hehe, Well I hope so, since I'm working on system that is entierly injury based and has nothing resembling hit points at all.

But in regards to your topic hear my thoughts. I've noticed over the years that there has been a steady trend in games away from long lasting status effects to short term effects. What I mean by that is it used to be that a character gets poisioned you need an antidote or a spell to heal them and if you didn't have them the character eventually died unless you got back to town first. However in recent years things have changed now if a character is poisioned or killed then are perfectly fine again after the battle is over and the item or spell is only need to heal them mid battle.

How the player will react to injuries depends I feel on the effects of those injuries. If Anne gets hit by a grenede in the ancient ruins what is the consequences of that? Even if I have the field surgery kit needed to bandage her wounds, do I still have critically injuried character which I will have to either abadone or carry the rest of the mission? Or is she perfectly healthy again. All though people will disagree with me but I personally feel that as characters get injuried they should become less effective. Which is something that has yet to make an appearence outside of tactical strategy games.

But in the end I think you should just go with the boy scout motto all ways be prepared. So if the player send their best npcs into the masterious alien pryamid armed only with flash lights and and knives. Only to discover the pryamid is infested with aliens parasites and alien hunters. Well thats their own fault.

Ultimitly though if the player knows that they need a field surgy kit to heal serious injuries on missions then they will learn to bring them along rather then risk losing a character.

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Original post by TechnoGoth hehe, Well I hope so, since I'm working on system that is entierly injury based and has nothing resembling hit points at all.

:) Nice to know I'm not alone.

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I've noticed over the years that there has been a steady trend in games away from long lasting status effects to short term effects.

Yes, me too. Although I have to note that where I've seen this is level-based, mission-based games which are highly restrictive in terms of funneling you to the next challenge. They can't afford to extend status effects because you often can't choose your own path.

In Morrowind, for instance, stat loss is permanent until you get back to civilization. If a ghost or Hunger drains your strength or agility, for instance, and you're carrying items, you have to drop those items.

But on second thought, they also give you the ability to warp back to civilization instantly no matter where you are, provided you brought the spell. This makes the status effect instantly curable provided you're willing to walk all the way back to wherever you were. This lets you instantly fix the mistake.

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How the player will react to injuries depends I feel on the effects of those injuries. If Anne gets hit by a grenede in the ancient ruins what is the consequences of that? Even if I have the field surgery kit needed to bandage her wounds, do I still have critically injuried character which I will have to either abadone or carry the rest of the mission? Or is she perfectly healthy again. All though people will disagree with me but I personally feel that as characters get injuried they should become less effective. Which is something that has yet to make an appearence outside of tactical strategy games.

But aren't a huge number of RPGs actually tactical strategy games? At least the party based ones, even the real-time ones like Neverwinter Nights and Pool of Radiance. Even Fallout was a tactical strategy game to some degree.

I think flat out failure is boring, and I like the idea of being able to recover partially, but I don't like creating consequences free gameplay because it can become so ludicrous as to prevent you from suspending disbelief. If you can't believe then there goes a huge portion of your fun factor.

What would be the effects of critical injury among a party of Navy Seals? Wouldn't the group soldier on, despite harm to a comrade, unless he or she was so critical that the mission had to be aborted?

I have a hard time thinking that RPG players will consider this inappropriate. However, as said above, the save and restore temptation will be strong, and it may be hard to swallow the idea that you can't win every aspect of every situation-- which is a fact of life in an open-ended game where get into trouble all your own.

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But in the end I think you should just go with the boy scout motto all ways be prepared. So if the player send their best npcs into the masterious alien pryamid armed only with flash lights and and knives. Only to discover the pryamid is infested with aliens parasites and alien hunters. Well thats their own fault.

I don't think players have a problem with this if they know its a possibility. However, if it's completely beyond their reasoning, they can't prepare for it.

As I complicate the damage model I need to inform you of what can possibly happen and how you can fix it. Only then can I fairly put the burden on you to take responsibility for the state of your party.

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Ultimitly though if the player knows that they need a field surgy kit to heal serious injuries on missions then they will learn to bring them along rather then risk losing a character.

I'm thinking that the best way to inform you of this is through anecdotes from NPCs and advice from tutorials. I will have to create a "Survivors Guide To The Post-Apocalypse Galaxy" before I can feel comfortable letting players discover something like this by experience, just because there would be a wide variety of things that could go wrong.

The problem you have there is really though. How to discourage players from reloading every time they fail something? Ha! Good luck :)

There are 2 ways: either you reward the players for not reloading, or you punish them for reloading. The players would see not reloading as a good thing if they had some sort of counter of their reloads (it's like a score that they're constantly trying to beat). And Warcraft III always discouraged me from reloading because it took so much friggin time on my crappy computer :) There's also the option of only saving in "safe spots" like planets and stations, or the ship if it's not in danger. If a mission fails repeatedly, the player simply reloads and doesn't go on that one. If it failed because of a lack of preparation, the player has the opportunity to do it right this time.

But yeah, telling the players that everything can be healed (with time) in the ship, base or planet, will really help. Given that, you can throw anything you want at the player. It's ok if some conditions are much more delicate than simple wounds, as long as they're rare and interesting (so when they happen they always make for a nice adventure).

About the miracles system, there's this really nice idea I read some time ago in this forum: you can have prophets or fortune tellers that give you an estimate of how lucky you will be in the future (how many "luck points" or "miracles" you have left).

As Jotaf said, your basic problem is to stop people reloading when they're injured.
So you have to make


I don't know how you handle save games. If you can save anywhere, you're up against a tough problem. It's very tempting to reload when your men are injured.

If we ignore that for a second, the player is faced with two options when injured:
Retreat or continue. If it means a long term injury, no one are going to continue, especially not if they can return later.
But if retreating means they've just wasted the last hour or more, they might be tempted to push their luck and continue on.

And then of course there's the save game problem.

Tricky tricky balancing act... Good luck with it. ;)

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Original post by Jotaf The problem you have there is really though. How to discourage players from reloading every time they fail something? Ha! Good luck :)

Yes, this is a vexxing problem all its own. I'm against save points because the game is so amorphous that either they'd have to be everywhere or players would have to spend alot of time backtracking just to save.

I've got two solutions here, though: An iron man option for those that want it, which is save only on exit; and Loss Bonuses.

I'm going to try to make sure that you understand Loss Bonuses from the start of the game. What they are are abilitites, options, contacts or other things you want in the game that can only be unlocked upon failure. The best example I can give is: You're trying to get a strong character to join your team but he refuses and refuses, even though you already have his brother onboard. Then, while on leave, the brother is killed by a faction that has targeted you.

This occurs as part of a semi-random event which is a result of how rough the port was and how strong the factio was there. Now, if you simply reload, you'll get the brother back.

But if you play it through, you'll discover that the strong character vows to avenge his brother, and as a result chooses to join your operation.

Loss bonuses are hidden and random, in order to discourage powermaxing.

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But yeah, telling the players that everything can be healed (with time) in the ship, base or planet, will really help. Given that, you can throw anything you want at the player. It's ok if some conditions are much more delicate than simple wounds, as long as they're rare and interesting (so when they happen they always make for a nice adventure).

Yes, I want you to come to identify your ship or base as "home" where you can breathe a sigh of relief. I think your point about making the complex wounds rare is essential, too, so that they in theory send you off on interesting directions.

I forgot to also mention: If you save the necks of your crew when they're very low on HP, it increases the chance that they will become more loyal should you intervene. So if they get these status effects, you get a chance to rescue them, which breaks a normal barrier relating to whether or not they can become Devoted to you (and thus made into super-NPCs).

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About the miracles system, there's this really nice idea I read some time ago in this forum: you can have prophets or fortune tellers that give you an estimate of how lucky you will be in the future (how many "luck points" or "miracles" you have left).

Hahaha! I like that, I may just use that. I've always liked the completely wholistic blend of mystery and science that shows like Babylon 5 created, and this would be very cool.

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Original post by Spoonster If we ignore that for a second, the player is faced with two options when injured: Retreat or continue. If it means a long term injury, no one are going to continue, especially not if they can return later. But if retreating means they've just wasted the last hour or more, they might be tempted to push their luck and continue on.

You're right, this is very tricky. I think I'm going to rely on this partly to be a personal pride issue. I cheated my way through parts of Fallout 2 by saving and reloading like mad because I hadn't found the weapons I needed to get through. When I replayed I promised myself no quicksave and it was a much more intense experience.

Allowing this sort of thing at least gives you a sense of control. However, just to help encourage playing it through I think maybe I'll save and display on the character sheet some sort of rating related to the number of save and restores.

all of this sounds very, very interesting... i love reading your posts wav, the game you describe has incredible potential.

you mentioned earlier something about the possibility of the team getting bonuses when a teammate is nearly dead. while this would be fun a couple times (as long as you aren't expecting or counting on it, i mean), it would be too easy to abuse.

people would start shooting at their own teammate until he was almost dead, then use some manner of temporary invulnerability to drag the bonuses out. they could even drag him around, almost dead, on a trailer of some sort, leaving him as far away from the battle as they could while still giving them the bonus.

The core ideas sound good, but I have some personal perspective to inject:

1) Make forward momentum more important than anti-powergaming. Take a concrete example: the described brotherly Loss Bonus would be an excellent way for the player to continue forward. So make it happen. Please stop worrying about the powergamer, and start worrying about guys like me - 26 years old, working full time, looking for a game where I don't have to reload all the time. If I feel like my best interests are always in your thoughts, I can still keep going. If I feel like you're willing to mess with me, I have to reload just in case. Don't offer a possible reward, promise a definite one. Consider it a form of auto-balancing if it makes you feel better about it.

2) I think the Strength of the Dying idea combines well with two other proposed solutions. First, the personality model - when someone gets hurt, your party is very likely to split into the save-the-strong and no-one-left-behind factions. Traditionally, dramatic works give the ones who stay behind a bonus due to teamwork. This can be a bit cloying, but it makes a lot of sense.

Take, for example, my time as an ice hockey goalie. We couldn't beat the team from a nearby town, couldn't even get close, when we had a good goalie. We weren't desperate enough. So in I go when nobody else will step in. I'm fat, not big-boned, awkward not "long", but all of a sudden we can draw and win practically at will. This, I theorize, is because the team drew together in a remarkable imitation of movieland drama. I'd love to think that it was my wicked goaltending, but realistically that wasn't the case.

</grandpa Jones mode>

3) Remember the old advice - just because you use a non-detailed combat system, doesn't mean your players aren't going to figure it out. Many have tried, and failed, to get around this, so the only option you realistically have at this point is to accept that people are going to deduce "hp" from the systems, and make it integral enough to not make that deduction significantly effective.

There comes a point where a philosophy of realism has to compromise - if a character can take bullets to the arm indefinitely with no ill effect, then you lose your realistic flavour. If the arm becomes useless at some point, you have hp, you just called it something else. My personal favourite is the shallow-stack approach favoured by White Wolf, which includes room for an injury (and scar) system but only in very simple terms. Alternatively, you could decide to only "record" serious injuries. That way, injuries are necessarily sudden, and do not "accrue" from more minor wounds.

Anyway, those just occurred to me. Take from them what you will.

One very old PC game (I forget the title) was an early (voxel/sprite based) outdoor "First Person RPG" (similar to Deus Ex). It was produced in 92 or 93, before all the standard first-person control/gameplay conventions were set in stone, thus it tried a few things (like a realistic damage system) that didn't quite work. In fact, it made so many poor game design decisions that it was nigh unplayable, and here are some examples from the damage system:

Because it was voxel based, it wasn't always possible to tell whether or not you could walk down a slope. In fact, if you walked down the slope to fast, you could fall. You could walk off of cliffs that weren't simply slopes and fall. You could fall if you failed what I assume was a dexterity check while running (particularly annoying because you needed to run a lot). A fall could result in a rupture of your space suit (instadeath), severe blunt trauma to the head, broken bones, internal bleeding, concussion etc. Often, it was very difficult or impossible for your character to heal themselves with inventory items or limp to help once injured. Said inventory items were injury-specific as well- a splint doesn't help you with a ruptured artery in your brain.

Other causes of death include (but are not limited to) hypothermia, starvation, cardiac arrest, and seizures. In short, if the player did pretty much anything, it was possible to pretty much randomly die.

If the situation had included other PC-playable teamates (a la Ghost Recon or what you seem to be considering) that could help a fallen character heal, it might have been fun. In addition, it would probably help if all injuries were associated with a limited number of causes, giving the player a way to gauge the various dangers associated with completing a specific gameplay task.

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Original post by rootbin all of this sounds very, very interesting... i love reading your posts wav, the game you describe has incredible potential.

Thanks!

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you mentioned earlier something about the possibility of the team getting bonuses when a teammate is nearly dead. while this would be fun a couple times (as long as you aren't expecting or counting on it, i mean), it would be too easy to abuse. people would start shooting at their own teammate until he was almost dead, then use some manner of temporary invulnerability to drag the bonuses out. they could even drag him around, almost dead, on a trailer of some sort, leaving him as far away from the battle as they could while still giving them the bonus.

A good point, but I can see some very straightforward solutions:

Shooting your own people would be treachery, and with a lock-on system there should be no way to accidently fire on a target. While there is friendly fire IRL and I don't think everyone should turn traitor on you if you hit them (especially with splash damage) I think their loyalty should drop exponentially every time the game processes damage taken that has your ID attached.

As for dragging someone around, you could do that, but it probably won't end up being a powermax strategy if doing so slows you down, the adrenaline rush bonus (heh, which I hear Doom3 is using, btw) doesn't last forever, and doing so risks another shot which could finish the gravely injured party member off.