Display brain damage for the patient

[NerdyVampire]

Hey guys!

If you ever had brain damage in Aurora, you know that this includes loss of motor functions, maybe headbanging an airlock every now and again, or being unable to use certain things.

However whenever we have reasonably severe brain damage, we could really use an HUD indicator to tell us, because otherwise we can't know exactly how brain damaged we are until someone tells us, or we scan ourselves - and we can't really roleplay it appropriately.

I imagine a changing icon on the HUD for every 20% of brain damage, and a tooltip that shows on clicking this icon giving hints on appropriate roleplay behavior, such as; overattachment to objects, slurred speech, infantilization, loss of sense of direction, violent outbursts, etc.

It makes sense that we can react to having massive brain damage, and can track it more easily, without having to ask in looc about it.

[FlamingLily]

I totally agree with this. Except maybe the roleplay prompts- or at least not ones that specific.

[NerdyVampire]

4 hours ago, FlamingLily said:

I totally agree with this. Except maybe the roleplay prompts- or at least not ones that specific.

I would just appreciate it myself, knowing what is reasonable for having 40% brain activity versus having 80% brain activity 😆

[evandorf]

I'd be hesitant about giving out too much information that's not available ICly. There are a number of contextual clues as to how brain damaged you are and the more medical knowledge you have the more accurately you can use them to gauge your damage. Roughly it goes:

• Lesser messages about pain begins somewhere under 95%
• Your vision blurs. Your walking slows.
• You start falling over and dropping items. (this is likely because of blood oxy loss and not just brain damage but generally the two go hand in hand)
• The messages about pain become more severe at higher damage levels.
• Inability to use doors and buttons.
• Right before death you get the pop up saying you won't remember the preceding events followed by the big three: Where am I? What's going on? What happened? 

There are probably others that I'm forgetting but my question is what would knowing more precise numbers about your BA give you beyond the context clues that already exist? The only things I can think of border on meta/powergaming since if your character would know where the above symptoms fall into the spectrum of brain damage then they would likely be in medical with access to a scanner. Otherwise ICly your character is only guessing.

 

[FlamingLily]

I think it could at least be reasonable to have a general number/UI element type thing for specific regions of brain activity. Something like

"I feel fine." - 100%

"I've got a bit of a headache" - >80%

"Everything feels a bit foggy." - >45%

[i literally can't think of a line for this one] - >20%

"What's... going on?" - >0%

[NerdyVampire]

On 01/08/2025 at 21:54, evandorf said:

Otherwise ICly your character is only guessing.

But as a player I want to roleplay my character accurately, and the mechanical changes doesn't tell me as much as you might think. At certain levels of brain damage, your character might not be lucid enough to convey what's wrong with it, or be able to get themselves to medical, or even logically tell medical where they are.

It makes a huge difference in how I want to roleplay my character, whether it has 20% brain activity or 80%. If I speak as coherently as normal and logically circumvent my own handicaps, only to learn in medical that I had 20% brain activity all along, I'd feel like I didn't accurately roleplay my character.

[NerdyVampire]

4 hours ago, FlamingLily said:

I think it could at least be reasonable to have a general number/UI element type thing for specific regions of brain activity. Something like

"I feel fine." - 100%

"I've got a bit of a headache" - >80%

"Everything feels a bit foggy." - >45%

[i literally can't think of a line for this one] - >20%

"What's... going on?" - >0%

Exactly what I would like Lily, this would give me a clue, and help roleplay accordingly.

[MattAtlas]

I do not like information like this being available to people as it is just too much information. You already have the contextual clues that you should roleplay around (messages about your brain hurting). The core philosophy of brainmed on Aurora is that we never want any sort of number visible to the patient because it quickly leads to people walking into medical and going "Help I'm at 20% brain damage" or whatever else. The method we have right now is what prevents people from doing that.

Dismissal.

[NerdyVampire]

On 04/08/2025 at 23:12, MattAtlas said:

it quickly leads to people walking into medical and going "Help I'm at 20% brain damage" or whatever else

Valid point honestly. Would you be open to not having any numerical values, but still have something like what FlamingLily suggested? A way to like get a vague "read" on your mental state based on the numerics behind, so you get a sense of how bad it is, and can roleplay off of that?

It is reasonable to try and roleplay braindamage beyond the mechanics forced upon you, but difficult to know what to aim for without any sort of read on yourself.