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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5944905" data-attributes="member: 42582">From Gygax's DMG, pp 80-81, under the heading "saving throws":ecause the player character is all-important, he or she must always - or nearly always - have a chance, no matter how small, a chance of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitabl destruction. . . So a character manages to avoide the full blast of a fireball, or averts is or her gaze from the basilisk or medusa, or the poisonous stinger of the giant scorpion mises or fails somehow to inject its venom. Whatever the rationale, the character is saved to go on.Given that a sting from a giant scorpion can kill a horse, it strikes me as incredible that a person could just "tough it out". So while I never thought about it too hard back when I used to play classic D&D, I've always taken for granted that what Gygax says here might be one explanation of why the PC doesn't die.Part of why I can take it for granted without having to think too hard about it is because most of the time the mechanics don't oblige me to think too hard about it if I don't want to. (Eg nothing mechanical turns on the difference between "the stinger failed to inject its venom" and "My guy was poisoned but toughed it out".)Well for me that's a change that 3E made, by making the save a Fortitude save. (I'm in the camp that thinks the 3E changes to save is far more than just a "rationalisation" of categories. It's turning what was a fortune-in-the-middle mechanic into a simulationist mechanic. Notoriously, this did over fighters in a bad way.)I actually think this is pretty dismissive. And also it reads like theorycraft, not the experience of actual play. (As far as RPGs go. I've got no experience with improv. And literary narration is a different beast again.)There are actual, successful RPGs - Tunnels & Trolls, Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, 4e among them - that rely heavily on fortune-in-the-middle mechanics. None of them is particularly about madness. None of them involves changing the fundamental call-response dynamic of a traditional RPG. Each of them uses a range of techniques to handle the deferral of narration until after the relevant mechanical process has been resolved. You yourself note one of those techniques:Another technique that is particularly common in D&D (as I noted above, it applies to AD&D saving throws as much as to 4e injury and healing) is to frame the mechanics so that they do not depend upon a high level of detail. In no edition of D&D do you need to know whether hit point loss is bleeding or a broken bone before you apply healing. (This is also true in Runequest. It is emphatically not true in Rolemaster.) In 4e you don't need to know whetehr hit point loss is bleeding or faltering morale before you apply healing.Furthermore, there is nothing in the resolution mechanics that especially encourages this level of detail. For example, in AD&D a player can't get any advantage to a binding of his/her friend's wounds, nor to the use of healing magic, by specifying in detail that a broken limb is splinted, or a gash stitched shut. Likewise, as a general rule in 4e there is no advantage to be gained by specifying the precise manner of treatment undertaken when a Healing check is made. In the language of "call and response", the game rules do not recognise these particularly detailed forms of call as significant or even desirable. (Just as a player who repeatedly calls hit locations in combat can actually push against the combat rules in any edition of D&D.)What this means is that the mechanical resolution of play does not grind to a halt just because the fictional details have not all been narrated yet. Narration can be deferred without harm to action resolution.It is true that for those with simulationist sensibilities this might be unsatisfying. As <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">Ron Edwards noted</a> about 9 years ago, deferring exploration (ie establishment of the content of the shared fiction) in this way, rather than at every point during play in a linear fashion, is a common feature of non-simulationist play, whether step-on-up or story-now.But to equate either of those sorts of play with madness an unreliability is, as I said, just dismissive. And suggestive of theorycraft rather than experience. Plenty of people may not want to play Maelstrom Storytelling or HeroWars/Quest, but these aren't game known for their inability to produce a strong and engaging story via play. I would in fact say quite the opposite!Agreed.Agreed. You present a common hit point mechanic for PC gen and hit/damage rules, but distinct modules for death, dying and recovery. You probably also need to present psychic damage in a modular way (it can be loss of morale, or Prof X style debilitating brainwave attacks), and to note that the warlord class/theme may not work well with the simulationist module.For the reasons that  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] already gave, I think the adventure design isssues can be pretty easily handled. (Perhaps a sidebar about where to drop the extra healing potions or healing scrolls if you're running the module with "simulationist" healing.)</blockquote>

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