Trauma-ing out while resisting
Got a question for the group think…
I was listening to Friends at the Table playing Scum and Villainy and one of their characters traumaed out on a resistance roll, and they played it that that was effectively a failed resistance—the consequences still came to bear, with the character out of the action.
My immediate response was that the resistance still should have worked before the character as taken out of action, but I’m not sure…
How do y’all play it? Consequences coming back defo makes the game grittier, but I really like the last-hurrah flavor of traumaing out while saying nope.
I’ve always seen it as follows — the whole point of a resistance roll is to say “nope, that doesn’t happen” and pay it off with stress. Bringing the consequence back AND having you take the stress (enough to trauma out) seems like a dick move to me. I mean, if everyone at the table is into it that’s all good, but… seems to kinda defeat the point. Also would make death way more common, since you wouldn’t be guaranteed to resist a level 4 harm unless you had low enough stress to not trauma out no matter what you rolled.
(Also, I’m glad I’m not the only person who says “trauma out”. That’s how everyone at my table says it thanks to me. :P)
I’m with you. Once you choose to resist, the thing you’re resisting just doesn’t happen. THEN you take Stress, and might get a Trauma.
Agree with above. For my table, anyway.
Well it depends. Like for example, if the consequence at stack is, “You get stabbed and take level 4 harm.” and you resist, you dont take level 4 harm but that doesnt mean you dont get stabbed. The question is how do you fictionally justify being taken out of the action. Why can your character no longer continue? The answer depends on the thing being resisted, but I do agree that by resisting you are saying that thing doesnt happen, or at least “its not that bad.”
Sean DMR I’m trying to remember that episode… was it Fourteen Fifteen?
Most recent one, Gig trying to knock the drillbots off the hull the second time.
Scott Wheelock “Ah, that was a great scene, wasn’t it? What episode was it in again?”
“Oh, I think fourteen? Fifteen?”
…okay, podcast in-jokes aside, having the consequence come to pass anyway bothered me too, but I think the situation was kind of weird because the consequence was “you take too much time and the boarders arrive before you get there”. Resisting the consequence means he doesn’t take too long on his previous task… but he’s stressed out of the scene, so it doesn’t matter how quickly he got there.
I still think it would have been better to give the other character (who wasn’t at the scene but was piloting the ship) a chance to respond before the consequence but I can see where the GM was coming from – the PC was resisting so he could take action, then he took himself out of the action.
Sorry for the random interruption, but which episode did they switch the S&V rules? I’d like to hear how they run with it…
Not to worry, found it! Twilight Mirage 28.
The first episode using Scum & Villainy is Twilight Mirage 28. However, I recommend listening to Twilight Mirage from the start (TM00 is optional, or TM01), as that’s in the middle of the story and as a big high-concept sci-fi story, I imagine it would be very hard to follow without knowing the characters, history, factions, etc.
Update to this post, at the beginning of the next session, Austin (the GM) says he made that call wrong and gave a player back some stress they spent after that resist (because it should have succeeded)