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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9592907" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Whichever way the causation swings, it is vexing to me, because if (what I have called) the Physicalist position were even remotely amenable to compromise or moderation, a very significant amount of game design space would open up to us, allowing a whole spectrum of things.It also doesn't help that, y'know, the books themselves have always been clear, going all the way back to Gygax, that &quot;hits&quot; in combat are much, much, much more complicated than just &quot;did your sword(/other weapon) ever, at any point, make physical contact with the flesh of your opponent?&quot;Well, conversely, that's actually a lot more like how real life works? Like yes, if you live in 1066 and literally take a longsword to the gut up to the hilt, you're gonna die, there's really no meaningful chance that &quot;medicine&quot; of the day could save you. But in actual, living melee battle between real soldiers? People don't just take a couple hits and then fold over. It takes a lot to kill a man. &quot;Gritty&quot; games and media are, at this point, simply preserving a fictitious perspective because it's what people came to expect.It's like people hearing actual horse hooves clopping on actual cobblestone and thinking &quot;well that's not what horses sound like&quot; because they've been raised watching media that replaced real hoof-clopping sounds (which were difficult for microphones to pick up) with the artificial sound of coconut shells banging together. Reality is unrealistic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9592907, member: 6790260"] Whichever way the causation swings, it is vexing to me, because if (what I have called) the Physicalist position were even remotely amenable to compromise or moderation, a [I]very significant[/I] amount of game design space would open up to us, allowing a whole spectrum of things. It also doesn't help that, y'know, the books themselves have always been clear, going all the way back to Gygax, that "hits" in combat are much, much, much more complicated than just "did your sword(/other weapon) ever, at any point, make physical contact with the flesh of your opponent?" Well, conversely, that's actually a lot more like how real life works? Like yes, if you live in 1066 and literally take a longsword to the gut up to the hilt, you're gonna die, there's really no meaningful chance that "medicine" of the day could save you. But in actual, living melee battle between real soldiers? People don't just take a couple hits and then fold over. It takes a lot to kill a man. "Gritty" games and media are, at this point, simply preserving a fictitious perspective because it's what people came to expect. It's like people hearing actual horse hooves clopping on actual cobblestone and thinking "well that's not what horses sound like" because they've been raised watching media that replaced [I]real[/I] hoof-clopping sounds (which were difficult for microphones to pick up) with the artificial sound of coconut shells banging together. Reality is unrealistic. [/QUOTE]

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