Seriously? You think you know a guy. After social damage, I'd say that relationship damage is probably the second most common form of damage in the games I run.
Example: I had a player (Scott Mathis, actually) who had a character named Lhan who had a follower who was his daughter, Serama. So, of course, he has a relationship ability between Lhan and Serama. Now because Lhan was involved with a particularly evil piece of jewelry he had found, he wasn't really very stable. So, at times, he'd try to have Serama do things that were against her interests. Like trying to marry her off to somebody she'd just met, for instance. Well, at one point there was a contest for Lhan to get Serama to do something, and it went very bad (I'm thinking Major Defeat), and so I put the penalty as "Hurt Serama's Feelings" meaing that any attempt to use the relationship was going to be at -50% until they had a reconciliation.
As it happens, Serama joined a cult lead by another PC, and Lhan ended up dying alone in the desert, so that rift never did heal.
But the fact that you can represent this mechanically in HQ is, to me, an awesome benefit of the system. It's precisely that the game has mechanics like this that's the reason why I play HQ.
I can't see how you could read the rules as not thinking that this is how they should be used.
>No first aid either?
Sometimes there's just no time. No, it's not that we're playing "round to round" D&D style combat, but simply that the way the narration works, there's no time to "heal."
EX: OK, so you've just gotten over falling down the cliff, and you have a broken your shield arm, a Major Defeat. You stand up, and face several broo. You want to kill them? OK, let's roll. Oh, Minor Defeat? OK, you manage to retreat into a defile in the cliff, and into a cave where you evade the broo, but you suffer a nasty gash to the leg. The broo will find you, likely, if you don't keep moving. You come to a chasm. You want to leap it so as to make sure the broo don't catch you? OK, roll. Another marginal defeat (the injuries sure made the leap hard, eh)? OK, that's another -1 from scrapes he gets as he lands on the other side badly. Worse, it takes you so long to get back up, that the broo catch up to you, leap the chasm, and start attacking you again. You want just to evade them this time? OK roll (Apply only the leg gash and scrapes, so -10%, and -1). Minor defeat? OK, let's call that a shallow stab to the chest from behind as you try to flee. The broo have captured you, and take you, all wounded up, to their leader. The leader decides to challenge you to personal combat, do you accept? Yes? Cool, Roll with -60% and -1 as all of these penalties apply.
Note that in the stilted example above, in the games I play, often it's the players who are pushing ahead oblivious of their characters injuries or penalties. The best example, and Jane can attest to this, was Kerstin's character having gotten concussed earlier in the day, having failed to heal it with coffee, then getting banged up in some fights, then losing an arm and an eye in a heroquest, and then having run around all day using her spirits having gotten exhausted from it, and having something like a total -30% -2 cumulative penalty on an action where she dropped a piece of masonry on a giant Tentacle/Clam/Wizard monster (and managing to trap it, as it happens). I'd have to look it up, but I think it was five or more penalties all added up.
This isn't common. But it happens. And when it does, it's pretty interesting stuff, IMO.
>Thus
>if they are injured, get defeated again, their injury level gets
>bumped according to the level of defeat. Haven't got the book here
>but you get what I mean I suppose.
OK, I've officially lost my HQ MRB. I had it less than two days ago, and can't find it in my house now. Tried to look all this stuff up, but couldn't. I'll be on the hunt again for it tonight (have a game I'm playing in, for one).
Just checked the FAQ, and it's not in there. I'm surprised we haven't heard from Rory on this one (no, that's not a challenge, just an observation). Perhaps we have earlier in the archives.
But I still think that my "interpretations" here are actually pretty much what the book indicates.
Mike
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