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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7555914" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I took a while considering how or if to respond to this, because I think it belies a fundamental difference in perspective that Alexander and I have. Also, disclaimer/warning, "fun" is not an object of discussion here. People (even me) have fun with lots of different games. I'm not trying to tell anyone that traditional rpgs are unfun or bad. I'm addressing only the idea of cinematic feel.I'll give you the first point, although I would put it more cynically that: "There are gamers who find that traditional games do not provide the cinematic feel they are seeking."Your second point...honestly, I think that that is the problem with traditional games. (From a cinematic perspective) HP are meaningless, and so is the turn-based nature of the combat. Everything that's possibly cinematic in a traditional D&D fight comes only from the DM (and possibly player) narration of what "I/he hit, he/you take(s) 9 damage" supposedly represents. And what makes it worse is that the narration and any cinematic elements are completely irrelevant WRT the resolution of the scene. The important part, as far as any mechanics are concerned are the 9 points. Did the damage come from an arrow, flames, or ankylosaur tail? Doesn't matter, this Cure Quantum Wounds spell will return your energy bar from yellow to green...carry on. Did the hero overcome that cut above his eye and his shattered wrist to defeat the evil monster....well, no, or at least, it doesn't matter. What matters mechanically is that he subtracted enough from the total in column "Monster HP" over fewer rows than the value in column "Monster Damage" added up to the value in cell "Hero HPmax". The whole mechanical exercise is a well-disguised spreadsheet with liberally applied RANDBETWEEN functions....not exactly cinematic or dramatic. (There's a reason the traditional game appeals to the mathematically inclined, I guess.) Which is not to say I haven't had much fun with it, but then I am one of those mathematically inclined people.Now, that said (I know "shots fired"), I do believe that there are plenty of gamers for whom hope springs eternal that someone will come up with some fix for the D&D/traditional combat mechanic that will make it cinematic. I just think they're barking up the wrong tree....So let me fire some shots in another direction, 4e was, IMO, probably the closest you can get to having the traditional game "physics" enforce something cinematic. And for some people, it works. For a lot of others, the 15 minutes of dramatic action packed into 4 hours of playtime is...lacking. Making the spreadsheet more complicated (more balanced or not) just made it more tedious to play through, even if the mechanical results better reflected the types of cinematic battles you wanted to see. Then there is the question of whether every battle should follow the same rules and proceed in the same way. (Which even some 4e fans have suggested reasonable alternatives to avoid having a minor encounter turn into a great time drain.)Another issue that comes up is that the "physics" you're trying to emulate isn't a physics of space and force and whatnot...its a narrative physics closer to what Terry Pratchett (at least, I'm familiar with his use of the term) calls narrative causality. I mean, there's a reason why you can take apart almost any scifi or action movie for stuff it gets wrong, its because film and writing school isn't physics or engineering school. And that's where I think things like the Apocalypse Engine come in. Ideally, for a dramatic or cinematic engine, you want the mechanics to focus on directly altering, constraining, or directing the fiction, not other mechanics. Creating the sidecar physics of a traditional engine should be avoided, as it creates a lot of hard-to-manage overhead. Instead, focus on the moments that create a dramatic decision point. A good PbtA game chooses these well, and players get to choose the ones that are important to their character as well. Since the mechanics directly constrain and direct the narrative, the GM doesn't have the wild discretion you seem to be concerned about.  It also allows you to efficiently move along the state of the narrative, much more so than the traditional pseudo-physics model if that is what you are seeking for a particular game-world. Moves can be designed to cover a lot of temporal ground, a little, or even a variable amount.</blockquote>

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