Heh, I love how some games, in the name of realism, have stacks and stacks of exceedingly complex rules that successfully reduce a round of combat to an unmanageable mess of calculations that take forever to sort out and a slide rule to compute. They then trumpet this as a success, being realistic when, in fact, it in no way resembles the confused reality of combat. In fact, in some ways it's less realistic, because the amount of real time required to model a very short period of game time removes any element of spontenaeity and chaos from the mix.
D&D and Storyteller don't have unrealistic combat rules because the rules aren't complex enough. They don't have realistic combat rules because they don't want to model such things. I don't think a rules-light or even rules-moderate game is going to have the resolution to model the difference between a .38 and .50 round. However, I don't think that having that resolution necessarily makes a game more realistic - just more complex.
You may now proceed to tell me not only that I'm wrong, but that I'm so wrong I should be put down for the good of mankind.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteWell, to make something realistic usually means you have to make it complex. Why? Well as an example lets look at combat with guns, this involves ballistics, which is physics, which is just applied math. So if you want to accurately simulate combat involving balistic weapons you will have to include math, and thus it becomes complex. As to why you would want to go through the hassle of accurately simulating something this complex in a game I can't say. Unless you are like me and find some bizzare pleasure in knowing exactly how your bullet travels through the body of you opponent, etc.
So yes, I'd say you need complex mechanics to make a system fully realistic, but there are several corners you can cut without skimping too much on the realism issue, which can bring the complexity down several notches, almost into rules-light territory. (Unknown Armies does a good job of this.) But neither D&D nor Storyteller does this. D&D for obvious reasons, it's not meant to realistic in any concievable way, and it's not even trying to. Storyteller though, atleast tries to be realistic, but has a coupple of failure points. The most significant being the fact that you can do the best shot in the world, hitting some poor schmuck with an AK-47 and 16 successes, only to end up doing a measly 3 damage. I'm sorry, but good hits should equal good damage.
If I'm not making much sense, it's Monday, live with it.
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thought processes as regards realism leading to complexity. Also agreed as regards D&D. However, I certainly hope Storyteller was never aiming for realism! I've always assumed that the combat rules in Storyteller were produced to give acceptable results, while not being a major consideration in the design of the game. Of course, the only evidence of this that I have is that the Storyteller rules have been revised so often, and still get tweaked with the release of every new core rulebook. (I think that if realism is the goal, you need to consider all aspects of the situations covered in detail, then work out the abstractions you are going to make, and only then write the system. As a result, they would tend to get it right first time, and in subsequent editions only have to change some of the numbers to better reflect reality. I may be wrong.)
Oh, I think I've thought of something. Storyteller has an abstracted damage system, where any injury that doesn't kill you can always eventually be totally healed (by the remaining mortal, not just the vampires/werewolves/mutant goo people). It's just not possible, by the rules as written, to sever someone's hand in combat. This pretty much precludes the system being described as realistic.
However, I have to take issue with your 16 success hit/3 damage example. In the current version of Storyteller, additional hit successes add to the damage pool, so you're most likely rolling 20 dice for damage (I forget the base damage of an AK-47, so I picked an easy number). Each die has a 10% chance of scoring -1 success, 40% chance of no success, and 50% of scoring 1 success. (Damage, like soak, has a difficulty of 6.) So, with 20 dice you can usually expect to roll 8 successes. With so many dice being rolled, the deviation from this is actually fairly small, but I'll post on statistics later.
So, yes, you can roll 3 damage in this situation, but it is a statistical anomaly, and quite a rare one at that. In real life, however, people do walk away from 'good' firearm hits with minimal actual damage. Not often, but it does happen. (Naturally, having never done the required experiments, I can't comment on the relative frequencies.) Maybe the bullet just passed straight through, and managed to miss every major organ on the way?
Just me playing Devil's advocate for the Storyteller combat system, which I accept isn't very good.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteHmm, good points on the realistic standpoint on Storyteller, I concede.
16 Successes
Yes, people walk away from 'good' firearm hits with minimal actual damage, but good in this case would be someone aiming at your head (not that I know if you can do this in Storyteller) and rolling just enough to hit. Goot shot, it hit the head, but damagewise it only scores three successes, oh well it got lodged in the cheekbone or whatever. But if you score 16 successes that should mean it goes in through the left eye, bounces around the head and comes out the right.
What I'm trying to say is that you should get some kind of feedback for rolling such an extremely good shot, which you will in most cases but you might still end up with feeble damage. (God knows I've messed up huge dicepools before.) Exalted actually have a alternate damage calculation formula, where every two or three (Can't remember) damage dice does one automatic damage.
Because, if you miss every major organ it's not a good shot ... is it?
Oh btw, rolling 16 successes is quite a statistical anomality as well. (Except in Exalted, where it's quite common.)
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteYep, rolling 16 successes to hit is a statistical anomaly. In fact, at difficulty 6, you'd require a dice pool of 40 dice to do it consistently. Quite common in Storyteller, really :-)
Called shots in Storyteller are decidedly iffy. I don't think you can attempt them, on the assumption that the system is abstracted. Then again, there is a system for trying to stake a vampire, which is very definately a called shot, so they break their own system. It's just bad.
I can't remember who it was, but when I was running D&D someone commented on wanting to make a called shot to the head, and was less than pleased when I said they couldn't, because the system doesn't support it. Storyteller is much the same (subject to the staking problem, above). Basically, I think you can have abstracted damage (Storyteller and d20), or called shots, but not both. I may be wrong.
Anyway, in your latter example, of a 16-success hit to the head, I would agree that the target was dead.