Rules that would be realistic, but be a real drag to have to use

[Chainsaw Mage]

What I am more interested in hearing is what other rules would be realistic to have in an RPG, but be absolutely no fun or too cumbersome to play?

It's realistic to have your character's sanity blasted when he reads from a skin-bound ancient tome of forbidden lore. But it sure ain't fun.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Disease can be tough, particularly in historical games.

It would be a strange world in which 17th century adventurers didn't worry about the plague sweeping from town to town, but at the same time I don't want to roll for infection from every sword cut or dysentery from every glass of water.

Don't have my books handy (at work right now) but AD&D 1e's famous (and wonderful) DMG had rules for "parasitic infestation checks" which the DM was to make monthly (if memory serves).

Yet another reason to love EGG.

 

[Thunderfoot]

chain mail in our homebrew rules has damage reduction 2 vs bludgeoning, 1 vs piercing, and 4 vs slashing =p


The problem I had when trying to homebrew automatic weapons was the sheer amount of dice rolling you'd need to avoid just hand-waving it. Either you just hand wave and have the weapon do d10 damage or whatever, or else you have to model a chance to hit and a damage amount for every single round fired, which could easily be 30+ for a 6 second round. That's potentially 60+ dice rolls =[

The "open-ended" die rule helps - roll 2d6 of different colors (usually white and red) the red die being the open ended die which means if you roll a 6, you roll it again (and again and again if you keep getting 6s) however, it works both ways, so the first a player is slain by a single bullet, friendships begin to dissolve.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Don't have my books handy (at work right now) but AD&D 1e's famous (and wonderful) DMG had rules for "parasitic infestation checks" which the DM was to make monthly (if memory serves).

Yet another reason to love EGG.

There were also rolls for mental illness, "social disease", drunken accidents... Ah, the good ole days of gritty realism.

The Interwebs meme of the D&D session would go something like this.
"If there are any girls here I wanna DOOOO them."
"Okay *rolls* you sleep with two women, you get syphilis and a magical form of herpes. *rolls* You die."

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

There were also rolls for mental illness, "social disease", drunken accidents... Ah, the good ole days of gritty realism.

The Interwebs meme of the D&D session would go something like this.
"If there are any girls here I wanna DOOOO them."
"Okay *rolls* you sleep with two women, you get syphilis and a magical form of herpes. *rolls* You die."

I recall a few such exchanges back in the early 80s. My personal favorite is when our party came across a beautiful dead woman in a room in the dungeon. (We knew little of decomposition and such things; we were 12 years old at the time). We nagged the DM to "make her alive" so that we could have sex with her.

Hmmm . . . maybe those "D&D is corrupting our young people" types had a point after all.

 

[Stormonu]

Bathroom breaks, dysentery and urinary tract infections (and kidney stones).

"I really shouldn't have eaten that orc chili. Guys, we've been wandering this dungeon for two hours. Anyone seen the loo? Argh, damn my plate mail!"

 

[Argyle King]

I was re-reading GURPS Martial Arts for GURPS 4th Edition recently and I read their rules for damage to hands; not only can a character take crippling damage from punching an opponent who wears solid armour or from being parried by a weapon-wielder, but even punching somebody in the head could cause that person to take damage unless his hands are protected in some way. (Interestingly, the book says that boxing gloves were invented as much to prevent damage to hands as they were to prevent damage to the person being punched; and that this is why boxers go for the head so often, an example of the law of unintended consequences.)

That rule might be realistic (and let's assume for the sake of argument that it is), but it would be no fun to play. Who wants to spend a boatload of points on unarmed fighting skills (plus techniques and supplementary skills) if using that skill is liable to get your hands and feet wrecked?

I am not going to go down the road of debating "cinematic vs. realistic" or "simulationist vs. dramatist" here, because that debate is old. What I am more interested in hearing is what other rules would be realistic to have in an RPG, but be absolutely no fun or too cumbersome to play?

I actually find those rules to be quite fun. Just like any other tactic, you're liable to get 'wrecked' when using the tactic in a situation where said tactic is a poor tactic.

different strokes for different folks....



From my own point of view, 'realistic rules' which I found to be unfun were the encumberance rules for D&D 4E. Mostly because they didn't seem to fit very well into the system as a whole, and because I don't feel they were particularly well thought out in regards to who they interacted with some of the other rules. I usually like to use some semblance of encumberance rules when playing rpgs, but I've just thrown it out the window when playing D&D anymore.

 

[Ulrick]

Rolemaster.

Sorry, but I tried. I really tried.

----

Although in one of my D&D games we had a wizard duel. The evil wizard cast fly to escape the PC wizard who had blinded him. But the PC wizard was entangled for a couple rounds. The enemy wizard flew straight up for a couple rounds, and then straight horizontality.

Once the PC wizard got free, he also cast fly to try to catch up with the wizard but flying straight diagonally from the ground. The player was a math major. He used trigonometry to calculate the distance and speed to see how long it would take for him to catch up and start using spells.

Man, that was tedious. but funny.

 

[pawsplay]

I recall a few such exchanges back in the early 80s. My personal favorite is when our party came across a beautiful dead woman in a room in the dungeon. (We knew little of decomposition and such things; we were 12 years old at the time). We nagged the DM to "make her alive" so that we could have sex with her.

Hmmm . . . maybe those "D&D is corrupting our young people" types had a point after all.

Tastelessness behind the tag.

Spoiler

ROOM CONTENTS

1-2 Monster
3 Nothing
4 Trap
5 Statue or Fountain (equal chance of either)
6 Lindsey Lohan passed out on the floor

 

[Harley Stroh]

Wik mentioned it earlier: realistic healing would take forever ... that's 12 inches of steel through your gut. If you survive the complications, when do you plan on adventuring again? Next year?

//H