   Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:23:35 -0700 (PDT)
   From: Donovan Colbert <dcolbert@campus.mci.net>
Subject: Re: [gworld] hit point thing.

 I've been thinking about this since I read this thread here, and I actually
like the idea of hit points being seen not as an example of pure ability to
take damage, but a combonation of this, luck, protection, area of the body
hit, etc. It is kind of an abstract way of looking at it, but when someone
gets opened up on by an automatic weapon and they only take 12 hit points of
damage from their 64 hit points total, on a roll that is a clear hit, how
else are you going to explain it? "The bullets strike you but bounce off the
leather buckle of your belt, causing you to double over in pain, but not
causing any grevious harm". :)

 I also like the idea of giving half of the hit points back after a battle
regardless of healing, but how do you go about that? Whatever the base hit
points remaining at the beginning of the encounter are used to determine the
amount of hit points returned at the end of battle? Or do you use the
*actual* base hit points? Am I making sense here?

At 08:49 PM 6/12/97 +0100, you wrote:
*snippage*
>The broader issue of hit points in general is academic unless one wants
>to convert to a different system. I agree with your general point that
>games which are too deadly are no fun and really don't allow for much
>roleplaying and I too dislike like complex systems. But you can get
>simple, fast and fun damage systems which at the same time do
>not have the limitations of hit points. Take a look at Fudge (you
>can get it from my Mutant Bikers site). But, as I said in the context
>of GW this is academic because hit points is what what we have.
>
>As for healing I fully agree GW doesn't cater for it very well. What I do
>is after each fight, I give the party half of the lost hit points back
>(technically
>on the grounds that its "stun" though its really just to keep things
>going).
>More details on my healing rule are up on my site.
>
>And finally, yes, I don't think anyone who runs GW will be too hung up
>on realism.
>
>Regards,
>
>--- James ---
>
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:39:17 -0700 (PDT)
   From: Donovan Colbert <dcolbert@campus.mci.net>
Subject: Re: [gworld] greenfolk

 I excluded them completely from my campaign. But had I allowed them, and
one of my players had come to me with the complaints that you had, my
answers would have been easy to see coming...

 Alright, so, you're not the *only* sentient plant in the world, and we'll
assume that you come from a "society" of plants (or at the very least, that
a society of plants exists). Unarmored plants *must* have developed some
form of armor. Write me up plans for your armor and have someone make you a
custom suit. I'll tell you how much it will cost, what it's AC will be, etc.
Ahh, you've decided that powered plastic armor isn't such a good idea after
all, huh? Well, with a few modifications we can probably design something
like it out of padded/studded leather. :)
 As for healing, you're a *plant* for chrissakes. What is the figure, 90% of
the medicinal treatments in the world are derived from plants. Something
like that. I would imagine the sentient plants would be a storehouse of
holistic/natural treatments for illness/damage.
 I'd say you need to develop your character and submit ideas to your GM.
Your GM may need to pay some extra attention to sentient plants and flesh
out that race as well. I always look at FRP rules as *guidelines*, not
absolutes. Maybe you should get some strenth bonuses as you grow larger. It
makes sense that a 40 foot oak is going to be more resilient than a 5 foot
sapling. Take the "base animal stock" approach to your plant life and build
on it from there...

  To me, it sounded like too much work, so I told my players, "Pure Strain,
Mutant, or Mutated Animal, only. Bipedal only". I'll leave plants and
quadraped mutated animals to the NPCs.

At 06:28 PM 6/11/97 PDT, you wrote:
>Hey now,
>
>Here's another thing that has cropped up in Reggie's campaign. When we
>first started gaming in GW, I chose as one of my players (due to a
>player shortage, we were each playing two characters), a mutated tree. I
>thought it would be rather fun, and different from anything I'd ever
>played before. I soon found that in GW the plant-based characters are
>given a woeful mistreatment in comparison to the other races. These are
>some of the problems I've encountered:
>
>* Plants generally have a _very_ hard time getting armour. And unless
>your plant has a carapace mutation and a killer dex, it's gonna be a
>big, easy target.
>
>* Healing for plants? Aside from the natural healing from time, or, once
>again, a lucky mutation roll (regeneration, total healing), you are
>S.O.L.  Medkits don't work on plants.
>
>* Every other race, including NPC races like the Created (but they don't
>exist...), (sorry, campaign-joke), have their own Cryptic Alliance.
>Except the plants. You'd figure that someone would have thought, 'hey,
>it was those _mammals_ who messed the world up, Gamma Terra should
>belong to -us-!!' or something.
>
>* I don't have the rulebook in front of me, but I know it holds at least
>for trees - you grow in size _per level_!!  My tree started out at
>roughly man-size, and now, a few levels later, she's almost eleven feet
>tall! (Yes, 'she.' I could tell you, but it's a long story.) That would
>be okay, but you don't get any strength bonuses for your increased mass,
>so it becomes more of a nuisance than anything.
>
>Some of the only benefits I'd found were that she could pretty much just
>'root' for the night for food, and sometimes it was a good thing to not
>be recognizable by live metal, but these don't outweigh the
>disadvantages that the green folk are faced with in a GW campaign. Reg &
>I pretty much agree that it seems that they only included that as a
>character race after the fact, and didn't put too much thought into it
>when they did it. However, I love dearly my plant characters, and I'm
>running one in my present campaign, and struggling to make her (yes, her
>again. Shorter story, but still a story) useful to the group (hence the
>dual-classing question, the esper issue, etc.)
>
>So now, after all that long-windedness, I put to the group:
>
>Do any of you deal with the green fold as PCs? Do you handle them
>differently?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tom F.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:14:34 -0400
   From: dh <dhorizon@accent.net>
Subject: Re: [gworld] Fallout game coming out.

CdBd3rd wrote:
>
> Raevyn wrote:
> > I'm curious how the RPG action will be, but
> > nevertheless it looks really intriguing.
>
> Me too, and yes it does... at least the one screen shot that I can get
> out of the 20 Mb (zipped)demo :) [most likely due to my ignorance of
> what to tweak how to fix something somewhere!]
> --
>                 ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
>                 REVEL IN THE DIVINE RADIANT GLORY !!!
>                    [Gary] CdBd3rd@Worldnet.ATT.Net
>           -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -


Hi,

 Could you provide more information on this subject. Thanks.

Cheers,
dh
dhorizon@accent.net

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 08:31:37 -0400 (EDT)
   From: RCrichton@aol.com
Subject: Re: [gworld] greenfolk

In a message dated 97-06-15 17:07:38 EDT, you write:

> Do any of you deal with the green fold as PCs? Do you handle them
>  differently?
>
I usually discourage them, but mostly for the reasons you mention.
-Bob
