Funny thing about fluids, blood in particular, is that they tend to strap everywhere when an open container (such as your bleeding head) is vigorously moved. And lets not even get into what happens when you're bludgeoning someone. You'd be amazed where the red stuff lands.

Close range fights are not clean affairs. It is extremely difficult to come out of one without blood all over you, and the walls, and the ceiling. It's one thing a lot of games gloss over, and perhaps for good reason. Your kung-fu master probably isn't going to punch someone out without getting blood on his clothes and your knife adept is going to be absolutely covered in gore and viscera after a major fight. When running around with holes in your body you'll be leaving blood in the oddest of places. When running past fallen guards you'll probably step in their congealing blood and leave tracks that anyone could follow.

Placing emphasis on exactly how messy bleeding wounds can be in real life does have the potential to make the players lose their lunches. Worse, it can bog down the game with cleaning efforts or make a getaway impossible (how many PCs plan to change clothes in the middle of a run?).

On the other hand, mess makes things more real. If dead enemies guards away like video game enemies, then they are video game enemies and should be treated as such. If you have to walk through a expanding pool of arterial blood to get to your objective then then they're more real, more human, their deaths matter just a little bit more to the player, if for no other reason than for being damned inconvenient. It changes the thought processes that go into playing the game and cold blooded murder becomes less acceptable, either because the PCs don't want to deal with the cleanup or because the players don't want to hear your stomach-turning descriptions of their wanton violence.

So, how do the GMs here deal with the mess that comes with fucking a person up, or being fucked up yourself?To you give lavish descriptions of walls and covered with fine droplets of the red stuff or do you just gloss it over?

And more importantly, does anyone have any recommendations for removing blood from a stucco ceiling? Any advice would be appreciated.

Sterilize spell for the win.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to magic, due to the fact that it doesn't exist in real life.

Also, mink blanket. I think I might have to dryclean that.

Also C-Squared loaded grenades.
Alternatively, grenades loaded with white paint. Mythbusters did it, and so did Mr Bean

RL use absorbent, mostly wet material. Pat, don't streak. Pat dry as well. Failing that, bleach might help, but it tends to remain visible. Best bet tends to be just painting over it. Blood is tough. Even when painted over, you can often still get it to show.
Ah. Fur? Don't get it too wet. Use lather from a cleaning agent instead of the agent directly, perhaps with a bit of ammonia if it's white or non-dyed. Dry cleaning would be a plan.
Either way, very much a case of YMMV. Good luck with it ^^

You mean you aren't wearing the latest in graphene film fashion?
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-tuning-graphene.html

Blood does get everywhere. My dad got a meat slicer (you can see where THIS is going) and managed to drop the blade and either tried to catch it or somehow cut himself picking it up (after putting a 1.5 inch long, .5 inch deep hole in the terracotta tile floor). A day later we discovered the blood splatter...on the ceiling.

I like it when there is a high level of description, but your mileage may vary. It depends largely on the tone of the game, I think - a darker, grittier game (like, say, that Shadowrun Noire game that someone here is running) benefits more from this sort of detail than a pink mohawk game (not to say you can't do both, simultaneously).



To echo what was said before, patting the bloodstains with a wet sponge (perhaps wet with salt-water, that may help) and then patting the area dry might have some effect. Stuccoing over it, if possible, will have the best effect (short of redoing the entire ceiling). Also, don't get blood on your stucco ceiling in the first place/in the future.

It hasn't come up in my game very often, but I can get quite graphic in exposition of blood splatter and such. Especially if people are using Hollowpoint+ rounds (You know: Little hole in the front, 10-pin bowling ball-sized in the back?).

For 'Runners that leave their own blood behind, after using the slap patches to cover and stop the bleeding, using some mixed up post-usage blood from the local Street Doc, combined with C-Cubed would be a good way to give CSI conniption fits as they find multiple DNA types in the blood splatter. Make sure you get all the spots. (This tip brought to you by the Vice Sourcebook, BTW.).

I haven't played Shadowrun, but any other game that I have played where the subject of combat mess comes up, I'd have to say it depends on the tone of the game. Dark and gritty, go for it; have one of the characters slip in a pool of blood and accidentally catch the fire alarm (and I'm sure that's inspired one or two DMs who's players have the Unlucky trait). If you're not going for ultra-realism, then just gloss it over; assume that when the characters are going past a murdered guard that they watch where they step if you address it at all.

Also, I can't help but imagine that opening post being read out by Yatzee; it sounds almost exactly like something he'd use in one of his reviews.

We tried really hard to avoid gunfights and generally killing people for this reason (among others). If you manage to avoid actual use of violence it seriously reduces the chance of leaving you DNA everywhere. The few times we did get in a fight unexpectedly we spent some time after to use sterilize to get our DNA out of there, didn't worry too much about the other guys blood as we had plenty of time to deal with that.

In real life, killing someone with a knife probably counts as a blood borne pathogen exposure.

Makes you think that meleeing a ghoul shouldn't be considered "safe" in terms of getting ghouled yourself.

Depends, are you wearing a Kevlar Re-enforced Bio-hazard Suit?

I think it's all in the game. A little bit of dramatic flair is great. head coming off, the arc of blood from the bullet hole between the eyes. this is exciting stuff. but describing joe shmoe gurgaling and twitching, or some cop gasping his wife's name in his last breath, might be a downer. Also, player paranoia is absurdly high(rightly so I should add). They will spend the rest of the month cleaning up after themselves instead of getting on with the story

"Only three days 'til retirement... Blarg."

Every table will have to find the balance between lovingly detailed gore fest and clean, old-style "rise his hand to it's wound and drop" that suits their taste, but some amount of that is IMHO mandatory to create the right flavor for the dark underside of the 2070's the characters work into.

In my games we go for a mixture of results if the team has the time to deal with things it is usually assumed they avoid stepping in blood, if they are running for the hills with the security thugs at their heels a perception check might be used to make sure they can avoid stepping in the red stuff. In terms of what happens during a fight.... physiology is interesting, when your body is pumped full of adrenaline part of the vascular system gets pinched off causing reduced blood flow to the surface (I can never remember the names) to protect you against bleeding out specifically, cuts to the face still bleed pretty freely since the vital bits are fairly close to the surface but dealing with the body and the other extremities unless a lot of damage is being done (a deep cut, possibly arterial, or a through and through with a good sized round) then the bleeding will tend to be minimal and fairly easy to manage. Playing up the blood does give the game a darker feel, but go to far and it is just silly, you start going in to pink mohawk territory of a sort.

On the flipside, if you're a wizard with words, you can turn it into a ballet of blood that would make John Woo happy that he's influenced the world.

...those blades are surgically sharp.

Used to work at a deli where we had several slicers. We fresh sliced all our meats and cheeses for each sandwich order so the machine got a lot of use and required periodic cleaning thoughout the day. One evening (after pulling a double shift) managed to nick my hand while cleaning the blade. Didn't feel a thing but when I noticed the blood streaming from my hand realised what happened. Took a number of stitches to close up. Never really hurt much afterwards as the cut was so clean.

...anyone remember the descriptions in the Critical hit/Miss charts from the old Arduin Grimoire?

That's what you'd freaking need!

Close combat with ghouls is a Bad Idea, any way you slice it (pun intended). Ghouls are best dealt with using WP/incindiary grenades, napalm, full-auto sniper rifles, and other assorted overkill. Most importantly, all of these things should be used from a DISTANCE.

Would this work?

See Stahlsteele's signature. I think it's his - the quote is I know.

They are.

And I had a cut like that once, from the serated edge of a hamburger spatula intended for outdoor grill use. I was wiping the counter and smacked my hand into it. Didn't feel it, but I knew I was cut and immediately patched myself up. Hurt like hell later.

The less it hurts immediately, the sharper the blade, and generally the deeper the cut. Similarly, if you get punched, immediate pain is good. Short to medium lag, medium injury; long lag (stunned and don't feel anything for a while), big injury. Something to do with peripheral nerves and how the brain processes trauma, I think.

On the original topic, the chunky salsa effect is called that for a reason. Grenades in enclosed spaces are MESSY.

On the upside, if a grenade goes off the forensics guys will have a lot of trouble sorting your DNA out from everyone else's ^_^

If you have a semi-gloss or higher finish it might wash right off, but considering its a stucco ceiling its probably done in a flat finish. Its not really going to come out, so wipe it down and let it dry then paint over with a couple of coats of a stain sealing primer, one prefferably with an alkyd or shellac base. Ceilings colors are usually some of the straight up brightest whites you can get, so your primer might even blend moderately well as is, if not repaint with the appropriate ceiling color after the primer is completely dry.

The breadth and depth of knowledge possessed by the Dumpshock community never ceases to amaze me.

Not me. We all come from varied parts of society and have some weird areas of knowledge, and are mostly intelligent people that know better than to never stop learning.

Also, there's our families to take into consideration. I know a fair bit about Diesel and Motorcycle engines despite the fact that I can't drive.

I nominate Fauxknight for the title of 'Bob Villa of Crime Scene Coverups.'

I worked at a paint store for a couple of years. I had to learn enough to tell both amateurs and professional painters how to handle certain situations. I had one who was cleaning up after a crime scene, after everything was wiped down and an ozone machine was ran for several days to help sterilize the area. In this case they had to use a shellac base to cover up the smell.

Not to mention gamers tend to work in a variety of fields over their life times, I for example am just shy of 26 but I've been in the army, worked construction, at an auto yard, as a cook and that is before you get in to hobbies (martial arts, history, and brewing.). A friend of mine is a former marine, works in a factory doing tight tolerance manufacturing, builds cars for fun and knows more about explosives than most EOD specialists.

This only reinforces my nomination, unless you'd prefer the Martha Stewart award.

The breadth of my experiences and knowledge has impressed my friends to the point where they have outright stated, "In the event of The Apocalypse, I'm hiding behind you."

And I never was physically capable of joining the military.

Awesome ^_^

On top of that you have support job fields which can be in a myriad of businesses. I can tell you about how to make wire coils specifically designed to resist electricity and heat up. I can tell you a far bit about the mechanics of trucks from current job.

And I can tell you some strange things about the culture of medieval reenactment, and once beat a guy just out of Navy SOCOM in Iraq 2/3 in a boffer fight. I guess we all have our quirks, and Dumpshockers tend to be quirkier than most.

I could tell you things about your eyes that you don't want to hear for 30 or more years.
(They stick needles in your eyes to cure Age Related Macular Degeneration!)

And I'm not even working in the pharmaceutical business* and I picked up this stuff at work.

*I do not, my company does. See, our clients are companies like ENDO, Genentech, and Eurand. I only build stuff in Flash and HTML, all the medical info I just copy-paste and occasionally have to read or listen to and I pick up some of it.

All these revelations about how awesome you all are makes me feel sad.

And slightly worried about that 'how to get blood off stucco' question. Be honest, you're not REALLY runners, are you?

The reason I can't join the military are my knees and flat feet. I can barely jog, forget run.

They haven't tried to get me yet, but if they do I'm popping my contacts out first.

Of course we aren't runners. Why would you think that we are? Are you a Johnson?

(shifty eyes)

They found out I was allergic to the chain of command, as well as their impending liability payments when I blew my ankle out on a forced march.

A friend of mine got a honorable discharge for being himself. Not sure what exactly the nature of it was (Haven't talked to him since he left. ), but still, I find it hilarious.

Pffft! AH hahaha.

Me, I'm allergic to exercise.

Brassholes gave me hives.

Who I am isn't important. I'm simply... doing some research on behalf of a mutual friend of ours.

Methinks we have a bunch of enlisted here.

Had I actually gone in rather than them finding out via ROTC it was a very bad idea, I would've likely been the physical embodiment of Sgt. Bilko.

It's generally agreed that I'd have ended up three ways:

1 (Most likely): Training accident to teach the other folks in boot.
2: A damn fine soldier, who would be forced out due to the nature of the Canadian Armed Forces and given the suggestion to join the US Army Rangers.
3: Dishonourably Discharged for a reason that cannot be stated due to national security and common decency.

4. Drummed out after Goblinizing.