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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4040868" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem with analogies is that they are never perfect one to and onto relationships with the thing that they represent.  If you push the analogy past the point it was intended to make, don't be surprised if it doesn't work.   In the case of a commoner stabing a 20th level fighter, that's the expected result.  He'll almost certainly make his Fort save, and it will takes maybe a dozen stabs to actually kill him.  Exactly how the game justifies this isn't really the question.  The point is that however the justification, this is how the game universe works.If those are enforcable, if they have any mechanical effect, then those sound like synonyms for 'rules'.  And if they aren't, they don't sound like a means of precise communication.Doesn't really have anything to do with anything.  By 'expressly set in the real world' what you mean is that it more formally than most has as a rule that where silent, you may assume that things work like the real world, and that this rule includes things like geography, history, and so forth.  I would argue that D&D is expressly set in the real world, plus the fact the D&D magic and the differences in geography and history, but that would probably just confuse you.  The main point is that the world that Call of Cthulhu actually takes place in is really just an imaginary space shared between the players which has certain rules.  You aren't setting the precedent you think you are setting.  The actual you just set is, "In this universe, if you manage to put a bullet from a .22 in someones eye, then it does more than 16 points of damage."  And that precedent would I think come back to haunt you, because you are inviting players 'in the know' to figure out how the NPC did more than 16 points of damage with a .22 handgun.  You are going to get questions like, "What if I hold a the hand gun to the monsters eye, can I do extra damage if it doesn't move?  Why not, when I know that it did extra damage to Mr. Manly?"  And the problem is, you will probably blame that behavior on the player and say, 'he's not roleplaying right', and maybe some of the other players at the table will feel the same because they 'know' you have to overlook some inconsistancies and mistakes for the sake of getting on with the game.  But let's not be too hard on Mr. Gamist here.  From his perspective, he's just responding to the information you've given him.  The problem would have been completely avoided if you'd actually created the universe that you wanted to tell the story in, or actually paid attention to the setting while you were creating the story.  For example, would the story have worked fine if you'd just shot Mr. Manly with a bigger gun, given him fewer hit points, or shot him twice?The other issue is that I doubt a referee with your perspective would have paid much attention to making sure that the bullet wound was obviously lethal because he isn't thinking about the game world physics.  So its highly likely that in your presentation, you would have presented the scene in a way that as Mr. Gamist explored it, he would have found further inconsistancies between what you described and the game worlds physics as he understood them. Why presume this?  Functionally, the game worlds are not more complicated than thier rules.  True, its true that presumably, the rules are incomplete.  The rule for insomnia doesn't need to be created until insomnia needs to be measured, but insomnia doesn't actually exist until we give it some substance.  No one actually sleep until you give them insomnia, and not sleeping has no effect until you define one.  NPC's with insomnia aren't fatigued until you say, 'Because he has insomnia, he is fatigued and can't recover his spells'.  People in D&D probably have broken necks all the time.  It's called 'Getting dropped to -10 hit points with one blow', or rather its one possible color you can give that mechanical event.  But broken necks aren't anything different than crushed skulls until you define how they are different, and hense don't have existance in that sense.  D&D doesn't have 'Fortune at the end' wound mechanics.  You can't say, 'Because he has a broken neck, he has -10 hit points.'   Or rather you can, but as soon as you do you are implying to the players the existence of 'Fortune at the end' mechanics that they can use to subvert D&D's normal combat rules.</blockquote>

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