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Re: Revised Defense Flow in GURPS
Well, I guess I'd say I'm beating the drum reactively; I pop up when someone brings up the topic, but otherwise don't go around trying to sell it. With this article, I can now lazily just point and say, "There's my take". : ) As you say, it is useful to put things into one place rather than point to a bunch of disjointed sources.
(Plus, a look at old forum threads shows a moderator getting exasperated with the undead nature of the discussion, so I don't want to beat it to death any more there.)
I actually thinks it's a little silly to make such a long article out of it, as it really is a trivial thing. Then again, I think all the points are valid, and even if the current rule isn't something awful that breaks the game, an improvement is an improvement. So there it is.
Maybe your comment about "suspension of disbelief" is the key. The current rule isn't awful, and I never even noticed anything funny about it for a long time – but at some point, when players do notice its oddities, it breaks the "suspension of disbelief" for the moment. It invites setting aside the action so everyone can discuss "does this make sense?" and detour off into mechanics.
It's not always easy to fix rules that invite in-play questions about mechanics. But in this case, it is easy, with plenty of other ancillary benefits to boot, so why not fix it? I think we're agreed on that stance.
Re name: you're completely right, "revised" has the negative ring of hacking for the sake of hacking. "Logical Defense Flow"... "Sensible Defense Order"... But how to get the requisite acronym? : ) "Sensible Active Defense Order"... no...