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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4042339" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm guessing you haven't been involved in many actual fights.&nbsp; I find the above description to be 'casual realism', in as much as it doesn't worry so much about realism but what it manages to achieve is believable anyway. I'd be really surprised if a drunken brawl involving clubs lasted more than 12-18 seconds.&nbsp; The first solid blow would finish it.&nbsp; Most fights I've been involved in or witnessed didn't last that long.&nbsp; As long as you use a 'fortune in the middle' technique for describing the fight, I think it would work pretty well.&nbsp; The real 'problem' D&amp;D has with realism is the lack of non-lethal injuries.&nbsp; It fatality/casualty ratio isn't realistic.&nbsp; But again, if we assume that many of the participants stabilize before hitting -10, then we can use 'fortune in the middle' to describe thier abstract injury as cracked ribs, bruised organs, broken noses and what have you and achieve what I think is sufficient 'casual realism'.&nbsp; This is an especially good veneer of realism for 1st level commoners because they take a while to naturally heal up to above 0.&nbsp; But, really, realism isn't necessarily what we are going for here.&nbsp; Particularly if I'm playing D&amp;D, I'm not striving for a world that is actually realistic, because the PC's would spend much more time recovering from fights than fighting them.&nbsp; We only need realism if one of the participants can't believe in the world as described.&nbsp; And even that isn't necessarily the end of it, because its really only the real world experts that need more than casual realism in a particular area because they do know what is realistic and they care.&nbsp; If someone had thier eyes blackened, and thier nose busted enough times to claim to be an expert on drunken brawling, and they told me we need a long description of beat down with baseball bats because otherwise they couldn't believe in the game universe, then I probably could alter the rules of the game universe to handle that without screwing up the game.&nbsp; But I'd do it by actually altering the rules so that the problem wouldn't keep cropping up.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4042339, member: 4937"] I'm guessing you haven't been involved in many actual fights. I find the above description to be 'casual realism', in as much as it doesn't worry so much about realism but what it manages to achieve is believable anyway. I'd be really surprised if a drunken brawl involving clubs lasted more than 12-18 seconds. The first solid blow [i]would[/i] finish it. Most fights I've been involved in or witnessed didn't last that long. As long as you use a 'fortune in the middle' technique for describing the fight, I think it would work pretty well. The real 'problem' D&D has with realism is the lack of non-lethal injuries. It fatality/casualty ratio isn't realistic. But again, if we assume that many of the participants stabilize before hitting -10, then we can use 'fortune in the middle' to describe thier abstract injury as cracked ribs, bruised organs, broken noses and what have you and achieve what I think is sufficient 'casual realism'. This is an especially good veneer of realism for 1st level commoners because they take a while to naturally heal up to above 0. But, really, realism isn't necessarily what we are going for here. Particularly if I'm playing D&D, I'm not striving for a world that is actually realistic, because the PC's would spend much more time recovering from fights than fighting them. We only need realism if one of the participants can't believe in the world as described. And even that isn't necessarily the end of it, because its really only the real world experts that need more than casual realism in a particular area because they do know what is realistic and they care. If someone had thier eyes blackened, and thier nose busted enough times to claim to be an expert on drunken brawling, and they told me we need a long description of beat down with baseball bats because otherwise they couldn't believe in the game universe, then I probably could alter the rules of the game universe to handle that without screwing up the game. But I'd do it by actually altering the rules so that the problem wouldn't keep cropping up. [/QUOTE]

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