The Forge Archives

Hello, two of my favorite resolution systems come from Dust Devils and Prime Time Adventures, even though my favorite game is Mortal Coil. So, I was trying to adapt a DD & PTA like resolution to Mortal Coil and here is what I came up with (please keep in mind that it may be nessasary to have read those other two games to fully understand this):

• Resolution will be done like this:
In a conflict, each person gets handed a card from a normal deck of playing cards for each point of the Faculty they are using plus any aptitude that applies to the task. If they can bring in a passion, then that number of bonus cards are given also (rules on raising passions after using it twice in a session still apply as normal).

If you want another card you can sacrifice a power token (or should it be a success instead?). After this, both people flip their cards and the person with the most red cards (hearts and diamonds) wins the conflict. The person with the single highest card wins narration rights. So, this is similar to Prime Time Adventures, but uses more cards like Dust Devils (both great games that you should own anyway).

I am not sure how to handle harm, but maybe use the same chart from page 79, but have these rules:
Scratched/Shaken: -1 from appropriate Faculty (Force or Grace for wounds, Will or Wits for mental trauma)
Lightly wounded/Demoralized: -2 from appropriate faculty
Seriously Wounded/Anguished: -3 from appropriate faculty
Maimed/Broken: permanate -1 to appropriate faculty
Killed: Your dead.

• You will drop Action tokens and will not use tokens to represent Passions. Magic still works the same. Power will be use to ad a card (or a success?) in resolution or bargain for narration rights (and to get more magic tokens).

• I am not sure how helping will count, but I would not want another dealing of cards just to see if you help someone. Maybe giving a card to someone that you are helping or something.

• There will not be "multiple actions," but I do not see a problem with this.

I would rather use Tarot cars as they seem more appropriate, but I honestly can not figure out how that would work.

If this all works well, then it will solve the "hiding tokens" problem and will also give unpredictable results as the person who wins the conflict, may not be the one who wins narration rights. The only pool that may need tokens is Power, as you can make check boxes for how many magic points you have and check them off when you spend them, or black them out (or erase them) when you sacrifice them. That is one of the only real problems with my group is having everyone have to sit at the table to keep the tokens on their character sheet. We normally sit around a coffee table with two couches and a couple of chairs while we use clip boards to hold our character sheets (and lean into the table to roll dice or draw cards).

I am curious what other think of these changes. I did not get into a lot of detail, but until we finish our current game of PTA, I have to hold off on experimenting with these rules.