Long Term Stun

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Long Term Stun

 

Oh, I know why there's a STUN Lotto - I just don't find it particularly heroic. Even when it works in my favor it's like "oh... heh, musta hit the funny bone?"

 

Not very dramatic IMO.

Well, the way the various KA threads have been going, I think overall what we are seeing here is an acknowledgement that the HERO system, as it stands in the book, ranges from "movie dramatisim" to "Semi Realisim" depending on how many combat options one uses. What these threads seem to be working towards are kinda twofold... on one hand defining "Comic dramatisim" and the other trying to come up with good options for "Serious Realisim". More options are, IMHO, never a bad thing.

Long term effects of damage, bleed through body damage, shock... all things the system has worked without for years, but all things that would be nice to have a mechanisim for other than Roleplaying. For when you are running a realistic game and want damage to have long term dramtic consequences, for instance. It all depends on what KIND of Drama you are going for in your games.

Personally, in some games (survival horror for instance) I love the idea of the heros struggling to overcome wounds, shock and the like and keep going. Honestly.... Zombies as individual opponents aren't that scary. What enchances the dramatic tension in such cases are the fact that the enemies are endless, and the heros are mortal, and fragile.

Right now, Hero lacks some of that. We're trying to brainstorm up options is all.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Long Term Stun

 

Well, the way the various KA threads have been going, I think overall what we are seeing here is an acknowledgement that the HERO system, as it stands in the book, ranges from "movie dramatisim" to "Semi Realisim" depending on how many combat options one uses. What these threads seem to be working towards are kinda twofold... on one hand defining "Comic dramatisim" and the other trying to come up with good options for "Serious Realisim". More options are, IMHO, never a bad thing.

Long term effects of damage, bleed through body damage, shock... all things the system has worked without for years, but all things that would be nice to have a mechanisim for other than Roleplaying. For when you are running a realistic game and want damage to have long term dramtic consequences, for instance. It all depends on what KIND of Drama you are going for in your games.

Personally, in some games (survival horror for instance) I love the idea of the heros struggling to overcome wounds, shock and the like and keep going. Honestly.... Zombies as individual opponents aren't that scary. What enchances the dramatic tension in such cases are the fact that the enemies are endless, and the heros are mortal, and fragile.

Right now, Hero lacks some of that. We're trying to brainstorm up options is all.

 

'Dramatic realism' is essential for, well, every type of game, although the realism level will vary by genre. In a survical horror game, for instance,as the zombies attack, each wave wears the defenders down a little more until they have to make a desperate escape or be rolled over by the ultimately unstoppable mob. Bit part players might get taken out in one go, but the main characters never wind up taking a high stun multiple bite and falling unconscious at the feet of a horde of brain munchers. If there is a good plot reason for a little unconsciousness then fine, but I resent (as a GM as much as a player) the mechanics taking over, and I feel that is what the stun lotto forces on us. Any game has random elements, of course, but those random elements become intrussive if they foist results on you that spoil everyones enjoyment, and frankly, making the coffee because my character is unconscious (as a player) or having to find some contrivance (as a GM) to keep a PC alive because the scenario has another two weeks to go and there are no more PCs available is not my idea of fun.

 

You can feel that the PCs are in genuine danger without having to resort to 'heads you live, tails you die'.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Long Term Stun

 

I'm pretty much right on the same page Sean...

All I'm saying is that if we manage to hammer out more options, then we expand the number of tools available to us as GM's to create the level of dramatic realism that we desire for a particular game, to fit within the boundries of the genre we are running.

 

Examples from a Zombie game might be

I want the characters to be mortal, and scared of the opposition, but not likley to be one punched except when dramatically appropriate. Usually this means as a punishment for performig an extra stupid maneuver after ignoring all the subtle and not so subtle clues that what they are going to do is a BAD idea .

 

Easy enough to say, a bit rougher to do. Sure I can nickle and dime them to death. Thats the easy part. Determining the long term effects are harder in system without creating a new structure for it. Easy to avoid large stun mods... Don't let zombie bites be all that feirce. How strong is a human jaw anyway? 1 pip HKA, 1/2d6 KA w/ Str, maybe? I know I can do way more damage with a small knife than I can with a bite. Given that zombies don't feel pain or fatigue, and are generally super strong due to the lack of inhibitors from pain (like a PCP crazed man), maybe they'd do up to 1d6 total. In any case.... I don't want the effect of damage to scare them individually (unless I'm doing "Zombies are contagious", which I probably will, in which case even a single bite puts the character into "Watching the Doom Clock Count Down" mode).

So due to the way the system works, we need a long term penalty for wearing the characters down, and MAKING them act hurt... but not neccecarily while IN direct combat. Hence my desire for good Long Terrm Stun and Shock rules. As we currently have it, Stun goes away lickety split out of combat. Body damage doesn't, but bleeding stops unrealistically fast, and any damage short of imparing has no lasting effect. Like you, I don't want a character getting randomly knocked out.. its not super consistant with the source genre after all.

What I want is pain and suffering.

I want the guy who jumps off a building to escape the shambling hordes to be paying for making the choice of the lesser of two evils.

I want (to shift suddenly to a different type of movie, but with the right feel) the badly injured guy who's going into shock to be battered into bootstraping himself awake by playing on his psyche disads to give him the boost to his ego roll he needs to get back up ("Resse! On your feet solider!").

 

Basically, to cut myself short....

I think were making some great headway.

If we managed to come up with some neat alternative rules, they may serve us well in order to shift some of the effects of combat damage into noncombat time, where it will impact roleplaying and genre tropes better and impact actual combat effectiveness less.

I have very few issues with the Hero system, but it's not so good that it can't benefit from additional optional rules to help us toolkit to fit whatever style or theme we are trying to play. Coming up with longer term effects of damage is a beaut of an example, as it allows for reducing the stun effects of KA's to more "dramatic" levels without neutering them and decreasing their fearsomeness.