As a super nit-picky realist obsessed with homebrewing combat systems, I LOOOOVE this column. I think it ranks as my favourite RPG.net column to date.
Can I just ask for a clarification on the liver rupture? If it is ruptured and no modern medical aid is available, can the victim recover (partly or fully) by him or hersef, through the body's natural healing mechanisms?
__________________ No operation extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy. --Helmuth Von Moltke
Or more succinctly...Everbody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. –-Mike Tyson
Thanks for the words, I appreciate the feedback. Personally I'm pretty disappointed with the first two columns in retrospect, but that's always the way when you're writing, painting or doing anything vaguely creative - older stuff never seems to measure up to standards.
Re: your question:
Liver rupture is unlikely to heal on its own, basically if not fixed it's a killer.
In a hospital situation the patient will turn up having suffered an abdominal trauma. A blunt or piercing injury will cause only a little bleeding, a gunshot wound will likely cause bleeding from multiple sites and fragmentation of the liver. Emphasise again - gunshots are a lot nastier than rpgs make them out to be, and are on order of magnitude of nastiness abover stabs and cuts.
The docs will notice that the patient has signs of losing blood - heart rate rises, blood pressure drops, conscious level falls, the patient looks pale and sweaty. The docs order units of blood crossmatched, and while waiting pump in a few units of O Negative.
The patient fails to respond to blood transfusion, and the surgeons suspect ongoing haemorrhage, so call for an urgent laparotomy. This involves rushing the patient up to theatre, knocking them out and laying them open.
The first goal is control of haemorrhage, with sutures or packing, but sometimes moving onto temporary occlusion of big blood vessels such as the inferior vena cava above, the portal vein and the hepatic artery.
The second goal is removal of devitalized (dead) liver fragments, as if let in these will turn into necrotic tissue and abscesses which in precise medical terms is known as "a very bad thing."
Sometimes a whole liver lobe needs to be taken out.
The patient is then stitched back together and survives. Probably.
Unfortunately there wasn't enough room to fit the above level of detail into the above article, but if anyone has requests for explanations of other injuries, I'd be more than happy to write here.
__________________ "I'm frankly disgusted. WFRP3 sandwich isn't even a sandwich, it's more like a food made up of slices of bread separated by filling. Calling WFRP3 sandwich a sandwich is practically fraud." - Ambrogino
__________________ No operation extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy. --Helmuth Von Moltke
Or more succinctly...Everbody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. –-Mike Tyson
i found both columns to be very informative. thank you!
__________________
Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. -Sam Harris, author (1967- )
__________________ "I'm frankly disgusted. WFRP3 sandwich isn't even a sandwich, it's more like a food made up of slices of bread separated by filling. Calling WFRP3 sandwich a sandwich is practically fraud." - Ambrogino
"The patient fails to respond to blood transfusion, and the surgeons suspect ongoing haemorrhage, so call for an urgent laparotomy. This involves rushing the patient up to theatre, knocking them out and laying them open."
Here in America, they'd probably get a CAT scan before doing anything. (I suspect this is also the reason healthcare is bankrupting America.) Your half-elven fighter has no access to CAT scans, of course. Magical radiology is an interesting possibility, I think.
Oh, if anyone is curious, an abscess is a localized collection of pus, usually secondary to infection. The key thing about abscesses is they have no blood supply, so antibiotics can't get there and they have to be drained surgically.
I think a relapsing-remitting disease like many of the autoimmune illnesses would make great roleplaying. It's not too hard to imagine making a player whose character has MS roll to see which part of his body he can't move that day.
Also, I can see why Cure Disease is a divine spell: of course the gods can wipe out ALL the bacteria. You don't want the one bacterium that resists Cure Disease to divide and produce Cure Disease-resistant bacteria.
the dragon magazine published a similar real damage system some twenty odd years ago, which we foolishly adopted without pause.
within a month, stumpy, say what?, and the gimp were a shadow of their former adventuring selves, and the campaign withered faster than the gimps leg.
congratulations on being able to play doctor for real, but you should never take your work home with you.
and remember kids...it's just a GAME
Well, it works for some games but not for all, and ultimately a cohesive story and fun play experience is the goal. I'd never dream of using trauma medicine ideas in a game where combat/physical danger is the raison d'etre, like Feng Shui,old school D+D or Truth and Justice.
OTOH, I've found it very useful when the style of the story demands that injury be threatening, visceral and brutal. For example, I ran a Battle Royale game where it added a great deal, and I tend to use realistic injury in a lot of modern games where the mood is enhanced by players knowing that people risk dying in firefights.
I aim to provide story tools, not didactic directions. I think "never" is probably too strong. "Use with caution and care" is better, and perhaps "always consult a doctor before use."
__________________ "I'm frankly disgusted. WFRP3 sandwich isn't even a sandwich, it's more like a food made up of slices of bread separated by filling. Calling WFRP3 sandwich a sandwich is practically fraud." - Ambrogino
I aim to provide story tools, not didactic directions. I think "never" is probably too strong. "Use with caution and care" is better, and perhaps "always consult a doctor before use." [/QUOTE]
touche
as i currently game with an orthopeadic surgeon, i "always consult a doctor". however its more along the lines of "wheres the beer, or chips?"
given, in my opinion, the complexity of 3.5, i feel its uneccessary to complicate matters further with concerns over what is very specialised knowledge.
no disrespect, but most games can only handle one divine ego at a time, and thats usually to be found at the DM screen...
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