I’m focusing on Steam Thieves again this week. I’m still working through the Stress & Trauma section. I’m not planning any kind of overhaul of this system within the FitD framework. Most the changes I’ll make here are to do with tone. The Trauma Conditions section will be where that’s most apparent, but I’m not there yet.
Right now I need to just give the Pushing Yourself and Trauma sections a touch-up. You can see those little daubs of paint below, after the image of how I’m imagining the balloon gondolas I keep mentioning (only they’ll have something like a vickers machine gun hanging over the basket).
Steam Thieves
(Steampunk x Forged in the Dark, Ashcan here [link])
Pushing Yourself
You can use stress to push yourself for greater performance. For each bonus you choose below, take 2 stress (each can be chosen once for a given action):
Add +1d to your roll. (This may be used for an action roll or downtime roll or any other kind of roll where extra effort would help you)
Add +1 level to your effect.
Take action when you’re incapacitated.
Trauma
When a PC marks their last stress box, they suffer a level of trauma. When you take trauma, circle one of your trauma conditions like Cold, Reckless, Unstable, etc. They’re all described below.
When you suffer trauma, you’re taken out of action. You’re “left for dead” or otherwise dropped (sometimes literally) out of the current conflict, only to come back later, shaken and drained.
Trauma conditions are permanent. Your character acquires the new personality quirk indicated by the condition, and can earn xp by using it to cause trouble. When you mark your fourth trauma condition, your character cannot continue as a high flying steam thief. You must retire them to a different life or send them to prison to take the fall for the crew’s wanted level.
My changes above are very minor. But that’s OK. It’s still progress. And I’m now on a twelve week streak when it comes to progression. I’m really proud of that. In the past twelve week streaks of inactivity were far more common, almost routine. But this little blogging project has really injected life into these projects and my creative process.
My ashcan is really looking like a game. And, most importantly, I can see it being completed. That’s huge for me. Often I embark on projects with little confidence that they will get seen through to completion. I’ve forgiven this by saying to myself that I care about the process and not the end-result and that the act of working on the project is satisfying enough that I don’t need the finished product. That’s a defence mechanism, though, designed to shelter me from fears that I won’t can’t finish something. Or that the finished something won’t be any good. It’s past time to push beyond that, though. I’m almost 40. It’s time to use the good china, scribble nonsense in my prettiest notebooks and get games fucking finished.