Bae'zel
Hero
We also found d100 games (well, in our case, WFRP 1E and Call of Cthulhu) to have been easier to grasp than D&D back in the day. 'Talking early to mid 1990s though.
How Much Do You Care About Novelty?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
It seems far easier to calculate your odds for success. I mean, to math your chances in a d20 game, you look at the DC, subtract your bonuses from it, subtract that from 20, then divide (er, multiply) by 5; to do it in a d100/roll-under game, you just look at the number on your sheet (and even something like needing to roll under half or a quarter of your skill is still more straightforward).
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Thomas Shey
Legend
Even most action-adventure spies don't land there; look at Bond. I'm not talking about quasi-realistic spy stories.
But this is a case where I think @Ruin Explorer has gone into it better, and in more detail than I probably would, so I'm going to drop it.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Yes, but the difference is that an elevanting hit point model very much makes it one that generally favors you (note the "elevating" is important here; lots of games have hit points, but outside of levelled systems, they normally don't increase much over time and damage is scaled to that).
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
One advantage to OSR-based level systems is that the increase is generally slower and definitely stops earlier.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Its not like D&D hit points are particularly realistic, either. If they were people wouldn't be taking sword thrusts and just routinely continuing on at moderate levels. In fact I'd argue they only make sense at all as cinematic conceits, and that's even if you don't take them seriously.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I'm not sure I'd say "accessible" (because some of that has to do with things entirely unrelated to mechanics), but I think comparing most BRP games to at least modern F20 games, they absolutely are more straightforward. It just happens to be that most people who hit them have already encountered versions of most of those mechanics in computer games.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
No question. But I'm also not interested to running, playing, and especially recruiting for a completely different game with no guarantee of practical success just because I'm not a huge fan of hit points. Sometimes you make compromises.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Yeah, but there's no reason to really have them increase at all. That's an artifact of deciding that higher level fighters should be able to take the kind of pummelling some larger monsters do and not die, while still having a simplistic damage system. I know you're broadly knowledgeable enough in the field to know that there are a lot of other solutions to giving higher level types better defenses that don't involve playing with their damage absorption. They aren't even meaningfully more complex in many cases.
What they don't do, is make it so experienced characters can be hit by a giant and not be probably at least be out of combat.
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Thomas Shey
Legend
And maybe that's an argument with the D&D-sphere proper. I don't think its an excuse for using that framework in genres where for the most part the structure sticks out like a sore thumb. Its privileging familiarity over utility a bit too much.
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