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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 807321" data-attributes="member: 6929">Largely combat-oriented. To paraphrase my point: Starship Negotiators just wouldn't have been the same film. "Oh no! A hundred thousand alien lawyers!" (Yes, I know Heinlein's book from the 60s had much less combat. And powered armour. It was cool, but it had a different feel.)That's not to say my group is just about killing the monsters. The players all have great character motivations and stuff, they all hate each other on some levels. And we've had some great encounters that were almost completely combat-free (the infamous Chase The Wagon session, for example). But in the end, once you've resolved the intrigues, identified the villains, tracked down their minions and discovered their evil plans, it's often more fulfulling to remove their head without anaesthetic than to slap them on the wrist and let them go with a stern moral lecture.At a slightly higher level of discussion: D&D is oriented on combat, but I think that's always the case with RPGs. How many games have hit points? Now, how many have embarassment points? (Or something similar - morale, social standing, fluffy stuff like that.) A conversation can be simulated by standing around a room talking. A combat can be simulated by hitting your friend with a sword, but that tends to leave a mark - we need extra rules to simulate something that can't be easily done in real life.Now would probably be the time to point out that my homebrew system (now being formatted for a web demo release) can resolve a combat without anyone even drawing a sword, all by rolling the dice. Mental damage can account for seduction, combat trauma, or big scary men telling you to go away now. It was specifically designed to allow for a paradigm where death wasn't the only answer (although you can still goad someone weak into fighting you if you're persuasive enough with this system). Quite the opposite of my D&D game, in fact, if you don't count the combat system where a dagger really is better than a sword in the right hands - I've tried to make every aspect of Twilight make sense. It is, after all, supposed to be universal, and you can't run a Cthulhu game without some good rules for tracking down financial records for an old asylum or getting your brain curdled by undimensional horrors. (I think. Never played Cthulhu.)</blockquote>

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