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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4756883" data-attributes="member: 77019">Yes the Magic system of TROS was definitely the weakest part of it, unless your group was into that kind of Forge-type gameplay, and the world wasn't sufficiently developed though it was a decent start... it's too bad Driftwood never did anything with it, it was such a fun system. Nobody can figure out what happened to those guys... they just kind of dissapeared. I wrote some stuff for TROS right before they bought the franchise from Jake.  Yeah I agree, I skipped all that kind of stuff with the Codex. I think hit locations, complex damage models etc. are kind of a game designers trap where a lot of energy tends to get wasted and many games get seriously bogged down. Lets face it, a severed limb is often going to mean the end of your life anyway, I am more interested in the fight itself than in the gruesome details of defeat. If you want it to be grim, just limit the amount of hit points or wound points or whatever you use. As for infections... you gotta be kidding.  I think it seems that way when you are first starting to seriously look at realistic combat from a game design point of view, but if you go a step or to further, you will find yourself in a new place where combat, while always dangerous, is not always so grim for  experienced and well equipped fighters.  After all, as I pointed out with a multitude of concrete examples in the History / Mythology Thread, there are hundreds of thousands of people in history who engaged in combat over and over for years, and even lived to an old age. Look at guys like Hernan Cortez, Henry Morgan, Bjorn Ironsides, or Xenophon. Correct equipment (esp. armor!), training, and situational awareness can make a very dangerous situation survivable. Same for combat as it is for say, hang gliding or dealing with sharks or mountain climbing etc. etc. The trick from a game design or DM'ing point of view, is to strike the right balance between making a fight always have a feeling of danger, but also giving the players some tools to improve their odds, fight entertaining cinematic battles and give them a way to literally rise above the fray. It makes combat a lot more gripping and fun.  Other than flying, quite a few of the effects of Monsters and Magic were mimicked by real world events in ancient times. Think of Greek Fire "flame throwers", hand grenades, war elephants, war dogs, armored heavy cavalry, lasso's, lion or tiger or bear hunting (oh my), cannons, mines, smoke bombs, seige engines, hallucenoegenic drugs (read about what the Mongols did at the Battle of Leigneicz), contact poisons, brainwashed suicide assasins (ala Hashishim)... in fact most of the fantastical effects you find in mythology had their real world counterparts pre-16th Century, and people figured out ways to deal with them. Take a look at how they worked and what countermeasures were invented to cope with them and you will find a lot to work with. G.</blockquote>

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