10 thoughts on “TRAUMA”

  1. If you are the player who wants to get xp off of the Trauma Cold introduce friends and family of old. I.e. emotional bonds to break. Getting close to other people in the crew is also neat.

    The funny thing about things like this is that it can be the player flagging that they want the exact opposite to be a thing in the game so that it will challenge stuff about their character.

    Likewise, as the GM you can introduce innocent/pleading NPCs to prod how the player wants to play out this Trauma.

    Just be mindful that introducing innocent characters (which, admittedly rare in Duskvol, for a reason) can be(come) very uncomfortable and mess with the scoundrel fantasy.

  2. Alternatively, maybe they’re so cold they can’t even fake sympathy or compassion. Hurts their con game, and dealing with fences and contacts.

  3. Killing innocents doesn’t seem to be an issue for the people I’ve played with, they’ve embraced the “Dark” part of the game title with relish and vigour, so as a result there is no “challenge” when that happens. Oddly, in one group the player with “Cold” is probably the most sane of the crew, and has the lowest kill count. I do like the idea of keeping it as a consequence, but it’s more an outcome of a situation rather than a challenge to overcome.

  4. Adam Brimmer I mean, who is innocent in Duskvol? Hence it’s not an issue, most of the time. This relies on humanizing the target.

    I like the idea that carousing people, being unable to relate to them, can cause problems. It’s a good question to ask the player and then lessen the effect before the role if they agree. Going to use that next time my Cold PCs try to appeal to someone when they really don’t give a shit about the fate of others anymore.

  5. “utterly merciless or destructive by default”

    I think Blades, though a game prone towards violence and misery, is also one about community and relationships. The characters all start with five contacts they know well, plus the crew has relationships with other factions (positive and negative). Our games (well Bloodletters at least) have certainly included a lot of bloodshed, but we also include a lot of character interactions, and in those, cold really changes the tenor of the game.

  6. I really find there are relationships emerging from the crew. Like who those people are in your cohorts. And once they’ve been in the game for a time PCs lean on them for certain tasks. If you start being cold towards their needs you might soon see yourself having loyalty issues in your own ranks.

  8. Also, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to get XP from your trauma conditions. If it isn’t a struggle for that character, then it isn’t worth XP. So it goes.

  9. On that note, what if one of the character finally had enough of the violence and lost their taste for it. It seems like in your group, someone with “soft” would be racking up the XP!

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