesn't do "realism" well. It does it very well at low levels and also happens to do the super-powered stuff well at high levels. The problem is the speed of advancement, which any group can tweak to their needs if they aren't intent upon running through all the levels in a year (because of an Adventure Path, for example).


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## Morrus (Nov 18, 2012)

I don't agree with the premise.  For every fantastical movie series, there's another doing a "gritty" Bond reboot or Nolan's version of Batman or something.  Maybe escapism trends towards the escapist - that makes sense - but it's by no means universal.  

Separately, emotive terms like "lame" merely show that the conclusion has already been reached before asking the question.


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## Derren (Nov 18, 2012)

Reynard said:


> (modern military shooters are all the rage)




Have you seen the most common modern military shooters (Call of Duty)?
That is anything except realistic and imo a good example of the over the top games I mentioned.


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## Nytmare (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> Have you seen the most common modern military shooters (Call of Duty)?
> That is anything except realistic and imo a good example of the over the top games I mentioned.





Does Call of Duty have spikey armor, and buster swords?


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## Ahnehnois (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> Somehow "down to earth" or even "realistic" stuff has become so lame in the mind of the current generation of gamers that they do not want to do anything to do with it.



I don't think it's a generational issue.

I do think that there is a significant cohort of people who are overtly hostile to realism, verisimilitude, or things making any kind of sense. And no, I don't get why.

But the current generation of young people is exposed to a wide variety of high-verisimilitude fiction, including genre fiction. The care that went into crafting the Lord of the Rings movies is influential, as is the uncompromising style of the Song of Ice and Fire books and their derivatives. People go to theaters to watch superheroes fighting allegorical terrorists, and sit in their homes to watch dramas about the illegal drug trade. Shaky-cam is in. Unrated cable shows are in. Reality is in.

If anything, the rpg industry has made a mistake by not adapting to these broad cultural trends, and instead focusing on a subset of people that stand against them.


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## 3catcircus (Nov 18, 2012)

You just have to do one of two things:

1.  Restrict the options in the games you play.  For example - if you play Pathfinder, you could say that your players are only allowed to use the core Pathfinder book and that the spiked armor, spiked shield, and spiked chain are not allowed.  Spells are limited to 3rd level or below, and there are no magic items available for sale.

2.  Play games with built-in realism.  In the fantasy realm, a likely choice would be Harn.  In the modern realm, a likely choice would be the (sadly out of print) Twilight:2000 (in any incarnation, V1, V2, V2.2, or the Twilight:2013 version) or maybe GURPS with the right supplements.  I know TW:2K fairly well, and the only danger is once you start getting into the nitty-gritty of it, you can find yourself tracking every bullet, when to do upkeep on the vehicle so it continues to run, when to forage and distill alcohol (to power said vehicle), and other "resource management" tasks, you can get so involved in it that you don't mind not advancing the campaign - the game can border on being like those RTS strategy games in that respect.


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## Balesir (Nov 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> Actually I am more talking about games in general, RPG or also video games and also the movie industry.



OK - as others have said, I see selection bias.

For computer games see almost any Paradox Studios title (Europa Universalis, EU: Rome, Crusader Kings, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Sengoku).

For films/movies/TV see Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Anna Karenina, Lincoln, Warrior...

In short, I just don't see the issue, unless what you are saying is that you don't really want to see any gonzo stuff around at all - in which case, lighten up, dude!


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## Desh-Rae-Halra (Nov 18, 2012)

When I read this thread title I had an immediate response, and I think 3cat covered it to some degree.
Sometimes "realism" takes a heroic-story element out of the game. I remember playing a game of...I think it was Phoenix Command? A tactical roleplay game. I didnt want to be on the roof next to the person so I took the stairs down to go join with the rest of the party. By the time I made it down the stairs (really maybe 6 or 7 rounds), the whole combat was over. The firefight was over quickly (as I imagine one would be IRL, with bullets and grenades flying). It was "realistic", but not fun (particularly since the 6-7 rounds took almost 2 hours to play out, with all the "realistic" charts of bullet trajectory, wind, ad nauseum). Every round on my action I got to say "I make it down another couple stairs". How thrilling!

Also, have you ever played in a campaign that was "realistic" to the point that your GM keeps track of when your character has to go to the bathroom? Realistic, but not fun.

I probably make the weirdest characters in our group, but its on the premise that this will be fun, and yet wont spoil it for anyone else. I'd frankly rather play a humanoid alien with a rapid fire shotgun that has a telescopic/spring loaded Halberd underneath, with my glowing illuminati runic tachyon-sizzling adamantium-spandex armor with katana-sized blades sticking out of it than play another 2 hours of "I'm taking the stairs for the length of the adventure/roll to see what percent your bladder is full while you sit in traffic".


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## Obryn (Nov 18, 2012)

If you take the mundane world and add magic, you end up in a situation where half of everyone obeys the laws of physics and the other half bend reality over their knee.

ETA: So step one of increasing realism is, "Get rid of magic" 

-O


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## Argyle King (Nov 18, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> Does Call of Duty have spikey armor, and buster swords?





No, but it's still not realistic; in some aspects, it's not even close.  One of the reasons I prefer Battlefield is because the way that bullets travel in Battlefield is a lot closer to my real life experience with guns than CoD is.  It's a small detail, but it is one which can have a big impact on things which matter to me when playing such a game.  The bullet travel and drop models aren't perfect, but they are (imo) far better than what CoD uses when it comes to that aspect of the game.  I find it strange in CoD 2 that some pistols are better at long range shooting than some of the sniper rifles are.  ...and as far as swords and armor... well, I can toss a throwing knife several hundred yards and kill somebody with it. 


For me, the small details are often more important to me than the big ones.  It in no way bothers me to have elves, dragons, and magic.  Fantasy is one of my favorite genres.  However, sometimes it does bother me when I try to justify how grappling someone has zero impact on their ability to use a longbow.  Likewise, I like small touches such as magical fire behaving like fire once it comes into play.  I'm not asking for a perfect model, but one which gives at least a nod toward what seems like it would make sense or at least be consistent with the game world fiction as presented.


On more of an overall scale, I personally prefer a little more realism because some of the stories I want to tell work better if I have some.  If I want political intrigue; feuding kingdoms, and noble PCs leading armies against a rival army, I feel it works out a little better when one PC cannot defeat entire legions by himself.  I also like for the PCs to engage the world and interact with it rather than standing so far apart from it as some games put them.     


None of this is meant to suggest I cannot enjoy unrealistic things.  I simply find that -for me- I can use reality to enhance my fantasy.  The two need not be mutually exclusive.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 18, 2012)

Another reason is that I prefer unrealistic to realism done badly.  If you're gonna be realistic, it requires a good deal of knowledge and/or research to be accurate.  If you're just pulling ideas out of your head or a movie you just saw, be honest about it.


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## Mishihari Lord (Nov 18, 2012)

Morrus said:


> I don't agree with the premise.  For every fantastical movie series, there's another doing a "gritty" Bond reboot or Nolan's version of Batman or something.  Maybe escapism trends towards the escapist - that makes sense - but it's by no means universal.




Agreed.  You can find both realistic and over-the-top if you look for them.

It's common even to find them in the same series or even the same movie/book.  For example I loved "Pirates of the Caribbean" because it started off very realistic then moved to some fantastic elements once a "real" feeling had been established.  On the other hand I hated the second Pirates movie because there was no realistic period - it moved straight into "WAHOOO!" territory.


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## Hussar (Nov 19, 2012)

Derren said:


> /snip
> 
> So what went "wrong"? When did save the world from ultimate evil plots, spikey armor, buster swords and fights against huge numbers of enemies which you easily dispatch with your superpowers become the norm? And why?




About 1976 with the release of AD&D.  I suggest you take a look at early modules if you think that fights against huge numbers of easily dispatched enemies is somehow new to this generation.

I also suggest looking at the D series of modules if you want spikey armor and whatnot, also released about 30ish years ago.  Oh, and the sequel module features a giant robot spider.  1985 gave us Earthshaker, a module about a giant robot run by Red Russian gnomes.  

Never mind movies like the Rambo sequels or pretty much any 80's movie with Schwarzenegger (it frightens me that Firefox's spellchecker knows that word)  which features Arnie mowing down masses of baddies with nary a scratch.  

I always love how people want to blame "this generation" for liking exactly the same things that we liked thirty years ago.  Funny how history tends to get ignored.


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## Hussar (Nov 19, 2012)

Y'know what?  I'm actually going to directly answer the thread title of why is realism lame.

I love running naval based fantasy campaigns.  Pirates of the Caribbean, Master and Commander, that sort of thing.  Love it to pieces.  But, the reality is, ship to ship combat is mind numbingly boring.  Age of sail ship battles take days, several days, and possibly weeks, to resolve.  Even when the two ships are actually in a position to shoot at each other, we're talking hours of jockeying for position.  Actual boarding?  Yeah, that happens after many, many hours of not a lot happening.

In other words, realism here is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

Or, look at the hit point discussions.  People were saying that one day is too short for complete healing, but had no problems with three days.  Which, let's be honest here, is completely unrealistic.  There is no such thing as a potentially fatal wound that you completely recover from in three days.  It just doesn't happen.  So, why should that version of "realistic" be better than another?  Realistic would be months of healing time, possible infection, complications and long term effects.  Again, totally realistic and about as interesting as watching paint dry.

We accept 7 impossible things before breakfast.  A fighter with a longsword cannot possibly kill something as large as a dragon.  He just can't.  Anymore than a two year old armed with a pin can kill you.  That's the size relations we're talking about.  I mean, dude with a sword vs elephant pretty much always ends the same way, but, hey, it's no problem that Thugdar kills dinosaurs with an axe?

It isn't that realism is lame.  It's that people are insistant on beating other people over the head with the wrongbadfun stick and hiding behind claims of "realism".


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## Hussar (Nov 19, 2012)

Spam reported.


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## Argyle King (Nov 19, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Y'know what?  I'm actually going to directly answer the thread title of why is realism lame.
> 
> I love running naval based fantasy campaigns.  Pirates of the Caribbean, Master and Commander, that sort of thing.  Love it to pieces.  But, the reality is, ship to ship combat is mind numbingly boring.  Age of sail ship battles take days, several days, and possibly weeks, to resolve.  Even when the two ships are actually in a position to shoot at each other, we're talking hours of jockeying for position.  Actual boarding?  Yeah, that happens after many, many hours of not a lot happening.
> 
> ...





I think there are a few parts to your post which highlight what I feel is a problem with the conversation: too many absolutes.  

Some of the people who want more realism (myself included) do not require perfect realism.  Like many other aspects of a rpg or rules system, I tend to view realism more like a sliding bar rather than a binary thing.  Wanting more realism doesn't necessarily mean I want perfect realism.

Bringing up naval combat is something I find interesting too because it highlights an area of play which prompts me to want more realism.  Yes, I do agree that the time scale of a naval battle might be boring.  However, the other end of the spectrum --the one in which a D&D druid can quite literally defeat an entire navy by himself while barely breaking a sweat- is something which ruins my fun.  It ruins my fun because I want to be able to have cool ship battles; swashbuckling adventures, and other such things.  It's a little tough to do that when one PC has the capability of making an entire ship obsolete.  

I also find that your view (which I in no way feel is wrong; just different than my own) brings me to a question: why is it that all game time must play out in combat rounds or similar time?  If it's going to take several months to heal, what's wrong with the GM explaining to the players how much time they have, and then asking them what they'd like to do during that time?  That would seem to me to be an excellent time to allow players to explore things like item creation, castle building, political machinations, and plenty of other in-game activities which require time to complete.


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## Hussar (Nov 19, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I think there are a few parts to your post which highlight what I feel is a problem with the conversation: too many absolutes.
> 
> Some of the people who want more realism (myself included) do not require perfect realism.  Like many other aspects of a rpg or rules system, I tend to view realism more like a sliding bar rather than a binary thing.  Wanting more realism doesn't necessarily mean I want perfect realism.
> 
> Bringing up naval combat is something I find interesting too because it highlights an area of play which prompts me to want more realism.  Yes, I do agree that the time scale of a naval battle might be boring.  However, the other end of the spectrum --the one in which a D&D druid can quite literally defeat an entire navy by himself while barely breaking a sweat- is something which ruins my fun.  It ruins my fun because I want to be able to have cool ship battles; swashbuckling adventures, and other such things.  It's a little tough to do that when one PC has the capability of making an entire ship obsolete.




You'll get no argument from me here on this.  D&D casters make naval combat pretty ridiculous.  Never mind the druid.  The wizard crafts and Extended Wand of Fireballs and now has a 50 charge fireball wand that out ranges anything you could possibly mount on a ship.  Why would you ever bother with a ballista when a 1st level wizard is a thousand times more effective?  



> I also find that your view (which I in no way feel is wrong; just different than my own) brings me to a question: why is it that all game time must play out in combat rounds or similar time?  If it's going to take several months to heal, what's wrong with the GM explaining to the players how much time they have, and then asking them what they'd like to do during that time?  That would seem to me to be an excellent time to allow players to explore things like item creation, castle building, political machinations, and plenty of other in-game activities which require time to complete.




Because you now have one player riding the pines for several months while his character heals, while the other characters are doing all this fun stuff.  Never minding, of course, that at low levels, it's pretty much impossible for any of the PC's to actually engage in any of those in-game activities.  But, at the end of the day, I don't play D&D to be a spectator.  And even half-way realistic healing would force far too many players to ride the pines far too often.

Sure, it's a sliding scale.  I agree with that.  But, considering the issue at hand with healing was 1 day vs 3 days (or 8 days absolute maximum in 3e), I find the issue to be a bit ludicrous.  If 3 days is perfectly acceptable to go from six seconds from death to completely healed, then 1 day is no different.

Like I said, we accept impossible things all the time.  A guy with an axe killing a giant or a dinosaur?  Really?  And people going to start fussing about spikey armor (who turned the clock back to 2001?) or whatnot?  How can anyone complain about a lack of realism on one hand but not have any problems with the ninety-nine thousand other things we take for granted in the name of keeping the game going?


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## Argyle King (Nov 19, 2012)

Hussar said:


> You'll get no argument from me here on this.  D&D casters make naval combat pretty ridiculous.  Never mind the druid.  The wizard crafts and Extended Wand of Fireballs and now has a 50 charge fireball wand that out ranges anything you could possibly mount on a ship.  Why would you ever bother with a ballista when a 1st level wizard is a thousand times more effective?




It seems we agree on that.  




Hussar said:


> Because you now have one player riding the pines for several months while his character heals, while the other characters are doing all this fun stuff.  Never minding, of course, that at low levels, it's pretty much impossible for any of the PC's to actually engage in any of those in-game activities.  But, at the end of the day, I don't play D&D to be a spectator.  And even half-way realistic healing would force far too many players to ride the pines far too often.




Ideally, I'd hope that would foster thoughts toward thinking in terms of the character and what they're willing to risk  for the rewards offered rather than what tends to be the D&D stereotype in which the players choose to fight everything and fight clear to the last HP of the last PC.  Giving other options such as stealth, social skills, and a variety of other things a little more room to shine by making combat a little rougher is ok with me.  I realize I'm probably in the minority with that sort of thinking, but that is my preference.  I'd find it a refreshing change of pace to play in a game where combat isn't always the best option.

That's not to say I don't enjoy combat.  I certainly do.  It just gets a little old when hack first and ask questions later is so often the best way to solve a problem.  

Even strictly speaking in terms of combat, I'd still find it nice if facing an entire army was something which (generally speaking) required having an army of your own if you hoped to succeed.  Again, this isn't somewhere I require perfect realism.  I'm a huge fan of R. Howard, and Conan facing several foes was a common thing.  However, he still had his limits.  I prefer that to a D&D 3rd Edition fighter with the right feats (great cleave I think) being able to teleport across the battlefield in 6 seconds by chopping down the entirety of an opposing force.  Likewise, it was a bit of a buzzkill to face Orcus at the end of my first 4E campaign and find that he was wholly pathetic in comparison to the power level of the PCs.  I find nothing wrong with mythic level heroes or mythic stories; mythology is something I love, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to play a hero by giving a rousing speech to lead men into battle or perhaps by pulling an Audie Murphy and surviving despite the odds.  

If nothing else, it would at least be nice to have a little more realism so that a mount or an animal companion didn't suddenly become worthless because I went up a few levels.  The questing knight on horseback is a classic trope.  Yet, somehow, it is one which many of the rpgs in the d20 family (D&D and Pathfinder) tend to do poorly.  Part of the reason behind that is because the PCs and the things they face tend to be on a completely different scale than the world they live in.  Having more realism --even if it's only more 'realistic' in terms of the game world and fiction-- is something I feel would help me to include something like that in my game as both a player and a GM.




Hussar said:


> Sure, it's a sliding scale.  I agree with that.  But, considering the issue at hand with healing was 1 day vs 3 days (or 8 days absolute maximum in 3e), I find the issue to be a bit ludicrous.  If 3 days is perfectly acceptable to go from six seconds from death to completely healed, then 1 day is no different.
> 
> Like I said, we accept impossible things all the time.  A guy with an axe killing a giant or a dinosaur?  Really?  And people going to start fussing about spikey armor (who turned the clock back to 2001?) or whatnot?  How can anyone complain about a lack of realism on one hand but not have any problems with the ninety-nine thousand other things we take for granted in the name of keeping the game going?




Sometimes the small details can be more important to a person than the big ones.  Like I said in one of my previous posts, Battlefield is a first person shooter which has more realistic bullet travel models compared to Call of Duty.  It's a small detail, but that small detail makes a world of difference in my ability to enjoy one game more so than the other.

I don't have much comment on the days required to heal.  I'm somewhat assuming the 1 day versus 3 day argument is something born of 5th Edition conversations.  Truth be told, I'm currently only vaguely aware of what some of the hot issues are for 5th.  Somewhere around the beginning of October, I stopped paying attention except for a few blips on the radar which I found interesting.  

As far as giants and dinosaurs...  I suppose it's worth saying that I feel it should be far tougher to take down something like a full grown dragon than it tends to be in most d20 games I have played.  I'd be fine with a suitably dangerous creature (such as an adult dragon) to be a match for a small squad of men --perhaps more for an especially dangerous specimen.  With the right skills or the right knowledge (Smaug's weak spot is an excellent example,) odds would improve.  

I'd prefer a game in which one of my knowledge skills allows me to learn that the secret to defeating a demon lord is coating my blade in holy water and speaking a long forgotten incantation at midnight to one in which that same demon lord is relegated to being a big bad of XP which I laugh in the face of as I stomp him into the ground.  I can enjoy the latter style and often do, but, all things being equal, I lean toward finding the former more engaging.  

I'm not opposed to having fantasy in my fantasy.  I just wish there was enough reality to be able to tell some of the stories I want to tell.  I find that --for me-- I get the best experience when there is the right blend of 'real' and unreal.  I'm fine with elves and dragons and magic, but I'd still like to be able to have my set piece battles, castle sieges, and naval warfare as well.


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## Neonchameleon (Nov 19, 2012)

Derren said:


> I just wonder. Games add more and more over the top stuff to appeal to their target audience and I can't really understand why this is necessary.
> 
> Somehow "down to earth" or even "realistic" stuff has become so lame in the mind of the current generation of gamers that they do not want to do anything to do with it. For fantasy this means among other things armor has to be non-functional and covered in spikes and swords have to be giant slabs of metal no person could wield.
> Why is that? It can't be because of escapism. We do not live in a medieval/fantasy world so a "down to earth" setting would be equally effective in that.
> ...




I'm not sure I can answer you.  But I can tell you that a game about _Dungeons_ and _Dragons_ - in short, ridiculous subterranian complexes that follow nothing like a known ecology and are there specifically for heroes to loot, and ridiculous flying, firebreathing violations of the laws of thermodynamics and power to weight ratios have precious little to do with realism.

Further I can name a few books on my ridiculously long to-read (or to-watch in some cases) pile.  Outlaws at the Water Margin, the Orlando cycle, Journey into the West, the Lokasenna, the Faerie Queene, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.  And such modern works of fantasy as those on my reading list are full of ridiculous powers, over the top descriptions, and are in no way down to earth.

So it's hardly a new thing.  And why?  Because people want to fantasise that they matter to the world.  We don't want to be third-serf-from-the-right.


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## DM Howard (Nov 19, 2012)

I prefer the term plausible to realistic.  I want elements in my games be they Fantasy or Science Fiction to be plausible to the audience.  To venture into the realm of "realistic" would be to get in the way of the story and, in some cases, the rules.


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## Umbran (Nov 19, 2012)

Dndungeoneer said:


> I want elements in my games be they Fantasy or Science Fiction to be plausible to the audience.




But that doesn't help too much.  Plausibility (being seemingly reasonable or probable) is audience-dependent.  Unless we are unified in what we all think is "reasonable", asking a game to be plausible isn't an objective bar for them to meet.


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## Ahnehnois (Nov 19, 2012)

Hussar said:


> I love running naval based fantasy campaigns.  Pirates of the Caribbean, Master and Commander, that sort of thing.  Love it to pieces.  But, the reality is, ship to ship combat is mind numbingly boring.  Age of sail ship battles take days, several days, and possibly weeks, to resolve.  Even when the two ships are actually in a position to shoot at each other, we're talking hours of jockeying for position.  Actual boarding?  Yeah, that happens after many, many hours of not a lot happening.
> 
> In other words, realism here is about as interesting as watching paint dry.



I think this is very illustrative of the difference between accuracy and precision.

To be accurate, these uninteresting parts don't require a lot of modeling in mechanics, the time, effort, and tactics involved simply need to be acknowledged, and dealt with quickly in real time so you can get to the good parts. (I think Stormwrack's narrative combat does a decent job of this, but I haven't used it a lot and my games have been landbound for a while now).

Game mechanics can be very abstract while still acknowledging basic tenets of reality...


> Or, look at the hit point discussions.  People were saying that one day is too short for complete healing, but had no problems with three days.  Which, let's be honest here, is completely unrealistic.  There is no such thing as a potentially fatal wound that you completely recover from in three days.  It just doesn't happen.  So, why should that version of "realistic" be better than another?  Realistic would be months of healing time, possible infection, complications and long term effects.  Again, totally realistic and about as interesting as watching paint dry.



...like health mechanics. The problem with hit points and healing rates isn't that they lack the precision to model every part of the human body, it's that they fail to acknowledge some of the basic parameters of health and injury that create verisimilitude and/or are dramatically interesting.

How many characters in fantasy novels are "mortally wounded", but make one last heroic act or goodbye speech before they die? That can't happen in D&D's health window. How many are scarred, or walk with a limp? How many battles are described by attrition, with the winner gradually injuring the loser until he can no longer fight? We can't have that in an rpg because it would be a "death spiral", as I understand, which is apparently bad.

As to healing, how much of the Lord of the Rings is spent on unhealed characters? Frodo's battle with vile damage from the ringwraith's blade or spider poison or Faramir sitting in bed while others fight for the future of the world? These things are more interesting than paint drying!

Does every injury have to happen as frequently as in real life or as irreversibly? No. You can simplify things, make them abstract. It doesn't have to be all that realistic. But expanding the rules to cover some of the basic possibilities for "stuff that can happen when someone whacks you with a piece of metal" opens up a new world of game tactics and storytelling possibilities.



> It isn't that realism is lame.  It's that people are insistant on beating other people over the head with the wrongbadfun stick and hiding behind claims of "realism".



I haven't seen much of this. I have seen a lot of the reverse: people claiming that because rpgs can't or shouldn't perfectly emulate reality, any move in that direction is foolhardy.

It isn't.


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## amerigoV (Nov 19, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Anymore than a two year old armed with a pin can kill you.  That's the size relations we're talking about.




Although I 100% agree with you -- my 2 year old daughter might just make a great linebacker some day with the way she crashes into me while I am wrestling with her 3 year old brother. She might not kill me with a pin, but I lets not give her one, shall we? 

I like stuff just realistic enough that logical tactics matter (vs. "system tactics" - where the rules says x is better than y).


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## Ahnehnois (Nov 19, 2012)

Umbran said:


> But that doesn't help too much.  Plausibility (being seemingly reasonable or probable) is audience-dependent.  Unless we are unified in what we all think is "reasonable", asking a game to be plausible isn't an objective bar for them to meet.



True, but, other than sales figures, what criteria by which an rpg could be evaluated are not audience dependent? Balance, ease of learning, speed of play, "feel", all of these things are in the eye of the beholder. Plausibility is at least on the same plane as these other things.


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## DM Howard (Nov 19, 2012)

Umbran said:


> But that doesn't help too much.  Plausibility (being seemingly reasonable or probable) is audience-dependent.  Unless we are unified in what we all think is "reasonable", asking a game to be plausible isn't an objective bar for them to meet.




Exactly.  That was my point, it isn't dependent on the system.  Sure Pathfinder has outrageous ideas on what size great swords are but I can find it plausible for me.  It's more of a group conflict thing to me if the idea of realism comes up.


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Nov 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> Somehow "down to earth" or even "realistic" stuff has become so lame in the mind of the current generation of gamers that they do not want to do anything to do with it.




I think you're confusing two issues here, probably flavor versus mechanics.

I like down to earth or realistic flavor. That's one reason I'm a huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire as a fantasy setting. Being a person with honor before reason, for instance, isn't an advantage in the setting. (Well, not usually.) People can die of disease, bad luck, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, etc. Being a socially powerful person actually meant something, like it did in the Middle Ages. I'm a big fan of the Bond movies without stupid gadgets. (My favorites are Bond's knife-in-a-briefcase and his exploding pen. I don't like invisible cars.)

But if you're talking about mechanics... real-life isn't balanced, real-life combat isn't fun, and many other things that adventurers would deal with (logistics, for instance) isn't a whole lot of fun either.


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## ggroy (Nov 20, 2012)

amerigoV said:


> I blame Tolkien and the *Matrix**
> 
> 
> * I knew we were in trouble when I saw a commercial for Charlies Angles and its was all *Matrix-like*.




This sort of thing was around earlier than The Matrix, such as the late-1980's/early-1990's cartoon version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the early-mid 1990's X-Men cartoon.


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## Aeolius (Nov 20, 2012)

Dndungeoneer said:


> I prefer the term plausible to realistic.  I want elements in my games be they Fantasy or Science Fiction to be plausible to the audience.






Umbran said:


> But that doesn't help too much.  Plausibility (being seemingly reasonable or probable) is audience-dependent.




One's willing suspension of disbelief seem to be a bit more developed, when one is a gamer, also. "A shrunken head, talking octopus, and a merman with the lower torso of a jellyfish swim into a bar."  Yeah, I can see that.  But then again when I shine a flashlight in the backyard and see a dozen deer eyes shining back at me, for a hundredth of a second I actually think "ZOMBIES!".

"Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box" - Dr. Fredrik Ullén


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## Umbran (Nov 20, 2012)

Aeolius said:


> "Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box" - Dr. Fredrik Ullén




I am stealing this quote.


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 20, 2012)

Umbran said:


> But that doesn't help too much.  Plausibility (being seemingly reasonable or probable) is audience-dependent.  Unless we are unified in what we all think is "reasonable", asking a game to be plausible isn't an objective bar for them to meet.




People disagree over what constitutes balance as well but that doesn't mean designers can't try to appeal to their audience's sense of balance and plausibility. The more you interact with and know your audience, the more you get a feel for what the find plausible and what they regard as balanced. Its also entirely possible to forge forward using your sense of what is plausible. I don't think we should toss these things out the window simply because there is a subjective element to them. It helps to understand them as being part of a spectrum of preferences, but I do think these are important categories to consider when designing a game (even if that just means the designers asking themselves what plausibility means for the purpose of the game they are making).


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## Aeolius (Nov 20, 2012)

Umbran said:


> I am stealing this quote.




yeah, it's a personal favorite. I found it in an article entitled "Dopamine System in Highly Creative People Similar to That Seen in Schizophrenics". Which also seems to fit.


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## Umbran (Nov 20, 2012)

Dndungeoneer said:


> Exactly.  That was my point, it isn't dependent on the system.




Okay, then we agree - it just wasn't so clear to me in the statement, so I bought it up.



Ahnehnois said:


> True, but, other than sales figures, what criteria by which an rpg could be evaluated are not audience dependent?




Few to none.  But, how often do we see folks try to take their own measure of an aspect of the game to be objective?  I was merely pointing out that while shifting from "realism" to "plausibility" may be a useful change in connotation, it doesn't get around that basic problem.  



Bedrockgames said:


> People disagree over what constitutes balance as well but that doesn't mean designers can't try to appeal to their audience's sense of balance and plausibility.




Quite correct.  This makes it clear that it is now about choosing a particular audience that agrees on the matter.  It shifts the discussion from, "This game is more plausible," to, "I find this game to be more plausible."  The issue is shifted from the game, to the audience, where it should be.

People gripe that the "I find..." or "I feel..." should be understood - but in writing it almost never is.


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## KarinsDad (Nov 20, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I suppose it's worth saying that I feel it should be far tougher to take down something like a full grown dragon than it tends to be in most d20 games I have played.




In my 4E game, every Dragon gets a Class (or sometimes a Functional) Template right off the bat, and many of them have followers, traps, fortifications, etc. The one creature in the game that I make sure is never taken for granted is a Dragon, even if it is lower level than the party. The game is named Dungeons and Dragons after all.


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## technoextreme (Nov 20, 2012)

Derren said:


> Why is that? It can't be because of escapism. We do not live in a medieval/fantasy world so a "down to earth" setting would be equally effective in that.
> And when you look back at the worlds history, especially at how other cultures than your own developed it is easy to see that a lot of interesting things happened there which would inspire your mind equally, if not more so than the usual fantasy cliches we get instead.



Actually if you look back at medieval time periods* you find that it is more bat  crazy insane than even World of Warcraft could ever hope to be.  At that point it actually becomes more fascinating to actually think about what the hell would have actually happened if even a small fraction of the crazy stuff that people like Newton, Honenheim, and god only knows who else believed it becomes a lot more interesting.
*I'm kind of stretching the definition of medieval a bit.


> (My favorites are Bond's knife-in-a-briefcase and his exploding pen. I don't like invisible cars.)



Hahahahah.... You're slamming the most realistic aspect of the entire movie series is kind of sad.  Invisible cars are probably one of the most realistic aspects of the bond movies.  Its really kind of insane but its actually more grounded in reality than any of the other gadgets.


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## Nytmare (Nov 20, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> You're slamming the most realistic aspect of the entire movie series is kind of sad.





Most.  Realistic?  Aspect.


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## technoextreme (Nov 20, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> Most.  Realistic?  Aspect.



Surprisingly yes.  It involves a relatively* new field of materials science that involves nanostructures which have optical properties that aren't common in nature.  Basically it involves creating materials with index of refractions that are negative which are nonexistent in nature.   In fact we have been able to make 2d claoking devices that work in the microwave range.  Scaling it up towards the color range of light involves more engineering and advances in nanoscales materials.  This happens all the time in engineering and science. 

Admittedly, I know what the person meant is that it should be a bit more grounded in terms of gadgetry but then again absurd technology was something that was always a part of James Bond mythos.

*In a fit of irony I actually think most of the advances made in making said materials postdate the movie.  Conceptually it actually is an old idea from 1967.


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## Nytmare (Nov 20, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> Surprisingly yes.




What I'm marveling at the fact that you're considering a scientifically sound, yet theoretical bit of engineering to be more realistic than a knife in a briefcase or a watch with a garrote wire.


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## Balesir (Nov 21, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> How many characters in fantasy novels are "mortally wounded", but make one last heroic act or goodbye speech before they die? That can't happen in D&D's health window. How many are scarred, or walk with a limp? How many battles are described by attrition, with the winner gradually injuring the loser until he can no longer fight? We can't have that in an rpg because it would be a "death spiral", as I understand, which is apparently bad.



Not only is it bad, it also seems to be "unrealistic". There is reasonable evidence that adrenaline makes sure that animals (including humans) are as little impeded by wounds as you could imagine (i.e. only affected by the actual biomechanical damage, not by any abstract "pain modifier") until such time as they become non-functional from a combat perspective. The point where they become non-functional varies enormously - it can be after the first, even relatively minor, wound or after taking severe physical punishment. The likelihood of early disablement can be affected by drugs, wound severity and type and the state of mind of the combatant. A clear theory of "hors de combat determinacy" doesn't exist, though - it might as well be essentially random.



Ahnehnois said:


> Does every injury have to happen as frequently as in real life or as irreversibly? No. You can simplify things, make them abstract. It doesn't have to be all that realistic. But expanding the rules to cover some of the basic possibilities for "stuff that can happen when someone whacks you with a piece of metal" opens up a new world of game tactics and storytelling possibilities.



It certainly does, which is why I thoroughly agree with *sometimes* using rules that make elegant, creatively abstract use of such phenomenae.

On the other hand, it also closes off a (different) world of game tactics and storytelling possibilities - which is why I vehemently disagree with using such rules on all occasions.


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## ggroy (Nov 21, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Because you now have one player riding the pines for several months while his character heals, while the other characters are doing all this fun stuff.  Never minding, of course, that at low levels, it's pretty much impossible for any of the PC's to actually engage in any of those in-game activities.  But, at the end of the day, I don't play D&D to be a spectator.  And even half-way realistic healing would force far too many players to ride the pines far too often.




Back in the day, I played in some games where the DM did things so slow that it would take many sessions (or over a month in offline time) for characters to heal up.

What ended up happening was the "riding the pines" players just spent all their game session time doing something else like:  watching television, reading a book, playing video games, etc ...  They only responded whenever the DM asked them.  Otherwise they were largely disengaged and just "biding time".

After awhile, some players just stopped showing up altogether until their characters were fully healed up.  Apparently they saw no point in showing up at all when their characters were just "riding the pines".


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## Ahnehnois (Nov 21, 2012)

Balesir said:


> It certainly does, which is why I thoroughly agree with *sometimes* using rules that make elegant, creatively abstract use of such phenomenae.
> 
> On the other hand, it also closes off a (different) world of game tactics and storytelling possibilities - which is why I vehemently disagree with using such rules on all occasions.



My gripe is that the rules of the most popular rpg don't even have language or structure to describe any type of meaningful injury, merely a counter that runs out and causes you to die. I certainly agree that the decision to actually use such rules is a complex one, and that they are more appropriate for some circumstances than others.

Personally, I use much more realistic injury rules when playing CoC than when playing D&D, because I think the former game's style benefits more from it.



> Not only is it bad, it also seems to be "unrealistic". There is reasonable evidence that adrenaline makes sure that animals (including humans) are as little impeded by wounds as you could imagine (i.e. only affected by the actual biomechanical damage, not by any abstract "pain modifier") until such time as they become non-functional from a combat perspective. The point where they become non-functional varies enormously - it can be after the first, even relatively minor, wound or after taking severe physical punishment. The likelihood of early disablement can be affected by drugs, wound severity and type and the state of mind of the combatant.



Indeed, this is a very difficult situation to create game rules for. As it is, all editions of D&D that I am aware of have a predictable "death window", a small period of time when characters become unconscious and lose hit points and die. I think a greater variety of possible outcomes would be beneficial, though modeling all the factors that determine those outcomes and estimating their relative probabilities is likely unfeasible. Given the fluidity of the situation, I think the ability to persevere through severe wounds is a great venue for extending the capabilities of the martial classes, not necessarily more realistic per se.


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## Balesir (Nov 21, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> Indeed, this is a very difficult situation to create game rules for. As it is, all editions of D&D that I am aware of have a predictable "death window", a small period of time when characters become unconscious and lose hit points and die. I think a greater variety of possible outcomes would be beneficial, though modeling all the factors that determine those outcomes and estimating their relative probabilities is likely unfeasible. Given the fluidity of the situation, I think the ability to persevere through severe wounds is a great venue for extending the capabilities of the martial classes, not necessarily more realistic per se.



For more realistic wounding and recovery I just use HârnMaster (or the variant "GunMaster" that was done for it) without counting penalties for IPs during combat. It fits the requirement almost exactly.

D&D I think just doesn't work at all well for that style of game, so I'm not really interested in modifying it in what seems to me to be a doomed attempt to make it fit something it's fundamentally unsuited to.

The heroic, movie-esque (and yet totally unscripted) type of play that "realistic" wounds and recovery effectively shut down, however, I think D&D - especially 4E - does surpassingly well. So I use it for that.


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 21, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Not only is it bad, it also seems to be "unrealistic". There is reasonable evidence that adrenaline makes sure that animals (including humans) are as little impeded by wounds as you could imagine (i.e. only affected by the actual biomechanical damage, not by any abstract "pain modifier") until such time as they become non-functional from a combat perspective. The point where they become non-functional varies enormously - it can be after the first, even relatively minor, wound or after taking severe physical punishment. The likelihood of early disablement can be affected by drugs, wound severity and type and the state of mind of the combatant. A clear theory of "hors de combat determinacy" doesn't exist, though - it might as well be essentially random.
> 
> 
> ilities - which is why I vehemently disagree with using such rules on all occasions.




I am not sure I buy this argument. I think whether you have wound penalties or not is more a matter of taste than anything else, but I have never really regarded them as simple "pain" modifiers. They are meant to simulate injuries that impede function as well as pain. 

Wound penalties are not a perfect simulation of real combat, but I do personally find them more realistic than ignoring the effects of physical damage entirely (until the person falls). Whether they are better for a given game, is a different matter. For D&D I dont think they fit the kind of play it is designed for.


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## pemerton (Nov 21, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> If it's going to take several months to heal, what's wrong with the GM explaining to the players how much time they have, and then asking them what they'd like to do during that time?





Hussar said:


> Because you now have one player riding the pines for several months while his character heals



Burning Wheel has an interesting way of handling this. First, it has practice rules - so while PC 1 heals, PC 2 can practice.

Two, its advancement rules make it a requirement, for advancement, to take on challenges you probably can't win. And when you're wounded, those sorts of challenges are actually easier to have (because your numbers are lower, because of the wound penalties). So players of wounded PCs have an incentive not to just ride the pines, but to get out into the thick of it despite their wounds.

This might seem like a recipe for a (slow) death spiral, but the rules for adjudicating failed actions in BW emphasise "fail forward", so taking your wounded PC out to get hosed in the attempt to earn advancement will take the game into places that suck for your character, but are interesting for you!


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## Balesir (Nov 21, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not sure I buy this argument. I think whether you have wound penalties or not is more a matter of taste than anything else, but I have never really regarded them as simple "pain" modifiers. They are meant to simulate injuries that impede function as well as pain.



What rules you use are a matter of taste, to be sure; what I'm trying to say is that there seems to be evidence to support a range of possibilities. The most recent studies seem to say that a lack of wound penalties is "realistic" - but the older assumption that this was not so is by no means comprehensively "disproved". I find that playing with biomechanical limitations (e.g., in HM, you can't use a limb that has a serious level wound or worse) but no "wound penalites" is simpler, quicker and quite acceptably believeable. Your mileage, quite naturally, may vary.



Bedrockgames said:


> Wound penalties are not a perfect simulation of real combat, but I do personally find them more realistic than ignoring the effects of physical damage entirely (until the person falls). Whether they are better for a given game, is a different matter. For D&D I dont think they fit the kind of play it is designed for.



Yep - this is pretty much my view, too. For the right game, "realistic" wound and recovery systems are a very distinct benefit. For D&D I don't find them to be so.


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## Aaron L (Nov 21, 2012)

*Th Cheapening of the Fantastic*

I view it as a cheapening of the fantastic, magic becoming commonplace and therefore desensitizing people to how wondrous it's supposed to be.

All the time, I see threads with people complaining about how magic doesn't "feel magical" anymore, and they don't understand why.  And yet they then go on to describe how their characters have 7 magic  swords and 10 magic wands and 3 pairs of magic boots and 2 pairs of magic underpants.  Too many people don't seem to realize that when EVERYTHING is magical, magic becomes mundane and ordinary and BORING.

At some point, if we're letting things become so detached from reality, we may as well set the standard height of humans at 7 feet, and set average human strength as able to bench press 400 pounds. 

I believe that the game should be rooted in reality, and things that aren't supposed to be inherently fantastic or magical should be as close to real life as possible.  Without a firm grounding in reality, the fantastic elements of stories and games are cheapened.  What makes a dragon special if you see ten every day?  What makes magic special if you see 4 spells cast before breakfast, and eat that breakfast off of a magically glowing plate?  If you want the fantastic elements of a story (or whatever) to be seen as adequately fantastic or magical, you really need to have the majority and base elements of the world be mundane and rooted in reality, or EVERYTHING will seem fantastic, and by extension, eventually NOTHING will seem fantastic anymore, because the fantastic becomes standard and mundane.  If magic become common then it is ordinary.


I also know quite a few people who simply wouldn't believe me that historic "longswords" (or arming swords, historic "longswords" would be bastard swords in D&D terms) were only about 3 feet long and weighed around 2-3 pounds, and two-handed swords were only about 5 feet long and didn't weight more than about 7 pounds, because they'd become so used to the ridiculously exaggerated depictions in D&D and videogames that they just couldn't conceive that things weren't like that in real life.  I showed them actual photographs of real, historic "longswords" and they dismissed them as shortswords or rapiers!  In fact,  MOST D&D players believe this stuff, to the point that "D&D player" has become something of an insult in some forums that discuss historic swords, because of the horribly distorted image of swords that most D&D players have.



Now, as for games where healing takes a more realistic, longer time for characters to heal, well, in my gaming group, any time one character was laid up and needed a large amount of time to heal, such as in some of our AD&D 1E games without a Cleric, the other players had the common courtesy to wait for him to heal, rather than go right back out adventuring without their wounded companion (and thus leaving me as his player twiddling my thumbs.)

If I was playing with a group that consistently left my character in the dust to go adventuring without him (and consequently leaving me as a player to sit around doing nothing) rather than simply have their characters "wait" for my character to heal up, (which would consist of everyone as players simply saying "we wait for him to heal up" and not taking any time away from the players at all) I would stop playing with them rather quickly.  I would consider it to be _extremely_ rude and selfish.  

Now, if there was a time-sensitive issue that needed to be taken care of and the other characters just couldn't afford to wait for mine to heal because it would cause them to miss the window of opportunity to accomplish something important, then that's different.  But if the other players simply wouldn't allow their characters to "waste time" on me (by waiting for my character to heal) just so they could get back to routine, non-time sensitive adventuring, then I would consider them to be extremely rude, inconsiderate people, and would quit playing with them rather quickly.


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## Nytmare (Nov 21, 2012)

Aaron L said:


> At some point, if we're letting things become so detached from reality, we may as well set the standard height of humans at 7 feet, and set average human strength as able to bench press 400 pounds.




They're waaaaaay ahead of you there:  http://www.lhup.edu/tmitchel/wmst/pope.pdf


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## Aeolius (Nov 21, 2012)

Aaron L said:


> I believe that the game should be rooted in reality, and things that aren't supposed to be inherently fantastic or magical should be as close to real life as possible.  Without a firm grounding in reality, the fantastic elements of stories and games are cheapened.



   Agreed. "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" is easier with a dose of realism.


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## Hussar (Nov 22, 2012)

Meh, adding in long term wounds to 4e is very, very easy.  Disease track is right there for dealing with that.  We use it in our Dark Sun game.  Easy peasy.  Any time you drop below 0 HP, you get put on the wound track - heal checks to get better, suffer penalties until such time as you do.  

This is not hard at all.



			
				Aaron L said:
			
		

> I believe that the game should be rooted in reality, and things that aren't supposed to be inherently fantastic or magical should be as close to real life as possible. Without a firm grounding in reality, the fantastic elements of stories and games are cheapened. What makes a dragon special if you see ten every day? What makes magic special if you see 4 spells cast before breakfast, and eat that breakfast off of a magically glowing plate? If you want the fantastic elements of a story (or whatever) to be seen as adequately fantastic or magical, you really need to have the majority and base elements of the world be mundane and rooted in reality, or EVERYTHING will seem fantastic, and by extension, eventually NOTHING will seem fantastic anymore, because the fantastic becomes standard and mundane. If magic become common then it is ordinary.




I'd point out that this has been true for D&D since day one.  As a player, you see magic spells being used all the time - either healing or the wizard firing away.  You have magic items being pretty commonly placed as treasure - most treasure types had around a 10% chance of 1-4 magic items.  After a couple of levels worth of adventuring, it's not uncommon to be lugging around a fair chunk of magic.

D&D has never been all that fantastic, as far as the magic system goes.  It's been common as dirt.  Sensawunda doesn't come from +1 swords.  It comes from what happens in the game.  If you want your players to go "Ohh gosh golley" because they found a magic sword, D&D is not the game for you.


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## OpsKT (Nov 22, 2012)

Been a while since I've been here. Like the new layout. 

Now, about the realism, I like varying levels depending on what I am doing. Hard sci-fi? The really brutal combat of Eclipse Phase is awesome, and the granularity of skills. Pulp action? Savage Worlds is perfect. 

Heck, even in traditional fantasy, we have games that are all over the scale. Pathfinder is considered (except the magic and hp bits) to be more 'realistic' or 'simulationist' than 4e, which is a high action movie with swords. 

These days games are going away from realism cause we live in the real world, and right now it kinda sucks. The realistic games, it seems to my old memory, where most popular during the 90's, when everything seemed fine and life was good and beer was cheap. 

Entertainment reflects the environments people want to escape by what the entertainment doesn't model.


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## Lanefan (Nov 22, 2012)

As some have said, making the game 100% realistic just won't work -  even beyond the magic issue - as things would largely grind to a halt.

That said, where realism *can* be easily inserted I'd prefer it if it was.  Some examples of where realism can be (re)inserted to the game without upsetting too many apple carts:

 - rerolling or randomizing initiative order each round to reflect the chaos of any battle
 - at least a vague passing nod to facing rules: a shield can't help you against everyone when you're surrounded, etc.
 - allowing or forcing things - particularly movement and spellcasting - to take time within a combat round; as in "You start your [spell, move] on initiative x, it'll take y amount of time, so you'll be done on initiative z"
 - allowing simultaneous actions in combat - maybe use a much smaller initiative die with the expectation that lots happens in each segment - in other words, move away from the very unrealistic strict turn-based system
 - going to a body-fatigue or wound-vitality h.p. system (though all h.p. have to have at least a tiny "meat" quotient otherwise poison becomes mostly useless)
 - forcing an aiming roll for all non-targeted spells
 - henches, hirelings, cohorts, guides, etc. should appear much more often
 - a sphere is a sphere, not pixellated or "squared"
 - everything (stats, h.p., spell and-or skill access, etc.) is on a bell curve, as that's how reality works; and balance be damned
 - alignments are shades of gray rather than black-and-white; and everybody has one
 - a default, clearly stated, that basic things (weather, gravity, magnetism, plant and animal life, etc.) work the same as they do on Earth unless the DM declares otherwise
 - some serious restraint on the art department; it's easier to take a realistic image and use imagination to add the fantastic than it is to take an over-the-top image and imagine it toned down, and the game's art sets the overall tone for the game (in 4e _Worlds and Monsters_ pretty much had it right, but for some reason it fell apart after that)
 - provide a reasonable physics-based reason as to what magic is and why it works.  It's not difficult - it can't be; as I've already done it for my own game surely a trained professional game designer can come up with something better in a heartbeat.

Lan-"denying any irresponsibility for apples falling out of carts"-efan


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## Libramarian (Nov 23, 2012)

Capitalism. Reality is in the public domain.


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## Hussar (Nov 23, 2012)

You are actually going to use alignment and realism in the same sentence?



			
				Lanefan said:
			
		

> - alignments are shades of gray rather than black-and-white; and everybody has one


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## Nytmare (Nov 23, 2012)

Hussar said:


> You are actually going to use alignment and realism in the same sentence?




To be fair, he followed it up with a request for a scientific explanation for  how something that breaks all the rules of science works.

Lanefan, I'm blaming you for midichlorians from this point out.


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## Janx (Nov 24, 2012)

Nytmare said:


> Does Call of Duty have spikey armor, and buster swords?




as compared to Halo?

at least 2 shots can kill a man in CoD.  Halo, you'll empty 2 clips to take down a man.


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## Neonchameleon (Nov 25, 2012)

Libramarian said:


> Capitalism. Reality is in the public domain.




Something that was a great worry to Homer, Valmiki, Wu Cheng'en, Ariosto, and Spenser I'm sure.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 25, 2012)

Janx said:


> as compared to Halo?
> 
> at least 2 shots can kill a man in CoD.  Halo, you'll empty 2 clips to take down a man.




Well Halo does take place in a sci-fi future.  If you're a genetically engineered super soldier in power armor with an energy shield, it would make sense to be able to stand up to getting shot a few times.  

The aliens could take a beating as well.


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## Elf Witch (Nov 25, 2012)

I have this issue a lot I prefer a little more realism and less who hoo in my games. And for a long time I could not figure out what my problem was. 

I compare all games to what I considered the best game I ever played which was a home brew 3.0 game when 3.0 first came out. Looking back on what made it so special besides the role playing was the way the DM managed the game we played just shy of two years every week yet we never got over ninth level.

It was low magic with not a lot of magic items and not a lot of clerical magic. The only magic in the party was a fighter/wizard and my character a sorcerer who I did not build as a blaster but more as an investigator and party support. There were not tons of source books and the DM used a variant damage system.

The party never became the most powerful SOBs around yes we were more powerful than villagers and we could handle a lot but there was no way we were going by ourselves take on and unseat the powerful evil Elven Bright Kingdom. The city we were in the Keepers of the City together were far more powerful than us but that was as long as they stayed in their city.    

I started to realize my main issue is that once you get over a certain level it becomes almost impossible to keep any kind of realism in the game. 

I am finding the more I play that I am  getting tired of level based play it leads to superheroes way to fast. You start out as an adventure at 16 and by 18 you are a god. 

I love fantasy novels and very few have magic as powerful as it is in DnD or fighters and rogues who can fall from great heights and get up and brush off their bottom and get up and walk away and that is not a fluke or a gift from the gods. 

I don't want it to be so realistic that healing takes months but I would like to see disease and poison be more than just a minor nuisance. And while I do like the idea of coming back from the dead I would like to see some kind of consequence for it. 

I would like to see penalties for wearing heavy armor all day long and I would like to see and end to spells that just create food and water from nothing. All these little things that can make adventuring more difficult is swept away with a spell. 

That is the little touches of realism I would like to see.


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## Balesir (Nov 25, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I started to realize my main issue is that once you get over a certain level it becomes almost impossible to keep any kind of realism in the game.



Nicely explained!

I've said it before, and I still think it's true, that the game that would suit you best is HârnMaster. You don't need to invest in anything - take a look here and sample some of the free downloads. In particular the "Friends, Foes and Followers" series (a collection of NPCs for a "realistic" medieval setting, light on system and heavy on fluff) and the "Anya's Vale" site are worth a look - although there's absolutely tons there if you get "bitten by the bug". There's also a very friendly forum attached where you can ask questions and find answers to all manner of queries.


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 25, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Nicely explained!
> 
> I've said it before, and I still think it's true, that the game that would suit you best is HârnMaster. You don't need to invest in anything - take a look here and sample some of the free downloads. In particular the "Friends, Foes and Followers" series (a collection of NPCs for a "realistic" medieval setting, light on system and heavy on fluff) and the "Anya's Vale" site are worth a look - although there's absolutely tons there if you get "bitten by the bug". There's also a very friendly forum attached where you can ask questions and find answers to all manner of queries.




I have to second harnmaster. The only thing to keep in mind if you buy the books is they are in three ring binder, loose-leaf form. Sme people are a bit surprised by that. The downside it is a bit more difficult to read through than a proper book (at least in my opinion) but the upside is once you start getting more packets its so easy to customize your folder. 

Even if you end up not liking the system, definitely check out the setting material.


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## Balesir (Nov 25, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I have to second harnmaster. The only thing to keep in mind if you buy the books is they are in three ring binder, loose-leaf form. Sme people are a bit surprised by that. The downside it is a bit more difficult to read through than a proper book (at least in my opinion) but the upside is once you start getting more packets its so easy to customize your folder.



Thanks for the second! The easiest way to get HM these days is as a PDF, so you can have it printed by Lulu or something to your own specifications  I like the binder format, personally, but can well understand those who prefer a "proper book".



Bedrockgames said:


> Even if you end up not liking the system, definitely check out the setting material.



Hârn has an interesting history. It started out as a systemless world setting - and you can still treat it that way, if that suits you. But feedback in the '80s was that no extant system really did the setting "properly" - so a purpose-made system was created. For my money, it's still the best system for playing in a "world you can almost reach out and touch".


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## Elf Witch (Nov 25, 2012)

I have looked at Harn and when things are less chaotic in my life I am going to purchase it. Right now I am not gaming at all. My game is on hold my roommate game is on hold. Real life issues of unemployment and health issues are in the forefront. I am going to be facing major spinal surgery in the new year.  

After all that I am going to look at changing over to Harn. 

I have also been looking at E6 which also limits the higher level power creep.

One of my players is really upset over my decision he just loves DnD and I think he feels I don't like the game any longer and that is not really true. I am burned out and I am bored with it. DnD is its on style of fantasy and it really does not support well a lot of variety of different styles. I am not talking flavor. If you want a low magic game DnD is not that ,not without a lot of work on the DMs part to try and keep things in balance by taking spells, classes and whole lot of things out.

There are times I do enjoy DnD style fantasy and want to play a game and I am beginning to realize I enjoy playing far more than I enjoy DMing it. It is not the amount of prep work. It is that the rules keep getting in the way of being able to bring my world to life.


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 25, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I have looked at Harn and when things are less chaotic in my life I am going to purchase it. Right now I am not gaming at all. My game is on hold my roommate game is on hold. Real life issues of unemployment and health issues are in the forefront. I am going to be facing major spinal surgery in the new year.
> 
> After all that I am going to look at changing over to Harn.
> 
> ...




Sorry to hear about your health issues. I hope the surgery improves things for you. Gaming when you are sick can definitely be difficult (and when you are not well, energy is often hard to come by). For the last two years I have been dealing with serious complications from crohns disease and it had a huge impact on my gaming. Earlier this year I blogged about gaming through illness (if you think it might be helpful feel free to check it out: http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/gaming-through-illness.html). 

I am also someone who doesn't play much D&D anymore. I used to play it a lot but now I prefer either a game like Harn (for more realism), or Savage Worlds (for cinematic stuff). I also play my own games, which are a pretty good blend of gritty and rules light. When different people in your group want to play different things it can be tricky to keep everyone happy. Best thing in my opinion is to have a frank discussion where everyone can freely give their opinion. You may be able to strike a compromise if you know what folks want. My own solution is to game with a few different groups.


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## Elf Witch (Nov 25, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Sorry to hear about your health issues. I hope the surgery improves things for you. Gaming when you are sick can definitely be difficult (and when you are not well, energy is often hard to come by). For the last two years I have been dealing with serious complications from crohns disease and it had a huge impact on my gaming. Earlier this year I blogged about gaming through illness (if you think it might be helpful feel free to check it out: http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/gaming-through-illness.html).
> 
> I am also someone who doesn't play much D&D anymore. I used to play it a lot but now I prefer either a game like Harn (for more realism), or Savage Worlds (for cinematic stuff). I also play my own games, which are a pretty good blend of gritty and rules light. When different people in your group want to play different things it can be tricky to keep everyone happy. Best thing in my opinion is to have a frank discussion where everyone can freely give their opinion. You may be able to strike a compromise if you know what folks want. My own solution is to game with a few different groups.




I will check your blog out.

Between my back injury and the pain and worrying about money and paying the bills my hobbies have suffered. For one thing my patience is very thin I get frustrated very easily and the pain medication dulls my senses so it is hard to concentrate. 

I think one of the biggest fears my players have is that all they know is DnD they are worried they don't have the time to learn a new system or the money to invest in a new system. Most of them are in their 40s and are set in their ways sure in their younger days they played different things.

It is not that DnD is going away my roomie will be still running her game though when it finishes she is switching to Pathfinder but they are fine with that. She runs adventure paths. And we have all enjoyed for the most part Age of Worms. So DnD will still be there.

I am the one who runs home brews and am finding that DnD just does not work for me for the most part.


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## Hussar (Nov 26, 2012)

Elf Witch - I think the realization that D&D is not the be all and end all of gaming happens to a lot of us.    And, I think you are completely right - D&D is its own fantasy and works best when the players and DM's accept that.  Instead of trying to constantly try to shoehorn D&D into other molds, just enjoy the ride.  Because, to be honest, I think it's a pretty smooth ride when you let D&D be its own thing.

And, yeah, it can be a real challenge breaking gamers out of the rut of only one game.  I'd suggest doing a few one shots just to see what people latch onto.  Savage Worlds is actually surprisingly crunchy and it's not as rules light as I thought when I first started.  It's a great one shot game when people have at least a passing familiarity with the system, but, it's not the easiest thing to jump into cold.

Fortunately, there's a bajillion systems out there.


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## Elf Witch (Nov 26, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Elf Witch - I think the realization that D&D is not the be all and end all of gaming happens to a lot of us.    And, I think you are completely right - D&D is its own fantasy and works best when the players and DM's accept that.  Instead of trying to constantly try to shoehorn D&D into other molds, just enjoy the ride.  Because, to be honest, I think it's a pretty smooth ride when you let D&D be its own thing.
> 
> And, yeah, it can be a real challenge breaking gamers out of the rut of only one game.  I'd suggest doing a few one shots just to see what people latch onto.  Savage Worlds is actually surprisingly crunchy and it's not as rules light as I thought when I first started.  It's a great one shot game when people have at least a passing familiarity with the system, but, it's not the easiest thing to jump into cold.
> 
> Fortunately, there's a bajillion systems out there.




That is what I have started to realize as a DM, as a player is just not as noticeable yes there were times I would get frustrated trying to do things with my character that the system would let me do easily but usually a few tweaks and I had something close. 

I have all these great ideas for my campaign world and the players tell me they love the world and want more. I am now on page four of different house rules and tweaks and they are level 5. They want a lot of political intrigue especially among the churches. And that gets very hard to pull off once you start getting all the divination magic and detect spells. 

They like the idea of a more gritty realistic world where plagues have swept across the cities and people are afraid of strangers and clerics of different churches don't get together and sing kumba ya. 

I like the idea of social skill rolls because it allows shy players a chance to play a more diplomatic character but it kind of annoys me that the bard at fourth level was adding a +8 to his roll. 

Especially because in actual world time they had only been together four months hardly time for this wet behind the ears apprentice who just set out on his own to be able to have that kind of influence over high ranking members of the church or the other major guilds. It was not realistic to me. 

DnD is not meant to run this style of game. After reading these forums for the last ten years I think a lot of people who are unhappy and want a fix is because like me they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. DnD will never be one game to rule them all no matter how well the rules are written.

I admit it is a little scary for me to think about DMing a new system I have never played in.  I am not a rules person my strength as a DM is my story telling and the fact that I know the rules because I have played under some wonderful DMs and some bad DMs. So the idea of being the one figuring out the rules and introducing them at the table makes me nervous.

But to answer the OP realism is not lame but it was really never apart of DnD not really and I think once you realize that it makes it easier to see if DnD is the eight system for a more realistic style campaign.


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## Balesir (Nov 28, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I have looked at Harn and when things are less chaotic in my life I am going to purchase it. Right now I am not gaming at all. My game is on hold my roommate game is on hold. Real life issues of unemployment and health issues are in the forefront. I am going to be facing major spinal surgery in the new year.



Sorry to hear about your health issues - I hope they all work out for you.

Burnout is an occasional occupational hazard of GMing - especially if you are trying to "force fit" the game you want to play into a system that doesn't support it very well. You seem to be doing the right thing, though - take a break, get real life tamed a bit and maybe play a little. I'm confident you'll be back, but it would be well to make sure it's on your own terms, when and with what you want to run.


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## Zhaleskra (Dec 9, 2012)

I long ago stopped talking about "realism" in games and replaced it with "believability". Although a game world may bend the known laws of physics, I except it to act consistently within its own laws of physics, and the ones it doesn't bend don't change. Gravity still exists and works exactly the same, yet huge dragons have some way of defying it despite their wings not being proportional to lift a being of their size. And because a lot of dragons have magic, A Wizard Did It is a reasonable explanation.


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## Loonook (Dec 10, 2012)

Zhaleskra said:


> Gravity still exists and works exactly the same, yet huge dragons have some way of defying it despite their wings not being proportional to lift a being of their size.




Two Words: Living Zeppelin.  All that ignition, lightning, bubbling chemical goop has to do wicked things within the Dragon.

The real problem is what happens when they lose altitude... 

Slainte,

-Loonook.


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## CroBob (Dec 11, 2012)

Derren said:


> I just wonder. Games add more and more over the top stuff to appeal to their target audience and I can't really understand why this is necessary.
> 
> Somehow "down to earth" or even "realistic" stuff has become so lame in the mind of the current generation of gamers that they do not want to do anything to do with it. For fantasy this means among other things armor has to be non-functional and covered in spikes and swords have to be giant slabs of metal no person could wield.
> Why is that? It can't be because of escapism. We do not live in a medieval/fantasy world so a "down to earth" setting would be equally effective in that.
> ...




Because realistic = very like real life, and real life = boring. Put on a 40 pound suit of armor, pop that 80 pound ruck-sack on your back, add a weapon to four on there, some knives, maybe some stickychewy, then walk around the country side.

Fire some bottle rockets at people who try to pick a fight with you, since there's no such thing as Magic Missiles.

Fall ten feet and break both your legs, and then don't get healed by a mystical cleric type.

Real life is not a fun setting for the kinds of things people do in D&D. Oh, not to mention all the monsters; Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Dragons, demons, etc... they don't exist. There are no plots to steal king's souls through seduction, or to tear the prime material plane into the Hells to add a layer and turn the Blood War in the Devils' favor, or to resurrect ancient snake gods, or whatever.

D&D has never been remotely realistic, and people claiming they want realism from it, frankly, I don't believe. Or else they'd remove magic, Gods, and everything else that's not realistic. If you want realism, play a game designed to be realistic. I've never found an RPG that was too terribly concerned about being realistic.


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## Aeolius (Dec 11, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Because realistic = very like real life, and real life = boring... I've never found an RPG that was too terribly concerned about being realistic.






Aaron L said:


> I believe that the game should be rooted in reality, and things that aren't supposed to be inherently fantastic or magical should be as close to real life as possible.  Without a firm grounding in reality, the fantastic elements of stories and games are cheapened.




This. Rooted in Reality. You give the players something familiar to latch onto as a springboard, then add fantastical elements as the icing on the cake.

Envision forests of branching coral the size of mighty trees, stretching upwards toward the surface atop mountainous seamounts. Or perhaps a jungle of free-floating sargassum seaweed would be more to your liking. Imagine a bramble of living sea stars, sea urchin barrens, or a dead coral 'desert'. You would do well to avoid the poisoned waters near the plumes of black smokers or the deadly undersea lakes known as cold seeps. Swiftly flowing underwater rivers can be found in abyssal trenches, assuming you pass the tidal bores and internal waves to each them. Boring? Nah. And that's without the icing.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 11, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Because realistic = very like real life, and real life = boring. Put on a 40 pound suit of armor, pop that 80 pound ruck-sack on your back, add a weapon to four on there, some knives, maybe some stickychewy, then walk around the country side.
> 
> Fire some bottle rockets at people who try to pick a fight with you, since there's no such thing as Magic Missiles.
> 
> ...




Since I am one of the people who like a bit more realism in my game world let me try and explain what I mean by that. I love fantasy and magic you can have all kinds of fantastic things with out breaking the suspension of disbelief. I can believe in dragons and gods and magic what makes me go ugg is having a mundane character fall from terminal velocity and live and not by a miracle but simply because of hit points. Or facing an army with the kingdoms best archers but because of the rules the party of four can just stand there and stick their tongues out because they are higher level than the army. 

I also have an issue with a someone who has been adventuring for three months game time is now high enough level to be the biggest bad ass in the kingdom.  

Even when using fantastic things there has to be some kind of logic and rules on how this magic works. It has to have an internal consistency. 

 Some games manage to do this Shadowrun for example I don't care how experienced you get how much cyberware you get no matter how good a shot you are being surrounded by a bunch of people holding weapons is never going to be a cake walk.   

This is the kind of realism I like in my RPGs either that or a reason other than metagame why a fighter can fall from terminal velocity and live every time or fall in lava and have enough hit points to be rescued before being I don't know killed instantly.


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## Hussar (Dec 12, 2012)

And, fortunately, as you mention Elf Witch, there are games which handle this better than others.  GURPS and Shadowrun are both pretty good about keeping things pretty well grounded in "realism".  I'm using scare quotes there because what's meant by realism can be pretty different for different people.  D&D has never been a game that does this though.  At least, not by high level.  And it's not a secret.  I remember an old Dragon magazine cartoon where they have this barbarian tied to a tree studded with arrows and a firing squad is shooting arrows at him.  The guy in the background says something to the effect of, "Ok boys, keep shooting, he's got thirty HP left."

So, when things like the OP talk about how it's changed so much and that the action is now all over the top, all I can do is go back to our early AD&D games where the Dieties and Demigods was just a really high level Monster Manual.


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## Janx (Dec 12, 2012)

Hussar said:


> I remember an old Dragon magazine cartoon where they have this barbarian tied to a tree studded with arrows and a firing squad is shooting arrows at him.  The guy in the background says something to the effect of, "Ok boys, keep shooting, he's got thirty HP left."




think it could get bogged down with all the "exception" rules, but I wonder how much of these situations can't be solved with situational rules?

For instance, Executions.  If you are tied up, and about to be executed, it's not a coup de grace attack.  The executioner simply kills you with his attack.  No roll.  You're dead.  You ability to avoid this fate is tied to any immunities/protections, or what you should have done to avoid this point.

Falling from great heights: no cap on maximum damage.  It's 1d6 per 10 feet.  period.  High PCs may survive a 50 foot fall, but not falling out of an airplane after joining the mile high club is 500d6, give or take, and the math with solve the problem.  terminal velocity ain't worth modelling, if it means people fall from airplanes and live.

Lava should inflict way more damage, just by proximity.  being with 5-10 feet of lava in the real world causes burns.  So crank up the damage by proximity to 1d6 damage per 10 feet under 50 foot distance.  Or whatever Wikipedia says the safe distance is.

Being surrounded by hostiles should fall under the overbearing rules from 2e, which enabled the angry mob of peasants to take down the 20th level PC.

Sure, this could turn into a long list of situational rules, but I don't see how they would drastically change D&D, other than correcting a few of the more extreme unrealisms that come up.


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## Balesir (Dec 12, 2012)

Sure, you could add a range of additional "situation" rules to D&D to handle such things, but, given that there are sets of rules out there that deal with the "unrealisms" just by their inherent structure as rules, why bother? Why not just use D&D for what D&D does well, and those other rule sets for what they do well?


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## Janx (Dec 12, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Sure, you could add a range of additional "situation" rules to D&D to handle such things, but, given that there are sets of rules out there that deal with the "unrealisms" just by their inherent structure as rules, why bother? Why not just use D&D for what D&D does well, and those other rule sets for what they do well?




Because odds are good I would find fault with those other rules just as easily for making different "realism mistakes"

Personally, I don't have a problem with D&D, it is the primary ruleset I play with.  I don't have a long list of house rules for it either.  But I just demonstrated some simple fixes for what folks complained about that I wouldn't find overly complex or invasive to the design.


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## Hussar (Dec 13, 2012)

Honestly, I think the best fix for anything like that is:

DM's, talk to your players when things like this come up.  If everyone agrees that it's ridiculous, go with what feels right to the group.  Don't be a dick about it, but, make the feelings of the table resolve the action, rather than strict adherence to the rules.​
And, if someone says, "No, but, hey, you can totally survive a fall from an airplane", just let it slide and move on.  By and large, it's really not worth getting worked up over.  If it bothers you and your group all the time, then it's time to start perusing other systems.  And this applies to any gaming system.


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## Umbran (Dec 13, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Because realistic = very like real life, and real life = boring.




Or, to put it more simply - realism is lame because reality is lame.

I've a friend who is an engineer in real life.  He plays the best darned mad scientist in my Deadlands game, in part because it allows him to do all the things he'd want to do, but cannot, because the Universe simply doesn't work that way.  The player generalized this into something he called the "Too Cool Rule".  The Too Cool Rule simply states that a lot of things don't happen in the real world simply because there's a limited amount of Coolness in the universe, and having the things would just be too cool to be allowed.  It isn't that these things break the laws of physics, but the laws of physics are created to enforce this more fundamental rule.  Rocket packs and flying cars?  Too cool.  Mutant powers and laser eyebeams? Too cool.  Aliens from another planet coming to visit us?  Way, way too cool.

Heck, in our universe, even getting into a fistfight over a matter of principle is apt to end up with a trip to the hospital and weeks of painful healing (and maybe an aggravated assault charge). 

So, I can understand why some folks don't want a whole lot of realism.  Realism isn't terribly consistent with the action, adventure, and dire decisions that must be made in a hero or heroine's life.


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## Hussar (Dec 13, 2012)

Heh, having recently blown out my knee during a tug of war contest at my daughter's preschool, with resultant multiple visits to the doctor, MRI scans and several injections, I can totally agree that realism sucks.  

I mean, imagine for a second that your character tries to bend the bars of his cage, and suffers a hernia.  Not a whole lot of fun there.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 13, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Sure, you could add a range of additional "situation" rules to D&D to handle such things, but, given that there are sets of rules out there that deal with the "unrealisms" just by their inherent structure as rules, why bother? Why not just use D&D for what D&D does well, and those other rule sets for what they do well?




Because a lot of people want to play DnD. So I think additional rules like this as a supplement would be great.


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## billd91 (Dec 13, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Because a lot of people want to play DnD. So I think additional rules like this as a supplement would be great.




I probably can't emphasize this enough. A lot of people *do* want to play D&D and, for a lot of places, it's the only game in town for which you can get enough interested players. That's the legacy of being the market leader in an industry with a bunch of waxing/waning also-rans.


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## Bluenose (Dec 13, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Because a lot of people want to play DnD. So I think additional rules like this as a supplement would be great.




If D&D doesn't work the way they want, is it unreasonable is it for them to expect the game to change to match what they want? Especially when there are a whole range of other games doing things more "realistically", that would match their claim. I mean, I understand billd91's point that it's the only game in town for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to stay that way. It was for me, till I made the effort to change it. Helped by having players who didn't really know what else was available, and when I showed them more jumped at it with both feet.


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## Janx (Dec 13, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> If D&D doesn't work the way they want, is it unreasonable is it for them to expect the game to change to match what they want? Especially when there are a whole range of other games doing things more "realistically", that would match their claim. I mean, I understand billd91's point that it's the only game in town for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to stay that way. It was for me, till I made the effort to change it. Helped by having players who didn't really know what else was available, and when I showed them more jumped at it with both feet.




to counter that, D&D has a rich history of being tweaked, modified and house ruled to cover these aspects people care about.

Some people take it farther than I would care to, but some of the basic "complaints" are easily solved with a simple patches.


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## Umbran (Dec 13, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> If D&D doesn't work the way they want, is it unreasonable is it for them to expect the game to change to match what they want?




I'm sittin', watching a production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth".  I realize I'm not in the mood for tragedy.  Is it reasonable to expect the show to turn into a buddy-comedy?

Well, yes and no.  If I'm in the comfort of my own home, I can make side commentary and snark and joke with my friends and turn the experience of watching Macbeth into something more comedic.  This is like house-ruling the show.  And maybe it'll work for me and maybe it won't, but it is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

But is it reasonable to expect someone to rewrite the play for me?  That's less reasonable, but possible.  Is it reasonable to expect Shakespeare himself to rewrite it?  Well, no, for obvious reasons.  Is it reasonable to expect all future productions of the play to be my preferred buddy-comedy version?  Also no.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 14, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> If D&D doesn't work the way they want, is it unreasonable is it for them to expect the game to change to match what they want? Especially when there are a whole range of other games doing things more "realistically", that would match their claim. I mean, I understand billd91's point that it's the only game in town for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to stay that way. It was for me, till I made the effort to change it. Helped by having players who didn't really know what else was available, and when I showed them more jumped at it with both feet.




If it is unreasonable to expect the game to change then why do we have dozens of threads talking about what peopled would like to see changed in the next edition? 

I was not suggesting a change of the basic rules but a supplement of rules to allow you to make the game more realistic and little more gritty. Something like that I would spend my very limited gaming budget on. 

The issue with changing systems is very simple most of the people I game with are busy adults who don't want to learn a new system or spend the money on a new system. That is a major thing I am running into. Right now my money is beyond tight I simply can't afford to spend much on a new system. Then there is the idea of getting my players to not only buy but take the time to learn a new system. They know the systems are out there most of them used to jump at a chance to try a new system until their lives became so busy and having to schedule gaming around work, marriage, children, sick parents.  

I also like a lot of what DnD has in it I own two bookshelves full of D20 and would like a chance to use them. My very first 3.0 game about halfway through the DM introduced a different way to handle armor using the grim and gritty rules  it added a lot to the game in making it a little more realistic feeling. It didn't change the entire rules and I don't think it was unreasonable for the person who designed it to want a more gritty game.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 14, 2012)

Umbran said:


> I'm sittin', watching a production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth".  I realize I'm not in the mood for tragedy.  Is it reasonable to expect the show to turn into a buddy-comedy?




I think a better analogy would be "I'm sitting watching a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  I realise I'm not in the mood for tragedy.  Is it reasonable to want a version that's a smutty black comedy instead?"  D&D claims to do a lot of things - especially if we look at the 2e settings like Birthright and Planescape.

And is it reasonable to expect there to be a good mass-produced future production of Romeo and Juliet that's a smutty black comedy rather than a tragedy?


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## Umbran (Dec 14, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> D&D claims to do a lot of things - especially if we look at the 2e settings like Birthright and Planescape.




I don't think it the game actually claims all that much, at least explicitly.  I think that's more the people who play it who make the claims.  



> And is it reasonable to expect there to be a good mass-produced future production of Romeo and Juliet that's a smutty black comedy rather than a tragedy?




Good *and* mass-produced?  You see the problem there?  "Good" is generally a very personal thing, while "mass-produced" generally isn't.  While it does happen, on occasion, *expecting* it is another thing entirely.


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## Janx (Dec 14, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And is it reasonable to expect there to be a good mass-produced future production of Romeo and Juliet that's a smutty black comedy rather than a tragedy?




Sound and Fury does a pretty dirty version of Romeo and Juliet 2.0

Though now they've mixed it with Hamlet and Juliet.

Testacles and the Sack of Rome is also funny.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 14, 2012)

Janx said:


> Sound and Fury does a pretty dirty version of Romeo and Juliet 2.0




The reason I used the example I did is that Romeo and Juliet _is_ a black comedy about two early teenagers falling for each other and doing ridiculous and melodramatic things.  It's been drifted IMO unjustifiably based on the text so that it's normally performed as a romance - but see Romeo's odes to Rosalynd at the start, or just about any of the Nurse's lines.



Umbran said:


> I don't think it the game actually claims all that much, at least explicitly. I think that's more the people who play it who make the claims.




If a setting says it does something...


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## Umbran (Dec 14, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> The reason I used the example I did is that Romeo and Juliet _is_ a black comedy about two early teenagers falling for each other and doing ridiculous and melodramatic things.  It's been drifted IMO unjustifiably based on the text so that it's normally performed as a romance - but see Romeo's odes to Rosalynd at the start, or just about any of the Nurse's lines.




A few lines here and there do not a comedy make.  Romeo's odes may be funny, but they're there to show how young and naive he is which is required to understand his reactions later - and that humor is largely washed away by Mercutio's death. It is played as a romance (a tragedy, actually) rather than a comedy because there's nothing at all funny about the ending.



> If a setting says it does something...




Well, for one thing, a setting is not the game as a whole.  And, for another, at least one of those settings (Planescape) seems to me to have enough fans that it must be basically  living up to its claims.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 14, 2012)

Umbran said:


> A few lines here and there do not a comedy make.  Romeo's odes may be funny, but they're there to show how young and naive he is which is required to understand his reactions later - and that humor is largely washed away by Mercutio's death.
> 
> It is played as a romance (a tragedy, actually) rather than a comedy because there's nothing at all funny about the ending.




Really?  The ending is very black, I'll grant.  But if you've a dark sense of humour, the ending is _hilarious_, complete with lashings of irony and some warped symmetry.  Of course I'd probably walk out of a performance that played the ending as a comedy (and I walked out of the Shrew when it was played straight) - but that's a different matter from the comedy not being there throughout the play.



> Well, for one thing, a setting is not the game as a whole.  And, for another, at least one of those settings (Planescape) seems to me to have enough fans that it must be basically  living up to its claims.




I disagree.  Planescape works despite rather than because of the system.  (I'm one of the fans).


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## CroBob (Dec 23, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Since I am one of the people who like a bit more realism in my game world let me try and explain what I mean by that. I love fantasy and magic you can have all kinds of fantastic things with out breaking the suspension of disbelief. I can believe in dragons and gods and magic what makes me go ugg is having a mundane character fall from terminal velocity and live and not by a miracle but simply because of hit points. Or facing an army with the kingdoms best archers but because of the rules the party of four can just stand there and stick their tongues out because they are higher level than the army.




You know there have been people in real life who have walked away from falls at terminal velocity with scratches and bruises, though more often, if they live, they have broken bones and such. There have also been real life war heroes who, even though they sustained a large volume of injuries, continued fighting on against superior numbers, through luck, skill, and grit. The heroes of games _are_ these people, in their world. How are they "mundane" after surviving so much and saving kingdoms etc? What's mundane about that, and why would you want high fantasy to be "mundane"?



> I also have an issue with a someone who has been adventuring for three months game time is now high enough level to be the biggest bad ass in the kingdom.




Why? We're not talking about average Joe, here, we're talking a talented, stubborn, tough SoB, who started out with that talent, toughness, and stubbornness, and adventured near constantly for months... it doesn't seem like he might become something more than the average warrior?



> Even when using fantastic things there has to be some kind of logic and rules on how this magic works. It has to have an internal consistency.




Few games lack _internal_ consistency. As long as you follow the rules of the game the same way in every applicable situation, then the game is _necessarily_ internally consistent. It's only not if the person running the game fails to make it so. It seems to me like you want it to be consistent with your picture of reality, hence saying you want it "realistic". A thing can be completely internally consistent while being absolutely nothing like what you'd find in reality... for example, the existence of magic and dragons. No, people who want "realism" are not asking for internal consistency, they're asking for external consistency, consistency with the real world. Which role playing games are historically bad at, and which would make the game boring in my opinion.



> This is the kind of realism I like in my RPGs either that or a reason other than metagame why a fighter can fall from terminal velocity and live every time or fall in lava and have enough hit points to be rescued before being I don't know killed instantly.




The reason is that he's a freaking _hero_! He doesn't succumb to the injuries or deaths of lesser men, or else he'd constantly have broken bones, internal bleeding, months and months of recovery time, physical therapy, and all of that instead of these "Hit Point" things which are akin to nothing you'd find in reality, and are completely, utterly, mechanistic in nature. I like a little grit now and again myself, but I don't want my grit to be anything like in real life, or else my characters would lose limbs in explosions, suffer soft tissue damage, get infections, etc. Again, realism isn't fun.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 23, 2012)

CroBob said:


> The reason is that he's a freaking _hero_! He doesn't succumb to the injuries or deaths of lesser men, or else he'd constantly have broken bones, internal bleeding, months and months of recovery time, physical therapy, and all of that instead of these "Hit Point" things which are akin to nothing you'd find in reality, and are completely, utterly, mechanistic in nature. I like a little grit now and again myself, but I don't want my grit to be anything like in real life, or else my characters would lose limbs in explosions, suffer soft tissue damage, get infections, etc. Again, realism isn't fun.





But not everyone wants this kind of over the top heroism in an rpg. For some players grit that is a bit more like real life is fun. I think for most people who play D&D it is expected that the game not be terribly realistic, but elf witch seems to be saying she has come to realize she wants a much more down to earth fantasy system. Nothing wrong with her wanting a system where the odds of surviving certain situations, the time it takes to develop skills, etc is a bit more realistic. There are plenty of RPGs out there that make this sort of thing a priority.


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## Zhaleskra (Dec 23, 2012)

Romeo & Juliet is really about the stupidity of Blood Feuds, the lust suicides are actually the side story. Too bad it took both families losing a child to realize it.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 24, 2012)

CroBob said:


> You know there have been people in real life who have walked away from falls at terminal velocity with scratches and bruises, though more often, if they live, they have broken bones and such. There have also been real life war heroes who, even though they sustained a large volume of injuries, continued fighting on against superior numbers, through luck, skill, and grit. The heroes of games _are_ these people, in their world. How are they "mundane" after surviving so much and saving kingdoms etc? What's mundane about that, and why would you want high fantasy to be "mundane"?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The people who have fallen are in the minority and it was sheer luck or maybe divine intervention if you believe that kind of thing. I would not mind a mechanic that simulates luck, or divine intervention. What I don't like is the entire idea that because you are such a good fighter that some how relates to being able to walk from something like that almost every single time. 

Other games have fantasy and magic in them and without some kind of magical intervention you are not usually going to walk away from a terminal velocity fall. As a DM I want my players to take stuff like that seriously take precautions like using ropes or everyone buying a featherfall item. I hate the way metagame comes into it with the oh don't worry about it we have enough hit points. That way of thinking ruins the game for me. PCs should not know how many hit points they have or what level they are. 

They may not be an average Joe but it is  hokey and schlocky and imo unbelievable that in three months a person can go from being an apprentice mage or a new fighter to being an expert that rivals fighters and mages who have spent years honing their crafts. It is one of the reasons I use a really slow progression for XP which works fine in a homebrew but is really hard in an adventure path. It is the side effect of a level based game. Whuch is why DnD does do all kinds of fantasy style setting equally well. As a player I don't have as much an issue with this one as I do as a DM.

That is simply not true. I want an in game explanation of why something happens. Take healing and raise dead two of the most unrealistic aspects of the game they work fine for me because the explanation that a god is involved. I don't have to twist myself into a knot as a story teller to say why this happened. And the biggest attraction to RPGs for me is the story telling aspect. I want to feel like my PC is living in a real world not playing a game. If I wanted the game experience solely I could just play video games. I am well aware that to play RPGs you need rules that simulate things like combat. And that no matter how well written these rules are there will always be moments of WTF. And for those moments you remind yourself that it is just a game and move on.  But if those WTF moments start happening a lot then it becomes unfun to me and not what I want in a RPG.

There is big difference between being a hero like John McClain who survives a lot of damage and Superman who can only be harmed with krptonite. Dump John McClain in lave he is going to die his odds of falling out of a jet at terminal velocity is not going to be in his favor. You are taking it to extremes to try and prove that your way is the only way to play the game. I am not talking about making the game super realistic with the things you describe. I am perfectly happy to hand wave away healing because of divine intervention. Or curing poison with a magical spell or disease for that matter. 

I just don't like the who hoo aspect of the hit point system that allows high level mundane character to survive totally unrealistic things for no other reason than hit points.  It is why for things like that I would prefer a mechanic other than just taking straight damage. Realism is not fun for you that is fine but for others we like a little realism in our games and it would be nice if DnD had supplemental rules to allow that but since it does not you house rule or got o third party products.


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## JamesonCourage (Dec 24, 2012)

CroBob said:


> You know there have been people in real life who have walked away from falls at terminal velocity with scratches and bruises, though more often, if they live, they have broken bones and such. There have also been real life war heroes who, even though they sustained a large volume of injuries, continued fighting on against superior numbers, through luck, skill, and grit. The heroes of games _are_ these people, in their world. How are they "mundane" after surviving so much and saving kingdoms etc? What's mundane about that, and why would you want high fantasy to be "mundane"?



Hey, at least you didn't go all badwrongfun, right?


CroBob said:


> I like a little grit now and again myself, but I don't want my grit to be anything like in real life, or else my characters would lose limbs in explosions, suffer soft tissue damage, get infections, etc. Again, realism isn't fun.



It's funny; when I wrote my RPG, I included limb loss, rules for infections, concussions, broken bones, etc. And, you know what? My friends and I like it. My brother (who is also running a game) likes it, as do his players. I can enjoy a game without it, sure, but your "this isn't fun" is about as generally accurate as "skip the gate guard talks, it isn't fun" was. It's wrong. As always, play what you like


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## CroBob (Dec 24, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> But not everyone wants this kind of over the top heroism in an rpg. For some players grit that is a bit more like real life is fun. I think for most people who play D&D it is expected that the game not be terribly realistic, but elf witch seems to be saying she has come to realize she wants a much more down to earth fantasy system. Nothing wrong with her wanting a system where the odds of surviving certain situations, the time it takes to develop skills, etc is a bit more realistic. There are plenty of RPGs out there that make this sort of thing a priority.




Then play those ones. I'm simply answering the questions of the thread. I, like many others, do not want our RPGs to be realistic because realistic is boring or, worse, full of horrible consequences for the actions heroes take. Further, Games are simply bad at mimicking real life, unless they forgo a HP system entirely, instead making somebody injured, possibly maimed, instead of simply "taking damage" in whatever sort of hit point system it has. In real life, you don't lose HPs, or stamina, or whatever. In real life, you get a gauge in your neck and start bleeding out, and then you're out of the fight and in recovery for months, if you survive at all. I agree there should be some sort of balance between realism and completely unrealistic, but only to the point that you can identify with the setting the game takes place in. I mean, there is generally ground, gravity, humanoids, and interaction at least somewhat reminiscent of how people _can_ act, even if through different means. However, I don't understand why a game which involves freaking _magic_ becomes unbelievable simply because one of the toughest SoBs on the planet can survive a short encounter with lava. That guy who conjured the lava out of thin air, sure, that makes sense, but someone coming into contact with the lava and surviving doesn't? I can't empathize with that train of thought.


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## CroBob (Dec 24, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> The people who have fallen are in the minority and it was sheer luck or maybe divine intervention if you believe that kind of thing. I would not mind a mechanic that simulates luck, or divine intervention. What I don't like is the entire idea that because you are such a good fighter that some how relates to being able to walk from something like that almost every single time.




It was or was not divine intervention regardless what I think of the situation. If you do like the mechanic that failing a climb check or two means you're almost assuredly going to die, unless you bought those feather fall items, cool. That's you. I'm not arguing about how a game should or should not be, I'm simply explaining why people, myself included, don't find such "realism" to be fun.



> Other games have fantasy and magic in them and without some kind of magical intervention you are not usually going to walk away from a terminal velocity fall. As a DM I want my players to take stuff like that seriously take precautions like using ropes or everyone buying a featherfall item. I hate the way metagame comes into it with the oh don't worry about it we have enough hit points. That way of thinking ruins the game for me. PCs should not know how many hit points they have or what level they are.




Then play those games.



> That is simply not true. I want an in game explanation of why something happens. Take healing and raise dead two of the most unrealistic aspects of the game they work fine for me because the explanation that a god is involved. I don't have to twist myself into a knot as a story teller to say why this happened. And the biggest attraction to RPGs for me is the story telling aspect. I want to feel like my PC is living in a real world not playing a game. If I wanted the game experience solely I could just play video games. I am well aware that to play RPGs you need rules that simulate things like combat. And that no matter how well written these rules are there will always be moments of WTF. And for those moments you remind yourself that it is just a game and move on.  But if those WTF moments start happening a lot then it becomes unfun to me and not what I want in a RPG.




You want an explanation for things which, in game, observably are true? You know how we figure things out in reality, right? We see what happens, and then we try to figure out why it happens. Eventually, we'll get to the basist levels of physics, where no more explanation can be discovered, and it's simply how things work. That basest level doesn't need an explanation, it's simply how the universe works. If something works in the game, it doesn't matter how that same thing works in reality, because that's not how it works in the game. Again, you want the game to be more like real life, and that's your prerogative, but if something works a certain way in a fictional world, well, that's just how it works. Why it works that way is due to the game-world's functioning, not the real world's. That's why magic works, because the game-world functions differently from the real world. Magic has an in-game explanation, so, too, do the other parts of the game which aren't realistic, they simply aren't spelled out. Magic isn't spelled out either. Does there have to be a core rule book all about the fictional world's physical mechanics in order to make the game fun? I don't think so.



> There is big difference between being a hero like John McClain who survives a lot of damage and Superman who can only be harmed with krptonite. Dump John McClain in lave he is going to die his odds of falling out of a jet at terminal velocity is not going to be in his favor. You are taking it to extremes to try and prove that your way is the only way to play the game. I am not talking about making the game super realistic with the things you describe. I am perfectly happy to hand wave away healing because of divine intervention. Or curing poison with a magical spell or disease for that matter.




When did I ever say there's only one, or even a finite, number of ways to play games? I think you're taking my points apart from their purpose. I'm explaining why people don't care about their games being realistic. I'm not saying realism is bad, only that many people find it both un-fun and silly to expect realism from RPGs.



> I just don't like the who hoo aspect of the hit point system that allows high level mundane character to survive totally unrealistic things for no other reason than hit points.  It is why for things like that I would prefer a mechanic other than just taking straight damage. Realism is not fun for you that is fine but for others we like a little realism in our games and it would be nice if DnD had supplemental rules to allow that but since it does not you house rule or got o third party products.




Hit points are _innately_ unrealistic, though! I mean, your tastes are your tastes, but why you would complain about hit points being unrealistic makes me really curious why you play games that use them at all. Hit points aren't _supposed_ to be realistic. That's not their job.


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## CroBob (Dec 24, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> It's funny; when I wrote my RPG, I included limb loss, rules for infections, concussions, broken bones, etc. And, you know what? My friends and I like it. My brother (who is also running a game) likes it, as do his players. I can enjoy a game without it, sure, but your "this isn't fun" is about as generally accurate as "skip the gate guard talks, it isn't fun" was. It's wrong. As always, play what you like




Good on you and your friends. Have a ball. You and your friends are not other people, who don't want that kind of realism, who don't find realism to be all that fun.

I don't know what skipping gate guard talks has to do with any of this. I don't see the connection. To many RPG players, the game being realistic isn't especially important. What that has to do with their desire to speak with gate guards I don't know. Could you please explain that to me?


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## Elf Witch (Dec 24, 2012)

CroBob said:


> It was or was not divine intervention regardless what I think of the situation. If you do like the mechanic that failing a climb check or two means you're almost assuredly going to die, unless you bought those feather fall items, cool. That's you. I'm not arguing about how a game should or should not be, I'm simply explaining why people, myself included, don't find such "realism" to be fun.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I do think that certain things should be more deadly. Unless you are immune to fire and heat in my game fall into lava you are dead no save and your body is burned up and you need something more powerful than raise dead to come back. The only chance you have is A DM fiat I decide a god wants you alive and saves you. B if you have played your character as being faithful to a god I roll a D20 and on a 1 or 2 the god steps in. I actually do this a lot. Since in my homebrew the gods are not distant uncaring creatures. 

If you fall in my game from what would be considered death for most people you roll you decide high or low before the dice roll guess right you live through the fall because of luck fail the roll and you die. Now the above for lava also applies plus my game as action points and fate points that help keep the game from being overly deadly. 

I have already wrote why we play DnD even when there are times I don't think it works well. And it really annoys me when people say this. First of all most fantasy based games are level based. I am not a fan of say Fantasy Hero because the entire work is put on the DM. You have to completely build everything from the ground up it takes a lot of work and I know a lot of my group don't like the system. What I don't understand is why there can't be supplemental rules for this kind of thing. They have done it for other things look at Unearthed Arcana which allows you to add all kinds of things to your game from prestige paladins and bards to bloodlines. 

That is not good enough. We may not know why everything works in our real world but I know gravity is the thing that makes fall so deadly and that lack of air which you can't see will kill you.  I know that if you die and are buried you are not coming back. I know the studies of people who fell and lived has to do with a lot of things. The angle of the body when it hits what it lands on,if anything is there to slow the descent. The PCs may not know how things work but as DM I want to know the basics. Like I said I want some kind of explanation of why a mundane character can live through something like this on a regular basis. If the answer is that there is a god that grants demi god status to all fighters then fine there is an explanation

The way you are coming across and the way you are wording things sure sounds like you are coming at it from a badfun kind of way. If that is not what you are trying then fine. 


I dislike the hit point system a lot but I accept that in a level based game it is a way of measuring what a PC can handle. I think it is a clunky system the whole you are fine up until you run out of them. Personally I would like to see a system ( as an option add on) where you take minuses as you lose a certain  % of hit points. I also like rules for having to make a save for losing a lot in one hit. Again this should be something optional. 

As for why we play DnD because it is is the best known game for fantasy and it has a lot of support and unlike a lot of other games it does not have a setting hard wired into it. I would love if someone took the Shadowrun rules and made a game using them for a generic fantasy setting and no I don't mean Earthdawn. That would be perfect for the style of fantasy games I run. I prefer a lower magic, more gritty style of game. I wish I was better at mechanics and balance then I would try and do this myself.


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## JamesonCourage (Dec 24, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Good on you and your friends. Have a ball. You and your friends are not other people, who don't want that kind of realism, who don't find realism to be all that fun.



I'm not saying it's fun for everyone. I'm saying that you saying "realism isn't fun" is wrong as a general statement.


CroBob said:


> I don't know what skipping gate guard talks has to do with any of this. I don't see the connection. To many RPG players, the game being realistic isn't especially important. What that has to do with their desire to speak with gate guards I don't know. Could you please explain that to me?



It's a reference to, essentially, this thread, which has a quote from James Wyatt in the 4e DMG that states "An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun." As you can see from the thread, there was some dissent with that view, as different people find different things fun.

And that's how it relates. That's what I was saying. You saying "realism isn't fun" is the same thing. As a general, blanket statement, it's fairly astoundingly wrong. I want to explicitly note, when people challenged your post, you did reply (not to me, but to Elf Witch) "I'm simply explaining why people, myself included, don't find such "realism" to be fun." And that's cool. But, claims of "realism is lame" or "realism isn't fun" as blanket statements, without qualifiers, is just begging for disagreement, in about the degree that the reverse would. Trust me, I've got no beef with your play style. Heck, see my signature  As always, play what you like


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## Hussar (Dec 24, 2012)

Just as a point of clarity JC. That isn't quite what is being said in the 4e dmg. That's taking things pretty far out of context.


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## CroBob (Dec 24, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> I have already wrote why we play DnD even when there are times I don't think it works well. And it really annoys me when people say this. First of all most fantasy based games are level based. I am not a fan of say Fantasy Hero because the entire work is put on the DM. You have to completely build everything from the ground up it takes a lot of work and I know a lot of my group don't like the system. What I don't understand is why there can't be supplemental rules for this kind of thing. They have done it for other things look at Unearthed Arcana which allows you to add all kinds of things to your game from prestige paladins and bards to bloodlines.




You can _make_ as many supplemental, or "house", rules as you desire. I mean, if people don't like when a game isn't realistic, citing that other games _are_ realistic... if this is such a hitch for you, I don't understand why you stick to the less realistic one. Or does it wind up that it's not _really_ that important?



> That is not good enough. We may not know why everything works in our real world but I know gravity is the thing that makes fall so deadly and that lack of air which you can't see will kill you.  I know that if you die and are buried you are not coming back. I know the studies of people who fell and lived has to do with a lot of things. The angle of the body when it hits what it lands on,if anything is there to slow the descent. The PCs may not know how things work but as DM I want to know the basics. Like I said I want some kind of explanation of why a mundane character can live through something like this on a regular basis. If the answer is that there is a god that grants demi god status to all fighters then fine there is an explanation




I'm sorry, I'm having a difficult time wrapping my mind around this complaint. I mean, you complain that it's unexplained, yet refuse to explain it yourself. Do you have the same problem with magical spells not being explained? Yes, we know how certain things work in real life... the fictional world is _not_ real life. Falls and lava don't _have_ to be as deadly as in real life, you simply want them to be. And that's fine, but if the rules state something works that way, either it does, regardless how or if it gets explained, or you're free to change it to how you desire it to be. Where's the problem?



> The way you are coming across and the way you are wording things sure sounds like you are coming at it from a badfun kind of way. If that is not what you are trying then fine.




It's not. I may even be debating the issue, but my point is certainly not that either of us, or that anyone, is "right" or "wrong" in any objective sense. I do find it kind of silly that someone's upset over the unbelievability of HPs. Yeah, they're unbelievable, but I don't see that as a weakness. It's simply a part of how the game works. The game isn't trying to duplicate real life, which is made patent through the existence of magic, gods, monsters, HPs, etc. Nothing in the game is realistic, and I have a hard time understanding why someone would have a problem with "mundane" people _also_ being unrealistic. Basically, it seems like cherry picking to me.



> I prefer a lower magic, more gritty style of game.




By pure coincidence, that's exactly the kind of game I'm working on right now. Still, I don't know if it'd suit all of your tastes, but those two aspects are there.



JamesonCourage said:


> I'm not saying it's fun for everyone. I'm saying that you saying "realism isn't fun" is wrong as a general statement.




It was the answer to a question about opinions, so I presumed it'd obviously be about my opinion. However, I have a habit of taking things in ways other people do not, so there's a good chance I didn't pay enough attention to how I worded my answers. If that's what happened, I am sorry.



> It's a reference to, essentially, this thread, which has a quote from James Wyatt in the 4e DMG that states "An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun." As you can see from the thread, there was some dissent with that view, as different people find different things fun.
> 
> And that's how it relates. That's what I was saying. You saying "realism isn't fun" is the same thing. As a general, blanket statement, it's fairly astoundingly wrong. I want to explicitly note, when people challenged your post, you did reply (not to me, but to Elf Witch) "I'm simply explaining why people, myself included, don't find such "realism" to be fun." And that's cool. But, claims of "realism is lame" or "realism isn't fun" as blanket statements, without qualifiers, is just begging for disagreement, in about the degree that the reverse would. Trust me, I've got no beef with your play style. Heck, see my signature  As always, play what you like




I can't help but notice that the very second poster says something about how skipping over the parts that aren't fun would mean going from combat to combat... and I'm curious; If this sort of thought is why people have a problem with 4E, then it's _them_ who are defining the fun part of the game to be fights. And, certainly, the fights are fun, but that's not the only fun part (to me). The idea to skip to the fun parts would include skipping the mundane parts such as walking down the road to the palace and waiting in the clerk's office, and skip right to the meeting with the king's adviser, which will likely involve no combat, yet will probably still be fun. If you find only combat to be fun, awesome, play as you will, but that doesn't mean the game created the definition of what you find fun, it's only advising to skip the parts that are irrelevant to your fun. I fail to see how that's bad advice.


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## CroBob (Dec 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Just as a point of clarity JC. That isn't quite what is being said in the 4e dmg. That's taking things pretty far out of context.




I half expect it to be a quote mine, where the words were shared, but out of context. I'd check, but I don't have my DMG, and won't for almost a year.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 24, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Then play those ones. I'm simply answering the questions of the thread. I, like many others, do not want our RPGs to be realistic because realistic is boring or, worse, full of horrible consequences for the actions heroes take. Further, Games are simply bad at mimicking real life, unless they forgo a HP system entirely, instead making somebody injured, possibly maimed, instead of simply "taking damage" in whatever sort of hit point system it has. In real life, you don't lose HPs, or stamina, or whatever. In real life, you get a gauge in your neck and start bleeding out, and then you're out of the fight and in recovery for months, if you survive at all. I agree there should be some sort of balance between realism and completely unrealistic, but only to the point that you can identify with the setting the game takes place in. I mean, there is generally ground, gravity, humanoids, and interaction at least somewhat reminiscent of how people _can_ act, even if through different means. However, I don't understand why a game which involves freaking _magic_ becomes unbelievable simply because one of the toughest SoBs on the planet can survive a short encounter with lava. That guy who conjured the lava out of thin air, sure, that makes sense, but someone coming into contact with the lava and surviving doesn't? I can't empathize with that train of thought.




This thread is not just about D&D but RPGs in general and lots of other RPGs use more realistic wound systems or have a more gritty feel. If you dont like those, that is fine. There is a place for over the top heroism in rpgs (and it works well in a game like D&D). But it isnt the only approach and it can be very fun to play somehting more realistic and gritty. Not saying you have to play them.


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## Bluenose (Dec 24, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> This thread is not just about D&D but RPGs in general and lots of other RPGs use more realistic wound systems or have a more gritty feel. If you dont like those, that is fine. There is a place for over the top heroism in rpgs (and it works well in a game like D&D). But it isnt the only approach and it can be very fun to play somehting more realistic and gritty. Not saying you have to play them.




But Elf Witch is saying he wants D&D to be like that, or more like that. There are other games for that.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 24, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> But Elf Witch is saying he wants D&D to be like that, or more like that. There are other games for that.




It looks like I missed that part of the post. D&D is not well suited to realistic game play. I think things can be done to make it more realistic if she wants realistic fantasy, I would say look into something like HarnMaster or Runequest. My only point is nothing wrong with wanting these things from a game.

edit: it looks like all she wants is optional rules for D&D to make it more realistic or is saying she wants 5E to be more realistic. In my opinion getting rid of stuff like HP isnt the way to go in Next, but it is fair for her to voice her opinion on the matter since they are taking the modular approach and i can definitely see a Gritty option book being something they could release. 

On this subject I think there are two different calls to "realism" for D&D. One is what elf witch is asking for which is a genuine turn toward genuine realism in the game. That does not seem likey to take hold, though it may appear in the form of optional rules. The other is a reaction to some of the features of 4E which for some people, took a game that was already light on realism, and pushed it even further into the realm of really challenging believability (for some it had the opposite effect, but for many this was an issue). This is an issue I think we will se a response to in 5E. These folks are not asking for gritty realism,they just want things that challenge their sense of believability, like mundane heals, out of the game.


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## JamesonCourage (Dec 24, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Just as a point of clarity JC. That isn't quite what is being said in the 4e dmg. That's taking things pretty far out of context.



There's a whole thread on it, if people want to agree with you, or agree with me. I don't plan on going over it again here. As always, play what you like 


CroBob said:


> It was the answer to a question about opinions, so I presumed it'd obviously be about my opinion. However, I have a habit of taking things in ways other people do not, so there's a good chance I didn't pay enough attention to how I worded my answers. If that's what happened, I am sorry.



No worries. I get that it's your opinion, which is why I tried to explicitly state that, since you said it in reply to Elf Witch. If I came off as harsh, I apologize.


CroBob said:


> I can't help but notice that the very second poster says something about how skipping over the parts that aren't fun would mean going from combat to combat... and I'm curious; If this sort of thought is why people have a problem with 4E, then it's _them_ who are defining the fun part of the game to be fights. And, certainly, the fights are fun, but that's not the only fun part (to me). The idea to skip to the fun parts would include skipping the mundane parts such as walking down the road to the palace and waiting in the clerk's office, and skip right to the meeting with the king's adviser, which will likely involve no combat, yet will probably still be fun. If you find only combat to be fun, awesome, play as you will, but that doesn't mean the game created the definition of what you find fun, it's only advising to skip the parts that are irrelevant to your fun. I fail to see how that's bad advice.



I haven't brought up any thoughts specifically about 4e, or how it's "fun" or "not fun". But, if you want my idea of the advice given, it's buried in that thread. Again, I have no real intention of going over it again in this thread. As always, play what you like


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## Elf Witch (Dec 25, 2012)

CroBob said:


> You can _make_ as many supplemental, or "house", rules as you desire. I mean, if people don't like when a game isn't realistic, citing that other games _are_ realistic... if this is such a hitch for you, I don't understand why you stick to the less realistic one. Or does it wind up that it's not _really_ that important?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




 There have been third party supplements that can make DnD more gritty less who hoo out there I have played with some great DMs who have used house rules to make the game more gritty and realistic. So I know it can be done using DnD rules and my point is why would WOTC want to lose players who for the most part enjoy DnD by not addressing this issue. I am not sure why it has to be one way or another. There are ways to tweak the game I like the idea of E6 or E9 to avoid the demi god syndrome of high level play for some campaigns. Personally I find it boring play the same same over and over again. As a fantasy fan I like all kinds from high fantasy with lots of high level magic to low magic more gritty style fantasies. And I believe with the right rule set and supplements that DnD can give the DM what they need to run a variety of campaign styles. Realism may be lame for some players and DMs but that is not the case for others and I think it is a disservice to address the issue with the take your balls and go play elsewhere kind of meme.

Okay I will try and explain one more time. I want a reason other than game mechanics of why something works in the world. Take healing it works because a god grants divine magical power to a priest who is a faithful follower that is good enough for me. Magic works because it is a force in the world different people harness it differently sorcerers have it in their blood , wizards learn complicated formulas to use the power. The way the game mechanics handle how magic works can be woven into a story very easily. A sorcerer who has run out of spell slots can be said to have used all their magical energy and need to recharge. It makes sense to me from an endurance point of view.  I ran cross country in track in high school so I trained my body to endure running for long periods of time but there are limits where you need to stop because your body needs rest. As sorcerers level they are training their body to endure using more magic. It is he same with any other class fighters get better at fighting because they do it a lot. All that seems very believable to me. A high level character can fight a dragon because they have gotten better at what they do they are more experienced. 

Hit points in the game are not just how much damage you are taking they also represented your ability to defend at least that is what the game designers claim. So a high level fighter has more not just because he has gotten stronger physically but because he has gotten better at protecting himself in battle. It is a clunky system as I have said but it can be work with. Where it really shows its clumsiness is using it for things like falling from terminal velocity or falling in lava. Again why can a high level fighter not just survive a fall but can do it over and over again.  It makes little sense that falling out of the sky and hitting the ground has anything to do with defense abilities. It is sheer luck and one I think should be equal to all character no matter the level. There is no training for falling from terminal velocity. There is no in game reason other than sheer amount of hit points to explain it. I don't believe an Olympic trained runner has any better chance of falling and living than an ordinary housewife who jogs it will come down to luck and how and what they land on.  

In the game world PCs are better than most because they have above average traits and they experience things that make them better at what they do. All that is pretty realistic. But there are things that go wonky simply because of hit points. In 1E a mob had the ability to be a danger to a higher level PC but that is gone now. Now even a mid range PC can stand and sneer at the city guard or laugh off a crazed mob because they have more hit points a higher AC and the mob and city guard often can only hit on a crit. Now some people may be okay with that in their game I am not one of them I would like to see balanced rules for handling that kind of thing. 

There is a lot I miss about AD&D the game seemed more believable more realistic and little more gritty. Using haste effected the wizard by aging them. Coming back from the dead required a system shock roll to see if you survived it and you could not do it over and over again.  It took a lot longer to level. While I like some of what 3E did to fix things I think it went overboard in making PCs over powered in some areas. 

I don't how else to explain this other than I have. Mechanics should have some story telling support the fact that a high level fighter can fall from terminal velocity over and over again without any story telling explanation other than hit points is a flaw in the game for me.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 25, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> But Elf Witch is saying he wants D&D to be like that, or more like that. There are other games for that.




That is not what I am saying at all. I am asking why DnD can't support both styles of play? I have seen it done by great DMs. And since WOTC loves printing books you would think that a splat book on how to make the game more gritty would be something that could interest people. How many splats did we need on how to make magic more powerful and different yet they keep bringing them out. BTW me Jane not Tarzan.


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## SkidAce (Dec 26, 2012)

It does support both styles of play.  and we will continue to play gritty can't survive lava immersion games no matter how many times other people tells us there are other games that do it better.*

It's what I learned to play and I like it.

*not poking anyone in specific.


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## Teflonknight (Dec 26, 2012)

I am intrigued by the idea of a gritty game....is there a thread somewhere that compiles the house rules used...including alternates to hit points? 

As for the subject at hand, I assume that wotc may not be aware of the desire for those optional rules or they feel that the market is not out there.

i don't think realism ruins the game, as long as that is what you like. If you and your group want increased realism in your games then go for it. If your group wants a more fantastical over the top super heroish game then awesome. I think the only problem with either is if not everyone in the same group wants the same game.

If wotc doesn't believe it is financially feasable, aka they won't make money, I think that an article on their website outlining some rules for grittier play would bring some good will.


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## CroBob (Dec 26, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> There have been third party supplements that can make DnD more gritty less who hoo out there I have played with some great DMs who have used house rules to make the game more gritty and realistic. So I know it can be done using DnD rules and my point is why would WOTC want to lose players who for the most part enjoy DnD by not addressing this issue. I am not sure why it has to be one way or another. There are ways to tweak the game I like the idea of E6 or E9 to avoid the demi god syndrome of high level play for some campaigns. Personally I find it boring play the same same over and over again. As a fantasy fan I like all kinds from high fantasy with lots of high level magic to low magic more gritty style fantasies. And I believe with the right rule set and supplements that DnD can give the DM what they need to run a variety of campaign styles. Realism may be lame for some players and DMs but that is not the case for others and I think it is a disservice to address the issue with the take your balls and go play elsewhere kind of meme.




Why? It's what you do with anything else. If you don't like a certain food, you either alter the recipe until you do like it, or you eat something else. Don't like how unrealistic a fantasy game is? Change it until you like it, or play something else. It's not ballsing up, it's a practical solution. Playing the game you want, how you want, is the best way to game. I fail to see how that's remotely bad advice.



> Okay I will try and explain one more time. I want a reason other than game mechanics of why something works in the world. Take healing it works because a god grants divine magical power to a priest who is a faithful follower that is good enough for me. Magic works because it is a force in the world different people harness it differently sorcerers have it in their blood , wizards learn complicated formulas to use the power. The way the game mechanics handle how magic works can be woven into a story very easily. A sorcerer who has run out of spell slots can be said to have used all their magical energy and need to recharge. It makes sense to me from an endurance point of view.  I ran cross country in track in high school so I trained my body to endure running for long periods of time but there are limits where you need to stop because your body needs rest. As sorcerers level they are training their body to endure using more magic. It is he same with any other class fighters get better at fighting because they do it a lot. All that seems very believable to me. A high level character can fight a dragon because they have gotten better at what they do they are more experienced.




So (1) "God did it", and (2) "Magic has a spiritual fatigue element" are full explanations with no missing steps or complexity for you, but "He's so tough that falling at terminal velocity simply won't kill him" isn't a good enough explanation for that? I think you're missing my point entirely. I'm not saying that it's realistic, or that it can be explained through parallels with reality, I'm saying that it doesn't _need_ to parallel reality, because it's _fiction_. If you want an explaination, you can make one up on the fly. Say he's simply that tough, or say the acceleration of gravity versus the wind resistance greatly reduces terminal velocity in this specific world, or whatever. You can explain it however you want! That's not your problem. You don't like it because it doesn't parallel reality. You want it to. Bottom line. And that's fine. I don't empathize, but that's your problem, not the lack of an explanation.



> Hit points in the game are not just how much damage you are taking they also represented your ability to defend at least that is what the game designers claim. So a high level fighter has more not just because he has gotten stronger physically but because he has gotten better at protecting himself in battle. It is a clunky system as I have said but it can be work with. Where it really shows its clumsiness is using it for things like falling from terminal velocity or falling in lava. Again why can a high level fighter not just survive a fall but can do it over and over again.  It makes little sense that falling out of the sky and hitting the ground has anything to do with defense abilities. It is sheer luck and one I think should be equal to all character no matter the level. There is no training for falling from terminal velocity. There is no in game reason other than sheer amount of hit points to explain it. I don't believe an Olympic trained runner has any better chance of falling and living than an ordinary housewife who jogs it will come down to luck and how and what they land on.




Not only is it what they claim, if it's to be believable at all, that's what it _must_ be; A character's ability to continue taking relevant action. Once you reach zero, you're actually injured, not just worn out and bruised... Why can a high level Fighter do those things? I provided two explanations for the fall damage in my last paragraph. Lava could simply be not as hot as in real life, or he's simply so tough that he can withstand falling in friggin' lava. Bam! Again, any explanation you want. You claim there's no in-game reason, but there obviously is, since that's what happens. If you want to explain it with in-game physics, go ahead. Nobody's stopping you. If you want it more realistic, do that. Again, the problem is not the lack of explanation, it's the lack of this fantasy being real.



> There is a lot I miss about AD&D the game seemed more believable more *realistic* and little more gritty. *Using haste effected the wizard by aging them. Coming back from the dead required a system shock roll to see if you survived it and you could not do it over and over again.  It took a lot longer to level.* While I like some of what 3E did to fix things I think it went overboard in making PCs over powered in some areas.




I have no idea how haste aging a wizard, coming back from the dead, or leveling, can even possibly correlate with anything that happens in reality. It's all completely fictitious. None of that was realistic, because there's nothing in reality we can compare it to, aside other fictions or, possibly, medical science, but that's reaching. More gritty, sure, but not more realistic at all.


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## billd91 (Dec 26, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Why? It's what you do with anything else. If you don't like a certain food, you either alter the recipe until you do like it, or you eat something else. Don't like how unrealistic a fantasy game is? Change it until you like it, or play something else. It's not ballsing up, it's a practical solution. Playing the game you want, how you want, is the best way to game. I fail to see how that's remotely bad advice.




Around here, particularly when discussing what D&D *could* or *should* be, it often seems to be dick advice intended to get someone to go away and shut up. I'm not saying that was your intent in this case, but it's often a not-so-subtle undercurrent in these discussion. That's why, though it isn't necessarily bad advice in general (though it might be for specific circumstances), it also isn't necessarily good advice either.

There are *good* reasons for wanting to tweak D&D to get it to do what you want rather than seek out a different game. The huge base of players with at least passing familiarity with it is a huge benefit of having been the market leader for 30 years. Teaching players a few house rules is typically a lot easier than teaching them a new game. And though there are a lot of players on these boards willing to try new games, there are a lot more causal gamers out there willing to play something they know but not so willing to learn a bunch of new games.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 26, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Why? It's what you do with anything else. If you don't like a certain food, you either alter the recipe until you do like it, or you eat something else. Don't like how unrealistic a fantasy game is? Change it until you like it, or play something else. It's not ballsing up, it's a practical solution. Playing the game you want, how you want, is the best way to game. I fail to see how that's remotely bad advice.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Bill explained it better than I have. 

We are just going in circles at this point. I am sorry you don't or won't understand what I am saying. That certain things are enough to make be unable to suspend my disbelief. That they hit me over the head that this is a GAME. I know it is a game but I want the rules to fade away in the back ground as much as possible. I want to be able to think like my PC and explore the world. As a DM I want to be able to make a living breathing world that makes sense to me. Unless I have or the world designer changed how basic gravity works and how fire works on the human body then I find it a bug that these things stop happening at high level for no other logical reason that the person has more hit points. I don't know how to describe this any other way. 

Sure as the DM I can pull out the god did it or you got lucky but this gets old and unbelievable if it happens all the time and there is my point falling from a high cliff or being dropped by a dragon should not be something that you can live through over and over again it makes the game feel like a cartoon at that point the PCs become Wily E Coyote. 

Just because something is fiction does not mean you can do anything you want it. Well you can but doing so will stop you from being published. In a magical setting in a fictional novel for example the author sets up how things work if he does it well then the reader is willing to suspend disbelief as long as the author does nothing to break the rules he has created.


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## CroBob (Dec 26, 2012)

No, I understand that it breaks your suspension of disbelief, I'm simply baffled about that. I'm curious, if you were playing on a world that was literally broken far in the past, beyond what any modern societies know how it happened, and due to this cataclysmic event, whatever it was, the world was nothing more than a bunch of islands literally floating above a vast ocean, and there was no detectable magic causing it (that is, it seems to simply be the nature of the post-cataclysm world), would that break your suspension of disbelief?

The quality you seem to dislike is that a thing is different from how it works in reality *without being magical*, so it seems to me you would dislike this setting, due to non-magical floating islands, but I _intuit_ that something like that wouldn't actually bother you... so I'm curious, would it?


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 27, 2012)

CroBob said:


> No, I understand that it breaks your suspension of disbelief, I'm simply baffled about that. I'm curious, if you were playing on a world that was literally broken far in the past, beyond what any modern societies know how it happened, and due to this cataclysmic event, whatever it was, the world was nothing more than a bunch of islands literally floating above a vast ocean, and there was no detectable magic causing it (that is, it seems to simply be the nature of the post-cataclysm world), would that break your suspension of disbelief?
> 
> The quality you seem to dislike is that a thing is different from how it works in reality *without being magical*, so it seems to me you would dislike this setting, due to non-magical floating islands, but I _intuit_ that something like that wouldn't actually bother you... so I'm curious, would it?




It really isnt that hard to understand and frankly. Her position isnt that unusual or mystifying. This argument has been one in the hobby for years. Some people dont worry about realism or believability and others do. Just because dragons exist and magic exists, that doesnt mean our other assumptions aobut reality ought to go out the window. If something happens because of magic, such as magical healing, that works because there is an explanation. If my warrior acts more ike a cartoon than a man, with no supernatural or magical justification, well that makes an already fantastic world that much harder for some to swallow.


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## Hussar (Dec 27, 2012)

billd91 said:


> Around here, particularly when discussing what D&D *could* or *should* be, it often seems to be dick advice intended to get someone to go away and shut up. I'm not saying that was your intent in this case, but it's often a not-so-subtle undercurrent in these discussion. That's why, though it isn't necessarily bad advice in general (though it might be for specific circumstances), it also isn't necessarily good advice either.
> 
> There are *good* reasons for wanting to tweak D&D to get it to do what you want rather than seek out a different game. The huge base of players with at least passing familiarity with it is a huge benefit of having been the market leader for 30 years. Teaching players a few house rules is typically a lot easier than teaching them a new game. And though there are a lot of players on these boards willing to try new games, there are a lot more causal gamers out there willing to play something they know but not so willing to learn a bunch of new games.




Fair enough but how far should that go?  You talk about undercurrents. Frquently in these discussions people try to claim that the game directly supports things that were never supported. Maybe it wasn't particularly hindered but it was never supported. But people will swear up and down that the game was this or that way. 

You only have to look at the various HP discussions or better yet, pacing of leveling back in the day to see that. All sorts of claims get made that have little or no support in the text of the game. 

So, at what point is it okay to tell people that what they are looking for is not found where they are looking but is much more better served in another place?  People looking for gritty realism in D&D are going to be very disappointed. It's just not there.


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## Umbran (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> So, at what point is it okay to tell people that what they are looking for is not found where they are looking but is much more better served in another place?  People looking for gritty realism in D&D are going to be very disappointed. It's just not there.




At the point when you're omniscient enough to know for certain that others _*cannot*_ find what they want there.  

It would be tons better to say, "I think you'd find what you're looking for more easily in this other place, for these reasons...."  Try not to tell others what they can or cannot do - tell them about your own experiences, and what they might learn from them, keeping in mind that they aren't you, and may find different things satisfying.


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## SkidAce (Dec 27, 2012)

double post...


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## SkidAce (Dec 27, 2012)

Umbran said:


> At the point when you're omniscient enough to know for certain that others _*cannot*_ find what they want there.
> 
> It would be tons better to say, "I think you'd find what you're looking for more easily in this other place, for these reasons...."  Try not to tell others what they can or cannot do - tell them about your own experiences, and what they might learn from them, keeping in mind that they aren't you, and may find different things satisfying.




I was going to explain to Hussar that DnD with gritty realism is a reality for me...but you said it better.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:
			
		

> So, at what point is it okay to tell people that what they are looking for is not found where they are looking but is much more better served in another place? People looking for gritty realism in D&D are going to be very disappointed. It's just not there.




Not necessarily. People have used this game in a variety of different ways over the last 40 years or so, and there's never been a Fun Police to tell them they've been doing it badly. In the same vein, what people are using your tool for when it's not suited gives you an indication of where they want to use your tool, and there's probably no reason you shouldn't accommodate them, if you can. 

I mean, think of a hammer. That little claw on the back of it, used for extracting nails. If someone had control over all the hammers produced, and only produced ones without that little claw, and said it was because "Hammers are for nailing things in, and if you want to pull nails out, it's just not for that. You can perhaps buy a Nail Puller instead," we'd all be using two tools for something that could be done in one. There's little good reason to presuppose that this highly flexible game engine is only usable for a narrow band of entertainment, and almost no good reason to say that it shouldn't be used for that, too, if it can be. 

And it clearly can be.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 27, 2012)

CroBob said:


> No, I understand that it breaks your suspension of disbelief, I'm simply baffled about that. I'm curious, if you were playing on a world that was literally broken far in the past, beyond what any modern societies know how it happened, and due to this cataclysmic event, whatever it was, the world was nothing more than a bunch of islands literally floating above a vast ocean, and there was no detectable magic causing it (that is, it seems to simply be the nature of the post-cataclysm world), would that break your suspension of disbelief?
> 
> The quality you seem to dislike is that a thing is different from how it works in reality *without being magical*, so it seems to me you would dislike this setting, due to non-magical floating islands, but I _intuit_ that something like that wouldn't actually bother you... so I'm curious, would it?




That really depends can it be hand waved away as having to do something with the way gravity works or because of minerals in the islands that push against minerals in the land and pushes the islands into the air. There is a lot I can suspend my disbelief on. I play Toon and in the game I have no issue with falling of mountains tied to an anvil or getting shot by a cannon. As I said my issue with falling is that if it is because gravity works differently then it should for all classes and levels. The same for divine intervention. If it is because the gods have given high level fighters a boon for service and they now bounce instead of break then I may groan but I can still buy it. It bugs me the way it is so I fixed it. 


This whole thread is, is realism lame. I don't it is nor do I think it ruins the fun of a fantasy game. I addressed areas in DnD that bother me and I have said why I have also said how I house ruled it. The only thing I have not been able to houserule because I can't figure out a way to make it work is dealing with mobs and threats of just huge numbers of trained combat soldiers facing four high level PCs.

I don't think this is really any different from people who hate how powerful magic gets and want to put in ways to make it less powerful. I think a lot of people may have things in the game that breaks the immersion or the fun for them. 

We all have our "things" I have a friend who hates Buffy the Vampire slayer because the vampires and demons don't just buy a gun and take out the slayer form a distance. I love Buffy so I am willing to overlook this flaw. For the most part I like DnD so I am willing to overlook certain things like hit points other things not so easily.


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## CroBob (Dec 27, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> That really depends can it be hand waved away as having to do something with the way gravity works or because of minerals in the islands that push against minerals in the land and pushes the islands into the air. There is a lot I can suspend my disbelief on. I play Toon and in the game I have no issue with falling of mountains tied to an anvil or getting shot by a cannon. As I said my issue with falling is that if it is because gravity works differently then it should for all classes and levels. The same for divine intervention. If it is because the gods have given high level fighters a boon for service and they now bounce instead of break then I may groan but I can still buy it. It bugs me the way it is so I fixed it.




Nobody inside that fantasy world knows why it happens. They've been living with it so long, they simply understand it as how the world works. They don't have the sensitive instruments to determine exactly why it happens. The DM may have come up with a reason, he may not have, but it's obvious that the world works that way, because the people living there watch it happen that way every day of their lives. Hell, maybe your character is a scientist at heart and tries to figure it out.

And gravity does work the same for all classes and levels (assuming that explanation), that's why tougher people (those with higher levels and more HPs) can fall faster and survive more easily than the less tough ones. Same way a boulder hurled by a giant phases them less.



> This whole thread is, is realism lame. I don't it is nor do I think it ruins the fun of a fantasy game. I addressed areas in DnD that bother me and I have said why I have also said how I house ruled it. The only thing I have not been able to houserule because I can't figure out a way to make it work is dealing with mobs and threats of just huge numbers of trained combat soldiers facing four high level PCs.




Yes, I agree you've spoken on the issue. I still can't seem to understand the sentiment, why that is the line for you and not, for example, getting struck with a boulder and not breaking any bones, or any other example of where the world doesn't parallel reality. It seemed to be the non-magical stuff being different from how the real world works, but there are plenty of examples of the non-magical stuff not working the way it does in reality. The fall damage, getting breathed fire on by a dragon and getting reduced to 1 HP by it, but your skin doesn't get horribly scarred and your clothes don't seem effected at all, the giant throwing a boulder at you and you're merely sore from it, or anything involving HPs. Diplomacy making friends from enemies, changing people's alignments, Rangers hiding in plain sight, etc. I could go all day listing things that aren't realistic and which aren't magical. It's not that I disagree that you should have your lines about what makes a game fun and not, I simply don't understand why your lines are where you've pointed and not in all the other absurd parts. It just seems so arbitrary to me. Which it doesn't have to follow a guideline, but it makes sense to me that it would.



> I don't think this is really any different from people who hate how powerful magic gets and want to put in ways to make it less powerful. I think a lot of people may have things in the game that breaks the immersion or the fun for them.




Of course. I could rattle off a list of things I don't like. Half-Dragon, Half Elemental, Vampire Trolls (and various other such ridiculous combinations) as my PCs for example. If people like them, cool, but it just seems too monstrous for me to be able to empathize with as my character, and it would naturally cause problems when going into humanoid towns due to people panicking and everything. There are certainly things that break my immersion, but if I accept one aspect of the game, then that same aspect of the game doesn't irritate me in a different situation. For example, when my fighter takes a giant's club to the face and it doesn't slow him down, it's also not unbelievable to me that this same dude can fall off a 200 foot cliff regularly, and survive every time. Yes, HPs are abstract and also count non-physical damage, but a giant totally hit the dude for 50 damage and he was fine. Why would he fall for 50 damage and then suddenly not be fine (unless he didn't heal in between)?

Due to HPs, injuries simply don't work the way they work in reality. At all. Falling, combat, lava, however you're taking the damage, it's not realistic, and I can accept that. So I don't understand why it makes sense when you get hit with a sword, but not when you get hit with the ground.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 27, 2012)

Just because some partsof the game are not realistic, that doesn't men the whole game ought to be unrealistic. D&D is not a highly realistic game, but there are places where the lack of believability are more striking and there have been changesto the rules in different editions that took this even further for some people. It is pretty obvious what crobob is doing here. He doesnt like or share elfwitch's opinion about realism so he is just building a semantic argument to show realism isn't real in the first place, and baiting her by being deliberately obtuse. This tactic gets used all the time in these arguments. It is the same argument people make saying if you can accept HP you have to accept instant non magical heals because heither are realistic.


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## Bluenose (Dec 27, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Not necessarily. People have used this game in a variety of different ways over the last 40 years or so, and there's never been a Fun Police to tell them they've been doing it badly. In the same vein, what people are using your tool for when it's not suited gives you an indication of where they want to use your tool, and there's probably no reason you shouldn't accommodate them, if you can.
> 
> I mean, think of a hammer. That little claw on the back of it, used for extracting nails. If someone had control over all the hammers produced, and only produced ones without that little claw, and said it was because "Hammers are for nailing things in, and if you want to pull nails out, it's just not for that. You can perhaps buy a Nail Puller instead," we'd all be using two tools for something that could be done in one. There's little good reason to presuppose that this highly flexible game engine is only usable for a narrow band of entertainment, and almost no good reason to say that it shouldn't be used for that, too, if it can be.
> 
> And it clearly can be.




If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".


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## Cleon (Dec 27, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Nobody inside that fantasy world knows why it happens. They've been living with it so long, they simply understand it as how the world works. They don't have the sensitive instruments to determine exactly why it happens. The DM may have come up with a reason, he may not have, but it's obvious that the world works that way, because the people living there watch it happen that way every day of their lives. Hell, maybe your character is a scientist at heart and tries to figure it out.
> 
> *SNIP*
> 
> ...




Yup, that's pretty much how I take it. Provided it's consistent any I can come up with a reasonable model as to what's going on in the "game reality" it doesn't matter to me if the same events would be unlikely or impossible in "real-life reality".

My favoured explanation for the "fighter surviving a tank shell to the face" problem is that D&D characters are like those martial adepts in a Shaw brothers film who can focus their "chih breath" enough to make a sword blow bounce off their naked neck. Hit points are some kind of life energy, and D&D adventurers literally have a life energy force field that protects them from harm. Once they run out of HPs, they're like a Star Trek ship whose shields have run out - the next attack could kill them.

That's the explanation that I think best fits the observed behaviour. The argument that HPs are in part (or mostly) a character's ability to dodge or evade attacks doesn't match how the rules work very well. If that was the case, shouldn't the HP damage depend on how hard to avoid the blow is, so an easy-to-dodge blow from a clumsy ogre's club would do less HP damage than an expert goblin archer's arrow? Also, if HP = dodging, why doesn't it cost HP to make a Reflex save?

It's quite possible to come up with variant rules for D&D that have more "realistic" injuries - some kinds of Vitality/Wound system with armour as DR can work pretty well. I've also run variant D&D games where the HP/wound damage varied with the attack roll.

If that's what some people prefer, go for it. Different strokes for different folks and all that.


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## Hussar (Dec 27, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".




Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make.  It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.  People are complaining that D&D isn't doing something they want it to do.  Note, the issue starts with the complaint.  It's not a case of someone stepping up and saying, "hey, D&D does this other thing really well, look at this!"  It's, "I want D&D to do this thing and it is resisting me, what should I do?"

Telling that person that another system will do everything they want with a minimum of fuss should be a good thing.

Look, if I wanted to do Game of Thrones as a campaign, D&D could do that.  I'm pretty sure it could anyway.  But, it's going to be a very bad fit.  The magic system (regardless of edition) is going to get in the way, the class/level system doesn't fit and the system is nowhere near gritty enough and, D&D generally lacks a good mass combat system as well.  

So, telling someone that maybe GURPS or Savage Worlds might fit that campaign better should not be seen as some sort of passive aggressive attack on playstyle.  Different games suit different playstyles and I do not believe that D&D is the panacea of gaming that fits all playstyles.  IMO, it does not.  Different editions might suit slightly different playstyles better, but, by and large, D&D suits a pretty narrow set of play which other games suit better.

There are just too many games out there to settle for one system over all.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make.  It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.  People are complaining that D&D isn't doing something they want it to do.  Note, the issue starts with the complaint.  It's not a case of someone stepping up and saying, "hey, D&D does this other thing really well, look at this!"  It's, "I want D&D to do this thing and it is resisting me, what should I do?"
> 
> 
> There are just too many games out there to settle for one system over all.




absolutely. There is deinitely nothing wrong with suggesting alternatives or saying d&dmay not be the best option for a realistic campaign. You have been offering sound advice. But it is a tone issue. While you have ben polite, there has been an undercurrent of hostility in some other peoples' posts when rather than suggest she try another game, they demand she play omething else and then question the very idea of wanting realism. Two very different approaches here. One respects her tastes and offers alternatives to D&D, the other basically says her tastes are incomprehensible, is a bit "shouty" and doesnt make good faith arguments.


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## Hussar (Dec 27, 2012)

Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.  

Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that.  D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example.  There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D.  Healing is a cure light wounds away.  You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences.  Even death becomes a speed bump.  There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.  

Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play. 

It does get very frustrating to see these claims, time and time again, with hardly a shred of evidence to back it up. And, any counter claim gets buried under "well in my game we do this and that" as if that somehow countered anything.  

I think I just get annoyed when people confuse their personal idiosyncratic take on the game with how the game is actually presented.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.  .



I prefer to call a spade a spade than let people like that win by walking the line.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that.  D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example.  There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D.  Healing is a cure light wounds away.  You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences.  Even death becomes a speed bump.  There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.
> 
> Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.
> 
> ...




Except what is being challenged here is the very notion that someone likes realism. I can debate all day long about how believable D&D ought to be and how believable it is (and you and I have done so many times so no value doing it here). That doesn't bother me that a poster might disagree with me about whether D&D is meant to be more realistic or cartoony. What bothers are efforts like crobobs to deconstruct a perfectly valid opinion about games through word games and being deliberately obtuse. It is obvious to everyone, i suspect even those who agree with him, what he is doing. And it is frankly becoming a stale tactic on this forum (one of the major reasons I rarely post here these days).


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## Umbran (Dec 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make.  It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.




Except that the, "there is NO gritty reality in D&D" assertion isn't offering them a screwdriver - it is a rather blatant challenge to their beliefs.  Leave that bit out, and you'd likely be okay.



Hussar said:


> Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.




And that's great.  I wish more people would.  But, honest and for true, is that what you *expect* from normal folks on the internet?  Write to your intended audience, and their traits, not your traits.



> Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.




Have you yet entertained the notion that your idea of "concrete support" may not apply well to RPGs?  Or, perhaps more usefully, that maybe just because you don't see it or feel it, doesn't mean the quality isn't there for others?  

My wife thinks cilantro tastes like soap.  Many people do not.  Just because those others don't experience the same sensation, does not mean my wife is lying, or wrong.  She just has a different experience.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 27, 2012)

Bluenose said:
			
		

> If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".




The fact that people have played the game like this implies that the game has this ability, because if it was impossible, or even significantly difficult, then people wouldn't be doing it. 



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.




This oversimplifies a complex issue of subculture identification, iconography, ingroup/outgroup dichotomy, gatekeepers, brand loyalty and identity, and actual suitedness. 

Not to mention being largely arbitrary. It's not like running a gritty D&D game is half as difficult as pounding screws in with a hammer. It's more like pounding in slightly duller nails. Okay, maybe you need to swing a little harder, but this tool clearly gets that job done.

Why CAN'T D&D offer a gritty option? Well, because self-appointed gatekeepers have recently tried to exclude that mode from supported play. There's nothing about the mechanics of the game that make it very hard, inherently.


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## CroBob (Dec 27, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> absolutely. There is deinitely nothing wrong with suggesting alternatives or saying d&dmay not be the best option for a realistic campaign. You have been offering sound advice. But it is a tone issue. While you have ben polite, there has been an undercurrent of hostility in some other peoples' posts when rather than suggest she try another game, they demand she play omething else and then question the very idea of wanting realism. Two very different approaches here. One respects her tastes and offers alternatives to D&D, the other basically says her tastes are incomprehensible, is a bit "shouty" and doesnt make good faith arguments.




I haven't demanded anything. Someone said "Well, these other games totally do the realism thing better than D&D!", so I suggested playing those games instead of D&D, since the problem is realism. Well that was the wrong answer, too. I'm just looking for consistency, and I can't seem to find it. Falling and lava make HPs unbelievable, but so does basically every other situation HPs are relevant, so there's no consistency. I've never lied about this, I do not empathize with her view on the subject. I'm trying to. If I've come off as a jerk for pointing out inconsistency, then maybe I am, in fact, a jerk, but I still don't see any consistency in what makes something more or less realistic to her. It makes as much sense to me as someone saying "I like peanut butter, just not on Tuesdays." Which is fine and all, but it still doesn't make any sense. Nothing about Tuesday is relevant to peanut butter, nothing about falling or lava make HPs any more or less realistic.

It's like in D&D 3.5, where taking 50+ damage called for a fort save or you die. But then the higher level you got and the more difficult enemies you fought just meant you rolled those saves more often. A guy with two HPs who loses half his HPs is fine, but a guy with 100 HPs who loses half his HPs is at risk of dying if he rolls a low save? It just punished players, it didn't make anything any more or less realistic. Just like removing the relevance of HPs to falling and your risk of dying only punishes players. What use are having HPs as a measure of how much punishment you can take if you're just going to ignore them in some situations?

I'm not saying anybody's wrong, I'm sincerely trying to understand this line of thinking. If that makes me an ass, then I'm an ass. Fine. Whatever.


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## Derren (Dec 28, 2012)

The "realism is lame" was not limited to the rules by the way (or the main focus). I meant by it more the world most fantasy settings play in. While there are people who enjoy, I think "gritty" would be the name even though it is just realistic most persons want caricatures. Paved roads everywhere, everyone can read with cities having libraries and of course sewers (for adventures) etc. and everything is available everywhere for enough money.
Or maybe I am just unlucky with the players I come across.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.
> 
> Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that.  D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example.  There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D.  Healing is a cure light wounds away.  You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences.  Even death becomes a speed bump.  There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.
> 
> ...




I can understand getting annoyed when people try and claim that DnD is not presented the way it is. Take all the magic arguments DnD magic is very powerful and keeps getting powerful and even though there was less ways to get as many spells before 3E and some spells had consequences magic has always been powerful. It is very hard to make it a low magic game unless you tweak the living daylights out of the game. 

I have never claimed that DnD was designed to be gritty even back before 3E when the game was less friendly to PC it still could not be considered gritty though it was more gritty then it is now. But that does not mean that certain things can't be tweaked to make it more gritty. 

There is a way to suggest a different system and I have valued some of the suggestions I have gotten when I brought up my frustration of trying to run my campaign as a DnD campaign. And there is a way not to. I agree with Bedrockgames in this you should not have to defend, and that is what I feel like it has become, liking a certain style. When I first read this topic is what about realism in gaming not just realism in DnD. And since DnD makes up the majority of my gaming experiences I was using it to illustrate points as well as how I have fixed them and how I would like to see other fixes. 

I know that game designers some times look at this threads and since I would like to see a way to make DnD more gritty I speak up hoping that maybe  one day there might be a supplement on how to accomplish this. Some gamers didn't like how powerful PCs get so the created E6 which is a really brilliant fix for that imo.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 28, 2012)

Derren said:


> The "realism is lame" was not limited to the rules by the way (or the main focus). I meant by it more the world most fantasy settings play in. While there are people who enjoy, I think "gritty" would be the name even though it is just realistic most persons want caricatures. Paved roads everywhere, everyone can read with cities having libraries and of course sewers (for adventures) etc. and everything is available everywhere for enough money.
> Or maybe I am just unlucky with the players I come across.




I get what you are saying and it is true for the most part that most published settings are very pseudo medieval in flavor. 

I prefer a world where not everyone speaks the same language like setting Kalamar does. Yes there is a trade tongue but it usually only found in the big cities. I have incorporated the optional language rules in many a campaign. Now some players may hate it because they may feel that it interferes with the lets just get on with it others really enjoy figuring out to communicate.

There are times I prefer a world that is less modern in flavor and more ancient. In those settings not everyone can read even PCs it depends on their backgrounds. While some roads may be paved after look at what the Romans accomplished with roads not all will be. 

And in all my games money can't buy you everything most magical weapons and armor have to be quested for. I rarely have Ye Magical Shoppe in my games. 

I also rarely have all the good churches interchangeable the church of say St Cuthbert may not be willing to go above and beyond o help a cleric of Pelor. And the gods can get feisty about being asked to do things for non believers. 

Now some of this might not be everyone cup of tea but for me and the majority of the people I game with they enjoy it because it gives some really good role playing challenges.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

CroBob said:


> I
> 
> I'm not saying anybody's wrong, I'm sincerely trying to understand this line of thinking. If that makes me an ass, then I'm an ass. Fine. Whatever.




No you are not. You are being the furthest thing from sincrere right now. You are not trying to find consistency, you re desperately creating inconsistency where there isn't any. What you are oing is obvious, and you ave one it before in the past on similar disussions. I really doubt after this many attempts to get at the heart of what this preference for realism is all about, that you honestly still don't understand.

*Mod Note:*  Please see my post a little ways down - don't make it personal!  ~Umbran


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## CroBob (Dec 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> No you are not. You are being the furthest thing from sincrere right now. You are not trying to find consistency, you re desperately creating inconsistency where there isn't any. What you are oing is obvious, and you ave one it before in the past on similar disussions. I really doubt after this many attempts to get at the heart of what this preference for realism is all about, that you honestly still don't understand.




You can dislike me, you can dislike my manner, but I'm not lying. Maybe I'm incapable of really understanding, maybe there is no consistency and it's all just arbitrary, maybe something in-between, maybe people don't like being questioned about their tastes and beliefs, presuming any kind of serious questioning is akin to an attack, but I'm not lying. Or, if I am, I'm unaware of it. Could you point it out?


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## Hussar (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The fact that people have played the game like this implies that the game has this ability, because if it was impossible, or even significantly difficult, then people wouldn't be doing it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win. 

By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win.
> 
> By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.




If that's what you think, then I think you have a far, far too narrow definition of grim and gritty. Mid-level party but with limited magic and healing in the game (actually quite easy to do in D&D) and you're still staring grim and gritty right in the face. You can take a few hits but each hit point becomes a precious resource. Name level PCs, in a typical magic-rich D&D campaign, are potent. No doubt about it. But that doesn't prevent a DM from adjusting a few assumptions and playing much more gritty. And it really does only take a few adjustments for the rules to work gritty. Check out the Thieves World supplements for d20. Not many changes, game much grittier than base assumption D&D.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

CroBob said:


> You can dislike me, you can dislike my manner, but I'm not lying. Maybe I'm incapable of really understanding, maybe there is no consistency and it's all just arbitrary, maybe something in-between, maybe people don't like being questioned about their tastes and beliefs, presuming any kind of serious questioning is akin to an attack, but I'm not lying. Or, if I am, I'm unaware of it. Could you point it out?




I am sorry CroBob, but I am too familiar with your posts to believe this. Its sophistry, not much more. You can do it with anything, from a person's taste in chocolate to a person's preference for healing surges or vancian spells. Keep questioning the perosn until you can trick them into opening up some possble inconsistencies (and eventually that does happen because you are questioning with the aim of establishing them). It is quite easy to do. And its obvious.


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## Hussar (Dec 28, 2012)

billd91 said:


> If that's what you think, then I think you have a far, far too narrow definition of grim and gritty. Mid-level party but with limited magic and healing in the game (actually quite easy to do in D&D) and you're still staring grim and gritty right in the face. You can take a few hits but each hit point becomes a precious resource. Name level PCs, in a typical magic-rich D&D campaign, are potent. No doubt about it. But that doesn't prevent a DM from adjusting a few assumptions and playing much more gritty. And it really does only take a few adjustments for the rules to work gritty. Check out the Thieves World supplements for d20. Not many changes, game much grittier than base assumption D&D.




Honestly haven't read the Theves World rules so I cannot specifically comment but in baseline D20 D&D, no wounds can ever take longer fhan a week of bedewt to heal and typically wounds are gone the next day or maybe the day after. So HP as "precious resource" certainly doesn't fit. 

As I said, people will make all these claims about the game but almost nver actually back them up with direct evidence from the game. 

It's funny. You go back a few years in posts on En World and you'll see almost weekly threads of people trying to do low magic or grim and gritty D&D and not having much success. Yet apparently it's a trivial thing to do it.


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Honestly haven't read the Theves World rules so I cannot specifically comment but in baseline D20 D&D, no wounds can ever take longer fhan a week of bedewt to heal and typically wounds are gone the next day or maybe the day after. So HP as "precious resource" certainly doesn't fit.
> 
> As I said, people will make all these claims about the game but almost nver actually back them up with direct evidence from the game.
> 
> It's funny. You go back a few years in posts on En World and you'll see almost weekly threads of people trying to do low magic or grim and gritty D&D and not having much success. Yet apparently it's a trivial thing to do it.






It is actually pretty easy but the decision to have that kind of campaign is wide-reaching and will affect the sorts of creatures and resources you can use in the campaign. And frankly I haven't seen that many threads with people saying they're failing to have success with low magic D&D. What I see is a lot of critics chiming into those threads saying that they *can't* succeed because it's too hard to do. And that's untrue.

Edit: It might also help to remember that in editions before 3e,  you healed a hit point a day, maybe two, no matter what your level was. True, you regained all hit points in a month's time, but that's hardly recovering the next day or even over the course of a single week.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win.
> 
> By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.




More recent editions of the game have resisted _tinkering_ more strongly. In 3e, there was such a complex web of inter-connectivity, if you changed one option (like the rate of magic the party got awarded), the whole house was liable to fall to pieces. 4e shared that problem to a large degree, and where it didn't, the game took such a strongly "my way or the highway" approach that tinkering was only welcome in certain proscribed ways. This is part of making a solid, balanced system, but it's also something that has said to a lot of people who want to play the game slightly differently: "This isn't FOR you."

Levels aren't inherently contra to a grim-n-gritty experience. It has more to do with hit point:damage ratios, ovreall character aplomb, and perhaps certain kinds of spells. And even 4e, tight as it is, tries to make some accommodation for it (see: Dark Sun). It's not something that is especially difficult to do. To decide that the game can't support it is to decide that this hammer can't POSSIBLY have a claw on the back because it was made for HAMMERING! A game engine isn't really a single-purpose tool.


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## CroBob (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> More recent editions of the game have resisted _tinkering_ more strongly. In 3e, there was such a complex web of inter-connectivity, if you changed one option (like the rate of magic the party got awarded), the whole house was liable to fall to pieces. 4e shared that problem to a large degree, and where it didn't, the game took such a strongly "my way or the highway" approach that tinkering was only welcome in certain proscribed ways. This is part of making a solid, balanced system, but it's also something that has said to a lot of people who want to play the game slightly differently: "This isn't FOR you."
> 
> Levels aren't inherently contra to a grim-n-gritty experience. It has more to do with hit point:damage ratios, ovreall character aplomb, and perhaps certain kinds of spells. And even 4e, tight as it is, tries to make some accommodation for it (see: Dark Sun). It's not something that is especially difficult to do. To decide that the game can't support it is to decide that this hammer can't POSSIBLY have a claw on the back because it was made for HAMMERING! A game engine isn't really a single-purpose tool.




I see where this is coming from, but at the same time my nigh irrelevant anecdotal evidence of personal games contradicts what you're claiming. I've never had a problem with anything from adding additional powers to altering the feel of the game as a whole. I'm not going to claim it didn't require any testing or tinkering, but it wasn't exactly difficult, either. Granted, I don't think my goal was to ever make it more "gritty", so my anecdotal evidence is irrelevant in regards to that anyhow, but making changes to how the game works isn't difficult. Just off the top of my head, for 4E, going for gritty;

1) No in-combat healing powers aside your single second wind (which, let's face facts, could easily be too little and too late by the time you decide you need it).
2) -1 to D20 rolls when bloodied, maybe even -2 when under a quarter of your HPs... "super-bloodied" until a good name comes up.
3) One death saving throw instead of three, and when you succeed you end up with some sort of penalty imposing injury (requiring a ritual to fix).
4) No Action Points.
5) Monsters do higher than normal damage, but, maybe, have fewer HPs.
6) You have a maximum of 2 Encounter powers, switching out for a higher level one when you'd normally gain a new one.

That's what I'd start with if I were aiming for gritty, and I'd adjust it after a few test games if necessary.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

CroBob said:
			
		

> I've never had a problem with anything from adding additional powers to altering the feel of the game as a whole.




That makes sense -- different players have different thresholds for change/chaos/tinkering/whatnot. Saying that it's more difficult isn't even saying that it is especially difficult per se, just that it's harder with more interconnection and tighter balance concerns. In 1e/2e, it was easier to ditch part of the rules (like the original initiative rules, or the weapon vs. armor rules, or the grappling table, or random encounters) without quite as many unexpected cascading effects (3e) or built-in mitigating factors (4e). My central thesis is, after all, that D&D can and should support it!


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## Umbran (Dec 28, 2012)

There's some folks here who are getting more than a tad personal.  Please allow me to remind you that this is a bad idea - address the logic of the post, not the person behind the post, please.


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## Hussar (Dec 28, 2012)

Oh hey. Just  second here. I'm most certainly not saying it can't be done. What I am saying is that the system is not geared for it and you're going to get little, if any, support when you try. 

Can it be done?  Oh sure. Is it going to do it out of the box without considerable tinkering?  I really do not think so. 

For example, KM is right that a level based system isn't necessarily a problem. However, the level system in D&D is.  The power curve works very strongly against what you want. Thus Elf Witch's comments about falling damage or being able to face off against dozens of archers in an open field and win.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Oh hey. Just  second here. I'm most certainly not saying it can't be done. What I am saying is that the system is not geared for it and you're going to get little, if any, support when you try.
> 
> Can it be done?  Oh sure. Is it going to do it out of the box without considerable tinkering?  I really do not think so.
> 
> For example, KM is right that a level based system isn't necessarily a problem. However, the level system in D&D is.  The power curve works very strongly against what you want. Thus Elf Witch's comments about falling damage or being able to face off against dozens of archers in an open field and win.




So if we can put that hook on the back of that hammer....why shouldn't we? If we can improve the support for   [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION] 's games by building a system that is happy to accommodate them, why not do that? If D&D CAN support more "realism," why shouldn't it?

I think sometimes people get wrapped up in the idea that this is a zero-sum kind of situation, but it's not. Leveling in D&D doesn't HAVE to come with big HP boosts, and it doesn't have to NOT come with big HP boosts, it can be both, one at one table, one at another, maybe both swapping off at the same table depending on the style of the game you want (Dark Sun maybe grim-n-gritty, FR maybe not). 

I don't see any convincing argument that says that D&D shouldn't take the fact that some people use it for some grim-n-gritty games, and _make that more possible_. It's had a history of enabling or at least permitting it already, and it's something that it keeps trying to make stabs at once in a while, it's something there's clearly a demand for, so why not just build a game engine robust enough to friggin' do it already and stop trying to pretend that everyone's D&D games should play exactly the same and that if it doesn't play that way it shouldn't be "D&D"? That sort of gatekeeping does not mesh with the way RPGs are played (and my own pet theory is that part of why 4e struggled was because it tried to keep the gates like that). 

There is reason to believe 5e is going to do this, and the d20 system proved the underlying assumption: you do not need to learn an entirely different game to play a slightly more gritty version of heroic fantasy. You can play D&D. D&D just needs to let itself be used like that.


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## CroBob (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> That makes sense -- different players have different thresholds for change/chaos/tinkering/whatnot. Saying that it's more difficult isn't even saying that it is especially difficult per se, just that it's harder with more interconnection and tighter balance concerns. In 1e/2e, it was easier to ditch part of the rules (like the original initiative rules, or the weapon vs. armor rules, or the grappling table, or random encounters) without quite as many unexpected cascading effects (3e) or built-in mitigating factors (4e). My central thesis is, after all, that D&D can and should support it!




Hrm... sort of. A system which is very complex, the complexity would certainly make altering it more difficult relative to other systems. However, with a system like 4E, the base system itself is actually very simple. As, in my not entirely humble opinion, it should be. When the base system is simple, it's easy to figure out what kind of effect each change will have on the game. So while earlier iterations may have been more modular, newer systems are more easily molded as a whole, while allowing for modular upgrades to also be easy to do.


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## CroBob (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> So if we can put that hook on the back of that hammer....why shouldn't we? If we can improve the support for    @_*Elf Witch*_  's games by building a system that is happy to accommodate them, why not do that? If D&D CAN support more "realism," why shouldn't it?
> 
> I think sometimes people get wrapped up in the idea that this is a zero-sum kind of situation, but it's not. Leveling in D&D doesn't HAVE to come with big HP boosts, and it doesn't have to NOT come with big HP boosts, it can be both, one at one table, one at another, maybe both swapping off at the same table depending on the style of the game you want (Dark Sun maybe grim-n-gritty, FR maybe not).
> 
> ...




I do think the idea of modular modification is a good one, but at what point is it too much? At what point do you have too much "The fighter gains a d10 HPs per level. For a less random HP total, the Fighter gains 6 HPs per level. For a grittier game, the Fighter gains a d6 HPs. For a less gritty game, the Fighter gains a d12. Etc, etc."?

I do think options should be part of basically every RPG, but at what point do you give up on writing a rule book at all and just hand people a business card that says "Do whatever you want"? Does a game gain anything through trying to bend over backwards so that it can be a different game entirely at every other table, instead of simply writing a few different games marketed towards those different groups? There's a point where something becomes so flexible and modular that it loses it's identity and utility entirely.

Is D&D good for gritty, realistic games? No. Can it be made that way? Sure. You can modify it to be anything you want. You can do the same thing to any other game system as well. So what? Is there a reason the gaming style you desire must be made under the D&D banner? Does the title really matter that much? Why not find a game that's already close to what you're looking for and play that one? I could come up with a d20 game that's gritty in under a week, and it'd probably even be fun. It wouldn't resemble D&D all that much, though. I mean, it'd be d20 based, and there'd be skills and probably feat like things. I made it quickly, after all, but would it be right to call this quick game of mine "Dungeons and Dragons" just because it's based on rolling a d20?


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

CroBob said:


> However, with a system like 4E, the base system itself is actually very simple. As, in my not entirely humble opinion, it should be. When the base system is simple, it's easy to figure out what kind of effect each change will have on the game.




You're right, but I think we may have different definitions of "simple." IMO, if you're talking about 4e's skill system, okay, it's simple. If you're talking about 4e's combat system...then it is lousy with fiddly bits with great meaning and meaningless bits that seem significant. IMXP, of course.  



			
				CroBob said:
			
		

> I do think options should be part of basically every RPG, but at what point do you give up on writing a rule book at all and just hand people a business card that says "Do whatever you want"?




This is part of why I'm a big supporter of the OGL. The best way to ensure that someone can find a suite of options that suits their own table well is to ensure that there is an ecosystem of options that are more diverse than any one person will ever functionally need. Let everyone make modifications to your base system, and it is going to wind up adapted to EVERY niche, even the ones you've never thought of or the ones you personally don't have any interest in. The OGL enabled things like roleplaying in fantasy Africa, detailed rules for fictional sex and romance, a 300+ page compendium of historical weapons and armors, telekinetic flying jellyfish as a PC race, and more. I might not care about any of those personally, but a plentiful ecosystem makes it more likely to find what I DO care about. At least one "gritty" d20 variant has already been mentioned in the thread, and there's at least a dozen more where that came from. 

WotC doesn't need to provide everything (though they might want to provide some of the most common desires). They just need to provide a platform -- an engine -- that can run anything, and to give everyone permission to do anything they want with it. The magic of the OGL is, in part, that it supports the natural way that people play the game anyway.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> You're right, but I think we may have different definitions of "simple." IMO, if you're talking about 4e's skill system, okay, it's simple. If you're talking about 4e's combat system...then it is lousy with fiddly bits with great meaning and meaningless bits that seem significant. IMXP, of course.




My belief is that the fiddliness of 2e, 3e, and 4e combat is about the same (and ultimately little different from that of Storyteller) - but it's a matter of where things are loaded.  2e has a fiddly _system_ with THAC0, assorted non-obvious saves, descending AC, weapons doing different damage based on the target type, NWPs using their own rules, etc.  By contrast 4e has a very simple system (slightly simpler than 3e's, which is a lot simpler than 2e's) - and fiddly characters who have at will attacks where one pushes, one hits the neighbour of the target, etc.  So the complexity outcome is about the same in all cases.

And one of the problems with 4e is that until Essentials there wasn't a character class that used this simplicity to end up with a genuinely simple character (the 4e Slayer is as simple as a 2e Fighter, and far simpler than the 3e fighter).


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

The HP debate has been done over and over but what I will say is this, beginning with 3E HP and heals increasingly presented a believability issue for me. By 4E it became impossible to ignore with how quickly healing functioned. I get that healing and hp has never been a 100% simulation of reality. It was always a simple system that kept down record keeping and allowed for extensive dungeon crawls and long ventures into the wilderness with less rest than if characters had more realistic, static health. But one day or instant non magical heals take the game too far in the direction of a cartoon. A week or more, i can handle. There is enough of a nod to the need for the body to rest and recover. So yes HP are imperfect to begin with. There are flaws I can overlook (for example the 1st level guy healing all his hp faster than the 10th level warrior). But I just find a slower heal rate, say 1 HP per day ot 2 for every day of full rest, more believable, than a guy healing fully naturally in say a day or within minutes. This is enough of an issue for people that I believe they will have to address it in Next if they want to earn back lapsed customers.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> My belief is that the fiddliness of 2e, 3e, and 4e combat is about the same




My direct experience with the combat of 2e and 3e, and playing it as "theater of the mind," runs counter to your belief. 

A lot of this has to do with movement. The more effects there are that push, pull, slide, shift, teleport, and otherwise move creatures, the more precise positioning down to the 5' square begins to matter, the more fiddly combat becomes. It's not just movement (an entire combat role is dedicated to applying a -2 penalty and tracking out-of-turn actions!), but that's a big driver. 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> the 4e Slayer is as simple as a 2e Fighter, and far simpler than the 3e fighter




I disagree and find the differences to be remarkably obvious, but that's not really here or there with regards to D&D being maybe a game inclusive of "realism" or not.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> My direct experience with the combat of 2e and 3e, and playing it as "theater of the mind," runs counter to your belief.




And mine runs in line with my belief.  If Theatre of the Mind is what you want then I agree repositioning people makes it a challenge.



> A lot of this has to do with movement. The more effects there are that push, pull, slide, shift, teleport, and otherwise move creatures, the more precise positioning down to the 5' square begins to matter, the more fiddly combat becomes. It's not just movement (an entire combat role is dedicated to applying a -2 penalty and tracking out-of-turn actions!), but that's a big driver.




And that combat role is somehow more complex than a 3.X Batman Wizard?  But nevertheless the combat rules are simple and the applications fiddly - which is precisely what I was saying.



> I disagree and find the differences to be remarkably obvious, but that's not really here or there with regards to D&D being maybe a game inclusive of "realism" or not.




When I want Realism I play GURPS.  Not a game in which someone can take a crossbow bolt at point blank range and survive without any significant penalties - or one in which the original designer described the banner of realism as the refuge of scoundrels.  D&D has to me always been trying to be a cinematic game and the hit point system makes this screamingly obvious.  On the other hand 4e has narrative consistency which is a different matter entirely.  I expect Indiana Jones to be larger than life and to take a ridiculous amount of punishment - he is not "realistic".


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> And that combat role is somehow more complex than a 3.X Batman Wizard?




Nobody said that it was? 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> When I want Realism I play GURPS. Not a game in which someone can take a crossbow bolt at point blank range and survive without any significant penalties - or one in which the original designer described the banner of realism as the refuge of scoundrels.  D&D has to me always been trying to be a cinematic game and the hit point system makes this screamingly obvious.




If you accept that your experience is not universal and that D&D is a flexible enough concept to have "more realistic" variant HP systems, then I don't know why you wouldn't want to accept a D&D that actually did permit that for those that wanted it.

That's the thrust of my point, after all: D&D doesn't HAVE to be Indiana Jones, necessarily, and hasn't ever been, for a lot of its players. It's not a single-purpose tool. That hammer can also have a claw on the back - it's not JUST for hammering.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Nobody said that it was?




So you were comparing the most complex core classes in 4e with ...?  I'm calling Batman Wizards and 3.5 Druids as the high end 3.5 complex classes.  And I dispute that a 4e defender is as complex as either.



> If you accept that your experience is not universal and that D&D is a flexible enough concept to have "more realistic" variant HP systems, then I don't know why you wouldn't want to accept a D&D that actually did permit that for those that wanted it.




How many parts of it do you replace?  



> That's the thrust of my point, after all: D&D doesn't HAVE to be Indiana Jones, necessarily, and hasn't ever been, for a lot of its players. It's not a single-purpose tool. That hammer can also have a claw on the back - it's not JUST for hammering.




4e believe it or not has a claw hammer on the back.  But until you start throwing out major systems like the hit point rules, D&D is going to be cinematic past level 2.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> So you were comparing the most complex core classes in 4e with ...




I hadn't said a thing about any particular 4e class? I had compared my experiences with 4e combat to earlier-e combat and found 4e combat to be overall a slightly more complex and fiddly experience than before, and gave a supporting point to illustrate why that may be the case for me, in the context of illustrating that different editions have been able to accommodate different levels of customization, while remaining overall quite customizable despite this. 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> How many parts of it do you replace?




That's up to the individual group, I imagine. The system can be built in such a way that none of it is essential to play. For WotC's purposes, I don't imagine they'd stray far from the pen-and-paper heroic fantasy that is traditional for D&D, but there's no reason in my mind that they cannot allow for other tables to have their own interpretation of what "D&D" means to them, even if it becomes a space opera game about politics and intrigue played using a monopoly board and poker hands. That might not be my D&D or your D&D or Jeremy Crawford's D&D, or WotC's D&D, but there's little need to play gate-keeper to what that word could mean for every table out there, and lots of reasons not to.



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> 4e believe it or not has a claw hammer on the back. But until you start throwing out major systems like the hit point rules, D&D is going to be cinematic past level 2.




I think your second sentence undercuts your first one here. If you see D&D as requiring a certain kind of HP rule, then HP in D&D are single-purpose only. I don't think HP in D&D are anything like a "major system," so I can see a lot of different ways to use it to accomplish a lot of different goals for a multitude of different tables who might never use HP in the cinematic way that you seem to feel it must be used in.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> 4e believe it or not has a claw hammer on the back.  But until you start throwing out major systems like the hit point rules, D&D is going to be cinematic past level 2.




D&D really straddles the line in my opinion. It has strong cinematic elements but it was never particularly suited to cinematic play. TORG and Savage Worlds are deeply cinematic and far better choices for that in my opinion. D&D has always kind of had its foot in a number of different ponds, probably because at its best it is the one game people with a host of different preferences could gather around and play together. Did it have everything for the player who wanted realism? No but it had just enough for many of them. I would argue HP are not really about cinenatic play at all, but rather more about making dungeon crawls feasible and as a kind of reward system. 

So i think the argument that D&D is cinematic because HP, therefore the game should primarily be built around cinematic play, doesnt really make sense. That would be like arguing because the encumbrance rules try to place realistic limitsn what you can carry, the game is mainly about realistic play, so future editoins should be all about simulationism. This is exactly the kind of argument that creates hostility between fans of different editions, because it denies people the experience they had with the game. I know lots of 4E fanshave trouble uderrstaning how I could find 4E healing and encounter powers highly unrealistic but find HP and old class powers believable enough, but I do.


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## Obryn (Dec 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I know lots of 4E fanshave trouble uderrstaning how I could find 4E healing and encounter powers highly unrealistic but find HP and old class powers believable enough, but I do.



Speaking only for myself, I understand it.  Where I part ways is that I think 4e's healing surges and encounter powers make for a better _game_, and I'm vastly more interested in the "game" angle than the "simulation" angle when I'm sitting down at a table with my friends, pretending to be elves. 

-O


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I hadn't said a thing about any particular 4e class? I had compared my experiences with 4e combat to earlier-e combat and found 4e combat to be overall a slightly more complex and fiddly experience than before, and gave a supporting point to illustrate why that may be the case for me, in the context of illustrating that different editions have been able to accommodate different levels of customization, while remaining overall quite customizable despite this.




And I gave a counter-example of something that's more fiddly than 4e has anywhere which you accepted.  Defenders are fiddly tacticians.  This I don't dispute.  I do, however, dispute that they are all at the upper edge of the D&D fiddlyness stakes and gave a counter-example.

That's up to the individual group, I imagine. The system can be built in such a way that none of it is essential to play. For WotC's purposes, I don't imagine they'd stray far from the pen-and-paper heroic fantasy that is traditional for D&D, but there's no reason in my mind that they cannot allow for other tables to have their own interpretation of what "D&D" means to them, even if it becomes a space opera game about politics and intrigue played using a monopoly board and poker hands. That might not be my D&D or your D&D or Jeremy Crawford's D&D, or WotC's D&D, but there's little need to play gate-keeper to what that word could mean for every table out there, and lots of reasons not to.



> I think your second sentence undercuts your first one here. If you see D&D as requiring a certain kind of HP rule, then HP in D&D are single-purpose only.




I see all D&D versions as having _had_ hit points in which a second level PC can take a point blank shot from a crossbow and walk away even if it rolls (non-critical) maximum damage.  I see this as incompatable with realism - to me realism is one of those things that needs to be applied consistently.  If someone isn't realistic in their area of expertise (which includes taking a beating) then they aren't realistic.



> I don't think HP in D&D are anything like a "major system," so I can see a lot of different ways to use it to accomplish a lot of different goals for a multitude of different tables who might never use HP in the cinematic way that you seem to feel it must be used in.




They are foundational to D&D combat and consistently behave this way across almost all editions.  And there are multiple cinematic ways it can be used - indeed the 4e "Heroic comeback" hit point mechanics behave differently from the previous "Tougher than iron" versions.  They can be used many ways up to and including wizards having forcefields (yes, I've done this).  What they can't be used is "realistically".


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I see all D&D versions as having _had_ hit points in which a second level PC can take a point blank shot from a crossbow and walk away even if it rolls (non-critical) maximum damage.  I see this as incompatable with realism - to me realism is one of those things that needs to be applied consistently.  If someone isn't realistic in their area of expertise (which includes taking a beating) then they aren't realistic.




And yet people sometimes do survive grave injuries, including spikes through the brain, just like some people survive terminal velocity falls. Reality can be funny that way. Games typically, even the more realistic ones, bend the odds in favor of the PCs. I'm quite willing to have a game that has a significant nod to gritty, grim, and realistic while also including a certain amount of death resistance to the main protagonists.

One of the great elements of D&D is that the game changes at different level ranges. I can focus on grimmer and grittier at levels 5 and under. Dial up to less gritty but not too fantastic by focusing the game on 5-10. Or go much larger than life in the high level range.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> So i think the argument that D&D is cinematic because HP, therefore the game should primarily be built around cinematic play, doesnt really make sense. That would be like arguing because the encumbrance rules try to place realistic limitsn what you can carry, the game is mainly about realistic play, so future editoins should be all about simulationism.




Realistic + Cinematic = Cinematic.

And simulationism isn't inconsistent with a cinematic world being simulated.



> This is exactly the kind of argument that creates hostility between fans of different editions, because it denies people the experience they had with the game. I know lots of 4E fanshave trouble uderrstaning how I could find 4E healing and encounter powers highly unrealistic but find HP and old class powers believable enough, but I do.




That isn't in the top three ways of creating hostility between fans of different editions.

For the record:
1: Silly little putdowns.  (3tards, 4vengers)
2: Outright lies.
3: Attempted denial that someone else's game is D&D - an attempt to entirely remove them from the conversation.

Only after we've got those three absolutely conversationally toxic approaches out of the way (all three of which happen on ENworld although the do eventually crack down on the first) do attempts to tease apart and analyse why people like what they do come anywhere close to being conversationally annoying by comparison.


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> That isn't in the top three ways of creating hostility between fans of different editions.
> 
> For the record:
> 1: Silly little putdowns.  (3tards, 4vengers)
> ...




You forgot being totally dismissive of someone else's opinion and/or telling them that opinion is wrong... another attempt to remove them from the conversation.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> I do, however, dispute that they are all at the upper edge of the D&D fiddlyness stakes and gave a counter-example




This isn't a contest for the Most Fiddly Game Mechanic Ever In D&D History. It's just a statement that I find 4e combats personally more fiddly than combat in previous editions. If you think that's a fair opinion that a reasonable person could have, then we're on the same page. 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> I see all D&D versions as having had hit points in which a second level PC can take a point blank shot from a crossbow and walk away even if it rolls (non-critical) maximum damage. I see this as incompatable with realism - to me realism is one of those things that needs to be applied consistently. If someone isn't realistic in their area of expertise (which includes taking a beating) then they aren't realistic.




Some people have always seen that as a flaw. Some people have always worked against escalating hit points. Some people have used special rules to add lethality and grittiness to their games. Those people were playing D&D, still, and D&D can make it easier to play like that than it has. 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> They are foundational to D&D combat and consistently behave this way across almost all editions. And there are multiple cinematic ways it can be used - indeed the 4e "Heroic comeback" hit point mechanics behave differently from the previous "Tougher than iron" versions. They can be used many ways up to and including wizards having forcefields (yes, I've done this). What they can't be used is "realistically".




They can also not be used at all, used in lower amounts, used with rules enhancing overall lethality of the game, etc. 

If you're just looking at the rule as a pure function of what they do at the table during play, HP are a combat pacing mechanism, nothing more. Some people want a faster pace, some people want a slower pace, some people want back-and-forth, others want all-or-nothing. There's no reason D&D can't allow for all these styles. A particular combat pace is something that should be easily allowed to change with the preferences of the group playing. 

And to make the example concrete, this was easier to change in a game like 1e than it was to change in a game like 4e. In 1e,  you decide that everyone has 1d4 hp and that never increases, and you're done. The game is grittier. No one survives a sword wound. It's not balanced, but 1e is comfortable with imbalance. In 4e, you make that choice and you need to interface with healing surges, and the leader role, and Second Wind, and healing potions, and monster recharge abilities, and the "bloodied" status, that's only if you don't care about toppling that carefully built house of cards that is 4e encounter design or about being "gritty" in other ways (such as with death saves). But none of that really needs to stop you, it just makes it a bigger hump to get over. And it's nowhere near the hump you might need to get over if you wanted to strip magic items out of your 3e game (which 4e makes comparatively quite simple!). 

Which is just to show that you can make design decisions with a game that encourage or discourage tinkering with it in certain ways, and that there's no reason that D&D cannot be designed to be tinkered with in EVERY way.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Realistic + Cinematic = Cinematic.




No. When something deviates from what is realistic and attempts to emulate movie physics it becomes cinematic. It is a question of realism makes something gritty and how much deviation from realism makes it cinematic. Having a few unrealistic mechanics in the game doesnt make it a cinematic rpg. 



> And simulationism isn't inconsistent with a cinematic world being simulated.




That depends on what defintiion of simulationism you are using. I am not using the forge's definition. I used it to mean a realistic game system in this case. A realistic game system and a cinematic one are in tension with one another. 






> That isn't in the top three ways of creating hostility between fans of different editions.
> 
> For the record:
> 1: Silly little putdowns.  (3tards, 4vengers)
> ...




that isn't how it works. People dont get to continue being rude because they feel a list of other greivances haven't been addressed. I have not once in this thread said 4E isnt D&D. I have not made use of put downs like 4vengers. I have not made any outright lies. So pointing to these things when I complain about people dismissing my experience of the game adds nothing to the discussion.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 28, 2012)

Obryn said:


> Speaking only for myself, I understand it.  Where I part ways is that I think 4e's healing surges and encounter powers make for a better _game_, and I'm vastly more interested in the "game" angle than the "simulation" angle when I'm sitting down at a table with my friends, pretending to be elves.
> 
> -O




And I am totally fine with that. If 4E gives you a better game, more power to you. Play it and enjoy. If healing surges and encounter powers are part of what makes it better for you, then you should use them. My only point is that many of us didn't like them and had some issues with them in terms of believability. They were simply a step too far. I dont need a game to be a full simulation of reality, but for my tastes 4E was a bit too oriented around the game at the expense of suspension of disbelief. I am fine with someone agreeing with this assesment but believing it produces a better game, as I am fine with someone who believes 4E doesn't have any issues around believability. What tends to aggrivate me is folks trying to deconstruct my position, using Socratic questioning to "prove" my experience of the game is wrong. To me that is dismissive and it's sophistry.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

billd91 said:


> And yet people sometimes do survive grave injuries, including spikes through the brain, just like some people survive terminal velocity falls.




This is why I am talking about maximum damage rather than minimum.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> This isn't a contest for the Most Fiddly Game Mechanic Ever In D&D History. It's just a statement that I find 4e combats personally more fiddly than combat in previous editions. If you think that's a fair opinion that a reasonable person could have, then we're on the same page.




And I'm differentiating the combat from the combat rules.  4e IMO starts with simpler rules than previous editions and uses them to build a complex game.   The only part that the _rules_ are harder is round healing surges (for which there is no equivalent) - but you can make some very fiddly characters out of simple building blocks.  I also don't think the fiddliest are _as_ fiddly as the fiddliest in previous editions (which is one of my points) but the baseline characters have more things that are included actually mattering.

We aren't actually disagreeing here as far as I can tell.



> Those people were playing D&D, still, and D&D can make it easier to play like that than it has.




And this is two interesting questions.  How much hacking can you do before D&D stops being D&D?  And is playing D&D for its sake a good thing when there are better games to get the effect you want?



> Which is just to show that you can make design decisions with a game that encourage or discourage tinkering with it in certain ways, and that there's no reason that D&D cannot be designed to be tinkered with in EVERY way.




The way to design a game to be tinkered with is to isolate parts of it.  Which leads to clunky rather than elegant rules because they are all bolted on and can be almost trivially removed so there's less of a sense of a coherent whole.  



Bedrockgames said:


> No. When something deviates from what is realistic and attempts to emulate movie physics it becomes cinematic. It is a question of realism makes something gritty and how much deviation from realism makes it cinematic. Having a few unrealistic mechanics in the game doesnt make it a cinematic rpg.




Hit points are designed to emulate movie physics - explicitely the swordfights and swashbuckling of Erroll Flynn.  Having a few cinematic mechanics designed to emulate cinema makes it cinematic.



> That depends on what defintiion of simulationism you are using. I am not using the forge's definition. I used it to mean a realistic game system in this case. A realistic game system and a cinematic one are in tension with one another.




Then use "realistic" please.  Using idiosyncratic language when there are commonly agreed meanings of those terms within the roleplaying community does nothing but harm communication.

[Conversation from here on in cut due to mod suggestion.]


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> This is why I am talking about maximum damage rather than minimum.




A spike through the head is minimum damage, equivalent to the barest graze of an arm or shoulder? Or is it significant damage delivered in a way that doesn't happen to kill the target? Frankly, I find the latter a more satisfying answer.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2012)

billd91 said:


> A spike through the head is minimum damage, equivalent to the barest graze of an arm or shoulder? Or is it significant damage delivered in a way that doesn't happen to kill the target? Frankly, I find the latter a more satisfying answer.




If a spike through the head is maximum damage then _it is __not possible_ for a spike through the head to kill a certain (healthy) PC.  Frankly I find that an even less satisfying answer (although prefer the GURPS approach which combines damage with death saves if you want to model this).


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> If a spike through the head is maximum damage then _it is __not possible_ for a spike through the head to kill a certain (healthy) PC.  Frankly I find that an even less satisfying answer (although prefer the GURPS approach which combines damage with death saves if you want to model this).




It's a serious injury that doesn't happen to kill the target. It could be a spike in the head, a blade thrust that deeply penetrates the thigh but misses the artery. A central conceit of hit points and gaining more is that the PC gets better at turning injuries that would be lethal into ones that are not. The blade that would have severed the femoral artery is dodged or blocked enough that it just cuts deep. 

Now to go back to context, you were also talking maximum, not critical, damage. Maybe you really do need (or even should need) a critical to have the chance of one-shotting that PC because that's what turns that high rolling damage from being a severe injury into and even higher damage mortal one. Ultimately, this is part of the fun of the random roll, both for hit points and for damage. Some people can't take the punishment as well as others. Some injuries are worse than others. Make the recovery of those hit points slow, and you can have plenty of grim and gritty fun even while PCs take a few shots to actually kill.


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## Umbran (Dec 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Realistic + Cinematic = Cinematic.




You speak as if the world of games is digital, and Cinema is dominant - by this logic, having a *single* cinematic mechanic means the entire game is cinematic. That being a bit extreme means the logic fails at some point

It is more likely a continuum, and the various mechanics all stack together to reach some end result standard play state.  And exactly how cinematic that feels to people will depend, in large part, on the people.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> You're right, but I think we may have different definitions of "simple." IMO, if you're talking about 4e's skill system, okay, it's simple. If you're talking about 4e's combat system...then it is lousy with fiddly bits with great meaning and meaningless bits that seem significant. IMXP, of course.



   I'm talking about the system itself. basically everything that happens follows all the same general rules. While there's wiggle room, everything that happens is basically a combination of the same variables with different values, which was not true in older editions, especially pre-3E. Back then, magical fear could have any number of different effects, for example. While those variables tended to pile up, the problem was more in keeping track of them after their application, which can be done easily on whatever note card you're keeping track of combat on in the first place.  







> This is part of why I'm a big supporter of the OGL. The best way to ensure that someone can find a suite of options that suits their own table well is to ensure that there is an ecosystem of options that are more diverse than any one person will ever functionally need. Let everyone make modifications to your base system, and it is going to wind up adapted to EVERY niche, even the ones you've never thought of or the ones you personally don't have any interest in. The OGL enabled things like roleplaying in fantasy Africa, detailed rules for fictional sex and romance, a 300+ page compendium of historical weapons and armors, telekinetic flying jellyfish as a PC race, and more. I might not care about any of those personally, but a plentiful ecosystem makes it more likely to find what I DO care about. At least one "gritty" d20 variant has already been mentioned in the thread, and there's at least a dozen more where that came from.



  This does make sense. However, at the same time, there doesn't need to be a book on the topic in order for someone to change the game in the way they want it changed. It's not like they need permission from publishers to play the game with house-rules or variations on the game's innate rules, or something. The only thing these options being printed really does is offer suggestions as to how to do it. I don't see how major changes being done by yourself would take much longer than poring through a bunch of OGL products/online references to figure out how other people did it, except with the disadvantage of the work's results being less directly proportional to how much effort you put into it, but rather depending on how much work other people already did on that particular thing.  







> WotC doesn't need to provide everything (though they might want to provide some of the most common desires). They just need to provide a platform -- an engine -- that can run anything, and to give everyone permission to do anything they want with it. The magic of the OGL is, in part, that it supports the natural way that people play the game anyway.



  So would you advocate churning out a very basic game, with very core mechanics, providing very little flavor or specific functionality, and then pumping out books which are more specific to particular genres? Frankly, I wouldn't mind that at all. It could be called "D20 Core", or something, and then pump out a bunch of D&D products for it, or even things labelled something entirely different, but which still functions on those very basic mechanics. I'd go so far as to call it a good idea.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And I'm differentiating the combat from the combat rules.  4e IMO starts with simpler rules than previous editions and uses them to build a complex game.   The only part that the _rules_ are harder is round healing surges (for which there is no equivalent) - but you can make some very fiddly characters out of simple building blocks.  I also don't think the fiddliest are _as_ fiddly as the fiddliest in previous editions (which is one of my points) but the baseline characters have more things that are included actually mattering.
> 
> We aren't actually disagreeing here as far as I can tell.




There's quibbles, but I think we're pretty much on the same page as long as you agree that I can find 4e combats more fiddly than previous e combats and not be disingenuous or insulting. 



> And this is two interesting questions.  How much hacking can you do before D&D stops being D&D?  And is playing D&D for its sake a good thing when there are better games to get the effect you want?




I think this kind of interfaces with branding and how people tie up intimately with "D&D" in a way that they don't with other brands, but I don't see any reason we need external gatekeepers to tell us when "D&D" ends and when some other game begins. Is d20 Call of Cthulu D&D? How about [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate]? OSRIC? Mutants and Masterminds? Gamma World? Birthright? Adventurer Conqueror King? For me, the answer to that is: "Well, is it D&D _to you_? Then it's D&D. Even if it's Star Wars d6."

I don't think anyone needs to cut down strict dividing lines. In a lot of ways, it's like putting down strict dividing lines in genre. Is Star Wars space opera? Sci fi? Science-Fantasy? Is this kind of music post-punk, post-rock, indie, noise-fusion, instrumental, or experimental? Well, it's a subjective, academic distinction that has no real authority outside of an individual's understanding. 



> The way to design a game to be tinkered with is to isolate parts of it.  Which leads to clunky rather than elegant rules because they are all bolted on and can be almost trivially removed so there's less of a sense of a coherent whole.




Elegance is overrated, IMO. If you want an elegant game mechanic, flip a coin. The way to capture attention and to initiate flow is to have complexity with significance in areas that you're interested in, and to have the game constantly turning you back to those areas. Since different people are interested in different areas, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Some folks are interested when combats are quick and deadly. Some folks are interested when combats are cinematic and tactical. Some folks want one for one game and one for the other. There doesn't need to be an authority pronouncing one or the other to be What D&D Is. It can be up to the individual table.



			
				CroBob said:
			
		

> While there's wiggle room, everything that happens is basically a combination of the same variables with different values, which was not true in older editions, especially pre-3E.




Aye, that's true. At the same time, some folks like those unified mechanics, others don't. 



			
				CroBob said:
			
		

> However, at the same time, there doesn't need to be a book on the topic in order for someone to change the game in the way they want it changed. It's not like they need permission from publishers to play the game with house-rules or variations on the game's innate rules, or something. The only thing these options being printed really does is offer suggestions as to how to do it. I don't see how major changes being done by yourself would take much longer than poring through a bunch of OGL products/online references to figure out how other people did it, except with the disadvantage of the work's results being less directly proportional to how much effort you put into it, but rather depending on how much work other people already did on that particular thing.




I think it's a feature of there being different kinds of players with different needs. I'm a homebrew machine, you can't STOP me from tinkering with rules. But not everyone is. Some folks would rather get a book on roleplaying in fantasy Africa than to have to research African myths and legends and compose unique classes and abilities themselves. Personally, I'd rather pay someone who is already smart about those things to make game rules for me than have to make them myself, just as I'd rather pay someone to make me a chair than go harvest and chop and sand the wood myself and make a chair. 



			
				CroBob said:
			
		

> So would you advocate churning out a very basic game, with very core mechanics, providing very little flavor or specific functionality, and then pumping out books which are more specific to particular genres? Frankly, I wouldn't mind that at all. It could be called "D20 Core", or something, and then pump out a bunch of D&D products for it, or even things labelled something entirely different, but which still functions on those very basic mechanics. I'd go so far as to call it a good idea.




Kinda. I'd probably package it a little differently, but that's what it'd be. 

I'd _package_ it as a basic fantasy game for anyone who wants to pretend to be an elf for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon (ie: include a simple skeleton of rules that is stripped-down, basic D&D: fighter/wizard/cleric/dwarf/elf/human, GO), combined with a bunch of pages of extra options (ie: include the most common additions that people will want: halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, paladins, thieves, warlocks), and maybe even some more advanced options just to see what's possible (tweaking hp, tweaking how common magic items are, tweaking the magic system) in the DM's guide. 

And in that book would be the basic core rules and math that any DM could use to tweak their games for their own tables...and, ideally, that any potential publisher could use to make their rule systems for others to gather up if they choose.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Elegance is overrated, IMO. If you want an elegant game mechanic, flip a coin. The way to capture attention and to initiate flow is to have complexity with significance in areas that you're interested in, and to have the game constantly turning you back to those areas. Since different people are interested in different areas, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Some folks are interested when combats are quick and deadly. Some folks are interested when combats are cinematic and tactical. Some folks want one for one game and one for the other. There doesn't need to be an authority pronouncing one or the other to be What D&D Is. It can be up to the individual table.




I can neither strictly agree nor disagree with this sentiment. While it should be a game design objective to make the game as simple as possible, it must also be as simple as possible while retaining the design goals you have for it. And therein lies the problem with designing a new iteration of D&D specifically. So many people have such differing opinions about what makes it D&D, that you either try to please everyone and create a clunky beast that alienates new players, or you design an elegant game and turn people off to it for being unfamiliar. Frankly, it wouldn't be difficult at all to design a game based on flipping a coin instead of dice rolls. I just got a vague idea for one just now, in fact. The problem is that it may be just too simple, not allowing for enough variation or randomness. Maybe. It really depends on how it's implimented and how varied the non-random rules are. This only supports the idea of having a very basic core set of rules, with other books utilizing them in different ways, I think. For D&D, anyhow. Other games have their specific niche and are thus easier to design to fill it.



> I think it's a feature of there being different kinds of players with different needs. I'm a homebrew machine, you can't STOP me from tinkering with rules. But not everyone is. Some folks would rather get a book on roleplaying in fantasy Africa than to have to research African myths and legends and compose unique classes and abilities themselves. Personally, I'd rather pay someone who is already smart about those things to make game rules for me than have to make them myself, just as I'd rather pay someone to make me a chair than go harvest and chop and sand the wood myself and make a chair.




Understandable.



> Kinda. I'd probably package it a little differently, but that's what it'd be.
> 
> I'd _package_ it as a basic fantasy game for anyone who wants to pretend to be an elf for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon (ie: include a simple skeleton of rules that is stripped-down, basic D&D: fighter/wizard/cleric/dwarf/elf/human, GO), combined with a bunch of pages of extra options (ie: include the most common additions that people will want: halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, paladins, thieves, warlocks), and maybe even some more advanced options just to see what's possible (tweaking hp, tweaking how common magic items are, tweaking the magic system) in the DM's guide.
> 
> And in that book would be the basic core rules and math that any DM could use to tweak their games for their own tables...and, ideally, that any potential publisher could use to make their rule systems for others to gather up if they choose.




I don't really like that idea. Including the options in the same book as the very core mechanics insinuates that those options are higher-order, or more important than any of the other options that come out later and in different books.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Hit points are designed to emulate movie physics - explicitely the swordfights and swashbuckling of Erroll Flynn.  Having a few cinematic mechanics designed to emulate cinema makes it cinematic.




I think HP are there for many reasons, but at theend of the day, to me they very much look like mechnics that arose to facilitate gameplay, not neccessarily to emulate cinema (even if deignshavepointed to ciato help explain them. But even if that isnt the case, having a fewcinematic mechanicsi the game doesnt make the game cimematic. The  system would need to produce conistently cinematic play for it to beso. 





> Then use "realistic" please.  Using idiosyncratic language when there are commonly agreed meanings of those terms within the roleplaying community does nothing but harm communication.




No. You do not get to dictate what terms can beused here. Most people understand simulationist to mean an attempt to simulate reality. The forge definition is not widely accepted as an agreed upon meaning. Themenipng I am using has been in use for a long time and has wide acceptance. 




> Rudeness is relative.  To me, attempting to divert a conversation into your personal grievances (as you did) because you are unable to support your opinions is incredibly rude.  My response was merely to point out the house discussion style of enworld and what is considered acceptable behaviour here - rudeness is all relative.   And enworld permits some quite thunderous rudeness of the types I listed.




i am fully able to defend my position andhave done so here, as well as on other occassions.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I'm not dismissing your experience of the game.  I'm dismissing an experience that isn't backed with evidence as anything other than an experience that isn't backed with evidence.  The plural of anecdote is not data.  If you had presented some actual analysis and reasoning (the way KM does) I would have engaged with that.  However literally your second post to me in this thread was to say "This is exactly the kind of argument that creates hostility between fans of different editions" - i.e. to accuse me of heating up an edition war that is continually near the boil on ENWorld for reasons far more direct than the ones you were complaining about.  I am a fan of an edition that many on ENWorld dislike - I _expect _my opinions and statements to be challenged unless I can back them to the hilt (which I normally can).  I therefore have little time for people here who are complaining that it's rude to challenge opinions, statements, and the causes of experiences.




What part of my opinion do you take issue with. I am happy to explain my position and justify. I just wont play into any semantic games.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 29, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> There's quibbles, but I think we're pretty much on the same page as long as you agree that I can find 4e combats more fiddly than previous e combats and not be disingenuous or insulting.




I can.



> I think this kind of interfaces with branding and how people tie up intimately with "D&D" in a way that they don't with other brands,




I really disagree here.  I've never seen D&D defended to the degree e.g. football teams are. It is merely one of the two brands in tabletop roleplaying with much size at all - and White Wolf have pretty much fallen.



> but I don't see any reason we need external gatekeepers to tell us when "D&D" ends and when some other game begins.




I don't see how it's meaningful to talk about D&D under your definition then.  Or rather it means that you need to work to establish a common language before there is meaningful conversation on an individual basis.  And D&D is a brand name - there are points you can look at.



> Elegance is overrated, IMO. If you want an elegant game mechanic, flip a coin.




Simple isn't the same as elegant.  Elegant is simple enough to fit the purpose and no simpler.



> There doesn't need to be an authority pronouncing one or the other to be What D&D Is. It can be up to the individual table.




For some people D&D is not the preferred game.  ANd for some games it isn't the best option.



> I'm a homebrew machine, you can't STOP me from tinkering with rules. But not everyone is. Some folks would rather get a book on roleplaying in fantasy Africa than to have to research African myths and legends and compose unique classes and abilities themselves. Personally, I'd rather pay someone who is already smart about those things to make game rules for me than have to make them myself, just as I'd rather pay someone to make me a chair than go harvest and chop and sand the wood myself and make a chair.




Snap.



> And in that book would be the basic core rules and math that any DM could use to tweak their games for their own tables...and, ideally, that any potential publisher could use to make their rule systems for others to gather up if they choose.




Ugh.  I'd far rather a more tightly focussed game - I have a couple of dozen games on my shelves, all of which are good ones (I had some bad ones - they get given away when I moved house) - and in many cases the vast differences in what they are trying to do mean that the same core wouldn't work for them.  Cortex+ (i.e. Leverage, MHRP, or Smallville) works well for games where who you are is more important than what you are currently holding - but I can't do the same things with it I can do with GURPS, or even a D&D retroclone or 4e (and when the older Cortex games tried they were horrible).  I'd far rather a game was the best there is at what it did than a skeleton that can be tweaked to do most things badly.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Dec 29, 2012)

[Conversation cut due to mod suggestion.]


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## Umbran (Dec 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Rudeness is relative.





My Moderator Senses are tingling!

There are some arbiters of rudeness around here.  Are you sure you want to invite our review of exactly who is being rude here, and how?  

How about I give folks a little chance to correct themselves before I do that.  I'll come back to this thread tomorrow, and see how it is progressing...


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Umbran said:


> My Moderator Senses are tingling!
> 
> There are some arbiters of rudeness around here.  Are you sure you want to invite our review of exactly who is being rude here, and how?
> 
> How about I give folks a little chance to correct themselves before I do that.  I'll come back to this thread tomorrow, and see how it is progressing...




I actually would like to see what someone neutral to the discussion thinks is rude, if only out of curiosity.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

On the topic of "consistently cinematic";

How frequently do HPs get used as a basic mechanism for the game? At least in almost every single fight there is and in other situations where people might get hurt, but which isn't a fight. You could play games of D&D where there are no fights and no damage dealt ever, but let's face facts and admit that D&D is and always has been an action oriented game, focusing a lot of the rules on combat and damage. Even a mere one fight per gaming session means HPs are relevant in every single gaming session. HPs are a consistent part of the game, and they're cinematic. Thus, the game is consistently cinematic.


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## JamesonCourage (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> I actually would like to see what someone neutral to the discussion thinks is rude, if only out of curiosity.



I'm "neutral" in the sense that I haven't had what I'd consider a prolonged discussion in this thread. Personally, I haven't chimed in more because this discussion looks entirely unproductive. That's because I find you needlessly aggressive, Neonchameleon aggressively dismissive (which I'd consider rude), and Bedrockgames aggressively defensive (which I think has come off as rude in a few posts).

But that's just me. I'm a sucker for civility, and I just don't see it happening here. Too many people have to "prove" their side Correct (you, Hussar, and Neonchameleon on one side, with KM, Elf Witch, bill91, and Bedrockgames on the other), with some posters being much more divisive than others (in my view). Not my cup of tea. As always, play what you like


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## Bluenose (Dec 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Most people understand simulationist to mean an attempt to simulate reality.




Really? I'd have thought most people use simulationist to mean something that's "right" for the particular game settting in question, regardless of how closely that setting cleaves to reality. Pendragon is "simulationist" for the Arthurian literature that inspired it, despite being horribly implausible for the reality of the time period "Arthur" may have lived in.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> On the topic of "consistently cinematic";
> 
> How frequently do HPs get used as a basic mechanism for the game? At least in almost every single fight there is and in other situations where people might get hurt, but which isn't a fight. You could play games of D&D where there are no fights and no damage dealt ever, but let's face facts and admit that D&D is and always has been an action oriented game, focusing a lot of the rules on combat and damage. Even a mere one fight per gaming session means HPs are relevant in every single gaming session. HPs are a consistent part of the game, and they're cinematic. Thus, the game is consistently cinematic.




This argument doesn't really work. I think it sounds like a convincing argument, but when you really think about it, it breaks down. Combat is consistent a feature of the game, combat does include HP (whoch are arguably cinematic) but combat itself is not consistently cinematic as a result of HP, and too many any other things in the game work against it being cinematic.

there is also the issue that the mere presence of something throughout a game, doesn't neccesarily definethe game's feel. 

Lots of other things feature in the game consistently that are not cinematic. It doesnt make the game those things. Travel and treasure are consistently part of the game, therefore encumberance comes up pretty consistently. That is a pretty reaslistic part of the game. Doesn't make the game realistic. Cinematic play isnt just about having something vaguely cinematic in the game consistenlty. It is about having a number of different aspects of the game being cinematic enough to produce something that feels cinematic to most players. It isnt enough for characters to just be able to take lots of damage, and say that makes the game cinematic. 

The use of a cinematic mechanic on a regular basis doesn't make the game consistently cinematic. There are many aspects of the game where it is consistently not cinematic as well. A lack of "hero points" makes the game ery uncinematic. This was a big issue in the 90s when they were promoting a more cinematic playstyle but the game simply didn't support it. You literally had to cheat on a regular basis to make the game feel more cinematic. 

Or what about all the gritty save or die effects in older editions? There is enough of that in the game to counter any sense of cinematic D&D. And those feature prominently in the game: do they make it gritty? Of course not, because the way HP works fights against the gritty elements of the game.


And lets be clear here, HP do not always produce cinematic results. Opponents also have high HP. A tenth level PC fighting a 10th level NPC doesnt get any special treatment for being "the star". 


i am not saying D&D is devoid of the cinematic. There are elements of it. But their are other aspects of the game that shatter any full sense of cinematic play. I could maybe see an argument that 4E was a much more cinematic game. But to say D&D has always been consistently a cinematic game, simply because it includes the arguably cinematic  HP (and HP are used consistently) is not an argument I find persuasive.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> Bedrockgames aggressively defensive (which I think has come off as rude in a few posts).




That is fair. I think this is an accurate assessment of my posts. I have been getting frustrated with these discussions and have been posting in anger.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> Really? I'd have thought most people use simulationist to mean something that's "right" for the particular game settting in question, regardless of how closely that setting cleaves to reality. Pendragon is "simulationist" for the Arthurian literature that inspired it, despite being horribly implausible for the reality of the time period "Arthur" may have lived in.




To me that is emulation. When I encounter simulationsist, it usually just refers to the simulation of real world physics. This is a bit beside the point being debated and more of a side issue.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> The use of a cinematic mechanic on a regular basis doesn't make the game consistently cinematic.




... Yeah? It's cinematic... on a consistent basis... but is not consistently cinematic? Do you define "consistently" as "more total time spent this doing the relevant thing than not"? That's not what consistent means.



> There are many aspects of the game where it is consistently not cinematic as well. A lack of "hero points" makes the game ery uncinematic. This was a big issue in the 90s when they were promoting a more cinematic playstyle but the game simply didn't support it. You literally had to cheat on a regular basis to make the game feel more cinematic.




Sure. I disagree on the "hero points" and "cheating to make it cinematic" things, but so what?



> Or what about all the gritty save or die effects in older editions? There is enough of that in the game to counter any sense of cinematic D&D.




I'm not so sure that counts as gritty. I'm not getting in the "save-or-die is a bad mechanic" argument right now, so I'll just grant this. Okay, save-or-die effects are gritty... therefore the aspects of the game which are regularly cinematic don't count?



> And lets be clear here, HP do not always produce cinematic results. Opponents also have high HP. A tenth level PC fighting a 10th level NPC doesnt get any special treatment for being "the star".




It's not about the star getting the spotlight. That's not why HPs are cinematic. HPs are cinematic because instead of just getting stabbed and being done fighting, you last a while. You take several hits and keep going, continue the exciting battle. Enemies also having a bunch of HPs means only that the fight has more total cinema. There's no point where HPs aren't cinematic, as they're the very measure of someone's ability to keep going.



> i am not saying D&D is devoid of the cinematic. There are elements of it. But their are other aspects of the game that shatter any full sense of cinematic play. I could maybe see an argument that 4E was a much more cinematic game. But to say D&D has always been consistently a cinematic game, simply because it includes the arguably cinematic  HP (and HP are used consistently) is not an argument I find persuasive.




Good for you. I don't find your arguments persuasive either. And me saying that is totally an argument against your points, not just me not adding anything to the conversation. And yeah, 4E is definitely the most cinematic version of the game so far, but to claim the other editions aren't is getting fairly silly. I think you may have modified your games to be less fantastic than the base rules for so long that you forgot what the base mechanics actually were. We're talking about a game where people regularly get in battles with liches, demons, werewolves, and other such fantastic creatures, using magical weapons and spells, healing injuries through prayer, and becoming kings and heroes. Lower levels, sure, they're a bit less cinematic, but they're also the levels leading up TO the high levels where magical fantastic epicness is the norm. In every edition. And, yes, you can play the game in a way that it's less fantastic and cinematic and more dangerous, but that's not supported by the standard rules _or_ the fluff.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> ... Yeah? It's cinematic... on a consistent basis... but is not consistently cinematic? Do you define "consistently" as "more total time spent this doing the relevant thing than not"? That's not what consistent means.




you are making a semantic argument here that obscures what isreally going on in the game. A mechanic with the property of X featuring into the game consistently does not make the game itself consistently property x. Save or die is gritty. It features in the game pretty consistently. But D&D clearly isnt s consistently gritty games. You cant reduce the judgment of whether D&D is consistently cinematic to a single mechanic. You have to account for the entire system. I would even argue that HP, while they can be cinematic, for them to be truly cinematic, require a host of other things (for example minion or minor player rules like you have in 4E or Savage Worlds). 





> Sure. I disagree on the "hero points" and "cheating to make it cinematic" things, but so what?




it is important. If the game couldn't do cinematic even when the deigners clearly wanted it to, then that suggests the system was not all that cinematic. 




> I'm not so sure that counts as gritty. I'm not getting in the "save-or-die is a bad mechanic" argument right now, so I'll just grant this. Okay, save-or-die effects are gritty... therefore the aspects of the game which are regularly cinematic don't count?




they count but it diminishes any cinematic feel they might produce. Te bigger point is to how x ing in the game consistently doesnt automatically make the game X. 





> It's not about the star getting the spotlight. That's not why HPs are cinematic. HPs are cinematic because instead of just getting stabbed and being done fighting, you last a while. You take several hits and keep going, continue the exciting battle. Enemies also having a bunch of HPs means only that the fight has more total cinema. There's no point where HPs aren't cinematic, as they're the very measure of someone's ability to keep going.





Cinematic is all about the stars getting special treatment. A rule that bestows cibematic immunity by making characters dificult to kill isnt very useful for that purpose if opponents have it as well. In a cinematic fight you mowdown the bit players and only a handful of key villains pose ny real challenge. Are HP unrealistic? Yes. But cinematic does not equal unrealistic. 



> Good for you. I don't find your arguments persuasive either. And me saying that is totally an argument against your points, not just me not adding anything to the conversation. And yeah, 4E is definitely the most cinematic version of the game so far, but to claim the other editions aren't is getting fairly silly. I think you may have modified your games to be less fantastic than the base rules for so long that you forgot what the base mechanics actually were. We're talking about a game where people regularly get in battles with liches, demons, werewolves, and other such fantastic creatures, using magical weapons and spells, healing injuries through prayer, and becoming kings and heroes. Lower levels, sure, they're a bit less cinematic, but they're also the levels leading up TO the high levels where magical fantastic epicness is the norm. In every edition. And, yes, you can play the game in a way that it's less fantastic and cinematic and more dangerous, but that's not supported by the standard rules _or_ the fluff.




i am sorry but i dont see previous eitions of D&D as all that cinematic. The GM can wirk to make it more cinematic, and the game certainly hasa few vaguely cinematic elements, but at the end of the day previous editions really had their feet in multiple ponds. At times the game could be cinematic, but it could also be gritty andit could also be quite gamey. It was a compromise between many styles of play, not predominantly cinematic. 

Epic magic, fantastic elements, tough heroes, none of these make the game cinematic. They make it epic fantasy. TORG and Savage Worlds are very cinematic (and great games IMO). The new Dr. Who Game is very cinematic. Having attempted cinematic campaigns of D&D in the past, i just do not see it as a cinematic game.


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## Jacob Marley (Dec 29, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> I'm "neutral" in the sense that I haven't had what I'd consider a prolonged discussion in this thread. Personally, I haven't chimed in more because this discussion looks entirely unproductive. That's because I find you needlessly aggressive, Neonchameleon aggressively dismissive (which I'd consider rude), and Bedrockgames aggressively defensive (which I think has come off as rude in a few posts).
> 
> But that's just me. I'm a sucker for civility, and I just don't see it happening here. Too many people have to "prove" their side Correct (you, Hussar, and Neonchameleon on one side, with KM, Elf Witch, bill91, and Bedrockgames on the other), with some posters being much more divisive than others (in my view). Not my cup of tea. As always, play what you like




It's not just you. I have been quietly reading this thread and my impression of it matches yours.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> you are making a semantic argument here that obscures what isreally going on in the game. A mechanic with the property of X featuring into the game consistently does not make the game itself consistently property x. Save or die is gritty. It features in the game pretty consistently. But D&D clearly isnt s consistently gritty games. You cant reduce the judgment of whether D&D is consistently cinematic to a single mechanic. You have to account for the entire system. I would even argue that HP, while they can be cinematic, for them to be truly cinematic, require a host of other things (for example minion or minor player rules like you have in 4E or Savage Worlds).




 The entire system is focused on combat. There are other aspects of the game, but let's not fool ourselves about one of those aspects getting nearly as much focus. The base mechanic for determining how combat is won or lost is how many HPs remain on each side of the combat. It's not a semantic argument, it's mechanically the foundation of the game, most other aspects of combat focusing on removing or restoring HPs. There are exceptions (save-or-die, stat damage, and such), but, well, they're exceptions, not the norm. About half the classes don't even have access to those exceptions through class mechanics anyhow, and some are explicitly prohibited from of them entirely. It's not like HPs are this obscure, hardly used rule, they're the basis of combat! This has nothing to do with semantics, it's about how the game mechanics function!



> it is important. If the game couldn't do cinematic even when the deigners clearly wanted it to, then that suggests the system was not all that cinematic.




Well, since that's not the case, it's irrelevant.



> they count but it diminishes any cinematic feel they might produce. Te bigger point is to how x ing in the game consistently doesnt automatically make the game X.




They're also the exception to the norm, only available to the extremely powerful of a limited set of characters and villains. EVERY character has HPs, EVERY character has abilities to remove HPs from their enemies.



> Cinematic is all about the stars getting special treatment. A rule that bestows cibematic immunity by making characters dificult to kill isnt very useful for that purpose if opponents have it as well. In a cinematic fight you mowdown the bit players and only a handful of key villains pose ny real challenge. Are HP unrealistic? Yes. But cinematic does not equal unrealistic.




... No. Cinematic is about it being like in movies. While 4E codified the mook as "minions", they were still around in previous editions as less powerful, well, minions of the bosses. Or every single fight could be like the big bad boss. Whichever way you did it, the goal was excitement and entertainment, the same goals of the cinema (hence cinematic).



> i am sorry but i dont see previous eitions of D&D as all that cinematic. The GM can wirk to make it more cinematic, and the game certainly hasa few vaguely cinematic elements, but at the end of the day previous editions really had their feet in multiple ponds. At times the game could be cinematic, but it could also be gritty andit could also be quite gamey. It was a compromise between many styles of play, not predominantly cinematic.




Okay, fine. The rules were written to be cinematic, following the advice found in the DMG led to cinematic...


			
				2nd edition DMG said:
			
		

> To have the most fun playing the AD&D game, don't rely only on the rules. Like so much in a good
> role-playing adventure, combat is a drama, a staged play.



Are staged plays not cinematic, or, at least, should they not be?



> Epic magic, fantastic elements, tough heroes, none of these make the game cinematic. They make it epic fantasy. TORG and Savage Worlds are very cinematic (and great games IMO). The new Dr. Who Game is very cinematic. Having attempted cinematic campaigns of D&D in the past, i just do not see it as a cinematic game.



Epic fantasy _is_ cinematic! You're just focusing on an ambiguous term to make your semantic argument, the very sort of argument you claim you dislike. I don't blame you for disliking them, but please don't claim others are doing it when it's clearly you. Frankly, I'm done using "cinematic". It's too ambiguous to be practical, here. I'll instead use words like "exciting", "entertaining", or "dramatic".


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

I think the argument over cinematic is clouding the discussion a bit. It is a term with a bit of baggage. 

The problem I am having here is it feels like we are being presented with a false choice between 100% realism and absolute disregard for any believability. This is much more of a spectrum. The game has parts of it that gloss over realism. I can accept that. I think the game works well wth HP as they function. But just because there are dragons, just because heroes are tougher than their real life counter parts, that doesn't mean we have to accept anything that intrudes even more into our suspension of disbelief. So while I can accept many of the flaws of HP, many of which are not immediately apparent until you reflect on things a bit, something like mundane instant, or one day heals, present a problem for me because they are so hard for me to ignore i can overlook a lot of the problems with HP because they just dont jump out at me all the time. Non magical super fast heals, or non magical combat moves I can do just once an encounter stand out for me (and. Belive many others).


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> ... No. Cinematic is about it being like in movies.
> ".




This is a meaningless definition and not what most people mean by cinematic play. The Godfather is a movie. Rosemary's Baby is a movie. Turner and Hooch is a movie. Rainman is a movie. Sophie's Choice is a movie. I could make a super realistic game that plays like rainman. That wouldnt make it cinematic.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Double post, somehow. Sorry.

While I'm here, though, I'll say that, yes, this "cinematic" talk is useless and clouding the issue, as I pointed out in my last post. Also, a large chunk of that reason is because there is no clear definition _of_ "cinematic". While we all understand it to be something like "fantastic, dramatic action", that's not what the word actually means. If we're going to discuss this in any objective sense, we're going to have to use words with clear definitions, hence my dropping "cinematic" from my discussion from here out.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Okay, fine. The rules were written to be cinematic, following the advice found in the DMG led to cinematic...




2E is my favorite edition. I still play it. It isnt cinematic. It is terrible for cinematic play. The rule bookk embraced the zeitgeist of being cinematic and emphasizing story, but to get their they had to tell people to ignore the rules. The passage you quoted is what I had in mind in my post. If they have to tell you to ignore the mechanics of the game to achieve cinematic resuluts, that strongly suggests the game is not good at being cinematic. 



> Are staged plays not cinematic, or, at least, should they not be?
> 
> ".




It is a bit of side issue, but plays are not at all cinematic in opinion. Cnematic impies visuals and kinetic energy. Plays handle drama and dialogue well. They don't handle stuff like james bond well.


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the argument over cinematic is clouding the discussion a bit. It is a term with a bit of baggage.
> 
> The problem I am having here is it feels like we are being presented with a false choice between 100% realism and absolute disregard for any believability. This is much more of a spectrum. The game has parts of it that gloss over realism. I can accept that. I think the game works well wth HP as they function. But just because there are dragons, just because heroes are tougher than their real life counter parts, that doesn't mean we have to accept anything that intrudes even more into our suspension of disbelief. So while I can accept many of the flaws of HP, many of which are not immediately apparent until you reflect on things a bit, something like mundane instant, or one day heals, present a problem for me because they are so hard for me to ignore i can overlook a lot of the problems with HP because they just dont jump out at me all the time. Non magical super fast heals, or non magical combat moves I can do just once an encounter stand out for me (and. Belive many others).




HPs are said to be, in explicit and unambiguous terms and in almost every RPG I've ever played, not merely physical injury. In 4E especially, you're not even bleeding until you've already lost half of them. A "mundane" man can't catch his breath and recover from some superficial bumps and bruises all on his own? It's not like he has gigantic wounds, here. He's banged up a bit, and that's all. That doesn't stretch my imagination at all, let alone thinly. How is it so difficult for you to imagine a guy taking a breather after a strenuous fight?


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## CroBob (Dec 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> 2E is my favorite edition. I still play it. It isnt cinematic. It is terrible for cinematic play. The rule bookk embraced the zeitgeist of being cinematic and emphasizing story, but to get their they had to tell people to ignore the rules. The passage you quoted is what I had in mind in my post. If they have to tell you to ignore the mechanics of the game to achieve cinematic resuluts, that strongly suggests the game is not good at being cinematic.




Within context, it's advice to be descriptive and not to think of the game as only the rules, but as the adventure it's detailing, not to throw the rules away to make combat exciting. Grab out your DMG and read that entire four or five paragraph section. I don't feel like posting a wall of text.


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## billd91 (Dec 29, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> Really? I'd have thought most people use simulationist to mean something that's "right" for the particular game settting in question, regardless of how closely that setting cleaves to reality. Pendragon is "simulationist" for the Arthurian literature that inspired it, despite being horribly implausible for the reality of the time period "Arthur" may have lived in.




It's both or at least either depending on the context. Superhero games simulate comic book genres, but some rule structures within may also simulate reality as well.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> The entire system is focused on combat. There are other aspects of the game, but let's not fool ourselves about one of those aspects getting nearly as much focus. The base mechanic for determining how combat is won or lost is how many HPs remain on each side of the combat. It's not a semantic argument, it's mechanically the foundation of the game, most other aspects of combat focusing on removing or restoring HPs. There are exceptions (save-or-die, stat damage, and such), but, well, they're exceptions, not the norm. About half the classes don't even have access to those exceptions through class mechanics anyhow, and some are explicitly prohibited from of them entirely. It's not like HPs are this obscure, hardly used rule, they're the basis of combat! This has nothing to do with semantics, it's about how the game mechanics function!
> ".




this argument strikes me as very semantic in nature. It relies on a definition of cinematic then turns on making HP=cinematic and then claims HP are the foundation of the game. You cannot get much more semantic than that in my opinion. 

i dont think combat tis the focus of the game. It is a huge part of the game but exploration and role play are also enormous parts. Combats may feature prominently into a dungeon or hex crawl but the goal itself is the exploration not simply to engage in combat. And exploration can often be quite gritty, very uncinematic. 

Save or die, deadly traps and spells that turn you to stone are not all that rare in the game. Lots of characters die in unheroic, uncinematic ways in D&D.  

There are lots of elements of the game that oppose a cinematic feel. Okay HP are a big part of combat, but they are not universally cinematic.  Look at a low level party. Try running a normal game using earlier editions and see how many characters die. Dying from stray arrows, as many love to point out is not cinematic.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 29, 2012)

billd91 said:


> It's both or at least either depending on the context. Superhero games simulate comic book genres, but some rule structures within may also simulate reality as well.




This is because they are simulationist _of reality._  It is possible to call them simulationist and claim the of reality should be implied.  Or you can just call them realistic.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> HPs are said to be, in explicit and unambiguous terms and in almost every RPG I've ever played, not merely physical injury. In 4E especially, you're not even bleeding until you've already lost half of them. A "mundane" man can't catch his breath and recover from some superficial bumps and bruises all on his own? It's not like he has gigantic wounds, here. He's banged up a bit, and that's all. That doesn't stretch my imagination at all, let alone thinly. How is it so difficult for you to imagine a guy taking a breather after a strenuous fight?




While HP have always been a combo of luck, health, mojo, etc. they still physical damage. I older versions if you took a point of damage part of that wa suck, but part of that was actual damage. And it isnt a stretch to make the connection between a sword doing 1d8 damage and that being some kind of physical harm to the body. 4E offers a new definition of how HPs work, but it is a definition that runs counter to how most of us have viewed HP and used it in praactice. I dont like the idea that that a blow cant become physical damage until you are at a certain level of HP. For me that doesnt work. "The 20 points of damage you just took from the ogre's sword only winded you" doesnt work for me. It takes a game that is already on the cusp in terms of realism and believability and drives it over the edge.

Particularly in earlier editions, it is very clear from hownatural healing works that there is a physical component to the damage you are taking (even if it includes fatigue). You cant take 13 points of damage in AD&D or 3E and say okay "these 10 points here are mojo and these 3 here a cut". 

it also serioiusly stretches believability for me to have so many figts involving swords, fire spells, and arrows result in less bruising and harm than a boxing match. Seems very cartoony to me.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> Within context, it's advice to be descriptive and not to think of the game as only the rules, but as the adventure it's detailing, not to throw the rules away to make combat exciting. Grab out your DMG and read that entire four or five paragraph section. I don't feel like posting a wall of text.




i have read it. Many, many times. 2E is a system I like and understand very well but some of the Gm advice was flawed. But my point is that to make 2E play cinematic, you must fudge. If they had something like bennies in the game, this wouldn't be neccessary. The designers were trying to make the game cinematic, but the underlying mechanics didnt support it. Sure you shouldnt be a slave to the rules, but of the mechanics are activley making it difficult to run a cinematic game unless you ignore them, it just isnt a cinematic game.

i mean, if i made a game that claimed to be highly realistic, but only engaged in realism here or there, nd at other times was loaded down woth mechanics that produced highly unrealistic results, i couldn't salvage my claim to realism by saying "just ignore the unrealistic bits and results  to make thegame more believable".


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

And by the way, I am not saying that people who find healing surges and mundane encounter powers realistic are wrong. I can see that some people do find them believable. I just find them quite jarring.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 29, 2012)

Also worth pointing out we are getting to somewhat ontradictory arguments to contend with here. On the one hand posters argue the game as always been hopelessly unrealistic so any effort to maintain vestiges of realism, or avoid new mechanics that break suspension of disbelief are misguided. The game's soul is fundamentally about the unrealistic, the inconsistent and fantastic. On the other hand we ae told that 4E with its healing surges, bloodied condition and mundane envounter powers, isthe most realistic and internally consistent edition of the game ever. If you hold the former position, and believe the latter to be true, then 4E's more realistic and consistent mechanics must bemisguided.


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## Umbran (Dec 29, 2012)

CroBob said:


> I actually would like to see what someone neutral to the discussion thinks is rude, if only out of curiosity.




Fair enough.



JamesonCourage said:


> I'm "neutral" in the sense that I haven't had what I'd consider a prolonged discussion in this thread. Personally, I haven't chimed in more because this discussion looks entirely unproductive. That's because I find you needlessly aggressive, Neonchameleon aggressively dismissive (which I'd consider rude), and Bedrockgames aggressively defensive (which I think has come off as rude in a few posts).
> 
> But that's just me. I'm a sucker for civility, and I just don't see it happening here. Too many people have to "prove" their side Correct (you, Hussar, and Neonchameleon on one side, with KM, Elf Witch, bill91, and Bedrockgames on the other), with some posters being much more divisive than others (in my view). Not my cup of tea. As always, play what you like





I'll avoid going too far into specifics at this moment, but I think Jameson here is not too far off the mark.

Whatever your actual desires, a bunch of you are coming across rather like your main motivation for being in the discussion is to be Right, and that anyone with an alternative take on it is Wrong.  This no longer reads like a discussion, but like an argument.  It looks like it is not about learning from others, but is instead about winning and losing. When a conversation drifts into that realm, there's a tendency for everyone to start getting rude.  To be honest, those of you who are trying to prove "There Is NO Grittyness In D&D" seem the rather more aggressive and dismissive - your argument is the more exclusionary one, as you are arguing *against* something, rather than for something.

Here's my advice - stop what you are doing.  Assume, instead, that in some sense, *everybody* in the discussion is actually 100% correct, at least from their perspectives.  The folks who can't find gritty play in D&D's mechanics, honestly cannot find gritty play in D&D's mechanics.  Those who have found it easy and supported - it *is* there, even if you cannot see how.  Add on top that nobody here is terminally stupid or unobservant.

With that assumption, the discussion should be more about what in the other person's perspective makes things work (or not work).  It can be more about learning how the game can function for players who aren't you, and less about how the other guy is wrongity-wrong-wrong, with wrong sauce.


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## Balesir (Dec 30, 2012)

For what it may be worth, I don't see [MENTION=6683307]CroBob[/MENTION] as fixed on arguing that "realistic D&D" is "wrong" so much as holding my initial position of puzzlement over why some folk desire to use D&D for "realistic" play. At first blush it can seem like deciding to do time trialling on a pushbike, but choosing a unicycle to do it on; there's little doubt that it's _possible_, on some level, but it's puzzling why anyone would _want_ to do it.

I have come to realise that the simple truth seems to be that, for some people, D&D *is* roleplaying. Replace "D&D" with "roleplaying" in what they say and I agree with most of it completely; it's hard not to. Some folk hold this view, and they have every right to do so, but I think it does have a few unfortunate side-effects for D&D from my point of view.

 [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] asks why D&D can't be made more "flexible" in order to please everyone, at least via a bit of tweaking and module selection. I think that may well be a good way to please those folk for whom D&D ought to be all of roleplaying in microcosm. It _is_ a tall order simply because roleplaying is quite literally limited only by the players' imaginations, but I think that quite a lot of ground that would seem "sensical" to the mainstream gamer could probably be covered without too much hassle. The problem (for me) is that this won't please _me_, because it specifically excludes the style of play I have finally found a class/level/hit point system to be useful for. It excludes a tight, clearly laid out system that is balanced such that players are given both interesting choices (i.e. ones where no single option is clearly "optimal") _and_ a clear understanding of the implications of those choices (via the understanding of a largely unambiguous game system).

This is, in essence, why I said some while ago that I wish 4e had been produced as something other than "D&D". There is clearly a significant constituency "out there" for whom D&D is either something very specific in terms of its tropes and DM-malleability or expected to be adaptable into anything that roleplaying itself "should" be. This is probably largely because it has always been the "big boy" on the block - whatever. My position is simply that, if that is what the "mainstream major game" has to be then I'm really not interested in it - but others clearly are, and good luck to them.

So, to CroBob and the rest I would say: there is a "mainstream" of gamers out there who either want D&D to be a specific thing (i.e., what it has always been, with perhaps a few tweaks to make it simpler without losing that "special something"), or want it to stretch to cover everything that they imagine they want to be included in a roleplaying game. You and I don't share this desire of the game - we may even think it's a doomed and hopeless phant'sy - but it's really not for us to say it's "wrong" or that those folks don't have a right to want what they want. It's a tragedy (for us) that a game that (for us) finally makes sense of all those D&D system tropes is being dumped so that D&D can return to these "mainstream" desires - but denying the mainstream their "dream game" would be just as much an unfairness to them.

The simple fact seems to be that we got out-voted - either by greater numbers or by folks whose vote counts for more than ours. I wish it looked like an non-mainstream game would pick up the baton for the sort of game I see and like in 4e - I think it still has lots of development potential to explore - but that seems unlikely due to the "GSL lock" that WotC have on it. I suppose I'll carry on with the "final" 4e and maybe try some of that development myself - but, even absent that, there are plenty more fish/systems out there in the sea...


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 30, 2012)

Balesir said:
			
		

> The problem (for me) is that this won't please me, because it specifically excludes the style of play I have finally found a class/level/hit point system to be useful for. It excludes a tight, clearly laid out system that is balanced such that players are given both interesting choices (i.e. ones where no single option is clearly "optimal") and a clear understanding of the implications of those choices (via the understanding of a largely unambiguous game system).




Personally, I think people need to stop advocating for what the _system_ should be and start figuring out how they want the game they play at their own tables to work.

If the system is a sprawling mess of vagueness and inanity, but there's a few options you can tune to tighten it up and make it clearer, then who cares if someone half a county away is playing their D&D game in a way that you wouldn't approve of? 

I think it's entirely possible to have a tight, clear game within a modular, all-encompassing system. There's no reason D&D5e can't be designed with core math that is robustly balanced and enables a narrow focus so that people who want that can get it by shaving off all the stuff they don't want and running it slim and tight. There should be no reason that someone can't get a very 4e-like game by turning a few dials.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 30, 2012)

I certainly did not mean to come off as rude or that my way is the *right* way to play. I have only been trying to answer what I consider realism in RPGs and how it works or does not work in DnD for me.

I will say that I was getting frustrated because I felt that I was being put in the position to defend my personal likes and this started to feel more like a debate than a discussion. 

Balesir really summed up very nicely what I think is going on here. My biggest dislike of 4E is how limited and rigid it seems to me.  It is has it place and I think it does certain really well. It is perfect for con style play and for living play. I think it is is perfect for a pick up game and a game played to introduce people to role playing at game stores. And it satisfied a lot of what certain people want out of a game.

Since I don't want to play the same style campaign over and over again I want a game that can give me dials that can go from more grim and gritty to cinematic without having to houserule the game to the point that it starts looking more like something else than DnD.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 30, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Since I don't want to play the same style campaign over and over again I want a game that can give me dials that can go from more grim and gritty to cinematic without having to houserule the game to the point that it starts looking more like something else than DnD.




If they are still sticking with their mpdular approach to 5E, this is probably the ideal timeto express that opinion. If you want truly gritty, i think it would take quite a fewdials but could see a "Dark and Gritty" book coming out to support the game. If they can squeeze in a ton of optional rules likethey did in the 2E core books, they might be able to fit in some gritty options in the core book.

we should keep in mind that is what they said next would be all about: dials you can adjust to make the game play how you want. I see nothing wrong with including a gritty end of the spectrum on those dials.


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## Balesir (Dec 30, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Personally, I think people need to stop advocating for what the _system_ should be and start figuring out how they want the game they play at their own tables to work.



I do this for each instance of play I run already - a key part of it is selecting which system we will use. The "game I play at my own table" will be what I want it to be - but it won't (necessarily) use D&D (any edition) as its system.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> If the system is a sprawling mess of vagueness and inanity, but there's a few options you can tune to tighten it up and make it clearer, then who cares if someone half a county away is playing their D&D game in a way that you wouldn't approve of?



People half a country (or more - I'm in the UK so many gamers in the gamer-rich US will count) away will play as they like, and this will not bother me in the slightest. But if I have a game that does what I want for a specific campaign without me having to understand its dials and options so well that I can mould it into a game that does what I want, the "mouldable" game won't get a look in. I have little time and I'm fundamentally lazy/pragmatic by alignment.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I think it's entirely possible to have a tight, clear game within a modular, all-encompassing system. There's no reason D&D5e can't be designed with core math that is robustly balanced and enables a narrow focus so that people who want that can get it by shaving off all the stuff they don't want and running it slim and tight. There should be no reason that someone can't get a very 4e-like game by turning a few dials.



This is theoretically possible in a "monkeys and typewriters" sense, but (a) I'm not convinced it's their aim and (b) I see no glimmerings of this in the playtest material so far. Sure, there might be a "tactical combat" module and so on, but (as others have said) this misses most of the point. GURPS is already a game that has "tactical combat" options and a plethora of other options, but it very decidedly does not do what 4e does in this respect. The very fact that there are other "optional" systems - or even "core" systems that are overwritten by the "4e lookalike" options - muddies the waters and makes the system less clear and unambiguous.

If the "multigame option" is what "D&D fans" want, then I say "let them have it". I'm not sure exactly how widespread the preference is, but it seems pretty common, and it's what the IP owner has decided to support. If I sound like I'm moaning, it's not because the folks with these preferences will get what they want - I'm genuinely glad for them. I'm just sad that me - and apparently others, too - will not get what we like supported for the time being.


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## Bedrockgames (Dec 30, 2012)

I think generally speaking, tighter more focused games are easier for smaller companies to do (i like to think my games are somewhat tightly focused) because they can suceed by marketing to a narrow fanbase. But ike movies or tv, the broader an audience you want, the more general you want the content. I think with D&D people have been playing it a bunch of different ways from very early on. Each edition did tend to lean in one direction or another, but was broad enough that most seemed to be able to get the experience they wanted from it. 4E was just too succesful in achieving a foused design, which worked astoundingly well for the group who wanted that exact type of game, but freaked out anyone playing the game differently. 

The problem is, once you splinter a fan base, the damageis done. New preferences and expectations are set. Before 4E, there wasnt a sizeable group of D&D players who expected it to play like 4E plays. Now there is. Folks have had a taste of D&D just the way they like it, and you cant blame them for being a bit miffed that the publisher is yanking that away. 

My guess is 4E will survive either as a side system through wotconce they realize 5E cant win over many 4E players, or through clones of the system. I also think it is going to spawn a bunch of games done in the same spirit even if they use different systems. You will probably see another strong midtier company emerge once people figure out it is a very solid niche to occupy with an enthusiastic fanbase. 

4E isnt my cup of tea, but I can see how well it resonates with a core group and amd sure there is money there for the publisher who  takes the first step.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 30, 2012)

Balesir said:


> People half a country (or more - I'm in the UK so many gamers in the gamer-rich US will count) away will play as they like, and this will not bother me in the slightest. But if I have a game that does what I want for a specific campaign without me having to understand its dials and options so well that I can mould it into a game that does what I want, the "mouldable" game won't get a look in. I have little time and I'm fundamentally lazy/pragmatic by alignment.




Sounds like the OGL + a modular system would be perfect! You could pick up a set of pre-packaged 4e-esque rules put out by WotC or by some intrepid 4e fan who sees the dials they can turn in 5e and then turns them. 

I hear you on the "Neutral Lazy" alignment, which is part of why I'm a big advocate for that idea.



> This is theoretically possible in a "monkeys and typewriters" sense, but (a) I'm not convinced it's their aim and (b) I see no glimmerings of this in the playtest material so far. Sure, there might be a "tactical combat" module and so on, but (as others have said) this misses most of the point. GURPS is already a game that has "tactical combat" options and a plethora of other options, but it very decidedly does not do what 4e does in this respect. The very fact that there are other "optional" systems - or even "core" systems that are overwritten by the "4e lookalike" options - muddies the waters and makes the system less clear and unambiguous.




Does the system need to be entirely clear and unambiguous if your own games can be clear and unambiguous?

On a bit of a side-note, I do wonder what 4e does for some folks that 5e isn't doing, and if 5e could easily do them with a few bends and knobs. And I mean specifically, functionally, in the actual play experience. That's probably worth a thread all its own, though. I'm reasonably confident that whatever a 4e fan wants to do with D&D at their own table, 5e could probably do. What might be difficult is 5e _as an entire system_ doing what 4e does as an entire system, but as long as we're each only interested in our own games and how they play, and not in being gatekeepers for all the millions of people who play the game, that shouldn't be a big deal. 

I wonder what the "point" is, or what the points are. What are big 4e fans seeing that will neutralize their own style of fun?



> If the "multigame option" is what "D&D fans" want, then I say "let them have it". I'm not sure exactly how widespread the preference is, but it seems pretty common, and it's what the IP owner has decided to support. If I sound like I'm moaning, it's not because the folks with these preferences will get what they want - I'm genuinely glad for them. I'm just sad that me - and apparently others, too - will not get what we like supported for the time being.




See, I'm optimistic that 4e fans (or fans of gritty games, or 3e fans, or 1e fans) can still get what they want out of 5e, as long as what they want isn't to dictate what the entire system is like. So, anyone who wants a game that will never include Dragonborn or Drow or Gnomes or Alignment or Paladins as core options is SOL. But anyone who wants to play a game without any of those things would be entirely able to. 

To figure out what people want, it might be useful to drill down into what actually happens during play that people want. And that digs into iffy issues of psychology, page design, nomenclature, and other weedy parts, too, where someone might not like a given rule just because of the _format_ of the thing. But it might also bear some interesting fruit.


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## CroBob (Dec 30, 2012)

Balesir said:


> For what it may be worth, I don't see  @_*CroBob*_  as fixed on arguing that "realistic D&D" is "wrong" so much as holding my initial position of puzzlement over why some folk desire to use D&D for "realistic" play.




That's exactly the case, but if I'm being rude, even if by accident, I don't want to push that.



> I have come to realise that the simple truth seems to be that, for some people, D&D *is* roleplaying.




How do you mean that? Do you mean they're unaware that there are other systems out there, or that it's more like just a strong, subconscious connection, or what? Because I've noticed some people mention that non-D&D games are rare and difficult to get into. Perhaps I've been fortunate in the people I've met, but I've never found this to be an actual problem. So are some people directly opposed to playing something that's not D&D, or do they not want to take the time to learn new rules, or what?


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## CroBob (Dec 30, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Personally, I think people need to stop advocating for what the _system_ should be and start figuring out how they want the game they play at their own tables to work.




That is, frankly, completely irrelevant when you're discussing a manufactured game. The manufactured game is what it is regardless what your table likes. Your table _probably_ already knows what it likes, what it wants to try, etc. That's a non-issue. If the system you'd be paying money for doesn't match what you want, though, you're not going to buy it. The people who saw the innovation and modern game design strategy as a good thing in 4E don't want to effectively take a step backwards into a game which doesn't come as a completed product, which _requires_ you to modify and tweak the rules in order to be functional in a meaningful way, and which allows for character power imbalance right from the get-go. That's how a lot of people see the development of 5E going.


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## Balesir (Dec 30, 2012)

CroBob said:


> How do you mean that? Do you mean they're unaware that there are other systems out there, or that it's more like just a strong, subconscious connection, or what? Because I've noticed some people mention that non-D&D games are rare and difficult to get into. Perhaps I've been fortunate in the people I've met, but I've never found this to be an actual problem. So are some people directly opposed to playing something that's not D&D, or do they not want to take the time to learn new rules, or what?



It's probably a mix of all the things you mention, but I think there's a perception that D&D is "the vast majority of (fantasy) roleplaying" and that "the rest" consists of a thin and tattered fringe of minority, amateur efforts that are too difficult, too splintered, too complex or whatever else to be worth the (overestimated, I think) expense and effort to get into. Thus D&d is "it", so "it" has to cover all the bases desired.

Now, _I_ know - and I guess _you_ know - that there are a whole array of professionally produced, slick, imaginative and exciting games out there that cover all sorts of bases really well. But, from the point of view of a gamer who is maybe not as "hardcore" as either of us and who really knows only one system, I can see how it might appear pretty intimidating. Possibly the best/only thing we can do to help is to run as many "minority" games as we can, with as open access as we can give, to help those worried gamers get at least a taste of life "beyond the pale".



Kamikaze Midget said:


> On a bit of a side-note, I do wonder what 4e does for some folks that 5e isn't doing, and if 5e could easily do them with a few bends and knobs. And I mean specifically, functionally, in the actual play experience. That's probably worth a thread all its own, though. I'm reasonably confident that whatever a 4e fan wants to do with D&D at their own table, 5e could probably do. What might be difficult is 5e _as an entire system_ doing what 4e does as an entire system, but as long as we're each only interested in our own games and how they play, and not in being gatekeepers for all the millions of people who play the game, that shouldn't be a big deal.
> 
> I wonder what the "point" is, or what the points are. What are big 4e fans seeing that will neutralize their own style of fun?



It's hard to pin down exactly what the defining point of "coolness" is, but part of it is the player agency through clear, open, functionally complete and shared rules. That is, the GM _may_ choose to modify some aspect of the rules if it better fits the game their table is playing, but the GM doesn't *have to* modify the rules - especially not on the fly - because the rules are either unclear or incomplete, or because one player or character category dominates to the detriment of others' fun if they don't.

As a 4e DM I don't study the character abilities - either those available in the books or those my players have picked - at all. I get to see them in play, obviously, but I don't *need* to know what the characters can do in order to present fun and challenging situations to the players. Nor do I need to judge corner cases or elastically defined rules text all the time in play. I just study my NPCs and Monsters, and focus on having them act sensibly - and intelligently if they are intelligent - in trying to achieve their own ends and make the PCs' lives difficult 

Rather than having to juggle all the disparate parts in order to wrestle the game into working smoothly, I just push in one, design-supported direction, and fun and stories just happen. I think that's the best way I can put it - I don't have to wrangle and dodge to get fun, engaging play to emerge any more with D&D when I play 4e. That play just happens when I press in the right direction. For me, all the best systems work that way - it's just that the direction you need to push can be different from one system to another.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 31, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> If they are still sticking with their mpdular approach to 5E, this is probably the ideal timeto express that opinion. If you want truly gritty, i think it would take quite a fewdials but could see a "Dark and Gritty" book coming out to support the game. If they can squeeze in a ton of optional rules likethey did in the 2E core books, they might be able to fit in some gritty options in the core book.
> 
> we should keep in mind that is what they said next would be all about: dials you can adjust to make the game play how you want. I see nothing wrong with including a gritty end of the spectrum on those dials.




This is my hope for DnD next that they do really do a game with dials. It is why I download and playtest the rules respond to the surveys. This is the time to get what you would like to see in DnD out there.

I am also working with my roommate to take the Shadowrun rules and adapt them to a fantasy game. I know they did Earthdawn but it is out of print and I don't have the money right now to buy any new gaming stuff.


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## I'm A Banana (Dec 31, 2012)

CroBob said:


> That is, frankly, completely irrelevant when you're discussing a manufactured game. The manufactured game is what it is regardless what your table likes.




In my mind, a solid modular game will be what your table likes, whatever your table likes. That's one of the big strengths of modularity: the game isn't ONE thing, it's many different things, to many different tables. 



> The people who saw the innovation and modern game design strategy as a good thing in 4E don't want to effectively take a step backwards into a game which doesn't come as a completed product, which _requires_ you to modify and tweak the rules in order to be functional in a meaningful way, and which allows for character power imbalance right from the get-go. That's how a lot of people see the development of 5E going.




I think that a modular game that encourages some easy modification is really no different than what every DM already does for their own home games. Do you identify player types a la Robin Laws/4eDMG2? Do you build encounters? Do you pay attention to what your players like and what they don't? Do you create NPC's? Do you decide what options are available? Do you invent stories and create world elements? Then you're already putting forth some minimum of effort. Modularity doesn't need to be any more complex than the work the DM already does in setting up a campaign.

That's part of why I'd present a modular system with a simple "newbie-version" of the game up front. It gives you a very basic skeleton that can be run straight out of the box. It doesn't have a whole lot of options, but it's easy to add and subtract and modify. A comparison with _LEGOs_ seems salient: you buy a basic set that lets you build a castle according to the instructions, and then you buy another castle set and build a bigger castle of your own design, and then you buy the Batman set and suddenly you have a medieval Gotham City and then you buy the Star Wars set and now you have Batman and Yoda and some medieval knight sipping tea in the Mos Eisley Cantina while the Joker, Darth Vader, and a dragon burninate the peasants. 

That basic set isn't going to exactly enable you to do everything right out of the box -- it's pretty simple. But it works, and delivers a basic LEGO experience. 



			
				Balesir said:
			
		

> part of it is the player agency through clear, open, functionally complete and shared rules.




So what's that look like in play? What's an example of that working in 4e that couldn't work in any other edition for one reason or another?



			
				Balesir said:
			
		

> That is, the GM may choose to modify some aspect of the rules if it better fits the game their table is playing, but the GM doesn't have to modify the rules - especially not on the fly - because the rules are either unclear or incomplete, or because one player or character category dominates to the detriment of others' fun if they don't.




Yeah, that's the original LEGO castle: the instructions are clear and it comes with everything you need. And if what you want is clarity and ease of use, you can buy as many castle sets or as many sets from the _Medeival World_ collection you want and make a whole medieval village look exactly like that one on the box. Easy peasy. 

In D&D, this might look like a "basic dungeon-crawl" kind of a game. Gives you the basic elements of a D&D game (fighters, wizards, clerics, a dungeon, a dragon, some goblins, orcs, and kobolds, some treasure) and you don't even need to think about them. 

And then as the game goes on, you can add more dungeons, or different monsters, or new classes like Thief and Paladin, and different kinds of dragons, and you don't need to think about them. 

Of course, the blocks are built with modularity in mind, so that kid with Batman and Yoda and Medieval Knight Guy (or, in this analogy, the guy with his Space Opera Cthuluesque Psionics Game) is also enabled to go wild. 



			
				Balesir said:
			
		

> As a 4e DM I don't study the character abilities - either those available in the books or those my players have picked - at all. I get to see them in play, obviously, but I don't need to know what the characters can do in order to present fun and challenging situations to the players. Nor do I need to judge corner cases or elastically defined rules text all the time in play. I just study my NPCs and Monsters, and focus on having them act sensibly - and intelligently if they are intelligent - in trying to achieve their own ends and make the PCs' lives difficult




So, that's how I DM every edition _except_ 4e. In 3e, or 2e, I don't feel like I need to account for corner cases or odd rules. I feel like I can plunk down some obstacle, and the party will figure out what to do with it, and I don't need to figure that out. In 4e, I feel like I need to spell out what my players' party needs to do to overcome the challenge quite explicitly. I can't just say "goblins live here," I feel like I have to say, "the party has X encounters with Y goblins and spend Z% of their resources and then they can rest because otherwise it's not fair."

But this is really just illustrating that when the game is going well, it seems that we're running it the same way, and we'd claim it had the same qualities. There's something about the rules of 4e that make this easier for you and harder for me, and there's something about the rules of the other e's that make it harder for you and easier for me, and I'd love to figure out what that is and why the approach is different. I can certainly elaborate on my reasons, but I feel like I might need to couch them in all sorts of caveats so that people don't come along, read my post, and then try to "correct" me. I feel like if I try to describe the elements of 4e that work against achieving this for me, people are more apt to tell me that I'm doing it wrong than they are to try and help me understand why it doesn't work for me, and why it does work for them.


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## Elf Witch (Dec 31, 2012)

It is not that people are not aware of other systems. I am and I have played a few other systems. For me a big factor in sticking with DnD is cost. I don't have a huge budget for gaming for example my budget right now is zero. Since I won't pirate gaming materials I play what I have. I have mainly DnD from 1 to 3.5, Shadowrun, a few Pathfinder books, Some  White Wolf and few odds and ends like Stargate, Toon and Tunnels and Trolls. 

Another factor is I don't feel confident DMing a system I have not played a lot. My strength as DM lies in my ability to think on my feet and do a rich world, rules are my weakest even after playing 3E since it came out I still have to look things up. 

DnD may not be the best system to give that grim and gritty feeling but it is not impossible to get it either. 4E should have taught WOTC a lesson and narrowing the focus on the game lost them a lot of players. People play DnD a lot of different ways and a system that supports that has a the ability to appeal to a larger group of players.


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## Argyle King (Dec 31, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> It is not that people are not aware of other systems. I am and I have played a few other systems. For me a big factor in sticking with DnD is cost. I don't have a huge budget for gaming for example my budget right now is zero. Since I won't pirate gaming materials I play what I have. I have mainly DnD from 1 to 3.5, Shadowrun, a few Pathfinder books, Some  White Wolf and few odds and ends like Stargate, Toon and Tunnels and Trolls.
> 
> Another factor is I don't feel confident DMing a system I have not played a lot. My strength as DM lies in my ability to think on my feet and do a rich world, rules are my weakest even after playing 3E since it came out I still have to look things up.
> 
> DnD may not be the best system to give that grim and gritty feeling but it is not impossible to get it either. 4E should have taught WOTC a lesson and narrowing the focus on the game lost them a lot of players. People play DnD a lot of different ways and a system that supports that has a the ability to appeal to a larger group of players.




I find your point of view completely understandable.  It makes sense.  I feel the same way sometimes.

That being said, the question I'd like to ask is whether or not it's something if a self-defeating problem.  It makes sense that you'd want to play something before DMing it; become more experienced.  But how does that happen if you never play something else?


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## Elf Witch (Dec 31, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I find your point of view completely understandable.  It makes sense.  I feel the same way sometimes.
> 
> That being said, the question I'd like to ask is whether or not it's something if a self-defeating problem.  It makes sense that you'd want to play something before DMing it; become more experienced.  But how does that happen if you never play something else?




That is a quandary. Even if I was brave enough to do it and could get my fellow players to go along with it I don't have the income to play another system for example used Harnmaser  goes for around 40.00 brand new over 400.00. Dragon Age is around the same 40.00 range. I am disabled on a fixed income and things are really tight right now. My friends are not willing to shell out for a new system because a lot of them are in the same boat I am they have upside down mortgages, medical expenses, kids in college. We have all heavily invested in DnD over the years. 

For some of them I think if the choice came down to either not playing or getting a new system they would choose not playing. Not because they don't enjoy playing but real life things come first.   

So I am trying to make things work with what I have.


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## Umbran (Dec 31, 2012)

CroBob said:


> That is, frankly, completely irrelevant when you're discussing a manufactured game. The manufactured game is what it is regardless what your table likes.




If you're using the term "manufactured game" how I understand it - D&D hasn't ever been a manufactured game.

If the game were written with strict rules, and run exactly as written, then yes, you'd be correct.  If, in essence, the game was tic-tac-toe, and in an individual campaign, there were no choices for the GM in how he went about things, you'd be correct.  An upshot of this is that the game experience would be unequivocal.  Everyone would have the same experience of play.  But that's clearly not what we see in practice.  D&D is not tic-tac-toe, or even monopoly or chess, with single-style-results in play.

We can bring out the Gygax quotes of how the GM is allowed to ignore the rules, if you like.  But even without that, and without blatant homebrew rules, the GM always has choices.  The rules have always been littered with things that are optional, advice for the GM on how to *vary* the game to fit the needs of his or her players.  The game has thus always been, to a significant extent, hand-tailored, rather than manufactured.

Does the GM go with a "wish list" for magic items, or does he drop them instead randomly, or by his own design.  Does the GM use Skill Challenges, and if so, how often?  How are adventures structured (because exactly how "encounter" and "daily" powers play out depends on how much time passes during a given adventure).  Does the GM use masses of weaker monsters, or focus more on big boss monsters, or does he run an entirely human-centric campaign without "monsters" at all?  Are XP handed out only for killing monsters, or does the GM reserve some for handing out for Role Play, or achieving success through methods other than combat - or does the GM eschew XP altogether!  If the game has save-or-die effects, does the GM use them, or not?  Is the GM using one of the 3e action point variants?  Psionics?  

These, and many, many more things, are all choices that can impact the feel of the game.  Add in Rule 0 and outright homebrewing on top of that, and "manufactured" no longer really applies.



> Your table _probably_ already knows what it likes, what it wants to try, etc. That's a non-issue.




Even if you know what you want to try, doesn't mean you know how to try it.  If someone has never before cooked pasta, they probably want to discuss what goes on in the kitchen before trying to make their own Italian cuisine.



> The people who saw the innovation and modern game design strategy as a good thing in 4E don't want to effectively take a step backwards into a game which doesn't come as a completed product, which _requires_ you to modify and tweak the rules in order to be functional in a meaningful way, and which allows for character power imbalance right from the get-go.




As noted above, even working within the rules, every table has already experienced this tweaking - the DM makes decisions, implicitly or explicitly, in how the game is run.  Anyone who thinks they're going to get a version of D&D that is like Monopoly, with no choices in implementation, are expecting something rather extraordinary in the history of the game.  In fact, so long as the GM has the handle on adventure choice and design, the "manufactured game" will never fully be achieved.

But, it can come close - it can (and always has) offered a basic set of defaults.  This is how those who want as much "manufactured game" as they can get can play.  But, if they then feel that their desires then preclude even the existence of options for others... well, I have to say they're being pretty darned selfish.


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

Elf Witch said:


> That is a quandary. Even if I was brave enough to do it and could get my fellow players to go along with it I don't have the income to play another system for example used Harnmaser  goes for around 40.00 brand new over 400.00. Dragon Age is around the same 40.00 range. I am disabled on a fixed income and things are really tight right now. My friends are not willing to shell out for a new system because a lot of them are in the same boat I am they have upside down mortgages, medical expenses, kids in college. We have all heavily invested in DnD over the years.
> 
> For some of them I think if the choice came down to either not playing or getting a new system they would choose not playing. Not because they don't enjoy playing but real life things come first.
> 
> So I am trying to make things work with what I have.




From the sounds of it, HarnMaster seems like one of those games that does realism a far deal better than D&D, and which I'm using as a higher realism value game against which I'm measuring D&D such that I'm claiming D&D isn't very realistic. If realism is something you value, it seems to me that it's something you really should invest in if ever do get the chance. I've never personally played it, and, frankly don't really have the desire to, but I'm sorry that your issue is monetary. Still, it doesn't seem terribly expensive to at least get HarnPlayer to see what the rules are like. As I said, I simply don't know much about it, except it's pretty "realistic".

Has anyone here played it? If so, is it a decent system besides the realism?


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

Umbran said:


> If you're using the term "manufactured game" how I understand it - D&D hasn't ever been a manufactured game.




It would seem I am not. What I meant by "manufactured game" was a game which is made as a product to sell. I was specifying the difference between a game based on it's rules and story and all of it's innate features, from the people who are making it, the actual product you're purchasing, outside of your table. The game itself. The advice that someone should stop worrying about what that product is and worry about what they want at their table is bad advice. Your table already knows what it likes. Probably, anyhow. The trick is making sure what you're buying is what your table wants, or at least doesn't take a lot of modification to get there. The relevant step when discussing this issue is whether or not the game meets your standards. If you don't know what your standards are, then that's not relevant to the discussion.



> Even if you know what you want to try, doesn't mean you know how to try it.  If someone has never before cooked pasta, they probably want to discuss what goes on in the kitchen before trying to make their own Italian cuisine.




Exactly my sentiment. Well, close, anyhow. My point was more that they already know that they like pasta (or find it worth trying, at any rate), the trick is that they need to figure out how to get it, and to make sure they get the kind of pasta they want.


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## Bedrockgames (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> From the sounds of it, HarnMaster seems like one of those games that does realism a far deal better than D&D, and which I'm using as a higher realism value game against which I'm measuring D&D such that I'm claiming D&D isn't very realistic. If realism is something you value, it seems to me that it's something you really should invest in if ever do get the chance. I've never personally played it, and, frankly don't really have the desire to, but I'm sorry that your issue is monetary. Still, it doesn't seem terribly expensive to at least get HarnPlayer to see what the rules are like. As I said, I simply don't know much about it, except it's pretty "realistic".
> 
> Has anyone here played it? If so, is it a decent system besides the realism?




The big drawto Harn is the setting, which is quite well done and detailed. The current system is solid and good for realism but getting people to play it may be tricky. I would think that would be her biggest hurdle. Also, not everyone likes how the game is packaged: it comes in packets with a binder a bit like the old 2E monster manual.


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> In my mind, a solid modular game will be what your table likes, whatever your table likes. That's one of the big strengths of modularity: the game isn't ONE thing, it's many different things, to many different tables.




It can also be a weakness, though. Yes, it gives many people what they want, but then if you move or otherwise have to find new people in order to game, you might meet people who play the same system, and thus you go to play with them, but then you discover that it's essentially a different game entirely because they use vastly different modules from the ones you like. Making it a different game at different tables just makes it different games, and thus _not_ a single game. A more "strict" set of rules can only be modified so far, and will always be, essentially, the same game. Unless a group takes it upon themselves to change it so severely it's a different game, which is fine, but then that's still not the same game.

It's a problem of identity. If you make something that can be anything, it's nothing. Why would I invest in a game that I need to worry about choosing the proper selections to make it what I want, when I could spend less on a smaller book that contains more options I'm actually interested in, or even just make my own game? An very modular game would essentially be a list of rules you can mix together to make your own game as it is. I definitely see the appeal in that, but then why label it a specific game instead of a mechanic selection book or as a game building tool? I'd even favor that idea. I'm a huge fan of it. But that tool is not a specific game.

*Facepalm* Why didn't I just multiquote?


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

Bedrockgames said:


> The current system is solid and good for realism but getting people to play it may be tricky.




Why? Just say "Hey guys, I found a game that looks like a lot of fun, let's make some characters this weekend and see what we think of it." Such a sentence takes very little effort and less than ten seconds.



> I would think that would be her biggest hurdle. Also, not everyone likes how the game is packaged: it comes in packets with a binder a bit like the old 2E monster manual.




She actually already said her biggest hurdle is money, which I would classify as the most difficult sort of hurdle to leap. I mean, if you can't afford something, you can't afford it. There's not a whole lot of wiggling out of that. And how it's packaged seems like a very superficial complaint. I mean, think back to early editions of D&D and the layout of those books. Less than ideal. Newer systems are objectively better, with better art, a more intuitive layout, and better indexes. The imperfect rule books of older editions still never impeded me from playing, though. I understand it being a legitimate complaint, but ultimately not a very serious one unless it's just plain terrible to use. I haven't used it such that I could really know.


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## JamesonCourage (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> Why? Just say "Hey guys, I found a game that looks like a lot of fun, let's make some characters this weekend and see what we think of it." Such a sentence takes very little effort and less than ten seconds.



No offense, but the idea that nobody has ever thought of this before is really funny. There's no way you can think it's that easy for other groups when they're saying it's not easy, right?

I mean, my group uses a few different systems (mainly my RPG, occasionally Mutants and Masterminds for one-shots, and rarely D&D 3.5 with old characters for a 2-session game). We're okay with other systems, but yes, we have our preferences. But obviously some people resist new systems. The idea that "let's play something new, it looks cool" will somehow be enough is amusing, when people are explicitly telling you that it's hard to convince some people to do just that. As always, play what you like


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

I believe it, but I find it strange that _everybody_ in a group of friends or gaming companions are against merely trying a game once. I don't find it likely that the majority of people are needlessly stubborn. If _nobody_ in your group wants to try a new game... well, what's wrong with them? Like if they're planning on playing hearts on Tuesday, what do they do if one guy suggests playing spades instead? I mean, why be a jerk about it?

I also understand not wanting to try a new game if you have an ongoing campaign you're looking forward to, but what if the new game is suggested _between_ campaigns? I'm not advocating trying a new game every week or something, just once in a while. I've never encountered this problem _ever_. There have been certain, specific denials, or denials based on poor timing, but I've never known anyone who never wanted to play a different game _ever_. Frankly, I like to think they're the minority of gamers. It also makes sense why some people want D&D to be able to do anything, since they apparently irrationally refuse to play any other game, _ever_! I mean, are these even real people we're talking about? How could you put up with people who are _that_ stubborn?


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## Bedrockgames (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> Why? Just say "Hey guys, I found a game that looks like a lot of fun, let's make some characters this weekend and see what we think of it." Such a sentence takes very little effort and less than ten seconds.




if you are in a group open to games other than D&D or pathfinder that works. My groupsmostly play other games, so I get to play all kinds of stuff as long as I or someone else is running it. But I also know from talking to other gamers that my experience isnt neccessarily the norm. A lot of groups play one game and getting the to try something else can be quite difficult.


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## Bedrockgames (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> And how it's packaged seems like a very superficial complaint. I mean, think back to early editions of D&D and the layout of those books. Less than ideal. Newer systems are objectively better, with better art, a more intuitive layout, and better indexes. The imperfect rule books of older editions still never impeded me from playing, though. I understand it being a legitimate complaint, but ultimately not a very serious one unless it's just plain terrible to use. I haven't used it such that I could really know.




It might or might not be superficial. In this particular case I think it actually affects use (in both positive and negative ways) but I mentioned it because it is a complaint you hear (particularly from people who order online expecting a boxed set with books and are surprised to see a bunch of loose sheet pages) and felt she should know about it if she is considering making a switch.


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## Elf Witch (Jan 1, 2013)

I am very interested in Harn and will one day money allowing I will pick it up. Bedrockgames thanks for the warning about how it id packaged that won't bother me. I have things on PDF that I have printed out and put in notebooks. 

The people in our group are not jerks it is just that it is hard to get to get together with everyone schedule to play and they are attached to their characters and the current campaigns. So most would be very unhappy for our limited gaming time to be something new different from the campaign we are in.   

The best time would be at the start of a new one. I know my roommate is planning on switching to Pathfinder as soon as we finish her Age of Worms adventure path.

The other issue is that since we don't have a lot of time to play and so we make characters for games via email so we are ready to go on game day. Since I would be the only one with a copy of the game I would either have to make pre gens which might not be a bad idea to try a one shot or have a day just making characters.I would also have to deal with the power gamers of our group who are the most resistant of switching to a system they own or know.

I have noticed that the older some of us get the more set in our ways we become back in the hey days of my gaming life I was willing to try anything and so was my group. I also had way more money to spend. I went out and bought every Talislanta book and Lost worlds of Atlantis after making characters for a game that didn't go anywhere. Now a days I look very closely before I buy anything and it requires planning and saving.


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## Nytmare (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> If _nobody_ in your group wants to try a new game... well, what's wrong with them?




My gaming group used to be significantly larger, so I was able to see a much wider array of reasons and excuses.  These ran the gambit from perfectly acceptable to (in my opinion) tinfoil hat.

I don't want to buy any new books.
I don't want to learn a new game.
I only play D&D.
I don't play D&D.
Are we playing with miniatures?  I don't like miniatures.
Can my character start with guns?
Can I start with an airship?
Why can't I be a vampire?
Why doesn't this game have Mega-Damage in it?
I will only play if I can use a pre-existing character from another game/movie/anime that doesn't fit into this game at all.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> It can also be a weakness, though. Yes, it gives many people what they want, but then if you move or otherwise have to find new people in order to game, you might meet people who play the same system, and thus you go to play with them, but then you discover that it's essentially a different game entirely because they use vastly different modules from the ones you like.




Parsing out what you like and what you don't as a group happens pretty naturally for a new gaming group (or a new member), though. How did that first group arise? Through that very method! Yes, entering a new group is going to require some diplomacy and getting used to new dymanics, but that's happening anyway -- every group is already different in terms of social dynamics and inter-personal interactions and preferences and all sorts of other things. 

It's also true that anyone who is deeply inflexible in terms of what they want out of an RPG is probably being _redonk_. Yeah, we all have our preferences, but if playing the game Your Perfect Way is more important than playing the game with cool folks in your new town so that you can't form a new group because your gaming style is too inflexible...I mean, what, you can't say you really like Rule X and maybe start a conversation about changing it? Then there are deeper issues at work than your game system here, man. 



> It's a problem of identity. If you make something that can be anything, it's nothing.




It's already the flagship tabletop fantasy RPG. Does it really need a _more narrow_ definition? Is there some subset of people interested in tabletop fantasy RPGs that are missing out on D&D because it's not _sufficiently targeted_?



> Why would I invest in a game that I need to worry about choosing the proper selections to make it what I want, when I could spend less on a smaller book that contains more options I'm actually interested in, or even just make my own game? An very modular game would essentially be a list of rules you can mix together to make your own game as it is. I definitely see the appeal in that, but then why label it a specific game instead of a mechanic selection book or as a game building tool? I'd even favor that idea. I'm a huge fan of it. But that tool is not a specific game.




This might play into the idea of releasing a "Basic" set. This basic set is like those LEGO instructions that come with the castle to show you how to make the castle. The identity of the thing is clearly, "a castle," and you know how to make it. It'll give someone their first experience putting this thing together.

But you can also make a T-Rex or a Giant Squirrel or a face out of it, because the parts are built to be interchangeable. They can make a castle, but they can also make lots of other things. And when you start including other sets and extra modules and even just a few raw parts (the bags of blocks without a specific set), you get a lot more possibility -- all because everything is made with the idea of using it in ways it wasn't originally intended to be used. 

You start with the bricks that can build a castle...and make other stuff. You start with the D&D that lets you run a dungeon crawl...and then use it to make other stuff.


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## SkidAce (Jan 1, 2013)

Mega Damage!   That's the ticket...


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## CroBob (Jan 1, 2013)

These posts are growing too long, so here;

I agree that a modular system of rules would be a good thing. What I disagree with is that a system which is so modular that it can fit any form of fantasy RPG you can think of should be called a specific game instead of a game building tool. Yes, D&D has been historically flexible, and should be, but it can't be anything fantasy. At least, not without changing a whole lot, such that it barely resembles the original game, in some cases. And in a lot of cases, there are games that do that genre better, so you'd basically be making a clone of that other game anyway. Which I don't have a problem with necessarily, but then why are you relying on this modular tool instead of just playing that game and then using some ideas from the tool to fit it slightly better to your goal? There's like a stigma that D&D _should_ be anything anybody wants, when it has historically not been. At least, not without modifying the game anyway. I think it would behoove the game more to figure out what has been historically iconic and functional about the game, and work on it doing that well. Modules can be plastered on afterwards.


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## Bedrockgames (Jan 1, 2013)

CroBob said:


> ? There's like a stigma that D&D _should_ be anything anybody wants, when it has historically not been. At least, not without modifying the game anyway. I think it would behoove the game more to figure out what has been historically iconic and functional about the game, and work on it doing that well. Modules can be plastered on afterwards.




I do agree to the extent that this modular aproach seems to be taking it too far. The game probably shouldn't be 100% customizeable. But it should be suficiently broad to appeal to the rangeof playtsyles it has over the last thirty years. While it has historically been as open as a game like gurps, it hasalso never been as narrowly defined and focused as it was with 4E. That edition succeeded in its goal of bing focused, but D&D is the go to game for such a wide swath of gamers, making it a niche product backfired. 

I do not agree they should identify what is iconic and functional bout d&dandmake agame that does that well: D&D has ever really done one thing well. It has always been a bit of a hodge podge and that is its strength. Its messy, it is not the sort of thing a deigner can step back and admire easily, but IMO that is what made it work for so many different groups. 

What they ought to do is clean up and streamline the game, but chuck any notion of focused design. Focused design is what got them in trouble last time around.


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## CroBob (Jan 2, 2013)

Bedrockgames said:


> I do agree to the extent that this modular aproach seems to be taking it too far. The game probably shouldn't be 100% customizeable. But it should be suficiently broad to appeal to the rangeof playtsyles it has over the last thirty years. While it has historically been as open as a game like gurps, it hasalso never been as narrowly defined and focused as it was with 4E. That edition succeeded in its goal of bing focused, but D&D is the go to game for such a wide swath of gamers, making it a niche product backfired.
> 
> I do not agree they should identify what is iconic and functional bout d&dandmake agame that does that well: D&D has ever really done one thing well. It has always been a bit of a hodge podge and that is its strength. Its messy, it is not the sort of thing a deigner can step back and admire easily, but IMO that is what made it work for so many different groups.
> 
> What they ought to do is clean up and streamline the game, but chuck any notion of focused design. Focused design is what got them in trouble last time around.




That's essentially what I'm saying. Third edition did a good job of identifying iconic D&D mechanics. They took the d20, making it the standard resolution rolling mechanism. I don't want iconic flavor, I want iconic mechanics. HP, AC, Attack rolls, damage rolls, etc. A very basic mechanical foundation, upon which you can build specifics. How to handle classes would be the biggest problem, because they're traditionally imbalanced and some are, ultimately, mechanically boring. I think this issue is a big one, but changing the classes to much, as we've seen, can create a backlash of opposition to the change. How do you make every class fun and balanced without severely altering them, though?


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## Bedrockgames (Jan 2, 2013)

CroBob said:


> That's essentially what I'm saying. Third edition did a good job of identifying iconic D&D mechanics. They took the d20, making it the standard resolution rolling mechanism. I don't want iconic flavor, I want iconic mechanics. HP, AC, Attack rolls, damage rolls, etc. A very basic mechanical foundation, upon which you can build specifics. How to handle classes would be the biggest problem, because they're traditionally imbalanced and some are, ultimately, mechanically boring. I think this issue is a big one, but changing the classes to much, as we've seen, can create a backlash of opposition to the change. How do you make every class fun and balanced without severely altering them, though?




I don't know the solution to this. It does seem to be one of the core problems keeping the base fragmented. Part of the problem, if we all put our biases aside for a moment, is each group seems to have very different ideas about what constitutes game balance and what maes the game fun. I agree that 3E did a goid job of unifying the system. Bringing everything around some core mechanics was a crucial step in making the game appearless clumbsy. But in terms of balance, for me AD&D felt right, 3E felt highly umbalanced (though in some ways that was a feature, not a bug) and 4E felt balanced but too uniform. I dont think you want to return to AD&D but I do think the classesneed to feel distinct. Feel is very important to a lot of players. 

My solution would be to accept that pure balance is an imposibility. There are always going to be instances where one class outperforms another. But what you can do is make those variations in power come at a cost and make sure everyone has a strength. The problem in 3E for me isnt o much that ighters andthieves are boring, it is that other classes have too much access to their key abilities (thief skills and, in the case of fighters, multiple attacks). 

I think we have see that making fighters a resource mnagement class wont work for a lot of people. Instead I think maneuvers they can always attempt, are the way to go. These shouldnot feel likebuttons but like real modes of attack you might see in an actual combat. The trick is setting it up so they are not over or under powered. Also making some conditional might work well too (allowing for ounter attack, etc). Allow other classes to attempt the maneuvers for believability but make the penalty to do so prohibitive (-6 provided the math istruly flatter and dont allowfeats to lower it). As a general rile as well, fighters ought to do a lot bette on crits. Not just a bit, but a lot (adding half their HP for exampe to damage). 

For theives, i think they really need to dominate the exploration skillsonce again. I get that people have also begun to view them as commands as well. While i really dont like thisflavor or the theif, i would probably throw a bone to this expectation by making backstab work without being broken and explore moremechnics for poison use (this could be a great way to set part the thiefin combat).


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## CroBob (Jan 2, 2013)

Well, exactly what happens with classes, it's bound to alienate some players. Too many people simply want different things, and I don't want to derail this thread _too_ far. Relevant to the thread, I don't think realism should be too big of a concern. It boils down to a decision to make "mundane" characters fun and equal in power to the magical ones, or to tone down magic until it's equal to the mundane. I don't think ignoring balance is really an option if we want the game to pick up new players and thus survive past ourselves. Which, it's also fine if you don't care about new gamers, but I'm sure the business does. Modern game design and product sales require no class invalidates any other class, if you're going to have classes. It's not about playing on "easy mode" or "hard mode" and getting rewarded for it, it's about experiencing the play differently with different characters, and not being penalized or awarded depending on which class you're trying.


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## harikus (Jan 3, 2013)

The whole d&d multiverse is unreal.  I can make a platoon killing fireball out of a few well placed words, hand signals, and bat droppings.  

But no I do understand what you mean, but I think its my distaste for a certain style.  I grew up reading lotr, dragon lance and forgotten realms.  Extraordinary abilities don't bug me much, they are kinda cool, but I prefer Drizzt to Paul Bunyan or Neo any day.


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