Author: Silver Crawfish (---.50.194)
Date: 05-04-2005 08:02
Sergio,
Reading your latest on Realism v. Gamism v. Cinematism, it occurred to me you might want to incorporate another cinematic convention to your design: that of the lingering death. In most RPGs, and for reasons you outlined pretty succinctly yourself (simplifying play), characters who are killed are just killed. Period. But in films and novels, they often linger in a variety of ways, clearly dying but still in play.
One of the Wild West games on the market right now (Sidewinder? OGL Wild West? Can't recall.) has a "mortal wound" rule. As far as cinematism goes, this permits the wounded character to go out of the world in a number of ways, whether screaming and calling for water (or his mother), or slowly fading while imparting some last pithy bit of wisdom or encouragement. And because people in the real world rarely drop dead from wounds like sacks of wet meal, it might just serve the ends of realism as well, not to mention imparting more psychological impact to a death which might otherwise be just another tick-mark on a character sheet.
Combined with a hit location rule (for those who don't mind that level of complexity in their combat), this can become very dramatic. I'm reminded of the sergeant in Dog Soldiers staring down at he eviscerated guts and writhing in furious agony. Good stuff, both more cinematic and more realistic than standard game-play.
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