Shane Hensley comments on the RPG industry

[Synicism]

Boramir's death scene in the LOTR movie is a great example of hit points in action.

Which is all well and good for that kind of combat. But it isn't appropriate to every RPG.

In Deadlands, certain things are supposed to be highly dramatic. A character who is trying to defuse a bundle of dynamite really has to worry about being blown to bits.

In d20, once you hit about 8th-10th level, grabbing said bundle of dynamite and just running away to a remote area and letting the bundle blow up in your arms in order to save the populace becomes a legitimate option because you'll still have hit points left.

That's idiotic. But the system supports it. Or, as a friend of mine said in a high level game only half jokingly, "sure, I'll reach into the molten iron and pull out the magic sword. It's only 10d10 damage."

That's even more idiotic. And it totally ruins Deadlands. After about two years of play, my harrowed bounty hunter was a horrifying badass. He was stronger than a demon-possessed elephant, hit harder with a cavalry saber as hard as a rifle shot, could heal from the brink of death in an hour, and could run as fast as a racehorse.

But you know what? He about died defending the rest of the party from four guys armed with scatterguns. There was risk involved. In d20, with as many levels as the character would have had, he could have waded through an infantry battalion armed with scatterguns and killed them all because he would have had so many hit points.

It's inane. It works for games like D&D where characters are supposed to be like Boromir from LotR. But even in fantasy, the D&D paradigm can fall apart. The best example is L5R, where one strike from a katana during an iaijutsu duel is supposed to kill the loser. In d20, two skilled iaijutsu duelists could hack at each other for hours before one of them dropped.

 

[hellbender]

Do you even understand the economic fundementals that are the context to business strategy? This 'macrocosm' case works for any pseudo-competitive industry where the barrier to entrance is not that high; you seem to believe rpgs operate within a broad economic vacuum, that relative returns and input markets do not operate and in a certain respect that has been the case in the past. But someone decided to make this into a viable business, giving the broad range of consumers control over what is made and what is not. The price signals have been lit and 'suit', i.e. everyone who ascribes to a capitalist model, much higher than you give it credit for, are flooding in.

'Risk' as you call it tends to be minimized over time, because, though few consciencly place primary value on money, EVERYONE places some value on it and therefore do as much to avert risk as possible.

Having taught Western and Eastern business strageties, I think I can grasp the concept of the basics. Being a member of the Strategic Learning Institute's thinktank doesn't hurt either. All I said, in the beginning, was that all the d20 products are pushing aside the physical space on shelves, and this pseudo-intellectual diatribe began where I am faced with textbook jargon that is irrelevant in this situation is brought up. All I said was, open your eyes, and look around.

hellbender

 

[Felon]

If he has enough hit points to withstand several shotgun blasts, he's not a minor character. Minor characters have 1 HD and they drop like flies.

To suggest that only characters of 1st-level can be considered minor seems a bit silly. And it's a good deal sillier to point at any given fictional character that's ever been killed by a single attack and glibly say "Oh, he was obviously just 1st-level". The term "minor" is relative, not absolute--particularly so in d20. Characters at any level will be fighting cannon-fodder goons who, as Nigel Powers puts it, don't even have name tags. To a 10th-level character a group of 4th and 5th-level flunkies can easily be considered minor opponents, yet each one can stop .44 slugs with his face, even the 10th-level character's slugs. And they won't even be fazed. If it's some sort of "heroic" factor insulating these thugs from an instantaneous, ignominious death, then why is a character with much more experience and a far superior affinity with deux-ex-machina incapable of overcoming that factor and killing them with a single bullet between the eyes? Because the heroic factor in d20 is represented by hit points, and of course that's purely defensive, which is yet another difference between hit points and other systems' "hero points" (action points, willpower, etc.). So again, not "the same thing".

You need to make a distinction between high and low level play. High level play always produces larger than life character. That's the whole point. If you don't want your character to be super-humanly tough, don't make a 15th level character. You can't consider D&D power scaling to be a bug. Its a feature!

I can and do consider what you call "power-scaling" to be a viable but flawed feature that has managed to withstand the test of time without undergoing some much-needed fine-tuning. I want my 15th-level character to be a badass crack-shot that can walk away from a gunfight having left behind a row of corpses with a single hole in each of their foreheads. But here's the funny thing: thanks to good ol' power-scaling, the chances that my gunslinger can do this actually decreases as he gains levels. When he's 1st-level, he can one-shot bad guys left and right (until he gets one-shotted anyway). When he's 20th-level, he won't be squaring off against those 1st-level characters that drop off like flies unless he actively goes trolling for them. The nameless chaff the GM tosses at him will be chaff built-to-scale. Minor bit players, but with sufficient hit points to ensure that my gunslinger, even with his various little feats, will have to empty his revolver just to take out one of them.

Boramir's death scene in the LOTR movie is a great example of hit points in action. Boramir is fighting along, his hps slowly draining, it doesn't look good. Bang, he's hit by that 1/2 orc dude. Does Boramir suddenly become inepts? No. He may stumble around a little, but while he's doing that acting, the orcs don't attack him. When they do attack again, Boramir continues to cut them down as before. Bang, he's hit again. This time he falls to his knees in a bit of player RPing. Again, when the orcs attack, the big B keeps cutting them down as before. When the final arrow strikes home (reducing B's hps to below 0), he falls over. The rest of the orcs run past him while the leader dude sets up for the coup de grace. This is exactly how it would happen in D&D.

Well, you do a good job interpolating that fight scene with d20 mechanics, I'll give you that...but you have passed over a heck of a lot of the comments I made in my post, and that includes statements that deflate what you're describing here. Boramir is clearly not fighting at 100% capacity up until the moment he drops. His attacks become clumsy and desperate. He's gravely injured, with numerous organs punctured, and barely capable of standing. much less making 30ft moves between attacks. In fact, it's pretty easy to see that he's mortally-wounded well before that third shaft drops him. If Lurtz hadn't gotten that final shot off, Boramir wasn't gong to simply get up, arrows still protruding from his torso, and stroll away from the battlefield with a dozen hit points shouting "Cleric! Get your butt over here! And where are those hobbits? Someone keep an eye on them while they're looting the bodies!". And that, my friend, is how it would happen in D&D.

 

[Morgenstern]

Um...

I thought we were discussing the market for RPGs and d20 products in particular, but if we have to talk game design I'm up for that too .

On the subject of hit points, have you read how Star Wars and Spycraft deal with taking damage? In both cases, nobody likes to get shot at any level, though higher level characters/agents are a bit harder to get a clean hit on...

HP are not an absolute in d20 design. There are a number of other ways of dealing with 'ouch'.

 

[D'karr]

[SNIP]
I can and do consider what you call "power-scaling" to be a viable but flawed feature that has managed to withstand the test of time without undergoing some much-needed fine-tuning.

If it has withstood the test of time for over 25 years I wouldn't necessarily consider it a flaw. Maybe it isn't as broken as it appears to you.

I want my 15th-level character to be a badass crack-shot that can walk away from a gunfight having left behind a row of corpses with a single hole in each of their foreheads. But here's the funny thing: thanks to good ol' power-scaling, the chances that my gunslinger can do this actually decreases as he gains levels.

Again, not a flaw of the game design

When he's 1st-level, he can one-shot bad guys left and right (until he gets one-shotted anyway). When he's 20th-level, he won't be squaring off against those 1st-level characters that drop off like flies unless he actively goes trolling for them. The nameless chaff the GM tosses at him will be chaff built-to-scale.

And herein lies the problem. It is the GM who is responsible for making the game world real to the players. I routinely give the players bonuses or penalties in combat due to damage. If the player gives himself penalties, without me due to roleplaying the damage, I even give XP awards for that type of roleplaying. I tell the player that the 88mm mortar that landed close enough to do XYZ HP of damage knocked the wind out of him and that he will be stunned for d6 rounds. I make that decision. I don't need rules for that.

However, I actively pursue the storylines my players want to play. If my 10th level players want to have a bloodfest on a canyon fighting orcs, that is what I tailor the game to do. They fight orcs cleaving them as they go along ending tired (low HP) but victorious. I'm responsible for that as the GM. I talk to my players and communicate with them to find out what they want. I don't blame the rules if my players are not having fun, I blame myself. I also don't blame the rules for not providing the required level of "realism" for my game. I add that myself.

As a GM I use some common sense and make the world "real". Unfortunately the only thing that doesn't come packaged with the game is a DM with common sense. And you can't make common sense fit into every rule, no matter how well written.

Well, you do a good job interpolating that fight scene with d20 mechanics, I'll give you that...but you have passed over a heck of a lot of the comments I made in my post, and that includes statements that deflate what you're describing here. Boramir is clearly not fighting at 100% capacity up until the moment he drops. His attacks become clumsy and desperate. He's gravely injured, with numerous organs punctured, and barely capable of standing. much less making 30ft moves between attacks. In fact, it's pretty easy to see that he's mortally-wounded well before that third shaft drops him. If Lurtz hadn't gotten that final shot off, Boramir wasn't gong to simply get up, arrows still protruding from his torso, and stroll away from the battlefield with a dozen hit points shouting "Cleric! Get your butt over here! And where are those hobbits? Someone keep an eye on them while they're looting the bodies!". And that, my friend, is how it would happen in D&D.

Like I said before, don't blame D&D rules or lack thereof for the follies of a DM. The DM could describe each combat just like that. The players can describe the damage like that. It is up to the game group how the game is played, not to the "rules". If you've agreed as a group that you want the damage to be cinematic (LotR example) there is nothing stopping you from doing that. My current group is an example of that.

 

[hong]

In d20, once you hit about 8th-10th level, grabbing said bundle of dynamite and just running away to a remote area and letting the bundle blow up in your arms in order to save the populace becomes a legitimate option because you'll still have hit points left.

Pick one of the following:

1) For every "stupid rules! Can't handle situation!" example, there is a counterexample. In this case, think of the ending to _Predator_, and Arnie surviving what looks like a close-range nuclear blast.

2) The hit point system is designed essentially for _combat_. Sometimes, it won't work quite as well outside combat. That's where DM's discretion comes in. If you, as DM, think that a hero who jumps on a grenade to keep it from killing his friends should die immediately, then he dies. Personally, I think it's a lot more fun to give said hero a chance of surviving, however small. But that's just me.

It's inane. It works for games like D&D where characters are supposed to be like Boromir from LotR. But even in fantasy, the D&D paradigm can fall apart. The best example is L5R, where one strike from a katana during an iaijutsu duel is supposed to kill the loser. In d20, two skilled iaijutsu duelists could hack at each other for hours before one of them dropped.

It's entirely possible, and even probable, for an iaijutsu master to kill his opponent in the strike phase of a duel. See the prestige class writeup in OA.

 

[hong]

If a "stock" d20 character (with HP and stuff) is holding a bundle of dynamite when it goes off, he takes just as much damage as if someone threw it at him and it blew up at his feet.

So he dodged the worst effects of the blast, or threw himself flat at the right time, or something. Handwave it a bit; you're allowed to do that.

Same with the rocket. He could blow it up himself and he would take the same damage as if someone shot it at him. He could be tied up, immobile, or unconscious and would still take the same damage if someone set it on the ground and detonated it as if someone shot him with it.

Someone who is tied up, immobile, or unconscious is helpless, and therefore subject to coup de grace attempts. An enemy could walk up to him, point a gun (or a rocket) at his head and pull the trigger. That's an auto-crit, and a Fort save to avoid dying outright (usually at a near-impossible DC).

Now you might say that you can't normally coup de grace with rockets, but then rockets aren't exactly common in D&D, and so fall outside the scope of the rules as written. I wouldn't have a problem allowing CdG attempts with ranged weapons as part of a more generic ruleset.

 

[hong]

To suggest that only characters of 1st-level can be considered minor seems a bit silly. And it's a good deal sillier to point at any given fictional character that's ever been killed by a single attack and glibly say "Oh, he was obviously just 1st-level". The term "minor" is relative, not absolute--particularly so in d20. Characters at any level will be fighting cannon-fodder goons who, as Nigel Powers puts it, don't even have name tags. To a 10th-level character a group of 4th and 5th-level flunkies can easily be considered minor opponents, yet each one can stop .44 slugs with his face, even the 10th-level character's slugs.

A 10th level character who takes a .44 slug to the face is dead, just the same as a 1st level character.

What's that, you say? Someone with 10 levels of hit points should surely beable to take a direct hit in the face from a .44? Nonsense. The point of those 10 levels of hit points is to represent skill at _avoiding_ a direct hit in the face. If said 10th level d00d still gets hit, then that's clearly a situation where those hit points have run out; and thus they are going to die like anyone else.

Furthermore, in D&D, a 10th level fighter with Power Attack and a greatsword can easily dish out something like 4d6+20 points of damage per hit, and they get two attacks per round on a full attack. Even someone who's 3rd or 4th level will usually go down in a single round.

What's that, you say? We're talking about guns, not some anachronistic melee weapon that went out of fashion around the same time as lederhosen? Well, the same principle applies: damage dealt scales with level, just as does hit points.

And they won't even be fazed. If it's some sort of "heroic" factor insulating these thugs from an instantaneous, ignominious death, then why is a character with much more experience and a far superior affinity with deux-ex-machina incapable of overcoming that factor and killing them with a single bullet between the eyes? Because the heroic factor in d20 is represented by hit points, and of course that's purely defensive, which is yet another difference between hit points and other systems' "hero points" (action points, willpower, etc.). So again, not "the same thing".

Other systems do have super-high dodge skills, or parry, or whatever. It's still the same thing: a powerful character _cannot be killed with a single shot_. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be much point to becoming more powerful.

I can and do consider what you call "power-scaling" to be a viable but flawed feature that has managed to withstand the test of time without undergoing some much-needed fine-tuning. I want my 15th-level character to be a badass crack-shot that can walk away from a gunfight having left behind a row of corpses with a single hole in each of their foreheads. But here's the funny thing: thanks to good ol' power-scaling, the chances that my gunslinger can do this actually decreases as he gains levels.

Then you have a dumb DM, if he thinks he must scale EVERY opponent and EVERY encounter to the party level.

When he's 1st-level, he can one-shot bad guys left and right (until he gets one-shotted anyway). When he's 20th-level, he won't be squaring off against those 1st-level characters that drop off like flies unless he actively goes trolling for them. The nameless chaff the GM tosses at him will be chaff built-to-scale.

That's an issue to take up with your DM, and not something mandated by the rules. When we went through the RttToEE, we had 10th level characters routinely coming up against groups of 1st and 2nd level mooks. They didn't last long, just as you seem to want.

Well, you do a good job interpolating that fight scene with d20 mechanics, I'll give you that...but you have passed over a heck of a lot of the comments I made in my post, and that includes statements that deflate what you're describing here. Boramir is clearly not fighting at 100% capacity up until the moment he drops.

See "spiral of death", and undesirability thereof in a game.

His attacks become clumsy and desperate. He's gravely injured, with numerous organs punctured, and barely capable of standing. much less making 30ft moves between attacks. In fact, it's pretty easy to see that he's mortally-wounded well before that third shaft drops him.

That's because Boromir was on negative hit points and had the Remain Conscious feat.

 

[Felon]

If it has withstood the test of time for over 25 years I wouldn't necessarily consider it a flaw. Maybe it isn't as broken as it appears to you.

It's not broken. It provides a simple, video-game style mechanism for tracking a character's health. Just because it's withstood the test of time, though, that doesn't mean it's achieved a state of perfection. Like I said, it needs fine-tuning. I like d20 plenty, but hit points are a flawed artifact of 1e D&D's combat system that went overlooked during the big overhaul that WotC performed converting the system to 3e.

And herein lies the problem. It is the GM who is responsible for making the game world real to the players. I routinely give the players bonuses or penalties in combat due to damage. If the player gives himself penalties, without me due to role-playing the damage, I even give XP awards for that type of role-playing. I tell the player that the 88mm mortar that landed close enough to do XYZ HP of damage knocked the wind out of him and that he will be stunned for d6 rounds. I make that decision. I don't need rules for that.

Man o man, I don't mean to get all snarky and jasamcarl-like, but how I pray for the day when all the smug GM's inculcated in their fluffy little fawning circle of gamers up in the clouds come back down to planet Earth, and stop proffering gamers who live in the real world all the quaint little techniques that only function within the confines of their pristine, perfect little groups.

Your system of improvised penalization, where players contrive all manner of ways to flagellate themselves with self-imposed handicaps in exchange for scraps of XP is cute, but are you naive enough to believe such an arbitrary system is an easy, ideal solution for every group of gamers to implement? Perhaps you have an ideal group of gamers who all love you and coddle you and stroke your hair and tell you how wonderful this ad-lib wound system is. If so, that's great. I'm happy for you

Putting aside your own infallibility when it comes to assigning all these off-the-cuff effects ("Uh, gee, that arrow hit you...in the arm! Yeah! You drop your weapon!"..."Wow! I rolled three 6's on that 8d6 fireball. Let's see, I say you're stunned for 1d6 rounds!") and your players' sheepish acceptance of those whimsical penalties, do you see where this knee-jerk approach to applying notions of "common sense" to hit points might actually lead to enormous debacles of gaming in the hands of someone less brilliant than yourself? How about all the left-brained DM's out there that are capable storytellers, but have a half-baked grasp of game mechanics (of which there are many)? They would constantly be coming up with sloppy, unfair, and just plain stupid calls on how penalties are assigned, getting players killed routinely. That would tend to sour a players' ability to appreciate the DM's finer qualities, wouldn't it?

And imagine, for a second, that there's actually a large contingent of players who actually have some standards of their own when it comes to their gaming experience, and believe it ought to be governed by well-thought-out rules, that have undergone at least a bare minimum of playtesting. They might just find this slap-dash approach to a comprehensive damage system to be shoddy, inconsistent, and just plain half-arsed. I do.

Now, if your answer to that is "Then they can find someone else to play with!" or "You shouldn't be a GM if you can't cut it!", then you have undercut your own position. Getting back onto what this thread is supposed to be about--the overall welfare of the RPG industry--it's safe to say that attitude is not one that's healthy for business. If d20 or any other system has a gap in rules that ultimately results in the GM having to take up so much slack that it's too much hassle to run, or has shortcomings that frustrate players to the point that they're turned off by the experience, then the game's publishers have fallen short. That's what happened with my group's foray into Deadlands d20. You can play the elitist all you want blame the GM and players for not being up to snuff, but ultimately the publisher is the one who suffers when Deadlands fails to succeed in the market due to its inability to meet consumer expectations.

As a GM I use some common sense and make the world "real". Unfortunately the only thing that doesn't come packaged with the game is a DM with common sense. And you can't make common sense fit into every rule, no matter how well written. Like I said before, don't blame D&D rules or lack thereof for the follies of a DM. The DM could describe each combat just like that. The players can describe the damage like that. It is up to the game group how the game is played, not to the "rules". If you've agreed as a group that you want the damage to be cinematic (LotR example) there is nothing stopping you from doing that. My current group is an example of that.

Yeah, I had a groovy group like that once too, but don't take it for granted that what works within your microcosm is applicable to 90% of the gamers out there. Most people can agree on basics, but once they're into the specifics--like how to decide whether a character dodged an arrow, or was struck in the arm--then the disparity of views to begins to tell.

Frankly, I find it quite disturbing to think that there might still be some game designer pursuing the remnants of this thread who might stumble across your comments and take that lofty nonsense about "the follies of a GM" seriously. The rulebook serves as a toolkit for the DM. Now, maybe there are virtuoso GM's out there who have a MacGyver-like ability to jury-rig rules for their game with duct tape, baking soda, a can of Coca-Cola, and a pack of pop rocks, but most folks will just wind up making a big mess. They need the best tools that they can get their hands on. The fact remains that hit points are not a great tool for creating dramatic, cinematic combat encounters. Even you don't dispute that statement so much as insist that a good DM should just ditch his tools and drive in the screws with his teeth

 

[Felon]

A 10th level character who takes a .44 slug to the face is dead, just the same as a 1st level character. What's that, you say? Someone with 10 levels of hit points should surely beable to take a direct hit in the face from a .44? Nonsense. The point of those 10 levels of hit points is to represent skill at _avoiding_ a direct hit in the face. If said 10th level d00d still gets hit, then that's clearly a situation where those hit points have run out; and thus they are going to die like anyone else.

Yes, well, you know I did already address the shortcomings of that rationale you're espousing at some depth in my previous long-winded posts, so rather than re-hash, I'll only suggest you go back and check it out when you have a few minutes. Suffice to say, the big problem is that, just as with Synicism's dynamite scenario, just as with PEGShane's comments about a soldier shrugging off a direct hit from a tank round, just as with my anecdote about characters jumping off a mountain because it's the shortest way down, is that character, having done the math. knows for certain that there's not a chance of dying. So much for drama. Some dastard pulls a gun on the hero, the hero sighs and walks across the room to take his shotgun down off the wall. "Well, nobody's shot at me today, so I have some dodging points to burn. You go ahead and start shooting. I gotta load this thing."

Now, before everyone rushes to make some obtuse commennt about how the GM can arbitrarily override the rules in this situation and decide what happens in a given situation, but realize that in doing so you're just going off on a completely unrelated tangent. Here's my statement: d20's hit point system is a flawed and inadequate method for handling realistic or cinematic combat. Saying "a good DM would easilty handle it this way" or "a GM who lets that happen is dumb" doesn't refute my statement one tiny iota. It is irrelevant what a DM can or might do. If the system's adequate, the DM doesn't have to override it and make up house rules on the spot to keep things from getting goofy.

Other systems do have super-high dodge skills, or parry, or whatever. It's still the same thing: a powerful character _cannot be killed with a single shot_. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be much point to becoming more powerful.

Conan is a powerful character. In one story, a handful of guards catch Conan someplace that he shouldn't be. Does Conan just roll initiative and tear the guards apart? No. One of the guards has a crossbow leveled at him and Conan knows he's more than likely a dead man if he tries anything funny. He has to use his wits to wait for an opportunity to strike.

In D&D, a couple of barbarians are sitting in a bar when they are surprised by four goons with crossbows. In a movie or novel, the characters might use a tactic like flipping over their table and using it as a makeshift mantlet, perhaps picking it up and using it to ram the guards. In D&D, the barbarians needn't bother thinking out a plan like that, they just rush the guards knowing that they can't be killed. In fact, the barbarians are somewhat foolish if they do use the makeshift-mantelet tactic, since in D&D it almost always better to do something offensive than defensive. Characters relying on hit points don't have to use their wits.

Then you have a dumb DM, if he thinks he must scale EVERY opponent and EVERY encounter to the party level.

Interesting perspective. Let's do a field study. When you get a chance, run out to your local hobby shop and find how many published d20 products you can find that provide 15th-level parties with 1HD opponents to fight. Let's keep everyone posted on the results. I'm sure we'll find it enlightening how many dummies are making a living scaling every opponent in every encounter to the party's level.

That's because Boromir was on negative hit points and had the Remain Conscious feat.

Oh, that's the answer! ROFL! Good one. Any time I see some hero fighting on despite mortal wounds, I'll just think "Oh, he's got that feat from one of the splatbooks!" Heh. You're a real card.

But wait a sec...Remain Conscious has Iron Will as a prerequisite, and that's hardly appropriate for Boramir, is it?

Wait, never mind. We'll just say he had a very low Wisdom score, and the Iron Will didn't compensate enough. Yeah, that works. Hey, looks like the time I've spent with you guys must have unlocked the powers of spurious reasoning that lay hidden deep within me. Glad to see that this thread hasn't been entirely unproductive.