After our brief try-out of The Dolorous Stroke the other night, a couple of other thoughts occurred to me. The first was the phrase "mortal wound".
This was an absolute staple of my childhood reading in epics and myths. But I haven't heard it used for years - and not once, I think, since I got back into gaming. Why? I suspect it's because most wargames and RPGs don't really cater for the idea of a mortally wounded warrior who staggers around the battlefield taking out a few more foes before succumbing to his injuries.
And that's a real shame. It's such a huge part of the stories that inspired fantasy gaming in the first place. There are lots of epic and mythological examples. Take Cuchulain, for example:
Then Lugaid threw the spear, and it went through and through Cuchulain's body, and he knew he had got his deadly wound; and his bowels came out on the cushions of the chariot, and his only horse went away from him, the Black Sainglain, with half the harness hanging from his neck, and left his master, the king of the heroes of Ireland, to die upon the plain of Muirthemne. Then Cuchulain said: "There is great desire on me to go to that lake beyond, and to get a drink from it."
"We will give you leave to do that," they said, "if you will come back to us after."
"I will bid you come for me if I am not able to come back myself," said Cuchulain.
Then he gathered up his bowels into his body, and he went down to the lake. He drank a drink and he washed himself, and he returned back again to his death, and he called to his enemies to come and meet him.
There was a pillar-stone west of the lake, and his eye lit on it, and he went to the pillar-stone, and he tied himself to it with his breast-belt, the way he would not meet his death lying down, but would meet it standing up. Then his enemies came round about him, but they were in dread of going close to him, for they were not sure but he might be still alive.
And then there's Boromir (whose death has a distinct echo of Cuchulain's):
Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fierce than ever. Pippin did not remember much more. His last memory was of Boromir leaning against a tree, plucking out an arrow; then darkness fell suddenly.
When Aragorn finds Boromir, he "was pierced by many black-feathered arrows" and had killed four of the very large goblins of Isengard, so he clearly fought on after receiving his mortal wounds (he killed some of the big Orcs who shot him dead, as other of their kind later boast).
Anyway, The Dolorous Stroke is the first game I can recall playing that has mortal wounds worked in as an integral part - disembowellments, bleeding out and other grisly and prolonged exits. I'm sure there are others - actually, RuneQuest may well have some rules for this, though I think the character is generally incapacitated at that point - but they've never come up in any game I've played in.
So, if you think that fantasy wargames should attempt to emulate epic, myth and the better sort of fantasy literature, that's a huge point in The Dolorous Stroke's favour.
The second point that occurred to me was how welcome the lack of points values is. All the best skirmish games I've played have involved asymmetrical forces. Our family-favourite scenario for Song of Blades and Heroes is a last-stand scenario that pits five elven archers (around 500 points) against at least 1,500 points of monsters. It's worked brilliantly every time we've played it. So any game that encourages asymmetrical games is to be applauded.
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