Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
Traditionally, magic just... works. Stabbing people just... happens. But in GURPS and most RPGs, there's some sort of skill or combat roll involved. Fiction rarely takes time out to discuss probabilities, much less make die rolls, but that doesn't mean the abilities "just work" in a game context.
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Agreed – and that's crucial here!
Games and fiction are not much alike. Games have multiple partners whose interests often diverge. The characters have agendas of their own, not dictated by a director or an author. Everybody gets a saving throw; everybody has the right to duck, luck out, oppose, resist, etc.
GURPS very explicitly does its best (or worst, if you see it that way) to ensure that you
can't get "just works" abilities . . . even Cosmic can, at best, ensure a hit and avoid DR. The target still gets an active defense roll, still gets to absorb the badness with whatever FP or HP she bought, and still gets to break free, regenerate, or what-have-you. Similar efforts have been made to foil ultimate defenses, such as invulnerability, which are fine in auteur fiction but crummy in interactive, collaborative fiction. The game also has an implicit goose/gander rule, which means that NPCs enjoy similar benefits for the sake of plausibility and a good story, unless the GM expressly switches on mook rules to meet a different definition of "good story."
In this discussion, the problem very much seems to be that players expect TK to work as in films and novels, which is quite broken for games. In my long experience running and playing RPGs (34 years and counting), I've found that players tend to hate it when it's the
PCs who are lifted up, no saving throw, and told they cannot do anything but lose the fight. As a designer, my belief is that efforts to eliminate such situations should benefit NPCs equally.