(( Wounds ))

[Zander-Bo Umra]

Hi everyone, I'm not usually in the habit of making these kinds of posts, but it might be a nice opportunity to discuss the subject of wounds in the age of Star Wars. The majority of weapons used are energy-based. Depending on the strength of the discharge, weapons can completely vaporize matter, or simply transfer enough energy to inflict perhaps more grievous wounds.

WARNING, GRAPHIC IMAGE

An artist impression, regardless of its scientific accuracy, is shown above. Our game engine does not account for inflicted wounds, and some of the comics that have been made of Star Wars often only show someone being injured without all the gore involved. In this case the helmet has been blasted open and the flesh has probably melted off, but not enough energy has transferred to sufficiently damage the skull. (Yes, the eye should be gone in my opinion as well. )

I was wondering what your thoughts on the matter were, and how you deal with wounds ingame in your imagination.

I personally think that quick cuts with a lightsaber, even though dismemberment is often seen as instant cauterization, have the potential to cause excessive bleeding in a case where major arteries have been struck. Blood pressure is often as such that it should be able to push through a cauterized ending if not treated properly.

In the case of Darth Maul, he was victim of a very quick horizontal Sai Tok, severing his torso from above his hipbones. Because Star Wars is not R-rated and made for adults and kids alike, it is obvious that in the movies his organs would not be flying about the place. Yet when you think about it, there is no reason for a thin, and by nature of internal organs inconsistent layer of burnt flesh to keep back aortic bloodflow and the involuntary disembowelment.


It seems obvious that not everyone shares my personal grim-dark interpretation of the world we roleplay in, and I completely respect any opinions on the contrary.

[Dev Kai]

This is my RP death guide break down.

At the temple, wounds obviously need to be rp'd if a player feels like slipping on a banana peel and breaking his leg it's what they want to do.

Regarding missions, many (many) years ago, Corinth and I worked out a concrete system for death so here it is.

One knockdown - (meaning you go dark for ten seconds) Scratches, bruises, possible torn clothing or broken items in your inventory. Light to light /medium damages.

Two knockdowns - complied with the pain from the first knock down, is made up of all the injuries talked about in one but, adds lacerations and breaks. A normal person would need a hospital at this point.

Third knockdown. - Critical condition, you're probably going to die without some magic use of force or a friend saving you and getting you to a hospital. As it takes a minute or so to bleed out fully, there is a 1 - 2 minute grace period where you can have someone save you. Should this fail to happen in a two minute span, your character is dead.

Any one who wishes can use the system I use, it's how I've always done it my entire time in Jedi.

[Zander-Bo Umra]

However informative, that's not -quite- what I was going for here. I'm not concerned but more interested in how players perceive stuff in game and how they make their characters react to it. (Mostly wounds on -other- characters )

If you assume the one system with perfect cauterization, it would probably be less traumatic for a younger person to watch, for example. On the other hand, with gore on 'high,' it could have a lot more mental impact on a person not accustomed to it.

EDIT: In an RP on Arven's ship, Zander held an attacker at gunpoint who decided to charge at him anyway. He shot him with defense, and Arven aptly RP'd him as riddled with holes and died. It adds a 'gross' factor to the roleplay dimension once you make concrete what characters (regular or one-offs) may be inflicted with.


EDIT2: May have been too vague a start to a topic, my bad for any misunderstanding. ^^

[Dev Kai]

For anyone with first - aid / medical training the procedures for healing should be obvious.

Zander I think there are just a lot of factors involved as to how you would rp it "like in starwars"

Like a real gun it takes one to two shots to put someone down. Unless you were using that gun from unreal tournament, they wouldn't be full of holes. Example #1 - Greedo VS HAN

You didn't see Greedo's speen fly out the other side of him when Han riddled him with holes. It left an intense burn the caught slight fire and burnt for a moment after his death.

Since Emperor Mouse-a tine, retconned everything saying "Only the first three movies are cannon" I guess it makes sense to follow their example of Violence.

Hope that answer makes more sense to what you were looking for.

[Zuri Lyn]

I find myself mostly agreeing with your representation of wounds and have personally also role played that way for missions.

What's certain is that star wars is a universe in which the laws of physics do apply and that blood and bowels and all the like do exist to maintain life. At the same time, I feel it's normal accidents and wounds in star wars can be at least as horrible as in real life.

So yeah. When someone gets run into by a speeder during a mission, I'm gonna role play that guy as having had half his torso ripped out, blood spread across the ground, his body twisted with broken limbs. Hey, it's not nice, but whoever ran into him with a speeder must realise what they really did. It's easier for them when you roleplay it.

As for lightsaber cuts, yes, they can lead to disgusting too. I can't speak for others, so I'll speak of personal experience : I had a mission with Zuri where he was assaulted by pirates in a large enemy ship. All other ways and possibilities being exhausting, Zuri had to cut a lot of them down. In those situations, there's no time for fancy knocking out or weapon disabling so he simply used Sai Tok on most of them, amassing a great amount of gore on himself. When he returned to the temple, he was disgusting, bloodied, and that left a lasting impact on his character.

So to conclude my points, I feel that violence and wounds are important to forging a character. I hadn't planned Zuri to experience those atrocities, but that was how the mission went and I feel it'd be silly if I'd considered Zuri to not have seen other people's blood and wounds and the consequences of him killing them.

Base line : if your character ends up causing harm/killing people, he's going to see the wounds, they're probably going to be disgusting and there's probably be going to be some effect on your character (what you do with that is then entirely your choice )





PS : As a comment regarding Dev's post, I feel that's an intelligent system. Up to now, I'd always had one knockdown = mission failure = you're captured/wounded/gonna die if not rescued.
Yeah, I guess that's sometimes a little much, but all in all I'd probably mostly react as to what caused the knockdown. If it's a stun by stunbeam, there aren't going to be lasting wounds stopping you from getting back up. If it's a knockdown for suffering too many blaster shots, I'm definitely not getting up after 10 seconds without medical assistance.

[Sebastin Creed]

The topic is wide open to interpretation, some people react differently to different things, I know I have been caught out personally on this once before.

At the end of the day, it's a question of role playing it properly and ensuring that those around you are given 'buzz words' in which to base their reaction on.

Also, while that may be a sound system from Dev, it's not an official one. People should play it how they wish, but also think realistically on what may have happened to you or what you may have done (like a 'mistake' turned into some solid RP).

Star Wars has some dark moments, but it's not always blood and gore either, I think a happy medium is where it would be safest to play. I know I have a scar from being burned on my face by my own lightsaber, take from that what you will.

[Evanin Dawnstar]

This is my RP death guide break down.

At the temple, wounds obviously need to be rp'd if a player feels like slipping on a banana peel and breaking his leg it's what they want to do.

Regarding missions, many (many) years ago, Corinth and I worked out a concrete system for death so here it is.

One knockdown - (meaning you go dark for ten seconds) Scratches, bruises, possible torn clothing or broken items in your inventory. Light to light /medium damages.

Two knockdowns - complied with the pain from the first knock down, is made up of all the injuries talked about in one but, adds lacerations and breaks. A normal person would need a hospital at this point.

Third knockdown. - Critical condition, you're probably going to die without some magic use of force or a friend saving you and getting you to a hospital. As it takes a minute or so to bleed out fully, there is a 1 - 2 minute grace period where you can have someone save you. Should this fail to happen in a two minute span, your character is dead.

Any one who wishes can use the system I use, it's how I've always done it my entire time in Jedi.

A number of RP communities used a similar system for death, though some were harsh in that 3 defeats and you're dead, no chance to save you and a few people were notorious so when it came to missions if someone hated another char they would go out of their way to make life extremely difficult for the person.

Only once have I lost a char to Perma-kill and that was voluntary on the second death as I was dropping out the community for good, that same character I'd had resign around the time I started with Skrassk so when I went back all those 'years' (months irl) later he was getting on in his years as the community had done a time jump for plot purposes, one of the other reasons one might choose to kill themselves off is for the sake of starting with a new char, be it from scratch or a Knight rerolling as another Knight.

It's a rather taboo thing in my opinion as no-one really wants to lose a character they have worked so hard on, for some it can be difficult starting over no matter the age/species/rank/personality/gender/etc of the replacement, the originals hold close to our hearts, I generally back off at number 2 especially if the opponent is on 0 or 1 as the chances of actually doing all 3 for them are slim unless you somehow become god.

A number of communities used a rank = count system where an initiate dies the moment they are killed, no questions asked, a padawan has two chances, a knight 3 a master 4, with no thought of the characters skills/resilience or even the feelings of the player, it's a cruel, harsh and crazy world in the star wars galaxy from plagues to lightsabers through your chest, I once encountered a Knight Kel'dor who removed his mask in the middle of a council meeting just to end it.

[Zander-Bo Umra]

For the sake of remaining on-topic you could make a death-system discussion in another thread perhaps.

Otherwise, I'm quite in agreement with Seb and Zuri. During general roleplay detailed descriptions could be forgone for the sake of fun and the pace of the situation. At the same time you could choose to have such things pop up more in individual roleplay for characters, such as missions and trials, naturally in conference with the player involved so they stay in their comfort zone.

[Jerex Sol]

I usually base all injuries upon what was happening in the current RP at the time. Blasters are energy based yes, but I don't really see them creating a 'large' amount of blood. In my mind they quite literally burn a hole through whatever body part they hit. I'm usually able to keep track of where I am hit even during missions. Until I am knocked down though, I tend to count all damage taken as grazes until that final hit whatever it may be.

[Simus Cnydaria]

Star Wars has some dark moments, but it's not always blood and gore either, I think a happy medium is where it would be safest to play. I know I have a scar from being burned on my face by my own lightsaber, take from that what you will.

You managed to burn your face with your own lightsaber? What are you, blind???

[Evanin Dawnstar]

Star Wars has some dark moments, but it's not always blood and gore either, I think a happy medium is where it would be safest to play. I know I have a scar from being burned on my face by my own lightsaber, take from that what you will.

You managed to burn your face with your own lightsaber? What are you, blind???

Here take this free burn heal (Not that it does your face any good):

10624762_837217529658110_7508771606683539548_n.jpg (3.2 KiB) Viewed 6255 times

[Sebastin Creed]

Star Wars has some dark moments, but it's not always blood and gore either, I think a happy medium is where it would be safest to play. I know I have a scar from being burned on my face by my own lightsaber, take from that what you will.

You managed to burn your face with your own lightsaber? What are you, blind???

Bad people, Simus, the bad people did it. B(

[Kieran Orion]

This is my RP death guide break down.

At the temple, wounds obviously need to be rp'd if a player feels like slipping on a banana peel and breaking his leg it's what they want to do.

Regarding missions, many (many) years ago, Corinth and I worked out a concrete system for death so here it is.

One knockdown - (meaning you go dark for ten seconds) Scratches, bruises, possible torn clothing or broken items in your inventory. Light to light /medium damages.

Two knockdowns - complied with the pain from the first knock down, is made up of all the injuries talked about in one but, adds lacerations and breaks. A normal person would need a hospital at this point.

Third knockdown. - Critical condition, you're probably going to die without some magic use of force or a friend saving you and getting you to a hospital. As it takes a minute or so to bleed out fully, there is a 1 - 2 minute grace period where you can have someone save you. Should this fail to happen in a two minute span, your character is dead.

Any one who wishes can use the system I use, it's how I've always done it my entire time in Jedi.

This post has rather ironic timing as I was just recently talking with Kyrios about being downed during a mission. Much similar to Dev Kai's approach and many other Role playing communities that I've been part of, I too follow a system though keep it "open to interpretation", mission dependent.
Character death for example is not an option in one of my held missions, assignments or ventures without the strict permission of the player behind the face however in its stead, I account for such bad situations with the possibility to structure the mission around the Jedi involved and their bevavior/actions and decisions, injuries and what have you, (Mission failure/Mission success).

For Kieran, I've kept things rather casual though tried to keep to realism within the iconic Star Wars universe as much as possible. Just yesterday during a mission I was downed and accounted for it by taking a blaster shot to the arm. Now as Zander-Bo has brought up, how do you play out being shot by a blaster? Plasma bolts being a form of energy, much like the lightsaber which I do believe cauterizes all wounds given, had much the same affect to Kieran's bicep in which it burned away flesh and muscle, rendering Kieran for a time in-game, unable to spar/use his lightsaber and for me to Roleplay his great discomfort following being attended to by a-48 (of which I haven't yet reported but will do, Nico!).

As Sebastin has pointed out, many players will look to this in a different light. I encourage the risk of injury as it adds depth and realism to role-play yet acknowledge and respect peoples involvement and dedication to their characters to know better than to accept mistakes/accidents that would look to cause death without being planned for. At the end of the day your character is in your hands and your roleplay is much the same, ::JEDI:: will not force you to follow one set path or direction in how you take your characters health or decisions however we are encouraged to RP to the best of our ability and think things through as there are consequences to the decisions we make both In-Character and Out-of-Character.

I'm personally glad this was brought up as it's a pleasure to see where other members of the community stand on this subject. It doesn't have to be a negative experience seeing your character be hurt and can definitely lead to some interesting future prospective role-playing moments, it's all about how we handle it maturely.

Going back to Zander-Bo's question and reason for the topic however, the detail in which we use to describe injuries does need to be, in my opinion, monitored a little to ensure we don't go to far and end up grossing out some of our 'softer' peers.