Recent content by Thomas Shey

Though that's less true with other Hero applications, where powers are less core to what's going on. Once you understand what the attributes do (and the unfortunate breakpointing) building Heroic scale characters is not actually particularly complex; at worst you have the issue with a lot of...

You could deal with it in a relatively simple way as a baseline, then push up some elements for certain weapons and the like (I've made the comment that most damage really comes down to physical or psychological shock, blood loss or a very small amount of actual disablement, at least with...

I don't consider "training" and "learning by doing" the same thing, and was talking about the latter. That would be better than nothing, but it still produces an abrupt jump when the gains should probably be spread out. And as you say, that's a long time.

The problem with that is that it inevitably produces one of two results: 1. Damage becomes completely disconnected from any effect, its just a counter until people fall over, or (this is probably the more benign of the two but to me that's damning with faint praise) 2. It offloads all the...

They aren't the only ones though. You can have relatively obscure fandoms where people will do everything but (and maybe even that) knife each other over things of both minor significance, and to even some fans trivial difference. There's money to made playing to it, but people would do it...

Some people have been fortunate enough they don't realize how common this sort of thing is (and it can occasionally roll the other way; I have a tic where I tend to overexplain possible consequences from having hit people who would get surly if they thought I'd played "gotcha" with them--which...

Unfortunately its abundantly clear that some people connect things they like with their identity in a way they don't (maybe in a sense, can't) separate out.

If I knew it a little better, I suspect Outgunned would be a pretty good choice for that situation too, especially Outgunned Adventures.

It honestly doesn't help that in some cases what "realistic" would look like is either unclear, or people have some ideas about it that at least appear to be counterfactual (but are understandable, since the data isn't commonly available, so they're going off person experience and anecdote).

There are certainly games that make one-shot kills unlikely, but not impossible, and give players some tools to avoid that while making it still a threat. Default Savage Worlds lands there for example.

In a thread about realistic combat, I kind of took it as a given that the hyperstylization of games in the D&D sphere were already off the table, especially since the discussion was about how to handle things without that model. And frankly, once you get outside that sphere, a number of games...

Its an SF dungeon crawl after all.

Yeah, there was a time I could have done that with RuneQuest or Hero without too much of a struggle. Like I said, I'm just rusty.

The only thing I'd need specifically was stats for opponents, but given the somewhat schematic nature of SWADE, if the sample opponents in the book or something else I had wouldn't do, I could slap those together in a short period, or if absolutely necessary, do them off-the-cuff. A knowledge...

While its not a complete case, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about systems that allow you to avoid being hit. In RuneQuest you can Dodge, in the Hero System you have DCV that can be high. And a purple worm or a frost giant is not automatically a specially accurate attacker...