A discussion regarding wounds and injuries?

[cutecuddlydirewolf]

I've noticed that there are two ways injuries are played in-game- either people choose to treat honey and other healing foods as a miracle cure for every ailment, or they roleplay out the injuries and healing methods that involve more than just eating honey. What I want to know is- is one considered more 'correct' than the other? Who is right when two characters with differing opinions on the matter come into contact with one another?

[LittleSoul]

I don't think there is a right or wrong on this one. Some people prefer to roleplay out a healing process, a surgery, and [insert medical procedure here].
Some don't.

[computaertist]

My rule when two differently played character's collide has been to let the one with the injury dictate what works on their character. If one heals instantly and the player is happy with that, it's fine, and if one takes a full two or three Cantrian years to finally finish healing all up, going a little bit every so often with elaborate medical role play, it's fine. I guess some bodies just don't respond as quickly to honey.

Which is of course what LittleSoul said, more or less.

[Marian]

It does depend on whether the one with the injury decides to heal it or not, as far as RP goes, with the caveat that not everyone is going to let their chars getting sucked into someone else's elaborate emote-only medical drama.

Though of course healing food is a miracle cure, as far as the actual game mechanics go. And mechanics are considered to trump RP in most cases. Even without descriptions or emotes, your character can look at someone just standing there sleeping and see whether they're injured or not. Just like a character with one leg can still get in and out of buildings or work on projects as fast as anyone else, regardless of whether they take the time to emote their hopping.

So personally I always lean more toward the mechanics for my own characters. I do emote an injury in most cases, but don't drag it out. When it comes to someone else who's RPing some drawn out, major illness or injury, at the end of the day I treat it like...I don't know, demon possession, or split personalities or prophetic visions or whatever. Like, I'll go along with it to a point and it can sometimes lead to interesting RP, but there's no real immersion for me there because I know it's just the player putting on a show. Someone staggering around and dramatically passing out in the middle of town is never going to get the immediate, visceral 'holy crap this is bad' reaction that seeing someone at 80% injury would.

[prometheus]

I think just like any RP it's valid. Sure, you don't have to go along with it (ignoring fainting and etc is fine, people fake things like that all the time in IRL). But more complicated stuff - a pained leg (or one that needs amputation), an infected wound... Why not go along with it? It adds to RP, it's getting people to RP... I'm game for almost anything that gets people RPing. And if you/your char doesn't want to try and fix it, just be like "I don't know what to do to fix that, you should probably find a doctor." After all, in real life, we don't fix life threatening injuries ourselves, for the most part. If you don't want to RP your char actually hurting from a wound, thats fine, but IMHO it helps immersion/realisticness. And as far as mechanics go, people have been begging for bandages forever. So it's not like we're not trying to assist.

[ObsessedWithCats]

With my own characters I generally assume healing food heals immediately, but if the character has received many injuries in a short space of time, has been damaged beyond maybe 70% or has a long delay before getting healing food the injury(/ies) might scar or not heal quite right. Sometimes I'll also account for likely messiness and depth of an injury.

Coming back to this thread after having read the logs of all my characters for the morning, I feel like we could do with an official stance on this. I think the varying by individuals route is a good one - it essentially fits best with the rule of not dictating other characters' situations in RP. Newspawns spawn with a very wide variety of medical oddities - clearly health and medicine is a broader situation than just what can be dealt with by healing food.

[fireintherye]

It is a ROLE-PLAYING game that happens to be graced with mechanics, in my mind.
Not a mechanical game that MIGHT be graced with role-playing.

I see nothing wrong with accepting cantrian cures or role-playing them out. In real life, people react differently to all kinds of medical procedures. I think some players are too quick to assume it's done solely for the sake of attention or pity-seeking. Perhaps some players are truly seeking to role-play interesting experiences. Novel idea?

If it's ridiculous to role play non-mechanical aspects, the point of the whole game is kind of moot, is it not? If we wanted to limit ourselves to mechanics, I doubt very many of us would be here.

[SekoETC]

There are times for rp and then there are times when you need to heal quickly. I've had fun rp'ing slow healing injuries, but if I was in the middle of a combat, you bet I would eat very fast and heal as much as I could. My characters on islands with a lot of wild animals tend to be covered in scars because they get attacked so often that it isn't funny anymore. Animals tend to go for the legs since they're short. But lions and tigers might jump and get you in the back or chest.

I find it ridiculous when someone doesn't heal for a year. IRL any wound would close in a year. I also hate it when people forget to update their descriptions and have fresh wounds for days or years after it happened. It's okay to have permanent damage, but the surface layer heals pretty quickly because a year is only 20 days.

[iavatus]

Played nigh hundreds of games, with the healing method being, Pick Up First Aid Kit, heal health. Or eat fruit, or whatever. Pick it up, jam it wherever, fight more space zombies.

Maybe 3, with more detailed variants, and this game isn't one of them. Sorry.

From the guidelines for custom descriptions

Mechanics always trump RP

Sure, you want to RP something diseased, something injured, something broken, and honey ain't fixing it, that's your choice. It's everyone else's choice to look at you like a martian, and proffer honey. Take the chance, and do something with it, aside from some allergy to honey, cause then you're asking for popcorn.

I've seen well-done injuries. I've seen well-done blind, deaf, mute, lame chars too. I've seen far, far more of them, just being a lazy characterisation, for someone who wants and wants and wats, without giving anything to others.

[Meem]

I , for one, enjoy the RP of healing someone or whatnot. It's all fun. Though I think I can agree when it becomes...well, too much. Or when the other player leaves it up to my imagination of what to happen...and then it's like, they sometimes drag it out to a point where no matter what I've done, it doesn't fix em'. Like come on -_- BUT it's still fun.

[prometheus]

I've seen far, far more of them, just being a lazy characterisation, for someone who wants and wants and wats, without giving anything to others.

I think right here is the takeaway. Just because you have an illness, that is not all that you are. Chronically ill people, with the exception of hypochondriacs, do not like being sick, do not want to be sick, and do everything they can to not make their lives all about their sickness. This extends to mental illness, as well. Nine times out of ten, people with bipolar or BPD (BPD being what is now the official designation for split personality disorder) do everything they can to 'normalize' their lives and make it less about them having an illness or fighting their brain. Some will even go without mental Healthcare, or withdraw from people because they are tired of every conversation being about their illness.
Characters should be the same. Characters should not BE their illness/malady any more than people are. They should have some other goal or desire in life. They should be a dynamic, well rounded character, who happens to have an injury/illness. Not to tell anyone how to RP, just stating what I think would make for a pleasant experience all around.
And fainting? I can think of no medical reason for fainting, except perhaps high blood pressure, and unless you're going to emote inventing cholesterol medication, I don't really know what you expect there, except everyone to ignore you. Because munchausens and hypochondria are illnesses too, and treatment is not indulging their delusions.
And if you do RP a complicated illness in a way that makes no sense, don't expect me to tolerate or heal you, because, yes, I may be fine with healing RP, but I do my research and you should too.
Example: Char A: "*clutches chest, falling to the ground and passing out*"
*proceeds to whisper to someone in a different room than them for thirty minutes*
*wakes up to arrest a thief, is healthy enough to drag, passes out again when all is safe*

[*Wiro]

It does bother me if someone were to walk around wounded all the time because of "realistic healing", but that is allowed within the game mechanics and rules. The problem is if you're going to roleplay fake-drinking and fake-eating, everyone can see your wounds aren't healing and therefore you're breaking the rules by emoting that you are ingesting them. That is taking things too far. Mechanics trump RP, whether you like it or not.

Personally I ignore medicial problems because these are usually roleplayed by a specific group of players who are looking for something different in the game than I am. I like it when actions drive the story forwards, but it seems to me a lot of medical problems exist only to artificially fill the boring gap in their stories.

A while ago someone posted something I completely agreed with, but I can't find the post. It put into words the idea that these medical conditions mean you're forcing something on other players and demanding them to make a choice. I hope I don't need to explain why that is bad.

Just a reminder to report anyone who emotes eating healing food, but clearly doesn't eat it. Again, mechanics trump roleplay. You are welcome to roleplay needing amputation and refusing to eat honey, but you're not allowed to emote eating it just to "prove" it's not healing you.

[Naranjita]

I like medical roleplay, though the mechanics leave small room for doctors in cantr, I use to enjoy how they confront the sickness and the original vision of each one. Everyone is free to roleplay their character's illness as they want, as long as they adhere to the mechanics. A character can refuse to eat honey finding a proper rp excuse, though I agree with Wiro that if you roleplay eating honey, it should be reflected in the health bar.
Regarding the people whose chars only focus on their illness, I fear I can't disagree more. In my job I daily see lot of people who, sadly, only define themselves in base of their illness. Specially when it comes to mental patients. It's sad, and it can be extremely annoying for some people -including me-, but also can raise feelings of care and tenderness in other people who enjoys taking care of disabled or ill people. Anyway, I think it's something that can create rp, and can be dealed in game -in both options, taking care or expressing annoyance-, and discouraging it here in the forums can be an ooc influence.
Personally, I'd like to see one of these medical roleplays everyone is talking about. Even without participate, I'm hungry of rp these days, treatening with coming back to play properly!

[Marian]

It is a ROLE-PLAYING game that happens to be graced with mechanics, in my mind.
Not a mechanical game that MIGHT be graced with role-playing.

There are those who would disagree with you here. Cantr is a society sim, not a pure roleplay game. You can go to a forum or a chat room for the latter, but Cantr is about simulating character interaction in a specific, persistent world with specific mechanics.

It's a funny distinction you've made there, anyway, when the game is designed to be easily, successfully played even without emotes, but the mechanics can not be ignored or handwaved away no matter how many paragraphs you stick between asterisks.

A while ago someone posted something I completely agreed with, but I can't find the post. It put into words the idea that these medical conditions mean you're forcing something on other players and demanding them to make a choice. I hope I don't need to explain why that is bad.

edit:
Wiro, I think this is the post you're thinking of, and it sums up a lot of my feelings as well: http://forum.cantr.org

edit2: Actually I think I'll just quote it, as it's very relevant to this one.

I've been kind of wanting to post about such a thing as well.

My problem is really with the physical conditions without a mechanical reason (ie. being attacked by someone or an animal)... Things that are only roleplayed (and not always very well) and would require some kind of specialist knowledge to diagnose/treat, and something other than the available healing food/potions or a basic roleplayed bandage. Yet, these characters make it very difficult for you to not address the issue, unless you're playing some really horrible mean-spirited person that openly doesn't care about anyone but themselves. But it makes me really uncomfortable to have to deal with such things when Cantrian medicine is so weird.
There simply are not enough characters who are played as doctors, and unless the character is lucky enough to know of the existence of one of the few, I'm really not sure how mine are expected to be able to help?

I'd just like for those who are needlessly giving their characters these afflictions to take into consideration how awkward it all is and to maybe not force it so much...? If the situation appears to be generally ignored by the characters around you (other than the ones you are specifically getting involved and putting into a position of not being able to turn a blind eye) then maybe it should be something that can just gradually get better by itself with your character maybe just needing to rest somewhere warm and comfortable? Please stop seemingly demanding medical attention that just isn't available...

[ObsessedWithCats]

*begins to worry whether their own disabled characters have bothered people that way*

I've not seen anything very closely matching the complaints, but I think at least to some extent I'd find it interesting? There reaches a point though where if all other suggestions are rejected you say 'right, what would be your preferred place to die then?'