This is just my opinion, but I think the global gaming
community is highly fragmented and that there are clusters of people who have
been quietly playing together for years and that with the rapid expansion of 5e
players over the last several years, many people who are new to the hobby don’t
know what’s going on in these “quiet little corners”. Of all the problems facing
the world today, this is not a big one—but it is one that I can spend a rainy
Sunday morning chipping away at.
What follows is my recollection of the key points in the
development of damage systems within the corner of the gaming world that I sit
in. It is not a scholarly exploration, but rather a first-person recollection
of the path I took. It is more nuanced than you might think.
Earliest History. Hit points coming into TTRPGs
through wargames. A player would have a unit of soldiers and as it was
attacked, they would remove figures from the unit to reflect the damage taken. If
there were five soldiers here and two were injured or killed, two figures would
be removed leaving only three in play. When non-human monsters and super
powered heroes were introduced, they would have “hit points” that would be lost
as they were damaged. The figure would stay on the board until all hit points
were lost, then it would be removed. (Note also that some early TTRPGs called
the characters “figures”.)
My First Bifurcation. Two different ideas on how to
make damage more interesting appeared in my life at about the same time. Recall
that in the late 1970s, people living in rural communities didn’t learn about
things as quickly as they came out, one idea might be older than another, but
it still might not reach a kid living in the redwoods before an earlier idea
does. But the two ideas are critical hit tables and damage locations.
Crit Tables. Critical hit tables first appeared in my
life in the Arduin Grimoire. When a special hit was scored—a critical
hit—the player would roll d100 and the GM would read off a table of special
hits. These were famously graphic.
What is important here is that it gave a location that was hit, a special description, and bonus damage that should be rolled, along with permanent effects—like three fingers were cut off. In another part of the country, the folks at Iron Crown Enterprises were devolving the “Law” system. The Law system (Arms Law, Claw Law, and Spell Law) where a complex set of critical hit tables which could be used with “any game system” and would give a much wider variety of damage effects, all carefully tuned to match the weapon or body part used in the attack. This went on to become Rolemaster.
But no matter how complex these systems got, there was
always just one pool of Hit Points that damage came out of. In Arduin,
you could lose a random percentage of your arm, you will die in 1d3 turns, but
you also took an additional 4d6 damage. This contrasts with damage by location.
Damage by Location. As early as 1978 Runequest
had the now classic seven hit location system. Each arm and leg was a location,
the head (of course) and then the torso was divided into chest and abdomen. Each
location had its own armor and hit points. In most versions of this system, a
character also has Total Hit Points. It was your Total HP which would determine
the HP for each location.
When a character was hit, a d20 would be rolled to determine location. The system originated with people who were familiar with the Society for Create Anachronism (SCA) which came into being in the same town as Runequest, and at about the same time. So, in true SCA style there was a Melee hit location table which was biased towards hitting limbs and a missile weapons table that was biased towards hitting the torso—these biases reflect the reality of the different weapon types. Bows and thrown weapons are more likely to hit you in the torso and swords and axes are more likely to hit your limbs.
This system used “absorbing” armor. So, you would roll to
hit—if a hit was scored, you’d roll location and damage. The armor on the
location hit would be subtracted from the damage and whatever is left over
would be subtracted from both the character’s Total HP and the hit location’s
HP. There were effects for what happened when a location went to zero. For
example, you would lose the use of a leg when it went to zero, but you would be
knocked out if it was your head. And
more rules for large amounts of damage etc.
The Morrow Project. A few years later the Morrow
Project took this idea further. In this game, weapons did a fixed
amount of damage and what was really important was where you were hit.
The first spreadsheet I ever made was to handle the damage location calculations for Morrow Project. (I still have a hard copy of it printed in dot matrix in my files.) The game was lots of fun and character generation and combat was fast and easy—except for all the calculations for each location’s HP. Once that was done, you were golden.
Aside from fixed damage, the system had another innovation.
The human torso was broken into four “zones” based on how dangerous it was to
get shot there. Zone 1 was deadly. Right in the center of the torso, nothing to
hit but the things keeping a character alive—heart, lungs etc. Each zone had an
instant kill percentage based on the damage taken. It didn’t matter how many HP
you had, a bullet to the heart would kill you.
Psi World. This was an innovative game that is under appreciated
in many circles and so I thought I would give it a little “shout out” here. It
had a moderately complex HP calculation system where you would compute the
number of dice to roll based on stats and it also incorporated the seven hit
locations of Runequest.
One thing to note is that in all (or at least all I can remember) of the damage by location systems, characters did not gain HP during play. You could get better at avoiding damage (with improved parrying skills, for example) or get better armor, but you didn’t really get tougher as play went on. Beginning characters and experienced characters can stand side-by-side in fights and both survive—of course, the experienced characters would have to look out for the noobs, but it was not just “mooks die fast”.
Fringeworthy. A year or so after Morrow Project
hit, Tri Tac dropped Fringeworthy. This game pushed “damage by
location” to its logical limit. When a location was hit, there was a “damage
path”.
If I’m remembering it correctly, you would read Arm 1,3 as “the first 3 HP are flesh, then 6 HP for bone (being the clavicle) then 2 more HP of flesh”. Any damage beyond 11 blowing through and not being counted. The Fringworthy setting was great and well ahead of its time—it was very much like the TV series Stargate. But the damage system was too much even for a simulationist like me. The one time I ran the Fringeworthy world, it was with GURPS rules. It was just easier that way.
Ending Thoughts. I mentioned that the world of TTRPGs
is fragmented and that there are all these quiet little groups. Well, Runequest
and Rolemaster are still going strong. I saw a new book for it my
feed just before I sat down to write this. Morrow Project has
followers, and I suspect so does the Law series.
But what is funny to me is that I was always a “damage by
location” guy. I played games like Mythras and (of course) Rubble
and Ruin. The damage by location system gives a game realism. Stories
don’t have to be cinematic, in fact, most stories shouldn’t be. But in my
current Work in Progress, something I’m calling Rustic Fantasy, I’ve
gone back to total HP and a critical hit table. But with a modern difference. Someone
and I don’t know who, but I first encountered it in Chaosium’s Magic
World, invented the Major Wound threshold. This idea is that small
wounds are just “lost HP”, but a single large wound is treated differently.
What is nice about this, is that you still have the feel of real danger in
combat—it is not just a Conan-esque, happy frolic at the expense of a bunch of
mooks—but it is also simpler to play.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read this post
and I invite you to post any questions or comments below.
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