What is the problem with Landfish''s wants? well.. they''re unrealistic!
If you''re in a combat zone, and a bullet hits your foot. what happens? Well, the bullet pierces the skin, hot lead touches exposed nerve endings. These nerve endings send some chemicals along to the main nerve which sends a signal up your spine to your brain. your brain has some chemical displacement and suddenly your conscious hears a knock at the door "Sir! Right foot has been wounded, Sir!" Your consciousness thinks about this whilst your reactions go to work. You leap to the ground, screaming and grabbing your foot. Your eyes dart to the scene from a command from the subconscious. Look, blood! Yup, i''ve been hit. The exposed nerves feel the blood rushing past and debris as well.. sending even more chemicals along which say "dammit, help us!" You grab your foot, trying to stop it all.

Why can''t this work in a game? the player doesn''t FEEL the character''s pain. We''re like the subconscious in a respect. An instinct almost. We either go to work fixing it, or something else. This is instinctual to people wounded. They often recall that they had no real clue as to what they were doing, but they were doing it. This is where training and SKILL comes in. The more skillful you are, the more instinctual it is to do something like this. You could easily break skills down into "book knowledge" and "field knowledge". Afterall, being shot at while you repair your foot is a bit different than having a simulated repairing in a classroom, yes? In short, the player doesn''t feel the character''s pain. They merely go "dammit!" as the character falls to the floor. "get back up you stupid character, get up!" is this how they''d react if THEY were shot? I doubt it Displaying the damage might not be enough. Afterall, who looks down at their foot whilst playing EQ? The N64 Goldeneye and Perfect Dark games both have a system where blood appears in the area where the person''s shot. You can''t look at yourself and see where you''re shot though. Unless you had an actual part in the frond end which displayed your body or something, and relative damage to parts like it does in mechwarrior games.. then it''s useless. If you do this, i could understand.. it''d be kinda cool, even but still, the player won''t feel the pain and usuallyjust becomes frustrated at the character because of it realize what role the player has in these situations and you can realize how to make a system that works correctly. knowledge IS power, afterall.

J

Nice example. Reminds me of a game of Cyberpunk I played where my character died from shock after shooting himself in the foot. It wasn''t fun but it did add a bit more to the game than the usual, "Damn I just got shot. Where''s the medic so he can patch me up." As I was tossing those dice I was thinking, oh shit, I''m gonna die. I''m going to bleed to death and there''s not a thing I can do about it. It was great, my character died. I was pissed but it was fun in some odd twisted masochistic sort of way. If this could be done realistically in an online game than it would have been done already. It''s just not realistic. Even if I did have a little display of my character and the areas where he was hit at and bleeding from, I don''t think the experience would be quite the same as there seems to be a sort of detachment one acquired when playing any sort of computer based game to a degree. I''ve been doing table top for a while but it wasn''t until I introduced White Wolf to an avid computer gaming friend of mine that I ran into a minmaxer. THose wonderful powermaxing twinks that we all love to hate. For me the thought just never occured because I had been used to making a character and developing it over a long period of time. For him it was let''s see who gets to the end of the game first..only there was no real end. However, it didn''t stop him from finding a way to make a character who could get their first. Don''t get me wrong, I love computers and I even fancy myself a developer although someone''s SO keeps trying to curtail my creative energies with some blasted stat based d20 AD&D wanna be system but that''s okay. I''m not /too/ bitter. As I was saying, while the idea is nice, I don''t think it would float and it''d be more likely to piss more people off than it would please. Personally I say go for it but as someone keeps telling me, that''s not going to make you any money. Sucks, yes but that be life.

A.

Akujin, go for it man.. it never hurts to try

Jeranon, it was also more strategy based, solve puzzles. Look at Myst, that''s TRUE RPG there. You played a person and ran around solving things. Or even other games which came before Myst.

Landfish, I''m using the same example you did You said if your foot was wounded! ;p So, i ran with that. But it''s not gonna matter either way.. a picture of a body with it''s guts hanging out when your stomache explodes is likely the only way to make people feel something over it.. but they''ll likely only feel sick. hehe But hey.. that''d be the reality of it.. lol. I think it''d just be hard to do anything like the level of Mechwarrior. You don''t know EXACTLY how damaged your foot it. So how would you do it? Simply turn the foot red if bleeding, and yellow if bruised? It''s hard to decide what to do to make it come out right.

The stats in D&D are static. You have to find SUPER RARE items to change them at all. The powermaxing there comes in from the best rolls and the best combo of skills and powers. With the vanilla D&D game, you can''t powermax too much. Skills and Powers offers you a WHOLE WORLD of minmaxing.
So static stats might offer some hope, but only if skills don''t exist. What were you going to have along with the stats, if anything?

J