Quote from: droogIt doesn't have to be fine-grained – cf. Risus. But in any case, I'm not saying all games ought to be this way. If you like games that model combat in detail and everything else in less detail, that's cool and you should play those games. I'm just saying that, historically, games  that do this have been in the majority, and games that model other options in the same detail have been rare.

Word.  And hey, I like RISUS, so it's all good.  

Quote from: RPGPunditDo you know that Dulce De Leche is a Uruguayan invention?

RPGPundit

Kudos to Uruguay. It's a wonderful dessert

Don't jump too soon, Imperator. At least five different Latin American countries lay claim to dulce de leche. That's why I asked for a source. I'm curious about whether he's seen something I haven't, and wouldn't be averse to having that minor little mystery cleared up. Most places I've seen say that Argentina's claim seems to be the most reliable.

I thought it was the French that made it first centuries earlier, and SA just used a spanish name for it?

It'd be like someone in NA claiming to have invented yoghourt because nobody else spells it that way.

Chiming in way too late here, but isn't this an argument that died out after countless iterations almost a decade ago?  Pundit, I realise that you're interested in stirring up activity on the board with controversy, but you need some fresh material.  What's next?  Arguing lead minis vs. pewter?

!i!

Quote from: John MorrowI find that statement incredibly ironic coming from someone with the screen name "King of Old School".

Dude, I'm all about the irony.

But seriously, liking old-school dungeoncrawling and high adventure doesn't mean that you can't like something like investigation-centred Call of Cthulhu or some weird-ass Over the Edge once in a while too.  I like to think that "old school" doesn't have to mean monotonous or robotic or, god forbid, grognardy.

KoOS

Quote from: James McMurrayDon't jump too soon, Imperator. At least five different Latin American countries lay claim to dulce de leche. That's why I asked for a source. I'm curious about whether he's seen something I haven't, and wouldn't be averse to having that minor little mystery cleared up. Most places I've seen say that Argentina's claim seems to be the most reliable.

The Uruguayan Answer: Argentina loves to rob other country's inventions. They also claim to have invented Tango, when in fact both Gardel (the most famous tango musician) and the Cumparsita (the world's most famous tango, the song everyone thinks of when they imagine "tango") were from Uruguay.

The more straightforward answer: Dulce de Leche is an invention of the river plate region, and Uruguay and Argentina probably have an equal claim to it.

RPGPundit

Cool. I guess the mystery continues.

Of course, when I first got curious I assumed it was Mexican.

Quote from: droogJohn, I'm afraid I can't talk to you. For every line I write you write a page. I don't want to get locked into another ten-page discussion on what I mean and what you mean, so let's just forget it.

Hes right though - thinking people like combat because there are rules for it is backwards - people write lots of rules for combat because they like it.

Quote from: Erik BoielleHes right though - thinking people like combat because there are rules for it is backwards - people write lots of rules for combat because they like it.

Yes, but that's not what I said. What I said was that there was a historical trend towards games with detailed combat systems because of the wargaming ancestry

Then it becomes kind of circular. Wargamers (including me – I came from hex-grid wargames) are attracted. New people who enjoy fantasy combat are attracted. These people then write more games, which concentrate on combat, because they enjoy it and because of the weight of tradition.

Somewhere around Greg Costikyan's games, there's an idea that combat is only one of many activities that can be modelled mechanically. From there you see increasing experimentation with this idea.

It seems to me there are two routes designers have gone here: the Risus/HQ/DitV route, where all activities are treated in the same way, or the BW route, where detailed subsystems are created for particular activities that will be important in that game (a development of the combat system idea).

I think DitV is a particularly clever implementation of the first method, because of the way it pushes you towards violence without ever making it absolutely necessary. Universal mechanics can have personality.

Personally, I'd like to see the discussion get past "Combat good" or "Combat bad" and into the nuances of what the different approaches can give us. Neither can be objectively better, because it depends on what you want to do.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadWhen did we get from "[not] only about combat" to "non-violence oriented fantasy"? There is a difference.

Personally, my minimum is one combat per game. I find my players get itchy if they don't get that much. But I find that the game has good enough skill support to handle investigation and infiltration style games, and don't feel a lot of need for personality mechanics and similar nonsense.

Quite, I said that people were wrong in thinking D&D was only about combat, which it isn't.  I didn't say that combat isn't a big part of it.

When I play D&D, which I expect to be doing again in around a couple of weeks, my system of preference is Cyclopedia.  I don't actually like 3.5 and really don't like AD&D, in each case for reasons irrelevant to this thread.  Cyclopedia I think is a pretty good game.

And if I play D&D I expect an action orientated game, I expect combats, but I would not be happy if the game was just fighting and kicking in doors and in my experience generally it isn't.

That said, there are tons of good games without combat systems, to take a tangential post of Pundit's on.  A lack of a combat system in no way implies a lack of combat, it may just be that the game uses the same rules for combat as other stuff.  I have mixed feelings on Heroquest, but I've played it a bit now and each time there have been combats, using the same rules as it has for everything else.  Indeed, the absence of specific combat rules actually allows for greater creativity in tactics at times, which can be cool.

Quote from: droogIt doesn't have to be fine-grained – cf. Risus. But in any case, I'm not saying all games ought to be this way. If you like games that model combat in detail and everything else in less detail, that's cool and you should play those games. I'm just saying that, historically, games  that do this have been in the majority, and games that model other options in the same detail have been rare.

Risus is a very interesting case.  Most unified mechanic systems essentially turn every mechanic into what looks to me like a skill check.  Risus comes at from a different angle, where every important skill check can be handled exactly like a combat.

That's why Risus works for me and so many games with universal mechanics don't.

Well I tend to avoid it when possible. It probably is because I don't like violence or pretending to inflict violence on others, which is why most of my characters are pacifists (or are mostly all talk, or are cowards or otherwise not likely to murder anything). It could also be because I've been subjected to violence before and I don't really enjoy fantasizing about it. Though I don't mind video game violence because of its total lack of reality, somehow when I game my imagination pulls out all the stops.

Its not that I find it boring, its more that it reminds me of a time that I don't ever want to relive, and I have issues with emotionally.

Though for some reason I do have a yearning to play a murderous anti-hero character who brutally strangles people.

I don't think sophistication has anything to do with why I tend to avoid combat when I play, and only include it when I run because I know people expect it, even then I tend to modify things so that the characters have chances to shine when the combat itself is de-emphasized.

Also what is a BNG?

A Biter Non-Gamer (BNG) is a person who no longer games in a group, because every campaign they were ever in was a disaster, and every group imploded - naturally, they conclude that this means that gamers are all fucked in the head, and "gaming is broken." Despite not gaming, they retain a strong interest in it. Unsuccessful at the practical side of gaming, they turn to the theoretical, and so they spend a lot of time online discussing rpgs, and often are attracted to rpg theory. In abstraction Bitter Non-Gamers find absolution for their misanthropy.

This person is often found at The Forge in large numbers, or in rpg.net in small numbers (about 1 or 2%, according to a poll I posted once). They don't want to game, but are still posting on an rpg forum. They seem like more than 1 or 2% because they're very talkative. After all, they have no campaign to plan for, do they?