Zero Hit Points

Mostly Dead!

I usually start my hobby related discussions by referencing the original three little brown books, tomes which I, like many, started my journey into fantasy role-playing with. I find that the genesis of so many topics can be found in a careful reading of those texts. Volume I Men & Magic has the following to say about creating the character's hit points:

Dice for Accumulative Hits (Hit Dice): This indicates the number of dice which

are rolled in order to determine how many hit points a character can take. Pluses are

merely the number of pips to add to the total of all dice rolled not to each die. Thus

a Superhero gets 8 dice + 2; they are rolled and score 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6/totals

26 + 2 = 28, 28 being the number of points of damage the character could sustain

before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character

is left to the discretion of the referee.

In brief, hit points are therefore referred to as "how many hit points a character can take" - being a total of finite number that is reduced by randomly determining how much damage is inflicted by a successful attack. Also as "being the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death". This statement implies that being brought to "zero" hit points equals death for the character - a position many subsequent versions of the game (but important to note that not all of them) have taken.

Parsing out the meaning or intent from these words has been a subject of debate for at least four decades. Part of the difficulty may rest with the author's use of inexact terms - for example "points of damage" - which is perhaps intentional. Abstraction is rampant in the original game's mechanics and serves a useful purpose in allowing each player to fill-in all missing detail by applying our imagination while at the same time keeping the game action flowing. 

The last sentence in the above quote from Volume I about referee discretion is important and serves as a good summary of the old school philosophy in FRP gaming. The phrase "is left to the discretion of the referee" invites each player acting in this capacity to modify the game to suit their particular tastes. Doing so is an important building block in the popularity of the hobby - I would argue.

Digging into the nature of original edition hit points a little deeper Volume III The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures says that healing or regaining of hit points associated with common wounds "can take a long time".

HEALING WOUNDS:

As noted previously, energy levels can only be regained by fresh experience, but

common wounds can be healed with the passage of time (or the use of magics

already explained). On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained,

but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is

completely healed. This can take a long time.

Applying logic (always a dangerous sport) I am confronted by a need to define the terms "damage" and "wound" while keeping in mind that ultimately this rests upon "the discretion of the referee". Many sources will separate damage and hit points as being somewhat separate from wounds. In other words they are not all the same thing. Hit points can be thought of as "one's ability to avoid the killing blow" - at least one prominent celebrity from the early days of TSR explains it just so and this is consistent with reading remarks made in the Dungeon Masters Guide to the Advanced game. Damage therefore reduces hit points bringing one closer to "the death blow". A wound would seem to imply some significant injury to the body and may be considered separate from what is meant by the term "damage". The taking of a "wound" requires either magical healing (which is relatively rare in the early edition) or considerable time to heal. So I am left to ponder - when does one suffer an actual "wound"?

Going outside the text - using the referee discretion clause - I like to "play around with" the idea that wounds happen when one reaches zero hit points. Some wounds are fatal and the character dies on the field of battle. Some may not result in death, but will require a long time to heal sans magic. Borrowing an idea, suppose the referee rules that upon reaching zero hit pints the character is down and out of the combat. Once the fight is over a comrade may "roll the body over" and discover the character's fate by applying a random result. I suggest a die roll on the following table:

1 - Dead

2 - Gaping wound - staunch flow or soon die

3 - Broken bone - limb useless until healed

4 - Unconscious - serious bump on head

Just how we choose to address the details implicit in such a table is entirely left open to the referee's preference just as it should be - although relying on common sense, fairness and consistency will obviously go a long way towards keeping one's players happy and content!

With its roots in wargaming where figures are generally either alive and functioning combatants or have become casualties and are essentially dead (for the purposes of the game), the original edition of the game treats character hit points as a resource that is whittled down on the way to becoming dead. The character (or creature) is fully functional (and is not impaired by the loss of hit points) right up to and until the magic number of zero is reached, at which point the unfortunate fellow becomes "dead". While this seemed intuitive to its audience of the day (1970s wargamers), the modern gamer often comes into the hobby with somewhat different prior experiences (including video games) hence we may have different expectations than those circa 1974. Adjusting the game to suit one's tastes is in keeping with the spirit of old school game philosophy and just how we address hit point loss and wounding in play at our table can reflect those preferences. 

"Avoid taking damage!" is the basic advice I like to offer players who express some concern over their character having a modest number of hit points. There seems a bit of "realism" to being concerned that a single violent blow may result in serious injury or death. This makes the game relatable - and believable! Yes, there are monsters and magic treasures, but the game having familiar reference points such as - "avoid taking damage or you could die" - are a great aspect of that style of play. It can be great fun to play while thinking about "life with one hit point". Players will often think more creatively about using different approaches to solving problems and conflicts when character life is more fragile.

Adventure Games

Our World, Only Skewed.

How do we do "Fantasy" fiction? There are of course many approaches that can be taken to address this question and one need not look too far to see the outcome of our many diverse takes on what Fantasy as a setting can be. Consult just a few novels or short stories selected from those labeled  the "fantasy genre" and a wide and diverse variety can readily be discovered - everything from the near historical Song of Fire and Ice written by George R.R. Martin, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth tales, to the other extreme to be found in the futuristic stories about Zothique written by Clark Ashton Smith and The Dying Earth tales by Jack Vance and we can see that any comparison between fantasy worlds can vary considerably. 

The authors of the FRP game Dragon Warriors describe their default setting as "our world only skewed" which for them is "what fantasy ought to be". A more magical version of our world, familiar to us through our shared personal experience as earthlings and through acquired knowledge of our cultural histories (DW borrows tropes from British history), provides us, as "adventure gamers" with a contextual foundation upon which to build our fantasies. Most things in the game's setting will work as they do on Earth and many elements will be as we perceive them to have been historically. The points where the fiction varies from reality is where the magic exists.  

Dragon Warriors is not alone in leveraging the familiar to anchor a magical setting for use in gaming. Columbia Games uses their setting of Harn which shares many aspects with medieval England and the Fighting Fantasy books and games are set in the world of Titan which contains many familiar tropes. 

Familiarity gives us the freedom to imagine, to create, to add twists in the fabric of reality that make sense because it is all grounded in the familiar. This is why writers of the supernatural will spend time on the mundane details that are so familiar to us (comfortably familiar in many cases) accessing mental images of various mundane things we know are real, only to set us up for the eventual shock of encountering the nearly unbelievable. It is this juxtaposition of the known and the unknown that causes a mental tension which we enjoy while reading (or gaming) comfortably seated in a familiar chair. 

The familiar, yet magically different setting called Lands of Legend, which is built into the game Dragon Warriors, facilitates a comfortable fantasy game experience in a way very similar to the fiction of Prof. Tolkien - familiar, yet slightly different in that magical way. I find that the familiarity of setting and tropes gives me more freedom to imagine , to create, and to add twists in reality that actually make sense (and is therefore more easily engaged with) because it is all quite grounded in the familiar. It also aids in conjuring up a dark and spooky flavor much like dimmed lighting can do in a familiar room. By building the setting into the rules (and vice versa) the "stage" and "cast of actors" fit nicely together, thus facilitating the sort of adventure stories one might want to explore together with one's friends while playing Dragon Warriors. Experience a comfortable (and safe) adventure while making some nice gaming memories in a familiar yet magical land.

The MELEE Action Economy

Tactical Combat played in a Logical Manner

Metagaming's MicroGame 3 - The Fantasy Trip MELEE is is described by its author Steve Jackson (also founder of Steve Jackson Games) as an arena game that "can also be used as a tactical aid to the various fantasy role-playing games...allowing tactical combat to be worked out in a logical manner." Much of what Mr. Jackson calls  'a logical manner" can be found in MELEE's turn sequence, and movement and engagement rules.

MELEE uses a hex-based tactical display and counters to represent the area where action takes place and the position of combatants. There is no simultaneous movement and players take their turn based on a die roll, high score makes their move first, then low score. Attacks are resolved in sequence starting with the figure with the highest adjusted Dex value.

The MELEE system identifies each figure as being in one of three states - Engaged, Non-engaged, or in Hand-to-hand (HtH).

Non-Engaged "figures" - those who are are NOT in a space adjacent to another figure - have the following Action options:

• Move up to their full move allowance - based on armor worn
• Charge Attack including up to 1/2 move
• Dodge - including 1/2 move
• Drop Prone - up to 1/2 move
• Ready Weapon - may move 1 or 2 spaces (hexes)
• Missile Attack - may move 1 hex/space
• Stand Up

Engaged "figures" are those who are in a space/hex that is adjacent to another figure and have the following Action options:

• shift one hex while staying engaged/adjacent and Attack
• one last shot Missile Attack
• Change Weapon - may shift one hex
• Disengage - move one hex away and no Attack
• Stand up
• Pick up dropped weapon or object
• attempt to move into occupied hex and HtH 

Figures that are in Hand-to-Hand (HtH) have the following Action options:

• Draw a dagger and make a HtH Attack
• Attack HtH
• Disengage

Note: Some Action attempts require a successful die roll to succeed (move into or out of HtH)

The modular nature of many FRP games allow for the substitution of one combat system for another. In my experience, the MELEE system works quite well with the original little brown books if one makes allowance for the manner in which the two games generate Strength and Dexterity ability scores.

Old-School Fantasy Rules

A Circular Journey or "There and Back Again"!

As I continue to play role-playing games of all sorts, both old and new, including the "improved" versions of older systems, retro-clones and newer editions of older favorites, and others that are completely new, I find myself returning time and again to the original game I started with. I have often heard others say, "You will always favor the very first game system that you play." I am not so sure that is a true statement for many, but it has mostly been true for me and my FRP game preference.

One reason I like to dispute the "your first game is always your favorite" theory, however, is that it doesn't hold true for me in any other area of gaming. Let me start by saying that I love games of all sorts. Even sports. My tastes have evolved over the half-century-plus of playing all kinds of games, and continues to do so today. 

Like many, I started playing kiddie games - I won't bother to mention more on this subject. With respect to the various games in the genre of "adult" gaming, I have left behind many - probably most - of the games that I started out with and several of the more recently acquired new ones as well. Of all the earliest "wargames" which  served as my gateway to other strategy and adventure games, I have little interest in returning to any of those very  early systems. Computer games of every ilk have all gotten better since I purchased "Bard's Tale" for the Commodore 64 and revisiting an early CRPG, or flight simulator, can have little appeal for me except as a brief bout of nostalgia.     

So what is it about the old-school fantasy game that appeals to me so? The following list includes the reasons I have been able to think of. 

• Character knowledge and player knowledge are aligned in old-school play. 
• There is an emphasis on referee rulings which are based on common sense and the natural laws of what is possible in "the real world".
• A class based character system that reflects classic archetypes.
• Game mechanics that are easily committed to memory, require little thought during play and readily recede into the background allowing the game's fiction to be foremost in my mind.
• It serves as a do-it-yourself outlet for creativity.

Role-play isn't "acting" for me. The RPG is a game we play and knowledge of the game should be useful - at least that's what I think. One of the reasons I tend to shy away from skill-based systems is that they separate what the character knows and is good at, from what the player knows. I find rolling dice to convince the guard to let you pass is less interesting than "role-playing" how your character goes about the "convincing". In a similar way, I also find rolling to search and rolling to detect whether an NPC is lying to be interior practices to the old-school alternative of "tell me how you search" and the referee giving "obvious" hints about how truthful the NPC is being - "wink, wink!"

No rule system can cover every conceivable action a player can imaginatively ask to try - nor should it. Such a tome would be immense and likely require constant consultation during play. Part of the art of running a game is to use one's creativity - making good on-the-spot rulings is exercising that creative muscle. Common sense and knowledge of the real world should guide such rulings unless there is something "magical" or supernatural at play. The magic is that much more powerful when most things follow the familiar way of the real world.

Classic archetypes have their antecedents in the subconscious mind. Also, they have many reflections that can readily be found throughout literature. Leveraging the power of the familiar aids in the believability of the fiction. By contrast, the bizarre is simply that, and usually produces little more than confusion.

For most, learning a new game can be fun, but it takes effort. Sports require training our bodies and tabletop games require training our minds. We learn the relationship of the parts, the procedures and hopefully commit them to memory lest the game be constantly interrupted by consulting the book. I find that it is only after the game is largely committed to memory does it function well as an "adventure" experience where-in one may temporarily suspend disbelief and imagine the shared fiction as if it were unfolding before you. Under these conditions, the "adventure game" or "RPG" can become much more than a game of "Monopoly" or "Life" played with fantasy "trolls and wizards".

Many games, including most boardgames, card games and sports, require a strict adherence to the "rules as written" to ensure "fairness". I see role-playing as a departure from this concept. The nature of those little brown books was "rules are to be added to". This was a common approach seen in many miniature wargames of the day (and so it continues to the present) and I - like many who played such games - assumed that it was/is expected that I use my own creativity to enhance the fun and realism for those who play when I act as referee. It is expected that the referee should draw-up maps - both dungeon and wilderness - and populate said dungeon and wilderness with fantastic creatures. Once the game evolved to the point where we sought to include life among the "civilized" towns and cities, various aspects of the imagined culture and society becomes important and the original rules-as-written (intentionally) say very little about that. Thus we referees are invited to become "world builders". 

This formula works well for me and has proved a good "fit" lending itself to over four decades of awesome gaming. I continue to consume many new publications each year and enthusiastically "borrow" from them all their new ideas and creative mechanical systems that seem likely to fit with and perhaps improve on those found in the original little brown books.