[MUD-Dev] Spoken Languages & Food [was RP thesis...]

[Nathan Yospe]

On Thu, 29 May 1997, Travis S Casey wrote:
:On Thu, 29 May 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

:> IRL even a 10% damage quotient would have you doubled over on the
:> ground incapable of much more than mindless moans.  Movie and MUD
:> characters are built of firmer stuff where even multiple .44 Magnum
:> shells to the torso classify as "flesh wounds".

I get this sudden image of a character with a hole in his chest managing
one last thrust with his sword, killing his foes, and sleeping it off, to
awaken in a few hours fully recovered. Not to realistic, eh?

:Well... how people will take damage can be very unpredictable, 
:depending on the circumstances and the individual.  Some will act
:as if they're dying when they get a relatively small cut (say,
:two inches long by a half-inch deep) while others will keep going
:when they've taken damage that you'd think would stop a rhino.

This is true. Its incredible what adrenaline can do..

:An example:  at the hospital where my wife works, a man came into
:the emergency room one night -- walked in under his own power, holding
:one arm across his belly as if he had a bad stomachache.  He calmly 
:walked up to the desk and told the person there that he'd been stabbed.

:As it turned out, his belly had been slashed open with a knife --
:he'd simply held in his guts with his arm, gotten in his car, driven
:to the hospital, and walked in.

Fun. Of course, he DID have to go to the hospital, not just sleep it off.
Now, I once saw a guy with three broken ribs and a hole through his thigh
refuse to go to a hospital, apparently because he was wanted by the
police... that takes some strength of will.

:My father once had a finger nearly ripped off while working on a 
:tractor.  He wrapped a rag around his finger (which was still 
:attached to this hand, but not by much), drove the tractor home,
:and my mom and I took him to the hospital.

Yeah, I've seen this one with my mom... she managed to cut to the bone on
both sides with pruning shears, and walked in and dialed the hospital,
then wrapped the finger and put it on ice.

:A friend of mine in high school, who was one of the people who
:the local "jocks" hated.  One day a few of them caught him, held
:him up against a wooden fence, and drove a nail through his
:hand into the fence, then left him there.  He managed to pull the
:nail back out and headed to the hospital.

Yeesh! OK, living in the kinds of places I've lived, the nailing is not
that shocking, but off of jocks?

:On the other hand, I've seen people screaming in apparent agony
:over bruised knees, small cuts, and broken fingernails.

OK, so there are some wimps out there..

:Don't get me wrong -- I agree that characters should be penalized
:for damage more than they are.  I just don't agree that most 
:people would be rolling around screaming on the floor at 10%
:damage.  :-)

Having had a plank through my abdomen, been flayed twice (once
deliberately, once due to a long roll at great speed over sharp rocks) I
know I'm capable of functioning when in pain, if my survival depends on
it... but I still find myself jumping around going "ow, ow, ow!" when I
hit my funny bone. The truth is, adrenaline is a great focus for the mind,
and willpower can carry you through some pretty severe damage. Death for
my characters tends to occur in only two ways... REAL fast, or REAL slow.
You die in the blast that hits you before you can think, or you lie there
bleeding for ten, twenty minutes or until you switch out of the character.
(This is considered giving up the ghost when below the minimum survival
threshhold, and your character dies without your attention to keep it
fighting for life.) If there is no hope of anyone coming in time to save
you, that's really it, unless you can drag yourself, which is not always
possible. Of course, this is for humans. Some species work a little
different. The remnants (machine species) will detatch damaged parts
until they are just a sensory matrix, a housing for their central neural
cortex, and a set of spiderlike legs. They can lose the legs, but if they
lose their sensory matrix, the cortex goes irrevocably insane. The cortex
is housed in collapsed matter, and is virtually invincible, but it takes
some supreme effort to reincarnate a remnant, as the preinsanity cortex
state must be extracted from the shell. Some humans have cybernetic parts
that are immune to pain over the threshhold, but also lack the
responsiveness to willpower. Others have nanotech that can practically put
them back together from hamburger, given enough material to work with and
a still functional brain. This is expensive, though, like healing draughts
in fantasy.

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Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu