Roleplaying spar and combat damage

[Lizzie]

After reading some posts in RAT, I thought I'd open the topic here since it really is a RP subject, rather than a code subject. When I spar, I roleplay the damage done as bruises, sprains, and usually my armor saving me from anything other than muscle ache. Why? Because I don't want to spend the next 2 RL days in the barracks, recovering from serious injuries while everyone else is out doing whatever the clan does. It's a matter of playability, straight and simple, for me. It has nothing to do with the code, or believability, at all. Screw immersion. If an injury keeps me from playing, I might as well just log out, not play, and log back in two RL days later fully recovered from my 2-day virtual healing retreat.

If my character actually does break a bone, I'll just assume she's a Zalanthan-based human, not a human-based human, and Zalanthan-based humans heal faster than Earth-based humans do. So maybe I'll stay out of sparring and stick with "light duty" for a couple of RL days, the equivalent of 2 RL weeks. A splint, a few thodeliv joints, a few shots of whisky, and I should be good to go in less than a half-month.

Some people might enjoy playing combat-based characters who don't actually get to use their combat-based skills and background, due to receiving grievous wounds in the sparring ring or out in battle. And that's fine for them. However, some of us who occasionally play combat-based characters, do so because we want to use those combat-based skills and roleplay that combat-based role, and sitting out for any significant length of time just doesn't equal fun gaming.

Unfortunately, this creates a disparity. Two people who receive equally-horrible damage in sparring - one person heals within a RL day, the other is taking well over a RL week or maybe even has a "missing eye" scar added. Which one is correct? Which one should get criticized? My opinion: neither, UNLESS one of the two is making roleplay difficult for everyone else. If I heal from a grievous wound by immediately laying down to sleep with no emotes and no indication that I'm passing out, and 5 RL minutes later my HPS are back to full and I pretend I never got hurt in the first place...

If that happens every time I get hit badly - I'd say that'd be report-worthy.

If I take a couple RL days to heal, and I'm one of the people the crew needs for expeditions, and I keep holding up expeditions because my "healing process" is more important than the expeditions - I'd say that'd be report-worthy.

But there's plenty of space inbetween the two extremes, where you -can- switch out the priorities, while still including them both: playability, and immersion/believability.

[levinj]

I'm probably sitting on the light side of roleplaying injuries. That said, it really depends on how bad those injuries are. For one thing, I'm fanatically careful not to spar much below 2/3 of my hitpoints. When I see players consistently dropping to poor, or even terribly, my PC thinks about the fact that they're probably suffering serious injuries.

Lately, in my sparring endeavors, I've seen this roleplayed very nicely by my fellow thugs. A series of light hits that wear you down are probably bruises. But one of those incredibly deadly hits which ends the fight in one shot? That's gonna need looking at.

I'm not saying that's how it has to be, just how I've seen players wiser than myself roleplay it out. FWIW, Lizzie, I don't think we're in disagreement.

[Cale_Knight]

Lately, in my sparring endeavors, I've seen this roleplayed very nicely by my fellow thugs. A series of light hits that wear you down are probably bruises. But one of those incredibly deadly hits which ends the fight in one shot? That's gonna need looking at.

This is how I usually played it. If you take a "grievous wound to the neck" or whatever that drops you by 40 HP, then you've sustained a pretty bad injury even if you're only sparring. Anyone who's done any sort of martial arts training knows that even under controlled conditions it's still possible to get hurt pretty badly if somebody is unlucky or careless.

There are some circumstances that I think create a sort of "RP bubble" around a character, and that's mainly when you're dealing with subjective things like injuries. If Amos wants to RP that his 40-damage hit to the neck was a bad sprain that goes away in a week, that's cool. If Andy wants to RP that his equivalent wound is a cracked collarbone that's going to take much longer to heal, that's cool too. Amos and Andy (and their comrades) can accommodate both easily enough.

[QuillDipper]

I think both character and armor change how you take sparring injuries. A sixteen year old with an obsidian collar is going to get some mad neck wounds, as opposed to burly 30 year old who's neck is encased in obsidian and bone.

I roleplay sparring injuries based on the situation. If I take two "wounding you" shots to the head, that'll leave a scar. If I get on the ground and my arm is smashed repeatedly, I'll decide whether or not this is a broken bone depending on if I think it'll make good roleplay to be disabled for two-three weeks.

My way: The light wounds you take in sparring bounce off of armor, or are simply bruising since the dull blades/spears/axes, but as you get above that it starts to really dig in and leave scrapes/small cuts. Only grievous or horrendous are the equivalent of actual strikes. Anything that reels you is also a fairly jarring strike.

[CodeMaster]

Full contact training with ten pound "sparring" weapons most days of the week would lead to a crippling accumulation of chronic injuries, even if you NEVER take even a single life-threatening wound to the neck. (This is based on some modest RL experience.)

In real-life martial arts, drills, positional sparring, and practicing the same motion over and over again play a larger role than they do in Zalanthas. We are less prone to injury this way for obvious reasons. And not just immediate trauma but also subtler and perhaps more serious injuries related to inflammation and overuse.

The latter would be a safer, more effective way to train a fighting unit with fewer fewer losses.  My understanding from the help files is you can send in game logs of yourself practicing and ask for skill bumps.  But, this is labor intensive for the staff; who wants to reads six pages of some awful sweating dwarf swinging an axe by himself like star wars kid.  Sparring is a gambling minigame that's fun for us to play.

So I have to agree with Lizize. JUST BLEED and give us some mad ass grit, but we are already required to suspend our disbelief with the staff-sanctioned training schedules in place.

[ShaLeah]

Anything that reels you is also a fairly jarring strike.

Fairly?

reel2   [reel]  Show IPA
verb (used without object)
1. to sway or rock under a blow, shock, etc.: The boxer reeled and fell.
2. to waver or fall back: The troops reeled and then ran.
3. to sway about in standing or walking, as from dizziness, intoxication, etc.; stagger.
4. to turn round and round; whirl.
5. to have a sensation of whirling: His brain reeled.

I'd rank it above fairly.

[Lizzie]

That's why I think the code merely a guide - and that playabiity in this case should trump both code and believability. I mean, realistically, I can get reeled just by not eating in the morning. My blood sugar drops abruptly and I get dizzy and nauseated and have to either a) eat or b) lay down while the migraine sets in for the rest of the day.

I've been hit in the head with an acrylic lock-box when putting them away at work - the edge of the box hit the bridge of my nose at full force from a height. I was reeled - saw stars and everything. And I recovered within a few seconds and finished my shift with a bump on the nose, a few drops of blood, and a tiny scar that I still have.

I was emotionally reeled when my sister called me one night to tell me my grandmother had died while I was on the flight home from visiting her that afternoon. I made it to work the next day (albeit very weepy and they sent me home but it didn't prevent me from showing up).

I was punched in Junior High by a bully, and was reeled. I had a bruise on my chin, and was in homeroom class the next morning.

Reeling doesn't mean "OMG your bones are broken and you're bleeding horribly you need a medic or you'll die." In fact, no bones need to be broken, and no blood needs to be spilled, for a person to be reeled. Bones CAN be broken and blood CAN be spilled...but it isn't necessary, whether you're arguing the semantics, or talking about sparring roleplay.

Think of it this way: The fact that your character CAN recover within minutes via the code, means that the code gives you room to roleplay the injury however you feel makes sense in that moment. There are games that have actual body-part damage locations, from minor contusions to missing limbs. Shadows of Isildur was known for it. The staff of Armageddon have chosen not to go that route, so that tells me that they're leaving it up to us to interpret.

[boog]

I dunno.

I mean, if I only have so much time to RP and spar/skill up, my character might just pass it off as looking worse than it was to everyone around her/him. If I gotta go and s/he got scratched, maybe it exacerbated an old wound; fuck it, I gotta boogy. Excuses galore.

I don't want to over analyze anyone's actions. If your character is resilient and can bounce back from an injury sure - go ahead. If they're worn out and have accrued a ton of damage lately, sure - go ahead and play that, too, if you want them to sit in or out.

Playing in the Byn last time around, if I had to run upstairs and check on the kids or dose them with medicine, or take a pee, I'd just have my character rest if she suffered any during sparring. It just worked. But, hey, maybe your character's skin is tougher than mine, dried and cured beneath Krath. I'm not gonna look down on you for it, unless you're being Major Douchey Twink.

[MeTekillot]

em grunts

sleep

[slvrmoontiger]

Sometimes with sparring it DOES look worse than it is... I've had characters get hit with Solidly or Viciously that only do a few hp of damage.

[Lizzie]

Sometimes with sparring it DOES look worse than it is... I've had characters get hit with Solidly or Viciously that only do a few hp of damage.

That's when I'd roleplay the weapon making solid contact with something inflexible that I'm wearing. Maybe the chitin plate on my boot, or the most padded part of my cuirass, or the spot at the rim of my helmet where it meets the cap. And I'd RP staggering back from the blow, surprised - but otherwise not really hurt. More like the wind got knocked out of me for a few moments. And maybe a bruise, or a little lump rising from the general location of where the hit was.

Because sometimes it even FEELS worse than it really is.

[ShaLeah]

Sometimes with sparring it DOES look worse than it is... I've had characters get hit with Solidly or Viciously that only do a few hp of damage.

Because sometimes it even FEELS worse than it really is.

I'd agree with smt's wording, sometimes it looks worse to onlookers, meanwhile you're only down ten hit points. For me feeling is what warrants roleplayed response. I think it's bad form, REALLY bad form, to shrug off any drop in hit points where you don't regenerate by simply resting. If you have to go to sleep codedly to get your hit points up, you should be acting like you got fucked up in sparring.

[RogueGunslinger]

Let's stop trying to decide what other player should or shouldn't be doing. You, thankfully, don't get to make those decisions.

[Lukoyin]

If you have to go to sleep codedly to get your hit points up, you should be acting like you got fucked up in sparring.

This.

Just my 2 sids. In, or out of sparring, if you're too screwed up to "shake it off" (IE: Resting/natural regen) you probably should be playing out some sort of injury. However;

Let's stop trying to decide what other player should or shouldn't be doing.

This, too. End of the day, it's a game we all play to have fun. Each persons' idea of fun is different. Each person is going to view their PCs capabilities differently.

[ShaLeah]

If you have to go to sleep codedly to get your hit points up, you should be acting like you got fucked up in sparring.

This.

Just my 2 sids. In, or out of sparring, if you're too screwed up to "shake it off" (IE: Resting/natural regen) you probably should be playing out some sort of injury. However;

Why? Because the code says so. There are some injuries you can't play off.

Let's stop trying to decide what other player should or shouldn't be doing.

This, too. End of the day, it's a game we all play to have fun. Each persons' idea of fun is different. Each person is going to view their PCs capabilities differently.

Change on the Arm has been propelled by discussions such as these. The code is the guideline to which we have to stick to as characters because, hey, you can't get your hit points up sitting your dwarfy ass down you sure as hell aren't going to get anyone looking at your near-death ass saying 'Yo Amos! You took them hits like a mul!'.

The staff is the one who decides how players should play and there have been instances where a player was lucky to survive and is out the next IC day hunting like it was nothing and they've said 'Whoa there hero, you almost got dead'.

I haven't really seen that many people shrug off an injury that'd codedly devastating like it was nothing but I have seen it. Every time I've seen it I've thought as a player it's been bad form. Just my opinion. I'm not trying to tell them what they should be doing.

[slvrmoontiger]

I think it all comes down to situation based. I have never ever let a character of mine get so hurt during sparring that he would have been realistically out of commission for a long period of time and I make sure any characters sparring with mine don't get that badly injured as well. Its called training for a reason people you train so you get better not so you come close to dying.

Hunting on the other hand I've been close to dead many times with many different characters there are some situations you have no control over. In those cases I usually have my character stay out of hunting/sparring what have you and mostly become a tavern thug or stay in his/her apartment if he/she has one for a couple IG weeks.

[TheWanderer]

My reaction to 'vicious' and 'horrendous' strikes.

[slvrmoontiger]

*laughs* I was so waiting for someone to post that.

[Lizzie]

If you have to go to sleep codedly to get your hit points up, you should be acting like you got fucked up in sparring.

This.

Just my 2 sids. In, or out of sparring, if you're too screwed up to "shake it off" (IE: Resting/natural regen) you probably should be playing out some sort of injury. However;

Why? Because the code says so. There are some injuries you can't play off.

The code also says that I can recover 100% within 5 minutes by simply falling asleep. I don't rely on the code to dictate how well I recover. I use it as a guideline.  I also don't rely on the code to dictate how badly I'm injured. I use it as a guideline.

I'm saying - no one has to rely on the code either way. And no one should feel badly for NOT relying on it. No one should feel badly for relying on it either. And that includes the code that says you can sleep and recover fully within 5 minutes.

As long as it's not being abused either way (such as - intentionally putting off expeditions so your character can heal - which conveniently gets you out of being assassinated, for instance, or spam-bashing and spam-healing without even so much as a "emote passes out" on a regular basis)...then it really shouldn't be an issue.

It IS an issue, but I don't feel it should be. That's what prompted me to create this thread.

[ShaLeah]

The code is the guideline

I use it as a guideline.

Sounds like we agree, what we might disagree with is what we both consider bad form.  BTW, 5mnts RL is half an hour ZT, power nap ftw!

[Fujikoma]

Before choosing to RP out an injury, I like to consider what caused the injury. Vicious strike from a sparring weapon? Hmmm, what percentage are my HP at, ok, cut in half=dead obviously, but taking half my PC's hp doesn't mean they're cut in half, it means they've taken half the amount of damage it would take to kill a person, even with a "real weapon", meant for the purpose of killing. I like to consider attacks from real weapons, beasts in the wild, and arrow (SHEESH, hope it didn't hit you in the knee), or some kind of weird gick stuff to be of a much more serious sort of damage (despite the fact that both can kill you). If I took a minor blow from say, a HG, I might RP it out as something different than the smaller races just because, you got hit with a what by a WHAT?! Yeah, I take things like that into consideration. I also like to make my characters a little dumber or more forgetful over time if they take a high frequency of strikes to the head. If they have some kind of repeated emotional trauma, they may experience a sort of blunting of the effects as a sort of coping mechanism. Is this scientific? No, but I shouldn't be expected to spend eight to twelve years in college to RP a character realistically in a low-fantasy setting with beings much hardier and resilient to damage than their earth counterparts. Shoot, would you explain a scientific explanation for the whole magickal system? No, though certain concepts may be interesting to apply, I can't confess to have anything beyond a "I read an article in a magazine once" level of education on that.

I have to agree with the other players who insist it's about having fun and playability. I might have one character, despite his scores, who plays like some kind of unstoppable regenerating beast, meanwhile the next, with higher endurance, may suffer longer term damage. I like that I get to choose what fits in with the concept rather than having it chosen for me. I understand there are people "out to win" who will just shrug off things unrealistically, but I find this kind of playstyle (maybe once or twice from my own experience) seems to lend itself to certain self destructive tendencies that will trap the play to win player more often than not with their own ambition (also, staff might notice/be notified of this behavior and step in to make the necessary adjustments). In the end, I'm not really sure there really is a way to win, just a way to set goals and try to get them accomplished, which doesn't really lend itself well to taking unnecessary risks for minimal gain. But just an ignorant viewpoint from a newbie, blah.

[Jeax]

But just an ignorant viewpoint from a newbie, blah.

Fuji is ig'nant.

I will add to this, though, as I've actually fought with sparring weapons before IRL. They hurt like mad. You can most certainly get "reeled", or even break things. In later training, without sparring weapons, just with my own self, I broke things. Sparring is not necessarily a safe activity. Of course I did not do padded-up sparring like you find in Karate/TaeKwonDo, etc.  There was a big pad on the floor, at least.

So yeah, I think requiring some recovery time is reasonable. If you get hurt enough to have to get medical attention, take at least the rest of the IG day off from sparring.

Now, along the same lines, I once had a character (this was like 4 years ago, so can say, I assume) that upset the militia in the Gaj...and he was held by soldiers and one of them smashed his knee with a warhammer. I did not spar for quite a while after this. I think I gave it like a RL week, which would be somewhere around half a month IG I think, or 1/6 of a year, aka the equivalent of 2 months in real life. I know in real life if you rip someone's knee in half (the ligaments) it's two month recovery time for them to be able to do anything with the leg again. So realistically I probably would not have been sparring after half a month, but I did anyway, because I don't want to sit around forever.

[Harmless]

This thread = Totally ignorable.

Do it how you like. If how you're doing it is wrong you'll get a notification from staff.

Enjoy the game. It's Zalanthas. Not combat realism roleplay protocol simulator.

-harmless

[Lizzie]

This thread = Totally ignorable.

Do it how you like. If how you're doing it is wrong you'll get a notification from staff.

Enjoy the game. It's Zalanthas. Not combat realism roleplay protocol simulator.

-harmless

I guess it wasn't ignorable afterall, since you (and 10 other members of the forum) didn't ignore it.

[Patuk]

This thread = Totally ignorable.

Do it how you like. If how you're doing it is wrong you'll get a notification from staff.

Enjoy the game. It's Zalanthas. Not combat realism roleplay protocol simulator.

-harmless

I guess it wasn't ignorable afterall, since you (and 10 other members of the forum) didn't ignore it.

10 members of the gdb?!?! My god! It is a world-shaking issue indeed!