Beasts, Men & Gods

Plausibility in Roleplaying
Beasts, Men & Gods (BMG)was first published in 1980 and recently received a rebirth as the revised second edition. In the About this "Revised Second Edition" BMG, author Bill Underwood tells us that he wrote BMG while a college student 1977-1980. In his Introduction Mr. Underwood explains his desire to improve reality or "plausibility", as he refers to it, in his fantasy game. Mr. Underwood specifically mentions hit points and magic as two areas where realism seems lacking in other games. These are two areas where BMG differs from white box and I think Mr. Underwood offers interesting alternatives.
BMG assigns about 7 hit points to each character. This may vary slightly, but not by more than a digit or so. The character also gets at least 1 stamina point, which increases as they level-up. Damage is taken from stamina until that is gone and then deducted from hit points.  Hit points represent flesh and blood, stamina is luck, sixth sense, dodging, etc. A critical hit bypasses stamina and damage is taken directly on hit points. Stamina is easily recovered with a few minutes rest and/or a drink of water. Hit points, representing real wounds is slower to heal.
Magic in BMG makes use of Mana points and also costs stamina to cast. There are 10 areas or schools of magic and three types of priestly magic. Casting magic above one's mastery level can result in mishap. BMG makes use of character classes and levels and dwarves and elves are each a class. Saving throws are used, although the list includes bleeding, shock, stress and unconsciousness as well as the more traditional poison and magic saves. Combat is percentile based and includes both melee and spiritual combat mechanics. The bestiary section includes the usual monsters.
Mr. Underwood stresses, like many authors of his day, that the rules as written are suggestions and he invites the player/referee to alter the rules to meet their expectations. He suggests the reader draw from other sources, especially fantasy and sword & sorcery literature for rule and setting inspiration. I would add that drawing from various rules and other systems is also good practice.
Although BMG is an older game in the spirit of those first generation published houserules or "improvements on white box" it is a recent discovery for me and I am glad it is available again. I like the idea of separating the hit point pool into something like stamina and body points. The combat and magic systems are certainly more complex than white box and with more study I may agree with Mr. Underwood that they improve on "plausibility". However at this point in my gaming career, I am rather content with a game being just a game as long as it's fun.