Instead of using general hit points or stamina to represent a character’s condition, the Jackrealms system uses a location-based chart to track their injuries. Injuries are usually allocated across your character’s eleven limbs in one of two ways. You assign where they are going when you buy in, and the dealer assigns where they are going when you suffer from complications. The term “limb” is used to loosely describe the important things a human uses to affect the world around them. They are not all medically defined as limbs, and many include parts not included in their name (such as Cranium including both brain and skull).
Your character’s limbs are as follows:
- Airways - (Vital) Your airways allow your body to take on required gasses from your environment, as well as excrete waste gasses back into it. Clear airways are required for all feats of athleticism, observing your environment via scent, and all spoken communication.
- Blood - (Vital) Your blood carries oxygen, nutrients, water, and other necessary substances throughout your body. Healthy blood is required for most physical actions, as well as staving off the effects of extreme environments.
- Cranium - (Vital) Your cranium includes your brain, the bone and connective tissues protecting it, and the nonvisual sensory organs contained in these structures. Injuries to your cranium interfere with your ability to perceive your environment, maintain balanced movement, and to think clearly.
- Guts - (Vital) Your guts include all the various organs which are used to process the resources you take on. An unhealthy gut can impede intense physical action, slow recovery, and make one more susceptible to the effects of disease and poison.
- Sanity - (Vital) Your sanity is your ability to understand and collect your own thoughts. Insanity stresses all other actions the character performs, especially their ability to communicate with others and make rational plans.
- Arms - Your arms are the limbs you use to manipulate your environment, which for humans are their forelimbs. Your arms and their hands are necessary for carrying things, manipulating objects, climbing, and many other purposes.
- Core - Your core is the muscles of your torso, as well as the bones which support them. Your core is activated whenever you properly perform most physical activities, and is necessary for keeping you standing upright.
- Eyes - Your eyes are used to translate light into an image by your brain. If you cannot see you will be impeded when performing most tasks, especially those done at range or for the first time.
- Legs - Your legs are the limbs you use to convey yourself, which for humans are their hindlimbs. Your legs and their feet are necessary for any upright movement, as well as assisting prone movement and swimming.
- Lucidity - Your lucidity is the precision with which you are able to understand your environment. As you become less lucid, you will have difficulty with accurate movements and understanding others’ attempts to communicate.
- Morale - Your morale is your general sense of confidence and security. Broken morale makes all tasks harder, but especially those which involve either assisting or opposing someone else.
Your character’s limbs will begin the game in a FRESH state. The first time an injury level is applied to a limb, it becomes SCUFFED. A second injury level will leave it BROKEN, and a third and final will cause it to be completely LOST! It is possible for multiple injury levels to be applied to a single limb at once. Your character’s various limbs are obviously required to perform actions, and as they accrue injuries the actions you perform with them will be impeded as follows:
- A fresh or scuffed limb may be used normally, as any damage is cosmetic at worst.
- A broken limb may still be used to perform actions. When you perform an action, the dealer will decide if any of your broken limbs would be required to perform that action. If they decide that your action would be impeded by the injury, or would require unusual compensation on your part, you count as having an action rating of zero for that action regardless of your actual rating.
- A lost limb prevents you from performing action which would require it. While a lost limb is not necessarily completely missing (it could simply be broken beyond the point of your character having any control over it), it is too far gone for you to be able to provide it enough compensation for that action.
It is always the dealer's decision whether or not a limb is required for an action, based on your narration of that action. Your character’s airways, blood, cranium, guts, and sanity are referred to as vital limbs. If any one of these limbs becomes lost, the character will die. In the case of sanity, the stress and panic of the situation either leaves them comatose, turns them against their former allies, or drives them into some danger which kills them. Either way, the dealer and player should narrate an appropriate death scene for the character. If a character had any remaining effort when they died, they may divide it up amongst the remaining members of the team. This represents a renewing of resolve thanks to either the nobility of the character’s sacrifice or the gruesomeness of the rendering they received.
If the only options you have to assign an injury during a buy in would result in the death of the character, you may still buy in. Assign the lethal injury and immediately declare and perform a single action. No other players may perform actions during this action, nor may they assist you with their own bets. Regardless of your narration this action will be from a safe position, and it is miraculously unaffected by any lost or broken limbs you may have. Regardless of the results of the action you will drop dead at the end of it, either as a result of the action or as the effects of your grievous wounds finally take you. Narrate yourself something as noble or cowardly as the character deserved, then distribute the character's remaining effort to the team.