I like the odd bar fight as a player too. Its usually low stakes and played for fun which is a change of pace. But your post is also kind of funny because during the Crusade Arc, before Tukufu's creation, my main character was a Nierite named Eisener. And Eisener worried IC about being killed in a bar fight. How the would that look, to have survived fighting Uhxbractit himself, and then be killed by some nobody? Barehanded. What do you say to the Judgement of Nier, "Cut me some slack? I did everything right up until I got gacked by someone on the junior varsity?" ... somehow I don't think so. That's the kind of humiliating ending that maybe nullifies the victories of your life if you're a Nierite.

Eisener was right to be concerned. While he believed there were few to no people he couldn't take in a stand up fight, he had no ranks in unarmed combat, no weapon training with unarmed attacks and no pugilistic type talents. That's probably true for more heroes than not. (perhaps like In Fistful of Dollars where Clint Eastwood is death with a gun, but not so hot unarmed).

The Arcanis rules set is terrific...but it doesn't necessarily lend itself to authors as an easy vehicle to write fisticufffs and barfights. For example, because Avoidance isn't tied to gear a tier one farmer/tough/mook still can't hit a tier 2.5 PC even if they're out of armor (that wouldn't necessarily be true in other rule systems). Similarly, if your PC doesn't have any rank in unarmed combat then its really hard to hit any tier appropriate foe unless their avoidance is artificially low (unless you jerk steel or cast spells which kinda defeats the mood of most bar fight).

Despite mods that do have bar fights, like What Lies Beneath and In Darkness, Light, I suspect that authors who want to put them in mods going forward will have to begin experimenting with some kind of skills challenge type format instead. Which could be cool ...

I believe Henry's point is that unless the bar fight has significance to the overall plot and moves it forward in some important way, that they should be avoided. home campaigns or intro mods have more flexibility for those sorts of things than a mod targeted to run in a 4 hour slot.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

BINGO!

Paul I think the point of Eric's post was that the RAW don't lend themselves to the sort of classic bar fights we see in fantasy literature and movies. I think we all get and agree with Henry's point as regards to the time and plot issue. Even if someone came up with good set of rules for bar fights even I would not want it to detract from the main mission of the mod. As much as I love fun stuff (such as the contests in Elements of Faith) I still want to make sure we finish the mod in a reasonable amount of time, even in a home environment.

I agree strongly with Henry that I think encounters should be story driven (and drive the story...).

But at the same time mod writers (and writers in general) control what their story is and how their story unfolds. They are choosing the story. So I also resist what I hear is an implied suggestion that bar fights don't drive story. I think and maybe worry a little that it may be true people write off bar fights as "generic thug encounter" (Certainly in some mods over the years that is true...but it doesn't have to be)

Bar fights could be used anytime you want to: (1) highlight local tensions between two groups...or (2) highlight how insular a population is and how they are edgy around outsiders... or (3) highlight how weak the norms of civilization are in a locale\frontier mentality ... or (4) the PCs get set upon for asking the wrong questions about someone who doesn't appreciate the attention. Or (5) thieves target the PCs for their wealth and get more than they bargained for... or a patron discovers the PCs because they clean up a bunch of thugs in a bar fight. Or even (7) a local lady is taken with one of the heroes and her would be swain is jealous so he gets some of his friends together and things get out of hand ... it turns out my favorite scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc is the bar fight in the Himalayas....

In other words bar fights potentially cover a lot of narrative ground. It just depends on what themes and moods an author wants to explore.

Somewhat similarly I recently read an interview with the writers and director of Man of Steel defending the allegedly "gloomy tone" of the movie and in particular the decision for Superman to kill General Zodd at the end. They said (I'm paraphrasing here) "Hey, after the other Kryptonians get rebanished back to the Phantom Zone there isn't a choice. No prison on Earth can hold Zodd, and Zodd is unwilling to choose peace so ...Supes has to kill him or the fight doesn't end." That's essentially saying the logic of the story demanded that "encounter" and "ending." (...or to say the encounter is driven by the story!) But that ignores that Zac and Company are the story tellers! Its their choice to set things up the way they do...its not like they "just happened" to end up in that situation and the logic of the movie set up that scene. They chose to make a movie where things are more morally complicated and Supes has to compromise.

I enjoyed the movie (and that scene) but in the interview I thought their answer was a weak.

The ending with Zodd wasn't chosen because of internal logic or because the ending was story driven. The ending was where they chose to go. I think Zac Syndar would have been much better off saying something like, "we wanted to put Supes in that position because we want that death to be part of the story arc of his inner growth. And we'll get the chance to revisit how he grapples with the consequences of taking a life it in later movies."

One of the reasons for this longer post (and the moving of this topic to a separate thread) is that I'm grappling with a a potential bar fight in the module I'm currently writing. I'm looking for something with more mood and panache than the standard low stakes fight. I think I'm looking for something something a little more complicated . I'll end by noting I'm also struggling mechanically...it doesn't entirely work yet. So one of the reasons why I posted was to see if anything ideas-wise shook loose in the discussions.

I'll keep grappling with it.