Trauma and Symptoms

What Trauma Is
Trauma is an important and integral part of Kingdom Come. It represents the struggle you have to, more or less keep yourself sane in the face of everything you've been through in this world of clay, the heartrending experience of being cast out of Heaven, and everything else that weighs upon your heart and mind. Trauma is, at its core, 'stress'. It presents a great opportunity for you to exercise your roleplaying muscles, and it makes the whole game that much more interesting. You need to remember that Trauma is not a *bad* thing; it's an inextricable part of the kind of creature you are. The Fallen are more susceptible to suffering Trauma (at least psychological and emotional Trauma) than humans might be, and therefore, are living that much "closer to the edge".

How Trauma Works
Here is a rundown of how Trauma works, how it affects you, and what makes it Go Away.

Trauma is what you undergo when you are faced with a situation or conflict in which you must make a decision that is in some way distasteful to you. It can be related to Morality, but it doesn't have to be. Basically, whenever you're facing your own fears and 'inner demons', you're at the brink of the risk of Trauma. You may incur Trauma by committing, being the victim of, or witnessing something morally objectionable.

Many characters find Trauma shameful (I won't mention any names here, Cheriour), and will try to mask the stress they are facing. Think: denial.

From the book:

A character gains Traumatic wounds based off their Morality and the experiences they go through...Trauma is marked on your character sheet in a similar way to physical wounds (Surface levels are marked first, then Severe, and finally, Mortal). Unless a Technique (or the Storyguide) specifies which type of Trauma (Emotional or Psychological) is inflicted, the character is free to choose where they will take the wound...Players are always free, and, in fact, are encouraged to give Trauma to themselves when they experience moments of stress and angst. (emphasis mine)

Surface Trauma should affect your roleplaying, but in subtle ways; it shouldn't really affect what you're able to do. However, Severe Trauma represents some kind of emotional or psychological breakdown (which is why you must take a Symptom whenever you take Severe Trauma). If you take Mortal Trauma, you suffer a complete breakdown and will only be able to play your character with Storyguide permission (you have to relent to all challenges if you've taken Mortal Trauma).

How to Heal Trauma
From the book:

...all actual healing is accomplished by using a Secular Action. Without taking an action, [you] will not be able to heal any wounds.

You can take a Rehabilitation action as one of your Endeavours. The Artist profession allows you to attempt to heal yourself on your own, and the Therapist profession allows you to try to heal someone else's Trauma (in which case, your Rehabilitation action would be on someone else's behalf; your target must be willing, and s/he can take an Aid action to basically help you help them work through it all). If the Rehabilitation action is successful, you make a Trauma test to rid yourself of a wound (either versus Anima or Psyche, depending on whther it's an Emotional or Psychological wound). The difficulty of this Fixed Challenge depends on the difficulty of the original Rehabilitation Action, and it is an inverse relationship (the more you put in to the Rehabilitation Action, the less difficult it will be to heal).

Ranks in Artist or Therapist Professions give Inspirations toward the Healing challenge. Any Risk incurred gives a Hindrance.

Absolution and Confession also help in healing Trauma.

If you have undergone Severe Trauma and have incurred a Symptom, you don't remove that Symptom from your character sheet once the Trauma is healed. That Symptom now becomes dormant, and may again become active in times of stress.

Symptoms

Remember, if you have Active Symptoms, you should try to act out your Symptoms at least once per session. If your Symptoms are dormant, you should play them if and when you experience more Trauma. Symptoms are not like 'derangements' in the White Wolf system, necessarily. Symptoms affect your personality (and you need to act them out, because they affect your personality often in ways that are visible to other characters). If you take a Severe Traumatic Wound, you will also take a Symptom (which is often embarassing to you because you're not quite able to 'keep it together, man'). I'd like to quote the book here, if I may:

Most Symptoms are triggered either by a reminder of the original event or by moments of (possibly unrelated) stress. A character can take the same Symptom twice if they have received multiple Traumatic wounds. Of course, by taking a Symptom twice, it should be twice as intense or it should last at least twice as long.

You can actually incur more Traumatic Wounds if you try to ignore your Symptoms (and/or if you don't play them). Of course, your Symptoms can be used against you by other characters. If your Symptom is drawn out by another character, you will have a Potent Hindrance (-2 to all die rolls) against you for every Symptom you're displaying, in addition to any of the Symptom's side effects.

There are ways, through Techniques and through Professions, to learn someone else's Symptoms. Certain Techniques can also inflict specific Symptoms on characters.

So in this month's game, when many of us took 1 trauma for either the crucifixion or the head-bashing, we would experience severe trauma (and, therefore, a symptom) if and only if we had only 1 surface wound? (Or is it possible to have 0?) (ie, Do we need to actually *take* a severe wound, or just be out of surface wounds?)

In certain situations, the Storyguide will assess that the Trauma you are facing surpasses surface Trauma and slides right into Severe, in which case, the test you make will be for Severe Trauma. F'rinstance, it doesn't make sense for someone with a Typical (or even Hardened) morality who has just witnessed (or experienced) the horror that was Auschwitz to test for Surface Trauma.

And Crucifixion is one of those things that's pretty freaking Traumatic.

There are mechanics in the book for exactly what kind of Trauma test to make after having witnessed a Crucifixion, but we couldn't find it on the fly, so that was the call I made.

With other damage, it is possible to have 0 Surface wounds left and not take any Severe wounds (provided that whatever gave you the Surface Wounds has stopped doing that thing it was doing), and I'm sure it's the same with Trauma. But when the Storyguide tells you the test is for Severe Trauma, I think it automatically eats up your Surface Wounds as well if you fail.

Because the test this month was a Severe Trauma test, if you failed, you took a Symptom (which will now always be on your character sheet, although it may be dormant).

Trauma is fun stuff, really.

Oh, and would those who *did* fail the Trauma test please inform me of which Symptom you took?

Thanks!

It has been mentioned to me that sometimes, while I think I Make Sense, in fact, I Make No Sense at all. So stay tuned for more (and more clear!) information on how Trauma and Wound levels actually work, the mechanics of them, and how and when to mark them on your character sheet.

... The trauma thread is locked. Was that on purpose?

Is "most of your Trauma" aligned if exactly half of it is?

Yes, locking the threads was done on purpose.

And, no. If exactly half of your Trauma is Aligned, then exactly half of it is aligned. That means that if you take another Traumatic Wound, you will suffer a breakdown (and, usually, you'll want to retire your character) if the next Traumatic Wound is unaligned Trauma.

If the next Traumatic Wound you take is Aligned, however, you will suffer a breakdown *and* all of your Trauma in that area (psychological or emotional) will be 'healed' because you will shift Morality.

So if you have one Surface Trauma, and you've crossed it off with Immoral Trauma; and if you have one Severe Trauma, and you've crossed it off with unaligned Trauma; and if you then take an Immoral Trauma, your morality shifts one 'bump' toward Irredeemable.

What if you have one surface wound box, two severe wound boxes, and one mortal wound box and your surface wound is aligned, your first severe is aligned, your second severe is unaligned, and your mortal is unaligned? This may have been answered previously, but I'm lazy and willing to grant Laura the benefit of the doubt that she looked into it before posting.

If that is the case, then you would suffer a breakdown and your morality would shift toward the side of the spectrum that you hold the most kind of *aligned* trauma in.

So if the aligned Trauma you took were both Immoral, you would shift toward Irredeemable.

If the aligned Trauma you took were both Moral, you would shift toward Innocent.

If you had one Moral and one Immoral, you would have a breakdown without a Morality shift.

cenobyte wrote:If you had one Moral and one Immoral, you would have a breakdown without a Morality shift.

This, I presume, is the 'bad' kind of breakdown where you can't do anything but aid someone's 'rehab you' effort.

yup.
Because when you have a breakdown from aligned trauma, all your other trauma in that Set is 'healed'.

Yeah, my question was what Jordan asked.. if it were half at the point of the breakdown. Thanks.