Nor the Battle to the Strong (working title of work in progress)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Update is up. Added a proper title header to the first page, cleaned up some typos and some of the ugly grammar and more awkward phrasing in the previous scenes, reworked how the stats are handled, and added one new scene.

If you want to see the new scene, then make sure you EITHER avoid taking survival as one of your starting skills OR choose to run away rather than deliver the sergeant’s message. If you choose to deliver the message and have the survival skill necessary to avoid getting lost, you’ll just arrive at the camp without incident and the game will end (as I haven’t written anything for that path, yet).

The new scene is probably pretty brief to play through but can vary a fair bit depending on your combat skills. More will be most likely coming on the morrow.

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Seems like a promising read so far.

Reminds me of another user-made story here, except a more dark and serious tone.

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Okay, so here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

In the new scene I added earlier, your character his his or her first opportunity to get in a real scrap, and his or her first opportunity to get injured. I introduced a quicky “health” stat to keep track of just how badly you get roughed up on the encounter; but it occurs to me your injuries are not just quantitative but qualitative. Especially given the relatively short period of time the story takes place in (where there’s no real opportunity to rest up and let your wounds heal), I feel like it should matter, specifically, whether your character twisted hia ankle, or took an arrow in te shoulder, or got his teeth kicked in.

So the perfectionist in me wants to actively track all of the PCs potential injuries in so that I don’t have the character easily sprinting across country three hours after he supposedly twisted hisnankle, for instance. And the black humorist in me would love to replace the sterile health bar with a list of increasingly painful injuries your character’s managed to accumulate during play. But the realist in me suggests that this is going to be a lot of variables to track and keep relevant. And the people pleaser in me could imagine it would be frustrating to make an archer character and then have to go 90% of the game not using that skill because of a shoulder injury you took in the third scene.

So I guess I’m asking:

A. Would people find some sort of injury tracking system a worthwhile addition?

B. Are there any good examples of this sort of thin in other games I could take notes from? Off of the top of my head I cannot think of any.

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A. Looks worthwhile to me. I intend to implement a similar system in my own game, albeit a relatively simple one. Heh. I concur to your statement about variable tracking; it will take a lot of effort, not to mention trying to balance the penalties involved, if any, for having wounded body parts.

B. Off the top of my head…

Fallout Series

  • Tracked both arms, both legs, torso, head, and eyes for damage. Reducing the HP of a body part provides a specific penalty; EG injured arms = reduced accuracy. I’ll be basing my system on this.

Some Roguelike games
-…like Cataclysm, Unreal, and Dwarf Fortress to name a few. Cataclysm has a more rudimentary system when it comes to injuries; there’s no real penalty for having injures limbs AFAIK unless HP’s at 0, in which case the limb is useless.
-but Unreal tracks -I think- every single blow thats done to you; it also has its own complex healing system.
-Dwarf Fortress track injuries down to each individual finger. Intense attention to detail, that game has.

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Well, in some ways it’s easier for a game like Dwarf Fortress ormeven Fallout to handle that sort of thing because it’s all baked into a larger engine. Having injury X reduces stats Y and Z which in turn make you W% less effective at certain repeatable tasks.

With a choicescript game every a scene and possible choice is its own unique instance and you as the author have to actively keep track of what factors might affect it and plan accordingly. Once I go down this path, it means coding every encounter to make sure I take into account that the character may or may not be attempting the task with a broken leg and/or massive bleeding head wound.

Still, I’m leaning towards taking the big bite and finding out just how much I can chew, I think.

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The writing has been pretty good so far. Looking forward to playing more in the future

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I would prefer the individual injuries, but like you said, someone who majors in archery that then loses his ability to fire an arrow effectively would be frustrating on the player.

It sounds like your somewhat new to CS (the coding side) so perhaps have the basic injury chart to begin with, and when you feel more comfortable with coding, implement the other one.

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I thought I was going to answer “use the injuries” but as I was typing my answer I changed my mind.

Hit Points/Health Levels etc are an abstraction for a reason. In most movies the hero soldiers on (ha see what I did there) regardless. They’ll take bullets, they’ll brush off broken glass, they’ll be stabbed and bruised and go through hell and they’ll only take lasting injuries when it’s dramatically appropriate.

So I’d say, if you want to have injuries, have pre-defined ones decided, and only in fights/places where it’s dramatically appropriate.

So, if the character’s hand is broken, and it has swollen up to the size of a balloon and they can no longer use it, they can switch to using their other hand for a sword. That happens frequently in movies/books after all. If they’re an archer they may have some worse problems.

They could also have the option of downing some painkillers/stimulants and just continuing to go, and fight through their injuries. So, after the battle’s over they’ve probably done far more damage to their own body than they would have, but at least they’re still alive.

Broken legs are not fun. A broken leg would seem to be a game-ender for me. A twisted ankle, again problematic, and if the protagonist twists their ankle I’d expect that it would result in its own path, even if that path’s straight to the healer and down a magic potion.

Magic healing makes everything better.

Anyway I’d say pick a couple of injuries you think would make the story better, more dramatic, provide more tension, and use those and only those. Otherwise just have the whole alive/hurt/dead status of hit points.

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Fairy makes a good point. Plus, in the heat of combat when the adrenaline is pumping, I don’t your going to overly notice if you sprain yourself a little, or suffer from a sliced up leg. But then again, I’ve never been in an epic combat and have that happen so…

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Here: “As you already have your bow knocked and half-drawn, you complete the motion, hoping to take out the opposing archer before he can get a clean shot off.”
You, uh, “nock” an arrow, hun.

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Bagelthief: Fixed, thank you.

FairyGodfeather: While I completely understand where you’re coming from, your post was probably what convinced me I had to at least attempt to do the injury system. The world of this game doesn’t have healing potions or “Cure Moderate Wounds” spells, which means the player should think long and hard before he draws his sword.

I’ll probably avoid letting the player gain any sort of wholly incapacitating injuries (unless it’s part of a game over), and probably 80% of the injuries that get logged on the stat sheet will be fairly cosmetic in their impact, but I want to maintain a sense that every fight your character gets into has real consequences. People who want to get through the game in good condition should have to play cautiously, and masochists who want to put their PC through the wringer (I’m hoping there will be at least some of those) should be “rewarded” with a thorough accounting of what they had to go through.

Anyway, newest update is online. I’ll be out of town visiting my parents this weekend, so this is the last update until at least Monday, and unfortunately there’s not much in the way of new content. Spent my time reworking the stats page yet again. In addition to the injury log, I’ve removed all numerical quantities and replaced them with qualitative descriptions. I think this better reflects how I’m thinking about the game and how I want players to be thinking about it. I’m not sure I’m in love with the way I have it formatted, however. I’ll have to play with it some more next week.

In the mean time, anyone who wants to play through the combat scene a few times to see if the injury log accurately matches the descriptive text will be a personal hero of mine.

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@Wonderboy Oh good. :slight_smile: It seems like you’ve thought out why you want to have injuries and how to implement them. Just be sure we don’t end up like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. There’s no fun hopping around because you’ve lost a leg, broken a hand and someone’s gouged out your eye.

Scars however are good. Or infections and injuries which will have an impact after the battle. Like was done in the Hunger Games (the books not the movie). Where you can somehow get through everything in a short space of time, only you’ve messed up your limb so badly you’ll need an amputation, or gangrene’s set in.

I’m actually good with realistic combat which has consequences. I actually prefer that to having hit-points.

I generally take the be cautious, run away, talk my way out of combat wherever possible method. Hang back and be the medic, or cast spells, or do archery and do everything I can to keep out of being directly in danger.

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Excellent effort, I really enjoyed the writing and scene-setting. Got a Black Company vibe from it, especially with the character names

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@Wonderboy Perhaps in your first combat scene you could get an injury that ‘stays with you’ for life. Like if you sprain your ankle : your ankle will forever be your… ‘achilles heel’(?) Or if your leg is sliced : you’ll always have that white jagged scar. And so on… just an idea :slight_smile:

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@Kitty9 Really original idea and pretty badass… *steals it*

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Umm no don’t you see my gaurd tiger watching for vagabonds like you? Good luck :stuck_out_tongue:

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@Kitty9 Pssh! Im a wereshark!

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@2Ton Bad luck wereshark you’re out of water here and while you flounder helplessly my tiger mauls your eyes out :slight_smile: So stay away from my idea. :stuck_out_tongue:

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But Im a land wereshark XD and I have all of the dragon balls

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Hmm well how will your land wereshark move when out of water anyway?