[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Yeah, Twig. He has been writing that combat is the most important thing. Look.

Context, A. Its important. Not how I qualified "in terms of screen time". Not what that was in response to. Read for context, or you're going to misinterpet me, and as far as that goes, lots of other people.

When he says that it doesn't work for most people and that game companies that ignore that are not serving the end users, he is strongly implying it.

I'm doing no such thing.

Even the "most people" line is inaccurate. Most people don't play RPGs. Among gamers, "most people" translates to a fairly spefic age group of teen to college age males, most of whom are playing D&D.

Context. Context. Context. We're not talking about non-gamers here.

But they are not the only people who game. One reason why women are sort of rare in this hobby is because most of the groups they see are just doing the fighting thing.

Funny, since White Wolf, which has been commonly credited as the company that brought more women into the hobby has pretty much as much emphasis on combat as anyone else. The only difference is the context in which it occurs.

There are whole communities of RPGing where people do other things though. RQ was one of them.

Bluntly, nonsense. Most RQ games I ever saw, including those of the designer, spent just as much time on combat as D&D. The only differences were twofold: The combat felt more authentic, and the support for non-combat was more consistent (you didn't have the bizarreness of early D&D that people were lockstepped into class roles and doing something outside your class role was either forbidden or simply not addressed.

As an aside, somehow you've interpeted "combat is important in the vast majority of RPG groups" as "nothing else matters". This is an incredibly bizarre reading of anything I've said.

How so? If there is nothing wrong with D&D them what is there to be insulted about? If balanced fights are so important, then D&D is THE system to go to, since that is a major desgin concept of the game. And combat has always been the priamry focus of the game too. Not much chance of WotC changing that anytime soon, either.

This is the fallacy of the excluded middle. Its not either/or; somewhat balanced combat is an important element; that doesn't make it the only thing that matters though.

Really, what's the point of playing a game like RQ/BRP? It takes a completely different approach. Just look a Call of Cthulhu. You don't think that combat is

The point is that it permits a variety of character designs that aren't lockstepped into one mold, that the combat has more direct engagement, and that character growth is freeform including going into areas you didn't start in, combat or non. Support for non-combat options _is_ important. Its just equally important that it handle combat decently, because that's what most people are going to be dealing with in most games frequently.

a primary factor in that RPG? Avoiding combat is more the point. CoC is also about the most popular RPG in the horror genre, too.

CoC is an exception that proves (that is to say, tests) the rule. You're correct that combat is deemphasized there, because it is in the sourceworks. That said, the "battle the cultists" meme isn't exactly uncommon in CoC scenarios.

However, that's because pure horror is not, in the end, an adventure fiction genre (any more than pure detective stories are); I also don't have much evidence that its all that popular as a genre in general in gaming for just that reason. It wouldn't suprise me that CoC is the most popular among those, but that's partly because its a small pool in the first place, but in that context CoC is pretty pure quill.

But why take all the "baggage" that goes along with RQ, BRP or whatever if combat is the priamry goal? You'll get a lot more of it in d20 games.

But not better. As I said, you're making the error of assuming that only one element is relevant. D&D has (at least at lower to mid levels) relatively balanced combat. Its also, barring use of tactics fed off feat chains, boring. That's partly a price of its relative simplicity. Its also not very authentic feeling; it tries so hard to make sure that the overall structure of fights fit a certain high-heroic mold that it makes things very vague. None of this is attractive if you want combat to actually be _interesting_. For that you have to go to something like Hero, GURPS or RQ.

ead my post. I never made a quality judgment about D&D, or claimed that one system was better than another. No, What I'm saying is, if he believes fighting to bo so improtant to a RPG, then why isn't he playing a game that is designed to support that view?

I _do_ happen to consider RQ to support that. In fact I consider it to on the whole do a better job than D&D unless you're specifically trying for a high heroic game.

Lots of fighting in BRp/RQ is counterproductive. One big reason why RQ wan't as combat fouced as D&D is that the critical hits will wipe out any group fairly quickly. If the game sessions were near constant combat, I doubt any group would last a month or two.

I saw extended campaigns run here a two decades ago that had easily as much combat as most D&D games that had proceeded them. Most of those campaigns lasted for years. Once significant protective and healing magic becomes present, as it does by moderate level of experience, even crits aren't an automatic kill (in fact, the hit location system ensures that; half the rolled locations are in non-lethal locations. No one likes getting an arm sliced off, it it still leaves you with a character, and there's things you can do about it after the fact). In games with heavy runic focus, its not that hard for someone to pull a Divine Intervention out if worst comes to worse, and as of RQ there was an (albiet expensive) Resurrection divine spell (possibly before too; its just been too long for me to remember). There's nothing about RQ that makes a fair bit of combat undoable, and I can speak firmly on this because I've seen plenty of games that did so.

So what I really want to know is, just what is it that Nighshade likes about RQ/BRP? What are his reasons for preferring it over a more combat oriented game?

Well, for starters, I don't see it as a "less combat oriented game". I see no sign that BRP people (outside the aforementioned CoC players) run less combat oriented games than anyone else. Certainly Steve Perrin ran as much combat in his last SPQR game as in any of his other games, and I don't recall any of the ones he ran back in the RQ1 days when I occasionally played with him differing from this. All it is that combat is more serious, requires more attention, and somewhat more has serious consequences. But that's true in a lot of combat oriented games; they aren't all D20.

Past that, I've explained it above as best I can.

As for being rude and impolite. I've found many of his statements to be condescending ("his 30s years of experience. So what? Virtually all BRP fans

Sigh. As I explained at the time, but apparently you chose to ignore, I simply wanted to forstall any attempts (as I've seen people do in this style of discussion before) to claim I "just haven't seen enough". I have. I wanted to make that clear up front. You really need to lose the chip here.

are old fogies who have games since the 70s or 80s. That doesn't make his experience any less anecdotal. Time is simply not enough informational to go on. I've know people who have games for as many years. Some are good, some still don't know what dice to roll half the time. I've also known people who have been driving for 30 years, but aren't any better at it than people who haven't) and rude (he doesn't just not respond, he "Won't bother to").

At a certain point, responding is pointless, because the argument is doing nothing but circling. In other cases, someone else has made the statements I'd make (as Twig did earlier) better than I would, so what's the point?

I'll be really blunt here: I've not seen any sign here you want to actually engage with my argument. What I've seen is you taking offense at my position, taking offense at being called on essentially suggesting that those who don't share yours are immature, and ignoring points (such as my pointing out the limits of participation of multiple characters in many non-combat endevors) when you didn't seem to have, or at least want, to respond to them.

At that point, what's the point in my continuing to talk to you? The only reason I responded to this one was you (whether deliberately or not) seem to be misrepresenting my position in some areas.

Basically, if you're unwilling to assume my tastes are legitimate and I've come by my opinion that they're the common one, and with reason legitimately, then what's the use of talking to you about it? Anything else turns into essentially an exercise in trying to convince someone on the Net you're not a liar, and that's a loser's game.