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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6887910" data-attributes="member: 6775031">That's a perfectly valid method of constructing a model! It just depends on your initial assumptions. You seem overly-concerned with the ramifications of simultaneous action, which honestly doesn't seem that important to me. If two people are going at each other with swords, then it doesn't matter how either reacts to the other reacting to their actions; what matters is which side is the first to land a blow, and that corresponds directly enough to the initiative process. Any more complicated system would gain very little from its added complexity, given that the processes we are modeling are not themselves overly complex. The chances of them successfully stabbing each other at the same time is sufficiently small enough that it can be ignored.Arguing that it's a poor model is not the same as arguing that it isn't a model. If you want to poke holes in how accurately a given game system can reflect particular situations, then that's a topic for a different thread.We know that person A is effectively somewhere within a designated area of 25 square feet during a designated time interval of six seconds, and that they are somewhere within another area during the subsequent time interval. We know that. It's actually a true fact, within the game world. And if an explosion occurs at a given location within a nearby area, over the course of a slightly-offset period of six seconds, then person A will either be close enough to be injured, or they will not. Whether or not they will be injured depends on certain factors - how quick they are to react, how quickly they move, the time offset between their movement and the spell being cast, etc - and we know all of those factors with some degree of precision. That's what initiative and move speed and whatnot actually represent. It's weird that you think simultaneous actions are important, when your rounds are a minute long. It seems much more likely that each person would have time to finish doing their own thing, and then someone else is mostly waiting around looking for their own opportunity to do a thing, when they have entire an entire minute during which those actions might take place.It's certainly a valid model that you could use, but in spite of its own foibles and eccentricities, it's no more valid as a process-sim model than anything used in a later edition.John Tolkien was telling a story, and playing an RPG is not the same as telling a story*. It is a poor GM who relies on contrived coincidence to steer the game in a certain direction. He could get away with divine providence in a novel, but a game that relied upon the same would be distasteful, and discerning players would shout him down as a no-good dirty railroader (or just roll their eyes heavily, depending on how polite they wanted to be).*Unless you're playing one of those new-age hippie-RPGs that is based on story-telling rather than role-playing.</blockquote>

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