[Rq-rules] [RQIII] Unpradictability vs SR

[Styopa]

We actually tried the 'rolling' round system where someone who acted on SR 7
the first round, went on 4 of the next and 1 & 8 of the following; movement
added SR as normal.  It *was* a bookkeeping nightmare, indeed.  You probably
could do it if you had a computer manager for all the participants (kind of
like the Star Fleet Battles 'impulse' movement system or Car Wars movement,
come to think of it).

The other difficulty was the rationalization of what 'happened' in that gap
of time...but that's an question I've always had with the SR system in
general: how it integrates with movement.
John goes on SR 7, so if he moves for 2 SR to come adjacent to his target,
what's he "doing" for the following 7 SR until 9?  If his target moves away
on SR 8 (or on SR 3, for that matter), he loses his chance to hit?

Not to start another argument about deterministic systems, but my
'discomfort' with predictability of combat systems led me to find the Harn
damage system attractive - where (going by memory here) instead of deducting
damage from a finite set of 'hit points', damaging blows instead caused a
check against a character's 'health', with accumulating injuries causing
cumulative negative modifiers against this check until even the strongest
character was likely to go down.
My appreciation for it was only in theory, however, I never actually played
with it in a campaign setting.  It SEEMS fairly realistic and (suiting my
own personal taste) uncertain, no more "ah, I hit him, he only has 2 hp in
his head and my min damage is 3, he's going to be dead"...

Anyone play it over a longer timeframe?  Was it playable?  Generally I find
systems that seem cool in theory tend to stumble in some unanticipated way
in application.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.thinbits.net/pipermail/rq-rules/attachments/20071024/53cd3a38/attachment.html