Cool mechanics from OSR/OSR Adjacent/Nu-SR etc.

[robertsconley]

In my Basic Rules for my Majestic Fantasy RPG I have the following

I included because there are times when knowing the exact amount a character can carry or lift is useful.

For armor you just reduce your max move. Why? Because while amor isn't hindering it is extra weight and you need to pace yourself. Technically if I had a fatigue system, it would make sense to allow a character the normal full move but at a fatigue. But the OD&Dish compromise is to cut down on the max move.


What I didn't do and I will correct this in the Manual of Pussiant Skill which has the full rules for characters and what they can do. Is state the following.

Rob's Note: I do not recommend requiring players to track every pound of weight. Instead only do a weight tally when it become obvious that the character is faced with a situation involving carrying a lot of items. The two most common examples from my campaigns are outfitting the party with supplies for long duration travel or winning a large treasure hoard. Outside of these circumstance continually tallying weight is an annoyance to referees and players alike. A good compromise is to come up with equipment packs with precalculated weights. I included several in these rules as an aide.

 

[Brock Savage]

Seriously what we do we gain by tracking slots or pounds?

I would never recommend using something granular like pounds, coins, stones etc to track encumbrance. It's way too much hassle and bookkeeping.

To answer your question, what's gained by tracking encumbrance is an opportunity for interesting and consequential decision-making during dungeon crawls. The heart and soul of dungeon crawling is resource management (spells, supplies, hit points, consumables, etc). Encumbrance and XP for treasure hauled out of the dungeon both synergize extremely well resource management and offer up additional decision points.

But to extend that to an entire slot system in my opinion as picky and annoying as having to track every pound carried.

With all due respect I don't think you understand how slots work. With a couple exceptions it's as simple as counting the items carried by a character and comparing it to their Strength score.

 

[Imaginos]

I like the Usage die. I also like the countdown timer from OLD/NEW, though those aren’t OSR.

And really like the culture setup from Black Sword Hack.

 

[CRKrueger]

I find that the added crunch in DCC magic isn't a burden because the added risk and unpredictability makes casting exciting. Crunch is bad when you feel the table checking out every time a mechanic comes up, but in DCC magic generally has everyone eager to see what is going to happen.

Yeah, and if you hate looking up tables, the Crawler Companion App helps a lot.

The only real disappointment for me in DCC isn’t the spell system, which rocks, but the spell list. It’s the same criticism I have against Hyperborea and one of most underrated OSR games ever - Fantastic Heroes and Witchery. With all of these games I expected a little more Arduin or WFRP1 in the spell lists if you know what I mean.

 

[CRKrueger]

When a game looks to Encumbrance, it should look at what encumbers - restricts or burdens (someone or something) in such a way that free action or movement is difficult.

So weight, size, and wieldiness. A gold bar is heavy as fuck, but is small and easy to pack away. The Princess’s favorite cat you’ve been hired to retrieve, may not be big or heavy, but trying to hold on to it while fighting out of the lair of the thieves who stole it is going to be rather difficult.

D&D concerns itself primarily with weight because wargamers. Of course these people knew what the various loadouts of soldiers through history was from the Battle of Marathon to the Vietnam War, and if they didn’t, they knew enough to be able to freeball it. Size and wieldiness was for the GM to rule, weight was just a matter of strength, and there were frequently different values for what weight you could carry at various rates of speed, armor had built in movement penalties etc. Like with most early mechanics no single way to track weight/size/wieldiness because they weren’t single things.

I could see slots as useful if they were essentially Hit Locations. Each location would have weight and size restrictions, like Hit Locations have different HPs in some games. You strap a knife on a forearm, no problem. You strap two knives on a forearm, no problem. You strap a long sword on your forearm, it doesn’t matter if you’re The Mountain, it doesn’t work well.
If you’ve ever been hiking (civilian or military) you know you can carry a helluva lot if it’s packed and distributed properly.

I can see keeping track of weight accurately and letting rules or common sense govern restrictions.
I can see using slots as encumbrance locations accurately and letting rules or common sense govern restrictions.

Something like 18 STR is 18 Slots is one of those modern abstract replacements (like Zones and Mobs) that gives me nothing and gameplay, without even trying, will break in minutes. If I know damn well it’s going to fail requiring GM Fiat to resolve, why in the God-Emperor’s name would I use it in the first place?

I’m like Ravenswing in this, I don’t see keeping track of items and weights to be a burden that needs abstraction, especially to the point that it becomes too inaccurate as a model of what’s happening to be a worthwhile replacement.

I understand that increases to Speed or decreases in Note-keeping vs. decreases in Verisimilitude or Immersion is a balancing act and everyone has their own fulcrum point.

 

[robertsconley]

With all due respect I don't think you understand how slots work. With a couple exceptions it's as simple as counting the items carried by a character and comparing it to their Strength score.

I understand exactly how slots work. The issue is that they are a pure game mechanics with no basis how things work if you there watching the character adventure. Slots are a mechanics better suited for a board game. Hence my position unless it clearly matters do not bother with tallying encumbrance whether it is abstract as slots or detailed as tallying weight and bulk.

To answer your question, what's gained by tracking encumbrance is an opportunity for interesting and consequential decision-making during dungeon crawls.

The thing it is neither interesting nor consequential except in specific circumstances. Something that was made obvious to me over the years watching smart players play their characters. So again if the players manage a win a dragon's horde then they need to be concerned about how much can be carried out.

I ran and played in enough campaigns with different systems and different groups to learn that almost everyone, referee or player, likes any type of encumbrance including slots. In contrast I had nobody complain about how I handle encumbrance.

The heart and soul of dungeon crawling is resource management (spells, supplies, hit points, consumables, etc). Encumbrance and XP for treasure hauled out of the dungeon both synergize extremely well resource management and offer up additional decision points.

Then play a board game like Dungeon, Tomb, or Gloomhaven. When a system is that focused on something that metagamey like slots then it starts to miss the point of using it as an aide to run an RPG campaign. A better way of doing something like slots is to make packs or bundles of stuff with the weight precalculated. The resulting system will not only have the same advantage as slots it will handle the corner cases better.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I understand exactly how slots work. The issue is that they are a pure game mechanics with no basis how things work if you there watching the character adventure. Slots are a mechanics better suited for a board game. Hence my position unless it clearly matters do not bother with tallying encumbrance whether it is abstract as slots or detailed as tallying weight and bulk.

I'll just be honest: Tallying weight is just as, if not more, unrealistic, to how things actually work as slots are.

Slots are just abstracted combo of weight and bulk.

Weight is just a dumb way to do encumbrance, because carrying around 60 lbs of gear in a backpack distributing the load across your body is different than carrying a 60 lb. 3' cube box is different from carrying a 60 lb. 5" sphere. Bulk is a better way to do it, but once you start doing bulk, it is pretty equivalent to slots tbh.

 

[JAMUMU]

If I go out with ten pound coins in my pockets, it's a silly, jingling faff. Twenty pound coins, ten pounds in silver coins (10p, 20p, 50p) and 100 copper pennies would require massively reinforced pockets on a pair of JNCO jeans, and it'd still make a lot of noise and require careful moving not to crush delicate groin-parts. Treasure-as-coinage just doesn't work in any game that wants to pretend to the "real".

The LotFP Summon Spell is definitely something I love. As is the spellcasting of DCC and the interactive Patrons and Gods. I also like the "Disposition" score (instead of hit points) that's in one of the OSR games (Nightmares Beneath or some such), which you reroll every morning. Bad night or bad mood? Lower hit points that day. Rolled really high? You feel zesty and full of vim!

 

[gruagach]

Don't ever get sucked into the gravity well of arguing RPG encumbrance rules, no light escapes from that place...

 

[JAMUMU]

Don't ever get sucked into the gravity well of arguing RPG encumbrance rules, no light escapes from that place...

View attachment 61620

But is the light two lanterns or six torches? And are the lanterns bullseye or hooded? I need to know for my character sheet!!

 

[Fenris-77]

I have no problem with slots and for some games they're great. I have no issues with other encumbrance methods either. Some games benefit from a more granular approach. I think it's silly to pretend that slots 'don't work' or 'don't make sense' when they plainly do for some people.

 

[ffilz]

There’s also a choice in between slots and weight, ENC as a combination of bulk and weight and general awkwardness. RQ uses a pretty simple ENC system that is closer to a slot system while Cold Iron uses an ENC system that is closer to weight (but the ENC of weapons and armor are definitely higher than weight would account for to the point I need to work on a packed ENC for those and maybe a “how much ENC do worn weapons and armor impose on s mount”. With my Google Sheets character sheet I’m actually figuring encumbrance for mounts and pack animals.

 

[Necrozius]

Eh no encumbrance system ever clicked for me. I just wing it nowadays. My players were very aware of how heavy 2000 sp were, and spread it out evenly while debating whether or not they should go back to town.

It was awesome.

 

[opaopajr]

This conversation reminds me to add more luxury duvet covers, fitted sheets, and mattresses to my standard treasure table. Is it heavy, or bulky, or worth it? You decide! " No Thonk, that's precious 800 count Pima cotton with goose down stuffing!"

/rolls wandering monster die

 

[gruagach]

I mean, that noble whose manor house we supped at was mentioning how hard it is to get a nice duvet out here in the sticks - I bet they'd pay top coin for it!

Empties out pack and tries to stuff massive goose down 800 count Pima cotton duvet into it...

 

[Telok]

10-20 years of gaming will probably make him as unimaginative as those old geezers.

"But you can only do exactly what the spell text says! You can't be allowed to do more stuff by being creative! Magic is too good already! Shield should be a third level spell! Etc., etc., etc."

Oy. I keep wanting to ask them to show us where the GM bad touched their fighter on the dolly. Then they turn around and say the fighters can't be allowed to jump 35 feet without rolling 20 on a d20, archery is over powered because it's at range, you must not restrict magic users from casting spells all day every day, and you don't dare make magic "harder to use" than pushing a button without being a total anti-fun scumbag. I've has conversations on the bus with hallucinating drunks that made more sense than some people's ideas about "fun" and in rpgs.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

Ah, encumbrance rules. The bane of my life.

I've been thinking about how I want to handle this in my next campaign and what I'm actually trying to accomplish with the encumbrance rules. I'm considering doing away with all the bean-counting, but to require players to keep track on their sheets of where everything is. 'In hands', 'tucked in boot', 'in backpack'. I might be tyrannical about it for a while and do regular audits, forcing them to delete anything whose location cannot be adequately explained, and then just let them police themselves once they've got the message.

The point here is not (just) to satisfy a lust for arbitrary power. I want to try and browbeat my players into visualising their characters as actual people holding things, not just some numbers and lists on a sheet. I find it too easy to get into bad habits of forgetting what characters are supposed to look like. My NPCs often don't react like they're speaking to a half naked, blood-splattered barbarian bristling with weapons; because both me and the player have gotten out of the habit of actually visualising what Bob the Barbarian it's supposed to look like.

I'm hoping that constantly thinking about where they're tying on this new weapon they just picked up will change that, but I'm half expecting we'll become distracted and forget about it in two sessions.

 

[AsenRG]

10-20 years of gaming will probably make him as unimaginative as those old geezers.

You mean...damaging his brain?

 

[AsenRG]

Ah, encumbrance rules. The bane of my life.

I've been thinking about how I want to handle this in my next campaign and what I'm actually trying to accomplish with the encumbrance rules. I'm considering doing away with all the bean-counting, but to require players to keep track on their sheets of where everything is. 'In hands', 'tucked in boot', 'in backpack'. I might be tyrannical about it for a while and do regular audits, forcing them to delete anything whose location cannot be adequately explained, and then just let them police themselves once they've got the message.

The problem is what do you do when the fresh-out-of-prison Thief writes everything in the "Up My Booty" column...


OK, it's unlikely to come to that. But what do you do when the description doesn't quite fit?

 

[SmallbutVicious]

The problem is what do you do when the fresh-out-of-prison Thief writes everything in the "Up My Booty" column...


OK, it's unlikely to come to that. But what do you do when the description doesn't quite fit?

I'm not asking for essays, just enough that it's obvious whether or not you need to delete a dagger from your inventory after the slathering Burgle Beast eats your left leg.

 

[Baulderstone]

Ah, encumbrance rules. The bane of my life.

I've been thinking about how I want to handle this in my next campaign and what I'm actually trying to accomplish with the encumbrance rules. I'm considering doing away with all the bean-counting, but to require players to keep track on their sheets of where everything is. 'In hands', 'tucked in boot', 'in backpack'. I might be tyrannical about it for a while and do regular audits, forcing them to delete anything whose location cannot be adequately explained, and then just let them police themselves once they've got the message.

The point here is not (just) to satisfy a lust for arbitrary power. I want to try and browbeat my players into visualising their characters as actual people holding things, not just some numbers and lists on a sheet. I find it too easy to get into bad habits of forgetting what characters are supposed to look like. My NPCs often don't react like they're speaking to a half naked, blood-splattered barbarian bristling with weapons; because both me and the player have gotten out of the habit of actually visualising what Bob the Barbarian it's supposed to look like.

I'm hoping that constantly thinking about where they're tying on this new weapon they just picked up will change that, but I'm half expecting we'll become distracted and forget about it in two sessions.

I find that encumbrance is one of those things that as often better handled with rulings than rules, at least outside of D&D-like games where loot-gathering is a core part of the game. When I was a kid, I needed specific rules for everything, both because of my lack of experience with life and as a GM.

Driving mechanics are like this as well. When I was a kid, I leaned towards rule sets like Road Hogs, which had the complexity of Car Wars. Now, I can just get buy with calling for Drive checks with appropriate modifiers for what the players are trying to do.

 

[AsenRG]

I'm not asking for essays, just enough that it's obvious whether or not you need to delete a dagger from your inventory after the slathering Burgle Beast eats your left leg.

If "the slathering Burgle Beast eats your left leg", odds are, you just have to delete the inventory, isn't that so?

Mind you, I don't disagree this idea might work. I'm saying "there's good odds of grumbling and trying to weasel out of it"!

 

[SmallbutVicious]

If "the slathering Burgle Beast eats your left leg", odds are, you just have to delete the inventory, isn't that so?

Not at all. We'll be playing DCC, so it's time to find a pegleg you can add to your inventory then set off on a quest to the fabled pool of Efenkwit, rumoured to be able to regrow limbs.

Mind you, I don't disagree this idea might work. I'm saying "there's good odds of grumbling and trying to weasel out of it"!

But that happens with any encumbrance rule short of "you all have seven bags of holding".

 

[Telok]

Ok. Thats it. "the slathering Burgle Beast" is going to have to go in my setting. Luckily I already have world on the back of a cooked elephant with a bbq saice volcano. So I know where that suckers going.

 

[spittingimage]

John Wick's Santa Vaca is only OSR if you take a very broad view of what qualifies, but it's got a couple of nice features:

Your Init is whatever penalty you're willing to take to your action.

No damage roll. Every weapon does 1 HP damage, plus 1 additional HP for every multiple of 5 you exceed while rolling at or under your attack stat.

 

[bleys21]

Ok. Thats it. "the slathering Burgle Beast" is going to have to go in my setting. Luckily I already have world on the back of a cooked elephant with a bbq saice volcano. So I know where that suckers going.

I originally read it as Bargle Beast... and was thinking, why doesn't Bargle have a beast?

 

[Acmegamer]

Encumbrance has always been one of those PITA systems. I have personally enjoyed using GURPS encumbrance rules but I tend to apply them rather loosely and only leaned into them when I felt I needed to. (shrugs) I have in the past had quite a lot of experience with real life encumbrance with growing up backpacking throughout the high Sierras and other mountainous areas throughout the USA.

After that came the military and as a recon scout I deal with bulk, weight and encumbrance weekly if not often daily. Carrying 85 pound fifty cal receivers (Someone else was carrying the barrel and tripod)over one shoulder, with a fully loaded ruck on your back along with your personal weapon and web gear, you quickly learn the pain of bulk, weight and encumbrance. The sheer fatigue of it all, you just never got used to shit like that. LAWs, cans of ammo, C-rats and later MREs etc, it all weighs. This of course isn't even counting vehicle loadouts, border loadouts etc etc etc.

Personally I don't have any issues with using a slot based system for encumbrance, Free Leagues games tend to use them. I feel that as long as you are applying common sense with their usage then they work fine. Rulings not rules does indeed tend to work best when dealing with encumbrance, at least if you want to keep your game moving along. Luckily for me at most any given table I tend to have more real life experience with such things, including the effect of the elements and terrain added to it. I don't tend to say much unless the table is getting stupid about it and it's slowing or stopping game play. Then I'll pipe in with my background and then my quick opinion on whatever the debate is. Hoping that will end it and we can get back to gaming.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

"But you can only do exactly what the spell text says! You can't be allowed to do more stuff by being creative! Magic is too good already! Shield should be a third level spell! Etc., etc., etc."

Oy. I keep wanting to ask them to show us where the GM bad touched their fighter on the dolly. Then they turn around and say the fighters can't be allowed to jump 35 feet without rolling 20 on a d20, archery is over powered because it's at range, you must not restrict magic users from casting spells all day every day, and you don't dare make magic "harder to use" than pushing a button without being a total anti-fun scumbag. I've has conversations on the bus with hallucinating drunks that made more sense than some people's ideas about "fun" and in rpgs.

You could ask that question over on the Gaming Den forum.

It's been many years since I was there, so don't even know if it still exists. But I remember a lot of the threads there, were a lot like what you posted above.

 

[robertsconley]

"But you can only do exactly what the spell text says! You can't be allowed to do more stuff by being creative! Magic is too good already! Shield should be a third level spell! Etc., etc., etc."

Oy. I keep wanting to ask them to show us where the GM bad touched their fighter on the dolly. Then they turn around and say the fighters can't be allowed to jump 35 feet without rolling 20 on a d20, archery is over powered because it's at range, you must not restrict magic users from casting spells all day every day, and you don't dare make magic "harder to use" than pushing a button without being a total anti-fun scumbag. I've has conversations on the bus with hallucinating drunks that made more sense than some people's ideas about "fun" and in rpgs.

Two points

• I would tell the person to chill out about magic. If the listener thinks it ought to work differently, I would explain magic is all completely made-up shit. But I do want to hear about it if I didn't explain things like magic properly, especially at the beginning of the campaign.
• I will get very annoyed with a player who ignores what I say when I state that my Majestic Wilderlands is a medieval setting with fantasy elements and then later complain that their fighter isn't able to jump 35 feet without rolling a 20 on d20.

 

[Telok]

I will get very annoyed with a player who ignores what I say when I state that my Majestic Wilderlands is a medieval setting with fantasy elements and then later complain that their fighter isn't able to jump 35 feet without rolling a 20 on d20.

Sorry, I must have missed the mark a bit. It's not really about specific stunts in specific systems. It's that those people are... I can't tell if they're hypocrites, fools, or just never think about what they're saying.

There's some massive disconnect where they want their magic both more and less powerful at the same time they're saying non-magic stuff is both too powerful and not powerful enough. It's just this weird disconnect where they seem like they want everything to be exactly the same +/- 10% and yet be completely different.

Its like they argue about stuff in a closed circle where the last thing leads to the first thing but they can only think about the peices in isolation and never connect the dots. And i cant tjjnk bevausr now constant interrupt maybe laterbtry again

 

[opaopajr]

Ok. Thats it. "the slathering Burgle Beast" is going to have to go in my setting. Luckily I already have world on the back of a cooked elephant with a bbq saice volcano. So I know where that suckers going.

The Slathering Burgle Beast is known for its love of goose down stuffed, luxurious duvet covers. Bonus points if they are fragranced in froufrou scents, like mountain spring, or seaside fresh.

 

[Dammit Victor]

• I will get very annoyed with a player who ignores what I say when I state that my Majestic Wilderlands is a medieval setting with fantasy elements and then later complain that their fighter isn't able to jump 35 feet without rolling a 20 on d20.

Really, if you're a running a grounded medieval setting with subtle magical elements, the fighter shouldn't be able to jump 35 feet, horizontal or vertical, under any circumstances. Maybe I'm just missing your hyperbole and maybe that's the point, but I've noticed that a lot of the problem in this argument and arguments like it is gamers having a rigidly arbitrary notion of what is and is not magic (either "spells" or "it's what magical classes do") and blinkered notions of what a professional warrior trained from infancy can actually do on a battlefield. Both drastically over and drastically under.

Magic is not a thin veneer over an empirical deterministic world. There is nothing unmagical in a magical world. And people who bitch about realism in fantasy games really need to go outside and touch grass... not because realism isn't a worthy goal, but because you can't make a realistic fantasy game if you're not on a first-name basis with reality.

 

[Fenris-77]

I do tend to prefer magic systems that aren't quite as proscriptive as, say AD&D. I quite like players being able to get creative with effects and whatnot. I'm warming up to the idea of calling freeform magic something similar to combat maneuvers and just have them both work on a push mechanic of some kind. I also like the idea of being able to write magic and not have it take 100+ pages of spell descriptions.

 

[Necrozius]

I do tend to prefer magic systems that aren't quite as proscriptive as, say AD&D. I quite like players being able to get creative with effects and whatnot. I'm warming up to the idea of calling freeform magic something similar to combat maneuvers and just have them both work on a push mechanic of some kind. I also like the idea of being able to write magic and not have it take 100+ pages of spell descriptions.

As much fun as I'm having with DCC's spell tables, I'd like it if there was a 1 stop shop table to handle all possible scenarios (includes damage scaling, area, potency etc...). Kind of like the Sorcery tables in Mythras.

Something as a GM aid to wing it more free-flowingly regardless of whatever spell the PC uses.

Like, I can tell that their total roll of 17 (including bonuses from spellburn and sacrifice) would grant him X damage/healing dice or THIS scale or scope of an illusion etc...

 

[robertsconley]

Really, if you're a running a grounded medieval setting with subtle magical elements, the fighter shouldn't be able to jump 35 feet, horizontal or vertical, under any circumstances. Maybe I'm just missing your hyperbole and maybe that's the point, but I've noticed that a lot of the problem in this argument and arguments like

it is gamers having a rigidly arbitrary notion of what is and is not magic (either "spells" or "it's what magical classes do")

Magical is 100% made up stuff. As a result, the only benchmark is personal preference. If the group finds the magic system fun and interesting to roleplay then it done its job.

and blinkered notions of what a professional warrior trained from infancy can actually do on a battlefield. Both drastically over and drastically under.

Understanding how warriors work in life is good if one's setting is grounded in reality. However, there are genres where combat is grounded in the fantastic and governed by its own internally consistent rules.

The general problem that is being talked about here is that some hobbyists have a vision of how settings are supposed to work or more commonly how specific elements of a setting are supposed to work. That vision is so strong that they refuse to enjoy other presentations or elect to engage in poor sportsmanship until the group gives in to change the setting.

For example, I ran a classic Traveller campaign three years ago. I explained to the group it was an older RPG that has some quirks. But the players were keen to try as they heard about it online and wanted to give it a try. One of the players was a long time friend who was a retired marine master sergeant. He read over the combat rules and thought how Marc Miller set up the range and armor modifiers for weapons was well bullshit. He didn't have an issue with the combat system itself.

He mentioned it briefly during character generation. Then afterward took it upon himself to rework it and came up with his own set of charts.
Weapons and Armor Reference.

Without giving me a heads up prior, he sends me this the day of the next session, sigh. I have known him for 35+ years and when he gets like this there is no real arguing with him unless you want things to get unpleasant. And he is a pretty good game designer in his own right so I knew whatever he came up with would be playable and self-consistent. The only issue with his first draft was that he only considered an accuracy bonus. There were no armor modifiers. Adding them would be hell given all the options he added. So given Mongoose Traveller was a hop and a skip from classic, I went with the armor protection values and fixed up the damage accordingly, and that is what we went with for the campaign.

But I was pretty annoyed at being blindsided and the fact that he agreed along with the rest of the group to give Classic Traveller a try 'as is'. And I felt the fact that Marc Miller was a Captain in the US Army and served in the Vietnam war along with being an award-winning wargame designer meant that the original rules were likely in the ballpark of realism so my friend's effort while understandable was also at the same time bullshit.

As a side note, it was also interesting how dismissive my friend was of Marc Miller's experience as a Army officer. Definitely a marine to the last.

 

[Simlasa]

One of the players was a long time friend who was a retired marine master sergeant. He read over the combat rules and thought how Marc Miller set up the range and armor modifiers for weapons was well bullshit.

Something about Traveller and military vets, I'm not sure why... but I've had similar experiences that do NOT crop up with the same people in fantasy games .

 

[Acmegamer]

Something about Traveller and military vets, I'm not sure why... but I've had similar experiences that do NOT crop up with the same people in fantasy games .

Yes. It's a thing and it's annoying even among the more rational of us.

 

[robertsconley]

Something about Traveller and military vets, I'm not sure why... but I've had similar experiences that do NOT crop up with the same people in fantasy games .

Well.... this particular player has strong opinions about magic as well. But that predated him joining the Marines and luckily for the sanity of the group and our friendship, we settled on GURPS and GURPS Magic as our main system back in the day. It wasn't until the rest of us started getting involved with the OSR and classic D&D around 2010 that it became an issue again. His solution to that was to come up with his own 3d6 RPG system after playing AGE. And like all his efforts it was well done and very playable although a bit fantastical for my taste.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I think the thing that hits most people about the "fighters shouldn't be able to do anything a mundane human being couldn't do" when talking about D&D is that a normal human being could never in a million years take down a fire breathing flying lizard larger than an Elephant, but in all editions of D&D, it is possible for a human fighter to do it (even if unlikely alone unless they are level 20 and the dragon is a bit on the younger side. Honestly, later editions make it harder than earlier editions, as they at least give them DR/Magic so the fighter would probably need a magic weapon to stand a chance).

D&D already lets fighters do superhuman stuff even if you just use the rules as written.

 

[Fenris-77]

That level of realism is best implemented by some training and then a quick trip to the zoo to try and kill a rhinoceros with a pointy stick. That should trim the number of people concerned by quite a bit.