Comments on: Using Scars in Your Game https://www.tribality.com/2018/03/12/using-scars-game/ D&D / Role Playing Mon, 16 May 2022 16:43:55 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: Jesse https://www.tribality.com/2018/03/12/using-scars-game/#comment-4978 Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:04:00 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=23490#comment-4978 In reply to Ish.

Thanks for the idea expansion!

]]> By: Ish https://www.tribality.com/2018/03/12/using-scars-game/#comment-4977 Mon, 12 Mar 2018 13:41:00 +0000 https://www.tribality.com/?p=23490#comment-4977 Scars can also serve as a social marker of membership in a certain class. Historically, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the universe students in German and Austria (all drawn from the at the upper echelons of society) went in for academic fencing in a huge way. Academic fencing was quite different from modern sport fencing or historical martial arts in that getting hit, repeatedly, in the face was the GOAL of the game. Anybody who was anybody in German/Austrian society of that era had to have a few Schmisse (“scars”). In fact, there are reports of students deliberately rubbing ash into their wounds and/or sewing them up crudely to enhance the scars left.

Extrapolating this to a fantasy world…

Maybe every dwarf of aristocratic lineage is expected to have a few broken fingers (intentionally poorly healed) on their hands to demonstrate that they were stoic enough to have them smashed with a warhammer in their youth… and as a side note, demonstrating that they’re rich enough not to need to do manual labor.

Maybe in a post-apocalyptic setting, the human survivors returning from missions routinely cut themselves to show they bleed – and thus aren’t robot-zombie-alien doppelgängers – that the scar tissue has become a stand-in for rank badge. Maybe they also work like the “mission marks” of WWII bomber crews. The Rookie hasn’t gone on any missions yet and has no bleed scars, most of the squad has a half-dozen or so, but the legendary hard-ass Sarge has so many he’s had to start cutting his other arm.

Maybe in a sci-fi setting, the powered armor used by the conscripted grunts of the last war required some sort of obvious cybernetic datajacks installed along the spine. These were crude, mass produced, and one-size-fits-all, making them obvious to anyone who sees the veterans… And the vets have come to embrace them as a marker of their status as “dangerous” to the dystopian dictatorship they live under.

Do we even need to elaborate on what missing fingers of the Yakuza could mean in the context of a modern-day action-adventure game?

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