I think I have short arms.
I could be wrong about that; it’s difficult to really know how any body part compares to what is normal (frustrating for some people, no doubt). I know that I have a rather long torso; I have the same inseam as my brother, who is three or four inches shorter than I overall, so I have to make up for it somewhere. (For anyone who perhaps does not know, the inseam is the inside length of your leg.) Besides, I don’t fit terribly well in cars, because even though at a shade shy of six feet I’m not all that tall, my head is constantly finding the roof, and the sun visor easily blocks more of my view than it ought. I frequently find myself hunching over at traffic lights to bring the light below the top edge of the windshield.
Thus it could be that my arms are not really short; it’s just that as measured against my body, they seem so. My father-in-law had proportionately long arms, but he was a very short man so I don’t know whether his arms were actually longer than mine, or whether my arms on his body would have reached just as far. The problem of my short arms has come to my attention just lately because I have a new pair of jeans, and I can’t reach the bottoms of the pockets without bending rather awkwardly, so it’s been in my mind.
It has also brought back to my mind a story I heard long ago of someone else with short arms, which I heard before it occurred to me that I might have short arms myself. The story is set during those days when dueling had shifted from swords to pistols, but pistols were still fairly new. One young man was challenged to a duel; he had short arms, and could see that he stood little chance of out-drawing his opponent.
It will at this point help to look back through time to understand the transition that had taken place. For generations, the sword was the honorable weapon, and in a duel men would draw their swords and fence to first blood or some similarly identifiable conclusion. Swords, of course, were generally worn on the left (for right handed individuals), because the length of the weapon required that they be drawn across the body to get maximum advantage from the length of the arm. If you wore your sword on your right hip, you would have significant difficulty freeing the full length of the blade from the scabbard while gripping the hilt with your right hand.
Thus when swords began to give space to guns, the users were already accustomed to reaching across their bodies to draw the sword, and that was where they put their guns. These are the famed cross-draw holsters, and costume from the period, such as the garb of pirates, usually shows pistols on the front of the belt angled for easy reach by the opposite hand.
Perhaps now you’ll see the dilemma our short-armed hero had. Reaching across his body would pose a problem. My arms are not so short that I couldn’t manage a cross-draw holster (although if I put on any more weight, it’s going to be a problem), but if you can imagine trying to use your right hand to get your keys out of your left pocket, you might have a good idea of the matter. He could certainly draw a gun and fire it from such a position; but he could not do it at all quickly, and against an opponent in a duel he would be facing certain death.
Yet of course he would have to accept the duel; after all, death before dishonor, and all that.
His father was not eager to see his son shot down in such an unfair fight; on the other hand, he, too, bought all that honor stuff of the age, so he would never suggest that his son back down from a challenge. It was just a matter of solving the problem of drawing the gun. Dad had an idea: let’s move it somewhere where you can reach it. Pistol barrels are not really that long; you can clear the holster fairly easily with them. Let’s put the gun on your right hip, and grab it with your right hand. Now all you have to do is pull it out, swing it up, and it’s already lined up with your adversary. The quick-draw holster thus was invented to solve the problems of a man whose arms were a bit too short to effectively use the cross-draw design.
The duel that inspired this never took place. His opponent took one look at the new holster concept, and conceded. No one could outdraw that design if they were shooting from a cross-draw position; in the time it would take to line up the shot, you would be dead. Still, once the advantages were seen, the quick-draw holster replaced the cross-draw almost completely.
My own short arms have not led to any such innovations. However, there are things I do particularly to counter my own disabilities. My vision is poor enough that if my glasses fall on the floor I might be a long time searching for them; on one occasion I spent the night on the couch waiting for someone to come downstairs and spot the elusive eyewear, for fear that in going upstairs I would step on them. Thus I never remove my glasses without putting them immediately in one of several specific places–my night table drawer when I sleep, the counter by the sink when I shower, the pocket of my terrycloth robe when I swim. People who have disabilities create ways of compensating. These can be extraordinary and world-changing like the quick-draw holster; they could be boring like my careful attention to my corrective lenses. They will be there.
They will be there for characters, too. Watch Matt Murdock getting ready for his day in Daredevil, as he carefully arranges his money so he can identify it by touch instead of sight (among the many tricks he uses). In a slightly different context, Mel Gibson’s Maverick lets everyone see just how fast he can draw a gun, and so never has to demonstrate that he can’t actually hit anything with it. When Harry Potter’s headmaster Dumbledore hired the centaur Firenze to teach divination (in the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), the class had to be moved from the tower room above the trapdoor to a ground floor classroom more accessible to him. Smart characters use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. This isn’t even limited to smart characters. Even stupid brutes are aware that they’re more likely to win an argument with their left hook than their clever insights and repartee. We all play to our strengths, and our characters will as well.
So apply it to your characters. How does the dwarf compensate for the fact that he is short and stocky? The dralasite is colorblind; what does he do to overcome this disadvantage? The yazirian wears dark glasses during the day, because his eyes can’t adjust to the bright sunlight; does the drow elf do something similar? Does the character have individual weaknesses that require him to do something out of the ordinary? It could be as simple as watching his diet–I can’t eat turkey, and my best friend can’t eat most seafood; diabetics have to be careful of their sugar intake and people with gall bladder problems must watch their fats.
These quirks can make the character interesting; done well, though, they can go beyond that to make the game more interesting. Those compensating actions or objects can have ramifications through the game world, if given thought. How do they impact the other player characters? How do strangers respond? What does it require of the character when unusual circumstances arise? All this can complicate the story, and complications are what make stories most interesting.
Give some consideration to these minor disabilities and simple vulnerabilities, but even more pay attention to the compensations that are required to overcome them.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
