You feel a burning flash run through your body and your vision is filled with a million tiny splatters of blood as most of the vessels in your eyes simultaneously explode. You try to scream but all that manifests is a horrid gurgle as your lungs also fill with blood, bubbling up to your mouth and running down your chin. Red fluid also leaks from beneath your finger nails and a vein in your wrist pops free of the skin, writing and twisting and spraying gore. Then the burning fades and your heart rate calms but still pumps hard to replace the fluids lost through your wounds. You've been nailed with a Power Bolt....a Power Bolt that only did serious damage.

Be it by bullet, car wreck, IC or spell every runner is going to get hurt. Unfortunately the definition of "hurt" tends to elude a lot of PCs and gamemasters. A runner doesn't care about the Serious damage because they say they're "tough". Well guess what, buddy, tough doesn't help you when fifty percent of your body is covered with first degree burns.

While the Condition Monitor is a wonderful way of keeping track of exactly how far a character has to go before they're dead it does a crappy job at giving you any clue as to what state the character is in before he gets there. Sure there's the modifiers but it's not as if the character gets shot, is given his plus two, and is suddenly unable to do everything as well as they could a moment before. Light damage may mean you got the tip of your trigger finger sliced off. Moderate damage may mean a bullet just shattered your elbow.. Serious damage may mean somebody just smashed both of your hips with a sledge hammer. And Deadly damage, well, we all know what that means. If you just went by the Condition Monitor the guy with the smashed hips would take his plus three, get up, and mosey on his way.

It seems that many PCs, as well as GMs, don't think about the actual effects of getting hurt. They just figure that Light damage means you took Light damage, receive a +1 modifier, and are free to get on with the run. What it really means, or should mean, is that you're MESSED UP. Parts of you hurt like hell, may not work the way your used to, or may not even be there anymore. Your pain compensator doesn't mean a damn thing if the Moderate damage you took was the result of somebody breaking all of your fingers therefore preventing you from firing a gun regardless of how good you feel.

And then there's the morale issue. The condition monitor may only say Moderate but if that Moderate means somebody just hacked off most of your right hand even if you're a magician who casts using chants and hardly even utilized the damaged hand in the first place just seeing the white bone poking into areas of nothingness where once it was connected to a finger has got to bring you down.

So what's a good way to introduce, if you haven't already, the true meaning of getting hurt? Well, I'm going to try to show you parts of the method I use, although I admit it's a bit messy. Most of the time I just shout out an injury ("The bullet punches through your right hand") when somebody takes damage. The system gets even messier once you get to healing. Here are a few of its finer points:

Damage Effects Hierarchy

One of the first things you should do is set up a loose hierarchy of damage effects for the sake of consistency. The worst thing you can do is tell one PC that Serious means he lost an eye then turn around and tell another the same when he gets only a Moderate. My hierarchy is a bit brutal, mainly in an attempt to keep PCs from wanting to get hurt as well as reduce the over all stupidity factor. The following is a very quick summary of my hierarchy:

Light Wound: Deep cut, partially severed/broken finger, broken nose, flesh wound, small burn.

Moderate Wound: Broken arm, damaged/destroyed eye, partially severed hand/foot, broken sternum.

Serious Wound: Damaged organs, severed limb, severe burns.

Ok, so how do you know which effect to hand out? Why should a PC receive a flesh wound when they could, instead, receive a severed finger? It really depends on the situation. If two people are fighting with swords and one parrys wrong, receiving Moderate damage, the wound would involve a laceration of some kind. Magic effects are tricky because a Power Bolt can do anything from giving a person a simple heart attack to blowing his brain out through his eye sockets. But, as I mentioned above, I usually hand out whatever damage pops out of my mouth at the time, although I'm careful to make it realistic and to keep its severity in its proper category. If an NPC does moderate damage to PC with a full auto SMG burst I may shout "The bullets stitch up your arm, up your neck, and into your face chipping your jaw and clipping your jugular." This may seem brutal until you realize that most of the wounds are superficial, the jugular hole is so small it clots in a second, and the jaw is still in ok shape.

Condition Monitor Adjustments

I'm constantly playing around with the levels of damage on the PC's and NPC's condition monitors to reflect the fact that the effects of a wound are not constant. A hacked off finger may only give you a Light but, if you don't do anything about stopping the bleeding, it will further damage your through blood loss. If, however, the stump was properly treated I may allow the player to erase the Light damage altogether although they will still have a missing finger; It doesn't magically regenerate.

Also, with the condition monitor, the modifiers only reflect the OVERALL condition of a character. The number would be increased if, say, they tried to fire a gun with a hacked up hand and it would be decreased if they used a non-damaged hand.

Healing

I'm sure at least one person is wondering why "severed finger" is under the Light category of my hierarchy when it obviously takes longer than a day for such an injury to heal. For the most part I do this because on the grand scale of things such an injury isn't that big of a deal as far as modifiers are concerned. As long as it isn't a trigger finger the injured person can wrap it up and keep going. Many of the effects on my hierarchy seem especially severe for their category and don't at all jive with the healing system. This is because, for the most part, I've done away with the normal healing system.

This is mainly because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Lets say somebody took Serious damage resulting in their arm getting hacked off in a sword fight. With 2050's technology the runner could enter a good hospital, get the arm reattached, and be back out on the street in a day. Of course if he tired to lift anything with this arm it would probably fall off. But, for the most part, he's feeling ok. His other arm works fine and if he swallows a pain killer he might not even feel hurt. By the healing rules, even if he was healing at the fastest possible rate he would still have the +3 modifier for firing a gun with his good hand for another day. Sure, if he got into a fist fight or had to climb a fence he's get the +3 and probably have the arm fall off again but if he had to fire his pistol there shouldn't be any problem.

And there are a million other examples of odd healing situations. A decker who has lost an eye ball because of Moderate damage may decide he never really needed it in the first place. An hour after losing it he has a skilled medic cauterize the wound and sewed the eye shut. He feels pain, but it's nothing compared to the time he broke his leg, and he hardly notices it. Technically he would have a +2 modifier until everything has "healed". But he's not feeling any effects from the damage and as long as it doesn't get infected his eye, or eye socket as the case may be, will heal without him even noticing. Why, then, the +2?

With magical healing things get a bit weirder. If a character who received Moderate damage because a bullet grazed their eye was healed magically then I consider the eye healed as well. If, however, the eye was completely shot out to the point that there was little eye left to heal the magic would simply heal the socket. If somebody had their arm hacked off, receiving Serious damage, magic would be able to heal the stump but wouldn't be able to take care of the entire arm. Even through the character was technically "healed" they would still be without the arm and would still receive a modifier of some type for, say, climbing a wall. There are many exceptions to the above results, such as when the hacked off limb is placed in it's original location and magic is able to merge the pieces together again.

First aid works kind of like magical healing, only it's much sloppier. If somebody was shot through a lung I would allow somebody using first aid to "heal" it, although this healing would involve a quick, messy sealing of the hole and a better repair job would probably be necessary later to insure that the hole does not reopen. With a hacked off arm on the spot first aid would be able to do little more than preserve the arm, cauterize the stump, and place the injured individual in a better position to fully heal once the run was over.

What you have to do if you want healing to be realistic is take into account not only the over all damage shown on the Condition Monitor, but the individual injury as well. Sure this complicates things but such is the price one pays for realism. Integrating the concept of "hurt" into the game may be difficult. Most players like to think of their PCs as machines who's ability to do and to not do things is measured by the boxes of a condition monitor. They may not understand that although the damage was Light the bullet went through the runner's smartgun pad in the process thus rendering it inoperable.

And, on a final note, let me mention that the best way to keep track of wounds and healing and everything related to the two is to give the players karma bonuses for integrating their damage into their roleplaying as well as reducing their karma when they don't. Getting hurt isn't an aspect of a character that can be overlooked.

P.S. I just wanted to add on these mock injury related Gamemaster vs. Pain In The Ass Player verbal exchanges because, well, I though they were kinda funny.

GM: You jump out of the Brumby's way a little too late and it clips the lower part of your legs, cracking your shins, and giving you Moderate damage.

PC: I run away.

GM: Uh, you have two shattered leg related bones.

PC: I only have a +2, I can run.

GM: On what?

PC: My legs.

GM: Your legs are broken.

PC: But it's only Moderate.

GM: You, as a whole, are Moderately damaged. Your legs, as a whole, are Seriously damaged. Your lower legs, by themselves, are Dead.

GM: Your sword swing is too low and the troll hammers his baseball bat into your right shoulder, breaking it into four or five pieces, and giving you Moderate damage. He then runs away.

PC: Whoooo, that was close! Anybody for a beer?

GM: What about your shoulder?

PC: I was going to take some time off anyway. It'll heal on it's own in a week, ten days tops.

GM: It is in five pieces.

PC: And?

GM: The five pieces don't know where to go. The first piece is thinking about sliding further down your arm. The second is considering merging with the third even though they were not originally joined. The forth is wondering if it is sharp enough to puncture your skin. The fifth is sitting near a major artery and is wondering what's inside it.

PC: So? I'm getting into my car.

GM: You feel a sting as you open the door. The fourth piece is happy, your skin was thinner than it thought.

GM: The sniper rifle round slams into your chest, nicking a lung, bouncing off of and breaking a rib, ricochetting through your liver and finally leaving through your stomach thus giving you Serious damage.

PC: Ok! Where is he!!!?? Where's the sniper!!!??

GM: It's getting hard for you to breathe.

PC: He's gotta be around here somewhere. Ah, on top of that building! I run towards the building.

GM: You feel a burning pain in your gut. As you run more blood begins to flow from your wound.

PC: Hope he doesn't shoot me again, I'm almost dead! Tee Hee! Hey, maybe under that car!!

GM: You're feeling light headed and can hardly breathe.

PC: Whoops! No more running for me! I'll just walk to the car.

GM: The speed at which you are traversing the sidewalk means little to your liver which, by the way, is beginning to fail.

PC: I'll patch that baby up back at home base! Now where was I...Oh, Yeah! Here sniper, sniper, sniper.....

GM: Your world is beginning to fade, you feel like you are going to fall over. Blood now soaks your clothing.

PC: Darn! I'll have to get those cleaned! Mr. Sniper....

GM: You fall to the ground and everything goes black.

PC: Oh, so he's using some spell on me! Dirty mage! Show your face, you pansy!

GM: A white light appears above you and beckons you upward. "The good Lord awaits you, my child." booms an omniscient voice.

PC: Good! Maybe this Lord character knows where the sniper is!

GM: I give up....