Bal wrote:I think Trauma has been clarified into incomprehensibility over the
course of successive rulebook revisions as it currently stands. As with
so many things, it needs to be vastly trimmed down, simplified, and
made easier to figure out and manage.
Hear, hear!
It's not *supposed* to be that difficult. In at least one future iteration of the rulebook, it is clarified quite a bit.
In essence, there are two areas in which you can get Trauma:
Psychological (wounds in your Mind Archetype)
Emotional (wounds in your Soul Archetype)
There are only three *types* of Trauma
Infected Trauma (caused by Techniques, which can be Aligned as Moral or Immoral)
Lingering Trauma (near-permanent Trauma which is extremely difficult to heal, and which can not be taken at the surface level; if you have a Vice or something happens that causes "Lingering Trauma", it will be either Severe (Recommended) or Mortal (Gah).)
Regular Trauma There are four *levels* of Trauma:
Temporary (usually lasts only for the scene or evening)
SurfaceSevereMortal (very difficult to heal, and can not be healed on your own - you must have someone else perform a Rehabilitation action on your behalf, etc., etc., etc.)
There are three ways of *receiving* Trauma:
Forced (the situation requires you to or Storyguide tells you to take a Trauma. There is no roll. These situations are rare)
Coerced (this is not a good word, IMO, for what this actually means. It basically means that if there is a situation that breaches your Morality, or if there is a Technique used upon you, you'll be asked to make a Test to see if you take Trauma. You can only take one "Coerced" Trauma per event.)
Voluntary (you can CHOOSE to take Trauma if you're faced with a situation you feel warrants it. This makes the Storyguide grin.)
ALL Traumatic wounds are either
Aligned (Moral or Immoral) or
Unaligned. There are situations where unaligned Trauma can *become* Aligned Trauma. The alignment of your Traumatic wounds is important because if you take enough Trauma to cause a breakdown (ie. if you take your Mortal Traumatic wound), it is your Aligned Trauma which dictates whether you will have a Morality shift, and if so, in which direction your Morality will shift. It's quite straightforward: if you have *even one* Aligned Trauma in the track (Psychological or Emotional) in which you have received your Mortal Traumatic wound, your morality will shift either toward more Immoral or toward more Moral.
So there aren't nine distinct kinds of Trauma.
There are three distinct kinds of Trauma, which you can have in up to two Archetypes. Each of those individual wounds could be aligned or not (a binary switch, as it were), and you *receive* them in different ways.
I'm not sure I'm fond of the "Infected Trauma" thing; personally I think I'd like to see (and no, I'm not suggesting changing this for Providence) two kinds of Trauma (Lingering and Regular). Techniques that cause what is now Infected Trauma would simply cause Lingering Trauma. At that point, Lingering Trauma might be made easier to heal.
Tue 3 Aug 2010 - 11:47 by cenobyte
» Magic Creation-Zeal Table
Tue 3 Aug 2010 - 11:28 by cenobyte
» Houses of the Blooded in Regina, August 28th
Wed 14 Jul 2010 - 15:02 by Bal
» The Sentinel's journal
Thu 8 Jul 2010 - 20:13 by Dorian Mason
» Character backgrounds
Tue 6 Jul 2010 - 12:19 by Corral
» The dreams of Edward
Sun 4 Jul 2010 - 0:32 by Edward
» Some of Eliel's secrets
Sat 3 Jul 2010 - 17:35 by Corral
» Question/June Game
Thu 1 Jul 2010 - 22:51 by cenobyte
» "Map" of the Fallen
Thu 1 Jul 2010 - 14:17 by Molior