Things players say to me
 

Me:

Where do you want to kick him

Player: It says here that skull is -7 to hit.
We do tai kwan do and its easier to hit the head than the body.

Me: yeah and I do Muay Thai and Im pretty sure the GURPS MA authors know martial arts. Are you really sure that you arent just practicing hitting the head over and over again in a sporting environment and that means you think that its easier but in real life people tend to raise their hands to block their head. Do you also think that maybe the head is a smaller target than the large torso and generally people trying to hit it with projectiles and weapons have at least some penalty.

Player: no the head is easier to hit.


Me: ....

Re: Things players say to me
 

Generally I would say something like: "OK well thank you for your feedback, however I'm leaving this rule as written".

EDIT

In game I don't encourage a lot of back and forth, so essentially I shut it down by making a decision and saying we can discuss after the session for future games. Nothing worse than having a combat stop while we get into 30 minute debate about volumetric fireballs or other esoteric technicalities.

EDIT2

Also, Skull isn't the whole head anyway.

Re: Things players say to me
 

First, Tae Kwon Do in the dojo/tournament is different than Tae Kwon Do in a real fight. An opponent is not necessarily committed to the rules of Tae Kwon Do (in which you usually avoid using your hands, for the sake of making points, for starters).

On the other hand, you could also say that in Tae Kwon Do, they teach you techniques to buy off the penalty to strike the head (That's on the martial arts book).

- Hide

Re: Things players say to me
 

And they were fine with that when I said something similar and perfectly polite. They just gave me the look of "you don't know what you are talking about... and your system isn't realistic"
Its more the not convincing them that bothers me and they no doubt went back to a system that deals with hit locations and close combat in a less realistic, more abstracted way than GURPS.

As it is it was a convention game and I was demoing- I think the real lesson is I am going to limit the kind of demos I run at cons and assess the worth of me demoing at a con. Its a lot of work and I'm really only doing it to promote GURPS. Its not rewarding when people don't seem very interested.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Don't give up promoting something you like.

RPGs have attracted people with little real world experience for over 40 years. It's just the nature of the beast.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I'd think it'd be worthwhile to point out to these players (and maybe you did point out) that it's perfectly possible to kick heads in GURPS. For starters, they only need to deal with a -5 penalty for the head, not -7. Add to that +4 for AoA, or +4 for Telegraphic Attack, or +8 for both, and heads will get kicked (especially if the fighters have a little skill, too). There are even Feints and Deceptive Attacks (and the use of Evaluate instead of Telegraphic Attack) to deal with pesky active defenses; fancy tweaks like Hit Location and Trademark Move to further boost committed practitioners' THH (To Hit Head); and probably more potential bonuses that I'm forgetting.

In short, GURPS seems a very head kick-friendly game to me...

(Then again, if the gist of the players' complaint is "Sure, it's easy enough to kick a head with all those factors, but that should be easier than kicking the body... well, that just sounds wacky to me. But to repeat from the above, with Hit Location and Trademark Move, GURPS makes it almost as easy for a skilled practitioner to kick a head as to kick a body. What other RPG with meaningful hit locations can offer that?)

Re: Things players say to me
 

Meh, not much you can do there. It seems intuitively obvious to me that a small target is header to hit and there are ways you can model a fighting style that prioritises head-blows in GURPS. So I'm happy with it. But people will pick some as aspect of a rules system and just disagree that its realistic with more or less justification.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Apart from everything else, and assuming the discussion does not take place during the gaming (which is rightly a no-no), what I see is that you provided explanations, and they did not, save "with this martial art it's easier".

Now, I know nothing about martial arts in real life, and you don't practice Tae Kwon Do, but even so, if they are unable to explain in simple terms, even to ignorant people, what are the actual factors that make hitting the head easier, then their argument sounds iffy to me.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I don't think promoting GURPS to people who aren't really interested is something I like.

As it is:

I probably won't try to GM at that con again. The people were perfectly welcoming and friendly I just think they have systems they like and I'd prefer to go as a player (and play another system that we might both like) rather than a GM (who GM's a system that they don't like).

Re: Things players say to me
 

"Easier to kick the head because that's the only target I spent all my time practicing to kick" is not the same thing as "easier to kick the head because smaller, more distant targets are inherently easier to hit than the body or the knee".

I'm hardly a TKD expert and probably couldn't kick above my waist if I had to. But it sounds like putting points into a favorite Technique to me.

You also might avoid body kicks because they're less effective, or because it's much easier for the target to trap your leg that way. That might make the head a preferable target -- but again, that would be choosing the head because it's smarter tactically, which is also not the same thing as "easier to hit".

GURPS die rolls aren't designed to lead unknowing novices into choosing the smartest, most effective option because that one has the fewest penalties. You could design a game that way -- Feng Shui had at least a few nods to making action movie silliness the more effective smart choice, mechanically speaking, to encourage players to choose that sort of behavior. But that's not GURPS' normal style.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I'm not a Tae Kwon Do expert but I did get to my red stripe, so that's a thing. I could kick above my head at the time too, no problem.

He's smoking some kind of crack if he says his TKD teacher teaches that the head is an easier target than the body. It might be a higher value target in a tourney (I never did tournament fighting) and GURPS certainly models it being a high value target in a real fight, but it's definitely a harder target (and not just because you have to lift your leg up further). Once you've got your leg up around your hip you can strike the entire torso and upper body with about as much leg-lifting-difficulty and speed. Hitting your target and not getting blocked is another thing entirely.

We definitely were taught to Telegraph our kicks, and I would say as a non-tournament practitioner I was merrily All Out Attacking too, even though the kata include miming defenses against imaginary opponents from all directions. The operative words there being "miming" and "imaginary".

Re: Things players say to me
 

I do have a problem with the enormous -5 to hit the face and -7 to hit the skull. Hitting the skull (from the front) is 75% as difficult as hitting an eye. Which feels utterly excessive. But I agree there should be SOME penalty.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Their arguments are iffy because they don't actually know what they are talking about.



Agreed, and with some strikes, swings, or kicks, the skull is easier to hit than the face.

I've always felt the Hit Location table was overly harsh, what with the ease of punching people in the face, head, groin, and knees.

Especially the knees. And no, I've never bought the notion that these were techniques that were specifically trained in. I mean yes, those were strikes I trained in, but no more so than body blows, kidney strikes, jabs to the solar plexus, etc.

But the face? It's just so punchable.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Well, do whatever you want of course, but this is a problem in gaming in general and it's not system dependent. The problem is many gamers just don't understand reality. They are young or get their ideas from movies or whatever. This causes them, through lack of meaningful life experience, to believe silly things.

You could play with those same guys in some other system and they would continue to think other thoughts divorced from reality. No fixing that. You just have to learn to accept it if you are going to play at Cons or otherwise engage with a large volume of gamers. The only solution is to play with a narrow group of selected people.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I've nearly always used that strategy, and it's worked well for me. But then I've attended only one gaming convention; at science fiction and comic conventions there have been too many other things to do for me to commit time to running a game.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I don't know jack about MA.

But it seems to me that you should not be practicing by kicking people in the head.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I didn't kick actual people in the head on a daily basis any more than a boxer punches people in the head on a daily basis. However, the boxer trains to punch people in the head, and a TKD tournament fighter trains to kick people in the head.

Kicks landed on the head count for more points than kicks landed on the body (usually), and strikes landed on limbs Just Don't Count. So you do a lot of training to get good at landing full strength blows at headish-like targets. Then you do practice sparring, where you aren't using full-strength blows (and everyone is wearing body armor and head protection) and train landing blows on actual defended heads, lightly. In full contact matches you put those two parts of your training together and punch and kick people in the head. Yay.

You can see why I didn't do tournament fighting.

Re: Things players say to me
 

My understanding is that for Olympic-style TKD, the watchword is "jarring contact." That is, if you kick someone in (say) the chest, is only counts if you rock their world a bit. The head is rather substantially easier to "jar" someone by hitting. Or end the fight right the heck then via knockout.

Therefore, not only is it a lower-percentage move to hit the body, kicks are prioritized to a huge degree (it's harder to jar a dedicated practitioner with a punch), it pays off to adopt a guard stance with the hands held substantially lower than many other arts, since you can be pretty sure that the attacks will cross the plane of the waist, and that punches are mostly ignorable.

So from that perspective, the head is "easier" to hit than the body, because (a) the hands are right there protecting the body, and (b) the impact to the body is not always "jarring" enough to get a point. Olympic TKD practitioners also don't have to worry about getting their sensitive bits kicked in as they go for high kicks, and don't have to worry at all about someone catching their leg and doing a takedown.

That's not to say these guys and gals aren't phenomenal athletes that can kick the head a lot, and really hard. But the rules of the game they're playing encourage a certain set of techniques that are honed meticulously.

I've also trained (briefly) at a TKD-centric school where the instructor was a huge fan of Hapkido as well, and extensively at Hwa Rang Do (which in many cases resembles a blend, if one must, of TKD, Hapkido, and Jiu-Jitsu and all can be used in sparring matches). These folks still like to go for the head, but other techniques are much more common, and the vulnerability to getting your leg caught and your other leg swept during kicks, especially high kicks, pours water on the "there's no downside to a head kick!" issue.

Re: Things players say to me
 

One time at a con-game I ran...
Let me set the stage first. [Warning for grossness]

The game is using BESM (an anime style game but similar in many respects to GURPS). The PCs are various pregenerated chars who are all on an airplane that crashes on the north pole. Most people on the plane died as it crashed but the PCs all had Powers that awoke as part of the crash. As the PCs crawl out of the ship and realise they are stranded, the very first action of one of the players is to - and this is were it gets gross - he wanted his character to consume human flesh.

I immediately pulled out of game and told him it would be wildly out of character for his pretty normal high school kid to suddenly want to eat people. Maybe search for survives - try to find a way to call for help or something? Or, if he was hungry there were airplane-meals scatteres around the area. But no, because, as he pulled me aside and told me in confidence, he had heard it tasted good...
This is the only time I have ever in any game ever GMed stated "no, you do not do that".
And then the alien robots who was supposed to turn up after some tension-building showed up and we had a fight scene. During the next scene the player decided to assault an alien base alone. And I was thankfull to simple tell him "you died" and ask him to leave so the rest us could try to have a normal 'super magical anime heroes stranded on the north pole battling alien robots'-game thank you very much!

[Edit] Sorry I had a point that was relevant to the OP: Some people are just crazy, they turn up at game cons. Forget about them and focus on the people who are having fun at your game.[/edit]

Re: Things players say to me
 

This reminds me an old twitter post from PK.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Having spent a couple years learning TKD, there is no way that kicking the head of a ready target is anything but a boneheaded move. The utility of TKD in a street fight is fast and powerful kicks to the lower body. A high kick against anyone but an amateur in a real fight is just begging for a Leg Grapple followed by any number of horrible things happening to your lower body.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I dont think Im surprised by any of this.

I think the point for me is that there are more and more players that I dont want to GM for and probably despite them turning up they really dont want me to GM for them either.

If it wasnt TKD it would be just something else.

If I have the choice between patiently explaining to them why they are wrong and having them still ignore me or doing something I actually enjoy then I'm going with the latter.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I used to do TKD and he's smoking something if he's talking about general combat.

According to my TKD teacher the high sweeping head kick, designed to hit the head, isn't much use for anything else. A standard sweep kick or a side kick are much better for every other target. I'll note also that he demonstrated to us (using me as the practice dummy, so I got a good look at it) that a side kick to the face is a better but less spectacular way to hit the head anyway, and told us to leave the sweep to competition bouts.

It does hit the head more easily than the torso--because you're aiming above the shoulders and standing very close to the opponent, and in a real fight you're inviting him to duck under the kick and punch you a couple of times in the groin that's been presented to him at punching height and range with no defense on it.

So the guy's right, for a very specific value of 'right'.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Exactly, he's right if he really likes getting punched in the groin.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Or is doing a demo and the other participant isn't going to fight back.

Re: Things players say to me
 

I have no skill in any martial art—I spent a year trying and wasn't ready for the first belt exam—but I have to say this sounds a bit like "the scriptwriter is on your side."

Re: Things players say to me
 

Ayup; 'doing a demo'=='has a scriptwriter'.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Lachimba:


So, go do the thing, run what you want. Even one convert is good. Visibility is better, especially if you make a point about the number and quality of resource books.

Re: Things players say to me
 

yes, GURPS' random hit location table and hit location penalties are an old part of the system, before good sources were available, and they lump together projectiles, thrusts, blows, and kicks into one system for convenience. In the real world, blows with weapons tend to land on the edges of the silhouette (Skull, Face, Neck, Arms, Legs) while projectiles tend to hit things in proportion to their exposed surface area, but the default rules are SIMPLE and let you get on with the fight. There are various optional rules in eg. GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators if you want to represent how different types of attacks behave more accurately, but as always, its much easier to make something more complicated than to make it more realistic. Posture, measure, the weapon used, presence of shields or armour all affect which targets are good ones.

In addition, what counts as a hit in a point-scoring game like SCA heavy fighting or a TKD tournament is not always the same as a Hit in GURPS combat. The Defensive Attack and Telegraphic Attack options in GURPS MA can help to represent techniques like these which deliver a touch but would not inflict as much damage as a basic Attack in GURPS.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Thinking about it, kicking in the head should be hard. High kicks are hard and leaping kicks harder.

(Well, they look harder to an unhealthy old git who has never done either in his life.)

Punching in the head though....

Your fists are about the right height, you are going to be more able to hit the upper body with your fist than you are the leg.

(Has to be said I've never punched anyone in the head either.)

But do we really want to go for different hit location modifiers for hands (and hand held weapons) and for feet?

And you can hit someone standing in front of you with a spear just about anywhere.

This could easily get more complex than most people want to deal with.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Honestly, arms are not easier to hit than torsos when it comes to swing attacks. Consider the problem in three dimensions. The torso is much thicker than both arms and much wider, so a swinging attack will be have a greater chance to hit the torso, even if the attack is coming from the side.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Yes, there are other optional rules to make kicking the face harder and stamping a foot easier.

You might think so in theory, but not in practice.

Re: Things players say to me
 

In practice, however, the arms are more likely to be hit in most cases because they are likely to be in the way - in melee at least, ranged combat is another beast altogether...

Re: Things players say to me
 

Arms are less likely to be hit because they can be moved out of the way quickly. It's only when you aim at the head or torso would they be placed in the way to block. Legs can also be moved quickly out of the way but not as quick as arms. The hardest thing to move out of the way is your centre of mass. That's why not called-shots are considered to aimed at the torso.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Barring some kind of alien species with giant heads or a human who is crawling toward you (or perhaps a very exaggerated crouch which thrusts the head forward and body back) it's hard to see how what your player is saying would be the case.

Unless he figures the arms tend to passively get in the way of the torso more than the head and you hit those instead, which can be true. It takes more effort to hold your arms up higher.

The kind who lean forward dramatically, denying the body and presenting the head tend to realize they need to guard their faces more and their bodies less so it would even out some. That would be an exhausting posture to maintain for longer fights.

Re: Things players say to me
 

Back to the OP. I think the problem is made too specific. In every simulation of reality there will be things that don't fit your world view. I have my issues about some GURPS-rules as well.

Avoid that discussion in a game session. If one of those people want to GM a GURPS game, they can give a bonus to kicking the head if they feel like it. If the players can live with it, have fun.

If it's your game, you decide the rules. If you stick to vanilla GURPS, that's your prerogative (I tend to make IQ, per, will independent attributes). Discussions about the validity of those rules should come after the game or in a GURPS forum.

Thinking a RPG is bad or unplayable because it doesn't fit your worldview about kicks to the head is silly IMHO.

Re: Things players say to me
 

The other thing to remember is this; if the players really want to argue that heads are easier to hit, remind them that means the bad guys can hit the PC's heads more easily as well. Are they happy with trading "realism" for a higher mortality rate?

Re: Things players say to me
 

I think the best thing I've heard from a player was Dripton's 10 minute rant about why on Earth mages would spend time making cursed items instead of useful one.

Next up would be:

Me: You see a door.
Player: I try to break it open with my shoulder.
Me: You don't try to turn the knob first?
Player: No.
Me: ...you hurt your shoulder. -.-

Re: Things players say to me
 

Sounds like the famous gazebo encounter. . . .

Re: Things players say to me
 

Had to reread this three times... the first two times I also asked "Why would Earth Mages spend time making cursed items?"