This is RPG-ology #77: Wounds, for April 2024.
Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating a copy of this and a number of other lost Game Ideas Unlimited articles. This was originally Game Ideas Unlimited: Wounds, and is reposted here with minor editing [bracketed].
As I drain the macaroni for supper, the steam rises to attack my right hand; and I remember not so many years ago when I would not have been able to hold it still for the pain (which I mentioned in Pain some time back), residual from when I burned my hand. And I start to think about old wounds–war wounds, football injuries (both things completely alien to me, but thanks to the burned hand I understand something of their nature).
I know that games will sometimes include weaknesses, whether in the form of defective mutations or the popular disads of point-based character creation or some other way. How many games include the possibility that a character could become partially disabled, even slightly so, through the dangerous activities and adventures undertaken? If I’m seriously injured and you save my leg, do I ever after walk with a slight limp? Can I suffer a slight paralysis in my left arm that prevents me from using a small shield or buckler effectively, let alone two weapons? Does the chill of the white dragon’s lair cause me to be distracted by the pain in those toes I almost lost to frostbite three years ago? Even, did the blow to my face damage my nerves or break my jaw, such that my smile always looks crooked on one side?
Michael di Vars, the name given in Multiverser’s Referee’s Rules for one of the original player characters, lost an arm and installed a robotic replacement. I liked the idea so much that in the novel Verse Three, Chapter One I had one of my main characters lose an eye and replace it with something cybernetic. These replacement parts, like Geordi Laforge’s visor, are in some ways better and in some ways worse than the originals. They can be unreliable, failing to function properly at a critical moment; they can be flawed in the sense that they don’t do everything the original did, such as sense heat on the forearm, or see color accurately. In these ways they are disabilities. But even our natural body parts can fail us, losing part of their sensation or their function, becoming unreliable–and particularly if they are abused or stressed.
I read a wonderful book by George Verwer, founder of the evangelistic ministry Operation Mobilization, entitled Come, Live, Die. It’s one of the few books I read in the seventies and then came back to read again in the nineties. He suggests that young people should not be too quick to judge older people for their attitudes, temperaments, or beliefs, because these things might well be battle scars–his phrase–suffered during their lives. And it reminds me now that the same concept which so obviously applies to our fighters, who are constantly surviving incredible physical injuries, also touches our priests, technicians, pilots, wizards, thieves, and whatever else we have, but in other ways.
I played with a drummer back in the early seventies who would not touch an amplifier; he was afraid of microphones being close enough to amplify his drumming (as if it [was were] needed). Eventually he told the tale of playing in an outdoor concert, and being asked by one of the guitar players to reach behind the amp and switch it on. As he reached over the amplifier and grabbed the metal switch, he also knocked over the musician’s drink sitting on top, spilling it into the circuitry and giving him a very nasty shock. The lesson ran deep enough that he did not help us load and unload amplifiers from the cars, even though he accepted our assurances (at least in words) that it was not possible for there to be any electricity in them at that point.
E. R. Jones reported playing a Traveler character who over time had been through so much that he was completely paranoid, afraid of everyone. He was the pilot for his team, and there were two peculiar things about him. First, he never stepped out of the ship; he rarely even left the cockpit, having meals brought to him by the one person he trusted. Second, he did not carry a sidearm. It was his opinion that he had the gun he needed, mounted on the hull of the ship, and he would use it against anyone he thought threatened him.
There could also be fractured relationships and damaged reputations. Is there somewhere that one guy who will never work with you again because of what happened five years ago on that completely disastrous venture for which he blames you? Does he warn others, possibly in exaggerated tales of your incompetence or irresponsibility? Or is it the other way around–is there someone with or for whom you will never work? Is there a girl, perhaps, who has tired of hearing your excuses for why you keep breaking dates? Sure, it was exciting to be the girlfriend of [a] spy, but it’s not fun when he’s held prisoner by the enemy for three days and doesn’t even call to let me know he’s all right. Were you ever misled by an employer, who represented the job as being very much simpler than–well, he must have known better? Or did he shortchange you when it was over, because you didn’t bring back his boat that was torpedoed by the submarine he forgot to mention? When he approaches you with another job, do you even listen? Or are you the former employer whose reputation makes it difficult to find workers?
Certainly if the player characters are cheated they’re more cautious in the future; certainly if they’ve been ambushed they take more precautions. But do your player characters–either the ones you play or the ones who play in your game–ever develop these quirks, these peculiarities, these battle scars? There are a lot of ways in which a character can be wounded–physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually–and a myriad of ways that can express itself through the character’s attitudes, reactions, and abilities. It’s one more level to character development, one which can add new depths to their identities.
[Next week, something different.]
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