What Is It About the Fantasy Genre Anyway?

[Aus_Snow]

Easier.

['Just because' -> 'OK'/'Cool!'] vs. ['Just because' -> 'Huh?'/'Yeah right']

 

[GSHamster]

As a segway, on "realism". Historically human beings have been able to take quite a bit of firearms damage and still survive. Look at Black Beard the pirate and how many shots he took. Look also at something like the Black Hawk Down incident or Operation Viking Hammer, where people took multiple hits and kept fighting. This is a big garish, but even an untrained person like T-Pac took a gun shot wounds to the groin and the back of the head at close range and lived to tell about it.

Guns can kill a person with one shot...but sometimes people can take multiple wounds at keep going. The human body is weird.

It's not only being able to take a bullet. It's about increasing your ability to take more bullets.

Let's say Blackbeard takes 3 bullets during one engagement. Is it reasonable to say that in the next engagement you will need at least 6 bullets to take Blackbeard down? And the number of bullets needed keeps increasing engagement after engagement?

Yeah, maybe some humans are tough SoBs. But the idea that they get tougher and tougher as time goes by is where it gets weird. I just think this idea is a lot easier to accept in a fantasy scenario.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's not only being able to take a bullet. It's about increasing your ability to take more bullets.

Its more about being able to react to shooters in such a way that a shot that would normally have been a wound- say, right through the meat of your bicep- instead is merely a scratch that just tears your shirt sleeve and grazes the skin.

Your character's pool of HP reflects his physical toughness, to be sure, but it also includes as its bulk abstractions of his ability to avoid meaningful damage from attacks.

 

[GSHamster]

Your character's pool of HP reflects his physical toughness, to be sure, but it also includes as its bulk abstractions of his ability to avoid meaningful damage from attacks.

Yes, but that means that at level 1, maybe 1 out of 2 shots are grazes. At level 10, 19 out of 20 shots from the same shooter are grazes? With swords and magic, it's easier to handwave it. It feels right that a more skillful swordsman would be able to convert more attacks from a novice into grazes.

I just think that as technology gets involved, the basic concept of "levels" starts to break down. But I think that most people who play RPGs like the idea of levels, and prefer to play in settings where the concept of levels is less jarring.

 

[Corinth]

Yes, but that means that at level 1, maybe 1 out of 2 shots are grazes. At level 10, 19 out of 20 shots from the same shooter are grazes? With swords and magic, it's easier to handwave it. It feels right that a more skillful swordsman would be able to convert more attacks from a novice into grazes.

I just think that as technology gets involved, the basic concept of "levels" starts to break down. But I think that most people who play RPGs like the idea of levels, and prefer to play in settings where the concept of levels is less jarring.

That's solely an issue of game design. There is nothing requiring the exponential increasing of PC traits to be tied to increases of either class or character levels. They exist because a designer made a decision to arrange the rules to work that way.

 

[Ahglock]

I'm happy playing anything. I prefer running fantasy. If I run a sci-fi or modern game there are a multitude extra levels of planing i have to do, to account for all the crap the players can and will come up with. Add in that I game with a bunch of science types and I honestly can't answer 1/2 of there questions.

Heck at the height of super splat book Armageddon for 3e I could deal with all the spell options, because bang there in the rules. Real world science and how a ventilation duct, fire suppression system etc. works aren't.