[Circle of Hands] A variety of phrasings and specifications

[Ron Edwards]

So you know, I'm calling the act of dividing one's Qx2 "commitment" (that's John's term) and the precise division will be the "split" (Gethyn's term). So the dialogue might go, "OK, time to commit," and "Sure, my split is 9/3."

I'm now going through the manuscript - which at least on my hard drive is now indeed a manuscript draft and not a playtest document - to replace placeholder terms with good ones.

BQ is the obvious primary offender. I had no intention, ever, of maintaining this as the actual game term. But what might be a good one?

Two others, related to one another, are tally and tally item. Any thoughts on what those ought to be called?

And a final, more conceptual brainstorming question. I'm struggling to articulate how to identify eligible actions for getting the oath die to add to one's roll. I'm sure no one disagrees with me that such concepts can get terribly tedious during play, as players try to leverage "but it's relevant to the oath" into anything and everything the character tries to do as long as the oath is unfulfilled. So ... thoughts on that?

[Moreno R.]

Two others, related to one another, are tally and tally item. Any thoughts on what those ought to be called?

"Tally Item" = "taint" or "gift" depending on whoever is speaking (a black wizard would call black tally items "gift" and the white "taint" for example). Circle Knight could use both word so it would be interesting to see which one a knight actually will use...

[glandis]

On the oath die - I've had some success (with myself as much as with other players) distinguishing the "right time" to let such a die/bonus kick in as being associated with emotion rather than logic. Are we wowed by the action in the [in this case] context of the oath? Is it "whoa, the character is totally doing that because of the [again, in this case] oath"? The die is probably appropriate. But if it's more "see, let me explain why this is connected to the oath", or if we're looking at why it just makes sense that the oath applies here, that's likely not a suitable context to kick in the bonus.

My take on it for oaths might be this: Action choices and descriptive language meant to connect with an oath, and/or any form of player-"lobbying" for the oath bonus, should always be about getting us to feel the connection. It's not about getting us to see or agree with how the association is justified - it's about helping us to actually experience an instance of oathkeeping. Knowing that something a character is doing has a connection to an oath is interesting, and is a fine contribution to play, but it's not what invokes the bonus. The die is added when the action and the oath ... resonate.

Examples might be useful, as well - of as many varieties as reasonable. Picking three: interesting-but-not-bonus, YES-bonus, NO-not-really-oath-connected.

[Nyhteg]

BQ: is there something wrong with calling it "Damage"?
It's what we've ended up doing automatically as we've played. "Eight points of damage..."

Tallies and tally effects...I'm thinking that Tallies are mainly things that Wizards would talk about and tally effects might be things non-wizards talk about too (because they're visible to all). So with that in mind:

Tallies: "Gifts". Both in the sense of a thing received, a boon, and also in the sense of a talent. "He wields many Gifts of Rbaja".
Effects: "Marks". "Marked". As in "She bears the Mark of Amboriyon."

G

[Nyhteg]

Ron, hi

I really don't want to start trying to do game-design-by-forum-post here, but my first thought is why not flip the whole thing over?
Place the limits on quantity not quality. If a player wants an action to count as Oath-worthy, then it does, but only so many uses are possible. The issue would then become not a matter of qualification and hedging case by case but, like the rest of the magic system, simply of over-arching strategic choice. I'm certain you could design a setup whereby strong, Oath-focused actions occur naturally as an emergent phenomenon of strategic play.

Oaths for NPCs are perhaps intense, ideological commitments. An NPC would always do actions under Oath which are tightly bound to the terms.
Oaths for Knights, however, are just another strategic hack? Using Rbaja and Amboriyon pragmatically, for their own purposes.

Is there a consequence for failing in an Oath? Maybe that's a part of it too. It's not about belief system but about weighed risk.

G

[John W]

BQ: I say keep it simple and call it "damage."  Perhaps "fatigue," "wear," or "debility" better describes what your picturing happening.  "Debility" is too awkward a term I think.

Colour points: Tallies, colour points, tilt, taint, pull.

Tallies: I'm glad we're getting away from calling the gained abilities 'tallies,' this was confusing - I think 'tallies' is better as a name for the colour points themselves.  "Evocations"?  This is a tough one.  I like "gifts."  Knights say it sardonically.

Tally side-effects: Could call them "Marks" generally, "marks of Amboriyon," "marks of Rbaja" specifically. 

Oaths.  What if the oath has to be phrased as a specific action, and only that action counts?  E.g. "I will kill Hedwig," only your battle with Hedwig counts, or with anyone who is explicitly protecting Hedwig from you.  "I will rescue Hilda from the bandits," surreptitiously searching the bandit camp counts, but sneaking past the lookout or interrogating a captured bandit to find out where the bandit camp is doesn't.  Fighting bandits in the bandit camp doesn't count, unless they're specifically trying to keep you from Hilda.  Hmm, am I just re-stating what was in the playtest doc?

What if: an action only counts if its success fulfills your oath.  So, none of the lead-up actions count, no matter how necessary they are.  If you fail at the action, you can try again and get the bonus again.  This removes a lot of ambiguity, but may narrow your vision of the oath mechanic a bit.

-J

[Ron Edwards]

This is great, guys. Keep it coming, and in this case, I am OK with the content bleeding into game design.

[Nyhteg]

Well...in terms of possible design thoughts for Oaths, I was thinking maybe on the 'quantity' side:

1. Swearing an Oath clears all current points of that colour;
2. The Oath can then be drawn on for the d6 bonus as often as desired until fulfilled or until points from the Oath bonus trigger a Tally. Once an Oath triggers a Tally it is considered fulfilled.

Could generate some interesting play effects, perhaps.

Alternatively, on the 'quality' side - and riffing on John's thoughts - what if all Oaths have to be linked to a named character or specific creature?
Only actions directly involving that character/creature qualify for the bonus.
"Avenge the death of Albrecht" would not count as an Oath because there's no specific named character to act against.
"Avenge the death of Albrecht by the death of Berthold" would qualify because Berthold can be directly involved in actions.
Similarly, "Protect the town til sunrise" wouldn't count because a town is not a named character.
"Protect Chief Anselm from harm til sunrise" would, because Anselm could be directly involved in harmful events.

G

[Ron Edwards]

H'mm ... Gifts for "tally items," Marks for the possible physical effects ... and there really doesn't need to be a distinction between "tally" and "tally item," does there? Tallies are just your number of Gifts, after all.

"Damage." That's what I call it too.

Oaths remain difficult to finalize because I'm not seeing enough of them in play. I think players simply forget about them, or never learn them especially well in the first place. In the latest session, Nathan's character was killed by ghouls, and she really could have gone to town with an Oath, now that I think about it, and had a good chance to prevail. The only solution seems to be to put it onto the sheet, right next to spells, perhaps even as a list of blanks, with either "active" or "fulfilled" or whatever it is I eventually decide to do with unfulfilled Oaths.

I'm beginning to think that an Oath must begin with a fixed word, one for Rbaja and one for Amboriyon. But it's also important that the word not be "kill" in either case, because an oath should always be a killing matter (or so it seems to me).

[ndpaoletta]

Wow, I completely forgot about Oaths! Let's remember a visual sheet-based cue, for sure.

[Moreno R.]

Every time we played (3 sessions), everybody forgot about Oaths...

[Ron Edwards]

I sat up in bed, suddenly convinced I'd completely stolen a key place-name from an obvious source.

No, or at least barely not. Research reveals that the island in Earthsea on which the school for wizards is located is named Roke.

Someday someone will earn a Ph.D. tracking the subtle acquisition and transformation of made-up names throughout the publications in fantasy fiction and gaming, the more so if some weird sociological algorithm turns out to model it. I have a notable library, a reflexive historical perspective, and a good memory - I have noted many occasions when someone lifts and twists, sometimes not bothering with the latter.

Gaming adds its own quirks, such as using technical terms almost certainly taken from whatever college class the author is attending, apparently convinced "no one will notice," such as calling a character Columella in a Warhammer fiction novel. Columella is the term for the single bone in the middle ear of most amniotic vertebrates, homologous to the stapes in mammals. Although I think these instances are funny, the more usual lift-and-twist is familiar territory to my own work, pretty much as found across fantasy fiction or so I hope.

The original Earthsea trilogy is one of my formative influences, and it was all too likely that my mindset in writing Gray Magick - deeply engaged with Heartbreaker logic, in its curious "original, but pastiche, but all-new, but fantasy-role-playing" form - would have included more light-fingered naming than my other work. Plain old "use it again!" is so easy and seems so legitimate no matter how obvious a theft it is. This is also from the exact period when I made up a character named Blackfell for our Champions game, and congratulated myself on what a cool original namer I was, until I suddenly remembered it was one of the important wolves in the backstory of the original Elfquest. Cool name, yes; me as original and creative thinker, not so much.

Fortunately not the case here. One "L" makes the difference between possible lift-and-twist and a necessary full-script revision.

[Joshua Bearden]

I propose the best protection against unconscious plagiarism is deliberate theft from an innocent source. An innocent source in my mind is any source you're comfortable admitting either upfront in your text, or ex post any readers inquiry or accusation.
I'd argue that "Columella" is a great example of an innocent source because the use of the anatomic term as a character name is an act of originality.

It's no easy thing to become a master namer, as I'm sure you agree.  I feel much more comfortable seeking innocent sources than struggling to conceive fully formed proto-nouns from my head.