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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 5039053" data-attributes="member: 3146">I think it's pretty simple: combat is one of the most complex activities that people can do and it involves everything that people make or use from rocks and sticks to science fiction ray guns and space fighters. Everything in the environment is potentially a weapon, cover, a strength, or a vulnerability.On the other hand, a foot race is pretty simple. There is some strategy and some psychology, but mostly, it comes down to "run as fast as you can for as long as you can or need to." That's it. If you're faster, you will probably win. If the other guy is faster, he will probably win. If you aren't faster now, you get faster by training in advance of the race. And that's it. It is interesting to the participants because it pushes them to explore their limits and reveals the results of training and genetics. It is interesting to spectators because they see the exhibition of excellence and because they get to see who is actually faster. But none of those are especially complex or strategic. There is a reason why EA does not release "Fastest Man Alive 2010: 100 yard dash and the marathon." It just wouldn't be interesting.Now, there are games for other kinds of sports. Auto-racing games have a long history, possibly because the sport is too expensive and dangerous for most people to actually participate in directly and because a lot of the technical requirements for victory are external to the participants. (The same driver can get into a faster car). But in those auto-racing games, the interesting part is not the strategic elements or other decisions. Instead, it is the skills involved in executing those maneuvers.If you want to find sports that have enough complexity and strategic depth to justify a system that approaches the complexity of RPG combat systems and that can build excitement in a turn based or non-realtime format, you need to look at team sports--soccer, football, basketball, etc. You will find that these sports actually do spawn real games that hold the interest of their players no just with the dexterity and skill required to attain victory but also in the strategic elements of the game. In fact, there have been versions of these games that are successful despite completely discarding the physical, real-time skill elements. Fantasy football and soccer club manager games would be examples of these. While they attempt to model a far more restricted struggle than RPG combats typically attempt to model, their rules for modeling it often approach RPG combat systems in complexity.So that's why RPGs usually hang more on combat than footraces and have detailed systems for resolving combat: combat is able to support that level of detail and interest in an interesting and exciting manner even when abstracted in turn-based rulesets."But you could do that with team sports!" you might object. Sure you could. But combat integrates much more naturally into stories than (even) team sports competitions do. Even if you were playing Friday Night Lights d20, odds are good that most of the time the football game would be a sidenote that was not directly integrated into the real story. If the home team wins the game, it won't resolve the budding love triangle between the quarterback, the cheerleader and the debate club president. If the home team loses the big game, it won't answer the question of who murdered the teacher last week. The football game has little to do with either. On the other hand, combat integrates into those scenarios easily and naturally. If the debate club president turns out to be a vampire cultist (obviously we're now playing Buffy or some similar game) then the quarterback's epic duel with him on top of the bell tower can resolve that love triangle. The cheerleader will see both men for what they are and even if they are both alive at the end, she will choose one or the other or demonstrate herself unworthy of either's attentions. Likewise, you can conclude the story of the murdered teacher with a dramatic shootout with the obsessive psychotic murderer when he pulls a gun rather than submits quietly.</blockquote>

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