Suggestion: Healing Trauma

I have some ideas for minor tweaks to the KC rules, that I'd like to hear whether other people agree or disagree and then if lots of people like any of the ideas, perhaps it can get passed on to Trent for consideration. I'm going to post each of them in a different topic so that discussions don't get confused.

Suggestion: Remove the limit of healing only one trauma per month, but make each more difficult.

Goal: Some parity between receiving and healing trauma.

As it currently stands, there is a hard-and-fast rule about only healing one per month, and a strong suggestion about only getting one per month. Part of the intent of this game seems to be that over time, trauma will be accumulated, characters will get more burdened or become less moral, and so forth, but perhaps instead of completely disallowing it, it could just get harder. That way, it would be theoretically possible to keep yourself free of trauma, just not likely.

My idea is that if you successfully heal a point of trauma, you could then use remaining Marks on your action to go toward your next point, but at an increased difficulty. For example, Carl (aided by somebody) gets 12 marks on his Rehabilitate action. He would then get a test at High (for reaching 2 Marks), Medium (for reaching 5), and then Low (for reaching 8) difficulty.

Now, say he fails the High but succeeds at the Medium. The way I see it, he's got 7 Marks left over. I am proposing that he now gets to use those Marks to try to heal another trauma wound, if he has others. But instead of a test at High and then Medium, since this is his second wound this month, he gets tests at Epic and then High. If he actually succeeded at the Epic test, then he'd have another 5 left over. Then instead of High and Medium, shifting two difficulties, the High becomes impossible (no test) and the Medium becomes Epic.

If we wanted to make it even harder, we could also add a Storyteller re-roll (like the one for healing Lingering trauma) for each successive wound, ie none on your first wound, 1 on your second, 2 on your third... theoretically with this method it would be possible to heal up to 5 wounds in a month, but it would require at minimum 32 marks and 4 epic successes. Healing 4 wounds would require at minimum 17 marks and 3 epic successes. I think it would be pretty rare for anybody to heal more than one... but not impossible.

Personally, I think more motion back and forth on trauma is worse instead of better. Simply because I do not want to spend bunches of OOC time managing/worrying about it. I think a better approach, if trauma is getting too overwhelming, would be to throttle back on how much is being given(perhaps by more broadly applying the Only One Per Month rule) instead of making it quicker to remove. Less complicated that way.

The One Trauma per Month rule really only applies to *forced* Trauma (Trauma that you must take, without a test, f'rinstance, the trauma you take for Hollow Death).

There's no rule that says you can't make a zillion Trauma *tests* per month, depending on what happens in-game, and I don't think the 1T1M rule (One Trauma One Month) applies to infected trauma caused by Techniques.

I think making Trauma easier to heal might be a better suggestion than allowing people to heal more than one Trauma.

Hm. Perhaps.

It would still mean that if you get 3 trauma one month, no matter how much time you put into "alone time" or talk to people about it, it takes a full three months minimum to heal it. That can get really rough.

There seems to be some agreement that some change might be useful, though...

I hate to say it, and I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but how about taking less trauma? I only mention this because I have seen people take actions that require tests, or walk into a situation that would force them to make a test. You shouldn't complain about something that you inflict on yourself and that could have been avoided.

If other people are inflicting it on you, well that is another situation entirely.

No offence taken, and yes, my character has done many things that cause trauma, and also done things that couldn't have been anticipated to cause it, but did, and also had trauma inflicted on her. Sometimes the lines are blurry, but... the point I would like to make is that sometimes, *you* know something is going to be bad for your character, but it makes for a better, more interesting game in general, so you do it anyway. Or, you know that it's in your character's personality to do it. Avoiding trauma is possible, but is it really the best solution?

EDIT: I mean, avoiding some trauma.

but how about taking less trauma? I only mention this because I have seen people take actions that require tests, or walk into a situation that would force them to make a test.

OK now I'm the one trying to not sound obnoxious, but am I the only person who sees an issue with a mechanic that actively discourages players from letting their characters get into emotionally charged situations by making it prohibitively destructive to the character?

I see where you are coming from Dave, but at the same time I have to wonder if the characters should be getting into those situations. Not because they are emotionally charged. It's a LARP. Situations should be emotionally charged. Emotion is good. I think that what you are missing from your sentence is that it actively discourages players from letting their characters get involved in emotionally charged situations that the character finds morally objectionable. I don't see that as a problem.

I don't think that characters should be able to participate/witness any action with impunity. I can't do that. In my life, if real competitions, such as televised fights, get too violent and bloody, then I have to turn them off or be bothered by them -- fictional representations are another story. Why should my character be able to go to a duel or crucifixion and not be bothered by something more extreme than a simple sporting match, especially as the LARP world is supposed to be real to them.

Part of making a character is choosing the morality. The player chooses what sort of exposure the character can experience without having moral objection, be it vocal or internalised. The character can undergo morality changes over the course of a game when exposed to acts of a moral nature -- it's not as though morally inflicted trauma is an automatic death sentence to a character. As the morality changes it opens or closes the character to participation in/witnessing of various acts. If a character is constantly getting involved in acts which challenge its moral code -- as laid out by the rules -- then maybe the character's morality as played is not accurately represented by the word on their character sheet.

It’s not the moral/immoral trauma I was referring to, as it is actually extremely easy to get rid of. Most characters I have played would probably have 2-3 breakthroughs every month as they constantly bounced back and forth across the hardened/hardcore line if I was actively recording every moral and immoral trauma I got. This is a completely separate issue and one that Jill (and others) and I will never see eye to eye on so I have changed my downtime submissions accordingly.



It is other trauma that I think discourages players from getting into emotionally charged situations. I of course realize that for players who are more interested in story than mechanics no system will prevent them from the story they are trying to tell. The corollary is that for players more interested in the game aspect than the story aspect, no mechanic can “force” them to switch their preferences either. What a punitive trauma system does is discourage players who like both the “game” aspect of LARP in addition to the “story” aspect from trying to do both.

If a character is constantly getting involved in acts which
challenge its moral code -- as laid out by the rules -- then maybe the
character's morality as played is not accurately represented by the word
on their character sheet.

But.. you don't always choose that word on your character sheet in this game.



Something that Paul and I were talking about that might work really well as a change for this game (but is not a minor change by any means) was actually a complete split of trauma tracks, for aligned or unaligned. When you took aligned trauma, it would go on one track, and that track would be responsible for your morality. The other would be responsible for giving you symptoms, and maybe something else so that it wouldn't be too easy to ignore. You could heal the latter, but not the former. That way, you wouldn't ever be the situation where the mechanics of the game are encouraging you to do something immoral so that you won't lose your character. (Since a breakdown happens only when you haven't done immoral things, and is so dang permanent). It would also make more sense that doing Acts of Grace can bring your morality up... if it didn't also give you symptoms. (It seems to me that when you're bothered by something - ie, showing symptoms - you aren't actually getting desensitized. When you're getting desensitized, it's because you're not bothered any more.)

I don't suppose that will find much agreement, but it was a thought.