Karma Rough Draft - Critique Needed

[jdrakeh]

Karma is an idea that I've been tinkering with for running IRC or PbP games. It's a fairly minimalist affair, but rigidly enforces certain design decisions. Here's the very rough draft:

---------------------

Characters

Describe them with words - write a short background and description of the character. No need to be ultra-detailed, but focusing on whatr makes that character unique in terms of the setting and/or genre of the game being played is a good idea. For instance, in a film noir campaign, a lot of the descriptive text should probably focus on personality traits - what they are and why they are.

Dharma

Each player begins with a Dharma pool of ten (see 'Final Notes') Dharma points. Points of Dharma represents potential gain that a player may orchestrate for their character. Dharma is 'burned' to influence the course of a story in a manner that benefits a character.

Karma

Players all start with zero Karma points in their Karma pool. Points of Karma represent potential conflict that a player may orchestrate for their character. Karma is 'burned' to influence the course of a story in a manner that hinders a character by creating conflict.

Burning Darma

When a player burns (expends) a single point of Dharma, it allows them to declare the outcome of any given conflict a success. Every Dharma point burned past the first (up to three) allows a player to state one fact about the outcome of the conflict that the Referee must incorporate into the outcome description. If a player burns more than three points of Dharma past the first, they narrate the entire outcome of the conflict themselves. Points of Dharma burned are subtracted from the player's Dharma pool and added to their Karma pool.

[Note: The facts stated by burning Dharma may not contradict the outcome of the action. That is, a successful outcome is always a successful outcome - you can't burn Dharma to state a fact that turns the outcome into a failure.]

Burning Karma

When a player burns (expends) a single point of Karma, it allows them to declare the outcome of any given conflict a failure. Every Karma point burned past the first (up to three) allows a player to state one fact about the outcome of the conflict that the Referee must incorporate into the outcome description. If a player burns more than three points of Karma past the first, they narrate the entire outcome of the conflict themselves. Points of Karma burned are subtracted from the player's Karma pool and added to their Dharma pool.

[Note: The facts stated by burning Karma may not contradict the outcome of the action. That is, a failed outcome is always a failed outcome - you can't burn Karma to state a fact that turns the outcome into a success.]

Dharma and Karma in Balance

When the number of points in a player's Karma pool equals or exceeds the number of points in their Dharma pool, they may not burn any Dharma points until the number of points in their Karma pool is less than the number of points in their Dharma pool.

If a player has more Dharma points than Karma points, but wants to burn an amount of Dharma that would raise the number of points in their Karma pool to the point that they equal or exceed the remaining number of Dharma points - they may do so. After this expenditure, the above mentioned rule of not spending Dharma goes into effect. For example:

Tim has six Dharma points and four Karma points, but wants to burn four Dharma points to overcome a given conflict and narrate the result himself. He may do so, but this drops his number of Dharma points to two and raises his number of Karma points to eight - he can't spend anymore Dharma points until he burns enough Karma to replenish the number of Dharma points to a degree that they outnumber his Karma points again.

Increasing Pool Capacity

If the Referee wishes, they may allow players to increase the capacity of their pools by one point (that is, the referee awards players another point of Dharma) after a certain number of games sessions. Reapeat as appropriate.

Final Notes

Obviously, the the frequency with which conflict occurs can be increased by allocating fewer points of Dharma to players at the beginnng of a game - or it can be diminished by allocating more points of Dharma to players at the beginning of a game. For extremely tense games packed with action, eight points of Dharma is good starting point value. For more relaxed games that focus primarily on verbal interaction betweeen players, 20 points of Dharma is a good starting point value.

This makes it fairly easy to tweak the game to capture certain tones. Do you want crazy kung fu action? No problem - start with eight points of Dharma. Do you want soap opera romance - hey, pad the starting pool with fifteen points of Dharma.

---------------------

Obviously, this is just a very rough draft of the system - but it is playable. AFAICT, it really only needs a bit more clarification on what order players declare action in - of course you can always just pass turns around the table like you do when playing poker, or resolve action in the order that the story demands (which is how most PbP or IRC games handle this anyhow, in my experience).

That said, I'm posting it here in case I missed any glaring errors. You've always offered me fairly good insight before - so here I am, back for another whuppin' ;)