This community is awesome. I really enjoy the diversity of perdoectives!
So, here is another question for you-
Stress, trauma, and vice can fit well in any fantasy hack. I’m working on epic/heroic high fantasy and making tweaks to make the game more heroic instead of desperate. Vice becomes vanity/ego, entanglements become larger than life, etc.
I’m considering changing stress to courage (count down instead of up).
What would you call trauma?
I’ll add my thoughts later (fear rolls and terror), but I want to hear your creativity first!
I’ve been toying with a similar idea about monster hunting were instead of stress ticking up your comfort ticks down. I think that trauma isn’t the best mechanic for heroic fantasy, but if I were to give an alternative “Scarred” would be the best match.
Stress works very well as “luck”, especially if you spend it down rather than fill it up (using tokens for it is fun). There is a clear logic to “your luck running out”.
Trauma depends a bit more on what you want it to mean in your game, and what sort of trauma-equivalents you envision.
That is, if we’re talking high-fantasy/Heroic, these aren’t going to be dark and gritty, but they might be epic. So perhaps they’re “burdens” – you survived, but now you are marked/cursed/haunted/bound/indebted/something else.
Or, depending on the nature of magic in your setting, they could be literal curses. Or, hell, maybe they’re blessings. I could 100% see a game where each time your luck runs out, you are bound more tightly to your patron deity (like it or not). Which is especially fun if your patron deity is kind of a jerk.
But I’m not sure there’s a clear one-size-fits-all answer.
If stress were courage, I could imagine trauma becoming “doubts” or “regrets”. You run out of courage, flee the current conflict, and when you come back you have doubts (about your ability) or regrets or shame. That would also work with vice being vanity/ego – just like having trauma demands that you indulge your vice, having secret doubts demands that you flatter your ego.
Awesome ideas. My original thought was to spend courage. When you would go below 0, you roll a number of dice that you are below 0 on a fear table. Depending on the roll, you have different effects and likely pick up a phobia.
With a good roll, the character may be able to keep going, with no courage. Any time they would use courage, they would roll on the fear table again…and again, until the rolls go south.
But now, I have more ideas…
Zachary Miller I could see spending comfort (or security, sanity, innocence, humanity) and picking up scars would be great for monster hunting.
Tim Denee thanks! I think it would be cool to pick up doubt (or spend courage) and roll fear when you are out. Most likely the roll also gives you shame. Too much shame and you retire.
If I use thus, how would you like me to credit you?
Rob Donoghue I really like the idea of being bound / in debt to a patron diety / spirit / demon.
I was planning on changing devil’s bargain to “tempt Fate” being tied tighter to a supernatural entity could be a pretty cool result.
If I use something along this line, how would you like me to credit you?
Feel free to use my name as it appears here, but don’t sweat it too much. 🙂