Grittiness and Lethality in Game Combat vs in Read-Only Fiction

[overgeeked]

Why yes, D&D and most RPGs are terrible at emulating fiction. We know. It’s almost like they’re designed as squad-based wargames instead of storytelling games.

Just because you can force roleplaying onto chess doesn’t mean chess is an RPG. Likewise, just because you can crudely force what’s extruded from an RPG into the rough shape of a story doesn’t mean most RPGs are storytelling engines.

 

[Bohandas]

People might not like to hear it but DnD has very much created it's own 'genre' marks in Fantasy as a whole. Hp is 'meant' to be a mix of luck and stamine but what players actually see is 'I can get hit by a fist the size of a truck and I'd need to take a breather after that, maybe.' and this has led to a lot of non-lit fantasy to portray violent as less bloody.

Treating it as luck makes it silly in the other direction

"you fall into the volcano but are prevented from hitting the lava by the leidenfrost effect"

 

[OptionalRule]

I think there are a few faulty assumptions in this example. People have already discussed the concept of what Hitpoints are and that missunderstanding. This is an evergreen topic in the hobby and I wrote an article examing this last year called What the Heck are Hit Points Anyway? the covers the evoluition of HP across different versions. Although HPs have gotten bloated, the concept has been surprisingly stable throughout the years.

Other problems with the comparison:

1. Combat isn't all that common in Lord of the Ring at all.
2. LotR would make a terrible adventure module. It''s mostly a stealth, evasion, survival, and large scale warefare module.
3. As was originally pointed out during the creation of DnD. Stories like Conan or Lankmar are much more the inspiration for DnD than LotR.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why yes, D&D and most RPGs are terrible at emulating fiction. We know. It’s almost like they’re designed as squad-based wargames instead of storytelling games.

Just because you can force roleplaying onto chess doesn’t mean chess is an RPG. Likewise, just because you can crudely force what’s extruded from an RPG into the rough shape of a story doesn’t mean most RPGs are storytelling engines.

And yet trying to do so is the goal of so many.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think there are a few faulty assumptions in this example. People have already discussed the concept of what Hitpoints are and that missunderstanding. This is an evergreen topic in the hobby and I wrote an article examing this last year called What the Heck are Hit Points Anyway? the covers the evoluition of HP across different versions. Although HPs have gotten bloated, the concept has been surprisingly stable throughout the years.

Other problems with the comparison:

1. Combat isn't all that common in Lord of the Ring at all.
2. LotR would make a terrible adventure module. It''s mostly a stealth, evasion, survival, and large scale warefare module.
3. As was originally pointed out during the creation of DnD. Stories like Conan or Lankmar are much more the inspiration for DnD than LotR.

As far as (2) is concerned, not sure why that would make it a poor adventure module. Stealth, evasion, survival, and large scale warfare are all part of RPGs. Your statement seems to carry the implicit assumption that a hefty amount of skirmish-level personal combat is needed for a not-terrible adventure module.

 

[Autumnal]

"you fall into the volcano but are prevented from hitting the lava by the leidenfrost effect"

Casimir effect saves the ones in heavy armor or go home.

 

[GMMichael]

Medievalish-Fantasy game systems do a fair job of emulating the injury and death rates seen among secondary characters and nameless mooks in read-only fiction, but a poor one of emulating the much lower injury and death rates among the protagonists - the characters who would be PCs in a game.

I'm re-reading a Song of Ice and Fire. Not seeing this low rate of protagonist injury.

And I note that Aragorn and Legolas do not get injured at all.

Aragon gets his feelings hurt.

I submit that this is a low, low, low injury rate, compared to that typically seen in a tabletop game that covers the same amount of adventuring, run under either D&D rules or under some alternative rule set having about the same degree of crunch in its mechanics.

Welcome to the "D&D isn't actually the greatest" club!

 

[Pedantic]

Games aren't stories, and stories don't often make for interesting games.

 

[Umbran]

I'm re-reading a Song of Ice and Fire. Not seeing this low rate of protagonist injury.

GRRM was specifically and explicitly writing a contrast to most of the rest of the genre.

 

[GMMichael]

GRRM was specifically and explicitly writing a contrast to most of the rest of the genre.

The rest of the genre, as in, the books that have conclusions? That's actually very gamey of him - his series fizzled out like a lot of campaigns do!

Games aren't stories, and stories don't often make for interesting games.

That doesn't have to be the case. I'd much rather be playing in a story than something that's very obviously a game when the GM says, "um, yeah. Er, you come upon the town of . . . hang on, let me roll for it . . ."