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[G-Flex]

Wind up with something like the Kujata of the Muslims, a bull endowed with four thousand each of eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, and feet. In their cosmology, he usually stands on the back of the great fish Bahamut.

Islam believes in a giant bull now?

You're talking about Arabian mythology, not Muslims.

This might seem like a nitpick, but seriously, that's kind of like saying "Christian" instead of "Germanic".

[Areyar]

you strike the mythical bull in the head with your hammer.
it explodes in a spray of gore!
your left eye is pierced by a bull skull fragment!
you weep red tears, a glorious prayer to Armok!

OK, maybe no bone shrapnell. combat is fierce enough already without having to worry about detonating heads.   

[Dareon Clearwater]

My favorite was kind of a saddle-shape, I forget if it had a scientific name attached.

Hyperbolic paraboloid. It's a mathematical name, not a scientific one. Math is about definition, not discovery.

Ah, thank you.  I knew "scientific name" was unlikely to be the proper terminology, but didn't know what the right one might be.

Wind up with something like the Kujata of the Muslims, a bull endowed with four thousand each of eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, and feet. In their cosmology, he usually stands on the back of the great fish Bahamut.

Islam believes in a giant bull now?

You're talking about Arabian mythology, not Muslims.

This might seem like a nitpick, but seriously, that's kind of like saying "Christian" instead of "Germanic".

It's a valid complaint.  I blame my source, an old popular-consumption catalog of one-page descriptions of various and sundry imaginary beasts.  It said "Moslem" (Which may be different from Muslim, in which case the error is also mine), and I assumed the author had done his homework. (Edit: Hey, whaddaya know, the Wikipedia entry for "Bahamut" lists my source right off the bat!)

I should have known something was up when I reread it looking for the right beast and ran across the "Eight-Pronged Serpent", which any halfway serious scholar would translate at least as "Orochi".

Back on topic: "You forced my nipple (And several ribs) into my lung!  How rude."

[Footkerchief]

broken rib into the heart

Wow, apparently this actually happens. 

http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/119-1245/2315/

A 72-year-old woman presented to the emergency department (ED) resuscitation room having suffered an unprovoked attack by a ram. The ram was being kept on the patient’s small holding to inseminate ewes. The animal had jumped and butted her six times on the left chest and upper limb.

[...]

On opening the chest and pericardium, a lacerated left ventricle was found, this corresponded to a similar puncture in the pericardium. Both lacerations were in keeping with perforation by a fractured rib. Surgical repair was unobtainable and the patient exsanguinated intraoperatively.

The post mortem study of the body concluded that the patient died as a result of rupture of the left ventricle, secondary to traumatic perforation by a displaced fracture rib.

Sheep: the next king of the beasts?  Okay, I feel bad for joking about that.

[Qmarx]

So, what are the odds that, with the new bone fragment rules, it actually gets MORE dangerous to have a skeleton than not?

[GaGrin]

Only if your bones are more brittle than your flesh is squashy.  For most people, most of the time having a rib-cage is a definate plus, and if I'm interpreting the system correctly, this will only happen if the hit is strong enough to cause a fairly clean break with enough remaining force to carry the fracture further into the chest.

Which means that even if you didn't have bones in the way your insides would go squish

[LumenPlacidum]

So, what are the odds that, with the new bone fragment rules, it actually gets MORE dangerous to have a skeleton than not?

I'd say pretty good.  It's a numbers issue in what's probably a very complicated dynamical system, and so only the vast testing of the community will really bring it up.

Oh, and to the map shape stuff, it's possible to have a toroidal space without curvature.  In fact, the standard definition of a torus in topology is such.  I agree that the cylinder is an acceptable substitute for a spherical world.  Of course, this would require a rewrite of the world-gen code to make the left and right sides of the map line up.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Great--now I get to consider how many ribs I think dwarfs should have.

I'm thinking less than humans.

[mendonca]

Sheep: the next king of the beasts?

This will happen. The thick layer of wool will render most attacks harmless.


Ram charges Urist!
Ram hits Urist in the left rib!
Urist is exsanguinating intraoperatively!
Urist Theatrecharmed, Shepherd, has been struck down!

[Alfador]

I always wanted to do a write-up of a fantasy world that closely resembled Earth, except it would actually be a flat, infinite plane, that went off in all directions, forever, with Earth-sized pieces of property (including continents and oceans, such as ours) separated from each other by broad tracts of arctic waste.

Not quite arctic waste, and not quite forever... but imagine if we found out we were living on the Ringworld, on the Map of Earth...

[Alfador]

and the patient exsanguinated intraoperatively.

...Why don't they just say "bled to death?"

[SirHoneyBadger]

Because nobody's sending them through medical school and then paying them surgeon wages, to say "bled to death".

[Jay]

and the patient exsanguinated intraoperatively.

...Why don't they just say "bled to death?"

Hahahahaha.
Because that's actually internal bleeding, if I'm not mistaken.
The term bled to death refers to an actual wound being made, blood completely exiting the body, etc.
Why they couldn't just say "died of internal bleeding" is beyond me.
Perhaps they just wanted to sound smart?

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

broken rib into the heart

Wow, apparently this actually happens. 

http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/119-1245/2315/

A 72-year-old woman presented to the emergency department (ED) resuscitation room having suffered an unprovoked attack by a ram. The ram was being kept on the patient’s small holding to inseminate ewes. The animal had jumped and butted her six times on the left chest and upper limb.

[...]

On opening the chest and pericardium, a lacerated left ventricle was found, this corresponded to a similar puncture in the pericardium. Both lacerations were in keeping with perforation by a fractured rib. Surgical repair was unobtainable and the patient exsanguinated intraoperatively.

The post mortem study of the body concluded that the patient died as a result of rupture of the left ventricle, secondary to traumatic perforation by a displaced fracture rib.

Sheep: the next king of the beasts?  Okay, I feel bad for joking about that.

Am I a monster for laughing at that.

[Sean Mirrsen]

and the patient exsanguinated intraoperatively.

...Why don't they just say "bled to death?"

Hahahahaha.
Because that's actually internal bleeding, if I'm not mistaken.
The term bled to death refers to an actual wound being made, blood completely exiting the body, etc.
Why they couldn't just say "died of internal bleeding" is beyond me.
Perhaps they just wanted to sound smart?

It's called sesquipedalian loquaciousness. For a reason.