Gamer Deep Lore, Exhibit #2. Fringeworthy.
How many hit points does your pancreas have? (Three.)
This is my first edition copy of Fringeworthy, out in 1982. It was one of my favorite games, the first alternate world RPG.
Basically, each character was "Fringeworthy," so you could travel to alternate worlds. Where Hitler took over the world, or you had to marry a catgirl, or Cheetos were blue, or something like that.
This svelte blue book contained the entire game. I love short rules. We should bring those back.
Be sure to savor some of that tasty 80s game art.
It’s so rare that I feel truly represented in an RPG.
As short as the rules were, they had room to provide a comprehensive lesson in proper Game Master style. This advice is all pretty terrific.
You know those clickbait D&D Tweets with insane questions people ask all the time? "Is it OK for a DM to fudge rolls?" "One of my players stabs the other players in the arm with his pencil, is this ok?"
Believe it our not, people in the 80s weren't drooling idiots. We knew how to play well with others. We'd answered all those questions pretty much immediately.
(Also be sure to enjoy the art. It’s full of ups and downs, twists and turns. At the top, our hero enjoys a laser high-five with a cat girl. At the bottom, he’s going to fight an evil gumby with only a fire extinguisher.)
To provide tension to your Fringeworthy adventures, meet the Klingon of this universe: The Mellor. They start out as little zergs and grow up to be shape-shifting supergeniuses.
40 years later, they are still completely hilarious.
But let's get to the awesome part, the MEAT of Fringeworthy. The combat!
You ever hear a gamer say how fighting in RPGs should be more REALISTIC? Like, he took a fencing class and now he wants melee to have 73 different wrestling options or whatever?
Yeah. We tried that. Fringeworthy wanted to have the most realistic combat damage system EVAR. There are page after page of loving, insanely complex stats for every possible weapon. It goes on forever.
The Fringeworthy damage system is AWESOME. Suppose you get shot for 7 points of damage. You roll the exact location where you get hit. And then you apply that damage to skin, then bone, then organs, with each location saying the exact thickness of what you hit.
So every gamer wonders, "How many hit points do my genitals have?"
But only Fringeworthy has the COURAGE to answer that question.
(The answer is: 1.)
The problem with realistic combat is simple: If you get in a fight in Fringeworthy, you just die. You take 2 points of bladder damage, you can't pee anymore, and you DIE.
Which means a realistic combat system rapidly reduces to no combat system at all. Nobody wants that.
To see what I mean, here is a Fringeworthy sample adventure. Basically a one page frame for a role-playing session. (Yes, we had games like that in the 80s too.) It's neat and all, but not what most people want.
(And be sure to savor that cheapo line-printer font, beloved of low-budget 80s games everywhere.)
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Conversely, my first tabletop RPG I bought was AEon Trinity. I didn't know squat about roleplaying mechanics and I remember being mystified that I had to wait a week between sessions for my character to heal. Didn't understand the GM could handwave time passing.
Having an older player to teach me would have been a good place to start!
In the search for “fun,” “realism” is a trap.
In a “realistic” game set in the “swords-are-still-relevant stage of technology,” you’re either playing a mounted archer, or you’re bringing everyone else down. Most of the game will be spent on weapon and armor maintenance, so hope you’re down for some hot, rust-fighting action! Also basically any damage would call for a “roll for lethal infection” mechanic, which would also be called for at basically every turn because ancient hygiene was a horror story all its own.
For all the memes, no one fired up Oregon Trail thinking, “oh boy! I can’t wait to die of dysentery!”
Combat where the most likely outcome is getting sent back to a lobby to wait for longer than you were actually playing is bad enough. Combat where the most likely outcome is seeing a character and all the time and investment put into them dissolve in the opening is far worse. Searching for “realism” can spark innovative design, sure, but realistic combat has been tried, studied, dissected, and left on the wayside because it isn’t conducive to a good time.