4E's hit point philosophy

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

I question your use of the term "disease-inducing"; the closest thing I've said is "break out in hives," and that's my opinion of strict simulationism, not a company statement. I believe my previous post is pretty clear in that regard.

I also think "blame the customer for playing wrong" is awfully harsh; what I've said is that I don't think GURPS is the best tool for some kinds of encounters, and trying to shoehorn those encounters into GURPS as written is going to lead to frustration and difficulties. (As this thread demonstrates!)

What I will say -- in my capacity as a gamer, not as a company spokesperson -- is that I think the more rules you load onto GURPS to make it a better simulation engine, the more daunting you make the game for casual players, and the more likely it is that those players will abandon the entire game in favor of something that chooses gameplay over realism. I don't think that's a desirable outcome for the line, for the company, OR for the fans.

Edited to add: I'm not in the least opposed to the creation of such rules for the players who want them. I do not think they should be the default, and I certainly don't think that the lack of those rules is a flaw of a system designed to appeal to as wide a base as possible.

I'm about as far from a simulationist as possible. I'm not looking for simulationism or even realism. I'm interested in good gameplay and that's pretty much it, but I don't want to use rules that totally break my suspension of disbelief due to ridiculous outcomes, like the previously mentioned musket fire taking down a ship.
In my experience, GURPS has worked for almost every adventuring encounter I've tried to game out. After all, "universal" is right in the name! But it fell flat when I wanted to play a pirates game and model ship damage. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to want a playable set of rules for ship damage.