Re: RE: (TFT) Fatigue Damage?

[srydzews@ix.netcom.com]

>> Gary Guygax introduced Hit Points into role playing 
>> (a mistake I think, but that is another discussion.) 
>
> This was an interesting statement! I'd love 
> to hear this discussion? 

Really?  You would?  Best reserve judgement until you
hear it.  

Well as far as the statement "Gary Guygax introduced Hit 
Points into role playing" it's not as if there were FRP 
games before Gygax, and he sullied the concept by grafting 
the idea of hit points onto it.  There weren't FRP games
before Gygax and Arneson wrote D&D in '73.  When they did,
they used the concept of hit points--brought over from 
Chainmail like most of D&D's combat mechanics.

The durability of the idea of hit points is self-evident.
Even 'modern' computer games such as Diablo II still use 
them.  Are they realistic?  Of course not.  Are they 
convenient and very "game-able"?  Yes.

The alternative is to use a 'non-ablative' damage system
that evaluates the damage caused by individual wounds in
a non-cumulative fashion.  Millenium's End is an excellent
system that doesn't use hit points.  Of course that's a 
modern-day technothriller game where all the combatants are
human (barring the occasional guard dog).  So you don't need
something that will 'scale' very much.  A FRP game, where 
you want one damage system to cover anything from animate
plants battling undead critters with no vital organs to 
multi-ton dragons fighting abominations from other planes,
isn't, in my opinion, usually as amenable to non-ablative 
systems.
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