Quote from: RunningLaser;936063I'd say another thing that seems to have fallen out of favor would be morale systems.  I haven't seen many games with a strong focus on morale.

I'd rather say that there was never a time when morale systems were in favor.
Hands up, every D&D DM who used it.

I didn't, and I never played with a DM who did - neither in Germany nor in the US.

Case in point:

Quote from: estar;936116When I run game store sessions or conventions, I always get a look of surprise from around the table when I start dicing for morale for the NPC opposition. It appears to be "not a thing" among contemporary referees they know.

(But I did apply morale-like decisions to certain NPC or monster groups, on a plausibility basis, without die rolls. Occasionally. Mostly in systems other than D&D.)

I use morale checks. Reaction checks first though.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;936210Hands up, every D&D DM who used it.

*Puts hand up*

I also use random die rolls for the foe's tactics a lot of the time. I've told the story here before, but I once took out a half-giant fighter by having a bunch of giant beetles focus their attacks on him. Thankfully my player didn't slap me upside the head, but we did have a talk about how shitty a situation it turned into.

Quote from: Omega;936211I use morale checks. Reaction checks first though.

Reaction checks I haven't used much, though I have been trying to use them more often.

Quote from: Larsdangly;936173Another thing most games don't seem to deal with well is the way wounds evolve over time. A wound that fails to immediately incapacitate you can easily go almost unnoticed for several minutes or more; shock sets in some time after injury; effects of blood loss and swelling don't really kick in for tens of minutes or hours (unless a wound is catastrophic). I can't think off-hand of any game that has wounds evolve in this way. You could say there is no reason to do this because it wouldn't be fun, but there are so many hundreds of games with so many different styles of play, you'd think there would be somewhere in that vast ecosystem for this sort of realism.

Pendragon was mentioned. I think similar rules exist in TRoS, but frankly don't remember them.

My players in Fates Worse Than Death (the same system is used in Hoodoo Blues, Tibet, Kids World and In Dark Alleys and there's a generic ORC-Modern supplement) ran like hell to the doctor after each fight where they'd suffered Blood losses. After the first time they didn't, and then I notified the guy his wounds continue getting worse, and he was barely saved. Especially after infection set in, and they had to go get him antibiotics, because of course he had dumpstatted his Endurance.

The best part? Those wounds can and will incapacitate you. Bleeding to death slowly on a deserted street is totally an option:D.

And there should be such a rule in GURPS and Warhammer;).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;936210I'd rather say that there was never a time when morale systems were in favor.
Hands up, every D&D DM who used it.

My hand goes up, too. Hell, I even use a variation of morale checks in non-D&D systems!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;936176COLITIS: THE SHITTING

Coming Summer 2017 from White Wolf

That might be better than the useless shit they've been putting out lately like The Hurt Locker.

There's people who played D&D without morale checks?  Huh...

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;936210I'd rather say that there was never a time when morale systems were in favor.
Hands up, every D&D DM who used it.

I use it in my Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign, per the rules. (B/X D&D)
And I would use it in Classic Traveller, per the rules. (Morale affects PCs as well in Classic Traveller.)

I also use Reaction rolls.

I think all of this is fun stuff. The rules relieves me of being in charge of everything, and make me more an impartial interpreter of the world's actions on behalf of the Players rather than "a storyteller" or entertainer.

The world with these rules is richer and more unexpected, as they produce moments and results I never would have thought of.

Quote from: AsenRG;936162Well, if you do that and aren't bothered by armour of TL3 being underrated in comparison to melee weapons:). But other than that little nitpick, I agree.

I would say it is more that the basic conceptual system works. I haven't played since the jump to 4e, but in 3e, I had all sorts of nitpicks. GURPS Vehicles should be brought up, however, as a warning to people who want more realism in their gameplay--sometimes it just takes you down a rabbit hole where you're arguing minutia that in the end doesn't change what your characters will do.

Quote from: Daztur;936146To go off on a tangent, what version of Traveler would people recommend? Haven't done much with it besides make some characters with Mongoose Traveler...

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;936166This could be a thread all on its own. There are many editions, each with its own answer to what different kinds of players want. How general should skills be; how many is too many skills? How should skills be used? Should armor reduce the chance of an effective hit; or should it reduce damage once hit? What is the role of the Referee? And countless other questions. So many, that to get into any detail on this thread would be foolish.

I would add that even within Classic Traveller there are differences. One can happily and successfully play with only Books 1-3 (the game was designed to played this way). And then there is eight years worth of published material for the Classic Traveller line that in the view of some fulfills Classic Traveller and makes it was it was always meant to be, and in the view of others is extraneous and gets in the way of the game.

I will say this, however, about Classic Traveller, because it is very distinct from all the other versions.

It's the edition I like. (The rules I described upthread are from Classic Traveller.) In particular, I like using only Traveller Books 1-3. (I have been writing posts about the value of only using Books 1-3.)

The reason I love them is because they are a product of their time: a SF response to Original Dungeons & Dragons. They are loose, with a few specific mechanics, with the understanding the Players will be trying many things beyond the scope of the rules. The Referee is there as a Referee. He adjudicates the actions of the PCs either with his own judgement, or if uncertain of the outcome, the indifferent throw of 2D6. It's all very Player Skill, Not Character Abilities, and so on. (There really isn't a skill system, though it trick people into thinking there is one. Instead, there is this:

The Referee generate a number to be equalled on 2D6 and -/+DMs can be applied, ranging from skills, to especially high or low characteristics, circumstances of environment, tools available, previous character experiences, and whatever else the Referee and the Players think best.

For people who want a consistent system that drains as much Referee judgement out of the possible, it's a broken nightmare. For those who love the possibilities of what RPGs were like in the mid-70s, its awesome.

Oh, I love this response!
Anyways, to Daztur's question. To put it in D&D terms, classic Traveller is very much OD&D, complete with a strong difference if you play with just the introductory 3 pamphlets or the expanded main set. Mongoose Traveller 1e is a B/X, BECM, or retroclone version. It smoothes and simplifies the system, perhaps stripping away some nuance you consider vital, but also makes it easy to get your friends who could care less to play (cTraveller, for instance didn't start out with non-military careers IIRC). If a die-hard OD&D player could sit in on their friend's B/X game and get X% of the same feel, I'd say the same percentage would be true of Mongoose 1e and classic Traveller. Traveller 5 (well, 5.09, 5 proper was pushed out before it was ready) is a big, expansive, GURPS 3e-style toolkit. If you want to be able to use a system to design the alien your PCs encounter using a consistent rulesystem, or the gun they are holding, it is good. If that is pointless rules for stuff you can decide by fiat, not so much. It is fine for what it is (and let's be clear, it is not meant to be used with all the subsystems turned on at once), but I'm not sure what it provides that GURPS or HERO system doesn't. There are also Traveller ports to D20, GURPS, and HERO. They are pretty much just the game universe that evolved in the later books in a different system (D&D equivalent: playing Greyhawk or Blackmoor using GURPS Fantasy). All the rest (MegaTraveller, Marc Miller's Traveller, Traveller: The New Empire, etc.) are AD&D-ifications of classic Traveller's OD&D. They exist, they each have their own quirks and benefits. If you started with them, they probably are the best for you, but it's hard to explain the benefit to an outsider.

Quote from: CRKrueger;936147The problem with this view of Hit Points is that when it comes to Healing, D&D Shits the Bed like Linda Blair after chugging a case of creamed corn.  Everything about the Healing and Recovery systems, prior to 4e, whether natural or magical, directly points to Hit Points being "Meat Points".

Classic Hit Points have always needed adjustments to things like Falling Damage (which Gary fixed in Dragon) and Healing to really have the whole underpinnings of the system, namely that Hit Points aren't meat, make sense.

Nowhere in my original post were the words "D&D" used. There is no problem with the view of hit points I presented... there's a problem with D&D's implementation of hit points (which I fully agree has problems on that front).

I even mentioned that the system I use has "hit points = luck/endurance/skill" based rules for falling damage (you don't fall off unless you're dropped to 0 hit points and "damage" is based on the difficulty of avoiding the fall not the distance they could fall) and "healing" (recovery of hit points is proportional, quick and non-magical morale effects can both cost and restore hit points).

Just because D&D happens to be the first and most popular system to use hit points, does not make it the ONLY way to implement a hit point system in a game.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;936180This is brilliant.

"He hits you. You die unless you spend..." DM rolls dice, "5 hit points." You are not suffering damage, you are spending fatigue and parries and so on.

Exactly. Variable damage in this case is a very important component of the realism as it reflects how much of your endurance and luck you have to spend to avoid being skewered on the spot.

Its been mentioned that hit point as fatigue is too linear for a realistic system, but variable damage means its only a linear depletion at the macro scale (over the course of hundreds of rolls). But at the micro level of an individual fight (say 3-5 actual damage rolls) there will be times where there will be spikes (a series of good damage rolls and/or critical hits for extra damage) that will burn through those points far more quickly than the average and the opposite where what should have taken 3 hits on average to drop ends up taking 5-6.

It also would probably be a bit more realistic if the hit rates in your system remain fairly static (or cap quickly) while hit points and damage grow with experience. Once you've reached X level of competence you can almost always hit a target that isn't defending itself and its only the skill of the opponent that keeps hits from landing and those cost fatigue (and luck if such a thing is a real force in your game world). A skilled fighter is more efficient at conserving their reserves, but a large number of mooks can still overwhelm him as his efforts to dodge, parry and roll away from their attacks do slowly wear him down (i.e. deplete his hit points). Similarly, the skilled fighter is also more adept at making attacks which require their opponents to expend more effort to avoid (i.e. higher damage).

In this sense its also probably fairly realistic to keep the proportion of the damage that comes from the weapon used fairly low. A bigger sword can be a bit harder to avoid than a dagger, but the skill of the wielder plays far more of a role beyond the beginner levels.

Quote from: CRKrueger;936221There's people who played D&D without morale checks?  Huh...

Plenty.  I've seen, and been schooled by some old school youngin' BTB types, that moral checks were only for followers etc. based on the DMG.  So every combat with a monster is to the death. Such thinking also seems to go along with little inability to think outside the box, or books.  Needless to say avoid those games, and learn to figure this approach out before joining any these days.

Quote from: Omega;936211I use morale checks. Reaction checks first though.

Dungeon crawling (for example), even in really lethal systems, becomes much more survivable when those goblins not only don't want to fight to the death, maybe they don't feel like fighting at all today.

Irony moment: when people complain about old school D&D as being "roll playing, not roleplaying", they are the ones who never bothered to use reaction checks which spur all kinds of great roleplaying interactions.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;936226I use it in my Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign, per the rules. (B/X D&D)
And I would use it in Classic Traveller, per the rules. (Morale affects PCs as well in Classic Traveller.)

I also use Reaction rolls.

I think all of this is fun stuff. The rules relieves me of being in charge of everything, and make me more an impartial interpreter of the world's actions on behalf of the Players rather than "a storyteller" or entertainer.

The world with these rules is richer and more unexpected, as they produce moments and results I never would have thought of.

My one time trying to GM Amber Diceless, I burned out on the system very quickly. GMed maybe a session or two (IIRC) before moving on.
Maybe I didn't grok the system well enough, but it felt like I was being asked to come up with the individial "dice rolls", and I just found it very tiring to have to decide who gets to hit, and who gets to evade, etc, etc, instead of letting the dice take some of the decision making off my shoulders. So I think there's a practical benefit from letting the dice provide results that the GM interprets too.

Quote from: Xanther;936239Plenty.  I've seen, and been schooled by some old school youngin' BTB types, that moral checks were only for followers etc. based on the DMG.  So every combat with a monster is to the death.

One does not seem to follow from the other. Running away is perfectly possible without a morale check. Are you sure it wasn't just the group?

Quote from: darthfozzywig;936241Dungeon crawling (for example), even in really lethal systems, becomes much more survivable when those goblins not only don't want to fight to the death, maybe they don't feel like fighting at all today.

That gives dungeons a very different atmosphere, which I like.
Goblins just run at the sight of you... or weirder still if they don't run but linger in the halls and doorways like transients... maybe follow at a distance to gather whatever refuse or corpses the party leaves behind.
Lonely beholders who just want to talk and trade stories.
Dragon loansharks who will let you borrow their treasure at a steep fee.

Like visiting a subterranean apartment block full of factions and agendas, but most things would rather be left alone or trade with you... but that gang of young kobolds running the halls on the 2nd level bully everyone and are always itching for a fight.

I've been lucky and most of the GMs I've played with seem to run things that way, rather than all creatures attack on sight.

Quote from: Xanther;936239Plenty.  I've seen, and been schooled by some old school youngin' BTB types, that moral checks were only for followers etc. based on the DMG.  So every combat with a monster is to the death. Such thinking also seems to go along with little inability to think outside the box, or books.  Needless to say avoid those games, and learn to figure this approach out before joining any these days.

Since the word realism is in the OP, consider that combat can often be resolved in terms of seconds. A monster might not have time nor opportunity to flee in the heat of the moment, when adrenaline is pumping. It kind of reminds me of that video from a while back of the wolf jumping on the cougar, and then seconds later the wolf stumbles off and dies shortly afterwards likely because it's been disemboweled. The wolf didn't have time to realize it had been killed. It might not even have felt itself being gutted. I've had a few occasions where I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I didn't notice I had cut myself on something until someone pointed out that I was bleeding, and that's just in the course of doing a job.

That aside, I use the Mentzer reaction table for everything. I have used morale rolls, but the Mentzer table gives me a good idea of the NPC/creatures's outlook. Sure you're supposed to only use it once, but if circumstances change then it merits another roll. Imagine being overwhelmed by an encounter and suddenly the foe stops, looks at the PCs and laughs, "Ha! You fight well. This amuses me, so I will not eat you... today."

With something like groups of goblins, if they are getting slaughtered and they have opportunity then it only makes sense that they would flee and be hesistant to fight again unless their master is scarier than the PCs. In that case, they might fight to the death because they are afraid of the consequences if they don't.