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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6401087" data-attributes="member: 42582">An RPG character doesn't have free will either, as one of many consequences of being a purely imaginary being.The player of an RPG character has free will, but then so did the author of the Riddick movie.In an RPG in which the player of "Riddick" fights with a cup, victory may not be pre-ordained. But it's not hard to design and run an RPG such that the player, using his/her free will, has a reason to fight with a cup rather than a sword. In a game session I ran a few week ago (using Burning Wheel, which does have a weapon table including speed and vs armour), there was one combat, between the only warrior PC and a scimitar-armed thug. The warrior, an elf, didn't draw his sword. He used his brawling to grab the NPC by the wrist and throw him to the ground. (In Burning Wheel, that combat can be resolved as a pair of opposed checks, attack dice vs defence dice for the two combatants.)This was because the elf warrior (and the player playing him) wanted to prove a point about the cutural superiority of elves to thuggish humans. I could easily imagine a Riddick variant of that, in which the warrior wants to prove a point about his abiity to beat of thugs with nothing but a metal cup.This isn't true. Off the top off my head I can think of four RPGs without weapons tables: Marvel Heroic RP, Fate, HeroQuest revised, and Maelstrom Storytelling. In none of them is a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - for instance, a character wieding a tea cup can't make the same action declarations that a character wielding a bazooka because only delivers explosives at range.The sort of rules structure you describe is 100% not required for an RPG.For instance, your example assumes that combat in the game involves initiative, affected by weapon speed and DEX scores. Which also assumes that PCs have ability scores such as DEX. You also make assumptions about action economy, consequence generation and imposition, etc.None of that is true for the 4 RPGs I mentioned above. Characters are defined by descriptors (completey free descriptors for 2 of them, a mix of free and semi-free descriptors for MHRP, a mix of free descriptors and skill ranks for Fate).Even Burning Wheel, which involves a weapons table with speed and vs armour, can be played without it. If the table doesn't want to bother differentiating in any detail between daggers and polearms, they're not obliged to. Situations where one weapon would be particularly advantageous or disadvantageous can easiy be handled via ad hoc modifiers (eg if the dagger wielder is charging the polearm wielder, the polearm wielder gets a bonus die; if the dagger wield is shaking the hand of the polearm wielder when the fight breaks out, then the dagger wielder gets a bonus die).Incorporating weapons speed, DEX stats, vs armour, etc into combat resolution is a choice in design. Not a requirement.</blockquote>

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