I’m putting my thoughts together for my first run as a Blades GM, and wanted to ask for a little clarification on “trauma” from the community:
In one of my play sessions, we viewed trauma as “scene death” – When you spent through your stress you dropped from the scene only to show up later, traumatized. As a player approaching the trauma threshold, i didn’t want to fail the mission and started avoiding stress.
On reading it again, the phrase that a player “may” choose to drop out of the scene stands out. This makes me think the player could take on an appropriate trauma and balance their stress out to zero, and could stay in the scene unstressed but hindered by a new traumatic injury.
Have your groups played it either or both ways, and which do you prefer?
Also, what are good practices when imposing trauma? Presumably, any except the final trauma incurred should leave the scoundrel functioning well enough to continue to thrive in the cut-throat streets, so melting all their limbs in acid seems pretty severe. But a paper cut seems pretty light. Should the trauma essentially turn into a one die penalty in relevant situations, with appropriate fictional impact?
Does anyone have a cool non-physical trauma to share? Fear of clowns? Ghost-magnet? Insomnia? How have these affected game play?
thanks!
