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ENWorld has/had a marketplace page for exactly the kind of dealing that you might be interested in. I can't find it today, for some reason. I'd be interested in anything with Savage Tide modules in it, myself.

Damnation Decade by Green Ronin is decidedly goofy, but the alt-history names for various analog real-world nations are pretty good (though Americo is probably too goofy for your tastes). It has the advantage of being a modern setting, so the country names might fit your setting better. Both...

Definite vote for Medieval Player's Manual. Neat ideas for settings with some very different assumptions than traditional fantasy RPGs. The "practical magic" systems for charms and alchemy, and the non-combat classes like the Scholar and Artist, are intriguing and largely adaptable to other...

I'm only skimming, so it's possible someone has already said this. But to the OP, yes, you can have a game or player that is both Gamist and Narrativist, or Narrativist and Simulationist, or even all three. Crucially, it doesn't even contradict GNS theory to say so, and the belief that it does...

I'm no gaming historian, but I was never claiming total originality. My claim was much more narrow, that you can have less bookkeeping than conventional hit points while maintaining their utility. I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't think this is analogous to what I'm talking about. You...

By the way, I like Alex's idea, particularly because you could build it with fewer "hit points" than we are accustomed to. One downside might be a possibly proliferation of conditions, in the "scared, frightened, panicked" sense. If every attack and power had its own unique condition, that...

Not if you can get the same results with fewer of them. Managing dozens of "hit units," by any name, requires more bookkeeping than managing fewer than ten.

I'm doing something similar, triggered not by dying but by failed 4e-style death saves. Multiple failed saves leads to worse injuries. Just make sure you clear such a system with your players first. Some would rather die (in character of course) than play a debilitated character.

I was going to offer my own definition, but after reading this thread I see no point. This thread offers excellent evidence in favor of the argument that "videogamey" is simply an undefined pejorative against a game someone doesn't like. Two bits of evidence stick out: -There are many, many...

The Gray Wastes of Gehenna, or something like that, right? Anyway, my mistake. In my imagination Death by Positive Energy should be proceeded by giddy euphoria. This amuses me, for the same reason as those stories about the professional runner who dies while running. Too much of a good thing is...

I recall that the 3.5 DMG says that if mortal characters bumble into the plane of positive energy without any precautions, they are bound to explode in a dazzling burst of colorful stardust. The plane of negative energy was said to just make people really, really depressed, on the other hand.

Smaller numbers mean less bookkeeping. D&D characters can have dozens, or even hundreds, of hit points. Dice pools typically involve fewer units than that. The system I'm working with now uses damage saves, where passing a save means you earn a hit token that makes subsequent damage saves more...

Yes, yes, but I'll say it one more time: I'm not advocating zero bookkeeping; I'm saying there are systems that involve less bookkeeping than hit points! Fair enough, but what I was originally responding to was the contention that hit points are advantageous because they involve little...

For an idea of what I'm driving at, check out any number of "dice pool" RPG's out there. Damage (or more general attrition) is not binary, but adding and removing dice from a pool is much easier and maintains a better sense of flow in-game than doing arithmetic on scratch paper.

Similar symptoms of the same phenomenon. By "condition tracking," I was assuming we meant something like what True20 or Storyteller uses, where different degrees of injury have different in-game effects apart from simply being closer to death. With hit points, typically, a character with 2 hit...

I meant people less enlightened than you :). The reason you do that is because you would otherwise wear your character sheet to firmament, which is just as indicative of how much bookkeeping hit points require. I was trying to make the explicit point that you can have damage saves without...

I'm sort of surprised people favor hit points because they ostensibly involve little bookkeeping. They're one of the bookkeeping-est aspects of OGL d20. People erase holes into their character sheets from keeping track of them. It's possible that a damage save and condition track system...

Reaffirming the call for swashbuckling, ships, gunpowder, treasure. Think hard on naval combat rules. People playing pirate games want something that feels like naval combat but doesn't get bogged down in detailed subsystems. I'd say the same thing about weather, come to think of it.* Islands...

I know. I just meant that as an example of a system that makes mechanical elements of the game that are usually purely narrative, which I think is part of the trouble in imagining xenchao's proposal. That's a good point, and a fair concern. I've certainly seen how point-buy systems could be...

I'm guessing that whatever we are talking about is a little more freeform than that, such that a GM is still required for interpretation. The rules would guide, not tell. Why do you suspect this would be problematic? I'm reading Fantasy Craft and am finding that it treats powers, abilities...