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How D&D Shaped the Modern Videogame
PC Gamer UK, via the CVG site, has a feature up on the influence Dungeons and Dragons had on the development of videogaming. The role D&D has had in inspiring gamers is fairly well known; Masters of Doom chronicles the inspiration the Johns' campaign had on the creation of Doom and Quake. The article discusses more recent confluences of the tabletop game and videogame development, such as Obsidian's use of pen-and-paper to develop the early areas of Neverwinter Nights 2. Ideas for the late, lamented, Fallout 3 were sparked by a number of tabletop roleplaying moments from developer campaigns.
you say "Ow." and you might go woozy or you might get emotional or some part of your body might not work right
Call of Cthulhu the PC game handles this very well. While you do have a form of hitpoints on your character sheet (an EKG), your real indicators of your state are the blurred vision that gets worse with additional damage, blood spatter in your view, vision slowly going white from blood-loss, controls that stop working quite correctly, labored breathing, and the slow shuffle of walking on a broken leg with that horrible little crunching noise with each step. Insanity-inducing events or locations pull in some of these elements as well, such as the vision problems, breathing, and loss of movement control. All in all, the game is downright heart-pounding at various points throughout.
and he sketched out a system (in the context of a true medieval RPG) where each limb would have its own status: broken, different levels of bleeding, etc.
Phantasie III on the C64 (I think there was a PC version as well, amongst others) had that kind of a system. In addition to hit points, your limbs, chest, and head could be "injured" "broken" or "gone", with obvious implications for losing your head or body. It led to interesting battles, where I'd have characters with two broken arms continuing to fight because they still had most of their hitpoints and I needed to conserve the appropriate level of potion (IIRC, Potion 3 would heal 60hp and either 2 broken limbs or one lost limb). As far as actual gameplay went, it didn't really add or detract anything significant, it just made it different.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If by "75" you mean "between one and three", sure. The Player's Handbook is the only "required" book. The DM's Guide and Monster Manual make things easier but are not strictly necessary - you can run a perfectly good game without them. Everything else is purely optional. This, by the way, is exactly how it was in the older editions, so nothing has changed in that respect.
Also, the rules in 3rd Edition are actually a lot simpler, saner, and more streamlined than in 1st or 2nd.
All you need to know about this: There is a class at Full Sail, the world's top video game design school, called Rules of the Game. It talks about how all games - from card games to D&D to video games, are all based on the same principles. Best game design class I've ever had.
The instructor? Dave Arneson, co-creator, Dungeons and Dragons.