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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7802916" data-attributes="member: 4937">The issue behind Lancaster's Power Law is one of the reasons Sci-Fi RPGs occupy such a small niche in the RPG world,and those that are fairly familiar tend to be Science Fantasy where you have very traditional Fantasy tropes given a superficially far future veneer - say Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, or to even some extent Star Trek.I've said it before, but it's very hard to do epic fantasy gaming in any setting where the technology of the setting strongly favors attack over defense. This precludes then settings where you have artillery, machine guns, or even really just rifles. Once you start bringing modern weaponry into the fray, and modern conceptions of battles you have to either willingly suspend a tremendous amount of disbelief, or else you have to accept that your character is and always will be a mook who can die randomly from some farmer or bandit with a musket whom he couldn't even look in the eye.Take the hit point. I have always asserted along with Gygax, that the hit point is an abstract combination of resistance to wounds and some metaphysical resistance that allows you to avoid being seriously wounded. The hit point well mimics any sort of movie or story where the heroes get wounded, but the wounds they suffer are "just a flesh wound" and never seem to slow them down except momentarily. It is a narrative device that works well with a fortune in the middle mechanic where you can compare the damage taken to the sort of being that took it, and the hit point total of that creature, and describe the wound in a proportional manner. Hence, 10 damage to 10th level character is just a scratch, but potentially a deep or even fatal stab to a 1st level character. The difference in the wound size is explained by the 10th level characters ability to avoid such a wound (at the last moment) through something where the something isn't really important and can also be narrative constructed.This works fine (famously) until you run into a situation that doesn't easily fit into Fortune in the Middle, but instead seems to fit into Fortune in the End, where we aren't trying to find out what happened in as FitM, but rather are trying to resolve what happened. The classic examples of this are falling 400' and immersion in acid. In both of these cases, we know already what happened and it would seem like we'd want the system to resolve the result of that - Fortune in the End. The person has already fallen, now tell me the damage. In a normal situation with a sword swing, you can wait to narrate how deeply the sword struck once you get a chance to compare damage to remaining hit points, and it's easy to make up something about how the cut was just a scratch or the blow was glancing or whatever. And if you do that, the rest of the system falls into place and is at least plausible. Against a sword, a guy could parry, block, or dodge and evade most of the blow. It feels reasonable for the more skillful hero to win those fights, because wielding a sword feels like one of those things where you could if you were good protect yourself from similar weapons.Until you get to that falling damage problem. Not saying that there aren't ways around it, but the testimony to how problematic it is is just how often it has come up and how much wordage has been used trying to deal with it.Well, a modern or sci-fi world where you have 155mm artillery, .50 caliber bullets, and assault rifles tends to produce those conceptually 'Fortune at the End' situations much much more often than fantasy. Grenade blows up 5 feet away, it feels like we need to resolve this and not find out what happens. You get shot by a guy with a submachine gun, it feels like we need to resolve this and not find out what happens. And so forth. And that does a lot to take away the hit point mechanic, and with it the wonderful ablative plot protection and character continuity that it provides.Which means that you need a science fiction setting with powered battle armor and personal force screens to return to that world of armored knights that can shrug off or mostly shrug off attacks. And then you start having to deal with the other problems Sci-Fi gives you.Some have suggested to do fire fights right you need to do suppression fire, cover, concealment, and all that sort of thing. But there are two huge problems with any attempt to do that. First, that suggests an attempt at realism, and the more you attempt realism the more Fortune at the End problems you are going to have where the expectation of resolution is that the PC just got their head blown off or their guts shredded or one of their legs just parted from their body at high velocity. And the other problem is that meeting engagements with modern weaponry often start at distances of 400-500 yards, so if you want to model them at a yard or 5' to the inch, you are going to find you need a battle mat the size of an empty two car garage or else do this all theater of the mind which means all your realism about terrain and cover is now a bit pointless.Frankly, my standard operating procedure is at least 2 enemy NPCs per PC.  (I can go into why if you want.) But yes, that frequently can lead to a lot of die rolling.</blockquote>

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