Game Mechanics

The game mechanics of The Bladelands Chronicles are designed to give the world an internal consistancy. Knowledge of the game mechanics allow characters to interact in a believable way. It is important that you get to know the game mechanics which will most affect your character (combat, healing, magic, and anything relating to particular skills which your character has). This page gives a biref introduction to various areas of the game mechanics. For full details please download the full Bladelands Rules and World Background documents from the System Introduction page.

Combat

It is a basic premise of the game that:

All weapons should be wielded in a "realistic" manner
All blows and parries should result in a reaction of an appropriate nature
All wounds should be role played, even if not disabling

Weapons and their Use

It is important to remember that in a live action game the length of weapon is very important to a character's apparent ability in combat. As a result the game places restrictions upon the length of weapons which may be used. This is intended to reflect a warrior's superior ability in combat in a playable fashion. Generally the maximum size of weapon that a character may use will be determined by the character's strength talent. A character will also require the skill to use a particular type of weapon.

Locations and Damage

Each character has 6 locations which can take damage: head, body, two arms and two legs. Armour is considered by location except that body armour is considered to have both a front and a back which are counted separately. It should be noted that armour does not cover the entire location but only the areas that the PhysRep actually covers. When a character is struck in combat damage will eventually be done to the location struck (once his defences have been overcome). Characters will generally be severely hurt as soon as they take damage (i.e. wounded, although they may not be incapacitated depending on their toughness) although some creatures can take several blows before being hurt due to their thick hides, physical toughness or magical natures. Most characters have only one hit point per location so they are wounded immediately a blow gets through their defences.

Prompt treatment of wounds is extremely important to prevent permanent injury or even death. Each character has a Spirit Strength and once a wound has gone untreated for a number of minutes equal to the Spirit Strength the effect becomes permanent. Characters should bear in mind that the physicians that treat them will know the details about treating different types of wounds and will tell them what they need to know. They should focus or role playing their wounds, that is behaving as if they had actually been wounded.

The Effects of Armour

Armour comes in two types: leather and metal based upon the PhysRep worn by the character. All armour is worth a certain number of points. It absorbs this many hits and is then penetrated, further damage is then done to the flesh beneath the armour. Armour is further subdivided into light, medium and heavy, each worth a different number of points.

The defensive rating of armour is restored after every encounter so that an armour wearer begins each encounter with his armour fully effective once more. This applies to each encounter not to each fight within an encounter. Light weapons, (eg daggers clubs and fists) will not affect metal armour. They do no damage to the armour which just turns aside the blow.

Damage and Wounds

All blows cause a "wound". Unskilled brawling should be reacted to, but causes no wounds.

All wounds must be healed after combat. If untreated they are life threatening. The "clock" or "count" starts when the player is disabled, unconscious, stunned or otherwise out of the fight, or when the battle is over. After the clock starts a player must be treated within a number of minutes equal to their spirit strength or the wound is permanent. This is a crippled or severed limb, or death for head/body. Thus it is very important that all wounds are rapidly treated.

In addition to the other effects of wounds, they can easily become infected leading to fever, disease or blood poisoning. These effects will be slower and referees will inform you of problems. You should be aware that we intend to use this rule to promote "Good Healing". A dirty ribbon bandage could lead to infection…

Healing

Healing is a core area for any live game. It has a massive effect on how the game is played, and how deadly it is. In the Bladelands there are following possible methods of healing:

First Aid, a way to keep people alive until better treatment is found;
Surgery, this allows people to be healed, but is slow and sure (importantly it can be used to help to recover spirit strength);
Apothecaries have a number of useful techniques which help heal and improves survival; it is an adjunct to the above two;
Religion, priests have a number of skills, again these are adjuncts to normal methods; and
Magic (generally referring to sorcery), magic can do anything; this includes healing and can be performed through spells or alchemy

Speed of Healing

One of the most important key concepts is the nature of the Bladelands themselves. In the wider lands, where the characters mostly come from, they will be used to healing taking 'normal' time periods (those that we are used to in the real world). The highly magic rich environment of the islands has an impact of the body and health of living things including the characters and in the Bladelands healing is must faster than would otherwise be expected.

Spirit Strength

All this magic places a strain on the body and spirit of a creature, in fact their very life essence, and the strain of repeated healing does cause the body to deteriorate. This is represented by the spirit strength. A character's spirit strength is the length of their life clock in minutes.

After every combat in which a player is wounded, they loose one point of spirit strength. It is possible to lose more - the refs will tell you (another opportunity for us to intervene in the event of, for example, poorly role played wounds or healing).

Spirit strength can be restored by rest (you get it all back after eight hours rest, overnight, at dawn). It can be recovered at any time with medically supervised rest (one point per hour of long term treatment). Some magical effects can bring it back more quickly, as can the intervention of those with true faith.

Wounds

There is an underlying assumption that when a character is hit it either causes a wound or it does not. Even if a character is able to keep going with that wound it remains there until it is healed and if unhealed will eventually lead to serious consequences. Some monsters are tough enough that they have multiple hits per location. This is not true of characters barring extraordinary circumstances.

Life Clock

As stated above, a characters life clock is equal (in minutes) to their current (not maximum) spirit strength. As soon as any of the following events occur, a player is expected to have their wounds take effect fully and begin to count (or otherwise time) the expiry of their life clock. When the end of the count is reached, the wounds become permanent, possibly leading to death.

Sorcery

It is important to remember that the contents of this section is not common knowledge to characters in the game world. Only sorcerers will know this information and you are expected to role play this accordingly.

This is the only form of magic which is available to players when the game starts. It is the only form practiced on the mainland. Sorcery is controlled by the colleges of magic. Each college teaches a slightly different form of magic and they are the only ones who can safely awaken the spark of magic in a person. The colleges teach a thought process and mental control based on the ethics and theories of the college - it is not possible to change colleges, or to learn from another college. It is not even possible to properly read their magical writings so learning their spells by accident is impossible. These ethics are not as straight forward as good/evil.

The churches do not approve of sorcery and while they do not seek to have it outlawed, they discourage it. In fact the gods disapprove of magic because it would be possible, even easy, to set yourself up as a priest of a false god - after all, your prayers are answered and miracles do happen. As a result, it is not possible for a sorcerer to have a ranking in true faith (the talent). There are extremists who would like to see the colleges destroyed and all the mages dead, but these witch hunters are the exception to the usual rule.

Sorcery is complex and playing a character who is a sorcerer will be more challenging. If you wish to play such a character you should try to discuss it with the Magic Ref prior to an event to ensure that you are properly prepared.

Skills and Talents

Both skills and talents cost development points whether bought at character creation or later during the life of a character. Not all skills are available to characters at character creation and some may only be bought at character creation.

Skills are generally learned. If a character wishes to develop a new skill that character will generally need to find a teacher to instruct him in the skill he desires. It is not normally possible to develop a skill without an instructor.

It is anticipated that basic skills will be easy to learn and that NPC teachers will be readily available. For other, more advanced, skills, locating a teacher and then persuading him to teach you could be a series of adventures in itself.

Talents are not taught as such but still require effort on the part of a character to develop. Generally, it is possible for a character to purchase the basic levels of most talents with their own efforts alone. The more advanced levels (especially the level III talents) will require the intervention of circumstances or special training regimes to develop.

A full list of skills and talents and the abilities they confer upon a character can be found in the full rules document.