[UA] Alternate Damage

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

You know, if you're having trouble communicating
damage to other players, you might try taking a look
at Critical Miss #4 and James West's excellent
"Traumatic Injruies for Gamers":

http://www.criticalmiss.com/backissues/issue4/traumaticinjury1.html

Ever since reading this I've been developing "State"
based systems off of all the old games I love
(including UA)

I'm a bit dramatic when it comes to roleplaying, but
maybe someone else out there is, too.  You could
certainly adapt the descriptions of major damage to
your game by assigning one to each level of wound
points (or % thereof), but I'm too lazy for that.

Instead, I have players make up two sets of scores,
one for when they are healthy and one for when they
are Hurt.  The players have less points to assign to
the Hurt side.  Healthy and Hurt scores do not have to
reflect one another (a Hurt person might seem better
at struggling when desperate, for instance.)  I also
spread around a few states like "Incapacitated" or, as
I like to put it, Felled (which can mean knocked out,
mortally wounded or just down and groaning, depending
on your interpretation.) and hypnotized, etc.  

A character gets put in a Felled State when the player
fails a Body check (not when you are failing to dodge
the blow, but when you actually receive the blow.) 
You might want to do a little percentage table based
off West's descriptions in Crit. Miss based on how
badly you missed the roll.

If you succeed at a Body check upon getting hit, you
get some sort of temporary marker (just to count how
many times you were whalloped during a fight.)  At the
end of the fight, you make another Body check (against
however many little hit markers you got during the
fight.)  If you fail this time, your character is
Hurt.

That's how I ran my UA game at a recent convention,
anyway, and it worked fine.  I'd say the players loved
it, except one of them is on the list, at least.

Also, I just hate hit points (I wish I could get rid
of the little hit counters in this system, but they
work so well!)

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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