NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9704598" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm prepared to accept that, in most D&D play, there are broad genre conventions and table understandings that rule out the "pixies stabbed you" hypothesis. But otherwise I fully agree (as per my "heart" reaction to your post).When I discovered Rolemaster, in early 1990, what blew me away was that it did answer all these questions: the resolution tables provide information about what is happening in the fiction, yes often at a modest level of abstraction, but more than simply a result. And when it comes to injury (and healing), the detail is intricate!There are non-simulationist break-points in RM - initiative is the obvious one, which is why, over the course of RM2 + 7 RM companions + RMSS, there were probably a dozen variant initiative systemseach one trying to establish a workable framework for near-simultaneous resolution while also accommodating the key mechanic of splitting your melee combat bonus between attacking and parrying.But pointing to D&D hp as a remotely "diegetic" mechanic is just not plausible to me. The payer of the high level fighter knows that no single crossbow bolt can be fatal, that they can jump over the cliff and be assured of survival, etc. And the notion of "action movie physics" doesn't help - the protagonists in action movies don't know that they're invulnerable (unless there is some breaking of the 4th wall going on), and that is part of what is crucial for generating the tension - the audience becomes invested in the character's fear/concern/danger even though, intellectually, the audience knows the character will survive.Now if someone says, All content in my shared fiction flows from the GM - and so, for instance, there will be no startled cooks narrated in response to failed attempts at burglary - that's fine. And I accept that that is a simulationist intuition. But as long as they're using D&D combat resolution, hit points, etc, I don't see how that makes their game any more simulationist than my BW game, which uses fail forward consequence narration but has a PC sheet and a combat system that any old RM player could jump for joy at.</blockquote>

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