Dilemmas and non-dilemmas

Dashiell Hammett, the father of 'hard-boiled' detective fiction

Yesterday I was 'de-friended', to use that horrible neologism, by someone on facebook (no-on I know in real life, so don't worry) como siempre for offering some constructive criticism and a different opinion. The guy was offering advice for writers. He said that they should give their protagonists a strong moral code and then put them present them with a moral dilemma. The problem was that the example he gave wasn't much of a dilemma. It could easily be resolved with a reasonable compromise or by thinking around the problem. 

Since the example involved a detective, I pointed out that the anti-heroes of the best 'hard-boiled' detective fiction of the 20s, 30s and 40s commonly faced far worse dilemmas. I don't want to spoil the plot of The Maltese Falcon for those of you who haven't read it or seen either of the films, but in the first couple of chapters Miles Archer, the partner of the protagonist Sam Spade, is murdered. It is then established that Spade has been having an affair with Archer's wife, which puts him under suspicion. It's strongly suggested that he's also having a fling with his secretary, who knows about his other affairs.

At the end of the story Spade is confronted with a dilemma, a real one. There is no workable compromise, no clever way round it. He is truly between the devil and the deep blue sea. He decides to play it by the book, and ends up being hated by everyone, including himself. This is not like one of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 dilemmas, which were meant to illustrate the absurdities of war, the military and life in general, but the kind of situation everyone faces at some point.

The Maltese Falcon was written by Dashiell Hammett, a man who was blacklisted by Hollywood for his political views: he was a communist and a leading civil rights campaigner. Hollywood is like that. Like the Greco-Roman god Cronos (Saturn), it devours its own children when they show precocious or exceptional talent or threaten a revolution. Anything new and exciting is quickly stamped out or appropriated and homogenised, then brought down to the lowest common denominator. 

It's impossible to divorce Hammett's politics from his literary works. He took up writing in the early 20s after quitting the Pinkerton detective agency in disgust at its involvement in union-busting activities. He understood humanity and saw clearly the web of collusion between businessmen, politicians, police and gangsters. He was a modernist and a realist. 

By writing honest stories where the ending was never happy, Hammett threatened to bring down the fantasy world of commercial entertainment, where square-jawed heroes face phony dilemmas in unreal, black-and-white morality situations in a mockery of real life.

The Maltese Falcon came out 85 years ago. It was a popular paperback novel - Hammett's first short stories were printed in pulp fiction magazines - not a great and worthy epic like Moby Dick. Two films were made of it within 12 years. The state of fiction writing and filmmaking is getting worse, not better. The rot needs to be stopped. If authors, publishers, producers and directors are unwilling to do so, at least role-players might try.

God Stats and Dump Stats

Hello again after a long break.

In role-playing games, a 'God Stat' is a stat which is more useful or desirable than any other. Typically this is a stat that has the greatest usefulness in combat, or which determines how many hit points you have or how many skill points you get to spend. The player character with the highest value in that stat will have a big advantage over the other players. In games where players can either juggle their stat rolls to suit the character they want to play, or just have points to buy stats with, most players (especially powergamers) will try to maximise that stat for their character.

An example is the Reflexes stat in Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., on which all the combat skills (and many other cool skills) were based, which helped decide who act first in the combat round, and which added to the number of skill points you got to spend.

The Norse god Thor has a Strength of 100. Make that 1,000!

A 'Dump Stat' is the opposite of a God Stat. It's the stat which nobody cares about, often because it's never used for anything 'cool'. In many RPGs the 'Charisma' or 'Appearance' stat is the dump stat, because no-one really cares if anyone likes or fancies their character when they can kill everyone in the room in ten seconds.

Stig of the Dump has a Charisma of 3.

One reason for the (perceived) existence of God and Dump Stats is that the most widely-played RPGs are either in the Fantasy genre, where the game generally revolves around dungeon crawling and monster slaying, or are otherwise combat-heavy games. Cyberpunk genre games, for example, seem to end up being all about getting as many high-tech weapons as your character can carry and using them on someone at the earliest opportunity. 

In designing this RPG I decided to try to avoid creating God Stats and Dump Stats. I'll try and explain how I went about that.

In Lead & Chrome there are eight primary stats and four secondary stats derived from them. The main stats are:

Strength: how much physical force you can exert. Although there is only one skill that uses the Strength stat, it affects how much damage you can do in close combat and how much weight you can carry. Strength stat checks might be used to see if you can bend or break an object, or overpower an opponent.

Toughness: your physical endurance and how resistant you are to disease and poisons. It is also used to see if you can survive being mortally injured long enough for a doctor or first-aider to get to you. Other  than that there is only one skill which relies on Toughness.

Agility: your gross motor skills, and how fast you can run. Close combat skills are based on Agility.

Coordination: your fine motor skills. Ranged combat skills are based on Coordination.

Intelligence: how clever you are. Academic skills depend on Intelligence.

Know-How: how good you are with manual tasks and machines. Technical skills are related to Know-How. 

Charm: how well you understand and get on with people. Important skills to do with persuasion and telling if someone is lying use Charm.

Nerve: how much guts, grit or whatever you have. Several key skills are linked to Nerve, and you need plenty of this if you're going to face off with your enemies in a fight.

The derived stats are:

Size: how physically big you are. Size is calculated as the average of Strength and Toughness, with halves rounded up. It affects how badly you get wounded if you're hit in combat, and what size clothes (and body armour) you can wear.

Reflexes: how fast you can react. Reflexes is the average of Agility and Coordination, rounded up. Combat initiative depends on Reflexes.

Looks: how attractive you are. Looks is the average of Geniality and Agility rounded up (since a high Agility stat means that you're in good physical shape).

Sanity: this is the unusual one, calculated by adding your Geniality and Nerve. Every time you do something brutal or witness something horrendous or terrifying, you have to roll equal or less than your Sanity (subject to positive or negative modifiers) on a D20 or lose one point of the stat, and a point of either Geniality or Nerve to boot. In Black Chrome, the Cyberpunk setting for Lead & Chrome, having cybernetics implanted in your body also calls for a Sanity check.

Notice how the eight primary stats roughly make four pairs. A character with a high Strength but a low Toughness is like a boxer with a glass jaw. One with a high Coordination but a low Agility is like an obese watchmaker. One with a high Intelligence but a low Know-How might be a university professor who can't work out how to turn their computer on, and one with a high Nerve and low Geniality is probably a cold-blooded killer.

Stats in Lead & Chrome are generated by rolling 2D4+1 eight times, then assigning the results to the stats as you please. This gives a range of 3-9 with an average of 6. One stat of the player's choosing can then be raised by a further point, possibly raising it to 10, which is the absolute human maximum (and quite exceptional) in the game.

Alternatively, the Game Master can give the players a number of points to assign to their stats as they please, with the proviso that you can only have one stat with a value of 10 and no stat lower than 3. A total of 50 points gives an average character, but the GM might want to give players more (or even fewer) points. 

Now, say the GM is generous and gives you 55 points to play with, and you want to create the ultimate combat character. You want them to be a crack shot with a gun, an artiste with a knife and to have fists of fury. You're going to want a high Coordination and Agility to complement your Firearms, Melee and Martial Arts skills, and to give you a high Reflexes stat. But you also want a high Strength to do more damage in close combat, and a high Toughness to help keep you conscious in a tough fist-fight or alive after an armour-piercing bullet goes through your kevlar vest, while the resulting high Size reduces the effects of attacks that hit you.

At the same time, you want a high Intelligence so that you have a good chance of making Perception skill rolls to spot lowlifes reaching for their hidden guns, and a high Nerve stat so you don't reflexively duck for cover every time a bullet whizzes past your ear. A reasonably high Geniality score is also useful as it raises your Sanity, so you don't end up with your nerves shot to hell and jumping at shadows after a few close shaves.

Those 55 points could buy you seven stats at level 7 (just above average) and one at 6. But you don't want to be average, you want to be the best. So you put 10 points in Coordination and 9 points each in Strength, Toughness, Agility and Nerve. Hold on, now you've only got 9 points left for Intelligence, Know-How and Geniality, three each. Your whirling dervish of death is also a moron, a technophobe and a social outcast. You'd need another five or 10 points to build the character you really want, and unless the GM's a soft touch he's not going to give them to you.

So that's is how I tried to avoid God Stats or Dump Stats in Lead & Chrome. Do you think it works? Please leave a comment below this post.

Genre Studies

A bugbear yesterday

It's fashionable at the moment to talk about 'gender-swapping' characters in fiction, in order to get a magical 50/50 'gender balance' and eliminate sexist stereotypes. Aside from being a misuse of the word 'gender' (sex is the right word; gender in this sense refers to the roles and stereotypes society assigns to people on the basis of their biological sex -- in other words sexism), the concept falls down as soon as you run into a cast of characters whose sex has social significance. Thelma and Louise wouldn't mean very much if you changed it to Theodore and Lewis, would it now? And if the characters in a story lack real meaning, what's the point of them, or it?

So let us leave gender and move on to the real subject of this post: genre. Lead & Chrome is intended as a system for running games in three fictional genres: Western, Detective/Noir/Gangster, Cyberpunk. These are the subjects of the sourcebooks I'm writing at the moment. They are modern, realist, adult genres, with little or no room for romanticism, and the game is intended to reflect that.

You may ask: why these settings? Why not write a Fantasy or Space Opera game like everyone else is doing nowadays?

Class- and experience level-based fantasy role-playing games are a bit of a bugbear of mine. That is to say, they have 3+1 hit dice, Armour Class 5, they are of low-to-average Intelligence, are Chaotic Evil in alignment and 6D6 of them will appear at any given moment. Don't get me wrong, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson invented RPGs in 1974 with Dungeons & Dragons, and they deserve all the credit they get. But Fantasy has been done to death. D&D is the source of most of the clichés in the hobby and the subject of most of its parodies.

RuneQuest, which first came out in 1978, eschewed the class and level system, and Chaosium's other big games, Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer (both released in 1981) also broke the D&D mould: the latter was a conscious deconstruction of the fantasy genre, the former a disturbing cosmic horror game set in the 1920s, where players expected their characters to either be killed or go mad before the end of the campaign.

By contrast there hasn't been a proper Wild West game (as opposed to Weird West like Werewolf: The Wild West or Deadlands) since the third edition of Boot Hill in 1990, and no detective-themed games since Top Secret or Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes in the 80s. Of the two big Cyberpunk games, Shadowrun was a fantasy crossover which William Gibson hated, although R.Talsorian's 90s classic Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 is still available.

The fact that Fantasy is experiencing a resurgence at the moment (along with the spate of superhero action films coming out of Hollywood) is no surprise. The entertainment industry worldwide has been busily infantilising culture for at least 35 years. Think how many times you read or hear the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' in books, films and TV nowadays. Whenever you do, there's a very good chance you're about to have your intelligence insulted.

Fantasy books and films and superhero comics don't have to be just for children, but the sad truth is that most of them are. Comic writer Alan Moore has said so. Both genres lend themselves to black-and-white, good-and-evil heroic storylines, but action films, dramas and thrillers are also being dumbed down. The hard-boiled anti-hero, born in the new wave of American detective fiction of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, has become just a cardboard cut-out, whose apparent vices and contradictions are just a thin veneer of grime over the shining armour beneath.

All this is the result of deliberate decisions by writers, editors, producers and directors, by the industry as a whole. These are commercial decisions, but they are also politicals decision that reflect the politics of our time. It's not a unique problem to the present either, as Mark Twain or Raymond Chandler could both attest. The battle between culture and philistinism has been raging for thousands of years. I may sound pessimistic, but in fact I look forward to the day when things get turned around again.

So I want to go back to the last time paperbacks and films were really about something, when writers wrote about real life from their own experiences. Hence the choice of these three genres.

Am I right, or am I talking bollocks? Please leave your comments below this post.

Combat: Penetration and Damage Class

Diagram of ballistic gelatin test result for .308 Winchester soft-point (SP, similar to a Dum-Dum bullet) hunting ammunition, by former US Army surgeon Dr Martin Fackler (from http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm).

The two most important stats for a weapon in Lead & Chrome are Penetration (PEN) and Damage Class (DC). These are explained in the Combat chapter under Armour and Penetration and Wounds, but an explanation of how the values of these stats are arrived at may be of interest, if only from the point of view of game design.

Background

In 1991 R. Talsorian Games published a book titled Edge of the Sword Vol. 1: Compendium of Modern Firearms by Kevin Dockery. The book was a generic supplement for various role-playing games, including R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., but it also contained the kernel of an original RPG, in the form of a combat system. 

Kevin Dockery's system used a several complex mathematical formulae to calculate the effectiveness of various firearms against armour and cover, along with the size of the wound cavity created in the victim's body: in other words penetration and damage. 

For many years before I began the Lead & Chrome project in earnest I had been tinkering around with ways to calculate RPG damage for any firearm, by taking weapons defined in the rules, comparing the in-game damage with raw data like calibre, bullet weight and muzzle velocity, along with statistics derived from those numbers like kinetic energy, momentum and sectional density (much much mass is behind each square millimetre of frontal cross section area). I have compiled have a huge spreadsheet file full of data for all sorts of calibres, with the numbers 'crunched' in various ways.

In late 2011, when I had already started on a set of alternative rules for existing RPGs that would become Lead & Chrome, I read Edge of the Sword in detail for the first time, finally paying attention to the formulae in the back of the book. Having played Megatraveller at school I was familiar with the idea of having separate stats for penetration and damage. It adds a layer of complexity, but it also solves the 'realism' problem of how to describe weapons which penetrate armour easily but cause only limited wounds (like the M16), versus those with low penetration but great wounding potential (like shotgun slugs or flintlock muskets).

I'd already found this interesting discussion of terminal ballistics and wound mechanisms (in terms of big game hunting), and I was working along the lines of using a calculation of wound cavity size as the basis for damage stats. 

So I took Kevin Dockery's formulae for penetration and damage and modified them in various ways, producing two new formulae for what I came to call Penetration and Damage Class. Developing that idea was one of the catalysts for the project of designing an original game.

Penetration (PEN)

PEN represents how well a weapon punches or cuts through body armour and cover materials. It is meant to correspond to real-world data on what class of armour will stop what calibre of bullet, artillery shell, anti-tank grenade etc. 

PEN corresponds to another game stat called Armour Value (AV). If the PEN of the weapon is less than the AV of the target's armour (or intervening cover) then the attack fails to penetrate. If PEN is greater than AV, the attack penetrates with its full DC. If PEN and AV are equal then the attack penetrates with a -4 modifier to the wound roll.

Low levels of AV correspond to the US National Institute of Justice (NIJ) rating for body armour. Type I armour (AV 2) will stop about 50 per cent of .22 LR and .380 ACP rounds. Type IIA (AV 3) will stop about half of .38 Special, .40 S&W and .45 ACP rounds. Type II (AV 4) will stop 9mm Parabellum and .357 Magnum rounds, Type IIIA (AV 5) will stop .44 Magnums, Type III (AV 7) will stop 7.62mm NATO rifle rounds and Type IV (AV9) will stop armour-piercing 7.62mm rounds, half the time.

PEN is calculated simply by multiplying the round's calibre by its muzzle velocity. The result is divided by a constant number X which gives a result of 2 for the .22 Long Rifle calibre, corresponding to the AV 2 value given to NIJ Type I body armour. 

This sounds like an unscientific 'rule of thumb', but it works very well for most handgun and rifle calibres. The results go askew for large-calibre, low-velocity, low-sectional density projectiles like musket balls or shotgun slugs, but merely dividing the PEN of those weapons by two (done by doubling the constant X) gets it back on track. 

Damage Class (DC)

DC expresses the wounding potential of a weapon. It is based on a calculation of how wide and deep a hole the bullet (or arrow or knife) will make in the victim's body.

The formula is quite complex: the round's mass times velocity squared, times the cross-sectional area of the bullet (proportional to calibre/2 squared), all divided by Calibre times Velocity. The result is reduced to its square root to 'flatten out' the results into a manageable range, and then divided by a constant that gives a result of 1 for the .22 Long Rifle cartridge. This can be summed up as:

(Square root of (M x V0 squared x A)/(C x V))/X

Where M = mass, V0 = muzzle velocity, A = cross-sectional area, C = calibre and X = the magic constant.

Sounds complicated? Well, the spreadsheet does all the calculations for me, and I put the resulting stats in the book (or on the web page) for players to use. 

The result of all this algebra is that a Luger pistol has a PEN of 4 and a DC of 2, while a Colt .45 Automatic has a PEN of 3 and a DC of 3. What do you choose, better penetration or better stopping power? A .357 Magnum or .45 Long Colt revolver is seemingly the best of both worlds, with a PEN of 4 and a DC of 3, but you only get six shots and reloading takes longer. A .44 Magnum revolver trumps all of these with a PEN of 5 and a DC of 4, but the rate of fire is lower due to increased recoil. 

Thus we have a nice set of pros and cons for different weapons, which in turn makes the players think about their options.

Pleas leave any comments you have below this post.

Updates; Tasks and Stat Checks

John Dillinger, the famous depression-era bank robber

Today's updates 

Gangsters & G-Men: a new page on character backgrounds has been added, so never fear, source material is being written!

Equipment/Ammunition: tables now include the weight of ammunition (mostly thanks to http://www.pmulcahy.com/ammunition/ammunition.htm), and there is an extra section on how much magazines and ammo belts weigh.

Equipment/Machine Guns: I have clarified whether the listed weight is for a loaded or unloaded weapon, corrected the weights in light of this, and added the weight of ammunition belts to the appropriate weapon descriptions.

Tasks and Stat Checks

I'd now like to write something about the mechanics of the game, regarding Tasks and Stat Checks, the two main mechanisms for getting things done in the game.

A Task (or skill check) is used to decide whether a character successfully uses a skill. The player (or GM for NPCs) rolls 2D10 and adds the character's skill level (a number from 0-10) and relevant Stat for the skill (a number from 3-10), trying to equal or exceed a difficulty number, which is always a multiple of five. Negative and positive modifiers are applied to the dice roll depending on the situation.

A Task: 2D10 + Skill + Stat + Modifiers vs. Difficulty Number

An unmodified roll of 2 on the 2D10 is an automatic failure, and a fumble in most circumstances except a non-critical, no-stress situation. An unmodified roll of 20 is an exceptional success, and a third D10 is rolled and added to the result. If the roll of the extra D10 is a 10, roll a fourth (and so on and so on). This way success or failure are never automatic, unless the GM rules that no Task roll is needed to succeed or that the task is simply impossible.

The average human value for any Stat is six, and a skill level of three or four is considered competent. A task of Average difficulty has a target number of 20, so a character with a skill level of three and a stat level of 6 will succeed on a 2D10 roll of 11: slightly more than a 50 per cent chance.

The human maximum for any Stat (apart from Sanity, which is the sum of Geniality and Nerve) is 10, and a character can have only one Stat at that level. A Skill level of 10 represents the pinnacle of human achievement, and hardly anybody will have even one Skill at that level. For example, sprinting phenomenon Usain Bolt would have an Agility Stat of 10 and an Athletics Skill of 9 or 10, in game terms.

Originally I was going to use a roll of 1D10 + Skill + Stat + Modifiers (with all the difficulty numbers set five points lower), but on reflection I decided that there were advantages to a 2D10 roll. One is that the range of results is greater, making the outcome of any Task roll less predictable. 

Another advantage is that the probability of rolling a particular number is higher for numbers around the middle of the range (11 being the median and average) than it is for results at the extreme (2 or 20). This not only makes fumbles and exceptional successes less likely, but it encourages players to use their heads and role-play by stacking situational modifiers in their favour.

A Stat Check is a roll of 1D10 against the relevant Stat, trying to roll equal or less than the stat. Positive and negative modifiers are applied to the Stat, not the die roll. The exception is the Sanity Stat, which is the sum of Geniality and Nerve and so has a normal starting value from 6-20: A D20 is rolled for a Sanity check.

Stat Checks can be used as a kind of 'saving throw', or when no skill is relevant to the situation. For example, a character would have to make a Toughness check to see whether they recover from a disease or survive poisoning, or a Nerve check to stand up and shoot back when being shot at.

I hope that makes the rules a bit clearer and entices you to play the game. Please leave any comments you have below this post.

James

Hiatus and Site Overhaul

Hi everyone,

This is the first new post on the blog for more than six months, so sorry for the lack of info. I've been working on the Lead & Chrome RPG all that time (the master document has reached 160 pages), but I haven't got around to updating the site or the blog.

But this weekend I caught up with things posted all the latest work to the website. I've added an introduction on What is an Role-Playing Game, reorganised the chapters so that statistics, background and skills are all under Character Generation, and Equipment is now chapter three, with extra material added.

The chapters on Time and Motion, Money, Work and Commerce and In Sickness and in Health have all been expanded with several sub-pages each, and a placeholder page has been put in for the rules for animals.

Lead & Chrome is a work in progress in the true sense: development is continuing but there are still a lot of blank spaces in the rules. I've been working on the four planned setting sourcebooks for the game (which are probably more important than the core rules), and I'll post material from them when I've got something concrete to show for my time.

I'm going to try to update the main website more often and try not to leave it so long between blog posts. Lets see if I live up to that promise.

This, by the way, is lead(II) chromate (PbCrO4), what you get when you combine lead with chrome. Not very exciting, eh?

Please check out the rules and leave any comments you have about them here. Don't be afraid to be critical!

James

Work in Progress

As I've posted before, Lead and Chrome is a work in progress. Many chapters and sections are unfinished, but being updated bit by bit. Currently the game is a 118-page word document (admittedly in large 12-point font)

This week I have updated the section on Shotguns under Combat, and added a new chapter: Equipment. This only has one section at the moment: Firearms, which relates to the Combat chapter. The stats for several types of machine gun are almost ready, and then grenades and grenade launchers will follow once the rules for explosive weapons have been properly developed.

Similarly, as the rules for vehicles take shape profiles for various cars, motorbikes, helicopters, planes and so on will be worked up and added to the Equipment chapter.

Please leave any opinions and suggestions you have in the comments section of this post.

In Sickness and in Health

Today I have posted the rules for healing wounds, and the beginnings of the rules for diseases. More to follow soon.

Please follow this link to the Lead and Chrome site:
https://sites.google.com/site/leadandchrome/8-in-sickness-and-in-health

Updates to the Combat Section

Today I have added 10 new sections to the Combat chapter, and reorganised the Combat section of the website to make each section a sub-page of the overview. 

Remember that the game is a work in progress, so please excuse any blank spaces or missing information in the chapters!

Just to remind you, the Lead and Chrome website is at: https://sites.google.com/site/leadandchrome/

James

Website and Changes to the Blog

Hi everyone, it's time to announce some changes to the Lead and Chrome blog.

This blog was created alongside a Google website for Lead and Chrome, and I have been posting the same material to both. I want to improve the quality of the posts in terms of formatting (pasting from the original word documents into Blogger or Google Sites doesn't preserve much of the original format), and having to do everything twice is too time consuming.

So, from now on, I'm going to post all new material to the Lead and Chrome website, and just use the blog to announce the updates.

Please take a few minutes to look round the website and visit our Facebook page as well.

Thanks,

James Tweedie

7h) Combat -- Wounds

Wounds

On the subject of stopping power

Warning: the following essay deals with a controversial subject, and ultimately takes one side in the debate. This should not be taken as an authority, but is included in order to lay a basis for the game mechanics which follow.

Much has been written on the subject of the mechanics of gunshot wound injury and the relative effectiveness of different calibres and types of ammunition. Many gun journalists expound the theory that kinetic energy (KE) is the key to 'stopping power', and that a rapidly expanding or fragmenting bullet is necessary to ensure all that energy is transferred to the victim and that the round does not 'over-penetrate' and exit the body.

Other (or often the same) writers believe that the large temporary cavity created by bullets impacting at supersonic velocities destroys tissue, or creates a 'hydrostatic' shock wave inside the victim's body which can rupture blood vessels and organs, stop the heart and injure the brain at distances far removed from the actual wound.

'Hydrostatic shock' should not be confused with physiological or psychological shock, which are well-understood processes.

Both kinds of pundit apparently believe that traditional low-velocity, round-nosed bullets which pass right through the human body, of the kind which killed hundreds of thousands of people in the wars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, are ineffective to the point where being shot with one probably wouldn't even hurt that much.

These theories have become quite popular, but there are problems with both.

The speed freaks' hydrostatic shock theory has very little solid evidence behind it, and is mostly based on anecdotal accounts of game animals instantly dropping dead when shot with very high velocity rifle rounds. There are several problems with this.

One is that the accounts are anecdotal and subjective, and not the result of scientific research. We simply don't know what proportion of animals mortally wounded with high-velocity rifles collapse immediately, and what proportion run for a distance before dying.

Another problem is that we don't know, nor will we ever, whether the animals collapsed because of physiological shock, sudden massive blood loss, or because they were knocked out by a 'hydrostatic shock' to the brain.

Ultimately, hydrostatic shock ceases to hold water when one considers that human (and animal) tissue is very tough and elastic, and can survive hard impacts, squeezing and stretching with few or no lasting effects. If a rapid change in pressure could burst our arteries, it would happen every time our hearts beat.

However, it should be noted that higher-velocity bullets create a wider permanent wound cavity than lower-velocity ones of the same calibre, as the narrow area of very high pressure in front of the slug crushes tissue (and crushing is the action of a bullet on flesh).

Proponents of the KE transfer idea go as far as to say that shot placement (where the bullet hits) matters not – except where the brain and spinal cord is concerned – and that a magic number of 700 joules (500 foot-pounds) of energy, delivered to any part of the body, will 'stop' or incapacitate the victim. By this token, a hollow point bullet which embeds itself in the fatty tissue of an obese man's paunch is more effective than a full metal jacket slug which passes right through his torso and comes out his back.

However, much of the KE of a quickly-mushrooming bullet is not transferred to the victim at all, but rather used to change the shape of the projectile.

Furthermore, small arms simply don't have that much KE. A 7.62mm NATO calibre rifle bullet has a kinetic energy of about 3,500 joules at muzzle velocity. A one-ton car travelling at 10 miles per hour has a KE of 12,500 joules – three and a half times as much – but a hit from the former is much more likely to kill you than a hit from the latter. Similarly, a blow from a police officer's truncheon has more KE than a shot from their handgun.

Kinetic energy is a good way of comparing like with like. The difference in KE between two firearm rounds or two vehicle impacts is a good indicator of their lethality and destructive potential. However, it is not the kinetic energy that kills you, it is the nature of the work that energy does to your body that counts.

Despite what you might have read, bullets (like cutting and trusting weapons) injure and kill by making deep, narrow holes in the human body. The severity of the wound is mainly a question of where the bullet hits (which internal organs are in its path), how deeply it penetrates and how wide a hole it makes. Higher-velocity and higher-calibre bullets are more effective because they make a deeper and wider hole.

'Over-penetration' is not so much a problem, but rather a desirable effect. A bullet that passes right through its victim, leaving a large exit wound, will have more chance of hitting a vital organ than one which comes to rest within the body. Taking into consideration that one may need to shoot through a car door, tree trunk or sandbag wall to hit one's intended victim, we can conclude that the more penetration a weapon has, the better.

The truth is that there are no mysterious physics of wounding, nor can it be boiled down to a mathematical formula. A person shot through the heart or a major blood vessel will pass out from blood loss in less than 15 seconds, and die not long after. A person shot through their thigh muscle might fall over and pass out, or they might not, but they're not going to die of that wound unless it goes untreated and they get gangrene. In science the simplest answer is not always the correct one, but in this case it is.

Firearms are very efficient weapons, much more so than weapons that work by brute kinetic energy alone such as clubs or bombs. A bullet propelled by the tiny amount of explosive in a rifle cartridge has a greater lethal range than a low-yield nuclear weapon.

Firearms have been in use since the 12^th century (in China) and have, when combined with the bayonet, been the universal infantry weapon since the 18^th century. There are good reasons for this. The flintlock musket gave the common peasant or urban labourer the ability to shoot the steel-plated knight off his horse, rendering body armour obsolete until the late 20^th century. The percussion rifles of the mid-19^th century could shoot a lead bullet right through one soldier's body with enough force remaining to kill the man standing behind him. Modern automatic weapons, although largely unchanged since the end of WWII, have many times the fire power, accuracy and range of the first cartridge arms.

In Lead and Chrome, the wounding potential or Damage Class (DC) of different firearms is calculated using a modified version of the formulae developed by author and firearms expert Kevin Dockery in his book Edge of the Sword Volume One: Compendium of Modern Firearms. Edge of the Sword was apparently meant to be a fully-fledged role-playing system, but it never materialised. What the book did contain was a combat system, with formulae to calculate both the penetration of a firearm and the total volume of the wound it creates.

In Lead and Chrome, the results of these formulae are 'crunched' into the PEN and DC numbers. PEN and DC for non-firearms is calculated based on the author's subjective judgements about their likely effectiveness, based where possible on scholarly articles.

Hit Location

Once a character has been shot, stabbed, punched or whatever, we need to find out where they have been hurt. For this we use the hit location table:

Primary Hit Location Additional Hit Locations (for shotguns etc.)

Roll D20: Roll D6:

1: Skull 1-6: face and neck

2: Face and neck 1-3: skull; 4-6: chest

3-4: Chest 1: face/neck; 2: upper R arm; 3: upper L arm, 4: heart; 5-6: abdomen

5: Heart 1-3: chest; 4-6: abdomen

6-8: Abdomen 1-3: chest; 3: heart; 5: upper right leg; 6: upper left leg

9: Upper right arm 1-3: chest; 4-6: lower right arm

10: Lower R arm/hand* 1-3: upper right arm; 4-6: abdomen

11: Upper left arm 1-3: chest; 4-6: lower left arm

12: lower left arm/hand* 1-3: upper left arm; 4-6: abdomen

13-14: Upper right leg 1-2: abdomen; 3-4: upper left leg; 5-6: lower right leg

15: Lower right leg 1-3: upper right leg; 4-6: right foot

16: Right foot 1-6: lower right leg

17-18: Upper left leg 1-2: abdomen; 3-4: upper right leg; 5-6: lower left leg

19: Lower left leg 1-3: upper left leg; 4-6: left foot

20: Left foot 1-6: lower left leg

*For lower arm/hand roll a D6: on a 1-4 the forearm is hit, on a 5-6 the hand is hit.

Once we have determined location, we need to work out how seriously the character has been hurt. For this we refer to the wound table on the next page.

Attacks and the wounds they cause are divided into two categories: Lethal and non-lethal.

There are five kinds of lethal wound: Scratch (SC) Flesh Wound (FW), Crippling Wound (CW), Mortal Wound (MW) and Death/Amputation (DA); and four kinds of non-lethal wound: Stinging (ST), Bruised (BR), Stunned (ST) and Knocked Out (KO).

To determine what kind of wound a successful attack causes, roll D10, add or subtract the relevant modifiers, and find the result in the row corresponding to the attack's DC on the wound table.

Wound/damage roll modifiers:

Range:

At every fourth range band beyond Close (V Long and V Distant): -1 to Damage Class

Penetration vs. Armour:

PEN less than AV: Zero penetration

If DC > than AV, attack causes a non-lethal wound at DC minus AV

PEN equals AV: Low penetration

Attack penetrates with -4 modifier to wound roll

Pen greater than AV: Full penetration

Attack penetrates with no modifier to wound roll

Target Size: Wound Modifier:

1 +3

2 +2

3-4 +1

5-7 0

8-9 -1

10 -2

11-12 -3

13-14 -4

15-16 -5

17-18 -6

19-20 -7

21-22 -8

23-24 etc. -9 etc.

For melee attacks only:

Attacker Strength: DC:

1 -3

2 -2

3-4 -1

5-7 0

8-9 +1

10 +2

11-12 +3

13-14 +4

15-16 +5

17-18 +6

19-20 +7

21-22 +8

23-24 etc. +9 etc.

Location: Wound Modifier:

Upper limb: -2/-1 vs cutting weapons

Lower limb: -1/0 vs cutting weapons

Hand or foot: -1/+1 vs cutting weapons

Abdomen: +1

Chest: +2

Heart: +5

Face/neck: +2

Skull: +5

Previous wound state at location:

FW/BR: +1

CW/ST: +2

MW/KO: +3

		D10 Roll
		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Damage Class	⅙	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST
	⅓	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST
	½	SC/SG	SC/SG	SC/SG	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST
	1	SC/SG	SC/SG	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST
	2	SC/SG	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO
	3	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO
	4	FW/BR	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO
	5	FW/BR	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO
	6	FW/BR	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW
	7	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW
	8	CW/ST	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW
	9	CW/ST	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW
	10	CW/ST	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW
	11	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW
	12	MW/KO	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW
	13	MW/KO	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW
	14	MW/KO	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA
	15	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA
	16	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA
	17	DA/CW	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA
	18	DA/CW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA
	19	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA
	20	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/MW	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA	DA/DA

How to use the wound table

First, total up all the positive and negative wound modifiers (for location, target Size, ammunition type and so on) Find the the attack's DC in the left-hand column. Roll D10 and count across the horizontal row for the DC to the corresponding box.

Next, apply the wound modifier: for positive modifiers (+1, +2 etc.) shift the result one column to the right. If you reach the right-hand edge of the table with point to spare, start moving down the rows instead. For negative modifiers (-1, -2 etc.), shift the result one column to the left. If you reach the left-hand edge of the table with points to spare, start moving up the rows.

Wound state definitions and effects

Lethal wounds:

Scratch (SC)

A Scratch bleeds and hurts a little (although the character may not even notice in the heat of battle). This does affect the character physically in any appreciable way, but they still have to make a Nerve check for being hit.

Flesh Wound (FW): A Flesh Wound is more than just a superficial scratch, but it is neither life-threatening nor greatly debilitating. It will bleed enough to leave drops and smears of blood on the ground and in other places, which other characters and some animals (sharks for instance) can track.

A character suffering a Flesh Wound must make a D10 roll equal to or less than their Nerve with a -3 die modifier, or pass out from pain and shock (effectively stunned: see non-lethal damage below).

Actions with the wounded location are made at a cumulative -1 modifier to the relevant character statistic for every flesh wound suffered.

Some examples of wound effects are as follows:

Arm or hand: -1 to Dexterity, Strength and Tech skills per FW for tasks to that arm.

Leg or foot: -1 to Agility and Strength skills per FW to that leg.

Face/Neck: -1 to Intelligence, Appearance and Empathy-based skills per FW.

Skull: -1 to Intelligence, Appearance and Empathy-based skills per FW, plus a 25 per cent chance that blood will flow down into the eyes, partially blinding the character.

Flesh wounds take one week to heal with an easy Medicine or average First Aid check.

Crippling Wound (CW): A Crippling Wound indicates a broken bone or severely lacerated major muscle, which renders the location useless until healed. A Crippling Wound is not life-threatening, but the character must roll equal to or under their Nerve with no modifier, or pass out (as with a Flesh Wound). It may bleed a lot and leave an easy-to-follow trail of blood.

Arm or hand: The character drops anything held in that hand and cannot pick up or manipulate anything.

Leg or foot: The character cannot walk and must make a Difficult Athletics roll to remain standing. They can move by hopping (⅓ walking speed) or using crutches (½ walking speed), furniture or scenery for support (⅓ walking speed), or by crawling (⅕ walking speed). The character can also climb at a -3 task modifier. If both legs are affected at once the character automatically collapses, unless already seated or lying.

Abdomen: The character cannot run and can only walk at ⅓ normal speed.

Chest: The same effects as a CW to the abdomen, plus the character suffers a -3 modifier per CW to all tasks due to shortness of breath and accompanying dizziness.

Face/Neck: The character cannot speak and has difficulty breathing, giving a

Skull: The wound renders the character unconscious (most likely with a skull fracture) until they have recovered to FW status.

Mortal Wound (MW): A major blood vessel or vital organ (such as a lung or the trachea) has been severed or badly damaged, and the character is bleeding or suffocating to death.

The wounded character must make an immediate Nerve -3 roll to remain conscious, and must then roll under their Constitution/Toughness every round to stay alive, with a cumulative +1 modifier to the roll every round after the first. They must keep rolling until they die or until the wound is stabilised. A natural roll of a one indicates that the wound has staunched by itself and the character is out of immediate danger. A Mortal Wound can be stabilised by another character on a successful Difficult Medicine or Very Difficult First Aid task, but if the character has more than one mortal wound, each must be treated separately.

Death/Amputation (DA): This is a wound which instantly kills the character beyond any hope of being saved through medical treatment, or which amputates a limb. Effects by location are as follows:

Skull: Shattering/fragmentation of the skull or other massive wound, with most brain tissue lost, or severing of spinal cord.

Face/Neck: Partial or complete severing of neck (decapitation).

Chest: Massive gaping chest wound.

Heart: Heart completely destroyed.

Abdomen: Disembowelment/evisceration. Treat as a Mortal Wound, but requiring a Very Difficult Surgery task or Nearly Impossible First Aid task to stabilise.

Upper Arm/Leg: Amputation above the elbow or knee. Treat as a Mortal Wound, but needing a Very Difficult Surgery task or Nearly Impossible First Aid task to stabilise.

Lower Arm/Leg: Amputation below the elbow or knee. Treat as a Mortal Wound.

Hand/Foot: Partial or full amputation below the wrist or ankle. Treat as a Mortal Wound but only needing an Average Surgery task or Difficult First Aid task to stabilise.

Non-lethal wounds:

For non-lethal attacks, hits to the heart location should be counted as chest hits.

Stinging (SG)

The blow stings or twinges, but does not even leave a bruise. The character suffers no debilitating effects.

Bruised (BR): The character has a nice shiny bruise where they were hit. Actions involving the affected location are at -1 per BR wound state for five minutes.

Stunned (ST): The location is temporarily incapacitated for 1D3 Rounds, after which the wound state is reduced to Bruised for five minutes. If the skull or face/neck is hit, the character is semi-conscious and cannot act (they just stagger around or fall over). If an arm or hand is hit, they drop anything held immediately, including ropes or ladders which you are hanging on to. If a leg or foot is hit, they cannot walk on it and must make an Average Athletics roll to stay on your feet. If both legs are affected at once they automatically collapse, unless already seated or lying. A ST wound state to the chest or abdomen leaves you winded – you cannot run and you can only walk at ⅓ normal speed.

Knocked Out (KO): You are knocked unconscious or crippled by the pain of the blow for 2D6+6 rounds, after which the wound state is reduced to Bruised for five minutes. If the skull or face/neck is hit, you are knocked unconscious. For the chest and abdomen, you are conscious but incapacitated and unable to stand. A limb is rendered useless, and in the case of a leg or foot the character must make a Difficult Athletics roll to remain standing.

A DA result from a non-lethal attack means that bone has been broken, counting as a Crippling Wound (CW) result from the lethal attack section. If the minimum roll for a DA result is exceeded by five points or more, the result is a Mortal Wound (MW) Thus, a short-range shotgun blast to a head could be lethal even if the victim was wearing a helmet that stopped the shot from penetrating. If the minimum roll for a DA result is exceeded by ten points, the result is a Death/Amputation (DA) wound. This reflects massive crushing damage or blast injuries from explosions.

Quick and Simple Wound Resolution

The rules for calculating wounds given above are detailed but complicated. They are probably too time-consuming to use in a fight between more than a handful of people. Furthermore, it doesn't really matter whether a nameless, faceless goon who's only in the game for one fight gets a flesh wound in the arm or the leg. Arguably hit locations should only be used for Player Characters and important NPCs, or not at all.

With that in mind, here is a simplified version of the wounding rules.

First there are no hit locations, and so no location modifiers to the wound roll.

A character's AV is based on the armour or cover protecting their torso, or the AV of the best-protected body location if the torso is uncovered.

A D6 is rolled to see if the attack hits the character's armour or an unprotected location. The number needed for this 'saving throw' is based on how much of the character's body is armoured or behind cover, which is counted in 'blocks'. The torso is two blocks, the head one, the arms one and the legs two, for a total of six for the whole body.

Blocks Protected Saving Throw

1 6

2 5 or more

3 4 or more

4 3 or more

5 2 or more

6 Automatic

Thus a character wearing a bullet-proof vest and a helmet would use the AV of the vest, but only on a D6 roll of 4,5 or 6. Otherwise an unarmoured location has been hit.

Penetration is handled more or less as normal: If the attack's PEN is less than the target's AV, the attack fails to penetrate. If PEN and AV are equal, the attack penetrates but with a -5 modifier to the wound roll. If PEN Is greater than AV, the attack penetrates with no modifier to the wound roll. We don't need to bother about non-lethal hits from high-damage weapons that fail to penetrate.

Wounds are rolled for on the wound table above, but with no modifiers for location, as already mentioned, and no modifiers for previously-suffered wounds. However, the modifiers for the Size stat are still used, as does the Strength modifier to DC for melee and unarmed combat attacks. The simplified wound results are as follows:

Lethal Attacks:

Scratch (SC): no effect

Flesh Wound (FW): -1 to all stats until healed. The character must make a Nerve check for morale or take cover, flee or surrender (as the GM deems appropriate)

Crippling Wound (CW): all stats halved. If two CWs are suffered, divide stats by three, if three CWs divide by four etc. The character must make a Nerve check for morale at -3 or take cover, flee, surrender or pass out (as the GM deems appropriate).

Mortal Wound (MW): as CW, but the character must make a toughness check to avoid dying every round (+1 to the roll for every round after the first) until they are stabilised by successful a First Aid task, roll a 1 (the wound stabilises on its own) or they fail the roll and die. The character must also make a Nerve check for morale at -3 or take cover, flee, surrender or pass out (as the GM deems appropriate).

Death/Amputation (DA): the character is killed immediately.

Non-Lethal Attacks:

Stinging (SG): no effect

Bruised (BR): -1 to all stats for five minutes

Stunned (ST): the character cannot act for 1D3 rounds.

Knocked Out (KO): the character is unconscious and out of the fight.

Super-Simple Wounding Rule:

This rule is presented in case things are still to complicated, or in case anyone wants to run a skirmish battle game with these rules.

Scratch (SC) and Flesh Wound (FW) results have no effect.

Crippling Wound (CW), Mortal Wound (MW) and Death/Amputation (DA) results mean the character is 'down' and out of combat as a casualty – injured, dying or dead in each case.