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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5884128" data-attributes="member: 42582">A massive damage save option, that I can just ignore, won't gum up my game.But if the module is more complex than that, or attempts to operate over a greater range of the game than just falling (eg point blank dragon breath), and if the part of the game that I'm using has to be built a certain way so as to support the integration of that module into the game, then it can gum things up.On the list mentioned in Rule of Three, the potential game-gummer that stood out for me was hit locations. Because once a system is going to support hit locations, it is probably going to have to support piecemeal armour. And piecemeal armour brings with it all sort of issues in turn. For example, it doesn't work that well with an AC system, because you get the oddity that your heavy breastplate makes you overall harder to hit, but doesn't reduce the likelihood of your taking damage to your torso as opposed to your arms or legs. (HARP has this issue, and Rolemaster to a lesser extent.) It can work better with a damage reduction system, but then the game probably needs called shot rules too, so that combatants can aim their attacks at the less-protected part of the body. (This is an issue in Runequest.) And workable called shot rules then put constraints on the design of the attack rules more generally.Lingering wounds are a different sort of case here. Because they complicate the encounter design guidelines (by changing the expected numbers of the PCs, due to wound penalties), they may lead to the encounter design guidelines being written in a particular sort of way, which might reduce the utiity of those rules for me compared to what they otherwise might have been.I'm not saying that making hit locations work mechanically, or integrating lingering wounds into a worthwhile set of encounter-buidling guidelines, is impossible. I just use these as illustrations of the conceivability of one person's module gumming up another person's rules.</blockquote>

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