Howdy

How do y’all track damage and how much info about damage to you expose to your players? I’ve always tried to expose damage narratively, like describing what a hit looks like, but more and more I’m wondering if it would be fine (especially with nemesis-type enemies) to just straight up reveal what their soak is.

I’ve come to this conclusion because when I count damage (after soak) I use tallies, which are kind of obvious for my players t o figure out. I don’t neciccarily have any “peekers” amount my players, it’s just that I want to give my players accurate information so that they can react accordingly, admittedly, due to my own failures in describing the severity of wounds.

I erase and write in a new number; and if they fail to exceed soak, then I erase and write in a new number anyway. Regardless, it's always accompanied by a narrative explanation like "he barely seemed to register that" or "He's not going to survive another hit like that one."

I track all Wounds/Strain, PCs and NPCs, and I don't tell them poop, except, you feel tired, really tired, you're covered in abrasions and burns and feelin woosy, etc. I don't tell them anything numerically about opponents, the only inkling they have is when the heavy hitter in the group lands a haymaker and the bad guy is still on their feet they use common sense and realize that target needs extra attention. They have an idea of their own Strain because they're using it, but they aren't positive, and they've no real clue with wounds except for my descriptions. I do have a policy though I won't let them do anything they don't have enough Strain for, so at that point they know they're at their threshold.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

I track all Wounds/Strain, PCs and NPCs, and I don't tell them poop, except, you feel tired, really tired, you're covered in abrasions and burns and feelin woosy, etc. I don't tell them anything numerically about opponents, the only inkling they have is when the heavy hitter in the group lands a haymaker and the bad guy is still on their feet they use common sense and realize that target needs extra attention. They have an idea of their own Strain because they're using it, but they aren't positive, and they've no real clue with wounds except for my descriptions. I do have a policy though I won't let them do anything they don't have enough Strain for, so at that point they know they're at their threshold.

I love this but man it sounds like a lot of bookkeeping. Do your players have normal character sheets?

How do you manage this and keep the flow of the game rolling? Just practice?

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

I track all Wounds/Strain, PCs and NPCs, and I don't tell them poop, except, you feel tired, really tired, you're covered in abrasions and burns and feelin woosy, etc. I don't tell them anything numerically about opponents, the only inkling they have is when the heavy hitter in the group lands a haymaker and the bad guy is still on their feet they use common sense and realize that target needs extra attention. They have an idea of their own Strain because they're using it, but they aren't positive, and they've no real clue with wounds except for my descriptions. I do have a policy though I won't let them do anything they don't have enough Strain for, so at that point they know they're at their threshold.

Wow. That sounds intense. I guess one thing I forgot to mention is how low-key my sessions are. My players are mostly first time RPGers and most of my sessions are played for laughs.

Good insight all the same. Maybe I’ll er on the side of obscuring most of this information after all.

I have a mix of experience levels. We don't play for best dramatic performance Oscar awards....

I prefer to withhold the numbers and keep it from getting meta gamey and an accounting homework assignment. I want them guessing and second guessing targets, and whether to hit another one with their hardest hitter or maybe someone less skilled can address a wounded target, etc. If you let PCs know all that information it's just arithmetic and random number generation I think. The unknown factor adds to the perceived anxiety.

They write down their Wounds and we use Poker chips for Strain. I made a small square placemat for Used Strain. Having said this 2P51 has a way better method. I will be switching to that way of doing it.

I put all the numbers out in the open. It's a game.

11 hours ago, 2P51 said:

I prefer to withhold the numbers and keep it from getting meta gamey and an accounting homework assignment.

I can't envision how you're pulling this off, but maybe I'm overthinking it. I like the idea of pulling some of the PC information back behind the screen but I'm finding it difficult to know just where.

To me critical hits are the only real injuries, and the Wound Threshold points (especially in the positive range) is a combination of fatigue, minor cuts and bruises, and maybe a dislocation or laceration to a small part of the body. So for describing wounds non-numerically I guess I will have to let the player know through description how the character is feeling based on the wounds situation without describing guts hanging out or big gaping wounds with embers of flash burned flesh. I imagine if you get a character who has taken twice their wound threshold in the negative they could have pretty bad physical injuries, but then describing the healing process is tricky because without medical attention you don't walk around the next day after a serious wound. Stimpacks are filled with "medicine, bacta, and painkillers" so the bacta can be regenerating wounds, but it seems like serious wounds call for surgery and immersion in bacta via a tank. So there is this narrative axis of description of heavy wounds that seems to be up to the GM and Players to detail.

The RAW Critical descriptions can be minor or non-physical too though, things like sudden jolt or winded. But Criticals stick around until they are healed, so there has to be some sort of physical or mental trauma associated with it that requires attention of a skilled person to heal.

14 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

To me critical hits are the only real injuries, and the Wound Threshold points (especially in the positive range) is a combination of fatigue, minor cuts and bruises, and maybe a dislocation or laceration to a small part of the body. So for describing wounds non-numerically I guess I will have to let the player know through description how the character is feeling based on the wounds situation without describing guts hanging out or big gaping wounds with embers of flash burned flesh. I imagine if you get a character who has taken twice their wound threshold in the negative they could have pretty bad physical injuries, but then describing the healing process is tricky because without medical attention you don't walk around the next day after a serious wound. Stimpacks are filled with "medicine, bacta, and painkillers" so the bacta can be regenerating wounds, but it seems like serious wounds call for surgery and immersion in bacta via a tank. So there is this narrative axis of description of heavy wounds that seems to be up to the GM and Players to detail.

The RAW Critical descriptions can be minor or non-physical too though, things like sudden jolt or winded. But Criticals stick around until they are healed, so there has to be some sort of physical or mental trauma associated with it that requires attention of a skilled person to heal.

Yeah, I think this is key. I let my players keep track of what wounds they have but with how we play things there aren’t a lot of narrative reasons for them to be in various states of fatigue. Like they’re probably going to play their characters the same way regardless.

I hadn’t thought about the wound threashold being mostly fatigue either. One system I always thought was strange was how hitting you’re threshold knocks you out and doesn’t kill you. Like you suffer crits until you die, but are enemies actually assaulting a passed out player? Maybe it makes more sense to pull a Battlefront 2 and have PCs take a knee when they hit their threshold. ?

3 minutes ago, LonelyElephant said:

Yeah, I think this is key. I let my players keep track of what wounds they have but with how we play things there aren’t a lot of narrative reasons for them to be in various states of fatigue. Like they’re probably going to play their characters the same way regardless.

I hadn’t thought about the wound threashold being mostly fatigue either. One system I always thought was strange was how hitting you’re threshold knocks you out and doesn’t kill you. Like you suffer crits until you die, but are enemies actually assaulting a passed out player? Maybe it makes more sense to pull a Battlefront 2 and have PCs take a knee when they hit their threshold. ?

Yeah at least in the positive range it seems to me like we are talking about minor stuff with adrenaline countering the damage to some degree. I like the idea of taking a knee or describing exhaustion as something other than always putting them unconscious. I usually have them able to see part of what is going on but having swimming vision or labored breathing and barely being able to move. I have them go unconscious if they go pretty far into the negative in one hit, or if it seems germane to the critical.

Oh also, because each critical makes you more vulnerable to further crits it seems to me that this can be luck running out as well as cumulative damage in whatever order seems best.

2 hours ago, themensch said:

I can't envision how you're pulling this off, but maybe I'm overthinking it. I like the idea of pulling some of the PC information back behind the screen but I'm finding it difficult to know just where.

Yeah that’s the issue I’m having. 50% of my players are engineers, so based off weather enemies take ‘any’ damage, they figure out pretty quickly like: “oh he must have at least such and such strain” which I suppose is where that meta-game aspect comes in.

I don’t personally have a problem with my players taking a couple of minutes to min-max their turns because it give me time to think about what I want to do next, but I can see how that can certainly be antithetical to people’s role playing experience.

6 minutes ago, LonelyElephant said:

Yeah that’s the issue I’m having. 50% of my players are engineers, so based off weather enemies take ‘any’ damage, they figure out pretty quickly like: “oh he must have at least such and such strain” which I suppose is where that meta-game aspect comes in.

I don’t personally have a problem with my players taking a couple of minutes to min-max their turns because it give me time to think about what I want to do next, but I can see how that can certainly be antithetical to people’s role playing experience.

I've never tried this with this game but a long time ago I did it in a D&D game. For the players who enjoy playing the mechanics, you may bum them out a bit with this as they are used to playing the game instead of the character to some degree (although this is not always mutually exclusive). The extra axis of Strain instead of just Wounds (Hit Points) means you have to describe two different pools of resource descriptively. I'm going to try this out for the first time in SWRPG today so I'm trying to think through how this might go. Strain is several things at once.

Strain is described in the character creation section as being "Psychological and mental." There are a lot of seemingly physical actions tied to Strain, but the Psychological and Mental nature makes sense if you've ever been running and started feeling that urge to quit and just walk. Your mind gets tired of the pain and/or monotony. To me that use of willpower toward your limit is Strain points being used. It also acts as a way for the designers to keep the character limited to a finite number of actions (in the generic use not the game use) and in that respect is probably purely gamey. That would also apply to droids I would imagine because droid willpower seems like something that could only be simulated. Other than that it's just a meta-game restriction where droids are concerned I would think. Maybe you could make the case that it is a processing conflict or something.

But in the end the GM should not be seen as the enemy of the players, so if they trust you, they should be able to adapt to some sort of descriptive sense of whether or not they are badly hurt or not. They should also be able to accept that their character doesn't have an unlimited ability to apply their will in a set period of time.

Oh, and another aspect, bad guys buy stimpacks too.

1 hour ago, LonelyElephant said:

Yeah that’s the issue I’m having. 50% of my players are engineers, so based off weather enemies take ‘any’ damage, they figure out pretty quickly like: “oh he must have at least such and such strain” which I suppose is where that meta-game aspect comes in.

I don’t personally have a problem with my players taking a couple of minutes to min-max their turns because it give me time to think about what I want to do next, but I can see how that can certainly be antithetical to people’s role playing experience.

I guess I made the pirate's ignore list, I'm quite curious about his setup. The way he describes it is much more cinematic, but I can't imagine the players don't have some sort of character sheet in front of them.

I'm with you, I play with people who solve problems for a living like that and it's easy to metagame. While I'd appreciate the moment to think, it does kinda stall the action to have them break the story into ones and zeroes, so to speak.

21 minutes ago, themensch said:

I guess I made the pirate's ignore list, I'm quite curious about his setup. The way he describes it is much more cinematic, but I can't imagine the players don't have some sort of character sheet in front of them.

I'm with you, I play with people who solve problems for a living like that and it's easy to metagame. While I'd appreciate the moment to think, it does kinda stall the action to have them break the story into ones and zeroes, so to speak.

I'm probably on that list too. I am having the players have their sheets as usual but I am not going to give them any numerical info on their wounds or strain. It will be descriptive only. Criticals will be the same though.

I think that knowing the math is going to automatically put a bigger divide between the player and the character. The player making math approximations is just juggling numbers. Paying attention to the plight of the character should really be more like how we meter our own body and mind in reality if you want some heavy RP-driven decisions under fire. In reality nobody goes into a gunfight going, "I can take two hits at least." Bravery is something that is often missing as a mental component from TTRPGs in my experience. In real life there were people who ran into battle nearly naked, and while you may consider that stupid, we can make that judgment from a position of relatively safe and comfortable lives in which science has beaten down other explanations of existence.

These characters are often combat oriented heroes that as part of why they are cool is that they put themselves in great danger. Having some of that peril translate to the player seems like a good way to keep charcater-as-gamepiece oriented play from occurring as much.

People have an idea of how they're doing, they know when I hit them. It isn't as though they switch the arithmetic off while they play, but over a whole round, with people each going, they're never completely sure. They also know my math is the math that counts. In addition I don't remember their weapons, so when they forget to tell me they have Pierce 2, sux for them. Over time I've also told them I don't want to hear a bunch of numbers, 'I have 4 successes, 2 Triumphs, etc, I wanna hear what damage they did. Then they can parse out their results. They do tend to suck at narrating combat and it's usually 'I give so and so a boost, and I heal 4 Strain', I tend to fill in the narrative and sometimes I'll ask when it's a really odd pool result.

However with opponents many times they're baffled. I make my own so it isn't like they can meta game browse the monster manual. I liberally sprinkle Talents on top of Adversary, like Dodge and such. They're never completely sure of Wound pools, so they can't meta game who hits a target if it doesn't goes down and how many Wounds it still has, they just know it's still up. I also don't really use minions all that often, mostly for the 'zombie round' scenes, when just for fun we see how many bodies they can pile up.

I've found over time the whole difference between Minions, Rivals, and Nemeses leads to more meta gaming, I just prefer it's a group of opponents and they have to make real decisions and ask real questions like 'Who's the biggest guy? Who looks in charge? Who has the biggest gun, sword, broken bottle, etc' They pester why the dice pools are so hard some times and I tell them because they're fighting bad @$$ mother F-ers.....After session I give them specifics like, 'they each had 3 ranks of Dodge on top of Adversary' or 'He had Parry 4' or whatever.

I let people make decisions when their turn comes around and there's no stopwatch, but there is no dragging *** and/or browsing the book on your turn either. Know your character is a must. I don't run a timer, but at times when people are really dragging *** I start banging the table with my had and a 5 countdown, I hit zero and you lose your turn I tell them.

I like my approach and it works for me, makes more role playing and less math trivia speed round.

6 hours ago, themensch said:

I guess I made the pirate's ignore list, I'm quite curious about his setup. The way he describes it is much more cinematic, but I can't imagine the players don't have some sort of character sheet in front of them.

I'm with you, I play with people who solve problems for a living like that and it's easy to metagame. While I'd appreciate the moment to think, it does kinda stall the action to have them break the story into ones and zeroes, so to speak.

Absolutely. I don’t want to have like, an hourglass, or anything, but I need to crack down on how long turns are taking.

On the other hand I want to give my players every advantage. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly balance encounters. One of our first sessions (outside of beginners game stuff) I overwhelmed them with way to many ememies and had to bail them out as they were getting shot while falling, unconscious, to their death. I added one extra enemy to a combat drill and both of my most experienced players almost died.

6 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I'm probably on that list too. I am having the players have their sheets as usual but I am not going to give them any numerical info on their wounds or strain. It will be descriptive only. Criticals will be the same though.

I think that knowing the math is going to automatically put a bigger divide between the player and the character. The player making math approximations is just juggling numbers. Paying attention to the plight of the character should really be more like how we meter our own body and mind in reality if you want some heavy RP-driven decisions under fire. In reality nobody goes into a gunfight going, "I can take two hits at least." Bravery is something that is often missing as a mental component from TTRPGs in my experience. In real life there were people who ran into battle nearly naked, and while you may consider that stupid, we can make that judgment from a position of relatively safe and comfortable lives in which science has beaten down other explanations of existence.

These characters are often combat oriented heroes that as part of why they are cool is that they put themselves in great danger. Having some of that peril translate to the player seems like a good way to keep charcater-as-gamepiece oriented play from occurring as much.

Great point, and I believe my players agree. Looks like we settled on obscuring enemy health, armour, etc. With the exception that a decent roll on perception, might reveal some info on their soak/defence (depending on how good the roll is, like maybe if it’s not great but still good, I’ll say “he has ‘at least’ blank soak), or a combined medicine/perception for health (see above).

As a side note my most powerful fighter has litterally been described as a tank without the defender to back it up. He’s so concerned with bloodlust that he just stands in open-fire regardless of how much strain he thinks his opponant has. So there is a fair bit of RPing going on after all. I was more curious as to how other GMs handled it.

6 hours ago, 2P51 said:

People have an idea of how they're doing, they know when I hit them. It isn't as though they switch the arithmetic off while they play, but over a whole round, with people each going, they're never completely sure. They also know my math is the math that counts. In addition I don't remember their weapons, so when they forget to tell me they have Pierce 2, sux for them. Over time I've also told them I don't want to hear a bunch of numbers, 'I have 4 successes, 2 Triumphs, etc, I wanna hear what damage they did. Then they can parse out their results. They do tend to suck at narrating combat and it's usually 'I give so and so a boost, and I heal 4 Strain', I tend to fill in the narrative and sometimes I'll ask when it's a really odd pool result.

However with opponents many times they're baffled. I make my own so it isn't like they can meta game browse the monster manual. I liberally sprinkle Talents on top of Adversary, like Dodge and such. They're never completely sure of Wound pools, so they can't meta game who hits a target if it doesn't goes down and how many Wounds it still has, they just know it's still up. I also don't really use minions all that often, mostly for the 'zombie round' scenes, when just for fun we see how many bodies they can pile up.

I've found over time the whole difference between Minions, Rivals, and Nemeses leads to more meta gaming, I just prefer it's a group of opponents and they have to make real decisions and ask real questions like 'Who's the biggest guy? Who looks in charge? Who has the biggest gun, sword, broken bottle, etc' They pester why the dice pools are so hard some times and I tell them because they're fighting bad @$$ mother F-ers.....After session I give them specifics like, 'they each had 3 ranks of Dodge on top of Adversary' or 'He had Parry 4' or whatever.

I let people make decisions when their turn comes around and there's no stopwatch, but there is no dragging *** and/or browsing the book on your turn either. Know your character is a must. I don't run a timer, but at times when people are really dragging *** I start banging the table with my had and a 5 countdown, I hit zero and you lose your turn I tell them.

I like my approach and it works for me, makes more role playing and less math trivia speed round.

I would actually love to play your campaign. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would mess around playing starwars in our backyard. I’m not calling your approach childish, your suggestions have reminded me of what a true narrative experience would look like in this format. And it really is unfortunate that at the end of the day, I’m not sure that’s what my players want.

If their character makes a speach, I can barely get them to give me two actual lines of beleivable dialogue.

But as long as everyone’s having fun I’ve kind of given up on forcing narrative requirement on them.

We don’t do carry weight, durability, cumbersome only sometimes shows up, range bands are never exact.

All that said, as my players gain more experience, or perhaps even next time I get a group of people together, I’ll probably at least try your way. I mean it’s the reason I picked EotE over DnD. I don’t like numbers as much as I like narrative, and results.

Thanks as always for the feedback!

My way isn't hard. It makes me do the bookkeeping, but all I'm doing is totaling up Wounds inflicted and Strain used, so it's not like it's calculus. I've got just a simple form with columns I did in Google doc, name, soak, def, wounds, and strain. I just track the numbers and as they take hits tell them things like "you took a little scratch" or "that one was a gut kick and you know it" or "you feel ok, tired, but you're in the fight and know it".

For crits they jot down the permanent details, but for tracking I just made some business cards that have on them for the applicable crit and they have folders with clips to hold all their character sheets and misc scrap paper for notes that they keep those in if they carry crits over or fail to heal one.

I use alot of the same phrases and they get a feel for what that means in game terms, but it's just like in real life, if you're in a fight there isn't a magic counter floating next to your head dinging off each hit, you're judging yourself by how you feel. Obviously if you're arm is blown off that's an easy diagnosis.....

On 9/28/2018 at 7:24 PM, 2P51 said:

I have a mix of experience levels. We don't play for best dramatic performance Oscar awards....

I prefer to withhold the numbers and keep it from getting meta gamey and an accounting homework assignment. I want them guessing and second guessing targets, and whether to hit another one with their hardest hitter or maybe someone less skilled can address a wounded target, etc. If you let PCs know all that information it's just arithmetic and random number generation I think. The unknown factor adds to the perceived anxiety.

I've seen this done in other games before. It makes things harder on the GM but it really increases immersion and as has been mentioned (I think), it makes players stop and think about things before they do them. And increases the mystery. You're *pretty sure* you just got a solid black market contact....but was he an undercover ISB agent?

It can be a pain for the GM, and I doubt I'll ever do it again (I would be perfectly content to never GM again...not because I dislike it, but because I burnt out a long time ago), but man can it make for some great sessions for the players.

4 hours ago, LonelyElephant said:

On the other hand I want to give my players every advantage. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly balance encounters. One of our first sessions (outside of beginners game stuff) I overwhelmed them with way to many ememies and had to bail them out as they were getting shot while falling, unconscious, to their death. I added one extra enemy to a combat drill and both of my most experienced players almost died.

I think this is an easy conundrum to make, but perhaps the better solution would have been for them to beat feet instead of draw blasters? While I'd agree it's the GM's job to create interesting encounters, it doesn't mean they're going to win every time, either. Of course you are right that the GM has to be the PC's biggest fan, but all heroes fail, and through failure there is growth.

Used the 2P51 "Blind Wounds and Strain" method last night for the first time and I may never go back to the old way. Every prediction I made yesterday came true to some degree and it feels like the game has opened up for better role-play during combat and regarding combat. They listened to descriptions of how they were feeling and physically doing and used that as their meter of the character's stats. I noticed that one person used advantage to heal strain a lot more than they usually do and stayed low in strain usage, and this person routinely bottoms out their strain in combat.

They behaved much more realistically in my opinion, trying to stay to cover and reserving overt stunts for appropriate situations. Also they weren't eating Stimpacks like candy because they weren't using them in conjunction with the game math, but instead got caught up in the actual story of what their characters were doing. I'm very happy this thread came up and 2P51 chimed in. This sort of changes the game for me and makes it even better.