What Hill Will You Die On?

[Dire Bare]

We all have one: that subject that you just dig your heals in on, no mattter what.

I have two. The first is "RPGs produce stories after the fact; they are not tools for telling stories." The other is "page count of rules DOES NOT determine the relative importance of rules in an RPG."

What's yours?

Note: I am not necessarily interested in fighting about these things. That's okay, I guess, as long as we are engaging in friendly debate. I am more interested in what folks hold on to in a death grip. What hill are you willing to die on, RPG wise.

Obviously, this subject has the potential to get heated, so feel free to debate but also be respectful.

In gaming? None? It's a game.

I mean, this is an important hobby to me, that has helped me regulate my mental health in a positive way, and I've made and maintained a lot of friendships through gaming.

But . . . no dying on hills. I save that for stuff that has real-world impact.

 

[Dire Bare]

We are talking about how we pretend to be elves. There are no hills in this topic important enough to die on.

Well . . . not if we're playing Talislanta . . .

 

[overgeeked]

Rules matter. Rules determine what the game is about. Rules focus and limit player imagination. This can be good or bad.

Whatever "story" an RPG produces is emergent from playing the game. A referee trying to force a story is not refereeing a game. Railroading is anathema to collaboration and defeats the entire point of playing an RPG.

Using a purpose-built tool will always yield better results than misusing a tool built for a different purpose. Just because you can use a screwdriver as a makeshift hammer doesn't mean the screwdriver is a hammer. The hammer will always be better at hammering things than the screwdriver.

D&D 5E is a purpose-built tool for monster fighting. Just because you can use it to badly produce vaguely story-like things does not make it a storytelling game. Just because you can use it to try to simulate the life of your character doesn't make it a life sim. Tacking on rules that generate better story-like things from play and simulate life better doesn't change what the game was designed to do, i.e. fight monsters.

AD&D is a life sim. You can tell because it included far more mechanics about how life works, even if in abstracted ways...things like aging and resource management, disease and death, loss and failure.

 

[innerdude]

Hit points suck.

Kind of.

I've sort of reconciled myself to the idea that they probably need to exist in some fashion.

Though I've discovered I like Genesys RPG's approach best, which is 2 separate markers for damage (wounds vs. stun), plus a critical hit chart. It seems like it would be slow and futzy to use in play, but it's very much the opposite. I found it engaging, and players liked the drama of rolling the critical hit chart (both for and against them).

It's good enough that it finally got me off of Savage Worlds after 8+ years as my trad/semi-trad system of choice.

 

[Guest 7042500]

Oh! How could I forget the most controversial one!?

The DM isn’t “god”. Authority in a game inherently resides with the group as a whole. Therefor, the DM can be told no, and all “sure, the players have the right to follow the DMs rulings or leave the DMs game” statements are ignoring reality.

I disagree categorically.

 

[RareBreed]

I will stand with you on both those hills

I have a kinda-sorta corollary to the 2nd one. Rules-heavy or crunchy rules do not have to:

• Have a huge page count explaining every possibility and nuance
• Be more complex than "simpler" rules

 

[FrogReaver]

All y’all picking and choosing your 2 hills…

Meanwhile, I’ve never met a hill I wouldn’t die on.

 

[RareBreed]

Modern kevlar body armors aren't better at stopping even modern ballistics than plate. They're lighter and cheaper and thus easier to equip for modern military and law enforcement personnel.

I'd like to see some statistics backing this up. I've seen articles (such as this one) that shows that body armor does save lives.

Now, there is a bit of semantics here. There is kevlar, and there are ceramic plate armors (and steel too). Modern body plate armor is rated IIA - IV as determined by the NIJ. If you are referring to the difference between kevlar and (modern) plate armor, I'd probably agree with you.

Just a bit of trivia, but the new XM-5 6.8mm rifle and ammunition that the US Army will soon start using to replace the M-4 5.56mm was purposefully designed to defeat modern body armor. There's been a lot of criticism about this new hyper-velocity round because the rounds are heavier, and thus troops wont be able to carry as much ammunition and lay down suppressing fire, and also the extreme velocity only gives the barrels a 2000-2500 life expectancy (that's very small and will be very expensive to maintain).

Hate to say it, but you know what actually reflects ballistic weapons versus archaic (and modern) body armor pretty well, all things considered? Armor providing a bonus to Armor Class, with no special dispensation for the penetrative power of boomsticks.

I think it has less to do with Armor Class, and more to do with the angle of attack. Unless you get a near perpendicular angle to the armor, the projectile will get some kind of glancing effect. So instead of Armor Class, i think some kind of margin of success would simulate armor better.

Otherwise I pretty much agree with everything you said in your post...especially about alignment.

 

[Shardstone]

Kind of.

I've sort of reconciled myself to the idea that they probably need to exist in some fashion.

Though I've discovered I like Genesys RPG's approach best, which is 2 separate markers for damage (wounds vs. stun), plus a critical hit chart. It seems like it would be slow and futzy to use in play, but it's very much the opposite. I found it engaging, and players liked the drama of rolling the critical hit chart (both for and against them).

It's good enough that it finally got me off of Savage Worlds after 8+ years as my trad/semi-trad system of choice.

I prefer using light and severe conditions, with severe conditions having effects on the fiction and counting as two light conditions. Then everything has a breaking point; once that's exceeded, you're either overwhelmed the next time you take a condition or you have to start spending a resource to stay up. Kind of like hit points, but combined with enough fiction mechanics and easy enough to grok for my taste.

 

[Lanefan]

Hit points suck.

Only until you don't have any left, at which point having more wouldn't suck at all.