From: mfp+@CS.CMU.EDU (Michael Polis)
Subject: Re: Skill and Hit Location
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 00:31:42 GMT

In article <3628@isgtec.isgtec.com>, mike@isgtec.com (Mike Sellers) writes:
|> jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
|> > Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes:
|> > >mfp+@CS.CMU.EDU (Michael Polis) writes:
|> > >> You only need to do this once, and then you can include a book of pictures
|> > >> with the game.
|> > >Player: "I want to shoot the sxybrian hiding behind that rock.
|> > >GM: "Just a minute.  <flipflipflipflip>  Hmmm, sxybrian crouching, turned 30
|> > >degrees.  <flipflipflip>  Rock cutout to place over image 1.  There!"
|> 
|> > 	You need just as many pictures as you would need hit location tables 
|> > in a non-picture system. Unless your hit location system takes into account 
|> > that third tentacle and the shape of the rock, I think you are just being 
|> > silly. 
|> 
|> No, he's not -- this is a valid playability concern.  Saying that you'll need
|> just as many pictures as you will tables *is* silly (and wrong too!).  Even if
|> it were true, having that many of anything that needs to be consulted during
|> combat drains the enjoyment right out of the game for a lot of folks (no, I don't
|> play Chartmaster).

It is a matter of accuracy.  The more accurate you are, the more pictures
you need.  If you are happy with using a chart based on a man, then you
just use a front view of a man, no matter what you are shooting at.  You
get the same accuracy as before, with the added advantage that aiming at
different parts of the person changes the probability of hitting various
locations in a simple and rational way.

The other main advantage is that when you decide that those man-eating
cows you have been fighting shouldn't be using the location table for
people, instead of having to make up an arbitrary table, you can just
draw or photocopy a picture of a man-eating cow, and have hit locations
based in reality (at least insofar as a man-eating cow is based in
reality).

I don't think you really need many pictures.  You start with:

standing humanoid (front/back)
standing humanoid (side)
quadruped (front/back)
quadruped (side)

and add more when necessary.  Those 4 drawings will take care of 90% of
what you run into.  Adding a generic bird and dragon will probably make
it 95%.  The others fall into two classes, planned encounters and random
ones.  For a planned encounter you have the picture ready.  For a random
encounter with a weird creature, which happens maybe 1% of the time, you
can draw something on the spot, trace the picture in the book you got the
creature's stats from, say that the hit locations aren't really important,
or do what gets done in systems with just one hit location table:  use
the standing humanoid or whatever picture seems closest.

If you fight a lot of kneeling people, maybe you should make a picture
of a kneeling person.  Otherwise, the picture of a standing person will
do just fine.  The advantage of this system is that you can have exactly
as much accuracy in hit locations as you want.  

|> Of course, if you can do hit location without a chart, as I do, then you've 
|> just eliminated a lot of senseless "flipping."

Do you just make up locations, or do you have a system which you can
tell us about?