Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5996397" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with Mallus here.If you write a fatigue-point system that is clearly and transparently designed as a balance mechanism, which has no connection to other aspects of exhaustion (eg running, jumping, dodging, climbing, dehydration etc) and has as its sole purpose in play the rationing of player actions, and then you cling to that system as integral to your immersion in the fiction, you've moved a long way from the way that I play an RPG.My immersion in the ingame situation is grounded in that situation, and the outcomes of my PC's engagement with it. The mechanical techniques are not irrelevant to my enjoyment, but are pretty clearly secondary to my immersion.My main objection to combat by way of hit point attrition, for example, isn't that it is unrealistic. It's that it's boring to resolve, and doesn't produce exciting situations. One way to correct this, for me, is to go in the Runequest/Rolemaster/critt-ish/rocket-tag direction. Another way is to go in the 4e direction, of making conditions and debuffs of various sorts a central feature of combat resolution. Either way facilitates immersion in the ingame situation, by making it more exciting - and hence generating, in me, an emotional state closer to that which is apposite to the ingame situation.To me, this is like the following explanation of hit points: "In the game world your guy only has so much luck and energy to dodge and twist when being struck by heavy blows; we use Hit Points to abstract that luck and energy".I mean, it's fine as far as it goes: it's a fantasy game, and we can stipulate whatever features of the gameworld we like. But what are we really stipulating? I could stipulate that the fantasy world contains square circles, but what is the force of such a stipulation? The GM narrates that my guy sees a building in the shape of a square circle - what am I meant to make of that? Can I take cover around a corner, or not? (I think this is partly the thinking behind  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s discussion, upthread, of dragons and giant arthropods.)So this "energy" that we have abstracted away as Fatigue Points (or Hit Points): it's a type of energy that I can only use to make special manoeuvres (or to duck heavy blows, as the case may be), but I can't use it to run faster, or climb walls, or hold my breath, or throw a javelin further; I can have all of it left even though I'm too tired to dodge (because I'm at full Fatigue Points but down to 1 hp); I can have none of it left, yet am still dodging perfectly well (zero fatigue points, full or near-full hp). What the hell is it again?I just can't accept that one can create a coherent and immersive fiction by sheer stipulation of unexplained, unanalysed, conceptually underdeveloped phenomena. Sheer stipulation, plus reiterated chanting of "It's an abstraction", isn't enough.(The history of the development of spell points in Rolemaster is a nice example of how this can play out. Originally, power point expenditure does not cause any penalties or exhaustion. But this seems odd - why can't I keep casting spells, if I'm not tired? So then - in RMCII - an exhaustion penatly for power point use is introduced. But this hoses fighter/mages, who suddenly suck in combat just at the point when they also have no spells left. So in RMSS, the spell point penalty only affects casting rolls: as I cast more spells, my ability to cast gets worse, until I can't cast any more at all. This is treading a fine line - positing spell points not as a model of fatigue in general, but rather of some special "mana battery" phenomenon.Tunnels & Trolls just bites the bullet, and deducts spell costs from Stamina - which has the genre-breaking side effect that strong mages are also ultra-buff!)Which tends to reinforce my perplexity at how 4e is suddenly this radically dissociating game compared to AD&D or 3E.Now you seem to be describing something very close to either freeform play, or GM-fiat AD&D 2nd ed/White Wolf play (the sort of thing the Forge hates).That's a long way from the sort of game that I'm interested in. And also, in my view, a very contentious gold standard for immersion. (But does at least take us from "dissociation" to "brain damage", if by a somewhat ciruitous route!)Roll a die at the start of each round to see what form of "chaotic energy" is permeating the area for the mages to exploit. This could easily be linked to descriptors, to maximum level of spell castable depending on degree of permeation, etc.</blockquote>

Verification