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Dr. Cliché
2014-01-01, 04:21 PM
Basically the title - which Fantasy RPGs would you say are the most realistic, aside (obviously) from their fantasy elements?

Morty
2014-01-01, 04:34 PM
Off the top of my head... Riddle of Steel is famous for its brutally realistic combat system. In terms of less obscure systems, the obvious choice is Warhammer Fantasy RPG, which is very down-to-earth. GURPS can also easily be used for highly realistic campaigns.

Scow2
2014-01-01, 04:41 PM
FATAL, of course! It even advertises itself as such!

Rhynn
2014-01-01, 04:43 PM
Do you mean realistic systems, or realistic setting/fantasy (presumably meaning, in the latter case, "a sense of verisimilitude") ?

HarnMaster on both counts (with a detailed realistic system).

Artesia: Adventures in the Known World on both counts (with a light, sufficiently realistic system).

MERP for both counts, shining in setting verisimilitude (even/especially when you include ICE's MERP-canon Tolkien-fanon material), with a system that produces sufficiently realistic-feeling results (although, if using Rolemaster, it's quite heavy).

Adventurer Conqueror King for system realism that produces realistic-feeling results in your setting, but still keeping essential elements of old-school D&D.

I could elaborate on any of those, I guess, if there's interest...

Knaight
2014-01-02, 12:16 AM
Burning Wheel can be surprisingly realistic in a number of ways.

Airk
2014-01-02, 10:24 AM
I think you need to define 'realistic' for us before you're going to get a good answer here.

Realistic as in "fewer fantasy elements"?
Realistic as in "people die really easy when you stab them"?
Realistic as in "the rules and setting really give a lot of thought to what the consequences of this kind of world would be"?

Help us out here.

Dr. Cliché
2014-01-02, 11:02 AM
Do you mean realistic systems, or realistic setting/fantasy (presumably meaning, in the latter case, "a sense of verisimilitude") ?

I guess realistic systems.

Really, it was because I'd seen a few people say that D&D3.5 is very unrealistic in terms of how physics and such work (or don't work) in it.

That just made me curious as to which systems are the most realistic, whilst still having fantasy elements.

Black Jester
2014-01-02, 12:33 PM
'Most' realistic might very well a misnomer. The relevant issue is not how to implement a more or less realistic environment through game mechanics. That is not particularly difficult. Runequest had that approach in the late 1970s. The issue is, how does the system include fantastic elements and how do these work alongside. The idea of a good implementation in that way is the issue how the various supernatural elements are included and made use of; this is primarily a world-building issue to consider the consequences of said deviations from reality onto the people and events within the setting.

As it is , there is not one game to rule them all, there are a few which are quite good in taking a premise and implementing it with enough wiggle-room to allow for some variation (monocausal events and consequences are highly unrealistic after all), and enough seriousness, consideration and effort to make it work.
Most have already been listed:
GURPS is the gold standard of RPG mechanics anyway, and it does fill in the niche of a game based on common sense, plausible expectations and intelligence (basically, what the term 'realism in roleplaying games' stands for), instead of wish fulfillment fantasies on the one hand or utterly nonsensical garbage on the other hand - if you want to play GURPS that way. Runequest/BRP is a simpler and effective way to run such a game and reasonably accessible (unlike GURPS, which requires some assembly and work to establish 'your' game).
HarnMaster is even simpler (besides from the character creation which is rather detailed and slow on purpose), but that game particularly shines in combination with its setting. harnMaster might be a very blatant example of a 'realistic' game based on very medieval social customs and styles (which have not that much incommon with the usual 'medieval technology, modern sociology' contrivances for the sake of comfort more common in many fantasy games-
Artesia is a somewhat odd example, because it is by all means a high fantasy setting with very common magic where it is not terribly unlikely, that if one of any character's ancestors was some sort of supernatural beast, for example. It is however, a prime example of the importance of how these elements are implemented and considered for the actual gameplay. It is however, one of the moreelaborate complex systems out there (including any experience points being applied in 22 different categories and you gain XP for bringing food or beeer for your fellow players).


Besides, any good game is firmly grounded in realism. That is a necessary requirement for any meaningful game; removing realism from a game is to remove the common framework of references all players are inclined to agree to.
There are basically two essential reasons for a game to deviate from an approach in realism, not good reasons mind you, but they exist: The one is unadulterated escapism, using RPGs as a vehicle for wish fulfillment fantasies and as an outlet for emotional stress. This is an understandable and very human emotion, and even though it leads to poorer gaming experiences (as the focus of the game tends to be on satisfying this need for immediate gratification and the entitlement of relatively easy victories) but isn't particularly problematic (at least for escapism. You can if you want, consider escapist activities as problematic in their own right, and you wouldn't be completely wrong, at least in the more extreme situations).
The other issue is sheer lazyness and the lack of creativity of bad world builders and correspondingly bad gamemasters that leads to migraine-inducing stupidity and mostly contrived nonsense. And yes, especially the contrived "this is fantasy, I don't have to care about realism" type is particularly lacking in the creativity department (even though these are exactly the people who try to convince you and most importantly themselves from the opposite with almost desperate need) as they usually fail to include elemental (and what is more elemental than reality?) outside sources and advice (or gods forbid, actual research) and lacking the endurance or interest to put actual effort in their works, and then overcompensate the resulting contrived
excuse for a game as 'innovative' or 'gonzo' (a lable specifcially developed to glorify lazy and inadequate world building).

Tyrrell
2014-01-02, 01:16 PM
I'll agree with previous posters that realism isn't necessarily a desirable goal in and of itself, rather it is valuable only in that it provides enough believability to not harm one's supervention of disbelief. Otherwise the goal of the game is only the enjoyment of the players (which is a quickly moving target and may well include more realism than just enough to maintain suspension of disbelief for some players).

Still, since the question was asked, it would be rather rude of me to supply meta-criticism without lowering myself to answer it.

Ars Magica has a among the most realistic settings as the original poster asked "aside from its fantasy elements" in that aside from its fantasy elements it is medieval Europe. I guess if you don't count functioning on medieval physics/ chemistry/ medicine/ cosmology etc. as a fantasy element then it becomes a significantly less realistic. But if you do, then you can't really get more realistic.

It is realistic in that character advancement is a function of spending time working, training, and studying rather than a function og the narrative structure (i.e. given by defeating challenges or collecting xp at the end of every session or adventure).

The combat system is dangerous and fairly "swingy" in that a good or bad roll can win or loose a combat for anyone regardless of their skill. this strikes me as realistic.

The healing times for wounds are believable and without magical help medieval medicine might well see you not recover from a serious injury.

Knaight
2014-01-02, 01:37 PM
Besides, any good game is firmly grounded in realism. That is a necessary requirement for any meaningful game; removing realism from a game is to remove the common framework of references all players are inclined to agree to.
Unless you have another common framework of references. There are several games based less on reality and more on the understanding of reality as understood under the mythic review, which is really rather bizarre by modern understanding.


overcompensate the resulting contrived
excuse for a game as 'innovative' or 'gonzo' (a lable specifcially developed to glorify lazy and inadequate world building).
That's not where gonzo comes from. Gonzo originated as a term to describe the writing of one Hunter S. Thompson, and basically just denotes the use of different divergences from reality than the conventional ones. It's entirely possible for a game to be gonzo and well thought out, while still closer to reality than typical high fantasy, simply because the tropes of typical high fantasy are so well worn that they don't seem unusual. Similarly, it's downright easy to have a lazy setting which is by no means gonzo, because it's lazy in a way that involves the reuse of the same tired tropes we've seen a million times (see: lots of D&D knockoffs).

CombatOwl
2014-01-02, 01:53 PM
Basically the title - which Fantasy RPGs would you say are the most realistic, aside (obviously) from their fantasy elements?

A really realistic fantasy game would get boring in a hurry. Even setting aside that most of the game would involve doing very little except waiting for things to happen. Even assuming that everyone plays some kind of professional soldier, most of the game is going to be spent either waiting for the right season to go on a campaign, laid up in bed sick (and hoping they get over it rather than die), or doing uninterrupted travel from one place to another by foot.

Typical game session: almost four hours of doing nothing, punctuated by five or six minutes of brutally quick combat--where you've got a very high likelihood of either dying to wounds or dying to disease caused by wounds, dying to some random illness, or dying to bad weather.

90% Oregon Trail, 10% Sword-Swinging Adventure


Really, it was because I'd seen a few people say that D&D3.5 is very unrealistic in terms of how physics and such work (or don't work) in it.

It is highly unrealistic. The D&D rules utterly ignore physics. It can be quite amusing if the players exploit that in-character. Take, for example, ranged weapons. They travel their full range instantly. So if you fire an arrow that can travel a mile (easily--stupidly--doable with a combination of feats and magical effects), it does so immediately. IIRC, it's possible for D&D arrows to travel faster than light. Suppose someone decided to use that build to send messages. They'd have faster-than-light communications. But it would immediately end at the full range of the arrow. Another oddity--arrows travel no further than the range of the weapon that fired them. It doesn't matter how it's directed, what kind of arc it's fired along, be it a high angle or straight at the target. It doesn't matter the lay of the land--you can fire the arrow from the top of a tower and it will still go the range of the bow and drop straight down to the ground (not even arrow-first). If the bow can fire an arrow 110ft, it doesn't matter that it was a large compound longbow with a draw strength suitable for a fire giant--it's the same 110ft range that a compound longbow built for a halfling with 10 strength has. And at the end of 110ft, it immediately stops, becomes an unattended object, and falls as per the falling rules.

Melee combat is even worse. For one thing, rolling to hit has got to be the most absurd assumption in the system. If you're proficient with a weapon, that ought to mean you're always going to stick the blade where you want it to go. Absent any defense by the person being attacked, it should automatically hit simply because you're proficient with the weapon. Combat should be resolved by active defense, not by trusting that the attacker screws up. Shields in a realistic system would provide an advantage much greater than a simple -10% to hit for attackers in D&D.

HP? Don't even get me started. There are very few systems that handle wounding in a sane way. Basically there should be three kinds of wounds in a realistic system;

Flesh Wounds: They don't do anything but if they're not treated can lead to infections later and still kill you.
Hindrances: You're badly injured but can still do something. It can still get infected and kill you later, if the wound itself won't kill you slowly over days (such as internal bleeding).
Grievous Wounds: You're out of the fight, and will probably die. Even if you get medical treatment, such as it is, you don't even have a 50/50 shot at surviving. And it still has a chance to get infected and kill you.

Every wound is tracked individually. Weapons don't have a damage type--that is determined purely by what the attacker was trying to do, and how poorly the defender did in blocking it. Infections are determined for each wound, and the severity adjusts how frequently they occur. Infections might or might not kill you. Depending on what society is doing the treatments, it might increase or decrease the chance of infection.

These are the sorts of things you would need in a realistic game. Characters would die, and frequently. It wouldn't be a fun adventure. There's a reason why realistic systems are uncommon--it's totally inappropriate for dramatic reasons. It's kind of silly to have a big adventure spanning a few months, only to have the essential hero of the story die because he fell down a hill and broke his arm while traveling to the evil king's castle for the big climax of the story.

Black Jester
2014-01-02, 02:15 PM
Unless you have another common framework of references. There are several games based less on reality and more on the understanding of reality as understood under the mythic review, which is really rather bizarre by modern understanding.

That's the problem. There is no other genuinely common framework of references. Even realism is open to a great variation of interpretation, but at least it has the benefit of reliability and a few facts on its site. Any deviation - or dilution, really - of it just makes away with this reliabilty which goes against the very reason of a referential framework.


That's not where gonzo comes from. Gonzo originated as a term to describe the writing of one Hunter S. Thompson, and basically just denotes the use of different divergences from reality than the conventional ones. It's entirely possible for a game to be gonzo and well thought out, while still closer to reality than typical high fantasy, simply because the tropes of typical high fantasy are so well worn that they don't seem unusual.

You are probably right, and I should have written "...'gonzo' as the term is used currently in the context of RPGs". I would edit my original post, but that would make your answer lose its context.

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 02:43 PM
For one thing, rolling to hit has got to be the most absurd assumption in the system. If you're proficient with a weapon, that ought to mean you're always going to stick the blade where you want it to go. Absent any defense by the person being attacked, it should automatically hit simply because you're proficient with the weapon. Combat should be resolved by active defense, not by trusting that the attacker screws up. Shields in a realistic system would provide an advantage much greater than a simple -10% to hit for attackers in D&D.

Rolling to hit presupposes active defense, and mostly has to do with armor "penetration": did you get around the opponent's armor? (A very realistic system, incidentally, because human-wielded hand weapons don't actually go through armor.)


These are the sorts of things you would need in a realistic game. Characters would die, and frequently. It wouldn't be a fun adventure.

Where are you getting that? Our first session of ACKS saw 2 PCs and 2-3 henchmen dead, in a group of 1 GM + 3 players. Everyone had great fun, and continued to have it in subsequent sessions (progressively less lethal because the players were learning and the PCs were getting better).


Also, gonzo D&D is the best kind. :smallcool: How anyone could read about Planet Algol (Cthulhu Mythos meets Tekumel in an irradiated wasteland where Lankhmar-style ghouls and Barsoom-style Colored Men take radioactive metals as narcotics) and not think its awesome is beyond me. Truly, it is the Hunter S. Thompson of D&D campaigns...

Knaight
2014-01-02, 03:00 PM
That's the problem. There is no other genuinely common framework of references. Even realism is open to a great variation of interpretation, but at least it has the benefit of reliability and a few facts on its site. Any deviation - or dilution, really - of it just makes away with this reliabilty which goes against the very reason of a referential framework.
Sure there is - sets of texts, using texts in the broadest sense. Take TOON, which operates based on bizarre cartoon physics, and has all sorts of ridiculous assumptions. It works, because there's a common framework of references in early-mid 1900's American animated shorts, excluding Disney. The same principle applies when dealing with different sets of texts that have actual merit to them, and not just the likes of Bugs Bunny.



You are probably right, and I should have written "...'gonzo' as the term is used currently in the context of RPGs". I would edit my original post, but that would make your answer lose its context.

Even there though, my point about it being more about different divergences from reality than any standard genre stands. Something like Star Wars would never be described as gonzo, even though it has magical monks with laser swords, planet sized super structures that get destroyed by the equivalent of a biplane in space, and the whole notion of titanic scale in which drama between individuals decides everything. All of these are absurd, but because they are an absurdity we are used to they aren't gonzo. Similarly, we're used to the fantasy adventuring party and generic high fantasy setting, a whole set of tropes that would look extremely gonzo were it not for their familiarity. Yet if you make something less odd than either of these - say, a future South America with a widening class gap, advanced technology, and still large amounts of wilderness in which there is magic in the sense of demons coming to the surface to hunt for Eldorado along with eccentric treasure hunters, the setting suddenly seems gonzo. It could be far more realistic and far more developed than ye old fantasy #7892 or space opera rebellion #9341, but demons racing private paramilitary special ops forces of a borderline secret society is a weirdness we aren't used to.

CombatOwl
2014-01-02, 03:28 PM
Rolling to hit presupposes active defense, and mostly has to do with armor "penetration": did you get around the opponent's armor? (A very realistic system, incidentally, because human-wielded hand weapons don't actually go through armor.

Depends on the weapon, depends on the armor. Human-wielded hand weapons certainly can go through quite a lot of types of armor. At the very least the blunt impact of the weapon will cause damage. It's only very late sorts of plate armor that would turn a sword, requiring the development of trusting swords to deal with it. Even that sort of armor won't save a person from enough blunt force trauma delivered by heavy-metal-stick. Physics is a bitch.

Anyway, this is best handled as active defenses because that matters way more than the attacker going "around" the armor. All the attacker ought to need to do is declare what they're trying to do.

Honestly, if I were designing this realistic system melee combat would work like this;

Characters in a fight would get so many actions per limb per turn. The body itself would have an action as well, though few things would use it. Some types of actions may require both limbs of a type (moving, for example, or certain tactical maneuvers). Others may require no actions at all (talking, for example). Characters may attack when they win the initiative (or if the attacker declines the initiative), and may counter-attack on a successful defense.

The attacker declares what sort of attack he's going to make. Depending on this choice, it will adjust the chances of the defender for particular types of defense. If the attacker is doing a precision attacks on vulnerable joints, the defender's armor percentage would go down, but the defender's movement percentage would go up. If he's trying to exploit his reach to give himself an advantage on avoiding attacks later, that has its own set of modifiers, and so forth. But the attacker wouldn't roll a thing, he'd either be able to do it or not, no chance involved. Improving your skill just expands your tactical options. Different sorts of weapons present different tactical possibilities and different suitability for the tactics they can perform.

The defender then gets to make any applicable defense test if conditions allow. A character with a weapon or shield gets a deflect percentage. A character with armor gets an armor percentage. All characters would get a movement percentage. Depending on the defender's choices for actions, they may have any piece of equipment ready for defense. Performing a defense action costs an action like normal. Movement uses the legs, armor takes no action, weapons and shields use the arm they're wielded in.

So combat would work like this;

The attacker declares that they're making an attack to pierce the weak point on the opponent's neck with a dagger, because in the haste of this ambush, he did not have time to attach his gorget. This provides a -30% to armor percentage (decreasing the likelihood that armor will block it), but increases the movement percentage by +20%. Daggers themselves provide no penalties to defense.

The defender then tries to block the strike. Since he has a mace and shield in hand, he decides to try to block the strike by blocking with his shield and moving out of the way. His basic deflection percentage is 35%, but shields are exceptionally good for this, so he adds a 20% equipment bonus to that, giving him a 55% chance to block the blow with the shield. He rolls, gets a 60. He fails to block with the shield. He then tests his movement defense. His basic movement defense is a 20%, but because the enemy is trying to strike a precise target, he gets a bonus of +20%. That gives him 40%. He rolls an 82, bad luck, the attacker strikes. Since the attacker is actually making contact, the defender makes an armor check. It's got a base of 40%, being fairly good armor, but the sort of attack that was being made was one that imposed a -30% penalty. That gives him just a 10% chance for his armor to successfully block the strike. He rolls an 8. Good luck, somehow the blow is turned by the edge of his armor and deflected away from his neck.

This is more about choices, and somewhat less ridiculous than the D&D system where master swordsmen have a 5% chance of either dropping their swords or dealing ridiculous levels of damage. It's about the tension of defending yourself against a very real, very lethal threat--not stacking your hand-wave-it AC up so high the enemy can only hit on a 20.

I mean, hell, half the fight is about keeping out of the range of the other guy, then beating him into submission with fists/swords-as-clubs/shields/whatever is handy when he happens to get too close. Not about elegant stabs and such.


Where are you getting that? Our first session of ACKS saw 2 PCs and 2-3 henchmen dead, in a group of 1 GM + 3 players. Everyone had great fun, and continued to have it in subsequent sessions (progressively less lethal because the players were learning and the PCs were getting better).

Did they die to stupid accidents? Because personally I feel that "he got cholera and died" is a pretty boring sort of game, albeit realistic.

Ionbound
2014-01-02, 03:42 PM
[stuff about active combat]

You've described the fluff of the AC system in a nutshell. It automatically assumes that both parties involved make the best possible choices, and that whether or not the weapon both hits and penetrates armor depends of the skill of the wielder and some luck. As for the 5% chance of critical failure, that is a, while widely adopted, house-rule, and has been since at least 3.0.

CombatOwl
2014-01-02, 03:49 PM
You've described the fluff of the AC system in a nutshell. It automatically assumes that both parties involved make the best possible choices, and that whether or not the weapon both hits and penetrates armor depends of the skill of the wielder and some luck. As for the 5% chance of critical failure, that is a, while widely adopted, house-rule, and has been since at least 3.0.

The problem is that unless you confine ACs to the point where people can reliably hit, they just work as some impenetrable barrier except for that rare chance of a critical hit.

If I have a 30 AC, and you have a +9 to hit, it does not matter what you do, nothing you can do will hit me unless you get lucky and roll a 20.

Believe it or not, I do understand that combat in D&D is supposed to involve a lot more than single strikes, but the mechanics are just so absurdly boring. It doesn't do a thing to increase the tension of martial combat. At all. You can look at your AC and realize that for all intents and purposes you're basically invincible against certain enemies. Tension, gone. It's also one of the many reasons why magic is so much more fun in D&D. Not only are martial characters mechanically weaker, they're also mechanically less interesting.

And because of how it scales, differences in level/CR can make one party an inconsequential threat to the other.

Red Fel
2014-01-02, 04:16 PM
I think that, ultimately, the more combat-oriented a system gets, the more it has to start throwing "realism" - and again, this is realism by the standards of a fantasy role-playing game - out of proportion.

That is to say, a system that has very little combat, or de-emphasizes it, can afford to have more brutal, and more crippling, combat outcomes. A system that emphasizes combat has to allow for more outrageous, less "realistic" options, in order to permit the players to survive, let alone thrive.

Ars is an excellent example, I think. In addition to the huge amounts of time spent by your primary character simply engaging in research and diplomacy, and the fact that you control an entire array of peons (further emphasizing class distinctions in the setting), combat is a fairly minimal part of the game. It's more about personal goals and development - the ambition of your primary character, the loyalty of his second(s), and the carousing of his numerous, nameless serfs.

Another example of "realism" is the Ironclaw setting. (Again, realism in a low-fantasy RPG with magic and, more importantly, animal-people. Context, folks. It's relative.) Combat is very de-emphasized, and many classes (scholars, aristocrats, various peasants) have virtually no combat skill whatsoever. Combat itself can be extremely brutal - overkill rules can turn a character into maimed giblets, and his allies into terrified, quivering heaps. Spells are less D&D wizard-y and more elaborate ritual-y. Clergy are more organized and regulated, with high-level ordination bringing with it social benefits such as authority. Literacy is extremely rare and valuable.

The pattern I see, as I've mentioned, is the de-emphasis of combat. Once that happens, the system can pay attention to more concrete, structural features, which add a sense of value to every action, not just combat ones, and can therefore bring more mundane actions (such as socializing, earning a living, or building something) to the fore. It ceases to be a series of combats punctuated by a few social rolls, and becomes a series of acted-out social encounters or productive actions punctuated by personal journeys and the general avoidance of probably-lethal combat. Injuries become harder to recover from and more to be avoided. Wars can no longer be won by a single high-level player character against an entire horde of mooks. One does not simply walk into Mordor.

So, yeah. There are two of my recommendations, right there - seconding Ars, and suggesting Ironclaw.

Delwugor
2014-01-02, 04:19 PM
Infection, Disease, Starvation and Civilian Causalities, the RPG. :smalltongue:

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-02, 04:24 PM
"People die a lot" is not necessarily boring, or realistic, for that matter. In fact, a lot of high-mortality games arise from trying to aim for realism in some respects (combat, injury etc.) while retaining an utterly ridiculous scenario premise ("must kill X monsters to advance"). A lot of time, application of realism in all fields (as well as some common sense...) would decrease the lethality of a scenario noticeably.

For example, a lot of GMs have NPCs be unrealistically willing to fight to death. Negotiation or victory through enemy surrender are unlikely. A lot of GMs also go to lenghts to incorporate an enemy that must be fought, for whatever reason. The players aren't given a choice to avoid the battle, leading to risks that otherwise wouldn't be there.

I like to play high lethality games, and yes, a lot of those deaths are stupid in the "and he died of disease one month later" or "he fell into a pit, broke his leg, and starved" sort of way, but those aren't boring when approached with a mindset mired in black and gallows humour. Instead, they're part of the fun. :smallbiggrin:

Ionbound
2014-01-02, 04:27 PM
The problem is that unless you confine ACs to the point where people can reliably hit, they just work as some impenetrable barrier except for that rare chance of a critical hit.

If I have a 30 AC, and you have a +9 to hit, it does not matter what you do, nothing you can do will hit me unless you get lucky and roll a 20.

Believe it or not, I do understand that combat in D&D is supposed to involve a lot more than single strikes, but the mechanics are just so absurdly boring. It doesn't do a thing to increase the tension of martial combat. At all. You can look at your AC and realize that for all intents and purposes you're basically invincible against certain enemies. Tension, gone. It's also one of the many reasons why magic is so much more fun in D&D. Not only are martial characters mechanically weaker, they're also mechanically less interesting.

And because of how it scales, differences in level/CR can make one party an inconsequential threat to the other.

And? In real life, training makes a pretty large difference. Maybe not a big a difference as in D&D, but still. And difference in level and CR merely reflect how far what training you've had can get you.

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 04:33 PM
Depends on the weapon, depends on the armor. Human-wielded hand weapons certainly can go through quite a lot of types of armor. At the very least the blunt impact of the weapon will cause damage. It's only very late sorts of plate armor that would turn a sword, requiring the development of trusting swords to deal with it. Even that sort of armor won't save a person from enough blunt force trauma delivered by heavy-metal-stick. Physics is a bitch.

Fortunately, all that is handily abstracted: better armor means the attacker is less likely to either go around it or inflict trauma through it. In OD&D, a 1d6 injury means "even odds of killing a man," so there's no room to model blunt trauma, etc. - and there's no need to, at that level of abstraction.

And no, seriously, no human cuts through mail or pierces plate harness at any kind of rate that's worth modelling. (Although I'll grant that the bec-de-corbin type spike on warhammers and some polearms may punch a hole through armor some of the time, and if you hit someone on the head it may cause a serious injury.) Ask over at Real-World Weapons & Armor. If swords had pierced armor, no one would have worn it. Even as good as armor was, it was so uncomfortable that people still minimized it.


Honestly, if I were designing this realistic system melee combat would work like this;

Cool. Some similarities to RuneQuest and The Riddle of Steel, although both are more elegant, IMO, and at least as realistic. (Indeed, I think it's close to impossible to improve on TROS's balance of realism and playability, especially if you consider the options presented in the Companion.)


Believe it or not, I do understand that combat in D&D is supposed to involve a lot more than single strikes, but the mechanics are just so absurdly boring.

That's a matter of misuse. OD&D never intended for combat to be the major activity. Combat was supposed to be fast (it is! I love how short fights are in ACKS!), while exploration was the main activity. Hence the rules for torches, supplies, etc.


You can look at your AC and realize that for all intents and purposes you're basically invincible against certain enemies.

I, too, dislike D&D 3.X intensely, and I think D&D 4E would make a fun computer game but wouldn't play it at a table. :smallcool: Old editions rule.


Did they die to stupid accidents? Because personally I feel that "he got cholera and died" is a pretty boring sort of game, albeit realistic.

You're modifying/specifying the statement I quoted and replied to, now. :smallsmile: Not that I think there's anything automatically unfun about a game in which disease and infection are real dangers, either - I think that's essential for the challenge of Twilight 2013, for instance.

But yes, most of them actually died due to the same stupid accident: someone triggered an obvious trap, and most of the casualties accrued trying to save the (already dead) character from angry giant beetles.


That is to say, a system that has very little combat, or de-emphasizes it, can afford to have more brutal, and more crippling, combat outcomes.

I see it as working the other way around, sort of: in HarnMaster and The Riddle of Steel, the realistic systems discourage fighting everything. Instead, you find other solutions, or make sure you fight unfairly.


For example, a lot of GMs have NPCs be unrealistically willing to fight to death. Negotiation or victory through enemy surrender are unlikely. A lot of GMs also go to lenghts to incorporate an enemy that must be fought, for whatever reason. The players aren't given a choice to avoid the battle, leading to risks that otherwise wouldn't be there.

Another area where old D&D shines. The removal of Morale and Reaction Rolls in D&D 3E was a giant mistake, even if it was just following the de-emphasis of both at many tables.

Airk
2014-01-02, 06:43 PM
And no, seriously, no human cuts through mail or pierces plate harness at any kind of rate that's worth modelling. (Although I'll grant that the bec-de-corbin type spike on warhammers and some polearms may punch a hole through armor some of the time, and if you hit someone on the head it may cause a serious injury.) Ask over at Real-World Weapons & Armor. If swords had pierced armor, no one would have worn it. Even as good as armor was, it was so uncomfortable that people still minimized it.[/qjuote]

Why exactly are we operating under the assumption that all armor is plate mail? I think we can all agree that chainmail and leather certainly get punched through with some regularity. :P

[quote]Another area where old D&D shines. The removal of Morale and Reaction Rolls in D&D 3E was a giant mistake, even if it was just following the de-emphasis of both at many tables.

I find it hard to fault someone for removing a rule that no one ever used, you know?

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 08:13 PM
Why exactly are we operating under the assumption that all armor is plate mail? I think we can all agree that chainmail and leather certainly get punched through with some regularity. :P

The very existence of leather armor (as opposed to clothing) is such an edge case, with (obviously) few surviving examples, that I don't generally consider it.

And no, I don't agree that mail gets punched through "regularly." If it had been, it wouldn't have been as popular. There are period accounts from the Crusades of e.g. a warrior literally curling up and the other man (in a one-on-one combat) being unable to injure him with a sword because he was wearing mail, and of crusaders walking around looking like pincushions because arrows could not penetrate their mail.

Tests with good riveted mail suggest, IMO convincingly, that even sharply-tapered longswords would not break the links reliably and would not penetrate deeply enough to do serious injury.

Fighting a man in mail with a sword, you'd be striking at where he's not armored. Unfortunately, there's a dearth of illustrated manuals from the period of mail, so we only know e.g. that legs were favorite targets (less commonly armored, and not easily defended with shields)


I find it hard to fault someone for removing a rule that no one ever used, you know?

That's their mistake. These rules are some of the best and most critical elements of old-school play, and in the OSR they are certainly used; they're included in basically every retroclone, and I have found them to have a huge effect on how ACKS plays, for instance. There's currently a thread up on the Autarch forums about reaction rolls, and no one's disavowed using them yet.

I do agree that they were probably removed because 2E de-emphasized them so much; the game had become a storygame rather than a game about adventuring in a setting. The latter benefits from - even depends on - rules for morale and reactions, but the former doesn't need them. Unfortunately, you have horrible and stupid side-effects, like turning fights into endless slogs to kill every last opponent (a complaint that intensified in 4E).

erikun
2014-01-02, 08:49 PM
90% Oregon Trail, 10% Sword-Swinging Adventure
This sounds like Ryuutama (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/ryuutama-natural-fantasy-role-playing-game), and is exactly why I opted into the system. A RPG where the characters (reasonably) spend most of their time at their lives, only fighting and potentially killing when it becomes necessary, makes a lot more sense to me than one where every PC is assumed to be a wandering monster slayer.

And, to be fair, most other games handle it that way too. AD&D assumed travel times in days with short combats throughout. Games like World of Darkness and Shadowrun assume large amounts of downtime between adventures.


Another example of "realism" is the Ironclaw setting. (Again, realism in a low-fantasy RPG with magic and, more importantly, animal-people. Context, folks. It's relative.) Combat is very de-emphasized, and many classes (scholars, aristocrats, various peasants) have virtually no combat skill whatsoever. Combat itself can be extremely brutal - overkill rules can turn a character into maimed giblets, and his allies into terrified, quivering heaps. Spells are less D&D wizard-y and more elaborate ritual-y. Clergy are more organized and regulated, with high-level ordination bringing with it social benefits such as authority. Literacy is extremely rare and valuable.
The Ironclaw setting is very interesting, what with a lot races with distinct religions and politics and history. I don't think it's necessarily the best setting with it all, but it's better than a lot of others.

I'm not impressed by the Ironclaw system, though. It's far too easy to end up with 4dX in a particular skill, which weighs contests too far in your favor. (As in: "I automatically win, let's just roll to see by how much.") A lot of parts in the system also behave rather unusually, as well.

CombatOwl
2014-01-02, 10:38 PM
And no, seriously, no human cuts through mail or pierces plate harness at any kind of rate that's worth modelling.

Plate? Yes. Mail? No. Polearms go through it, as do a variety of piercing weapons (the efficacy of which depends on the type of mail). It's still only partial protection against a sword, since a sword is still a heavy metal stick even if the blade can't cut through the armor. It is relatively minor protection against impact weapons. Plate is somewhat better, but it's still not complete protection against blunt trauma. More to the point, how well it protects depends greatly on the manner of its construction and the material its made from. Poorly made steel, for example, is quite breakable.

I mean, it's not like everyone in such a game ought to be running around in late medieval plate armor. That would be a bit like running a world war 2 game where every enemy is a tank and your players are infantry.


(Although I'll grant that the bec-de-corbin type spike on warhammers and some polearms may punch a hole through armor some of the time, and if you hit someone on the head it may cause a serious injury.) Ask over at Real-World Weapons & Armor. If swords had pierced armor, no one would have worn it.

... Why do soldiers on today's battlefield wear bullet-resistant armor? It's not perfect, even if it can stop quite a variety of rounds being fired at it. Medieval armor was in largely the same boat. There are types of armor that provide very good protection, but many types that provide almost none. It's why armor evolved over time. Weapons and tactics arose to deal with the armors of the day. The answer to the question "can a human-wielded weapon go through such armor," almost certainly depends on the time period, the type of armor, who made it, the quality of the materials involved, what sort of weapon is being used, and what we mean by "go through it." Stopping swords from cutting people was something armor did. But that didn't stop swords from killing people, by any means. And it also didn't mean that every sword fight devolved into attempts by one to pierce through the other person's joints or whatnot.

It's not even about what swords go through. Even if the blade never touches skin, it's still a several-pound metal stick that can be used for delivering blunt force. There are plenty of types of swords that were mainly used as glorified clubs that could occasionally get stabbed through something. They were expensive to make, and not altogether a better choice than some variety of heavy weight on a stick depending on the era and what the sword was made from.

There's entire styles of fighting that rely on using the hilt as a club--either with the pommel or the crossguard. One of those guards can reduce the surface area of the sword's swing to an inch or so. Easily enough to punch through armor given the weight and size of the swords involved. A sword wielded in such a way can deliver force not far from a bec-de-corbin or something along those lines. Again, armor kind of loses that fight. Just not to cutting weapons.

Cutting through armor is, as you say, quite difficult. But that's why there were so many alternatives devised.


Even as good as armor was, it was so uncomfortable that people still minimized it.

It was minimized in most cases because equipping folks with the best armor money could afford would have eliminated the profit in warfare.


Another area where old D&D shines. The removal of Morale and Reaction Rolls in D&D 3E was a giant mistake, even if it was just following the de-emphasis of both at many tables.

Meh, every time I rolled for morale, the enemies aced it like a boss. One on six, with everything in the PCs favor? Roll for morale. Result: "I got this!"

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 10:59 PM
Meh, every time I rolled for morale, the enemies aced it like a boss. One on six, with everything in the PCs favor? Roll for morale. Result: "I got this!"

How odd! Did you consider fixing the system so that it makes sense? AD&D 2E had a list of modifiers (a half-page table) that made it very unlikely that, e.g., goblins who were outnumbered and facing magic-users would stand their ground. (Like, 25% odds or something, and they'd be making multiple morale rolls.)

Also, check out something like Battle of Nations. Questionable-quality repro armor (although miles better than SCA or LARPer stuff, of course), heavy two-handed weapons, quite unrestrained use of force, and nobody gets killed or seriously wounded. (Injuries do happen, of course.) Blunt force just doesn't blow through armor.

Really, how many period sources (that aren't Norse Sagas, where the impossible is standard) can you find for people just cleaving or bashing through mail or plate?

The way to kill someone in harnischfechten is leverage, grappling, and tripping, then applying very fine control to your sword-point or a dagger to jam it where there is no armor. Mordhau was not some fight-ending blow, it was an unusual, probably rare technique to hopefully gain a temporary advantage. (And describing it as a "style" is pretty excessive!) You might stagger your opponent with the blow, and that might let you get them in a bind or on the ground so you could wound or kill them.


There are plenty of types of swords that were mainly used as glorified clubs that could occasionally get stabbed through something.

Yeah, no. :smallconfused:

Airk
2014-01-03, 09:15 AM
Really, how many period sources (that aren't Norse Sagas, where the impossible is standard) can you find for people just cleaving or bashing through mail or plate?


Did the Norse even HAVE plate mail? :P

CombatOwl
2014-01-03, 10:14 AM
How odd! Did you consider fixing the system so that it makes sense? AD&D 2E had a list of modifiers (a half-page table) that made it very unlikely that, e.g., goblins who were outnumbered and facing magic-users would stand their ground. (Like, 25% odds or something, and they'd be making multiple morale rolls.)

No, the running joke was too much fun. It was uncanny.


Also, check out something like Battle of Nations. Questionable-quality repro armor (although miles better than SCA or LARPer stuff, of course), heavy two-handed weapons, quite unrestrained use of force, and nobody gets killed or seriously wounded. (Injuries do happen, of course.) Blunt force just doesn't blow through armor.

If people aren't getting knocked unconscious regularly, they're not actually trying. That's the point. If you hammer armor, the force still travels through the armor. If you hammer them in the helmet, that force still travels through to the skull. Same reason people get concussed in helmets. Stopping a cut is the easy part. Lots of stuff can do that. Stopping percussive blows? No, not so easy. Very little can do that well, and what does do that was too expensive for most people to use.


Really, how many period sources (that aren't Norse Sagas, where the impossible is standard) can you find for people just cleaving or bashing through mail or plate?

Through mail? Anything that drives sufficient force on a tip--and humans can do that with hand weapons--will break links on old medieval mail. Of course, if you're delivering that much force, you could just knock them over and beat them till they're dead with less trouble.


The way to kill someone in harnischfechten is leverage, grappling, and tripping, then applying very fine control to your sword-point or a dagger to jam it where there is no armor. Mordhau was not some fight-ending blow, it was an unusual, probably rare technique to hopefully gain a temporary advantage.

It was probably used in the same way people used other percussive weapons in a fight--to knock people the **** out. Even in a helmet, you're going down from two or three strong blows to the head with that. If you deliver it strongly enough, and the plate isn't top-grade stuff, it'll even break the armor. Early steel was pretty easy to break by hand, and people almost certainly did use it because getting good steel was expensive even compared to the price of plate generally.


(And describing it as a "style" is pretty excessive!)

They had manuals for how to do it, how else would you describe it?


You might stagger your opponent with the blow,

At the very least.


and that might let you get them in a bind or on the ground so you could wound or kill them.

The only reason these blows aren't punching holes through armor is because a person standing on their feet will get knocked over long before enough force is delivered to break through the armor. A blow that would have enough force to punch through armor will just shove people around because it will overcome their inertia. A person on their feet. A person on their back? Certainly a human-wielded weapon can, with the right leverage, break through that armor, or at the very least kill whoever is inside with percussive force. True, it would be easier to simply stab such an enemy through a gap in the armor--which is why that was the preferred method. But it's quite possible to beat through it when the armor has nowhere to go. Human blows certainly can produce enough force to drive a spike or small hammer head through armor. But unless it is braced against something (say, the ground) they will simply move whatever they're hitting instead.

People don't get grievously injured regularly in these competitions because people aren't actually trying to do it. It's not about how much force you can deliver--you can deliver plenty enough to do the task--it's about physics. That person only has so much mass. If you deliver enough force to overcome their inertia, they're going to move--rather than the blow breaking the armor. But against the ground? Well, the blow will move them, but the ground will try to move them in return, and that blow that would have just knocked that person flat will instead punch through armor or damage soft tissue depending on the construction of the armor.

I mean, are you going to say that human beings simply cannot generate enough force with a weapon to hammer a blow through between 1 and 2 mm of tempered steel? Certainly untrue.

Mail fairs even worse, because it does comparatively little to protect against the impact (it can spread the blow over a larger surface area, which helps, but isn't even close to how much plate spreads force).


Yeah, no. :smallconfused:

You're referencing one such maneuver that used a sword as a club (or a "short polearm" if you'd prefer). Any time you're using the force of the movement of the sword rather than an edge, it's being used as a club.

I mean, pretty much all hand weapons boil down to levers, inclined planes, and combinations of the two. If it's just the lever part, it's a club. If it's just the inclined plane part, it's a blade. If it's some combination of the two, people call them swords, polearms, etc. If it's both a lever and an inclined plane, it can (and usually was) used for both purposes.


Did the Norse even HAVE plate mail? :P

Plate wasn't really a huge factor in medieval warfare until the 15th century or so. And by then it was already fairly obsolete given the spread of crossbows and emerging use of gunpowder. It was mainly developed as a "well, this is the best we can do" reaction to the mail-penetrating weapons of the day (spiked polearms, mounted cavalry charges, crossbows, etc). Single-piece plate armors were available earlier than that, especially for mounted combatants, but it wasn't really an important consideration in medieval warfare until roughly that time frame. It was definitely a late middle ages thing. As an aside, plate armor was developed far earlier than that, but the technology and industrial base required to produce it was lost after the fall of the roman empire.

So to answer your question; the norse had it about the time that everyone else did.

Before that there was mail. It worked okay, but wasn't nearly as tough as some folks portray it, mainly because most of it was made from some fairly poor steel, and didn't have sufficient backing in practice to deal with impacts from leveraged weaponry and swords designed for piercing.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2014-01-03, 10:55 AM
Yeah, no. :smallconfused:

He's actually right.

Take your average 2-handed European Broadsword, for example. Approximately 2.5 pounds of metal, swung with a lot of force.

Yes, you'd love it if you lop of your foe's head but, frankly, it doesn't really matter. 2.5lbs of steel with a two-handed swing behind it can easily be fatal even if it doesn't cut through skin: if you clonk a helmet-wearing knight upside the head with that you might kill him just from the blunt force trauma to his skull. Which makes it, in some regards, much like a glorified club: it has the edge (pardon the pun) of having some incredibly nasty side effects if it hits exposed skin, but even if all it does is impact someone's armor it's going to seriously ruin their day.

Knaight
2014-01-03, 11:51 AM
That's their mistake. These rules are some of the best and most critical elements of old-school play, and in the OSR they are certainly used; they're included in basically every retroclone, and I have found them to have a huge effect on how ACKS plays, for instance. There's currently a thread up on the Autarch forums about reaction rolls, and no one's disavowed using them yet.

I do agree that they were probably removed because 2E de-emphasized them so much; the game had become a storygame rather than a game about adventuring in a setting. The latter benefits from - even depends on - rules for morale and reactions, but the former doesn't need them. Unfortunately, you have horrible and stupid side-effects, like turning fights into endless slogs to kill every last opponent (a complaint that intensified in 4E).

I wouldn't consider that a horrible and stupid side-effects. Nowhere does it say that enemies have to fight to the death, it merely took a random element and put it in the hands of the GM. Said GM should be perfectly capable of realizing that enemies will run under certain circumstances. If they decide that a group continues to fight despite two thirds of them being wiped out in the opening round of their ambush, instead of realizing that they bit off more than they could chew and either surrendering or beating feet, that's the GM's problem.

With that said, a few paragraphs of advice regarding what circumstances most will run in, what circumstances you'll actually see fights to the death (e.g. fanatics perfectly willing to martyr themselves, those loaded up on the fantasy equivalent of PCP, cornered enemies, those who think that the party will just shoot them in the back as they run, etc.), and what circumstances they won't run.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-04, 12:33 AM
These topics are fun. Except when they are not.



Answering the OP:
I heard good things about Harnmaster and Twilight 2020--I think there was another one in the guns category that did an even better job than Twilight 2020... Ace-something?

While some have mentioned Riddle of Steel, I wouldn't say it is a good representation of combat. It does better than most. I have not had a chance to compare it to Harnmaster closely.



Penetration of armour...
remember that in places where swords were in common use as primary weapons instead of side-arms it was also common for several unarmoured regions to present themselves.

Mail was an effective armour but not a perfect one. One case speaks of a man who by lances was struck from opposite sides, the strikes so square and true that all the force was delivered and he did not move this way nor that. He was alive and well, his armour unpenetrated. As there are cases of arrows bouncing ineffectively from mail, there are cases of arrows very effectively piercing it. From the Crusades it was about 50-50 whether an arrow would penetrate depending on the conditions and the kind of mail. I can say in its favour that the injuries are less severe for the mail, though still easily could incapacitate.

Plate armour is a ridiculous armour which makes you a flipping human tank, which while uncomfortable is very wearable and not hard to move in making it extremely good for battlefield application of the time. For a ridiculous armour, you need ridiculous weapons. Poleaxes, bec de corbin, even equivalents to sledgehammers were used against plate harness (the latter case: Mainly by archers on unhorsed knights, the same tools used for hammering tent pegs). You need a square blow with a weapon more unwieldy than others, but it is highly effective when it works (the enemy won't oblige you).

I too will mention that while leather armour's presence in Europe was small and at times questionable, it saw extensive use in Asia.



Opinions on the matter of realistic RPGs...
it's true that RPGs do not need to pursue this. I would like to have one RPG that does it well enough to satisfy me.