Healing System Needed

[jburneko]

Hello All,

So, I've finally gotten around to working on my game Isolation, again.  The previous thread on this project can be found here.  Briefly, the game is designed to facilitate stories that involve a small group of people trapped together under stressful circumstances.  Source inspirations for this game are: Night of the Living Dead, Cube and The Thing.

Anyway, I've just come to the Injury and Death section.  My game borrows heavily from Story Engine and so it takes its damage scale from there as well with a few modifications.  There are five basic health levels:

Healthy, Bruised, Injured, Wounded and Dead.

In most games my Wounded level is actually Unconcious but I hate unconcious states in RPGs.  If there isn't some readily available healing method like there is in D&D then Unconciousness is kind of a downer.  It's like saying, you're out of the game... but not really.  Just let them make one last stand and then just kill them off and be over and done with it.

Anyway, I've got the damage taking system down pretty well.  What I don't have is a recovery system.

Basic idea: The problem is that 'recovery' isn't really part of source material.  Most of the source material covers a time period of less than 24 hours.  Also the source material focuses more on strengh of will than physical endurance and so MOST characters are either alive or dead with not very much in between.  Although occassionally one or two characters do get 'seriously injured' which is why I still include more than just one damage state.

Options I've considered:

a) Since recovery isn't really part of the source material there's no reason to include it in my game at all.  Once you're injured, that's it, it's only down hill from there.

b) Since strength of will is so central to the source material I can blur the lines between willful efforts and physical endurance in the following way.  Whenever a roll results in Complete Success (the highest level of success) then all the characters who were Cooperating (see earlier thread) heal one damage level if they are hurt.  Obviously, Dead is Dead is Dead.

What do you think of these options?  Do you have any alternative suggestions?

Thanks.

Jesse

[Paul Czege]

How about "Dying" instead of "Wounded"? Mechanics for expending the last vestiges of your life on a few actions could be fun.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Jesse,

Both Extreme Vengeance and Hero Wars have a very good solution to the long-standing problem of "damage and recovery" in role-playing games, especially those with cinematic source material.

Get better.

That's right, if the combat is over, the scene's over, and you're moving to the next scene ... you're all healed. Oh, you might have a bloody bandage, or you might limp, or whatever rakish after-effect cosmetics might apply ... but you're fine. The only penalties for a wound apply during that one combat or scene itself.

(HW does have a way or two to take a "real" wound, but that's not the default.) (In EV, if you really get hosed or get your ass kicked, you actually add 1 Guts for the rest of the movie.)

Over the Edge and Sorcerer have a "halfway heal-up" that acts very similarly.

Best,
Ron

[hardcoremoose]

I say stay true to the source material. I mean hell, for this game to do what it's supposed to do, you're talking about people in cramped spaces melting down over a fairly short amount of time.  If they make it to a second adventure, then they can be all healed up.

If, for some reason, a particular scenario were to play out over the course of several weeks or something, I'd do what Ron says.  But I don't think that's what you intend for the game, is it?

Just looking at the films you described, I don't see a whole lot of characters limping around with debilitating wounds.  They're either functional, or their dead (for the most part).  I'd cut back on the wound levels and go for Hurt, Dying, Dead.  The game's really about social/emotion meltdown anyway, right?

Just some thoughts.

- Scott

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Some suggestions for ya:

1) You do need some kind of formal injuries system for the game, but not for the usual reasons found in traditional RPGs. One reason is obvious -- being wounded impairs your abilities. But the second reason is more important (and intriguing) -- having an injured person in the group hurts the group. This is a major part of this kind of game...what do you do with the guy who can no longer keep up?

2) I think it would be helpful to take a step back and look at the source material. In most cases, the characters are either fairly healthy or they're dead. There isn't a whole lot of middle-ground.

The exceptions are the injured characters who fear dying if their wound isn't treated in time. This also corresponds with characters who are low on food, water or oxygen...or those who are caught in some hostile environment. They WILL die if the situation isn't changed. But really, you don't see much of a degradation of their abilities (except maybe in a dramatic "pant pant, too hot, too hot, need water" kinda way).

The point is that everyone else is OK, Dead, or Borderline OK/Borderline Dead.

Borderline OK is when Bobbie Sue (Evil Dead II) is accidentally shot by Ash. She's definitely hurt, but it's not really anything that affects her (other than coloring her views of Ash's stability).

Borderline Dead when Roger (Dawn of the Dead) is bitten by the zombie. After a short period of time he becomes a liability (needing to be carried around in a wheelbarrow) and then he becomes bedridden and near-comatose. There's no coming back from Borderline Dead...it's just a matter of time.

So avoiding concrete game system lingo (because I haven't much info on your game's system), perhaps the answer lies not in levels of Health but levels of...oh, I dunno what to call it. How their health affects the group or something.

1: Character is unharmed and fairly rested.
2: Character's ability is slightly impaired.
3: Character is impairing everyone in the group.
4: Character is dead.

You could even get crazy and put in a level BETTER than 1. Where the character is so rested and energetic and just so damn chipper that he gains a bonus...but the poor normal schlubs are operating at a deficit compared to Super Happy Guy.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with Moose, except for the not having a wounded state. People are always getting wounded in such films, and it's often a point of tension. Do we carry the guy with the bad leg, or leave him behind for the creature to munch? Wounding is cool for the Premise, I think.

So, once you are hurt, you are hurt for the game, but then next game (assuming characters are actually played in campaign style at all), they are fine. I think that Moose and I would both like to see the name of the game applied to not only location but to time. It's Night of the Living Dead, not Campaign of the Living Dead.

Mike

[jburneko]

Wow, that was fast.  So far I agree with Paul and Moose.  I've already revised the health levels to:

Healthy, Injured, Dying and Dead.

Also, I think Ron's suggestion works well for the heroic action genre's but not so much for this genre.  After all, this is about the awful spiral of social self destruction.  But he does have a point.  I already have a few rules for multi-session games so I might add recovery to those rules.  If your game spans more than a single session than characters can heal one health level.

First of all, I don't see too many games being multi-session.  And I certainly don't see this game being used as a multi-adventure system either.  But hey you never know.

Jesse

[hardcoremoose]

But Mike, I expressly had a wounded state.  I called it Hurt!  Damn you, misconstruing my words!  This is an outrage!

Seriously, Jared and Mike are right.  Jared, in the sense that hurt and injured people provide a dramatic centerpiece to such a story - what do you do with that poor guy?  And Mike in that the game should definitely have a sense of time.  Or maybe no sense of time - one of the cool things about Cube is that the people don't really no how long they've been in there, and that sort of carries over to films like NotLD, Dawn of the Dead, and The Thing.  Time passes, but everything is centered on the here and now, and the outside world be damned.  By excising any kind of healing rules, you would be telling your players "we're not worried about time - that is not our concern.  We're worried about what's happening now!"

- Scott

[Marco]

The ability to 'stop and heal' (get bandaged) might be a viable strategic option if you do include rules (i.e. if a somewhat impared character spends a scene on his back he gets better-or maybe move the imparment from STR to AGI (splints) or something like that.  Essentially put in healing rules to give a crafty character an option beyond staggering through the rest of the adventure like the 'almost dead.'

Or how about a "you killed my father rule."  The character can be created with some goal or (if you get silly a phrase) or whatever--and if that gets triggerred (i.e. they get him *really* angry) he "gets better" for a while. I realize that is *somewhat* outside of the genre but I suspect it could add to play if some characters had a method of enacting a second-chance.

-Marco

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Anyway, I've just come to the Injury and Death section.  My game borrows heavily from Story Engine and so it takes its damage scale from there as well with a few modifications.  There are five basic health levels:

Healthy, Bruised, Injured, Wounded and Dead.

OK, here's my take.

How about replacing Dead with Incapacitated?  This way, it merely means the character is out of action, not necessarily dead, which can be boring.

As far as recovery, I see it like this.  The concept of the game is for characters who suddenly find themselves in a stressful situation.  My experience with this sort of story show there's a time crunch going on.  Therefore, you don't get to recover.  You don't have time.  This can add to the drama of the game.

I suppose there should be a way to go from Incapacitated to Wounded, but once you get up to wounded, you're stuck there.  It takes a couple months to heal back up from that.  That is, unless you have a cleric handy (and there's a whole 'nother debate in that comment)

Consider the original Jurassic Park.  This is the kind of game you're thinking of, right?  The T-Rex attacks and Malcom gets knocked down to Incapacitated.  It took a couple of rounds/scene/whatever but he eventually recovered to Wounded.  He was still bleeding from his leg, although he managed to put a turnequet on it.  He had to wait until they got him back to the main building to receive medical attention.  And that didn't happen until the Rex attacked again.  But for the rest of the movie, he could not walk.  He was not very mobile and the others had to help him if he was going to make it out alive.

I think this can make for interesting game dynamics, depending on how you use it.  You have to be careful because you can only take so much before you're taken out of action.  But then, if you don't take action, you'll never get out alive.  Ha-ha!

I'm afraid I wasn't much help on the numbers/mechanics aspect, but maybe I've given you some food for thought.

[jburneko]

Hello Again,

I'm seeing a definite trend here that I like.  There does seem to be a big push to just strip out any kind of recovery mechanic and for good reason.  I think I may still go with a between sessions rule of some sort but the idea of focusing on the here and now is an important one.

Jared brought up a good point about having the injury some how tied into the stress mechanics which I really like and in fact had thought of before.  It may be as simple as adding additional red links onto injured characters.  After all, people are less likely to listen to and follow a wounded leader.

I'll have to think about this.  So far the advice has been great.

Jesse

[Zak Arntson]

You also may want to think about giving incentive for healthy folks to help out the unhealthy. Some kind of in-game bonus or something.

I'd like to see a mechanic that causes serious debate about what to do with the wounded. Heroicism should be played against pragmatism.

Say in Pitch Black, where there's a few people left behind.  Were they lied to and left behind?  Or are the able characters truly coming back to rescue them?

[Bill_White]

This is just a thought, and it may be too far afield from the way you intend the system to go, but why not forget about abstract wound levels and replace them with specific injuries?  

That is, if someone is at the "wounded" level, there's a menu of appropriate injury types, each of which is defined primarily in terms of its game effect:  "movement speed slowed" could be a sprained ankle, a broken leg, or a busted rib; "physical actions impaired" could be a broken arm or a gut wound; "perceptual abilities impaired" could be a minor concussion or damage to the eyes, and so forth.  You can also include a generic "in great pain" category, and have rules for gutting it out or sucking it up temporarily.  You can also have a "bleeding to death" category:  the character can act, but with the increasing chance of slipping into incapacitation the more he does so.  Multiple injuries of different types or multiple levels of the same type of injury are both possible.

Then your healing system becomes a "Let's Take A Look At That, My Friend" sort of thing, where characters can try to do first aid, mitigating the effects of an injury with a total or basic success, doing no harm with a partial success or a partial failure, and making it worse with a total or basic failure (or something like that).

If a character dies or is left behind, those who are more complementary (i.e., more green) on the relationship map have their individual stress increase by a greater amount than those who are less complementary (i.e., more red).

Bill White

[Garbanzo]

I'm not that familiar with the genre.

Do the wounded-impairing-the-party get better from being left alone or after being dragged all over creation (in a wheelbarrow)?
 
IF the former THEN
Gamblng with life:  Each scene of alonerisk grants a level of healing (or half a level, or however the pacing should go) and 10% chance of being et up.  When the party returns to the sickbay, roll to see whether the helpless clod was eaten or is now recovered.  Schrodinger's PC.

ELSE
Individual Pain transformed into Party Pain:  Another party member can accept a penalty (declared before the fact) on a Pretty Serious roll.  Each instance moves the injured one step closer.

Should there be a distinction between those who become Walking Wounded and those who become, er, the Walking Dead?  Something like "roll guts+stamina+virginity" just to see if you make it to that exalted state of injury?

-Matt

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Do the wounded-impairing-the-party get better from being left alone or after being dragged all over creation (in a wheelbarrow)?

Neither...he's dogmeat by the third act.

And also, Zak spake:

You also may want to think about giving incentive for healthy folks to help out the unhealthy. Some kind of in-game bonus or something.

I think this would be a mistake. The thing about this kind of story/situation/whatever is that the ONLY reason to do something altruistic is because of some innate sense of right and wrong, humanity, friendship, whatever.

There should be a penalty to everyone in the group when Joe Broken Leg is there. Which makes one side (get rid of Joe) easy...in terms of practicality. But in terms of humanity (keep Joe), it's tough. Does the good of the many really outweight the good of the few (or the one)?