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Atomics
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Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Thu 02 Mar 2017, 04:45

Not sure how I didn't notice this before, but in Genlab Alpha (GA), p.67 - the Warning Call animal power has this description:
"Your call can also be used to stun enemies at up to Close range. You inflict one level of stress on a number of victims equal to the number of FP you spend."

This brings up 3 questions. Searching for every other use of "Stun" in GA, they all seem to relate to doing Fatigue as damage (like the Stun Baton artifact does). Does this mean using Warning Call on nearby enemies would inflict one point of fatigue per enemy you spend a Feral Point (FP) on?

Question 2: What is "Close" range? Is that "Arm's Length" or "Near"? Is this maybe a translation from the Swedish version that just didn't get translated/changed correctly?

Third question: The second sentence talks about inflicting "one level of stress". The word stress is only used 2 more times in GA - p.108 (doesn't apply to my question) and again on p.183 where it talks about some "powerful teargas", where "every RAD inflicts one point of stress". And the word "stress" isn't used once the the Mutant: Year Zero book - no help there. What kind of Trauma is "stress"?
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Thu 02 Mar 2017, 09:32

This brings up 3 questions. Searching for every other use of "Stun" in GA, they all seem to relate to doing Fatigue as damage (like the Stun Baton artifact does). Does this mean using Warning Call on nearby enemies would inflict one point of fatigue per enemy you spend a Feral Point (FP) on?
Yes.
Question 2: What is "Close" range? Is that "Arm's Length" or "Near"?
It should be Near.
What kind of Trauma is "stress"?
In the Swedish edition we call Fatigue trauma Stress Trauma.
“Thanks for noticin' me.” - Eeyore
 
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Atomics
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Re: Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Fri 03 Mar 2017, 01:19

Thank you Fenhorn!

Quick follow-up - so if "Fatigue" is "Stress" in the Swedish version, and "Near" is "Close", then do the all the other ranges/damages have slightly different names in the Swedish version? (This would help me understand other entries I might find with slightly different names for things.)
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Fri 03 Mar 2017, 02:10

Regarding Close, I don't know why they wrote close. The Swedish word for that distance is "Nära" which means as you can guess Near.

When it comes to Agility and Fatigue. The original word for that attribute is "Kyla" in Swedish. In Swedish a word can mean several things (I have heard it is a difficult language to learn). The word "Kyla" usually translates to Cold or Cool regarding temperature, but it's also used when someone is very calm, focused if you will in a very stressfull situations. I don't know any good English words for that. There is a term in some games that could match it - Coolness under Fire. At least sort of. This is the reason Stress is the trauma for it. Now, "Kyla" isn't a perfect match if you strictly look at it when it comes to what skills it should cover. It is of course perfect for Shoot and ok for Sneak. Move, less so. The developers went for the more commonly Agility instead of finding a good word for "Kyla". Agility is a perfect attribute for Move, ok for Sneak and not so much for Shoot. Why they changed the trauma name. Perhaps Fatigue is a better match than Stress now when you have Agility.

So technically, neither the original word "Kyla" or the translated word Agility is a 100% match when it comes to attribute-skill connection, but they both are ok (but in different ways). But in a system that only have four attributes the attribute names (and their trauma names) will be a little bit off.

The other attributes and traumas pretty much the same.
Strength/Damage is the same in Swedish.
Agility/Fatigue is Kyla/Stress in Swedish.
Wits/Confusion is the same in Swedish.
Empathy/Doubt is Känsla/Tvivel in Swedish. The trauma is the same word, but the Swedish word "Känsla" would best be translated to Feel. I don't know why they didn't use that or why we in Swedish didn't use the "Empati" (Empathy in Swedish).

This doesn't mean much for the game though. One thing it means is that the roles have their attribute changed.
Slave in the Swedish edition have "Kyla" (he is use to work under stress), but he has Strength in the English edition. I don't know. Personally, the slave skill is OP and strength is more lethal than agility so to have the slave using strength instead is actually better.
Boss in the Swedish edition have "Känsla" (he got to have this fingertip feel, I guess), but he has Wits in the English edition. I guess that because they used Empathy they thought that it sounded strange to have all bosses have empathy. I don't know. For the English edition I think that wits fits better (better than empathy anyhow).

Of course, I'm not a developer so this is a guess from my side. I know that this has been asked before. I don't remember the exact answer.
“Thanks for noticin' me.” - Eeyore
 
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Tomas
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Re: Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Sat 04 Mar 2017, 15:39

There are some minor tweaks between the editions in the two languages yes, but it's mostly cosmetic.

Regarding the original question - yes, like Fenhorn says, it's a typo - it should say fatigue, not stress. And it should say Near range, not Close. Sorry about that!
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Re: Stun and Stress as Trauma?

Wed 20 Jun 2018, 16:36

I am a Norwegian player who started out using the English version, but have a couple of Zone Compendiums in Swedish, as well as Elysium (because I love everything you guys publish and didn't want to wait for the translated version). The alteration in terminology can be a little confusing when using both language versions.

There is also a new rule in Elysium that says if you want to coup de grace a broken enemy, you must succeed in a Kyla roll. This rule makes little sense in English (and Agility), so it will be interesting to see what the developers/translators do here.

As a translator, I am also interested in hearing the reasoning behind this change from Kyla to Agility and Stress to Fatigue :)

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