Wound Penalties and Stroke

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
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As many of you know, I had a stroke last October, which is why I’ve been doing little around here but ban spammers on UK time. It happened to come up in conversation that I’d been considering my recovery and how well it maps to BW:G (or vice versa), and this is what I said:

I’d say BW:G holds up pretty well. I took a Mortal Wound to the brain, but thanks to some excellent treatment, and help from many friends and family on the health tests, I’ll come out of it OK. It’s too early to tell for sure, but I think it likely that (given the nature of the wound) I will fail the Midi treatment test, but not the recovery test. i.e. long term I expect to be permanently down a die in Forte, but otherwise recover everything else. If anything, my Will has been tested and advanced, but my Perception of the physical world is still clearly reduced. Tellingly, I have no artha whatsoever. I’m spending it all on recovery tests, I guess. When the time comes to call on deep reserves… I just don’t have any left, for now.

What I didn’t really go into is the idea that I think my Forte cap has been reduced. It’s not just that I won’t recover that Forte, but I suffered brain damage; part of my brain is dead for ever: I’ll never be all I could have been before I had a stroke. So I would be looking for an appropriate trait to be voted on that would reflect the permanent damage that is by no means trivial, but not necessarily as bad as you might think.

It’s also interesting (to me, at least) that my Will has strengthened, although the general wounded-ness aspect of my life continues. That’s something that is not in the BW:G rules, but that’s fair since it’s a total gimme when roleplayed, but a whole other matter when it means two hours of exercise at six a.m., six days a week, for starters.

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I really enjoyed this. I’m very glad you’re recovering, and even more glad that you had a Persona point to spend at the time of you stroke. Otherwise, you’d have to roll-up a new character! :wink:

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Alexander,

Thanks for sharing, This is really interesting.

An uncle of mine had a stroke, long ago, and lost the powers of speech and writing, and fair chunk of motor skills. After years of rehab, while he never had the mobility of his younger self, he had devoted himself to to writing letters and receiving visitors, making calls and such, talking to everyone he could. In the end he was a far more eloquent and skilled speaker and writer than he had been before, and still had the devilish-yet-clean-cut sense of humour the typified my uncles. Letters he wrote to my family from that period are treasured heirlooms of our family. So take heart in this an apply yourself like hell to besting your youngerself. You may have lowered your PER cap to 7, but you’re still unlikely to get there without spending a bit of time acquiring the tests.

In game terms, Stroke could affect you physical of mental stats equally I guess. Perhaps in-game ageing requires health checks to simulate chronic late onset afflictions and deteriorations, be it Stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Arthritis or whatever. Fluff one badly and you take the big wounds.