Ankh - I think you're seriously UNDER-estimating the situation. So the pot can call the kettle black. I already laid out a pretty basic non-tweaked situation in which there was a 60% chance of a PC being knocked unconcious in 3 rounds in what many would see as a good, strong battle.
Let's use a different word than "death". How about "inoperable". The VP/WP system leaves large percentages of time where PCs are "inoperable". Out, unconcious, dead, dying, or otherwise, for the combat sequence that PC is "inoperable".
If a PC is "inoperable" the player normally operating that PC is "bored", "uninvolved", and/or "making a beer run". Maybe not. Maybe they're involved in ... moving minis. Or are the type of person who sits on the edge of their seat watching everybody ELSE add modifiers with nervous anticipation.
Let's think about the most common types of games that can be run in the SW universe. EpIV-VI or the "Rebellion" era ... EP I-II or the "Pre-Rebellion Era" ... EP III-IV, the "Jedi Purge" ... there's "Tales of the Jedi", "Knights of the Old Republic", and "New Jedi Order" in there as well.
Who are the badguys in these eras and what are THEIR most common armaments?
"Rebellion" - I'm pretty comfortable saying The Empire is the major bad-guy here, and the major bad-guy of the Empire is the Storm Trooper. Stormtroopers carry Blaster Rifles ... 3d8 (avg 13.5), 19-20 (10%).
Pre-Rebellion - Major bad-guy? Trade Federation/Seperatists. Major Foe? Battle Droids. Weapon? Blaster Rifle.
Jedi Purge - Major Bad-guy: Republic. Foe: Clone Trooper. Weapon: Blaster Rifle.
Tales of the Jedi - Major Bad-guy: Varied! Major Foe: Varied! So here we might encounter the Blaster Pistol more often, playing Jedi who face down bounty hunters and criminal syndicates. Of course it's also possible to follow some of the large plot lines of the comics and face some sort of Jedi Heresy or Dark Jedi Uprising ... where-upon you've got guys with Lightsabers ... 2d8-6d8+Str.
Knights of the Old Republic - Bad Guy: Sith. Major Foe: Sith Troopers, Sith Acolytes. Major Weapons: Blaster Rifles and Lightsabers.
So, to be honest, while the "most common weapon" in the galaxy is the blaster pistol, I can't really see where, without playing something SET in the SWUniverse but not dealing directly with the topics of the movies, books, or comics, you're not going to be facing an average weapon that has a 10% crit and 3d8 or better damage.
I don't know much, stat-wise, about New Republic stuff, but I know the major bad-guys are the Yuzhon Vong and from what I hear they were pretty much created to spank Luke's new jedi on a regular basis and that their bio-tech beats the total snot out of regular SW tech. If they punk folks with Blaster Rifles, then I imagine the damage and threat range is either similar or GREATER.
To be honest it sounds like YOU are playing the "rare game" if your foes are regularly carrying blaster pistols, NOT weilding lightsabers, NOT weilding Blaster Rifles, and you're careful to make sure there's no recurring villians and the players are all okay with getting knocked out. If you're playing mostly PBP games, it could have something to do with the slower nature of the medium and that there are fewer rolls being made.
We played a very heavily explorationist SWd20 game. Explorationist in that I made sure the players learned EXACTLY what their characters could and couldn't do. The first adventures took place in a Jedi Academy, where we used the rules for Seeing with the Force, Defense, Defense-Attack, Full Defense, Combat Expertise, Fighting Defensively, non-standard tactics, trip, disarm, using terrain, and the like. What we wanted was flashing lightsaber wuxia and morality plays. I took pains to lay out set pieces with interactive terrain features, ability and skill checks, rules for Move Object assisted jumps, boulders to throw, people to save, fights with possessed classmates who you couldn't just slash up.
We actually spent quite a bit of the campaign, the first 1/3, with TotJ era "Blast Pistols" doing 3d4 damage and Training Lightsabers that could only do 1d2WP on a crit. And, sadly, THAT ended up being the most fun sections of the game. The players used their training sabers for defense and style, whittling down VP, and ended combats with tactics like Disarm and surrendering foes.
We scrapped the Lightsaber Construction Rules and created the sabers like a regular item, which took a very long time. When the PCs finished their sabers it was a big deal for everybody at the table, a major source of accomplishment. At the same time, the characters were getting further into the conspiracy at the heart of the campaign, uncovering some Jedi Heretics, going up against other padawans and dark adepts.
And the wuxia crap went RIGHT out the window. Attack bonuses were going way up on both sides while Defense scores were not. Eventually the difference between fighting defensively and not was getting hit 60% of the time instead of 70%, and with crits equally easy to confirm, nerfing your own attack bonus and not being the first guy to crit was suicide.
I saw my players move from interesting tactical choices to simply hitting up Flanking positions as often as possible and wailing like madmen with Battle Mind and Enhance Ability cranked up to 11. Why not?
The only thing I found that really helped was foliage. Concealment was good for moving around doing interesting things. The Ithorian Jedi Healer had Plant Control ... but it just happened that I had chosen quite a few arid planets to set the thing. Once we had a few garden combats and moved to a temperate locale, some flavor came back.
What most upset ME was the PLAYER reactions. Fun went WAY WAY down. People were drumming their fingers, getting irritated, sighing, tossing down dice. It was the best I could do to keep up, and we ended up with a dozen house rules in place before things rounded up, but the system just wasn't designed to do what they wanted to do. They wanted to get all wuxia and saber it up, making Jump checks between pillars and emploring fallen padawans back to the light side of the Force. They wanted to be Luke and Yoda and Darth Maul. They were the nameless jedi knights getting mowed down by Battle Droids on Geonosis.
So it's not that I haven't played the game. It's not that I've played the game and am exaggerating the problem. My players told me, repeatedly, that they'd have rather we used the D6 system, used Grim Tales, or used Mutants and Masterminds. The VP/WP thing was just leaving too few viable combat options open and leaving too many players drumming their fingers while they sat out combats from Round Two.
((Not that I'd want to play too much all-Jedi D6 or Grim Tales. To be honest, I think Jedi are definately getting into M&M type territory to do properly.))
"More Deadly" combat != Better Gameplay. Nor does it mean "More Realistic". When you're playing an RPG you're so far from realism that there's no going BACK to realism. You can try to model it, simulate it, give the impression of it, but it's not realistic. If I fire a handgun at Bob, there's not a flat 10% chance I'm going to shoot him in the head or heart and kill him. Likewise, there's not a 90% chance that he's going to narrowly and cinematically avoid my shot, while using up his "mojo" to some degree that he'll be more likely to get shot later. That's just gamist mechanics for playing a game.
Which is cool. I like gamist mechanics. I like board games, I like RPGs.
I'm not saying that characters dying is the worst thing since plague. And to be honest, I'm starting to feel like the people suggesting that are setting up some flimsy straw-man redirections. "He doesn't like VP/WP, therefore he must want characters to never die!" Nope, not that either.
It's a game. It's not real life. Games should be fun. If they're not, then something has gone wrong. I can 'not have fun' without inviting people over, spending money on books and dice, and taking up most of my weekend. Anybody can sit around being bored for free. You can go to a bridge game and watch four other people play, and you're pretty likely to have grandmama give you some cookies while you're there.
Therefore my reasoning is, if a game mechanic begins to raise the "bored factor" to unreasonable levels ... for even ONE PERSON at the table ... then it's a bad mechanic.
This is the same reason I hated the old ShadowRun decking rules. It might have been great for reflecting the designers' vision of what decking should be, it might have been great for giving the Decker a feeling of importance and coolness of PC ... but everybody else at the table was deathly bored for great swathes of time. Thus, as a mechanic, it was lacking.
Character death as part of a game can be cool. It adds a sense of danger, of purpose, of being able to 'lose'. The Dying mechanic can be cool as well, as the tension of "will I stabilize this round" can be exciting, and watching another player roll his stabilize roll can be as exciting as any other roll in a combat. Being taken out of a tense fight can be fun, realizing that the party has become weaker and must now account for both that character being down AND trying to save that character.
It becomes a problem when it happens too often. It becomes a problem when it happens too randomly. It becomes a problem when "random" is greater than 1-in-20 rolls and is, actually, Not That Rare. Having a character gravely wounded because of underestimating a small-time hood is fun. Having a character die an ignoble death in a random encounter is not so much.
And it's not even death. It's vulnerability to utter randomness. It should be fun to watch the GM roll a 20 and know that randomness has dealt your side a blow, that there will be a setback. What wasn't cool was watching my players grit their teeth in frustration.
--fje
