Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6209888" data-attributes="member: 6688937">Since it was my quote that got us here, I might as well weigh in. (Despite enjoying this thread so much as a spectator...I really must bookmark these things for when people tell me how easy HP are. <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=":)" />)A lot of what you're talking about depends on the game systems you're using. I know we don't tend to think it can be that different, but...it is. I've taught several groups of kids how to play FATE, and if you present the game as telling a story, then all those "fiat tokens" or FATE points, make perfect sense to them. I haven't personally done it, but many folks who introduced Cortex+ games like MHRP report similar things. Newbies have, AFAICT, no trouble at all playing rpgs/story games at a very "meta" level, and IME take to that a lot easier than they do to the not-very-good-simulations of traditional rpgs.  The "simulatory" (to coin a word) aspects of the play experience to which you refer are (IME) completely dependent on the mentality that the system presents, not an inherent property of the people playing, at least AFAICT. I should also note that GMs who introduce games like FATE or MHRP to long-time D&D (or other traditional rpgs) players often report that significant "de-programming" or resistance takes place, far more so than with newbies. Hence my belief that we grow too familiar with the D&D system and its failings, to the point where we no longer recognize them as failings. I think a large part of the problem here is that the traditional D&D engine just isn't very good at being a process sim and regularly violates its own definitions and natural language for things like HP, wounds, "hits", etc.* (When it has even bothered to define those well within the context of the game and/or fiction.) I mean, once you toss in the old-school healing spell names and their effects...well the whole thing falls apart. One might think the Cleric is insane! First he casts Cure Critical Wounds on the Fighter, who looks barely winded with a few scratches, and he looks marginally better and a few bruises clear up. Then he casts Cure Light Wounds on the dying princess with the sucking chest wound**...and she's fully healed?<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> Most of us have learned to "not see" or handwave away these and many other problems, and have come to perceive the engine as somehow being a fundamentally better or more realistic thing than it is.*Now, I don't think that's a tremendous failing of Gygax or Arneson or  whoever. The traditional D&D engine wasn't (AFAICT) intended to be a  simulation in the first place! **How effective and miraculous this is may be edition or variant-rule dependent.</blockquote>

Verification