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Old 04-21-2010, 02:49 AM   #1
Elberon
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Default Trauma- the little death [house rule]

I've been thinking a bit about Trauma as it stands. A non Malakim dies and goes into Trauma and starts generating essence to get out, this takes time, sometimes a long time. If that was a PC their roleplay become experience suddenly becomes:
"here I am floating don't know if I'm up or down, I can't feel anything, interact with anything so I'll sit in the corner monologuing whilst everyone else figures a way to do a big essence dump" or
I'll generate a new character or
phew that was lucky the gm came up with a way to get me out, which deminishes it's impact.

None of which have been that palitable so I was thinking of redoing trauma something like this:

Each time you vessel die you return to your heart automatically but you also have a special kind of Discord - Trauma Discord.

Trauma Discord interferes with resonances as a Celestial Discord would but doesn't count when rolling for falling / re-deeming.
It is also harder to get rid of in that Superiors can't take it away, the only thing that cures it is time.

# Trauma Discord Time to remove
1 1 Month
2 3 Months
3 6 Months
4 10 Months
5 15 Months
6 21 Months

Each week spent working in a tether will reduce this by one (so if you had one level you could spend two weeks working in a tether and be clear of it).

Malakim of course are immune to Trauma Discord.

This does of course mean Limbo needs another look at - sometimes souls need a break, even celestial ones which means entering limbo would effectively become a player choice (or plot device which it is really already). Or you could make a check roll with it being penalised by your level of Trauma Disocrd, if you fail off to Limbo you go with the CD determining how hard it is for other to send you essence.

This will mean that characters won't have to make the original painful decision, running in all guns blazing still impacts on your character and Limbo is still there.

Chris
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Old 04-21-2010, 07:31 AM   #2
Jason
 
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Default Re: Trauma- the little death [house rule]

I think the collecting Essence bit only applies to Limbo, but I could be wrong here. I was under the impression that for celestials with a heart, it's just a Will roll every [Corporeal Forces] days. The easy way to reduce that within rules as written is to say that Trauma Baubles (in Liber Reliquarum) are standard issue to "favored" servitors, reducing Trauma to hours rather than days. Discord is an interesting take too, though, as it makes death both more short-term and more long-term in its effects, more post-traumatic stress discord than Trauma in itself.

EDIT to add: Then again, this would make Malakim a lot less terrifying, as now any celestial could simply pop back into a fight from Heaven or Hell. What if the level of your Trauma Discord determined how difficult it would be for you to get back to Earth in the exact place where you left? This would still result in "splitting the party" for a bit, but wouldn't leave players of killed PCs completely bored, as they could be running around Heaven, Hell, or some faraway Earth location, trying to find a way back to their compatriots.

Last edited by Jason; 04-21-2010 at 07:36 AM.
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Old 04-21-2010, 09:57 AM   #3
Orlin
 
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Default Re: Trauma- the little death [house rule]

As someone who still has a great deal to learn about GMing an In Nomine campaign, I have yet to encounter Trauma. None of my PC's have ever suffered a vessel death and the person that I game with the most is playing a Malakite, so even if he does die, Trauma is not an issue. I really like the way the RAW presents Trauma, but I can see where it would put hurdles in your path.

After all, the main goal is for everyone to have fun, isn't it?

Unless you make Trauma a very special kind of Discord, I think that the rule you've proposed will only reduce the impact that it has on your players. By the same token, if you simply state that all favored servitors are expedited through the process of Trauma, I feel that you would be diminishing its effect in quite the same fashion. If your players suddenly get it in their head that the aftershock of a vessel death is something their Superior will rescue them from every time, how is it any more significant?

Now, if the Superior in question were to suddenly withdraw his or her favor from a single Celestial, things could prove interesting...but then you're right back where you started, with one player sitting on his hands and the rest of the party enjoying the adventure.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions.

If you're playing a solo session with a Celestial who is not a Malakite, you can always consider role-playing the Trauma itself. This could be very tricky, because it would require you to present Trauma not as a lack of consciousness, but a shifting of consciousness. If the Celestial is old enough to remember the War, emphasize the peace and tranquility he once felt by role-playing a series of flashbacks that deal with the relative sanctity of heaven and the subsequent anguish of the division between brothers and sisters.

If the Celestial began life as a reliever, you could emphasize the transition from an existence of simplicity and comfort to one of political responsibility and doubt. Or, better yet, to the jarring contrast the angel first experienced when he or she departed from Heaven's pearly-white perfection to a terrible, smog-ridden, media-driven land of cement skyscrapers and unspeakable cruelties.

You could use a "Trauma-adventure" to reveal the relationship between a servitor and superior in any number of ways. For example, a servitor of David might find himself walking through a series of dark catacombs interspersed with both fond and terrible memories. Periodically, you could have the PC make a Will roll, with the check digit determining how close or farther away the character is getting from recovery. A low check digit might reveal that the catacombs seem to wind endlessly about, leading to darker and more disruptive memories, while higher check digits might provide the character with bright and powerful memories of his achievements, or give him vague glimpses into the tender hands of those who minister him in his sickness.

If you choose to entertain this sort of play, use the Celestial's mental landscape to tie the servitor to the superiors word and allow the "flashbacks" to present themselves as role-playing opportunities. A servitor of David may emerge from Trauma with the harried sense of a man who has just been forced to dig his way out of his own grave, while a servitor of Novalis may find herself following trails of golden seeds, soothing scents and calm, comforting voices -- even as the memory of her death repeats itself over and over and over...

Of course, if you're like most GM's, you probably don't do a whole lot of solo sessions.

That leaves another, more common solution, known as "troupe style play." The term was initially coined by White Wolf (I think) to handle politically oriented games. For example, if you and your fellow PC's send a group of servants out to do their bidding, a GM might do an entire session where the PC's play their characters servants. The same principle applies with a character in Trauma; the player could be given the opportunity to play one of his character's servants, or even an NPC. It sucks, taking a backstage seat...but that's one way to drive home the significance of trauma and vessel-death. It isn't good.

If all of your players get wiped out, you can always choose to emphasize other factors of Trauma as well. Time, for example, is paramount. If the characters had valuable leads on an antagonist or a relic of importance, you can emphasize the precious time they've lost as they were rehabilitating. In addition to lost time, the characters may lose the antagonist, the relic, their Superior's favor...or even all three.

If they were trying to protect someone, you could have the ward killed because the character's simply couldn't recover in time. By the same token, the ward could be captured by enemy hands, forced to endure weeks of grueling torture because they couldn't snap out of it in time.

There's also the issue of role. How do characters deal with losing a potentially powerful position of status if they recover from Trauma just in time to witness their last vessel's funeral?

If none of these factors suit your style, you could manifest Trauma as a special type of Discord that cannot be vanquished except by time.

If you do this, I suggest it should do more than interfere with the character's ability to activate his or her resonance; it should act as another form of Discord that cannot be identified until the player discovers it. A character who was pushed off of a cliff might suddenly develop a terrible fear of heights. A character who was shot to death might suffer a penalty to the TN of all Dodge or Ranged Weapons rolls when engaged in a firefight, equal to the level of Trauma.

The Trauma could even manifest as an uncomfortably human desire to be treated with corporeal affection: a persistent need (or even a Need) to be held, or to confide in someone, scaled to the level of the Trauma. A character with a particularly high level of Trauma might even be prone to fits of trembling, mood swings, or bouts of weepiness...making for potentially embarrassing situations around Superiors, who may do anything from scorn them to keeping them tucked safely away in Heaven until they are no longer a liability.

Ultimately, the way you choose to represent Trauma is up to you. And while, yes, I realize that Celestial's don't have dreamscapes in the same way human's do, who is to say that Trauma is not the one exception? It doesn't have to be a thing of the Marches, but the mind itself. A sort of "self-repair" feature built into the instruments of the symphony.

I hope that was helpful. On a side note, does anyone know of a book where Trauma is explained in detail?
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Last edited by Orlin; 04-21-2010 at 03:18 PM. Reason: weird text that I didn't delete at the bottom
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Old 04-21-2010, 10:29 AM   #4
Archangel Beth
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Default Re: Trauma- the little death [house rule]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason View Post
I think the collecting Essence bit only applies to Limbo,
You are perfectly correct. Essence-for-vessels used to apply, in one of the playtest drafts (and may be alluded to in some of the dead-trees core rule vignettes, though I think it got axed in the PDF?), but if you have an intact Heart, you get vessels from a Superior, not from Essence.

If you're an ethereal or in Limbo, you gotta do Essence.
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Old 04-21-2010, 12:27 PM   #5
JCD
 
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Default Re: Trauma- the little death [house rule]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Archangel Beth View Post
You are perfectly correct. Essence-for-vessels used to apply, in one of the playtest drafts (and may be alluded to in some of the dead-trees core rule vignettes, though I think it got axed in the PDF?), but if you have an intact Heart, you get vessels from a Superior, not from Essence.

If you're an ethereal or in Limbo, you gotta do Essence.

That said, IIRC, there is a GMG note putting the cost of vessels in Essence terms for Superiors. A 9 Force Vessel 'costs' around 405 Essence. As they say, anyone can do it, but only a Superior has the hundreds of Forces necessary to carry that load of vessels in one go. (pg 18)

And you wondered why your Superior was so touchy about vessel loss...Even a Superior who gains 10,000 Essence a day faces a little less then a 5% loss if he has to replace some guy's vessel.
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Old 04-21-2010, 02:09 PM   #6
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Default Re: Trauma- the little death [house rule]

Quote:
Originally Posted by JCD View Post
That said, IIRC, there is a GMG note putting the cost of vessels in Essence terms for Superiors. A 9 Force Vessel 'costs' around 405 Essence. As they say, anyone can do it, but only a Superior has the hundreds of Forces necessary to carry that load of vessels in one go. (pg 18)

And you wondered why your Superior was so touchy about vessel loss...Even a Superior who gains 10,000 Essence a day faces a little less then a 5% loss if he has to replace some guy's vessel.
And when you figure the amount he already has to "budget" for Malakim replacements ... yeah, touchy would be the right word.
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