Post originally by MattW at 2004-07-29 22:44:03
Converted from Phorums BB System

Well, I think Oliver rebutted the rebuttals of my point about GURPS reasonably effectively (and even somewhat civilly, surprisingly). Certainly my point is open to debate, and doesn't have anything to do with TRoS.

Polaris called me out for the snarkiness of my post and that it doesn't address the issue. Perhaps you are right. In the message to which I was responding, one of your two main objections was that non-HP-based wound systems have a death-spiral effect (certainly true in the case of TRoS) which makes conflict too problematic. It is the second part of this with which I disagree. In fact, my disagreement with this statement is, I believe, at the heart of ALL the debate and invective over this review.

There are two sentences from the original review which I'm going to cite here.

>> You’re able to perform some cool maneuvers and all, but it’s so deadly, you really pick your fights carefully. To me, this kind of thinking is worthless, and I’ll never get it. <<

Change "but" to "and" in the first sentence, and you'd have a pretty good advertisement for the game! "Dude! Did you hear about The Riddle of Steel? It's this game with a combat system where you can perform all sorts of cool maneuvers, like feints and counters and grapples! It's a really deadly combat system, though, so that players have to pick their fights carefully, and every fight is a crucial turning point in the story." That is *exactly* how TRoS is intended to be played. It is exactly the sort of game Jake et al were trying to design, and the fans of the game enjoy that style of play. If you and your players prefer games where combats happen more often and are more casual, that's certainly legitimate.

However, your (Helstorm's) derision towards that style of play, by calling it "worthless," does seem a bit close-minded, and I don't think it's surprising that you got strong reactions from people, because you did use such a very loaded word in your review. (I'm not saying some of the reactions weren't more than a little ad hominem themselves.) "Worthless" means "without any merit at all," not "a different point of view, preference, or taste." (To be fair, you did put the clause "To me" before your the main clause of that sentence, but I don't think people took that the way you probably meant it.)

The other major issue here, though perhaps secondary to the desirability of highly deadly combat, is the question of the level of out-of-game knowledge required to play the game, which I have addressed in other posts. But, briefly:

You contend the following:

>> Why does my combat skills as a player matter to my character in combat? The answer is - it shouldn’t. <<

Grammar aside, that pair of sentences, too, seems like an unfair assumption to make. "This is the answer. Out-of-game skill Should Not Matter. Period. End. Stop. It is not just the answer for myself and my players, it is *the* truth about RPG design, and thus I am not going to take into account in my review any other possible way of looking at it." Now, I realize that I put words into your mouth a bit there, but it's certainly not an unreasonable interpretation of what you wrote (even if you didn't mean it that way). Thus, the level of out-of-game skill required by TRoS (which is quite high, admittedly, though as I and many others have said, certainly comparable to many other games) becomes something which is just bad, and contributes to the game getting a low score from you, even though it was a deliberate aspect of the design.

Matt