Grappling - ruleset preferences and issues (Basic, Pyramid, MA, TG etc.)

[Gigermann]

Really, the driving forces behind this argument are two opinions:

1. Folks who dislike TG and are afraid it will be canonized such that they will be pressured to use it anyway
2. Folks who like TG and don't want it to be unreasonably marginalized, especially due to a misperception of its complexity

Obviously, I fall into category #2. I think TG achieves rather well what was intended, and is not nearly so bad as its "dislikers" believe it to be. That said, there's no way it will ever become "default"—I can point to but a handful that would care enough to even try it. So really, I see no need for a fuss to be made at all.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

It should be noted there is a difference in the Crunch, Vehicles and Deadly Spring is out of play crunch that when you use it you full contraction is on it and you're just preparing info for play use.

but TG in in play crunch where it's you concentration is split with your other tasks [especially for the GM]

Originally Posted by Xplo

I liked Vehicles. But as roguebfl notes, all the crunching in Vehicles happens outside of play.

I liked Vehicles too. I'm among the crowd who kept posting whenisitready whenisitready, then I quieted down once Alternate Spaceships was out. And yes, I'm using Spaceships to crunch numbers between games, not during them. Mostly, anyway.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You know the old saying, "To a man who has a hammer every problem looks like a nail"? This isn't that, but at times it looks to me like, "I'm used to using a hammer, so I want a wrench that works like a hammer." That is, I don't have any a priori assumption that grappling ought to be closely similar to striking; it seems just as possible that unifying the two mechanics is forcing a square peg into a round hole as that it's achieving an elegant unification.

There is a drive in many gamers to find ways to use a single mechanic for everything. When I was writing GURPS Social Engineering, I saw comments from people who quite clearly wanted social interaction to be represented by an attack/defend/damage process, with some sort of social "hit points" that represented a level of will that was being worn away or something like that. And I suppose that could have been done. But I stuck with reaction rolls and Influence rolls. So "it's like core combat" does not strike me as a compelling argument; in itself it carries zero weight.

Note that I am not saying, here, that it's necessarily wrong. It might not be. I haven't examined this particular unification, for entirely different reasons. I'm just saying that I don't take it for granted that "unified is better," and therefore I don't find "but it uses the same core mechanic" (out of, as has been noted, multiple different core mechanics) to be a reason to look into it.

Bill Stoddard

Only grappling is rather more like combat that social interaction I so think there's a natural synergy in concept there.

Thing is that hammer saying is based on the concepts of taking a simple tool and applying it to different situations hard enough they end up all equally flat. Which is an odd observation to make about a system that distinguishes a bit more finely than what went before

So I think its more like "give the man a tool kit, and he'll chose the best suited tool for a variety of different jobs, and apply it"

Doesn't quite have the same connotation

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by McAllister

This absolutely killed me. I love a good dissimile, and if you're not familiar with the term, look it up on tvtropes.

The TV Tropes definition does not appear to be the classical meaning of the term; Free Dictionary cites "Comparison or illustration by contraries."

I thought "hammer" and "wrench" was actually kind of a neat metaphor for the difference between striking and grappling. Would you have been happier had I just said, "GURPS combat mechanics: hammer. Wrestling: nail."? That seems to me actually to be less similar. . . .

In any case, I think the logical point is valid: Having one game mechanic for two different things is not necessarily a desideratum. GURPS provides us with multiple game mechanics for a reason.

Bill Stoddard

[Kromm]

Then there's the publisher's view:

More than one system can cover exactly the same piece of ground. Those systems do not have to agree fully in interpretation or outcome provided that the broad strokes are 100% compatible; e.g., they're all "3d6 roll low" rather than 4d6 or 3d8 or roll high, and all represent task difficulty via bonuses and penalties rather than through required margins or numbers of successes. Most important, many and varied systems can coexist to offer gamers different resolutions (from grainy to detailed), to serve different goals (realism, drama, ease of use, etc.), and to bring different parts of the picture into sharp focus . . . and the existence of one system for a given purpose doesn't render another, slightly different one obsolete or impose an obligation on us to smooth out the edges so that the two can be "switched on" at the same time.

In point of fact, large parts of GURPS assume outright that you will use A, B, or C. Whichever you pick, the other two are automatically out of the picture and "switched off." Grafting elements of the unused systems onto the one you're using is possible – we strive for that – but definitely in the realm of advanced rules hacking for experienced gamers.

When we say "GURPS is a system," we mean "the broad strokes are 100% compatible, and we strive to make it possible to graft various parts together." We do not mean "it's like one big computer program with dozens of subroutines that are meant to run at the same time, so if some of them don't work well together, that's a bug." No, that isn't a bug – that's a case where someone has hacked things so that the code runs two subroutines at once when the coders only ever intended one to run. That intent is evidence that the whole things really is a system, and the fact that some hacking by third parties isn't very good hacking is not bad design by us but bad hacking by them.

It also bears mention that pen-and-paper games are run by people, not by computers. Expecting all the rules in all the supplements to work together at once would be unreasonable in that picture. It would also be presumptuous: "Buy it all, at great expense, or your game won't work" is Not Cool.

It's very much the case the we're setting out a buffet to choose from, which is much more compatible with the way people think and act. Yes, some people will visit the "Desserts" display, think "These are all desserts, so I'll pick and choose from everything," and end up with a gross mess on their plate. That isn't the chef's fault . . . the chef made each dessert tasty and gave it its own spot, but can't be held accountable for weird combos. And fans of chocolate cake needn't worry that it will go away – and haters of chocolate cake don't have to fret being forced to eat it – just because someone combined chocolate cake with something weird. Like the chef, we're just going to focus on making everything good, and let people use their judgment to decide what to put on their plate.

Coming back to the specific case at hand, for grappling, you can use the Basic Set or Martial Arts or Technical Grappling. Each of these systems refers iteratively to the ones before it to save words. It would be really, really rude to customers to put every last word the Basic Set has on grappling into Martial Arts, and then to put all of that into Technical Grappling. Nobody likes to pay for stuff multiple times, and conciseness is a quality worth paying for. However . . . that iterative approach doesn't imply that the more-detailed systems need the less-detailed ones in play, only that we made an effort to show what replaces or adds on to what so that you can pick and choose strategically – so that you can hack well.

It's really no different from how Gadgeteering (pp. B475-477) refers to New Inventions (pp. B473-474) for most of its modifiers and concepts, yet totally replaces that system – or how Thaumatology depends heavily on Magic, yet offers magic systems that completely replace the basic one. The systems serve different needs, and we don't really expect them all to be used at once. You can do so, and the iterative design process makes it relatively clear how, but don't be surprised when it takes some work. And don't worry too much about the designers favoring one over the other.

[vicky_molokh]

I appreciate the whole post, but I would like to take an extra look at the following bits:

Originally Posted by Kromm

More than one system can cover exactly the same piece of ground.
[ . . . ]
the existence of one system for a given purpose doesn't render another, slightly different one obsolete or impose an obligation on us to smooth out the edges so that the two can be "switched on" at the same time.
[ . . . ]
It also bears mention that pen-and-paper games are run by people, not by computers. Expecting all the rules in all the supplements to work together at once would be unreasonable in that picture. It would also be presumptuous: "Buy it all, at great expense, or your game won't work" is Not Cool.
[ . . . ]
And fans of chocolate cake needn't worry that it will go away – and haters of chocolate cake don't have to fret being forced to eat it
[ . . . ]

This is more-or-less what I expected things to be. I don't expect a game to feature both Toxic Memes and Big Media Memetics rules stitched together; nor do I expect that all games involving propaganda will necessarily include even one of these two. Modularity rocks, makes everyone happy.

But when I make a post with a question or reply about MA grappling mechanics, and immediately am told that I am doing it wrong because TG is the 'current' ruleset, of course I will react unfavourably.

[Kromm]

To strain the computer-program analogy rather than the buffet one:

1. There's nothing wrong with a program that branches to A, B, or C without ever allowing A and B, B and C, or C and A at the same time.
   
   
2. There's nothing wrong with A calling X; B calling X (possibly for an entirely different purpose than A did!) and also Y; and C calling X and Y (possibly for entirely different purposes than A and B did!), and also Z. That's just efficiency.
   
   
3. There's nothing wrong with writing all branches of the code (A, B, and C) and all the subroutines they call (X, Y, and Z) in a way that lets later developers come along and splice them together in new ways. Using the same programming language is a broad example, but there are lots of subtler ways to facilitate borrowing.

That third point in no way implies X does the same thing in the context of A, B, and C; that Y does the same thing in the context of B and C; or that A, B, and C can all run at the same time. It merely implies that if you're good at coding, you might be able to come up with your own program that branches and calls in different ways but that efficiently reuses some code that was thoughtfully written to make that easier on you.

This is GURPS. It claims to be a system because it's clear about when things branch, because it reuses as much as it can to remain concise and facilitate learning, and because it's all in the same broad "design language." It does not claim that you can use its many and varied subsystems willy-nilly. The inability to do that without some hacking isn't a "bug" in the original code.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But when I make a post with a question or reply about MA grappling mechanics, and immediately am told that I am doing it wrong because TG is the 'current' ruleset, of course I will react unfavourably.

The question is whether anybody said that. When forums arguments run to dozens of posts, it's often the case that one side thought the other said something they didn't say . . . maybe side A implied something, or maybe side B inferred it. As far as I can tell, nobody has said, "Now we have Technical Grappling, so your Martial Arts skills are obsolete." What they have said is, "Well, that problem you have with Martial Arts is solved in Technical Grappling." And that's 100% legit.

Supplements often exist to address weaknesses in earlier ones, and it's fair to suggest that if you dislike a weakness in an earlier work, you consider the release that patches it. I realize that there's a school of thought that patching ought to happen in errata, and should not add new, paid-for content to the system. That ignores the fact that we don't always agree that something is a weakness in need of patching for most users, so we'd prefer to leave well enough alone and let authors who do see a weakness earn a few bucks patching it in their own add-on. And if you like the original system mostly but see a few concepts of merit in the patch, the onus is on you to hack them together.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The TV Tropes definition does not appear to be the classical meaning of the term; Free Dictionary cites "Comparison or illustration by contraries."

I thought "hammer" and "wrench" was actually kind of a neat metaphor for the difference between striking and grappling. Would you have been happier had I just said, "GURPS combat mechanics: hammer. Wrestling: nail."? That seems to me actually to be less similar. . . .

In any case, I think the logical point is valid: Having one game mechanic for two different things is not necessarily a desideratum. GURPS provides us with multiple game mechanics for a reason.

Bill Stoddard

Happier? I'm sorry, I must have been unclear. I was quite happy with your analogy. My statement that it killed me was using the word "killed" in the same sense that one might claim that a stand-up comedian slayed the audience.

I also agree with your point about consolidating game mechanics, and also thank you for introducing me to the word "desideratum."

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The question is whether anybody said that. When forums arguments run to dozens of posts, it's often the case that one side thought the other said something they didn't say . . . maybe side A implied something, or maybe side B inferred it. As far as I can tell, nobody has said, "Now we have Technical Grappling, so your Martial Arts skills are obsolete." What they have said is, "Well, that problem you have with Martial Arts is solved in Technical Grappling." And that's 100% legit.

This whole tangent started with:

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm referring to current grappling rules, i.e. GURPS Technical Grappling. While it provides new mechanisms for actual one-handed grappling, I didn't find anything about using the crook of the arm while holding a knife.