5 minutes ago, Tabulazero said:

In a way, the term "Wound" might not be the most appropriate for what wounds are exactly in a narrative game. The way I understand Wounds now after reading this thread is that it represent your capacity to take punishment as opposed to Critical Wounds which represent debilitating injuries.

Maybe “Grit” would be a better term (is "fightiness" an english word?) but this then raises another question: if Wounds represent your capacity to remain in the fight, why separate it in two pools (Wounds & Strain) ?

The sight of your “Dear Leader” high tailing from the battlefield can be as devastating to your ability to fight as a sucker punch.

True. Sometimes the line between Strain and wound is unclear. That's not de facto bad thing, as is allows more flexibility guided by narrative. On the other hand, it may sometimes be a bit frustrating or strenuous as there are no hard and absolute guidelines.

2 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

It’s about recovery time. Strain is a quick to heal Damage, have a good meal and a laugh with friends and you are good to go. Wounds take days to heal naturally. Critical injuries take weeks.

This is also a good point. This can be used as guideline what type of damage character should get. I.e. how long should recovery take.

37 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

It’s about recovery time. Strain is a quick to heal Damage, have a good meal and a laugh with friends and you are good to go. Wounds take days to heal naturally. Critical injuries take weeks.

For a couple projects I’m working on, I have changed both terms. Wound is now Pain , and Strain is now Fatigue . I believe these terms more accurately portray the concepts intended to be covered by the two thresholds.

7 hours ago, Tabulazero said:

In a way, the term "Wound" might not be the most appropriate for what wounds are exactly in a narrative game. The way I understand Wounds now after reading this thread is that it represent your capacity to take punishment as opposed to Critical Wounds which represent debilitating injuries.

Maybe “Grit” would be a better term (is "fightiness" an english word?) but this then raises another question: if Wounds represent your capacity to remain in the fight, why separate it in two pools (Wounds & Strain) ?

The sight of your “Dear Leader” high tailing from the battlefield can be as devastating to your ability to fight as a sucker punch.

Agreed that Wounds is not quite the best term, but I still am good with it. I prefer how the L5R beta has switched to Fatigue which is probably a better term. Strain and Wounds sort of both represent Fatigue in different ways so another term probably would be better than Fatigue for Genesys. Toughness, Grit, Hardiness would all be good choices. Toughness and Grit are used for Talents however.

There are really three pools of resistance, Strain, Damage, and Critical Hits. There reason for the split is to show different degrees of effect and recovery. Old school systems tend towards the binary. The narrative systems by FFG tend towards more complexity in what it can show.

Strain can lead to incapacitation, but cannot lead to Critical Hits. It recovers by scenes and succcess, and can be inflicted with words. Think of inflicting strain as anything that is capable of wearing a character down but without a serious risk of permanent harm.

Wounds can lead to unconsciousness and Critical Hits. It recovers by days and through physical interventions. Think of inflicting wounds as anything that is capable of serious permanent harm, in a sliding scale from somewhat superficial to more and more threatening as the total amount increase. A number of superficial wounds can add it to a serious threat, but also minor superficial wounds can outright be ignored because it cannot beat the defenses (soak) of a character.

Critical hits can lead towards many forms of serious complications. They recover by weeks, even with physical interventions. While the lowest critical hits have fairly minor immediate effects, the fact of having a critical hit at all is a serious indication of risk that doesn't go away until healed. At most, a character will die on the 16th ongoing critical hit (01 +150 is still death!). In practice, once you hit 5+ critical hits a character is at serious risk of death and likely suffering serious complications.

So in the end there are different levels of seriousness from these three pools of risk. Strain can end participation in a scene, but by and large a character should be able to keep going from scene to scene throughout the day. Wounds can end participation in a scene, and has a significant chance of ending participation for the rest of the day. Critical hits at the higher levels can end participation in existence.

Given that you count up to the threshold, certain names just aren't appropriate. What about Fatigue ? If an attack's damage exceeds your Fatigue Threshold, it connects with staggering impact, rendering you unconscious and giving you an automatic critical injury.

I got this idea for Fatigue from the Elder Scrolls, where if you remember playing Morrowind you had this Fatigue meter, but it seemed weird to me that when your fatigue was low that was bad, but then if your fatigue was really high that was good So the word "Fatigue" works much better as a threshold. I used it in a very early port of the narrative dice rules to the Elder Scrolls setting, back in like winter of 2012, because I thought at the time that it was perfect. And I used the strain threshold as an energy/magicka sort of resource.

Edit: somehow I skipped over your post, @Simon Retold . Sorry! What I'm proposing is Fatigue to replace Wounds, being more a passive physiological component; and leaving Strain as-is, being a resource you can actively take on to fuel heroic efforts.

Why not just use "GRRR" and "OUCH" points?

8 hours ago, Tabulazero said:

In a way, the term "Wound" might not be the most appropriate for what wounds are exactly in a narrative game. The way I understand Wounds now after reading this thread is that it represent your capacity to take punishment as opposed to Critical Wounds which represent debilitating injuries.

Maybe “Grit” would be a better term (is "fightiness" an english word?) but this then raises another question: if Wounds represent your capacity to remain in the fight, why separate it in two pools (Wounds & Strain) ?

The sight of your “Dear Leader” high tailing from the battlefield can be as devastating to your ability to fight as a sucker punch.

No, "fightiness" is not an English word, but it easily could be!

It might also help by looking at the terms in the sense of what you're trying to accomplish; are you trying to strain them (just stress them out) or wound them (if not now, then eventually)? But I'm coming at Genesys from learning and playing and running Fate Core and Apocalypse World style games so for me, it's not an issue. I learned role playing with my first game of red box D&D in 1980 and have been playing and running off and on since. I've collected and played literally dozens of games (and though I've gotten rid of most of my collection over the years, I still own more than a dozen different games/systems) and so I take the terms and such as simply a given for that game and move on.

In fact, I've had more of a problem with games that go out of their way to be unique terminology-wise rather than use common terms even if those terms may sound strange at first. Games that use a dozen or more attributes or acronyms for everything... man, those really annoy me most. But obviously, YMMV and all that.

On 3/6/2018 at 3:57 AM, kkuja said:

No. But it's my favourite. Being best would require there to be a universal criteria what kind of games are globally best.

No the term is entirely applicable to subjective assessments, all it would require is that you think it's the best.

On 3/6/2018 at 10:17 AM, themensch said:

Why not just use "GRRR" and "OUCH" points?

Maybe that should be "GRRR" and "YIPE!" so that we can extend play to animals. Think of the inclusivity!

That which doesn't make you YIPE only makes you GRRR.

Soak should be: Epidermis impact absorption rate (EIAR)
Wounds should be: Integrity of the cardiorespiratory system (ICS)
Strain should be: Integrity of the psychomotor system (IPS)

17 hours ago, Bucho said:

No the term is entirely applicable to subjective assessments, all it would require is that you think it's the best.

What if I subjectively consider the term to be objective?

On 8.3.2018 at 12:29 AM, Bucho said:

No the term is entirely applicable to subjective assessments, all it would require is that you think it's the best.

I respectfully disagree here. I require more specifications to define the best RPG. For me, best urban horror RPG for me is SLA industries (I love the world but hate the system). Best scifi opera RPG is FFG SW. Best space fantasy horror is Dark Heresy. Best space horror RPG is Rogue Trader. Best rules light horror RPG is Cthulhu Dark. My favourite beer and bretzels RPG is Fiasco. Best general fantasy is Dungeon World. Best hard scifi RPG is Jovian Chronicles. Best general system (also for fast spaced pulp styled games) is Genesys (future will show whether it's the system I will default to in every game). Also, if I want a system which heavily simulates the game world I choose different system than if I want a system which heavily focuses on narrative.

So what is the best RPG for me? If you can say easily what is the best RPG for you then great, more power to you! Unfortunately I cannot. I'm not saying other people cannot define best RPG more easily than I can, I'm only saying I cannot.

Thank you and sorry.