Immoral Therapy

cenobyte wrote:I also find Immoral Therapy confusing.

See, unlike the Acts of Grace, Immoral Therapy is easy for me to justify. A Moral Therapist says "We need to sit down and work through your issues..." An Immoral Therapist can instead be That Dude Who Knows How to Party, and Immoral Therapy might consist of him showing up your place and saying "Man, why so heavy? I've got a kilo of cocaine, a case of liquor, and the numbers for some high priced prostitutes! Take the weekend off, forget your worries, we'll make it all go away!!!" In other games at least, Rehabilitation is as often "finding a way to forget about your stress" as it is any kind of working through issues, and Therapy isn't necessarily psychoanalysis, but any method of helping people get rid of stress. So Immoral Therapy often got portrayed as just pretty serious R&R.

And, of course, if there is a guy whose sole method of making you feel better about yourself is getting you drunk and going and trashing some shit together, it is pretty easy to see how Immoral Therapy could give Immoral Trauma to Moral characters...

I think I'm just going to follow Wade around and agree with him from now on.

I *totally* agree with you, Wade! That's always how I figured immoral therapy would work. There's lots of ways immoral folks can therapize, partying, killing, breaking stuff, breaking folks....

Here's the thing. The way I read it, Therapy can never be used to help Immoral characters. This is how I understand it:

Immoral Therapy is when an Immoral Therapist tries to "help" a Moral character heal trauma and instead lands up doing a trauma.

The only way in the book to have an Immoral character help another Immoral character is a Rehabilitation action using Infestation (is that he correct technique, it sounds right, but...) and a Cry Havoc action in downtime.

If you are Immoral you need to do that R&R that Wade mentioned, but no one can help you find that magic way to put your worries aside.

You would need a Transgression to be Immoral and be able to use Therapy to help another Immoral heal trauma. I know it's been done before. I think it was called Dark Therapy, or something. Then that person could find the right way to help you. Of course, it still did trauma to Moral characters. :)

I am pretty sure you've always been able to use Immoral Therapy to help Immoral, and Moral Therapy to help Moral. Dark Therapy was a Transgression needed to allow Moral to heal Immoral or vice versa - it allowed you to cross the lines.

The BRB is misleading in this, because there is a typo in it. A cut and paste error, actually. I don't have it on hand, but I can probably get close to doing it by memory because I've read that section in some detail:

Under Moral Therapy, it says something like "A Moral Therapist cannot help an Immoral character heal trauma." Under Immoral Therapy, it says "A Moral Therapist cannot help an Immoral character heal trauma." That is right, it is the exact same sentence repeated. I'm pretty sure the second sentence is intended to say "An Immoral Therapist cannot help a Moral character heal trauma." Not prohibiting them from helping Immoral characters. Otherwise, frankly, Immoral Therapists get cheated - Moral characters can both heal trauma and give Moral trauma, but Immoral Therapists only get half of the Profession they paid for?

Really though, I think that is one that should be kicked up the chain and have Trent directly asked about and get his answer. From a game balance perspective, if Immoral Therapists can't heal Trauma on Immoral characters, then either the ability for Moral Therapists to do Moral Trauma should be taken away, or Immoral Therapists should get some other bennie Moral Therapists don't, otherwise Moral Therapists are just plain more powerful than Immoral ones, and that seems very strange.

My point wasn't that you shouldn't suffer symptoms or other consequences, but that you shouldn't then become more evil. More traumatized: yes. More evil: I don't like it. If that's the way it is in the final game, fine, and if that's the way we're playing it now, fine, but it's still my biggest problem with this game.

I don't have the rules on me and I can't find the thread where we talked about which acts are trauma-inducing for which morality ranks, but I'm sure I could find an example that didn't involve killing, if that would help. If, for example, a person forces themselves to do something they wouldn't normally do, and they're doing it because they feel they have to in order to help others, but then they take months getting over it - well, maybe some people would feel more inclined later to do it again, but others would feel less inclined to make the same choice later, or would at least still regret it if they did. (Whereas if they, say, watched a crucifixion or two and then slipped down the morality scale for their choice, now they don't bat an eye at making that decision again).

Damn it. Well, one of Laura's posts stayed in this topic. The rest ought to have been moved over to the Morality/Trauma Discussion thread.

This Forum is starting to make me Peevish in the way it just kind of randomly assigns clickery where clickery was not intended.

I've asked Trent for clarification on Immoral Therapy.

I understood that:

• Immoral characters could receive the benefits of Therapy only through an Infestation + Cry Havoc action.
  
• Confession/Absolution
  will *always* cause Moral Trauma on an Immoral character, regardless of
  whether the person using it is Moral or Immoral. It's the nature of the
  Technique, and not who uses it, in other words.
  
• Therapists
  can be anyone; they do not need to have the Therapist profession unless
  the person using their services needs to heal Mortal Trauma (in which
  case the Therapist must be Dedicated). Small-tee 'therapists' are
  people who put Effort toward healing/aiding the rehab of another
  character. Big-tee 'Therapists' can provide Inspirations for a healing
  roll.
  
• Artist profession can be used for self-directed Therapy.
  

I have asked Trent to clarify his intent, whether Immoral Characters could receive therapy from Immoral Therapists.

I do know, though, that the use of Confession and Absolution *causes* Moral Trauma to Immoral characters. Unless you have a Transgression that allows otherwise. Some of the ...erm... backwards Techniques? Retrograde Techniques? Damnit, I can't remember the term for them...allow this sort of thing.

I
think the intent behind Therapy, story-wise, was to help ameliorate the
guilt you feel when you've done something or when you've witnessed
something "wrong". Immoral characters who receive "regular" Therapy
have Moral Wounds inflicted on them because they actually begin to feel
that guilt. For Immoral characters to remain Immoral, they must instead
get rid of the guilty feeling and continue on to "pfft". Therefore,
Immoral therapy is less of a "let's talk through this and see if we
can't just get to the bottom of what's making you feel bad" and more of
a "fuck 'em. They're all a bunch of mooks anyway" type thing.

Anyway, that's my understanding, and I've asked for clarification as requested.

The list seems pretty clear on what severity things fall under, I don't think I'd ever classify it as "mutable". The examples you give are still just theft in the moral way of thinking and the distinctions you've made are for legal classification to adjust for punishment. Also, although legally torture is assault in the legal definition of the term, I don't think the chart intends for it to be taken that way so I think I have to disagree that simply being the instigator in common assault could ever be considered Heinous unless it crosses over into other criteria, ie. torture or against a defenseless individual (child or the elderly).

The system very clearly does not allow for the mutability of things like murder either, and thus I tend to agree with the difficulties that come forward in a setting that is driven by a military outside enemy. There should really have been a "us" vs. "them" element to the morality system, as there is any morality system found on the planet, but this was not done for whatever reason. Murder is murder and it doesn't matter who it is except to say that it is always a moral crime but the basis it gives for circumstance can so readily run counter to other criteria (euthanization of the elderly for compassionate reasons) that you can quite clearly to always be acting on a Heinous level regardless of circumstances, or often, intent, which the setting is supposed to run on.

Okay. We can agree to disagree on this, I guess.

Arc wrote:The system very clearly does not allow for the mutability of things like murder either, and thus I tend to agree with the difficulties that come forward in a setting that is driven by a military outside enemy. There should really have been a "us" vs. "them" element to the morality system, as there is any morality system found on the planet, but this was not done for whatever reason. Murder is murder and it doesn't matter who it is except to say that it is always a moral crime but the basis it gives for circumstance can so readily run counter to other criteria (euthanization of the elderly for compassionate reasons) that you can quite clearly to always be acting on a Heinous level regardless of circumstances, or often, intent, which the setting is supposed to run on.

I'll point out that as is, it is impossible to murder the main enemies of the Fallen, the ones who would normally be the "other" - Angels and Devils. They can be Banished to prevent them from ever returning to Earth, but that certainly is not murder when Earth isn't their natural place to be anyway. Even Demons are damned souls returned to Earth in stolen bodies essentially, so killing them is just sending them back. So I don't really think any murder excemption is needed, so long as it is understood that "killing" an angel resembles much more trashing someone's car than murdering someone.

However, not all Fallen will know that. Yet.

Bwah.

cenobyte wrote:Okay. We can agree to disagree on this, I guess.

To be clear, I don't expound here on the forums with what the answer is to how the game is run. I am trying to show a strict reading of the text that point in directions different from those held by people with years of experience in the setting, contact with the game designer, or who has already heard a lot about the game.

I'm not doing this to prove a point other than that if Trent really wants the system to be run exactly as he intended he should be addressing the way things are worded. I'm not trying to beat out your interpretation of the rules or how you run the game because that does nothing of benefit to the game and mostly not to the system as it should be released. After all, we're supposed to be pointing out these difficulties in reading the rules since we're "play testing". The fact that you and I don't agree is the point, and the solution has to come from clearing up how the book is written.

Immoral Therapy can be done EITHER as an Infestation + Cry Havoc action OR as a regular "Rehabilitation" action, with the proviso that any therapist who provides Rehabilitation to an Immoral character will cause Moral Trauma unless the therapist is Immoral. Confession and Absoultion cause Moral Trauma to Immoral characters, even if the character using them is Immoral.

The Trash Heap has spoken.