Healing System Needed

[Zak Arntson]

About in-game bonus for helping ...

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.

Good point.  I was thinking about gamers who wouldn't be of the right mind to play the game anyway. :)  The horror of leaving your friend behind should be tangible, but a fine option. Made all the more troubling because it would strategically _help_ the party.  Just not emotionally.

What kind of mechanics could support the strengthening and testing of relationships for the genre? In many of these films, enemies must band together, friends are often torn apart, etc. etc. I wonder, though, if these things would arise solely from the currently-considered damage mechanic (and the omnipresent stress).

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Great ideas so far...

If you wanted to have a game where characters could receive vicious injuries but be relatively unharmed for later scenes, I've an alternative to Ron's suggestion (heroic characters shrug off wounds). What if characters just realise that their wounds weren't so bad after all?

Torg used plot points to change serious wounds into minor wounds at the moment the wound was taken. Though the wound was bad, it turned out to have gone through mostly skin/avoided any serious arteries/missed the heart by an inch. You *could* have a system where characters reduce the severity of wounds a little with a roll/expenditure. Or where medicine ret-conned injuries.

That feels more like tv-reality than gritty survivalist horror, though.

Joe.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joe,

I was a little unclear, I guess. Your statement is exactly what I was driving at, and it's explicitly stated in Hero Wars as the appropriate use of the rules - retroactive "lessening" of what was perceived to be the injury's severity.

For the record, I was not suggesting that the heroes have some "rapid healing" type of ability, so to speak - although looking back on the post, I wasn't clear enough in terms of the description/use of this principle for anyone to pick that up. So thanks for zeroing in on the real issue.

I do think it's appropriate for the type of story we're talking about - the key is that an injury either gets ignored/retroactively "not so bad" (long-term), kicks a character into "slow death," or kills him. Works perfectly for zombie flicks, in my view. I do not consider them "gritty survivalist horror" but rather gruesome, ramped-up dramas.

Zak,
Check out my review of Dead Meat, in which I propose a "link" system of relationships among characters to facilitate exactly the issues you describe.

Best,
Ron

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

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.

Before any commenting, I just want to say that this sounds like a wicked awesome game. :)

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.

I would suggest leaving unconcsious in in some form. Others have already pointed out how important it is to have damaged characters be a liability to the group. In the kind of movies you're talking about, people *do* go unconscious. IME, this unconsciousness usually represents one of two things: the character is borderline dead and isn't coming back unless the other characters can get him out of the situation. Otherwise, the character wakes up at the start of the next scene ready to rumble. (Or he has a wakeup scene all to himself, with the hot chick leaning over him all teary-eyed. ;)

What I think I would do is alter your wound track so that that you have three levels (names only there for place holders :)

Fine
Hurt
Out of it

I would let the players decide whether or not their characters go unconscious when they get damaged. A "hurt" character is of the type that automaticaly wakes up at the start of the next scene. The "out of it" character is the kind that is on the verge of death (if not dead outright).

This could actually be a boon to the players, because it gives them the option of not playing the character. It can be stressful to play a character that is damaged. If a player doesn't feel like messing with it today, he can just decide that the character is unconcsious, and that everyone else can just do whatever they want with him (sling him in a wheelbarrow, frex :).

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.

I've writen an action cinema game for publication. While action movies aren't quite the same as the movies you're aiming for, I think the damage mechanic might work well. Essentially, characters automaticaly start at full health at the begining of each session. Additionaly, the GM can heal up any and all of the characters however much he wants in between scenes. Finally, players can burn a hero point at any time to completely heal their characters back up to full.

With this, you can stick with the "24 hour" idea, but you can still have miraculous (yeah yeah, cinematic :) healing from damage if the initial event wasn't fatal.

[Paganini]

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)?

But don't you think that some game mechanic is needed for this? I mean, I agree that they shouldn't get bonuses for helping, but there should be something to encourage them to help. Maybe a penalty for *not* helping. Maybe something like a humanity stat. Any scene in which a character is faced with the choice of practicality vs. keeping Joe alive, if the character goes the practical route he loses a humanity point. If the character loses all the humanity points, the character gets turned over to the GM. The character is one of the casualties of the war... maybe he goes crazy, and tries to kill the party. Or maybe he joins the opposition. If it's a disaster game, he runs off by himself saying something along the lines of "the heck with all of you, I'm gonna take care of *myself!*" Of course, shortly afterwards the remaining characters find his broken and bloody corpse at the bottom of deep shaft...

[hardcoremoose]

Paginini,

In reference to your post about cooperation/humanity mechanics...

These movies really aren't about the goodness of humanity.  In fact, most of them are about the exact opposite.

There is an automatic, built-in benefit to cooperation that does not require a game mechanic at all - you get to pool the skills and abilities of the various characters, which every gamer equates with greater survivability.  And this fits the premise of the game very well - other people's characters are only important in that they are somehow useful to you.  If Joe Broken-Leg is valuable in some sense - if he possesses some ability, knowledge, or information that would be useful to the others - then they may just keep him around.

I could see some interesting game sessions coming of this where the player of Joe Broken-Leg lobbies for support from the other PCs.  But I think a mechanical enforcement of humanity would be in conflict with the game's other mechanics, which encourage the taking of sides and the break down of civility.

- Scott

Editorial Note: I guess should point out before someone else does that someone often rises to the top in these movies, managing to remain human despite all odds (and s/he seldom receives any reward for it, beyond her/his own self gratification - see NotLD for a good example).  The point being is that I think the players will bring enough real humanity to the table with them that no mechanical measure is necessary.  Much of the game's intensity and horror will arise form the fact that the mechanics will require the players to do things they wouldn't otherwise want to do; it will challenge their inherent humanity, and maybe push the envelope in regards to their comfort level.  Any mechanic that mitigates this effect will be doing a disservice to the game itself.

Just my opinion, of course.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

It's a mistake to think in terms of classic RPG's where hurt=unconscious. All that unconsciousness is (in game terms) is that the character is "out of play." If the guy wakes up and is all ready to kick ass again, well he wasn't hurt was he? So I don't think you need to make that distinction. The players know he's going to be fine in an hour, the PC's probably guess he's going to be fine in an hour (no visible blood or trauma, no broken bones, etc.). The PC who gets smashed on booze then passes out, for example. Unless the PC's are in a situation where action MUST be taken, then unconscious guy isn't that much of a nuisance.

I think the key (again) is to look at the injured character in terms of the group. If Joe is OK then get's hit on the head and falls over unconscious, he's still OK. But if that's when the earthquake happens, he becomes NOT OK at that moment. His condition is now a hazard to himself and possibly the others (if they try and save him).

I could see some interesting game sessions coming of this where the player of Joe Broken-Leg lobbies for support from the other PCs.  But I think a mechanical enforcement of humanity would be in conflict with the game's other mechanics, which encourage the taking of sides and the break down of civility.

Spoilers!

Classic example is in Cube, where the retarded guy is really dangerous to the other characters (he can't follow directions, he almost gets characters killed several times). But he's also an invaluable asset (I won't reveal why). Of course, if you don't believe he's an asset (as one character feels), then you don't care and you want to get rid of him...

[Mike Holmes]

The whole debate about adding incentive to keep the wounded guy is moot. There already is a mechanical reward for keeping him, and it's the main mechanic. Sure, the wound may end up being an extra red line or two. But some characters may still have more green lines to that character.

This is absolutely perfect. For characters without the green lines the wounded character is a liability. For characters who have more green than red, he is still an asset. So what you get is intra-party conflict over whether or not to keep the character, even if playing Gamist. That all in addition to whatever emotional impact the play delivers. Which is exactly what the system is supposed to do.

If you read the original post on how it's supposed to work, you'll see what I mean. Make sense to you, Jesse? Thinking about it, I'd actually advocate making death unlikely but wounding relatively common, just to get these sorts of relationship changes to occur. Just let wounds pile up. One red line for each (maybe two or three for severe ones). Eventually, there will come the time when even the character's best friend will figure out that he's a goner (after the red lines have piled up really deep), and wistfully leave the wounded character behind.

Or, if you want to include Moose's hero option, the hero can be the guy who ignores the most red lines during the game. Score one hero point for each red line involved in a roll. Incentive for people to try even when it's obvious that a roll is going to result in lots of intra-party conflict. Nifty.

Mike

[Paganini]

These movies really aren't about the goodness of humanity.  In fact, most of them are about the exact opposite.

There is an automatic, built-in benefit to cooperation that does not require a game mechanic at all - you get to pool the skills and abilities of the various characters, which every gamer equates with greater survivability.  And this fits the premise of the game very well - other people's characters are only important in that they are somehow useful to you.  If Joe Broken-Leg is valuable in some sense - if he possesses some ability, knowledge, or information that would be useful to the others - then they may just keep him around.

*grin* Well, it could be that I just haven't seen enough of the right kind of movie. OTOH, it seems to me that often the characters in a movie will opt to keep Joe Broken Leg around because it's the right thing to do, even if they'd have a better chance of staying alive without him. So, it seems like usually they'd have an obvious advantage if they didn't save him, and an obvious disadvantage if they did. What I'm proposing isn't so much enforcing humanity, but enforcing consequence. If you act a certain way, then eventually you'll reap what you sow. I see that a lot in these sorts of movies, with the selfish characters eventually dying in some extra grisly way. :) Maybe the mechanic I suggested isn't the best for this, but I think it would be really cool if there was some way a PC could eventually go wack if he makes too many selfish choices.

Editorial Note: I guess should point out before someone else does that someone often rises to the top in these movies, managing to remain human despite all odds (and s/he seldom receives any reward for it, beyond her/his own self gratification - see NotLD for a good example).  The point being is that I think the players will bring enough real humanity to the table with them that no mechanical measure is necessary.  Much of the game's intensity and horror will arise form the fact that the mechanics will require the players to do things they wouldn't otherwise want to do; it will challenge their inherent humanity, and maybe push the envelope in regards to their comfort level.  Any mechanic that mitigates this effect will be doing a disservice to the game itself.

Hmm. I hadn't thought of it quite like that. You could be right.

[Skippy]

Since I love to play the martyr, my thoughts are staying with the wounded.  Rather than dealing with physical recovery, what about dealing with emotional recovery?  In many of these types of films, the wounded liability ends up sacrificing himself to gain more time/escape/advantage for the rest of the group.  I'd be interested in a similar mechanic here.  As the liability continues to be a burden to the group, can he accumulate metagame "points" to further his impact beyond the physical?  Perhaps he can spend these points in small ways to improve his long-term value despite the liability, or spend them in a Blaze of Glory sacrifice.

I also think that physical wounds do not necessarily correspond to liability.  Is there any doubt that Ash is more effective once he chops off his hand and mounts the chainsaw there?

$.02

Skippy

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I also think that physical wounds do not necessarily correspond to liability. Is there any doubt that Ash is more effective once he chops off his hand and mounts the chainsaw there?

But being possessed by a Candarian demon definitely IS a liability. ;)