*Sigh*  Don't be a dick, Blackhand.

Take the Indiana Jones or James Bond movies.  Actual physical combat is frequent, but it's just one type of action scene, amongst chases, sneaking, stunts, seduction scenes, interrogation scenes, research/investigation scenes, etc.

Most RPGs relegate all of that to simple pass/fail skill checks ("Magical Princess Tea Party") while combat is given the lovingly detailed AD&D treatment.  It's out of synch with the genre.  It's got nothing to do with your prissy-phobia.

Excuse My Supreme Dicklyness.  It's because I'm a wargamer.

It has nothing to do with phobia.  It has to do with contempt.

Which you started with your played down dig at tactical wargaming, which is basically the reason you're even on this site.

These games are essentially tactical wargames with tacked on skill systems.  

Your statement of such there tried to play you like you were some sort of new-age intellectual-hipster Lovecraft-scholar who had traveled long exasperated miles to tell us something we didn't know and couldn't figure out on our own.  

Don't try to make it more than it is, that's where my contempt stems from.  

You might not have felt that way about your post, but I don't need some new poseur to tell me about these games and how I'm doing it wrong with my combats.

Roleplaying itself was a thing people did before these games.  A lot of people today don't realize (or refuse to acknowledge) that gaming and roleplaying were two totally different and unrelated things prior to the late 70's.  They did a lot of it at colleges under various guises, therapy and such.  

Guess what happened when some wargamers (probably under the effects of your favorite narcotics) who had attended college decided to focus on individual soldiers in their wargame?

I'm not trying to write a movie script for my players to read, I want a fun and exciting game.  Ever tried to emulate real horror in one of these games?  It's difficult, not due to the setting or even the GM, but due to the players.  Best you can get is some tension and maybe some forboding...real fear and horror are stretching your expectations a bit.

I think you must have hit a nerve, Daniel. Blackhand's douchebag has been punctured and has splattered all over the thread.

Quote from: two_fishes;492524I think you must have hit a nerve, Daniel. Blackhand's douchebag has been punctured and has splattered all over the thread.

Are you trying to say this thread wasn't flush with douchebag before I showed up?

That's fucking pretentious.

But I'm happy to see you're happy to see me.

Quote from: Blackhand;492523I'm not trying to write a movie script for my players to read, I want a fun and exciting game.

Not too far from where I'm sitting is a copy of Mayfair's DRAGONS!, which I believe to be hands down the most underappreciated supplement ever.

This sourcebook/module contains three separate mini-games: one where the players play out a sort of hidden information boardgame to see whether they beat a party of assassins hired to kill them to the next town, one where they have to navigate an obstructed river on a rickety raft while being bombarded by rocks, and one where they have to organize a town defense during a dragon attack.

Also nearby is the MX series of modules for the old TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG.  Each module contains at least one minigame used to track the results of the character's actions.  In one, there's a gameboard used to determine how close the characters are to being located and rousted by the anti-mutant forces.  In another, there's a large scale strategic game where the players have to decide where to allocate forces and how to prioritize targets in the mutants vs. Sentinels war.  In another, there's a minigame used to track the overall state of anti-mutant sentiment based on events in the campaign.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.  I haven't seen this in an official D&D product ever, nor has the idea caught in general in RPGs - having either one-off mini-games for specific scenes, or else a general set of mechanics for constructing such mini-games.

4E Skill Challenges try but fail, FATE 2.0 almost succeeds, FATE 3.0 has all the right mechanics but they're scattered across different games and have never been codified into a general set of rules.

You're all hat and no cattle, cowboy, because you're projecting your prissy-phobia somewhere it don't exist.

I'm just going to state that I have absolutely zero fucking interest in a Call of Cthulhu wargame. It's the most asinine idea I've ever heard.

Lovecraft's stories aren't free from combat but it' sure a hell of a lot too rare for me to describe his works as "pulp action" in general. I'm star\ing at the latest collection of stories that was released just last month (Eldritch Tales), and I cannot find an example of physical combat in more than 1 of the 55 stories in the volume thus far.

Quote from: daniel_ream;492528This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.  

I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about, I'm saying I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not sure how any of that's related to Cthulhu gaming.

Quote from: TristramEvans;492533I'm just going to state that I have absolutely zero fucking interest in a Call of Cthulhu wargame. It's the most asinine idea I've ever heard.

No one said anything about this.

However...that's a GREAT idea and I'm going to look into it.  

Maybe a Dreamlands thing with hordes of ghouls and nightgaunts.

War of Cthulhu!  Elder God vs Elder God!

Quote from: Blackhand;492534No one said anything about this.

However...that's a GREAT idea and I'm going to look into it.  

Maybe a Dreamlands thing with hordes of ghouls and nightgaunts.

War of Cthulhu!  Elder God vs Elder God!

Twinky vs Twinky

That's about as far from the spirit of the source material as one can get. Misewell play Pokethulhu.

Quote from: TristramEvans;492533I'm just going to state that I have absolutely zero fucking interest in a Call of Cthulhu wargame. It's the most asinine idea I've ever heard.

Lovecraft's stories aren't free from combat but it' sure a hell of a lot too rare for me to describe his works as "pulp action" in general. I'm staring at the latest collection of stories that was released just last month (Eldritch Tales), and I cannot find an example of physical combat in more than 1 of the 55 stories in the volume thus far.

Actually, I've played a two boardgames based on Lovecraft several times - notably the recent remake of Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness.  I wouldn't call them wargames exactly, and they also have damn little to do with Lovecraft's stories.  Still, I kind of liked Arkham Horror as among the better of Ameritrash boardgames.  

Quote from: daniel_ream;492503But as a general rule, RPGs still haven't broken away from the problem of being tactical wargames with tacked on skill systems.  So if a game seems to focus heavily on combat and that's not the primary focus of the source material, I tend to assume that's the reason.

On the one hand, I do very much enjoy Lovecraftian and other scenarios with little or zero violence.  However, I still disagree with the above that presumes that being a tactical wargame with skills is a problem.  It's 100% not a problem.  It is a good thing that many people - including myself - enjoy.  I wouldn't want all my RPGs to be tactical wargames, but RPGs don't have to be one or the other - they can be both, and indeed they are.

Quote from: jhkim;492549On the one hand, I do very much enjoy Lovecraftian and other scenarios with little or zero violence.  However, I still disagree with the above that presumes that being a tactical wargame with skills is a problem.  It's 100% not a problem.  It is a good thing that many people - including myself - enjoy.  I wouldn't want all my RPGs to be tactical wargames, but RPGs don't have to be one or the other - they can be both, and indeed they are.

It's kinda like those people who say D&D is all about combat, because that's what the majority of the space in the rulebook is devoted to (besides spell lists I guess). The theory being that if a game is focused on an area besides combat, the majority of rules will reflect that, which I've always thought was a bit of misnomer.

I view it as, combat's a situation where I want to have a strong , detailed system in place...the rest of the time I don't need that many rules, or rules get in the way of roleplaying. I'm not sure I agree "wargames with skill systems tacked" on is an accurate reflection of the hobby as a whole, but it's not something I specifically object to.

Quote from: TristramEvans;492546Twinky vs Twinky

That's about as far from the spirit of the source material as one can get. Misewell play Pokethulhu.

You can say that about everything that ever made it into the form of a game.

Quote from: TristramEvans;492555It's kinda like those people who say D&D is all about combat, because that's what the majority of the space in the rulebook is devoted to (besides spell lists I guess). The theory being that if a game is focused on an area besides combat, the majority of rules will reflect that, which I've always thought was a bit of misnomer.

I view it as, combat's a situation where I want to have a strong , detailed system in place...the rest of the time I don't need that many rules, or rules get in the way of roleplaying.

Exactly.

Quote from: jhkim;492549However, I still disagree with the above that presumes that being a tactical wargame with skills is a problem. [...] I wouldn't want all my RPGs to be tactical wargames, but RPGs don't have to be one or the other - they can be both, and indeed they are.

Permit me to clarify: the problem is that nearly all RPGs are essentially tactical wargames with a tacked on skill system.  RPGs that provide a mechanical framework for any activity other than personal combat with the same level of detail are vanishingly few.

Quote from: daniel_ream;492559Permit me to clarify: the problem is that nearly all RPGs are essentially tactical wargames with a tacked on skill system.  RPGs that provide a mechanical framework for any activity other than personal combat with the same level of detail are vanishingly few.

That's a personal preference you seem to be processing as an actual problem.

What other systems do you really want to fuck with over and over (other than combat) that somehow won't make it tedious?

Some of those things you mentioned are in better context now, but really - do you want to do that every game you play?  No, those are like special campaign mini games.

You don't need that in a basic rulebook for an RPG.  You need detailed combat rules, because it's gonna happen.  Every.  Time.

Quote from: The_Shadow;492490But regardless, all the metagaming in the world doesn't do them any good when I GM.

So making a character with high skill% in Occult, Arabic, and the like for CoC isn't metagaming?

Or do you use some sort of Traveller chargen to ensure there is no metagaming?

Quote from: TristramEvans;492546Twinky vs Twinky

That's about as far from the spirit of the source material as one can get. Misewell play Pokethulhu.

So you haven't read the Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath?