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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4624023" data-attributes="member: 77019">No, I think it's my bad actually. I really appreciated the review and I think in my introduction I probably went a bit overboard in trying to distance myself from previous attempts to do realistic combat. I put "realism" in quotes because ultimately, it is a subjective concept, not to mention a kind of a lightning rod in the gaming world. Gamers tend to react negatively to the word because in the past it has been so closely associated with tedious complexity. Usually "realistic" combat systems in older games tended to focus heavily on hit placement, wound tracking, etc. and got bogged down in an infinity of charts, arithmetic and die-rolling. I was trying to sidestep all that with the Codex by putting it at a level of abstraction suitible for a game like DnD, but the Codex was in fact an attempt to make combat more realistic. I wanted to bring the exciting ebb and flow of martial arts sparring to the game, which I think is the same feel as a real sword fight. I also believed that would make it smoother, faster paced, more dramatic / cinematic and more fun.  This is counterintuitive to most people due to those other games I won't mention lest I offend somebody. It is a heretical concept in gaming theory (the initial idea for the Codex was unpopular on the Forge for example when I first broached it there four years ago) but I personally think you can bring that realistic basis into your game at a suitably high level of abstraction for a paper and pencil RPG and still get the same realistic (intuitive, immersive) feel from the underlying structure.  The bottom line though, is if the Codex makes combat more fun and exciting, as the review seemed to imply, then it succeded at it's goal, since most gamers really won't care if it's based on real fighting or not. To me that is a win-win. The only other very minor quibble on the review is that I wish it had mentioned the codex website, where we have tons of that 'fluff' which was missing from the Codex itself (which the review correctly pointed out is quite dense and curt in it's presentation) but thats my fault for not advertising the website more prominently in the PDF (subsequently corrected). Overall the review was great to be honest, the review seemed to get the gist of what I was trying to do which is the really important thing, and it seems to have generated a lot of sales so I can't complain <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I'm really pleased that the codex has found an audience with gamers (however tiny) because it's a sign I'm not the only person on the planet who likes the basic idea after all. I may be a heretic but it's nice to know I'm not a complete lunatic!  I'm even starting to believe the Codex and the Martial Pool in particular may ultimately find a niche in the DnD world. G.</blockquote>

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