I'm not sure what to make of gritty RPGs anymore. On the one hand...

If combat is so gritty that the situation you describe is a common occurrence, why in the world would a character wading into melee against multiple opponents be their Plan A? If you can get crippled in a couple of rounds by a couple of bottom-level enemies, you have to approach combat differently. You always attack from surprise, you always have your entire team ready to go, you fall back at the first sign of trouble, you know exactly who you're fighting ahead of time, etc. You don't have traditional "tank" characters intended to be front-line meatshields; because no one can meatshield, you'll just get maimed.

>Does the game have rules for making a splint/cast?
These don't give you back functionality. Rather, they take it away from you to ensure you don't make your injuries worse.

>Can you use gm/fiat if a player wants to try? Maybe they strap him to another player’s back. Or make a litter.
I sure can, and I would be inclined to. But if I'm going to those lengths, the grittiness of the system turns into a meaningless facade. If I'm going to handwave debilitating injuries anyway, I may as well use a system that doesn't even give characters debilitating injuries, 'grittiness' be damned.

>The point is, he made the choice to engage on the front lines without taking steps to minimize the damger to himself
If there's a front line, someone has to be in it, and there's only so much you can do to minimize danger. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" and all that.

>If you can get crippled in a couple of rounds by a couple of bottom-level enemies
That's what gritty realism is, though. People have survived falling from planes and getting shot, but people have also died from a single unlucky punch in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I never said that's not what it is. I'm saying that if you're in a world like that, you need to fundamentally change how you view combat. It is always a risk, someone is likely to die or be crippled. Don't fight if you don't have to, and if you absolutely have to, make it as short as absolutely possible.

You're right. OP probably made this thread just as an excuse to post that pic.

Let's change argument then.
Let's talk about the role of magical birds in RPGs, especialluy owls

How wise are owls, actually? They have all of these connotations with wisdom, or with wizened spellcasters, but I think that's mostly due to their good eyesight. Mouseguard portrays them as pretty vicious monsters, and that's what I've heard about real-life owls as well. Would an Owl familiar be friendly?

Samefag.

>breddy griddy

...

So, just the one where the samefag told himself "You're right".

I have no clue if those two are the same person. I just know that I, the third, was responsible for neither of those two posts.

I was just happy to talk about owls

Some folks enjoy that sort of thing. I know that's a shitty answer, but that's really what it boils down to - you think it's shitty, I think it's shitty, but some players and GMs like their games that way, where the consequence for bad luck or poor decision making is the player having to sit there and twiddle their thumbs because their character can't take any meaningful actions.

There's also something to be said about how tightrope walking can feel dangerous if you can't see the safety net. Players are playing characters in a game; you can play a character that is scared and feels threatened even if the player themselves isn't. I don't need to starve my players to get them to play characters that have ran out of supplies and are desperately hunting for food.

>physical activity

See, now here is your problem. In gritty systems, fighting is dangerous. Everyone knows this, players and NPCs. No one goes out looking for a fight unless the odds are stacked heavily in their favor. That is how you need to design stuff.

> But if I'm going to those lengths, the grittiness of the system turns into a meaningless facade.

This is the most retarded thing I have read in this thread.

You honest to god think that a gritty system is pointless if players have to come up with clever ways to manage debilitating injuries? You think a dude strapped to a dude's back with a crossbow is just as effective as a dude on his own with a crossbow?

The solution is going narrative. Let the players come up with how their character was maimed AND how they cope with it without taking them out of the game entirely. Try Fate for example, you have to break yourself out of the brain damage caused by """traditional""" RPGs.

>In fact, the group as a whole will need to spend in-game weeks doing nothing much if they ever want their warrior to have a chance of being relevant again.
Why don't they get a substitute for the warrior until he recovers?

>If there's a front line, someone has to be in it,

So encourage the players to find someone else to be in the front line.

Or to just avoid situations where a front line is needed.

OP, don't be mad that people called you out on your stupid bullshit.

You wanted to post your fetish and people called you out on it. Just accept it, dude.

You make it sounds like going out and looking for a fight is the only way you'll ever end up in a fight.

As if ending up in a fight where you don't have the upper hand is, in and of itself, an error in judgment. That just shifts the point at which the mistake is made, not the fact that it's being punished by making a character unsuitable for the game that's being played.

Are there games that manage to maintain a sense of danger and suspense without this level of grit?

>You make it sounds like going out and looking for a fight is the only way you'll ever end up in a fight.

You make it sound like you aren't the GM.

>You think a dude strapped to a dude's back with a crossbow is just as effective as a dude on his own with a crossbow?
But that's not clever. That's just Hollywood levels of unrealistic rule of cool.

If that's what the game is about, then you should absolutely go balls to the wall with out-of-the-box solutions.

But if the whole reason your character is severely handicapped is that the game and world you're playing in is gritty and realistic, then offering an unrealistic, cinematic idea as a solution for that handicap is a little incongruous.

Can't I be both?

Not everyone is ForeverGM.

>But that's not clever. That's just Hollywood levels of unrealistic rule of cool.

...wut? You are saying that for millenia, if a dude got his legs broken they just left him there to die?

Ah, so you are a contrarian. What's your philosophy that justifies this behavior?

Uh, no? How did you get that?

I'm saying that strapping a injured person with a crossbow onto your back and expecting that to be anything other than a massive handicap for everyone involved is Hollywood as all fuck.

If you get into a fight, the injured person is just going to get jostled around, possibly disturbing his injuries and certainly ruining his changes of ever getting a proper shot. The carrier, on the other hand, now has to deal with the weight of a fully-grown adult being strapped onto his back.

It's perfectly fine if the game was a little cartoony and over the top to begin with, but that's not how the gimpy one ended up in his current predicament.

How does trying to consider both the DM's and the player's PoV make me a contrarian?

>I'm saying that strapping a injured person with a crossbow onto your back and expecting that to be anything other than a massive handicap for everyone involved is Hollywood as all fuck.

Well apparently the adventure is important enough that they can't wait for their buddy to heal to the risk seems worth it.

Have you not been reading the thread or have all your scenarios been made up for the sake of having pointless arguments?

Try coming up with fun, interactive city/town adventures for the rest period. It sounds like the game is geared towards making players choose how and when to fight, if at all. As other people have said, tanking goblins is retarded if you're trying to take down the evil mecha-lich or something and the combat system means that you'll be out of adventure time for a few weeks by doing so. Players should be coming up with creative solutions to not get injured in the first place, if they keep getting injured because they can't/won't change their style you should go back to a system that is less punishing to the vidya combat system. Instead of fighting the goblins they should be rounding up posses, inciting goblin wars, poisoning supplies, burning down their village at night, ambushing isolated raiders, luring them in to a pit trap and so on. If your players want to say "the 4 of us yolo the 20 goblins" try playing D&D.

If your players are actually quite clever and just got unlucky, keep going. Your job is to find interesting things to do beyond rolling dice. Puzzles, riddles, NPC interactions. Remember that nothing they do is irrelevant, say your broken leg guy tells his tale in the tavern, maybe he catches the eye of a local bandit/merc recruiter, maybe a comely wench takes a shine to him leading him on all sorts of fun non-dangerous adventures, maybe a fist fight, maybe arranging secret meetings and avoiding her family's guards or the town guard if there's a curfew, maybe she becomes a plot point and knows something about the BBEG or is kidnapped, or she works for the BBEG, hell maybe she owns a local store and the party gets a small discount. Maybe some guy knows a lot about those particular goblins and provides maps of their town for the next assault.

In this pic I've made a chart, two of the five columns match up with each other exactly, so when my PCs talk to the 5 people they need to talk to only 2 of them will give the exact same information.

Because you make a statement completely uninterested of the thread's context.

Now, Mr. Contrarian, go ahead and round-a-bout try to prove that your statement is actually relevant to the context of the thread.

But before you do, realize that your connection will be tenuous. Nothing in the thread up to this point requires people to discuss the perspective of GMs/Players in terms of a gritty system. If you think otherwise, link the post with an explanation.

>Well apparently the adventure is important enough that they can't wait for their buddy to heal
Is it? Sounds like a new parameter for the situation that you just made up for the sake of an argument.

>Have you not been reading the thread or have all your scenarios been made up for the sake of having pointless arguments?
Oooh...

Okay. Say it with me.

Every system can be used for DIFFERENT THINGS.

So sometimes you play gritty, hardcore RPGs and glory is brutal realism and grinding pain. And sometimes you grab Wulin or Godbound or whatever and kill an army with a single swing of your sword. Sometimes you want to have Sci Fi adventures with Traveller, and sometimes you want mythic heroism with Runequest.

Sometimes you want to dungeoncrawl with D&D, and sometimes you want intense sword action with Song of Swords or Riddle of Steel.

There are many RPGs, because they all fill different niches. No niche is inherently bad (except maybe fetish ERPGs)- it all depends on what you want.

Stop being Badwrongfun guy.

>Because you make a statement completely uninterested of the thread's context.
What, this one?

>You make it sounds like going out and looking for a fight is the only way you'll ever end up in a fight.

Since "not getting into fights" was offered as a solution for getting injured in those fights, I figured my comment wasn't completely out of the blue.

I haven't ever played in a game where either I, or the party as a whole, always had complete control over when we were drawn into a fight.

I haven't ever DMed a game where I intentionally toned down or even removed combat encounters if I felt the players weren't doing quite enough to make sure they had the upper hand from the get-go.

PCs can surrender too, you know. Of course that's not "honorable" and getting robbed might piss them off, but are you going for "real" gritty, or are you going for "dark souls animu gritty" ? Because the second one is not gritty, it's just high-mortality no-brains-allowed game style.
In fact, most combat encounters in a gritty setting should end up with one party either surrendering (sometimes even before combat even starts) or running away.
On a side note, that's why undead should be absolutely terrifying in rpgs, but aren't. People and animals usually don't fight to the death, because killing is usually not an end in and of itself. Except for the undead, who will fight to the last twitch in their dead arms because they have no fear.
If you do get injured, tough luck, you're an easy target. Either use magic to heal, do what said, or timelapse to a point where the character has healed when convenient.
Severe wounds that partially incapacitate a character are also a good chance for challenge and tense situations, if you can scale the difficulty accordingly. Maybe the party is having a fight with a few orc bandits and one of the players is resting in the chariot because of his broken arm, and one lone goblin gets into the chariot hoping to steal stuff while the party and bandits are busy. For a seasoned adventurer, killing or chasing off a goblin should be weak tea, but with a broken arm and only improvised weapons at hand, that should prove a challenge, while not putting them in too grave danger. Similarly, having the party flee combat while dragging off one of their unconscious mates, or surrendering and trying to negotiate with slavetakers so they heal the one that's about to bite the bullet can be great opportunities for tense action or roleplay.

It's part of a bounty, the 2 names have been scribbled off the page by other bounty hunters to stop the PCs getting easy access to the information. The PCs should work out the correct 2 people by finding the answers that match exactly. This will take a while in real time, but the bonus they will get will stop them getting absolutely fucked by an advanced bristle boar at level 1. (+4 to all rolls)

They could wait and level up to be level appropriate for the encounter and spend that real time rolling dice, in the end it doesn't really matter. It works either way. For your system it seems like you really need to come up with stuff like this to stop your PCs getting maimed. If they choose to yolo it, that's on them, but there's no reason for downtime to be boring or useless.

Another thing you could do is find riddles with multiple clues, e.g.

I have two faces, but show you one.
I once had guests, but now have none.
I’m rarely bloody and seldom blue.
I’m often promised and sometimes new.
I'm white, I'm round but I'm not always around.

Answer: the moon.

They can roll for how many clues they get depending on int or wis or something. This could be a town puzzle posted on the wall of a local school with a small prize, or it could be crazy old hermit's test to give you information on the BBEG.

You could hand out macguffins that are hard to open, expensive boxes with intricate puzzle mechanisms that you could smash open but you'd rather keep intact whether it's to sell or have a cool storage box, or it could be made of vorpal metal or something.

And don't forget crafting, working on skills, making contacts.

I think the mechanics of your game exist to encourage your players to roleplay and come up with creative solutions instead of just "I hit it until it dies." You should help them out.

Questioning the point of using game mechanics where a random number generator can make you unable to participate in the actual game for a couple of sessions is 'being Badwrongfun guy'?

That's really hard to swallow.

>using riddles in a game
It's like you want everything to come to a screeching halt.

user, real war and real fights are scary. Those wounds the warrior took will make anyone retire.
Getting stabbed irl is really scary, as is getting your anything seriously.
Read this:
windsofchaos.com/wp-content/uploads/crits/josef/extended.pdf

Most games have Wounds/Hearts/HP being luck, and that those things that would've killed you get deflected or glance you (IRL this glancing blows can still fuck you over hard unless you're in full plate).

In gritty systems, combat is really a bad idea and a last ditch option due to getting hurt. And as such, you can't just throw goblins and orcs at the party, because the imaginary goblins and orcs are numberless and not important (that goblin that got his tendons cut will most likely die and who gives a fuck if it heals for 6 weeks), while the player characters last longer and can accrue multiple injuries that will retire them. Gritty games are more about safety, diplomacy, insults and intimidation, avoiding combat or ending it hella fast.
Invest in bows and guns.

Okay, so you've come into this with complete disregard of the conversation's context. You are trying to argue based on incomplete information. Arguing not to learn or teach, but just for the sake of arguing.

The secret is that every answer is wrong.

Now you're just completely ignoring valid points.

Yeah it is. Because you aren't paying attention to what the system is trying to do. You just don't like that you can't do what you want with it.

...

>Because you aren't paying attention to what the system is trying to do.
If there's a whole chapter on combat, I don't automatically assume the game is trying to make me avoid combat at all costs.

>a whole chapter on combat

I'm noticing in an uptick in enraged autists who can't handle the concept of hypotheticals on Veeky Forums. What gives, fa/tg/uys? You used to be better than this.

Homie, read the OP and the whole thread and link the posts where people talked about the players

Check out the OP, sonny Jim.

>Nero Neckbeard is playing
>He's playing a warrior
If that's describing a DM, I will eat an uncooked broomstick.

>a whole chapter on combat

But it is describing the GM.

After all, the example assumes that the combat was both mandatory and early in the session/adventure. Both of which a good GM would never do in a gritty system.

1)
Injuries should never be permanent. Otherwise people will look for an excuse to get rid of their character (if not outright telling the GM that they refuse to play the character).
2)
Injuries that invalidate a character should be very short-term. This is usally done correctly for stuff like unconsciousness. But there's no fun playing a fighter who is paralysed waist-down or a quadruple amputee.
3)
Most of the game should center around non-combat stuff so a penalised character can still partake in most of the adventure without being too hindered.

How the fuck are you going to talk about an RPG and consider players an out-of-bounds subject?

What the actual fuck?

Wow, your definition of hypothetical is "completely useless arguments"

You are the cancer of human thought.

>I am the final arbiter of what is useless
>And you are cancer
Dohohoho...

Nobody tell him. Nobody point it out.

Because of the thread's context, darling.

>I am the final arbiter of what is useless

Source?

If the game is combat centric then the character could either retire, or you could spend half a session roleplaying rest and R&R and then timeskip.

>But it is describing the GM.
Okay. In a sense, mentioning players, the things they do, and the things that happen to them, also describes the GM.

But saying this thread has always exclusively been about GMs is patently wrong.

>After all, the example assumes that the combat was both mandatory and early in the session/adventure. Both of which a good GM would never do in a gritty system.
This is something we can work with.

It's saying that gritty systems shouldn't be used for realistic narratives, since gritty mechanics are too punishing and a realistic universe doesn't care about individual people. Instead, they should be used for narratives where threats are carefully managed and dosed by the GM.

I think that's a very solid point.

Depends a lot on the game, the roles, the available game modes, and the gm.

Call of Cthulhu doesn't need swashbuckling combat. Rest based healing needs either some reason not to rest or some sticky damage. Games without something you'd want to do in down (or between) time don't exactly require you to actually (let's say) sleep for eight hours. Games with something to do in said time can reward you for picking the right time to fold. And not every game needs the warrior niche (penalties work best if it applies to something everyone does and the thing inducing them is the fail state and not the staple of play... Combat in a stealth game, not combat in a beatemup)

>But saying this thread has always exclusively been about GMs is patently wrong.

But it has been.

Because the scenario the OP describes implies 2 possibilities:

1) The GM is retarded
2) The players are retarded

Since the scenario didn't describe the players picking a fight with the goblins then the only logical conclusion is that the retarded DM forced an early fight on the players in a system where one/two bad rolls will fuck incapacitate a player for a long time. Also since the long heal times were described as detrimental to the player's enjoyment, then it is also implied that the DM made the adventure time-sensitive.

So the scenario described can only exist if the DM using the gritty system is retarded. That or the OP had 0 idea what they were talking about and has never actually ever played a gritty system.

>That or the OP had 0 idea what they were talking about and has never actually ever played a gritty system.
I'm not entirely convinced you ever have.

There are systems that don't give the DM a great deal of influence over when bad things will happen to the players. Systems that automatically have animals attack you at a substantial bonus if you happen to roll terrible on a check to handle said animal. Systems that, should that attack be particularly lucky, categorically state that your character breaks his spine and will be paralyzed from the waist down until rare and expensive healing is sought out.

No DM should ever follow the rules as written to a fault, but if a game is this clear-cut about a sequence of events leading to the prolonged uselessness of a game, I can't chalk that up to just the DM. That's a design flaw.

>uselessness of a game
of a character

You ignore the content of the post to do hypotheticals.

It's like you don't actually want to have a conversation, and are more focused in creating a scenario in which you are correct.

Instead of arguing about what the OP says in their example, you move the goalposts to a different example. That's a logical fallacy, by the way.

>you move the goalposts
You should know.

>I've decided that this thread about game mechanics is actually about GMs and everyone who doesn't agree is WRONG

If I tell you you're right about everything forever, will you fuck off and stop shitting up the thread with your pedantic retardation?

>>I've decided that this thread about game mechanics is actually about GMs and everyone who doesn't agree is WRONG

Source?

I'm not going to play this game with you anymore.

You're right. About everything.

Forever.

>Instead of arguing about what the OP says in their example, you move the goalposts to a different example.
It's called a tangent, you massive autismo.

Why does this picture arouse me?

Mental illness.

Maybe you're the mentally ill and I'm perfectly healthy?

OP, you wish to have heroics and adventure.
You also want a world of "realistic" consequences.
But you see now, you cannot have both.

This is why the way I would design a wounds system is as follows: When you take a wound, you decide the nature of it and rather than a penalty, roleplaying the wound gives you a bonus.

Nobody wants to see the crippled fighter taking a stand with his crossbow fail. That just makes for a shitty game.

EVEN NOW THERE IS HOPE FOR OP.

Ironically the people that play these gritty games seem to be the most thin-skinned motherfuckers.

That's what you get for playing a gritty system without spare characters. Also, timeskips are a thing.

There is no conspiracy to make traditional games politically correct. Characters in fiction and gaming communities simply change with respect to the latest cultural values. But you fedora-tipping cancerous fucks always blame imaginary SocJus boogeymen when people start hating you for the shit that you do. As long as you continue to refuse act like decent human beings, people will keep noticing.

But of course, you will keep blaming imaginary "SJWs", "poseurs" and "normies" when you the public hates you for the scum you are. And let's not even get started on how you all react to games becoming more popular and easily accessible.

Is this pasta? Why did you post it here?

Why do you not have multiple characters?

In general I'm just done with grittiness everywhere, but I've long thought PnP games should generally be designed to make characters do fun things. In your hypothetical, I'd want a GM to use the warrior's inability to run as an excuse for bandits to capture the party -- now you have a quest about escaping from bandits, instead of a busted character and bored players.

Hardcore challenge is something that CRPGs have to replace human interaction; if you have other people playing, the storytelling is better than the systems optimization.

>Not having a new/amnesiac sphinx who demands the PCs come up with good riddles for her before she'll let them pass

They have to make sense and not be stupid or too easy, or she'll get annoyed and eat them

>She turns around and immediately asks the PCs the exact same riddles on their way back out of the place
>Gets incredibly flustered if you mention you're the one that gave her the riddles

I'm stealing this. Thanks anons.

...

Source?

logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/129/Moving_the_Goalposts

Because you are the OP and it's the reason you posted in the first place.

Stop learning about mental health through memes.

>Nobody wants to see the crippled fighter taking a stand with his crossbow fail. That just makes for a shitty game

Literal lies.

That's Jesus of Nazareth, aka "King of Kings".

Stop projecting.

Nah, on what the comment is referring to.