Running the Real World as a D20 system

[atemu1234]

As was noted in a different post, I'm making a D20 Aincrad for a Sword Art Online D20 setting. However, I encountered one problem- how the hell would the real world work? Is D20 system even capable of making itself work in a literal world? Tips please.

[ArqArturo]

D20 Modern, sans magic.

[RSSwizard]

The answer is no.

You will have to use a different system to mirror the real world effectively, though each system has its own flaws, and for it to be a fun game it generally cant be too lethal (like GURPS is).

D&D was designed thematically for the medieval fantasy world that it is based on. It never had multi-genre support in mind. Every attempt to create altered genres for it (like space, future, modern) has been a dirty nasty hack to jury rig it to work, which results in other problems alongside the ones that the game originally comes with.

I think at least one of the main limitations with it is Hit Points, which are completely unrealistic, as well as the ways in which damage is determined (ie, rolling a bunch of dice). This is one of the seeds, if not the one, which breaks the rest of the system. Because a mind-bending amount of special cases have to be engineered to get the amounts to match up. And gauging effectiveness or the amount of force that something has based on its damage or its Strength Score is arbitrary.

(as a sidenote the Armor Class system is also wildly inaccurate, it assumes that everyone uses longswords and has relatively humanlike levels of strength. Last time I checked one of the weapons that brought knights down to the commoner's level was the Pick and Mace, since they penetrate armor. And thats just speaking of primitive weapons, not modern ones. Even the Star Wars fix to give DR isn't entirely accurate, since weapons can be streamlined for penetration and not damage.)

As a result they end up deciding what they want something to do, deciding how they want to balance it between the characters' capabilities, then they give it stats and rules.

For the Individual Case that they come up with that may work just great. But it reminds me of the % Skill chances from AD&D, which assume all challenges that impose a roll are the same. Yep lets do Bend Bars Lift Gates against a Portcullis. Same chance to lift a dead gargantuin red dragon corpse off of you.

Okay maybe its not so extreme, but by doing it this way rather than setting up a proper system to begin with which all of these other things can be accomodated in, it produces alot of eerie irregularities.

You get something like a Level 10 Fighter who can get shot by a .50cal Sniper Rifle SIX times before he even risks death (because his HP are likely somewhere around 90 and 2d12 only averages to about 13 points per shot). But in real life even being clipped by it will do an unreal amount of physical harm to the human body, and a full-on hit will blow you in half (and that has nothing to do with your training).

In real life they are used routinely to kill Elephants, and the inuit people used one to kill a whale in a tribal whale hunt some years ago.

There are few if any rulebooks that cover things like modern/futuristic equipment, and if you're going to use the d20 modern ones then there are some mechanics that have to be borrowed from it to preserve their effectiveness.

A friend of mine said his uncle didn't want to play D&D. When he asked why, the former marine veteran from iraq mentioned something about frag grenades.

If a Frag Grenade does 4d6 thats fine for the wide field of shrapnel it sprays around. But dont you think being Up Close And Personal with it is not just going to deny you a reflex save, its also going to stack up the damage too. Even if you Doubled it to 8d6 it still wouldn't be enough.

(EDIT - - - But I dont care what the rules say, if you stack up a crate of 100 Hand Grenades and rig them to all go off at once, it is NOT going to do 400d6 damage. No my son . . . a crate of 100 Hand Grenades is not going to cause 1400 damage . . . it is not going to bring down the Shields of a Super Star Destroyer which only has 800 shield points . . . it doesn't even constitute the firepower that a single Turbolaser blast has. And even if you use the +Explosives rules from d20 modern its still nowhere near as much.)


Or you get some situation like how a Fireball spell at its highest can only melt metals with low melting points, and specifically says it detonates with a low roar with little percussion, yet it can still inflict damage against a Main Battle Tank (which doesn't have a low melting point and requires horrendous levels of concussion force to damage it, so much so that most anti-tank weapons including the weapons the tanks themselves use only focus on poking a hole in the side of the crew cabin so they can be neutralized).

Conclusion: D&D works just fine* as it is for Vanilla D&D. Anything beyond that and you're going to have to do a major amount of rules hacking to make it work coherently.

[Zman]

I would suggest using a Wound/Vitality Point system where NPC classes don't receive Vitality points, only Heroic classed individual do.

That way you can have a Lvl 10 master smith(Expert) who has a ton of skills but still does to one good blow in combat, and a hero who may be less trained against a better trained so,diet, but due to vitality points survives.


That is my first suggestion.

[Chronos]

Quoth RSSwizard:

I think at least one of the main limitations with it is Hit Points, which are completely unrealistic,...
They're only unrealistic if you introduce some silly houserule about how they really just represent morale and getting tired. But this business about badasses actually being able to survive real bodily punishment that would kill normal people many times over? That's actually the way that the real world really does work. There have been people in our world who have survived sniper rifle shots directly to the head, or getting all of the skin shredded off of their back by bears, or falling from thousands of feet.

[cosmonuts]

They're only unrealistic if you introduce some silly houserule about how they really just represent morale and getting tired. But this business about badasses actually being able to survive real bodily punishment that would kill normal people many times over? That's actually the way that the real world really does work. There have been people in our world who have survived sniper rifle shots directly to the head, or getting all of the skin shredded off of their back by bears, or falling from thousands of feet.

On the other hand, a special forces fellow will take a sniper bullet to the head same as a regular soldier would. That is, it will kill them both.

I've never heard of anyone surviving sniper shots to the head, though. A bullet in a modern rifle would mush up the insides. Maybe a small caliber bullet.

[Zman]

They're only unrealistic if you introduce some silly houserule about how they really just represent morale and getting tired. But this business about badasses actually being able to survive real bodily punishment that would kill normal people many times over? That's actually the way that the real world really does work. There have been people in our world who have survived sniper rifle shots directly to the head, or getting all of the skin shredded off of their back by bears, or falling from thousands of feet.

His really is a poor example. No one could reliable take a sniper rifle shot to the head, in fact no one could take a direct hit. And according to your logic, that same personae would reliably survive being stabbed repeatedly in the chest.

[Zweisteine]

A sniper shot to the brain? No. To the rest of the head? Possible.

My word on the HP system, which is an idea I read somewhere once: For a high-level character, taking 20 damage isn't taking anime-style wounds like it might be for a commoner. It gives you a wound more equivalent to what 3 or 4 might to a lower-level character. It's not that you can survive larger wounds, it's that you are more resistant to wounds in the first place.
Not quite perfect, but it makes some sense. With a little touching up, this theory works fine.

As for running the real world? That's easy. Just use d20 modern, without magic, and with physics. Writing the rules for physics isn't easy, though. It will effect a lot of the other rules quite heavily.

[Chronos]

Quoth Zman:

His really is a poor example. No one could reliable take a sniper rifle shot to the head, in fact no one could take a direct hit.
I'm not going to be the one to tell him that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4).

[malonkey1]

@RSSwizard: As to your offhand mention of GURPS, I have to say that while the basic rules are very lethal, they provide plenty of rules to reduce lethality, most notably the cinematic ruleset. GURPS is to other systems what Phonebloks is to an iPhone: the iPhone is more popular and much easier to use out of the box, but the Phonebloks is much more customizable so that you can get the exact phone you want, from a gritty, cyberpunk phone to a goofy medieval fantasy parody phone and I think I lost the thread of this comparison. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Metaphorgotten)

[Zman]

I'm not going to be the one to tell him that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4).

He was shot in the cheek and jaw. Thank you for supplying evidence proving our point.

Are you suggesting that he somehow could survive some other near fatal wound easier, say a stab wound to the chest better than the average?

Now, if you told me that it was his vitality points which turned a fatal wound for anyone else into a near fatal wound, that makes much more sense than he was just that much tougher.

[malonkey1]

I fluff hit points as a combination of energy and dumb luck. As a fight drags on, the chances of dying increase, as you get more tired, and your luck starts to run out.