Character Creation

In addition to the usual character creation process, all Summerland characters must have a Trauma, a Flaw rated at 5M. This Flaw reduces over time, as the character confronts and deals with their Trauma.

Stress is handled as a special kind of Adversity, and is described in more detail below.

Hero Points can be spent to increase abilities at the end of and during sessions and to declare useful coincidences about the setting, such as bumping into a friendly face in a newly-discovered settlement. They can also be used to bump rolls, but this is primarily the role of Trauma. As such, characters start with 1 Hero Point and only gain 2 per game session to encourage them to primarily rely upon Trauma to succeed at contests.

Trauma

Stress is a 0-5 track, just as in Summerland. However, Trauma is treated as an HQ Flaw, as described above.

Traumas can be invoked in any conflict after the character’s dice have been rolled, bumping the ability by a Mastery. As usual, additional description is added to the Trauma as the player describes how the Trauma is relevant to the conflict in question.

Whether successful or not, the player immediately conducts a follow up Simple Contest with an appropriate ability (‘Keep it together’, ‘Calm under pressure’, ‘Hardened veteran’, ‘No one sees me cry’,  ‘People rely on me’, etc.) against their current Trauma rating or TN13, whichever is higher. If the roll is successful, Stress may be caused as the character represses their instinct to release their Trauma. If the roll is unsuccessful Stress may be caused and Trauma may be reduced, reflecting how the Trauma bubbles out and the character is forced to cathartically confront their haunted past.

The trade off is success means the character limits the level of Stress inflicted, and is thus less likely to Crack, but has no chance of reducing the severity of their Trauma. Characters who favour being in control at all times will want a high rating in a suitable ability to keep their Stress in check, but are ultimately going to spend longer resolving their troubled pasts. Others may choose a low  ‘control’ ability, which will shorten their path to acceptance by a community but at the cost of more erratic behaviour and more frequent breakdowns.

Cracking: When Stress reaches 5 the character has Cracked, sparking an immediate breakdown. As well as guiding the actions a character can or cannot undertake, treat them as equivalent to Injured for most social and mental contests while suffering from their breakdown. This Injured state disappears after the immediate breakdown ends.

Cracked characters cannot invoke their Trauma to assist in contests. They may also periodically be required to undertake a Simple Contest in times of stress to see if their Trauma causes a relapse, sending them off into a bout of hysterics, aggression or catatonia, with the temporary Injured status returning while they are suffering a relapsed breakdown.

Similarly, the Trauma might penalise other rolls, as per any other Flaw. In essence, while Cracked the character’s Trauma is much closer to the surface and harder to repress, and should regularly be complicating their interactions.

Stress cannot be reduced until the character is allowed to stay with a community for a period, at which point they heal at a rate of around one Stress per day.

Traumas are resolved when the Flaw rating drops to 5or less, at which point the character erases the Trauma and can no longer invoke it to aid in winning conflicts. On the other hand, the character is now sufficiently stable to be accepted into a community.

The Call

If the Call level of an area of the forest is greater than a character’s Trauma  attribute on the table below they suffer from a -3 penalty to most contests due to the distracting allure of the Call. If the spend a night in the area, this increases to -6 until the character is able to travel to an area where the Call is equal to or less than their current Trauma.

If the Call band of the area is twice that of the character’s current Trauma, the distracting effects are always -6 and for each night spent in the area the character must enter a contest, rolling their current Trauma against a Very High (+9) difficulty. If unsuccessful they fall under the spell of the Call and immediately attempt to flee into the deepest part of the forest. Even during the day, if not watched by their companions a character might need to succeed against a Moderate difficulty level to avoid wandering off and disappearing into the Deeps.

To find comparative Call/Trauma levels, consult the following table: