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Judgement calls vs "railroading"
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7095423" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>But "represent" here just means colour. It has no teeth.</p><p></p><p>It's not a coincidende that nearly all the early fantasy RPGs that react against D&D do so by abandoing the hp model, instead opting for some sort of wound/death spiral system.</p><p></p><p>And the hp mechanic produces endless debates about eg is it good or bad RP for a player whose PC has a loaded crossbow pointed at him/her to ignore the threat and suck up the attack.</p><p></p><p>Of indie games that exhibit this sort of "flexibility", in the sense of very loose connection between mechanics and colour, I would put HeroQuest revised at the top. Because it takes the hit point approach and generalises it across the whole framework of resolution (not just combat).</p><p></p><p>No serious sim system (eg RQ, RM, C&C, BW stripped of its overlays) is going to be flexible in that particular regard, because the whole point of those systems is to tightly anchor colour to resolution mechanics, so that the process of resolution also, ipso facto, establishes what is taking place in the fiction.</p><p></p><p>Not really. At least, not by the standards of RM or RQ. (And I should probably be putting C&S in there too, to complete the trifecta of "classic" sim games, but I don't know it very well.)</p><p></p><p>As I've often posted, hp and saving throws (as Gygax explains in his DMG) are fortune-in-the-middle resolution systems. They don't model any particular fictional process. Likewise the action economy. And one of 4e's great achievements is to really take hold of this by both hands and build the game around this mechanical premise from the ground up.</p><p></p><p>As I've also often posted, one of the things I like least about 3E is that it tries to meld a rather process-sim skill and combat manoeuvre system onto a wildly non-sim core combat mechanic (action economy and hit points), and then tops this off with non-sim, level-driven DC setting with an overlay of sim (ie the game makes no real effort to tell you what having a 40 DEX or a +30 natural armour bonus actually means in the fiction - the latter contrasting oddly, for instance, with the maximum +15 or so bonus available from the best magical plate armour in the game).</p><p></p><p>5e's bounded accuracy deals with some of the issues (eg the DC setting) but not others.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7095423, member: 42582"] But "represent" here just means colour. It has no teeth. It's not a coincidende that nearly all the early fantasy RPGs that react against D&D do so by abandoing the hp model, instead opting for some sort of wound/death spiral system. And the hp mechanic produces endless debates about eg is it good or bad RP for a player whose PC has a loaded crossbow pointed at him/her to ignore the threat and suck up the attack. Of indie games that exhibit this sort of "flexibility", in the sense of very loose connection between mechanics and colour, I would put HeroQuest revised at the top. Because it takes the hit point approach and generalises it across the whole framework of resolution (not just combat). No serious sim system (eg RQ, RM, C&C, BW stripped of its overlays) is going to be flexible in that particular regard, because the whole point of those systems is to tightly anchor colour to resolution mechanics, so that the process of resolution also, ipso facto, establishes what is taking place in the fiction. Not really. At least, not by the standards of RM or RQ. (And I should probably be putting C&S in there too, to complete the trifecta of "classic" sim games, but I don't know it very well.) As I've often posted, hp and saving throws (as Gygax explains in his DMG) are fortune-in-the-middle resolution systems. They don't model any particular fictional process. Likewise the action economy. And one of 4e's great achievements is to really take hold of this by both hands and build the game around this mechanical premise from the ground up. As I've also often posted, one of the things I like least about 3E is that it tries to meld a rather process-sim skill and combat manoeuvre system onto a wildly non-sim core combat mechanic (action economy and hit points), and then tops this off with non-sim, level-driven DC setting with an overlay of sim (ie the game makes no real effort to tell you what having a 40 DEX or a +30 natural armour bonus actually means in the fiction - the latter contrasting oddly, for instance, with the maximum +15 or so bonus available from the best magical plate armour in the game). 5e's bounded accuracy deals with some of the issues (eg the DC setting) but not others. [/QUOTE]
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