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Is the Real Issue (TM) Process Sim?
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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6258100" data-attributes="member: 27160"><p>Actually, in the case of Hârn I think you might be surprised. There is the possibility, for example, to get "Damage on a Miss"* in HârnMaster. If you roll a Marginal Failure and your opponent rolls a Critical Failure (which will happen, on average, 20% of the time she/he/it rolls a failure), there are several circumstances (attack-defence combinations) where you will inflict a potentially damaging strike. It's not very likely to result in a particularly serious wound, but it might conceivably render your opponent <em>hors de combat</em>. The system cross-references attack and defence roll results on a small (4x4) matrix to give a result - it doesn't really follow the physical process at all.</p><p></p><p></p><p>*: Although, interestingly, HM doesn't use the word "miss" for the die roll result at all - it uses "Critical Failure (CF), Marginal Failure (MF), Marginal Success (MS) and Critical Success (CS).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Whilst I agree with you in finding that there is no coherent way to connect hit points to the fiction directly, there are clearly some folks that find a way in their mind to do so - at least, to do so well enough for them to shove the "problem" into a deep, dark recess from which it seldom emerges. This is a form of the "habituation" I was talking about, I guess. The "HP as meat" thread contains ample evidence of this - [MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION]' "scaling damage", for example, kinda-sorta reach a point where you could ignore the problems with hit points in process-sim for most of the time.</p><p></p><p>I think this links to why hit points (or their functional equivalent) are used in so many RPG rule sets - even ones that deliberately aim for process-sim support. Hit points may, when examined deeply, not work with process-sim activity, but they work well enough (if you squint) to get a pass most of the time, and, yay, we don't have to design an alternative system for wounds and recovery (or non-magical fear, or extreme mental stress, or pain, or...).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, yeah, I don't pretend that all the criticism of 4E is based on anything rational - but I do think that D&D players who, for whatever reason, value process-sim and manage to rationalise/habituate themselves to the parts of D&D that do not jive with this are real. The question is, what to do about them?</p><p></p><p></p><p>"I don't like it" is a perfectly good reason not to include something in your game, but what is (in general) being discussed, here, is "what should WotC designers include in the game they publish?" That's a very different question.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6258100, member: 27160"] Actually, in the case of Hârn I think you might be surprised. There is the possibility, for example, to get "Damage on a Miss"* in HârnMaster. If you roll a Marginal Failure and your opponent rolls a Critical Failure (which will happen, on average, 20% of the time she/he/it rolls a failure), there are several circumstances (attack-defence combinations) where you will inflict a potentially damaging strike. It's not very likely to result in a particularly serious wound, but it might conceivably render your opponent [I]hors de combat[/I]. The system cross-references attack and defence roll results on a small (4x4) matrix to give a result - it doesn't really follow the physical process at all. *: Although, interestingly, HM doesn't use the word "miss" for the die roll result at all - it uses "Critical Failure (CF), Marginal Failure (MF), Marginal Success (MS) and Critical Success (CS). Whilst I agree with you in finding that there is no coherent way to connect hit points to the fiction directly, there are clearly some folks that find a way in their mind to do so - at least, to do so well enough for them to shove the "problem" into a deep, dark recess from which it seldom emerges. This is a form of the "habituation" I was talking about, I guess. The "HP as meat" thread contains ample evidence of this - [MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION]' "scaling damage", for example, kinda-sorta reach a point where you could ignore the problems with hit points in process-sim for most of the time. I think this links to why hit points (or their functional equivalent) are used in so many RPG rule sets - even ones that deliberately aim for process-sim support. Hit points may, when examined deeply, not work with process-sim activity, but they work well enough (if you squint) to get a pass most of the time, and, yay, we don't have to design an alternative system for wounds and recovery (or non-magical fear, or extreme mental stress, or pain, or...). Well, yeah, I don't pretend that all the criticism of 4E is based on anything rational - but I do think that D&D players who, for whatever reason, value process-sim and manage to rationalise/habituate themselves to the parts of D&D that do not jive with this are real. The question is, what to do about them? "I don't like it" is a perfectly good reason not to include something in your game, but what is (in general) being discussed, here, is "what should WotC designers include in the game they publish?" That's a very different question. [/QUOTE]
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