Injury Option for HISTORY MAKER GOLF
Delphi user Jimmy_Pettaya posted on the PLAAY Games forum his desire for some sort of injury chart for HMG. He put together some great ideas, which made me think (always a dangerous thing!)...
There's no question, injuries are becoming more common in pro golf. There's much that's been posted on that topic, but most of these posts explore the reasons WHY this is happening. There are few that document the actual percentages of how OFTEN it's happening! But, with a little creativity, I think we can approximate the occurance of injuries in pro golf with reasonable accuracy.
Here's a link from a fantasy sports site that presents a comprehensive list of current (as of 5/2017) golfers with injuries...
And here's another link specific to golf injuries, from a sports injury rehab website...
If we use theses resources as a base for creating a contemporary injury chart for HMG, here are some conclusions we might draw...
The odds of a golfer suffering an injury that would keep him out of action appears to be roughly 10% over one year. I suggest that because there are roughly 200-250 golfers on the PGA tour, and 25 of them are included on this list. Thus, we would want an HMG injury chart to generate roughly 20-25 injuries over a span of one year's play, which would be between 40 and 50 events. This would suggest that an injury should occur roughly every other event.
Since the HMG Tourney Day procedure concludes with only the 10 to 12 contenders, the injury mechanic would need to kick in during the preliminary process. That way ANY golfer could potentially suffer injury, not just the contending golfers.
The duration of injury rehab appears to be most often "unknown." In other words, it looks like most injured golfers don't know how long their injury will keep them out of action. Only 20% of injury listings had any kind of expected return date, and many of those appeared to be only guesswork. To me, in game terms, this would suggest than most injuries should be "TFN" results. One golfer (Sangmoon Bae) is listed as out for the year: our chart should have that possibility as well, albeit remotely.
The most common injury type appears to be back injury: almost a third of all injuries were back injuries. Of course, there are many types of back injuries: "upper spine," "lower back" and even "neck" injuries. The sports injury therapy site lists lower back pain alone as accounting for 20% of all golf injuries. We'll just group them all as "back injuries." On the golfer injury chart, the next most common ailment is "wrist," followed by "undisclosed." (It's interesting, full disclosure is apparently not required in pro golf! NOT the way it is in pro football, or baseball, anyway!)
The sports injury therapy site lists elbow, foot, knee and shoulder ailments as rounding out the top five. Also notable is that a few golfers are out of action for "family" or "personal" reasons—an injury chart probably could include those, too.
To summarize, we want an injury chart where 20% of injuries are for a specific time frame, and the rest should be "TFN." One of the "specific lengths" should be "out for rest of season." The chart should generate a back injury about a third of the time, an undisclosed injury about a tenth of the time. The remaining injuries should be more or less evenly divided between the various common ailments.
With all this in mind, I propose the following idea: Add a "golfer exit" result to the "MAKING THE CUT" section, dice roll 11. The text could be altered to read, "[draw] golfer EXITS tournament, TOP remaining golfer makes cut." For the EXITING golfer, roll again...
11 Misses this event and next event, family/personal.
12 Misses this event and next event, illness.
13 Misses this event and next two events, undisclosed injury.
14 Misses this event and next [dice] events, back injury.
15 Out TFN, elbow injury.
16 Out TFN, knee injury.
22 Out TFN, hip injury.
23 Out TFN, shoulder injury.
24 Out TFN, back injury.
25 Out TFN, foot injury.
26 Out TFN, wrist injury.
33 Out TFN, elbow injury.
34 Out TFN, back injury.
35 Out TFN, hip injury.
36 Out TFN, wrist injury.
44 Out TFN, rib injury.
45 Out TFN, back injury.
46 Out TFN, back injury.
55 Out TFN, undisclosed injury.
56 Out TFN, arm injury.
66 Out for season; (1-2)back injury; (3)wrist injury; (4) hip injury; (5) shoulder injury; (6) foot injury.
I believe this distribution of results will mimic actual contemporary pro golf injury results reasonably well. I've created a game board that you can download, print, and place in your game box. If you DO try this out, let us know how it works for you!