Combat Martial arts affecting your GMing style

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by smetzger

I think from a game designers perspective it is important to read these authors. It gives you an understanding of the influence on D&D. I am not saying a player or even a DM needs to read these authors (although I am sure most of them would enjoy the books). But a designer should.

I think a game designer should research what they want to research. I think it's more important that a game designer do what they want to do how they want to do it rather than taking some pre-established or recommended way.

If the designers of a game decide they want to avoid as much D&D influence as possible then they wouldn't want to read those authors, by your statement.

Originally Posted by Jack7

[snip]

This post is kinda what I'm talking about with Too Much Information. Do I really need to care about how real fighting works this much? Or even half this much?

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

But if....you take a serious look at real fighting and do good research, you can make a good fast paced system that has the elements of a real fight.

And some of us don't want real stuff in our pretend fights.

Sometimes you don't need to know anything about the real counterpart to your fiction because the whole point is the fictional nature. Real elements would then be counterproductive.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw2

I think a game designer should research what they want to research. I think it's more important that a game designer do what they want to do how they want to do it rather than taking some pre-established or recommended way.

You are assuming the reccomendations are arbitrary, as if just based on blind tradition. You sound like a high school kid who doesn't want to read his English assignment, that isn't what this is about. Can you describe a good Fantasy game that was designed without the influence of these authors ?

And some of us don't want real stuff in our pretend fights.

Sometimes you don't need to know anything about the real counterpart to your fiction because the whole point is the fictional nature. Real elements would then be counterproductive.

How, exactly? What makes you think the two don't go together? What makes them mutually exclusive?

I personally would rather not deal with the elaborate and patently ridiculous rules for a spiked chain, or track the effects of a power surge or a thrice per day stun move in my pretend fights, I don't want to be forced to use miniatures or power cards or a battlemat in order to play an RPG (I don't mind any of these as options mind you, I just don't want it to be a requirement). To me that all seems kind of childish, though I could probably get into it, but for my girlfriend or my pals from work who aren't hard core gamers, it seems very Geeky, Klingon or "neckbeard" to use a term somebody else coined in another thread. I just don't want to carry that baggage into my game, I like playing with mostly non-gamers and drinking buddies... I don't want to have to explain a double bladed sword or what a Tiefling or a Dragonborn is and defend these concepts from incredulous players since I don't really buy into these concepts myself.

Maybe it just boils down to different strokes for different folks, you "aren't impressed" with Literature or History, no interest in Mythology and want a game with none of these elements. I prefer a game that is has universal / mainstream appeal and a more 'grownup' feel, which I think is enhanced by good research. Luckily for both of us we can each find games which suit our particular preferences.

G.

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

You are assuming the reccomendations are arbitrary, as if just based on blind tradition. You sound like a high school kid who doesn't want to read his English assignment, that isn't what this is about. Can you describe a good Fantasy game that was designed without the influence of these authors ?

No. But that doesn't mean someone deciding to design a fantasy game should automatically turn to those authors, or even any product that has gone before them. The reason it feels to me like the recommendations are arbitrary is that I'm not seeing qualifiers added, no "I recommend these guys for a fantasy game like the kind of stories these guys wrote". If you don't want to design a game to be like those stories then why read them?

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I personally would rather not deal with the elaborate and patently ridiculous rules for a spiked chain, or track the effects of a power surge or a thrice per day stun move in a game I'm playing, I don't want to be forced to use miniatures or power cards or a hex table or any of that in my game.

On that we finally agree.

The thing is I worry about "real" combat because of three things: 1) I don't want it to complicate things, 2) I don't want to be afraid of combat because the reality-simulation elements tell me it's going to kill me, 3) I don't want it to take away the wonder of non-real stuff.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

To me that seems childish and for my girlfriend or my pals from work who aren't hard core gamers, it seems very Geeky, Klingon or "neckbeard" to use a term somebody else coined in another thread. I don't want to carry that baggage into my game.

Sorry, I don't quite understand you here.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I don't want to have to explain what a Tiefling or a Dragonborn and defend the concepts from incredulous players is since I already think they are kind of retarded myself.

Why? I mean I find "humans, but the look slightly different!" to be even worse because it seems like the exact same thing Xeroxed 5 or 10 times.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

Maybe it just boils down to different strokes for different folks, you hate Literature, have no respect for History, no interest in Mythology and want a game with none of these elements. I prefer a game that is logical and grounded in these elements............

I respect history as history, and I'm interested in mythology. But I'm not interested in the real world replacing the fictional world.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

.............luckily for both of us we can each find games which suit our particular preferences.

Actually I have a very, very hard time of it. That's why I'm so vocal about this whole issue: those people who want real elements already have their products. Me I still need mine.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I personally would rather not deal with the elaborate and patently ridiculous rules for a spiked chain, or track the effects of a power surge or a thrice per day stun move in a game I'm playing, I don't want to be forced to use miniatures or power cards or a battlemat in order to play an RPG (I don't mind any of these as options mind you, I just don't want it to be a requirement).

Perfectly reasonable...

To me that all seems kind of childish and for my girlfriend or my pals from work who aren't hard core gamers, it seems very Geeky, Klingon or "neckbeard" to use a term somebody else coined in another thread.

...but this is just cheap stereotyping. Gal, please, you post some interesting stuff, can you not mar that with descent into cliched sentiments like this?

Maybe it just boils down to different strokes for different folks, you hate Literature, have no respect for History, no interest in Mythology and want a game with none of these elements.

I game with a PhD in linguistics, a PhD candidate in English Literature currently teaching undergrads, a bibliophile lawyer, a person who's worked in publishing for years, people with an abiding love for the liberal arts. The last thing were looking for is any kind of well-researched accuracy in our Friday night games.

We want a lark, occasionally tarted-up by the somewhat prodigious amount of sh*t we know.

I prefer a game that is has universal / mainstream appeal and a more 'grownup' feel...

Gal, why do you assume you have such a keen insight into mainstream appeal, especially since it seems your tastes diverge significantly from the RPG with the greatest mainstream appeal?

Also, I'm still trying to figure out what 'grownup' means in this context. Is there a particularly mature way to pretend to be an elf? Would said elf need to be drinking a martini? Would the adventures revolve around cocktail parties? (actually, this is a fair description of a lot of the campaign I got my screen name from...).

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

..more 'grownup' feel...

What do you mean by "grownup"?

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw2

The reason it feels to me like the recommendations are arbitrary is that I'm not seeing qualifiers added, no "I recommend these guys for a fantasy game like the kind of stories these guys wrote". If you don't want to design a game to be like those stories then why read them?

Because these guys wrote the fantasy genre, so if you want to do a fantasy game in that genre, it helps to know the source (and I'd take it a step further, that you really need to look at the Historical and Mythological sources that they did otherwise you make something derivitive and therefore weakened.

The thing is I worry about "real" combat because of three things: 1) I don't want it to complicate things, 2) I don't want to be afraid of combat because the reality-simulation elements tell me it's going to kill me, 3) I don't want it to take away the wonder of non-real stuff.

We want much the same things, I just think you can get to all this easier with a game grounded in realism, go figure.

I respect history as history, and I'm interested in mythology. But I'm not interested in the real world replacing the fictional world.

Me either, I just think the fictional worlds that are fun, from experience, are the ones informed by History and Mythology (deep into it, not just the superficial version you get in high school).

Actually I have a very, very hard time of it. That's why I'm so vocal about this whole issue: those people who want real elements already have their products. Me I still need mine.

It's funny it looks that way to you, because I had so hard of a time finding a realistic RPG combat system I had to write my own. But I did finally find one, albiet in my own printer.

I think what we have mostly in RPG's is fairly complex, unrealistic games with elements of realism crudely and ineffectivley patched on.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Perfectly reasonable...


...but this is just cheap stereotyping. Gal, please, you post some interesting stuff, can you not mar that with descent into cliched sentiments like this?

I'm just describing what I have experienced, and I'm talking about the reactions I get from other people. When I try to explain spiked chains or Dragonborn to those folks, that is how they react, they make faces, they say a lot worse stuff than I said in my post.

Whereas they don't seem to have an issue with the RPG concept in general, which seems to have a broad appeal, or even with the idea of Dragons since they get the notion from Mythology and mainstream Literature, or movies like LOTR.

One can love the humanities and not be a prick about it.

I game with a PhD in linguistics, a PhD candidate in English Literature currently teaching undergrads, a bibliophile lawyer, a person who's worked in publishing for years, people with an abiding love for the liberal arts. The last thing were looking for is any kind of well-researched accuracy in our Friday night games.

People seem to keep assuming I'm talking about Detail or complexity, or absolute fidelity down to the smallest element. I'm not. To me if you are playing a game like say, Call of Cthulhu, you are playing a very well researched game, that is still loose and simple enough that you can have a lark.

Gal, why do you assume you have such a keen insight into mainstream appeal, especially since it seems your tastes diverge significantly from the RPG with the greatest mainstream appeal?

Also, I'm still trying to figure out what 'grownup' means in this context. Is there a particularly mature way to pretend to be an elf? Would said elf need to be drinking a martini? Would the adventures revolve around cocktail parties? (actually, this is a fair description of a lot of the campaign I got my screen name from...).

Frankly, yeah why not an elf with a Martini? Look, it's subjective, I have tried to describe it, I guess I have only come across snobby and snarky, not my intent. I put it in three categories of TV shows, 1) Buggs Bunny cartoons (fun for both sexes and all ages) 2) He Man Masters of the Universe (fun for 12 year old boys) or 3) Battlestar Galactica (fun for both sexes and all ages).

I like RPGs which are like #1 or #3 but not like #2. Those don't feel 'grown up' to me. Does that make sense?

G.

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

Because these guys wrote the fantasy genre, so if you want to do a fantasy game in that genre, it helps to know the source (and I'd take it a step further, that you really need to look at the Historical and Mythological sources that they did otherwise you make something derivitive and therefore weakened.

I'm still not convinced that looking at someone else's work is going to help any with writing your own. They wrote their own when they didn't have them.

History and mythology I've read, but that's what I felt like reading. If people don't feel like doing the research you're risking turning them off to the whole endevour by suggesting that unless they do something they really don't want to do they'll never succeed at what they're trying. Better to just let them fail on their own.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

We want much the same things, I just think you can get to all this easier with a game grounded in realism, go figure.

And I don't trust realism because I think it'll tether me to the ground. I think realism should be used if you don't want to float away (and I want to float away).

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

Me either, I just think the fictional worlds that are fun, from experience, are the ones informed by History and Mythology (deep into it, not just the superficial version you get in high school).

Hey, some of my favorite stuff is superficial. Sometimes the superficial version of something is very informative.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

It's funny it looks that way to you, because I had so hard of a time finding a realistic RPG combat system I had to write my own. But I did finally find one, albiet in my own printer.

I'm talking more about settings and whatnot that say that they use "realistic thinking" or something like that. They make it sound like they're doing something unusual, whereas I'm looking around and not seeing the "unreal" stuff.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I think what we have mostly in RPG's is fairly complex, unrealistic games with elements of realism crudely and ineffectivley patched on.

I'd agree. I just don't think emphasis on realism is objectively the best way to fix them.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I put it in three categories of TV shows, 1) Buggs Bunny cartoons (fun for both sexes and all ages) 2) He Man Masters of the Universe (fun for 12 year old boys) or 3) Battlestar Galactica (fun for both sexes and all ages).

I like RPGs which are like #1 or #3 but not like #2. Those don't feel 'grown up' to me. Does that make sense?

Yes, although I wouldn't put #3 in the "grownup" category. I wouldn't put most drama in the "grownup" category, I think it's still too "angsty teenager".

[Janx]

If I were to take what I know about fighting, and applied it to GMing, I'd consider the following:

movement: barring a tight space, combatants would be moving constantly. To keep with D&D's heroic feel, I'd make sure moving was rewared, not punished. This might mean using more 5' steps, or making AoO less likely.

HP and AC: As currently defined, they make it hard for players to relate how much damage they take in relation to the type of injury. To support a hit being serious, but not horribly crippling PCs, I'd effectively increase AC (make getting hit less likely, the storm trooper effect), reduce overall HP (they don't ramp up so much), and set a model for damage=side effect. I'd also throw in a healing system that makes it easier to recover.

In any event, the changes would attempt to keep the overall game play the same, but make the stats reflect what's really going on.

One way my experience has altered how I DM, is I created a "dojo" for the monk, that had enough detail based on merging a real style with fiction. The result is a dojo system that fits the rules (no new rules), but supplies all the fluff and advanvement to make it seem realistic. (also available in a past blog entry).

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Janx

If I were to take what I know about fighting, and applied it to GMing, I'd consider the following:

movement: barring a tight space, combatants would be moving constantly. To keep with D&D's heroic feel, I'd make sure moving was rewared, not punished. This might mean using more 5' steps, or making AoO less likely.

HP and AC: As currently defined, they make it hard for players to relate how much damage they take in relation to the type of injury. To support a hit being serious, but not horribly crippling PCs, I'd effectively increase AC (make getting hit less likely, the storm trooper effect), reduce overall HP (they don't ramp up so much), and set a model for damage=side effect. I'd also throw in a healing system that makes it easier to recover.

In any event, the changes would attempt to keep the overall game play the same, but make the stats reflect what's really going on.

One way my experience has altered how I DM, is I created a "dojo" for the monk, that had enough detail based on merging a real style with fiction. The result is a dojo system that fits the rules (no new rules), but supplies all the fluff and advanvement to make it seem realistic. (also available in a past blog entry).

This sounds good to me, I think this is a good example of how you can use realistic data to make your game better.

G.

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Another way to look at the "I don't want realism" position, Galloglaich, is that your system provides rules for how different bits of combat work and a decision process nearly blow-by-blow. But I don't want to decide combat blow-by-blow, I want a whole lot of blows reduced to one abstraction. The current system of "I attack.......I attack" works well enough for my purposes (though it could be even better).

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw2

Another way to look at the "I don't want realism" position, Galloglaich, is that your system provides rules for how different bits of combat work and a decision process nearly blow-by-blow. But I don't want to decide combat blow-by-blow, I want a whole lot of blows reduced to one abstraction. The current system of "I attack.......I attack" works well enough for my purposes (though it could be even better).

This isn't necessarily the case. If you are talking specifically about my system, Codex Martialis, the core of it is very simple. You literally hold your options in your hand, four dice, you decide how many to use for attacks, defense, or movement. To me that is a lot simpler than full combat option, move equivalent action, five foot step, run action, fight defensive action etc. etc.. That is the core idea, there you can have it, you don't even need the PDF

Everything else in that book amounts to components you can add (or not) as you see fit.

It is important to realise that incrorporating realism, History, Mythology etc. into the research that goes into your game design does not relate to how complex your game is. That is a false dichotomy.

Codex is a realistic combat system about the same level of complexity as 3.5E, (what I would call 'medium complexity') but there are also pretty realistic games which are simpler than the Codex, like Burning Wheel or Cthulhu Dark Ages, (low complexity) and those which are more complex (TROS). Just like there are many simple, medium complexity and highly complex games which are very unrealistic, (mostly medium and high)... I won't mention any by name here lest I annoy people.

All I'm saying is a solid grounding of realistic combat (or any other 'real' element you want to model) can help you build a better game at whatever level of complexity you like. I don't know why that is so hard to understand.

If you like unrealistic games explicitly, (and it sounds like you do) drive on man, you have plenty to choose from. If you think there aren't enough simple games, I believe part of the reason why is that unrealistic designs actually tend to accumulate more and more rules in fruitless efforts to make them work.

G.

[Jack7]

So you can never play someone with capabilities different from your own? That's a pretty weird role playing game.

Only if you assume human beings are static creatures unable to learn anything more than they already know.

But just as characters can learn new skills, then so can players. For instance it is pretty silly to say, as an example that a fighter can learn to fight with both a dagger and a sword, but a player can only learn to fight with a staff, cause that's all he knows and therefore all he will ever know. A character after all represents nothing more than a fictionalized version of a player, but there is absolutely nothing to prevent a player from training for new skills like his character does.

As an example much of our game often involves communications in Koine, Greek, and Latin. Well, interested players have learned Greek as a result of independent study and whereas before "some things were Greek to them" now they can read the Greek of the gaming era. They learned, so did the characters.

But to address what I think was your real point real world skills do not preclude or exclude games skills any more than in-game skills preclude real world skills. That is to say I allow my players to choose in-game skills and to choose real world skills. If they don't know something because it is only an in-game skill, like some survival technique then they may choose, like in the fighting example above, to resolve it by dice roll. Or they can attempt to reason it out, or they can employ their real world skills if they know a thing. But if they have an in-game skill that they commonly want to make use of then I simply tell them, learn how this really works and they usually do and then they can demonstrate it easily and assuming no other factors are involved (some force specifically working against them) then they cannot fail at it. (Most real world skills, and most game skills for that matter, consist of extremely simple techniques that once learned can be easily demonstrated and described. It's juts a matter of exposure to the basic ideas and training methods. They only seem complicated because of lack of experience. Most skills once learned are so easy they require little conscious thought, just practice. And that's easy to demonstrate. Once you learn to throw a ball or ride a bike or start a fire or climb a rock face or shoot a rifle, and practice at it awhile then thinking about what you are doing only gets in your way. Proper habit is more important to skill mastery than conscious thought. And once again habit is anything but random and chance driven. You actually become better through practice, not more random.) If it is a survival skill like locating water, then they know how to do it, and they will keep at it til they find water by the proper method given that environment. They don't have to rely upon dice roll for "a chance" demonstration of skill anymore than they have to rely upon a chance demonstration of combat capability. (As a matter of fact, as far as real work and capacity are concerned, chance and skill are antithetical terms if you think about it.) They know by training and experience. But if it is something rarely used then they may decide to train in other real world skills, or other in-game skills, and simply rely upon chance. But I didn't mean to imply it was either/or. They can choose both and the method normally employed. But if they know something then they can demonstrate it, really demonstrate it, and not have to rely upon chance to determine their level of success or failure. But we don't do away with in-game skills, we augment them through use of real world skills.

Then again you have those skills and abilities, magical for instance, that cannot be successfully emulated or demonstrated in real life, they can only be represented. So in cases like that real world skills are not applicable, though they may be helpful for demonstration purposes.

Indeed. But what makes you think that this is how D&D works?

I've played D&D, and the precursors, really since Chainmail, and very rarely have I ever been asked where I intended to strike an opponent, or in what manner, or what my attack intention was, etc, when playing a fighter of any stripe. (I could probably count those times one hand.) But if you stop and think about it for a second the method of allowing dice to resolve combat intention and potential is as silly as saying to a magic user, "just throw your fireball in any direction and we'll let the dice decide if you hit, where, and to what effect."

No professional combatant would ever enter any combat by saying, "chance will determine my success." In a real combat you would know, as an experienced professional, what you intended, where you were aiming, and how you were striking and with what intended effect.

Now the argument could be made that D&D isn't about real combat, and that it is merely representational, and that's true enough because math is a substitute for real skill and intention in the game, but then again you are supposed to be representing professional combatants (in the case of fighters). At least vaguely and real combatants do not rely upon chance to determine combat capabilities. It just isn't done among the living. Dead combatants rely on chance a lot. Surviving ones, not so much. Though a combatant can be very good and skillful and still get killed through no fault of his own. That happens too. But it has been my experience, that where actual survival is concerned, no real method has the same end result as "very bad method."

A sniper for instance goes to shoot a man and says to himself, "boy, my target is a long way away so rather than setting for the proper shot and taking into account all possible variables and getting a proper line of sight, I'll juts roll the dice and let's see what happens." You aim for the specific part of the body you intend to tag, and if you miss you don't hit the foot instead. You hit a few centimeters off-mark. Or something interferes and you go off-mark. But you don't almost hit the brain because that was what you were aiming at and then accidentally end up hitting the pelvis instead.

I have however been in numerous D&D games where this is the approximate case, or where worse, in my opinion, no method is even considered of where on the body a hit actually strikes or what effect that would have. Only hit points are considered. A puncture to the lung is no different than a slash across the forearm and indeed both may do exactly the same in hit point damage though each different type of wound would have very different effects upon most targets.

I'm not saying this is the way D&D has to be by the way, simply that this is the way it usually is, if my anecdotal evidence and experience has any weight. It is simply the hit-point/pay no real attention to wound effect so common in most D&D games I have ever observed or played in. But it is not the way anything like a real fight goes. Puncturing a lung has an extremely different effect than slashing an arm, though in most D&D games I've ever seen this plays no role in-game as to effect upon the victim. For séance I ask you, and your situation might be different, how many games have to ever played in where somebody took an arrow center of body mass and it had nay different effect than taking an arrow in the shoulder, forearm, or thigh? I'll bet the vast majority of players and DMs would say, "well it has made no difference at all in the games in which my fighters fought." But if you were a real combatant, if you could actually become the character you're playing, believe me, it would make a huge difference in every possible way.

And in the same way if you could become your Ranger then believe me he'd know exactly where he was aiming his shaft, and whether he intended to put it in the target's thigh, his heart, or in his gut. It would be the first question he asked himself as he bent for his draw, consciously or unconsciously, he wouldn't just be thinking, "well, I'll shoot and see if I happen to hit the guy and where it will hit." He'd know exactly where he was aiming, if he was a professional, experienced killing man, and he'd know why he was aiming there. Because to tell the truth a fighter's job in-game is not to fight, it's usually to kill. And if you kill for a living then you know exactly how to do that. Not as a "+ 5 to hit and a +6 to damage hit points," but as a "I'm sticking this right through your ear-drum the first time I try and you won't be living through it." Case closed. Fight over. I know exactly how to do this.

Real fighters don't fight to fight, they fight to kill (assuming they are involved in lethal combats, a non-lethal combat has another end). And D&D is just unprepared for that reality, though truth be told, it is the only real reality that real fighters really care about. If I were a D&D fighter believe me the last thing I'd care about is learning how to extend a fight into seventeen rounds of slugfest and happenstance body-strikes from big-toe to shoulder blade. If I were in a fight where somebody else were gonna kill me, man or monster, I'd be learning how to kill, not how to fight. And killing, not fighting, is what I'd be a doing.

That is to say that killing is the end of the fighter, the purpose of his profession, and technique is his method, and technique is not a vague, wandering, chance driven mechanism. It is specific in operation and functions towards a specific and desired outcome. Few, in playing D&D would think of allowing a dice roll to determine what spell a magic-user threw, where it hit, who it targeted, what effect it had, if it hit or had the intended effect, and so forth and so on. The magic user knows, he operates by exact technique and by studied application and experience. He chooses his targets, he applies the spell and does as much as he can to control effect. His technique does not include, I'll let chance determine how successful I am at employing magic.

Unfortunately D&D just normally doesn't recognize that very same and basic truth about combat, that combat ain't about fighting, it's about killing. And killing involves real technique, experience, and professional application. (Unless of course you're aiming not to kill and that's a different kind of training, but it can be learned too.) But where killing is concerned, as far as the combatant classes go, the game is very far from the real mark and the real intention of combat. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is the common paradigm. Now maybe you play differently, we do too, but I'll bet most players do not account for combat effects other than hit points or critical hits because the game just doesn't include real mechanisms for what would really be happening.

It's a game contract weakness. There's no law saying it has to have that weakness, but it does have that weakness.

Then again another thing I found silly about typical D&D fights is letting the dice dethrone what area of the body you hit...

I hate Microsoft products. That should read "determine what area of the body you hit."

But what I mean by that is the fact not of where you hit because of weapon, but that you are intentionally striking or trying to strike those areas because they assure killing effect.

[Andor]

Knowledge of real world martial arts and weapons can inform a game, within limits. But frankly there are pretty sharp limits to how useful it is.

Take guns for example. You can take any weapon in the world and break it down piece by piece to come up with maintence and reliability rules with differing factors for which oil you used in what enviroment. And your players will never use it. You can come up with a table listing every possible weapons malfunction, but really there are only two types that matter. Something you can clear in combat like a hangfire or a stovepipe jam, and something you cannot like a broken sear spring or squib load. Whatever the details it still boils down to "Spend your next action to clear the problem" vs "Get another weapon."

Likewise you can (easily) figure out for any given weapon the bullet weight, muzzle velocity and windage allowing you to compute exactly how much kinetic energy the bullet has when it hits it's target. All of which is shockingly useless when it come to knowing how the target will respond to being shot. I've heard of police officers taking minor flesh wounds to the arm from a .22 and dropping dead from shock, while Rodger Young took multiple heavy machine gun hits to the chest and still survived and was functional long enough to crawl the the bunker and blow it up.

All of which tell me that no system however 'exact and realistic' it's designer thinks it is, is ever going to portray all the complexities of life.

I used to play in a D&D group that was also SCA fencers. One day we were discussing called shot rules and decided to suit up and try fighting some bouts while going for specific targets. To our shock we discovered that we really didn't hit any less often, but our defenses went to hell. Since there wasn't really any way to translate that into D&D's entirely equipment based AC system (this was before 3e) we gave up trying to make D&D more realistic and got back to rolling dice.

Is D&D realistic? Nope. Is gaining HP as you level up realistic? I dunno. A marine friend of mine has been shot several times. He told me once "The first time I was shot I knew I was going to die. The seventh time it just made me mad." OTOH I don't think he could survive falling off a cliff any better than I could.

Food for thought.

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

This isn't necessarily the case. If you are talking specifically about my system, Codex Martialis, the core of it is very simple. You literally hold your options in your hand, four dice, you decide how many to use for attacks, defense, or movement. To me that is a lot simpler than full combat option, move equivalent action, five foot step, run action, fight defensive action etc. etc.. That is the core idea, there you can have it, you don't even need the PDF

Okay, it seemed more complex in the Play Examples on your site.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

It is important to realise that incrorporating realism, History, Mythology etc. into the research that goes into your game design does not relate to how complex your game is. That is a false dichotomy.

Yeah, I'm getting that.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

All I'm saying is a solid grounding of realistic combat (or any other 'real' element you want to model) can help you build a better game at whatever level of complexity you like. I don't know why that is so hard to understand.

Because of that false dichotomy you describe: they think "real = having to account for every detail". I'm still not entirely sure myself how you can have something that's both simple and is still based around realism because I would think at some point the abstraction would critically dilute the realistic elements.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

If you like unrealistic games explicitly, (and it sounds like you do) drive on man, you have plenty to choose from.

Could you name some? I don't think I've seen more than a few. I see more games with realism.

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

If you think there aren't enough simple games, I believe part of the reason why is that unrealistic designs actually tend to accumulate more and more rules in fruitless efforts to make them work.

And I believe that's because the people doing that don't realize what they already have works just fine. Or because they don't actually want unrealism.

[Jack7]

You can take any weapon in the world and break it down piece by piece to come up with maintence and reliability rules with differing factors for which oil you used in what enviroment. And your players will never use it.

That's true. Real usefulness is the first great efficiency.

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by ArghMark

Just wondering; has knowledge of swordplay or martial skill affected anyone else's games? Do you think about it at all, or downplay it? Does it come into descriptions, or into actual combat?

I have done a bit of live-combat larp, some SCA heavy list fighting, and studied shotokan karate. I have to say that all that has not much changed my games.

But then, I'm also a physicist, and when I run sci-fi games, I don't worry about whether or not FTL travel is possible.

[jasin]

Originally Posted by smetzger

Tolkien and CS Lewis invented fiction and fantasy. They sat down in a pub and lamented over the fact that there were no fiction fantasy books. So, they decided to create there own genre.

... what!?

History of fantasy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by Jack7

But if they have an in-game skill that they commonly want to make use of then I simply tell them, learn how this really works and they usually do and then they can demonstrate it easily and assuming no other factors are involved (some force specifically working against them) then they cannot fail at it. (Most real world skills, and most game skills for that matter, consist of extremely simple techniques that once learned can be easily demonstrated and described.

Tell that to anyone playing a mage. If and when you can make the laws of physics sit down in the corner and shut up, then you can never fail with magic!

My players are taking part in a hobby. Maybe they'll find something in it interesting enough to study it outside of the gaming session, but given busy adult lives, I'm not going to hold my breath.

[Jack7]

My players are taking part in a hobby. Maybe they'll find something in it interesting enough to study it outside of the gaming session, but given busy adult lives, I'm not going to hold my breath.

Oh, I don't know Umbran. It works out pretty easy when it is tried.

Take, for instance, all of the time spent to learn the intricacies of your hobby (which is one of mine too), the proper terminology, the math, learning the rulesets, the time spent playing, the theoretical discussions, etc. All the effort spent learning to play the hobby, and involved in the ancillary support activities, is no more time intensive than it would take to learn how to free-climb (good practice is another matter), and learning the game is certainly far more time and effort intensive than learning to start a fire (given the proper equipment), set a tourniquet properly (which I unfortunately last had to do on Good Friday), or learn basic trauma first aid. I'll bet I could spend far less time teaching a person how to properly set a rabbit snare out of cord than in explaining D&D rulebooks to a novice, or in re-learning rules myself when a new edition comes out.

If anyone can spend hours upon hours involved in a hobby then they can learn to shoot the sun, navigate by the stars, track a deer, or set a splint. It just depends on what you spend your time learning. And every you learn a new associated skill it comes a lot quicker because you already have an experience base. (For instance it was probably much easier for you to learn 4th Edition than to learn D&D on the very first time you were exposed to it. Similarly once you learn what a bear track looks like it becomes much easier to recognize a deer track by contrast.) And of course practicing already known skills usually increases fluidity and ease of performance. But if you or anyone else can learn a game of such intricacy as D&D and then pour hours of effort into further advancing those gaming skills then learning other skills is not that problematic at all.

If you make skills acquisition part of the same basic idea as say rules learning and practice, then it's pretty easy to do. And if you couple that with the fact that the player wants to learn how such and such works then you don't really have to take any more effort than to say, "okay, you wanna know how that works, then put the same effort into learning about it as you do in learning about heroic tier progression." It's just a different subject matter is all.

I think the real problem is not that it is beyond the capabilities of the players (or DM) at all, it's just that it is rarely encouraged. People are encouraged in the game to learn rule minutiae regarding skills, but they aren't encouraged to learn how those skills really work. However if players and DMs took the time that is used to learn rule minutiae and level progression stats and figuring combat probability assumptions of a given edition of the game and instead redirected that towards leaning real skills then different ends would be accomplished.

It's just an assumed mindset that in-game skills means "no relation to real capabilities," it's not a law. Just, I suspect, a kind of usually unexamined paradigm. But that's just a paradigm, it's not a necessity nor a reality.

I kayak, and track animals, and watch the moon through my telescope as hobbies also, and those hobbies don't prevent me from learning real world skills associated with those hobbies or from learning other, non-hobby associated skills. From watching the moon I've gone on to grind my own lenses, just as I suspect you have probably went on from playing D&D to learning to play other games. Now imagine that in-game you have a character who likes to manhunt. Why should the fictional game prevent you from spending time to learn how manning really works (I don't know that you would like manhunting, it's just an example), anymore than spending time playing D&D prevents you from learning other game forms? And if you could spend the time moving from D&D to other game forms then you could spend the time, or anyone else could, learning how manhunts are undertaken. And if manhunts aren't your thing then you could learn some other skill just as easily as could your character, as long as you were motivated to do so. But I suspect it is very unrealistic to say that someone can't learn some real skill because they are too busy to do so when they can spend hours and hours involved in an intricate hobby. For instance you wouldn't have to learn how to track a deer like the world's greatest hunter, you'd just have to learn how to track a deer successfully. It's just an assumption that one either precludes or is totally unrelated to the other.

I think the game (not just D&D, but many role playing game forms) suffers from certain unrealistic and reflexive assumptions that aren't so much really true as just assumed by habit and practice. But the game doesn't have to suffer from those practices, it just does because it isn't looked at in any other way.

Now am I gonna say I want somebody who has learned something about trauma medicine through study inspired by a game giving me a field operation to remove a bullet, over say, a trained medic who has actual experience removing bullets. No I wouldn't. But I'd probably prefer that fella, assuming they were sincere and honestly studied over somebody who knew nothing of the subject. I'd certainly though prefer someone with at least some familiarity with real world survival study (even if it was inspired by a game) over someone who knows nothing of survival other than what he learned just in-game. Die-rolling a survival skill is not practicing a survival skill, it's just practicing a die roll. However if that player decides he should learn how to really locate water and survive in a desert (because his character can) then I'd prefer his company in a desert to that of somebody who was never inspired to learn any such skill, for any reason. And the game gives no reason while anyone should not learn real skills. There's nothing preventing it other than assumptions. There's no preclusion or exclusion clause saying the twain shall never meet.

But there is nothing in the game to prevent people from learning anything they want, assuming they are willing to put as much general effort into whatever they master, as they spend in mastering the game.