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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7086703" data-attributes="member: 996">(apologies if this is a double-post, I'm pretty sure it was eaten by  ENWorld maintenance...) You certainly can play out a combat in real life.  You could even, with a little SCA experience, gear, and prep, do so fairly safely - or you could play it out in a LARP style with boffers.  The downside to doing that is that you're no longer resolving a combat involving the PCs, you're resolving a combat involving the players.  If there's a three-time SCA King at your table, his character is going to win a lot of fights, even when he's playing a non-combatant, for instance. The same applies to exploration and social challenges.  Sure, you could have a player try to open a puzzle box or climb to a second story window instead of rolling his Thief's chance of disarming a trap or climbing a wall, or have the player of the wizard verbally spar with the DM to determine if he successfully negotiates with a devil.  But you're no longer modeling the PC, so you're essentially limiting your players to characters much more like themselves than if you had workable mechanical resolution systems available to model the characters.  Of course, you could still ignore or override such mechanics in situations where you feel the PC/player and/or NPC/DM distinctions are moot, or where you want to erase those distinctions to some end, such as achieving a greater sense of immersion, maintaining a sense of mystery or discovery, or whatever.</blockquote>

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