Isolation Trauma
Isolation is a subtle danger: it corrodes your sanity by denying you input. You rely on other human beings for feedback. Without the opinions of others, you do not know how to judge yourself. When you become resistant to isolation, you overlook social morés and unwritten rules because you’ve forgotten how to conform to the expectations of others. If you’ve suffered from isolation, you become very needy. These are not mutually exclusive: it’s possible to be very clingy and still be unable to pick up hints about when your behavior is unacceptable.
Failed Isolation is often used to make Climb, Swim, or Disable Device rolls when escape or reconnecting with a friend or group is the goal, or Escape Artist, Fly, Ride, Knowledge (geography, local, nobility), Linguistics, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, and Perform rolls in general. Stealth, Knowledge (dungeoneering), Will, Survival, Bluff, and Intimidate rolls sometimes use Hardened Isolation, and both Failed and Hardened Isolation are often used to make Profession rolls.
The Effects of Various Levels of Failed Isolation (FI) Trauma on Personality
1 ~ You can interact in society and get through your everyday life with no real problems. You’re maybe a little shy with people at first, but you feel a kind of gratitude whenever a new acquaintance doesn’t reject you.
2 ~ You’re a bit nervous around new people, eager to make a good impression. This could be expressed as shyness or through “chatterbox” behaviors.
3 ~ If you sleep alone, you sometimes suffer from insomnia. Perhaps you don’t like silence when you’re by yourself, and always keep a your hands beating out a rhythm. Sometimes, when you’re not paying attention, you talk to yourself or think out loud.
4 ~ Sometimes when you’re isolated (either all by yourself or surrounded by strangers) you have panic attacks—a sense of intangible, impending doom. Your skin flushes, your breath becomes rapid and labored, you sweat. Simply put, you show the signs of being in mortal danger, when there is no danger around.
The Effects of Various Levels of Hardened Isolation (HI) Trauma on Personality
1–3 ~ There are no really obvious signs of your experiences. Perhaps you’re a little standoffish or curt.
4–5 ~ You can be unthinkingly rude, breaking in during the middle of a conversation before someone’s done speaking, scratching yourself in an indelicate fashion, or telling the truth when it isn’t diplomatic to do so. (For example, you might blurt out “Damn that’s an ugly haircut!” instead of saying “Wow, that’s a new look for you, isn’t it?”)
6–7 ~ You lack patience with people who don’t immediately understand what you’re trying to tell them. Your natural inclination is to repeat the same explanations (which are obvious to you) over and over, or just give up. (This is just your first impulse; it can, of course, be overcome if you pay extra attention. In game terms, this means that your Diplomacy and other social skills aren’t penalized any time you make a roll, but you might have a little bit of trouble in casual situations.)
8–9 ~ Unless you’re concentrating, you lack dialogue skills. You don’t like it when people interrupt, but you frequently interrupt others. You also don’t see the point of a lot of social conventions such as clothing, grooming, etc. You might still shave every day, but it all seems a little silly.
10 ~ At some level, you not only don’t care what people think about you: you can’t understand how anyone could care. You are very aware that people are inherently alone, that we can never really understand anyone or communicate anything but the most rudimentary ideas and feelings. You know everyone is an island, in the final analysis. Especially you.
Self Trauma
This is the trickiest one. It’s your guilt and self-loathing, but it’s more than that. A major trauma is when you find out you’re not the person you thought you were, by breaking a promise you honestly meant to keep, or by standing idly by when your values (or what you thought were your values) are desecrated. It’s your sense of alienation from self that provides, perhaps, the deepest terror. Where other Traumas measure how, well, traumatized you are by things that happen to you, Self measures how traumatized you are by your own reactions to those things. To put it another way, the only thing you can ever really be 100% sure of is “I think, therefore I am.” The Self Trauma measures how uncertain you are about the “I” in that statement.
Both Failed and Hardened Self have a tendency to become the primary Trauma used for all rolls after a character falls victim to one of their Vices (that is, the lower of the two Virtues in a pair), as they struggle to predict their own actions in the intensity of the moment. Many characters use either Failed or Hardened Self for Sleight of Hand rolls, especially the first few times they use it; both are also sometimes used with Stealth to appear inconspicuous or to blend in or with Knowledge (history, nature, planes, religion), Heal, Profession, Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Perform, and Use Magic Device rolls. Failed Self is sometimes used to make Fly and Ride rolls (reflecting the connection between animal and humanoid) and Knowledge (local) and Sense Motive rolls, too. Survival and Intimidate rolls sometimes use Hardened Self.
Failed Self governs the spellcasting of sorcerers.
The Effects of Various Levels of Failed Self (FS) Trauma on Personality
1 ~ You don’t have any real kinks yet, but every now and again you feel a sense of dissociation, an eerie moment when you feel alienated from your own character and motivations. “Sure, I know I’m Greg Stolze,” you might think, “but who’s Greg Stolze?”
2 ~ The “who am I?” moments come more frequently. You tend to become introspective whenever someone mentions “truth” or “lies” or “promises.”
3 ~ Half the time your words and actions feel oddly forced, fake, or rehearsed to you—as if, rather than yourself, you were an actor playing the role of you.
4 ~ You frequently feel like you’re watching your every action from the outside. You have little or no sense of will or volition: it’s as if you’re a passive observer, along for the ride while your body goes through the motions.
The Effects of Various Levels of Hardened Self (HS) Trauma on Personality
1–3 ~ There are few external signs of your interior struggle: people may sometimes find you to be a little brittle or “phony”-seeming.
4–5 ~ Even when you’re telling the truth, people often think you’re lying, unless you make a particular effort to act “natural.”
6–7 ~ You’ve lost a sense of connection to those who were previously close to you. You can predict the actions of your friends, relatives, or lovers, but you no longer know exactly what you feel about them.
8–9 ~ Half the time, you only know you’re telling the truth if you take a minute to think about it. Truth and lies aren’t nearly as important as they used to be—back before you quit lying to yourself . . .
10 ~ Life has been pared down to the essentials for you: you no longer have opinions about music, food, or fashion. You’ve lost the ability to enjoy or dislike things, because there’s so little “you” there to interact.
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