The Viking Hat GM

  One of the troublesome parts of any game is counting consumables, whether ammunition, food, torches, spells or whatever. In normal circumstances this can be handwaved, since the party is not out long enough to use up all their ammunition and other consumables, and can resupply. For example, one study [ lengthy pdf , but interesting] of police shootings found, Officers involved in gunfights fired, on average, 7.6 rounds, compared with an average of 3.5 for officers who fired against subjects who did not return fire. Between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate was 18 percent for gunfights. Between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate in situations in which fire was not returned was 30 percent. Thus in any encounter, modern police officers are typically firing off less than a single magazine. In reality the officer who shoots a suspect is spending the next several months dealing with the legal fallout of it all. But in a typical game setting where they go out on the beat again tomorrow,

Gear needed for this article: snacks AD&D1e  Dungeon Master's Guide AD&D1e  Monster Manual Polyhedral dice Hex paper and notepad, or Laptop with internet connection Commonly GM guides will tell you to draw a world, then a continent, put in mountain ranges and so on. This "top-down" approach (as detailed very well by Bat in the Attic ) is lots of fun, because we all like to draw big maps. But it's less than useful for running a game, because you invariably get caught up in minor details that'll never see the light of play. On the principle of "the teacher only needs to be one chapter ahead of the students in the textbook," the GM only has to be a few hexes ahead of the players in the game world.  You only need a small scale. If you have a location service on your mobile phone you can review it and see that most of us only have three or four places we always go. Most medieval villagers never went more than twenty miles - a day's hard walk - fro

Following on from the previous article  on determining whether  the person is wounded, we now look at the effects  of the wounds; all of this is yet to be playtested and so is subject to change. The three wound categories are KIA, INC and WIA. The person may be left untreated, given first aid, or given proper care from a physician.  KIA means that the person is unconscious and on their way to death. Given successful first aid quickly enough, they will last those minutes, but die in hours instead. With successful physician treatment, they will recover to an INC condition. Absent treatment or failed care means death.  INC means they are incapacitated. In most cases they will also be unconscious, though some tougher individuals may be able to remain conscious or even active. Given first aid they can be kept stable for some hours, but will need to be cared for. Physician expertise can mean that in a week or two they can recover to merely WIA. Untreated or failed care means they will decay

In Conflict: the adventure game of modern warfare  we have tried to establish a more-or-less realistic wounding system to cover modern combat. This was inspired by Charles Franklin's article Hitting Them Where It Hurts .  From Franklin, we learn that of those wounded, the wounds will break down as below. KIA being death, INC being incapacitated, and WIA being merely wounded. Note, this is not the results of every “hit”, but of wounds requiring treatment . It might be for example that there are actually proportionally more hits on the torso compared to the head, but that torso hits are less likely to require the attention of a medic. But in a tactical or roleplaying game, we are not interested in hits but hurts, what takes the person out of the fight permanently (KIA), temporarily (INC) or hinders them (WIA). Head 21%,  Torso   21%,  Limbs 58% No breakdown of limbs is given, we assume exactly half of wounds on each of arms and legs. Probably roughly even chances of each limb being

The Viking Hat Way 1. Bring snacks. 2. The dice are always right. 3. I master the game, the game does not master me. 4. Momentum over perfection. 5. The game must go on! You must bring snacks because gaming is social activity. In every culture and religion worldwide, sharing food is how people bond. You will observe that people who do not bring snacks tend not to contribute in other ways - especially if they never bring, but always take. As with snacks, so with everything else.  The dice are always right because nobody likes boxed text and being railroaded, and gaming like life is meaningless without the risk of failure and death. The dice enhance the creativity of player and gamemaster both.  I master the game, the game does not master me  because no collection of rules can ever anticipate everything that might happen at the game table, and the ideas and whims of players and gamemaster. In other words: " I am the GM, I wear the Viking Hat!"  Momentum over perfection  mea