Poll: Realism Modules in Your Game

[GMMichael]

I wasn't sure what "real-time combat" meant in this context. . .

Basically anything other than turn-based combat. SCA combat totally counts

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd love to know how many people back in the "hardcore" days of OD&D/BECMI/1e were tracking this, or just wrote, "2 wks. iron rations, 20 arrows" and never changed that.

Right?

I mean, as I recall, and note that I started in 1989 with 2E, we started out with this stuff and did tightly track it, then over time we got more and more lax, then Aurora's Whole Realms Guide came out and suddenly everyone had an inventory a mile long and absolutely loved it, and we started tracking this kind of thing again, and people were, I swear to god, saying what cheese they were eating and so on. Then we left the FR and suddenly basically forgot about most of this again.

Now if I wanted to track all this stuff I'd probably play a game where that was more of a primary mechanic, like Torchbearer.

I do feel like mental trauma/stress is something more games should use, and track separately from health, and I think it's just an quirk of the evolution of RPGs that we don't.

 

[GMMichael]

Clearly varies by games BUT one thing that puts me off a game almost straight away is an active defence roll. Bleh

Funny, active defense is often my first clue that I would enjoy a system. But if you add an attacker's inherent miss chance, variable damage, and the possibility for armor to negate a perfectly good attack, then yeah, active defense is a bit much.

Attacking and defending typically aren't simultaneous events. Each requires effort. Unless you're these guys:

I do feel like mental trauma/stress is something more games should use, and track separately from health, and I think it's just an quirk of the evolution of RPGs that we don't.

It's been cropping up more and more, from what I can tell. Heck, since D&D's hit points don't simulate injury, those could be considered mental damage. That's a little meta though; it's the player who gains stress as hit points go down, not the character.