Has anyone tried a hack where Vice and Trauma are inversely related rather than directly related? So that early in your career, you can more easily keep your flaws under control, but as time takes it’s toll, you have to either start burning your Stash or Overindulging to get the same benefits.
Has anyone tried a hack where Vice and Trauma are inversely related rather than directly related?
Has anyone tried a hack where Vice and Trauma are inversely related rather than directly related?
Intriguing. Haven’t considered it. However, one of my players intentionally took trauma in the first session in order to be better at vice from the get-go (and to fit the character concept of a young kid getting blooded/jaded and thus growing up early on). That choice surprised me, but it makes some sense even if it limits future options to some extent.
Also, it’s not that menacing to see that a character will get cashed out eventually due to trauma. Most BotD games are NOT going to be campaigns, but one-shots or arcs. And even in a campaign, there’s something to be said for cashing in one character to try something else.
Not every flame must be carefully nursed to make it through the long night. Sometimes you just gotta light the rag on that Molotov cocktail.
Creates a death spiral. Be careful with this. Can get unfun quick if you choose to take stress. There’s less change and more ‘oh I never take my last stress’.
I haven’t read Vice rating as having much fictional meaning. It’s a purely mechanical construction to make characters accumulating Trauma better able to get rid of Stress so they don’t take more Trauma.
I’m with Stras Acimovic. I think you’d end up with careful use of Stress and relatively easy recovery with all that Vice, so characters would be less likely to take Trauma, but once they did take it they’d be more likely to take more. I’m just not sure how that improves anything.
I’m not sure that I grok the death spiral here. As is, scoundrels have the least ability to recover from Stress early in their careers, when they also have the lowest action ratings and Effects for avoiding and mitigating stress.
Reverse it, and you get an increasing ability to avoid stress with a decreasing ability to recover.
It seems less like switching into a death spiral, and more like a desire to see growth proceed in only one direction.