Sorry late reply (last week of work)
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
I'd be interesting into going into them elsethread, though. Probably in a more general way, not restricted to just RS.
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Cool
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
What I often have problem with, is drawing the line between a honest match of Man-To-Man-'Chess', and abuse of the system. Divining that requires knowing RAI, at the very minimum.
On one hand, I want a ruleset that maps mostly 1:1 to descriptions of events. On the other, it has been stated that what descriptively happens can only be interpreted after all the game-mechanical issues have been resolved within a turn sequence.
I remember a clarification that when the first, third and seventh 'shot' in a beam weapon RoF attack hit, that does not necessarily mean on-off-on-off shots, but rather that at some point within those ten shots, three in a row got on-target.
So it's not at all clear whether making three steps around a 'trapped' opponent should be described literally, as the opponent not turning around at all, or as the opponent starting to turn immediately, but still suffering penalised / auto-failed defences until he gets to recover from his spin. And I do mean not clear, I don't mean to say that it's necessarily the 'excusing' description.
So . . . separate thread about abstraction vs. literal mapping between system and description?
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I think there's always going to be the competing issue of a playable system that can be followed easily and what would happen in real life in a chaotic everyone going at once combat. For me the best to apply the former with an eye on the latter. Rather than just run the former on the assumption it's also the latter.
So for instance I tend to be careful about rules that hinge on a precise cut off points for actions that can be exploited, because the underpinning ethos of the GURPS combat is while it's completed in a step by step turn based way, it's actually a series of concurrent contiunuums. The example in this thread being when you can and can't change facing, but can for instance leverage a hex of movement (with facing change) of defence response.
IME none of these by themselves ever cause that much of an issue, it when you combine a few of them together you get some pretty odd situations.
Weather this is just clever play within the rules, or gaming reality, is going to come done to that balance I first mentioned. Of course that distinction is going to irrelevant to many genres where the constraints of reality have less bearing (this is a point I should perhaps have made a while back).
But yep happy to discuss that in a different thread some time!