Adrenaline

This is literally only fun once or twice before it gets stale as hell.

Yeah, if you're playing the same character every time... different people handle stress in different ways.

I'm utterly confused that "relaxation" seems to mean "keeping it in by all means" and not, like when you relax to take a piss, "letting it flow freely". Though I'm not a native english speaker, maybe I'm lacking something here.

It's also more complex then that.
Generally when someone kills someone they freak out AFTER but not during, but that's largely because of shock and sudden adrenaline withdrawal heightening their emotional reaction to it.

There's lots of circumstances in modern combat situations where this never ends up happening because even though you fired in the directon of the enemy you can't always be sure it was YOUR bullet that killed them and so while the moments afterword make you all shakey you don't necessarily freak out because the emotional connection is distant.
One weird personal experience from when I served had a guy I know for a fact had killed in combat before (I saw some of his shots hit) react mostly with wind-down excitement, but months later when he was suddenly forced to kill someone up at close range when he wasn't expecting it he freaked the fuck out and almost panicked because adrenaline was amping up his sense of shock and surprise so the sudden start and end of it hit him all at once and he didn't get a chance to "wind down" so to speak.

Another fella I knew said doing it with a knife is way worse because of how intensely physical and disturbingly intimate the experience is (killing a person with a knife requires pretty much the exact same level of physical proximity that hugging, kissing, and sex does), so it hits even harder when fear and reflexes "push" you into doing it.

Guns make taking life so easy that it's desensitized as all hell so you can adjust easier.

No, it's so you pee yourself- this lightening you carried weight

I like this.

Maybe the concept merits further exploration, kind of like The Mountain Witch explores PvP, or Dread explores tension.

The idea that you don't feel damage at first fits with a ton of tropes. It's the classic hero death: battle the villain, defeat them, then collapse. It doesn't have to be death, it could simply be helplessness or unconsciousness. It already feels better than negative HP or major wounds.

Players know the hits and maybe get some imprecise indication as to blood loss and loss of functionality. But damage is rolled and tracked behind the screen and only revealed once a character has left combat. Unless they suddenly die of course.

Damage shouldn't be just HP as that leads to whittling down combat and invites players to meta game. Instead the character could die from any attack if a vital organ is struck. HP would be more of a blood loss count but not a safety margin to bet combat rounds against.

There could be a simple list with items like extremity goes numb, extremity goes limp, internal bleeding causes hidden damage, lung damaged causing str/con loss, loss of sight in one eye, heart damaged: immediate death, ... All sorted by damage zones. It can't clutter up and bring down the pace, so maybe the results could be read into the already existing rolls like ORE does? Or there could be a stack of premade wounds to draw from?

It could even be abstracted further with a damage level defined during combat so it can affect events, then rolled for a precise effect after combat.

And that's only the damage effect of adrenaline. There should also be an effect on abilities. And there must be a system like the madness meter or some such to define when which character gets an adrenaline rush, and for how long.

I got into a "fight" once that wasn't really a fight. Someone slapped me, then dared me to slap him. So I did. Then the fucker hit me with a closed fist like I had just pissed in his cereal, so I hit him once with my hand, and then elbowed him. I remember the look on his face when he was teetering against the wall, and I realized he was unconscious with his eyes open. For a terrifying moment, I thought I had killed him. There's still a dent in the wall in our washroom from where his head was wedged into the corner when I got the elbow in.

Thankfully he was fine, though his jaw was swollen like a bastard the next day. I broke my hand hitting him too, because I was so angry and formed the fist wrong.

The pain really doesn't kick in for like ten minutes. You know that you did something wrong when you break your hand, but it gets pushed to the back of the line because there are more important things to worry about.

As for games, it's too hard to represent mechanically, and it's also too messy.

It's because the muscles you have conscious control of to keep yourself from pissing don't involve your bladder, they're in the groin. The bladder and involved muscles are trying to expel toxins and waste, muscles in your abdomen and groin can keep that waste from expelling for whatever reason. God only knows how we evolved that one before clothes were invented, many animals don't have the ability to control when they urinate at all.

If the bladder relaxes and just stops doing its job, you don't have to piss anymore. At the same time though, people often piss themselves because they had to go already, but when surprised or horrified, let the muscles holding up the flow go slack.

>Are there rules that lower a character's int/wis and increase their str/dex when so affected?

d20srd.org/srd/classes/barbarian.htm

I see, thanks.

I just watched an interesting talk about sport science research with police officers in Germany. They created a training scenario where the officers were under pressure in an unclear situation, then a threat appears and seconds later a gunshot is heard from behind the officers. And a lot of them shot the suspect right then.

The scenario escalated, so if they didn't he would get more and more threatening, so that they shot is a given. The interesting thing is when they did. Some had not even seen the gun yet.

They also measured trigger discipline and found that what an officer claimed or believed after the event does not match what they did with their trigger finger at all.

So adrenaline messes with your memory as well as your perception. Even one's own actions can be remembered in a stylized or idealized way. And events around one are very unreliably perceived and recalled.

Watch the white shirts and count their passes. But pay attention! Sometimes they pass directly, sometimes they bounce.
youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
And you are nowhere near any adrenaline effects.

The memory thing is spot-on.
I work at a law firm (PI stuff) and it's basically completely impossible to get a 100% objective account of things happening in emotionally stressful or violent situations due to just show shitty our brains are for the purposes of storing and retrieving information and how badly our emotional state at the time creating the memory distorts the memory as we form it.

Makes you wonder about the justice system. All those things we hold so dear and cling to when establishing The Truth: eye witness accounts, fingerprints, hell, even DNA labs... it's all pretty flimsy.

But can we use that in a game. Can we describe the scene differently to different players once adrenaline is introduced? We can clearly do it with instincts, goals, and beliefs.

>God only knows how we evolved that one before clothes were invented, many animals don't have the ability to control when they urinate at all.
To avoid giving away your position with the smell?
Because it makes the ground slippery?

I got 12 passes and saw the gorilla. Is that good or bad?

Stop talking.

It means you are relaxed and perceptive.

I get blackouts every time I get angry, does that count?

Got beaten with a bat and stabbed with a knife once.
Still kicked their nuts and teeth in.

If i had to pick any stat in d&d terms that is above 13 with me then it's defintely Con.

I'd guess communication; perhaps proto-hominids used their urine as a scent-marking, or would urinate to indicate a signal to other man-apes.

This would of course necessitate some sort of control over where when and how one passed urine, and is the simplest explanation I can think of.

I get that too. But I mean, really, really angry. Like, rageful.

Because people make bad decisions on adrenalin.

I tried roleplaying the effects once and accidentally torpedoed the campaign.

Give yourself 3-4 seconds to consider and perform an action. Sounds rough right? It didnt go well.

Killed our prisoner when we got discovered with no way of hiding the body.

Was the only person who survived combat because I dove behind cover. For some reason no one believed me when i said covers important in dark heresy

I think instead of pushing strictly mechanical stuff on players, it's better to simulate this in other ways.

First one is definitely to make combat lethal and serious business. Systems with HP bloat is directly counter to this, but if you realize that ANY fight you get into can end badly, things get a lot more tense.

Secondly, how much time people have to make decisions. At our table, the DM gives us basically a few moments to say what we're gonna do next in combat, but will press the issue and demand a Wits roll if we take too long. This can also happen outside of combat. Again, adds tension, and forces the players to sometimes do reckless/non-ideal things, especially when they're already stressed out by knowing that this might decide whether their character lives or dies.

>I broke my hand hitting him too
This is the most hilarious shit. I've seen several random drunk fights when I worked night shift at a gas station, where one punches the other and "wins", because the other guy realizes it's serious and backs down, yet the puncher only moments later realizes he broke his wrist. Next day, one need the cast the other just has a little painful spot on his jaw. Pretty funny.

If I was to try to harm someone, I think I'd just grab a nearby object and smash them with it. Seems less risky.

You just went from assault to attempted manslaughter.

I was beaten up once and sent to hospital with concussion. It was really boring.

No, self-defense. I wouldn't start a fight, that's stupid. But if someone despite my best efforts decide to pummel me, I will use every advantage I can get.

That's not self defense then
If you use a weapon and they are not, unless you can claim you were severly outmatched (you're a girl, they're a big guy for you) then you become the aggressor

I love sad Bane.

Both of you are wrong. Both of you should shut up.

Both of you don't realize that laws differ from place to place.

Both of you are idiots.

This.

>unless you can claim you were severly outmatched
I probably am, I'm not a huge guy.

Anyway, have fun being beaten up because you insist on having a "fair fight". My country isn't retarded when it comes to shit like this, so I wouldn't get punished for just knocking some drunk idiot over the head.

Unclench your anus, I do realize. I didn't bring up the law, he did. I'm just saying what I have mentally prepared myself to do, should the situation ever arise. (Not that I think it will, I generally de-escalate by saying sorry even when I'm in the right.)

>saying sorry even when I'm in the right

Hello my fellow Canadian

That's how it works in most developed countries, chump.
I have colleagues from US who said me that, and it's like that in lot of european countries too
It's my job, idiot

>some guy is beating my ass
>there's a weapon available
>better not use it though, because then that means that I'LL be in trouble
>continue getting ass beat

Fucking retarded. And that's not how it works "in the US," I don't give a shit what your friends say. First, self defense is a fundamental right. Second, there are 50 states with general police power to define their own rules on self defense. So there isn't a US rule at all, but dozens of state rules.

>US attorney

Until you start quoting statutes and case law instead of, "well my friend said I'm right!", you're participating in a slap fight of stubborn ignorance .

>Anyway, have fun being beaten up because you insist on having a "fair fight".
I don't. I just say that most developed countries disagree with you.

>some guy is beating my ass
>I pick a baseball bat and beat his ass hard
>I've got some bruises, he got broken bones
>I'm in the right

Yeah, nah

>thats not how it works, I never worked in the field and I have no arguments except "bring me case law that I will not understand because I never studied law"

You know what mate? I have been in so much arguments about law on this shitty website that I just drop it now. Everytime I bring evidence and law principle, you people shit on it and you never try to find it by yourself

>you're participating in a slap fight of stubborn ignorance .
Where do you think we are?

I work in a correctional setting. Not just the guy in for drugs or traffic violations (though we had those guys too) but the guy doing 8 life sentences as well. Actually, the lifers are pretty well behaved (they will kill somebody though). It's honestly the young inmates you have to watch out for, they're the worst.

I've had me some violence.

From my experience, I could see adventurers getting used to violence after a while. The first couple incidents of violence, yeah, you act stupid. My hearing shut off and everything got very surreal, but thankfully I kept control of my actions.

After a while though, you start learning to control it. Doing things without unconsciously, but you're still thinking too. It's hard to describe.

The veterans had warned me. When something pops off, you don't know how you're going to act. I've seen fellow officers turn right the fuck around and lock themselves in a room when violence erupts. I've seen hardened inmates that havn't really gotten in a fight before just keep talking to the guy while being stabbed. It just depends on the person, and you won't really know you have it til you're in that situation.

That being said, roleplay it.

>Heroes are not affected much by this and continue to quip and banter
It's fantasy. If I wanted nothing but grunting and swearing, I'd be playing Cover-Based Shooter N+1.

>perception narrows
That's a malus to perceiving things not immediately related to the fight

>willing to push any advantage, maybe even a bit bloodthirsty
We call that "roleplaying".

>It removes social solutions
Not really. Sometimes people talk during fights, and it sometimes does help or end the fight.

>Have you ever been in a fight, Veeky Forums?

Yeah, was in a fight with a girl when I was 14, but she was half a foot taller then me. She beat me up, but we became good friends a year later.

>"Maybe I won't take my standard action and force you to wait!"
>"Okay, you're taking a delay action then, the monster goes and full attacks your manchild ass, save against massive damage."
God, Goblins is shit.

America?

>Yeah, was in a fight with a girl when I was 14
That reminds me of the day I saw my first catfight in high school. It basically started with wrestling and trying to scratch out eyes, and ended with one girl facedown on the floor with the other girl sitting on her back and slamming her face into the tiles. Girl fights are fucking horrifying.

A lot of professional fighters talk during their fights.

A lot of serious fights happen too fast to talk, just as many end up with you rolling around on the ground like you're hugging it out.

A lot of serious fights with weapons take longer than expected because neither person wants to get shot/stabbed because IRL you don't have health bars and that shit fucking hurts, cripples, or yes kills.

TL;DR I don't think you know what the fuck you're talking about when you talk about the pacing of fights.

Also,

> That pic

Ironically, most fights between predators contain a SHIT ton of "dialogue" signalling between the two, and rarely actually end up with one or the other dying. If you want to see animals of the same species killing each other, you want to look towards herbivorous or sea creatures.

Did she wrestle you and sit on your face to show you her dominance?

Whoops, wrong pic.

What's the saying, men are natural fighters but women fight naturally?

No. That's not how it works unfortunately.
The best I got was my face pressed against the side of her tit when she headlocked me on the ground.

Well, you could have asked her to sit on you.

I prefer playing someone who already has a little experience.
I've been able to do this to a certain extent. I think playing american football helped a little, but then I worked at a couple of bars that could exceed 1200 person capacity for six years. I've seen knives get pulled, had bottles get smashed over my head, been in a few 30+ person brawls, saved people from getting their heads stomped in, and been attacked more times than I can count.
Mist of the time that I get the shakes or anything is when I think something's gonna happen and it doesn't.

You should check out the Song of Swords General. It sounds like it'd be right up your alley.

>beat his ass hard
Not those guys but there's a difference between hitting someone to get them off of you and beating the shit out of them.

Okay, here is how it is *suppose* to work in Soviet Canuckistan

>You get jumped. Either by mugger(s) or drunken asshole(s)
>If there is a weapon near by and you utilize it, fair game, as you have no idea how far they will take it. If there isn't, then it's fisticuffs
>The moment they run away, give up, or are knocked out, fight is over.
>If you continue beating them after this, you are now the assaulter.

That's not often how it works, as they want you to run away, get robbed/raped then call the cops.

Interestingly enough though, as I remember form law class:

>You and some dude get into a fight.
>Specifically where you both express an interest in beating each other's asses.
>You two fight. Neither can be charged with assault.
>If through mishap, one of you dies (say, getting knocked down, splitting your head open on the curb and dying), there is reduced sentence, manslaughter instead of murder 2
>If both of you fight, then walk away or someone is knocked out, charges cannot be laid (though they might try to stick you with disorderly conduct or somesuch)
>If someone produces a weapon during this mutual fight, picks up a rock or takes their belt off to use as a sort of improvised brass knuckle, it goes from mutual fight/mutual combat to assault with a deadly weapon, with the individual with the weapon being the assaulter.
>Obviously, if this assaulter kills his opponent, it is considered murder 1 (though they may try to argue it down to murder 2)

I remember being fascinated by this law. I know it is still a thing in Nova Scotia, but I am unsure how much weight it holds out West

>God only knows how we evolved that one before clothes were invented
Actually, God knows that we did not evolve at all.

it doesn't actually remove social solutions. most confrontations between wild animals end with both running away.

also player characters are by no means regular humans. they're basically psychotic, as a minimum.

>Have you ever been in a fight, Veeky Forums?

Yeah, probably ~30 fights in my adult life. Mostly bar fights when I was in the Army. And a few more bar fights after I got out. And a couple of doozy's at Cardinal (NFL) games.

I get an adrenaline rush that gets me through the first minute or so. In the few that have lasted longer than that, most people - including myself - are too tired to do serious damage.

I'm sure you could implement any number of mechanics that would account for this. Stamina, strength, constitution penalties being the simplest ways to simulate the aftermath of an adrenaline rush. If you really want to get simulate-y, you could employ a 'sanity check' type mechanic for especially gruesome or extreme cases (witnessing or causing death, disfigurement, etc.).

Seeing someone go into convulsions, or losing their shit due to a particularly nasty broken leg will psychologically affect most people.

>Takes off belt
> Deadly weapon
Wew.

Imagine taking off the belt, wrapping around his fist with the buckle running along the knuckles.

Shit can cut you wide open

*unzips dick*

Yes, but your fingers will heal with time.

Have you ever been beat, buckle first, with a belt?

My mom showed me her scars. Did not look fun at all

Can't say that I have.

People don't get used to adrenaline. They get used to situations.

>I get an adrenaline rush that gets me through the first minute or so. In the few that have lasted longer than that, most people - including myself - are too tired to do serious damage.
Yeah, when I did martial arts my sensei always had us do endurance, since real fighting was way more exhausting than practice. 30 seconds of fighting was supposed to feel like 30 minutes of practice.

Also, I like stamina. I feel like more tabletop games should try to model it. At least some kind of stamina points thing would be alright with me, since it's been proven effective in video-games.

>Have you ever been in a fight, Veeky Forums?
Yes, and apparently according to/tg/, I am an abnormal psycho for only fighting when I lost control of my temper, instead of being a nice, normal person who intentionally inflicts violence on others to "save face".
Normies creep me out.

Neither of those is a good reason.

This is a weird thread to show up the day after I shot someone.

Uh. Yeah, OP. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

>Day after I shot someone
Okay now we have to know. Story time.

Depends on the reason he lost his temper.

Twilight 2013 kind of gets a bit of it down, in an abstract way.

Yeah, had some guy in a bar throwing ice and lemons and shit at our table so I went over and told him to cut it out, he shoved me (which spilled the drink I was holding) so I hit him across the head with the drink. The instant adrenaline and heart rate you get is really something! Ended up being tackled into a table by a couple of bouncers, split my forehead open

I can't measure in on this. Not trying to be edgy or anything, but I'm a checked-and-verified sociopath. Unsurprisingly, I've been in a good handful of fights. When I get in one, I hold myself back and wait for the other guy to stop or leave if they aren't doing serious harm to me, because I know that when and if I get started, I'll kill them unless I get pulled off. When I do get started in an actual fight though my brain just sort of shuts down and I focus singlemindedly, almost roboticly on hurting the other guy as bad as I can. I really don't know how it is for normal people. I don't fight because I get angry or anything, I get into fights when I start them because I just want to hurt someone. So the whole 'making quips and calculating the outcome' part doesn't piece together in my head, but the looking for a weakness part is pretty much all I do.

I've only fought once, myself. Wasn't exactly a glorious thing. Both of us ended up bleeding and pretty damn hurt. Not exactly in a hurry to do it again.

I guess I should've seen that one coming.

Uh, short version:
Seeing this girl. Showed up at her apartment early and heard noises, screaming. Thought someone broke in or something so I ran in. She's against the counter in her kitchen, with a dude beating the shit out of her. I wind up pulling him off of her. I'm a good sized dude, but he still had four inches and probably thirty pounds on me. Also, drunk. Drunk is an incredibly unfair advantage. We wind up tussling. I tried to warn him to back off, but I'm a bit fuzzy if that was before or after my head bounced off the linoleum floor. It gets a little hazy after that, but I managed to get my ccw out and plugged him in the thigh while he was on top of me.

Fair enough. Had someone at (air)rifle point myself but didn't need to fire.

I have however nearly been run over by a train, jumped off the line and sprained my ankle and had to run after the hand-cart me and my group was using and jump back on. That was an interesting experience.

I've been in a few adrenaline pumping situations in my life. Never life or death, I don't think anyway. The most significant one was during a confrontation between me and my father, which ended with me holding him at knifepoint. It was a real weird feeling, kind of like I wasn't in control of my body. Everything was automatic from the point things kicked off, and I was just sitting back and watching things unfold with no saw in it.

It's a weird feeling, really.

missing point in the story - the dude turned out to be her ex boyfriend, coming in drunk and just found out she was seeing someone else.

She is finish. Our romantic dinner wound up being takeout on the way to the ER to get checked out. She has a broken nose, a black eye, a few stitches. I have a few stitches in my forehead, my right hand is wrapped up from cutting it open on his teeth at one point, and the right side of my torso is purple, but nothing is broken. Neither of us are concussed though, which is a plus.

Also the scariest part of that adventure wasn't the dude, it was the cops. The neighbors had already called them when they heard the fight begin. I showed up at most five minutes earlier than they did. Apparently they were in the parking lot when they heard the shot, and bolted up the three flights of stairs to get to her apartment.

They came in guns drawn and shouting to see me standing there covered in blood with a gun in my hand. Also, in addition to leaving a huge fucking mess .357 is a loud-ass round in an apartment building. All I could hear was EEEEeeeeeee.. add to that the fact that I had just had my skull bounced off the floor and everything was all fuzzy. I neither heard them, nor realized they were there until I started to turn around - again, covered in blood, gun in hand.

It's here I should also point out that I'm just over 6 foot, 220lbs, and I dress like a biker - beard, long hair, jeans, wallet chain, leather and shit jewelry..

I'm 99% certain the only reason I'm alive is because said girl reacted faster than I did and got in front of the cops fast enough to clarify the situation.

Three police drawing down on you is enough to make anyone want to pee a little.

> She is finish
*Fine-ish

No, it doesn't.

Fuck, dude. Glad you and her are alright (read: not dead).
Hope the son of a bitch gets put away for the rest of his natural life.

>For some reason no one believed me when i said covers important in any system that has firearms.
I don't understand how your fellow players didn't get that without needing to be told.
On a related note, also kinda torpedoed a storyline last night when the guy we were meant to be saving from a ghost car he'd bought died in the explosion when we salted-and-burned it in his garage in an on-the-spot decision. GM called us out and I countered with the fact that the one PC who went in the car was nearly strangled by it - no way in hell were we moving it anywhere first.
So apparently now my job as the only combat spec is to be the only one not going through what this thread is about, and instead scream as civilian to GTFO when the walls start bleeding.

>Salt and burned on the spot
As far as I'm concerned this is the correct fucking decision for everything?
Eldritch horror? Salt'n'burn.
Aliens from beyond? Salty burnin'
Fellow man? Salt + Burn.
Steak? Salt and burn.

Neighboring Kingdom?
Burn everything down and salt the earth so nothing will ever grow again.

Weeds? Salt and burn.
Speed traps? Salt and burn the unholy abomination.
Infected wounds? Salt and burn.
IT troubles? Salt and burn.
Diplomatic engagement? Salt and burn after Ambassador Pineapple takes the floor.

And there I was thinking she was from Finland.
Good to hear you and your GF are alive.

Mmm, Supernatural-themed campaign. My character's got combat experience unlike everyone else, but also isn't used to the fact that 90% of what we're up against really doesn't care about being shot.

I've almost been stabbed a few times if that counts...
Full contact Competition martial arts for 7+ years so I've had both calm collected fights and seeing red / fighting for life

I agree both are bad reasons, but I think it's worse to initiate violence with intent than over a brief loss of control.

Closest I've ever been to a fight was when I was in primary school and two kids in the year above mine were beating up my best friend behind one of the school sheds. According to my mum, apparently she heard a collection of shouts, looked up and saw the two bigger kids running away from me while I shouted like a lunatic and was swinging my lunch box in front of me as I chased them. Cue them hiding behind the other mothers on the playground as my mum grabs me with the two kids shouting 'He's going to kill us, he's going to kill us.' Strangely enough, the little escapade didn't involve a trip to the headmaster's office afterwards. Adrenalin is a hell of a drug.

So does the law.

The last time I had a blackout, I supposedly slashed someone's face with my nails. I don't believe them, but now I have some records in the police station. I still don't believe them, I'm just a skeletor for fuck's sake I can't grab someone's throat and slash them with my nails thinking I'm some kind of autist who thinks he scares people with fangs and claws.

Then again, I did almost stab that guy who was also beating the crap out of some guy in front of me. I only got triggered cause he also threatened to hit me. And that just happened this Tuesday. I think I need to see a doc? Or learn some breathing exercises?