© 1994 by Scott Gray and Sharon Tripp. These pages may not be reproduced for profit. They may be copied, provided they are not altered and the authors' names remain attached.
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When a game item is bought, seized, stolen, or otherwise changes hands, the item card is kept by the new owner. When possible, the representation should be taken as well. In some instances the prop for an item belongs to a player, who does not want to lose it. In such instances the representation should be returned to or kept by its out of game owner, and a new rep made, as close in appearance as possible to the original item. If a game item is stolen, and the player is not around to ask about the prop, the prop should be taken as well and promptly brought to the GM, so that its out-of-game owner may reclaim it later.
Characters may sell "used" goods for one quarter of the list price to off-screen characters (i.e., logistics) after or between events. Those with the brokering ability may sell used goods for one half list price.
Heights can be represented in a number of ways. One way is to put down blankets or tarps wherever there is supposed to be a drop off. Another is simply mark off the boundaries of such drops with tape, powder, or something similar.
When a character falls or jumps, there is the risk of injury. A character takes damage of 2 plus force of armor worn (not minus force of armor) hit points per five feet dropped. For short falls, unless the character is already tired or injured, the result will be that the character is merely winded, losing only fatigue points that will regenerate after ten minutes of rest.
The fall may have damage added or subtracted based upon what the character lands on -- i.e., water will reduce damage, rock will increase it, and metal spikes will do an intrinsic killing blow.
If the fall delivers more than two times as much damage as the character's total hit points, the character will be killed by the fall (not merely dying, but instant death). For every four health points of damage incurred by a fall, the player should choose one limb to be broken in the fall.
There exists a skill called "breakfall" which allows a character to use dodges to lessen (and in many cases nullify) the damage caused by a fall. This applies only to the damage calculated for the fall, and not to the additional damage incurred by the surface landed upon (no using the breakfall skill to avoid the above-mentioned metal spikes).
And, of course, GMs should feel free to modify fall damage somewhat in either direction as they see fit.
In some (particularly large scale) games, the GM might opt to require characters to purchase ingame food to keep up their health. If a player does not turn in a food tag at logistics, (s)he will receive no overnight healing. Food may be bought from ingame vendors. Often vendors may choose to sell real food for real money simultaneously. The food tag is purchased with game money; any real food is paid for separately out of game.
Whether or not food tags are required for overnight healing, if a character is being starved or intentionally fasting, the character should not gain any health overnight.
It is up to the player to decide if her character becomes pregnant. However, once the player has made that choice, what happens afterward is in the hands of the GM. It is up to the GM whether there is a miscarriage, when labor begins, etc.
Although the player cannot choose what happens with the pregnancy, there are steps the character can take to increase or decrease certain probabilities (such as taking certain herbs to cause a miscarriage).
During labor, the mother's effective health level is reduced to one health point, regardless of current health, ignore wounds ability, or pain relievers.
There are potential dangers to the health of a pregnant character. There is the chance of permanent health loss or even death from miscarriage, or from difficult labor. There is also the possibility of the child being born misformed (particularly if herbs were taken to try to trigger an early labor).
If a pregnant character is wounded, there should be a chance of miscarriage. The worse the injury, the greater the chance of miscarriage; a character being brought to negative health would almost assure it.
A skill, midwifery, exists that allows the midwife to lessen the chance of health loss to the mother and help prevent miscarriage.
When a character is tied up, gagged, carried by another character, or other such activities which restrict the player's movement, the player must agree in order to have it be played out. If the player does not wish to play it out, (s)he will not be allowed to attempt to pick the lock or untie the knots, and is assumed to be unable to escape his/her bonds on his/her own.
If one character is going to carry another, either the player must actually carry the other player (with the permission of the person playing the other character), or have the ingame strength required to do so. Rules for carrying another character are detailed in the Strength section, below.
Any game item openly displayed may be taken from an unconscious or restrained character. If a character wants to search an unconscious or restrained character, the player must describe how (s)he's going about the search, and where (s)he is checking. Anything in pockets, concealed by clothing, etc., will take one minute of searching. Anything actually hidden will take an additional five minutes of searching. The term "hidden" includes inside linings, concealed pouches or pockets, in boots, etc. To be hidden, the player must actually be hiding the item wherever his/her character is carrying it. Time spent searching must be spent hunched over the body.
A corpse may remain for however long the player wishes to continue playing it, though there is a minimum of five minutes that the player must remain to represent the corpse. If the player stops playing the corpse before fifteen minutes have passed, (s)he must leave whatever ingame items the character was carrying where the corpse was. After fifteen minutes, the player may choose whether to leave the items (with the tags) where the corpse was for other characters to possibly find, or bring them to logistics to turn in as "lost."
There exist abilities for picking pockets, which every player should understand, in case his/her character is the victim of such a crime. Pickpocket ability are detailed in the ability description section.
A player may not bypass an in-game lock (locks are represented by one-tumbler luggage locks) unless it is opened -- either with the appropriate key, picking the lock, using force to smash it open, or it having been left unlocked. It is important to check for notes in or around the lock rep, which may mention whether or not a pick has been broken in the lock, preventing entry. A player who intends to use any sort of ability to bypass locks or traps should be sure to read and understand relevant sections of these rules thoroughly.
There are some situations in which the strength of characters must be considered. For example, a character (or group of characters) is trying to force a door open (or closed) against one or more other characters; or two characters are in an arm wrestling match; or a character is carrying someone.
Because some of these things can't be played out for safety reasons (such as opposing sides trying to open or shut a door on another group), and others can't be played out because the character's strength and fatigue is unlike the player's, there are some guidelines for how to resolve contests of strength.
Players should use common sense when comparing statistics and deciding which characters win. In the event of a dispute, the following guidelines can be used to determine which side wins or loses in a contest:
Total points are compared. All persons on the "winning" side lose two fatigue points, and all persons on the losing side lose three fatigue points. The contest then continues, and characters lose fatigue points again as appropriate.
When a person is brought to zero fatigue points, his/her efforts will cease to add any points to his/her side. When every character on one side is at zero fatigue points, the other side wins the contest of strength.
If a character is going to carry another character, either the player must actually carry the other player (with the permission of the person playing the other character), or the character doing the carrying must have a minimum of .3 strength and "act out" the carrying by moving at a slow pace, holding the other player by the shoulder as the two walk together. A character with a 1.5 strength or higher may move at a brisk pace while carrying another character. A character with a 3 or greater strength may run while carrying another.
The strength values suggested are for a character carrying another character of roughly the same weight or less. Players should use common sense to modify the strength requirements when their characters are carrying characters heavier than themselves.
In most campaigns, game time and real time run at the same rate. During the time between events, unless otherwise stated by the player or GM, a character continues to go about his/her normal affairs. The practical effect of this is that by the start of the next session, a character is assumed to have his or her temporary health points returned to full with natural rest.
However, particular effects, such as those caused by slow poison, addictives, disease, infection, and the like, continue to affect a character; unlike wounds, they will grow steadily worse unless treated. But because in the time between events, the player cannot attempt to cure the character's condition, it becomes unfair to assume either that the character cured him/herself of the condition, or that (s)he did not. Therefore, things with "continuous effects," such as poisons which steadily decrease health, are on hold from the end of an event until the beginning of the next event. If the character is not played at the next event, (s)he still continues to worsen (and even die) during that and other successive events. A player should only have this rule waived if (s)he has a reason for not playing the character (couldn't make the game session or in the middle of some big plot line concerning his/her secondary character), not because (s)he wants to wait for friends to find a cure for his/her character's condition while (s)he LCs or plays a different character.