Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1089560In GoT there is no adventuring party, at best there are some pairs of major characters.

As DMs have been explaining since 1972, D&D isn't designed to be a fantasy novel. "Story" is an emergent property which does not always emerge. You do not survive because you are the hero, you are the hero because you survive.

This disturbs players because a character is commonly a Mary Sue by design, but the DM and the dice do not always allow the full expression of Mary Sue. But you cannot have a whole party of Mary Sues. Not even GRRM would write that.

I agree D&D is not the best vehicle for exploring this kind of fiction. But there are a lot of RPGs that do a good job at it, from Vampire to Apocalypse World, to Hillfolk, Smallvile, the official ASoIaF rpg, Houses of the Blooded, etc.

Just saying.

Quote from: Shasarak;1089707If you have two different characters, one with 7hp and one with 70hp, then why would you describe a 7hp wound the same for both characters.  One of them has taken a potentially mortal wound and one of them has been barely scratched.

You can assign fictional wound severity based on relative damage (% of hps lost) incurred. Will you base it on max hp or current hp?
If you base it on max hp: how about a 70hp character that has been whittled down to 1hp and then receives a 1 damage wound from a dull knife?
If you base it on current hp, then not only the fictional weapon damage becomes uneven - you also have a lot of % maths to do.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1089711Not at all. It's an important distinction to make.

Emulation comes from the verb "emulate," which means to imitate or reproduce. Now, rpgs are completely unable to reproduce (say) a novel, because a novel has one author, and a linear plot. (Even if after the fact) Novels do not change between readings.
If I tried to emulate GOT in an RPG, I'd have to force the players to make the exact decisions as the characters in the novel. Not very much fun.

I only need to force the players to make the exact decisions if I wanted to emulate the genre in that regard. But an emulation doesn't need to reproduce with complete or even high accuracy to count as an emulation. Sufficient semblance, whatever that is, is enough to warrant the label. And the narrative produced in fantasy RPGs sometimes do bear resemblance to the kind of stories we can encounter in fantasy fiction (so does the experience of the story unfolding in games versus reading it in a book). When I talk about eliminating healer dependency in games, the goal is to increase the resemblance.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1089711But an RPG can take inspiration from fiction. Like putting dwarves in a setting, or having a dragon in a mountain lair. Even to details like putting a bunch of feuding houses in a kingdom that has years long seasons, and a terrible threat looming during the winter season.
Seperating emulation from inspiration, I think, leads to a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of RPGs compared to non-interactive fiction.

What's the difference between an inaccurate emulation of the fantasy genre and merely taking inspiration from it? How can we tell them apart?

Alexander can you accept HP as plot armor points, or as I like to call it heroic points?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1089747You can assign fictional wound severity based on relative damage (% of hps lost) incurred. Will you base it on max hp or current hp?
If you base it on max hp: how about a 70hp character that has been whittled down to 1hp and then receives a 1 damage wound from a dull knife?
If you base it on current hp, then not only the fictional weapon damage becomes uneven - you also have a lot of % maths to do.

If you only have 1hp then a 1hp wound with a dull knife is not a paper cut.  You can describe it how you like but something must have happened to cause you to fall unconscious.  If it was me then I would describe it in a way that does not seem ridiculous.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1089764Alexander can you accept HP as plot armor points, or as I like to call it heroic points?

Yes, anything beyond CoC levels of HPs (10-15) gets increasingly hard to define as pure meatpoints. If anyone wants to emulate GoT system-wise, then some questions to ask themselves are:

• How do you handle severe, debilitating wounds?
• How do you handle "healing", especially of plotarmor points?
• Do you even need to take account of wounds that don't do more than cosmetic damage (and a round of stun, perhaps)?

All these questions have informed the rules for my game. The fun part is that by doing so you don't end up just emulating GoT but also countless other movies/TV shows - most modern movies work similarly.

Quote from: Shasarak;1089779If you only have 1hp then a 1hp wound with a dull knife is not a paper cut.  You can describe it how you like but something must have happened to cause you to fall unconscious.  If it was me then I would describe it in a way that does not seem ridiculous.

If even 1 hp damage wound can be that severe, how much more severe is a 10 or 20 hp wound? And yet... as you said, no wound penalties. And where do light, purely cosmetic wounds even begin? Again, yeah, if you always interpret weapon damage relative to current hit point levels, sure. That means only after you have beat down a 70 max hp hero down to ca. 10 hps, he starts to take wounds like a normal human being.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1089982If even 1 hp damage wound can be that severe, how much more severe is a 10 or 20 hp wound? And yet... as you said, no wound penalties. And where do light, purely cosmetic wounds even begin? Again, yeah, if you always interpret weapon damage relative to current hit point levels, sure. That means only after you have beat down a 70 max hp hero down to ca. 10 hps, he starts to take wounds like a normal human being.

Honestly, humans don't have meat points any more than they have hit points. A simple stumble and fall could kill us if we land wrong (say we slip in the bathroom and crack our head on the edge of the countertop going down) while other people survive getting shot in the head by high powered rifle.

For me, the difference between 1 hit point of damage and 1d8+6 hit points of damage isn't the size of the killing wound it will inflict, its "how likely is it to deliver a fatal wound?"

Depending on the particular variant of D&D the average human seems to have somewhere between 1-8 hit points so only the very frail and/or unlucky are likely to die from the 1 hp slip and fall in the bathroom, while only the luckiest of mere mortals (8 hp) will walk away from a 1d8+6 hp high powered rifle fired as his head (minimum damage 7).

As I describe it in my system ,"Edge" (because hit points is so loaded with physical injury associations that it was leading to major misunderstandings) is something you spend to avoid otherwise lethal injuries and is entirely non-physical. Its the last second parry, the roll with the impact, etc. that keeps an otherwise lethal strike from doing more than a little cosmetic damage (some scrapes, minor cuts, etc., but nothing more). Real debilitating injuries only happen when you're out of Edge to spend and can leave you debilitated very very quickly at that stage (or if you choose to NOT avoid an injury; like throwing yourself on top of a grenade to shield others from the blast... you're a hero, but a dead hero regardless of your Edge score... it can't help you if you're not trying to avoid the damage).

I even rewrote the falling rules so that falling "damage" is determined by how hard it would be to catch yourself before going over, not the distance of the potential fall, because as long as you have Edge remaining, you catch yourself just before you go over so can pull yourself up to continue the fight (unless you choose not to catch yourself, then damage isn't based on your margin of failure in catching yourself, but by distance fallen and Edge is your ability to roll with the impact).

Well in my game there is heroic points and wound points.  Now all attacks go after heroic points first and yes you stack your armor into heroic points as well (my game has no AC so armor is more HP, but players can roll for defense when being attack).  Now this changes either when suffering a critical hit, or you start taking wound points.  In either of those you drop a attribute by one point and given your chances of success on rolls depends of rolling lower than your attribute you can see the long term effects.  Also mere mortals must roll to stay up during combat if they are taking wound damage using their current wounds as TN.

I am a fan of detailed combat system and all (GURPS + Martial Arts, Harnmaster, etc). But the appeal of Game of Thrones is well the Game of Thrones. The interplay of mythology, culture, characters, and motivations is what makes it a unique piece of fantasy. Not the particulars of combat.

The combat system just has to be in the same ball park of deadliness for it to be good enough. And the D20 Game of Thrones RPG handled this using the wound vitality system.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm

And this works with 5th edition or one of the classic editions. Although for OD&D 3 LBB it is overkill.

Quote from: estar;1090019I am a fan of detailed combat system and all (GURPS + Martial Arts, Harnmaster, etc). But the appeal of Game of Thrones is well the Game of Thrones. The interplay of mythology, culture, characters, and motivations is what makes it a unique piece of fantasy. Not the particulars of combat.

The combat system just has to be in the same ball park of deadliness for it to be good enough.

THIS.

Really the combat system doesn't really matter as long as it's lethal. It could even be "flip a coin" for that matter. The meat heart of the game is in the intrigue/politics/backstabbing.

Quote from: Itachi;1090024The meat heart of the game is in the intrigue/politics/backstabbing.

Yeah, I'm interested in that as well but I wouldn't say that the combat system doesn't matter. Not at all. Early GoT has had some very intense duels and you'd want similar face-offs in your game. Much more importantly: in RPGs the damage and healing subsystem impacts the way adventures run and how players approach them - with healer independency being one factor. Especially when you want a lethal system.

Ultimately, it comes down to "How accurate is accurate enough?" for a given gamer. As we can see in this thread, there's a variety of preferences.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1090017Well in my game there is heroic points and wound points.  Now all attacks go after heroic points first and yes you stack your armor into heroic points as well (my game has no AC so armor is more HP, but players can roll for defense when being attack).  Now this changes either when suffering a critical hit, or you start taking wound points.  In either of those you drop a attribute by one point and given your chances of success on rolls depends of rolling lower than your attribute you can see the long term effects.  Also mere mortals must roll to stay up during combat if they are taking wound damage using their current wounds as TN.

This sounds a bit like a Palladium-variant I ran back in the days with critical attacks bypassing S.D.C. and going straight to HPs. Armor adding to S.D.C. and all. The main thing about plot armor points (in whatever form) is the recovery rate as it no longer has to be tied to natural healing.

Quote from: Chris24601;1089990Honestly, humans don't have meat points any more than they have hit points. A simple stumble and fall could kill us if we land wrong (say we slip in the bathroom and crack our head on the edge of the countertop going down) while other people survive getting shot in the head by high powered rifle.

Yeah, well, I don't think CoC nor D&D are meant to be super-accurate or super-plausible. You just interpret the die rolls creatively as a GM and ignore serious wounds not impacting the performance negatively. But with CoC's 10 HPs I can see the case for meatpoints much more than in the case of a mid-level D&D PC. They clearly have some HPs as plot armor.

Quote from: Chris24601;1089990As I describe it in my system ,"Edge" (because hit points is so loaded with physical injury associations that it was leading to major misunderstandings) is something you spend to avoid otherwise lethal injuries and is entirely non-physical. Its the last second parry, the roll with the impact, etc. that keeps an otherwise lethal strike from doing more than a little cosmetic damage (some scrapes, minor cuts, etc., but nothing more).

Yeah, it's plot armor. PCs are destined to be special after all. While I'm using metacurrency to do that, HPs or HP-equivalents emulating plot armor can be used as well and behave, in a way, like an implied, dedicated metacurrency (dedicated to one purpose only). As above, the question when you recover them (and how much) is critical.

Quote from: Itachi;1090024The meat heart of the game is in the intrigue/politics/backstabbing.

Latching onto this: does anyone like using social combat mechanics for that? I'm no big fan - I think that part should be unstructured and chaotic and come down to the GM having some good ol'-fashioned tricks for his NPCs up his sleeve.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1090081Latching onto this: does anyone like using social combat mechanics for that? I'm no big fan - I think that part should be unstructured and chaotic and come down to the GM having some good ol'-fashioned tricks for his NPCs up his sleeve.

Interesting point. I think "social combat" is a bad term for this IMO. The games I've seen that do this well don't really treat it as a social analogue to combat (at least not in the sense of having discrete rounds and "wounds" etc). Instead they give power for players to push/nudge others to their interests, usually with attractive carrots for the target if they agree (or setbacks if they don't). Like any negotiation really.

About the GM preping good ol' fashioned tricks for NPCs, I agree it helps but again, the heart of a good ensemble cast (like GoT) is, ultimately, conflicting interests between protagonists/players, or PvP. If the players don't understand and buy-in on that, nothing the GM does will make the game sing, I guess.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1090080Yeah, it's plot armor. PCs are destined to be special after all. While I'm using metacurrency to do that, HPs or HP-equivalents emulating plot armor can be used as well and behave, in a way, like an implied, dedicated metacurrency (dedicated to one purpose only). As above, the question when you recover them (and how much) is critical.

Well, in mine, you can Rally to regain half your Edge, but can only do so so many times in single fight and only so many times total without significant time to rest.

It's also not a metacurrency. That implies some external narrative force is keeping the PC alive when the specific examples of spending it are all skill, morale and pushing yourself. You lose Edge by throwing up a last second block that costs you way more endurance than your usual parries. You catch yourself just before you'd slip while climbing. You fight past the wave of nausea from the blow to the gut your armor only partially absorbed.

You're not invoking narrative fiat to keep the PC alive unless you view every last action of a character to be narrative fiat. It doesn't require anything beyond the PCs own skill and effort to explain... ergo, not metacurrency.

In fact, I've gone out of my way in my system to specifically avoid metacurrency. Every resource the PC has is something they could choose to access from the character's perspective. The PC is choosing to spend their endurance on keeping themselves alive (they could also choose to not spend it by jumping on the proverbial grenade to save someone else).

So they've also got Focus, which they choose to spend to push harder on an action to achieve a greater benefit (a stronger attack, a more potent spell, a better result on a skill check). It's a very small pool (2-4 to start, grows to 7-9 at max level), but recovers quickly with just a few minutes to stop and regain your focus.

Finally, they've got Reserves; their deep reserves of endurance they can draw upon to regain Edge or Focus in the middle of a battle, take an extra action, perform extremely taxing actions or spells and which is their buffer between life and death if they're out of Edge (the general rule is 0 Edge + 0 Reserves = dead). Reserves are larger than Focus (7-9 to start, grows to 9-11 at max level), but take significant rest to regain (anywhere from 1-2 points per week of rest for gritty games to 1-2 per hour of rest for heroic ones... for Game of Thrones; I'd peg them at 1-2 per day of rest for the main characters on the show, 1-2 per week of rest for the books).

In all cases though Edge, Focus and Reserves are things the character would know they're calling upon ("I'm going to feel this in the morning" being one of the default expressions used by one of the playtesters when they spent a point of their reserves) and none of the abilities they grant affect anything other than the character's own abilities.

You can't spend a reserve point (or focus or edge) to declare that there are crates in the alleyway you can use for cover (unless you had the Creation spell and were specifically creating crates with it... but you'd be better served with conjuring a wooden barricade instead if you had that spell). You can't create a ledge out of nowhere to catch yourself when you fall (the DC to catch yourself is based on how hard it would be to catch yourself... at best you could burn Focus to improve the result of the check to catch yourself on what's already available... but you're not altering reality to do so).

I think your definition of "metacurrency" is a bit skewed... you seem to be applying it to anything not explicitly physical that is measured in points rather than "points spent outside the perspective of the character to achieve an in-universe result."

Quote from: Chris24601;1089161.

But that's just a kludge (like the ones I mentioned above). Attempting to model anything but D&D with any D&D (except 4E; which is better at non-D&D fantasy emulation, but has its own issues) is always going to be fighting the system rather than working with it.

I think that's the point, really. D&D wasn't made to emulate GoT. And it's not only a matter of inflated HPs or healing capabilities, the fundamental framework of the game - a group of martial specialists exploring dangerous environs - has absolutely nothing to do with GoT.

Quote from: Chris24601;1090122I think your definition of "metacurrency" is a bit skewed... you seem to be applying it to anything not explicitly physical that is measured in points rather than "points spent outside the perspective of the character to achieve an in-universe result."

I'm looking at it from an angle of purpose: the purpose of some types of metacurrency (think Fortune Points) is to make the PCs favored by destiny. One aspect in which they can be favored by destiny is having plot armor that ensures their survival. One specific form of plot armor is the ability to escape serious harm in combat. HP-levels that exceed far the levels of commoners serve that purpose, as noted earlier in the thread. So HP (or HP-equivalent) bloat serves a special niche that some types of metacurrency also do serve: whereas in a metacurrency system you'd deduct one point of metacurrency to negatve the successful enemy attack, you deduct 10 of your 75 HPs in a HP system. (And as an aside, you could narrate the HP loss as diving behind cover with the attack missing.)

This of course does not hold as much true if PCs only have 10 HPs to begin with, as in CoC. And of course metacurrency can serve more purposes than the above.

Quote from: Itachi;1090204I think that's the point, really. D&D wasn't made to emulate GoT. And it's not only a matter of inflated HPs or healing capabilities, the fundamental framework of the game - a group of martial specialists exploring dangerous environs - has absolutely nothing to do with GoT.

Well, you can't look at the Hound or Jon Snow or Ninja-Arya or Bronn or perhaps even Melisandre and tell me that they have nothing in common with fantasy PCs. The stories that get told are different but the characters have plenty in common. There are certain discrepancies, however, in the way most fantasy systems proceed and they can be adressed.

Quote from: Itachi;1090119Interesting point. I think "social combat" is a bad term for this IMO. The games I've seen that do this well don't really treat it as a social analogue to combat (at least not in the sense of having discrete rounds and "wounds" etc). Instead they give power for players to push/nudge others to their interests, usually with attractive carrots for the target if they agree (or setbacks if they don't). Like any negotiation really.

Interesting. Which games do the above?

Quote from: Itachi;1090119About the GM preping good ol' fashioned tricks for NPCs, I agree it helps but again, the heart of a good ensemble cast (like GoT) is, ultimately, conflicting interests between protagonists/players, or PvP. If the players don't understand and buy-in on that, nothing the GM does will make the game sing, I guess.

Well, not everyone is backstabbing all the time in GoT. The Starks, for example, are fairly close-knit.