cracked open in the waves, its emptiness loose

cracked open in the waves, its emptiness loose


metamorphosis pt 2 by carmine3 (commissions)


For the lovely coming glaugust: An HP-less system.

There are really exciting replacements for HP, sloppy drippy and such-like. This is something else, I think. A largely deathless, potentially bloodless system, depending on how it's used.


———


When you get hurt, take a wound. It's a d4.

When you roll to do something that hurts, roll all your wounds together afterwards. If they come up higher, take a wound.

When you roll to do something that leverages suffering, you can roll all your wounds together instead. This usually hurts.

If you have 2 wounds or fewer, you can give them back with nourishment and rest.

If you have 4 wounds or fewer, you can give them back with safety and time.

If you have 6 wounds or fewer, you can give them back with medical attention.

If you have 7 wounds or more, you can give them back with sacrifices.

Sacrifices like:

  1. Something precious you're carrying, in desperate miscalculation.
  2. The trust of someone you could rely on, at panicked gunpoint.
  3. Someone who followed you, in gory agony.
  4. The fire in you they followed.
  5. Your freedom, to the open arms of a caretaker.
  6. Your freedom, to a place you can't escape alone.
  7. A memory that protected you, or guided you.
  8. One of your limbs. It goes on and on and on without you.
  9. Screaming gone to ragged tatters.
  10. Clothing gone to ragged tatters.
  11. Skin, now. Sorry.
  12. Your faith in something more than living.
  13. All your motion more than walking.
  14. Walking too.
  15. Some sense gone insensate.
  16. The you you'll never be again.
  17. The you that they believed in.
  18. All hope of victory.
  19. All hope of turning back.
  20. The hatred that made this matter.

You can sacrifice anything you have until it's gone. They might return one day. But they'll remember.


by Vicky Wyman, from Xanadu

Adaptation to this system is more or less straightforward. Something that would deal 4 damage forces its victim to take 4 wounds instead. Something that would adjust your total HP instead adjusts the thresholds for your different methods of giving wounds back.


I think non-player characters should use these rules too, if the players do. It's a good tool of characterization. 

 

There's room to grow from here: Terror, for losing your bearings in breathless flight and abandoning your friends in the dark. Heat, for losing your home and your friends and your capacity for trust and your freedom in prison. Shame for losing your sense of self and being cast into exile and beaten with rods. They'll differ in texture: medical attention and exacerbation and leverage and sacrifice, but they're all wounds. Track them all together, if you like.




Comments

  1. Joy of DiceJuly 15, 2025 at 1:50 AM

    Oh this is crazy good.

    Desperation pitch-black, worming itself out of blank eyes.
    Knife in hand, gripped as tight as a torch in the dark.
    A lightning rod to ground the self that abyssal sea.

    That wounds and terror and shame becomes a thing to invoke gives it this two sided weight, and helps the GM in remembering it exists, when the players invoke it. When something negative becomes a source of strength (or vice versa) I always get these strong mental pictures. The gulf that the mind must cover paints a picture of the inner workings of the character.

    I can imagine a world where that is all that matters. Wounds, Terror, Shame. What you do with it. What can you do with it? Will you walk with The terrible weight or terrible lightness of being?

    ReplyDelete

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