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Message: <blockquote data-quote="krupintupple" data-source="post: 5800090" data-attributes="member: 58300">...because no-one thought of it until they did, and it didn't exist until it did? Not to pull a Black Swan event here, but the rules evolved through fits and starts until they generally coalesce into an acceptable form and then are grouped accordingly into an edition - this tends to set the vantage points for the realm of gaming possibility. It's like other things, such as S.T.R. when dealing with suspected stroke victims, or certain maneuvres to prevent pasta from sticking together, or how to open a bottle effortlessly: nobody did that in the past because noone had thought to, even though the newer method, trick, or rule may be superior.Not to be flip, but generally, I take that Gygax likely attempted to deflect criticism from his detractors by being fairly accurate and as realistic as possible - insofar as fantasy gaming was concerned. I imagine that, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, no one game had come out on top, and anyone who attempted to float "Just imagine a long red bar that says Hit Points, and every time you get dinged, it goes down, but healing and potions make it go up, okay?" would probably be sneeringly laughed out of the gaming arena. I try to situation these questions around who the early gamers actually were. During this period, D&D was in its infancy, and comprised mostly of veteran war-gamers, Tolkien fan-boys, literary nerds, history and war buffs, and bookish kids who felt that reading a few encyclopedias worth of rules was more entertaining and fun, than say, going down to the creek to catch fish, or race bikes (I'm definitely in the first group of gaming nerds, do not take this as a criticism).At any rate, it may well be that it was merely "baked in" to the ruleset, and, as it seemed to work all around, nobody really ever managed to unseat it. I'm sure in the early issues of Dungeon or Dragon, people wrote in about how to fix it, or change it, or make it more realistic, but all things considered, most of the changes would likely add an unwieldy set of additional rules and slow gameplay to a crawl.So, here's my appraisal, in sum: his audience demanded not factual reality, but something that was plausibly real; it is a sacred cow, not to be touched or messed with; and finally, it would bog down an already immense ruleset.</blockquote>

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