Marital Arts System

[rafael]

So the game I'm working on currently is extremely violent and dark and full of the angsty darkness of miserable violent deathness.  Consequently, I'm devoting a little time to a short, simple party game.  I'm not sure of the name, but "Marital Arts System" is the working title.

This is a serious post about a silly game.  A party game, perhaps an icebreaker.

I've decided to focus on the various stages of romance/dating/boudoir gymnastics/love.

Each character has three attributes, a skill, a flaw, and a Reservoir of Passion.

Thirteen points (each representing a die) must be distributed between the three Attributes (Agape, Eros, and Caritas), and the remaining point(s) can be dumped into the Reservoir of Passion (depending on how much water your character has in that particular well).

* Agape: selfless love, almost platonic in nature -- the love of a friend
* Eros: fairly carnal -- sorta hot love, if you will
* Caritas: serious, mutual love founded upon respect and understanding

These three attributes define the kind of love that your character is disposed towards.  A score of 1 indicates a deficiency, a score of 6 indicates that your character is full of this kind of love, and gravitates towards appropriate relationships.  The high score among these three Attributes is known as your Casanova Attribute -- it indicates what your character is inclined towards, romantically speaknig.

At least one point must be set aside for the Reservoir of Passion, but no more than three.  This means that the player must distribute 10 and 12 points between the three Attributes.  The maximum score for any Attribute is 7 -- this indicates that the character is something of a Casanova, but only in that specific regard (platonic affection, hot ardor, and serious romantic love).

After this, the characters must assign points to a Skill and a Flaw.  The Skill in question must be something that pertains specifically to impressing specimens of the appropriate gender(s), such as Flexing, Nice Teeth, Fantastic Wardrobe, Great Conversationalist, and so on.  The Flaw in question must be something that the character perceives to be an impediment to finding Love (or even Like), such as In Bad Shape, Crooked Teeth, Self-Absorbed, or No Car.

The Skill and Flaw have the same score, which is between one and six (the player must choose during character creation).

Gameplay consists of the player group meeting and interacting with others (NPCs) in an environment that is not conducive, in any way, to the pursuit of romance.  For example, the game  session might take place on the surface of Mars during a lighting storm, on on the beach at Normandy, during the invasion.  It is not necessarily important to justify the characters' appearance at these places.  The important thing is that the characters must be completely comfortable with their surroundings, regardless of what is going on around them.

Each player, in turn, must describe the NPC or PC that (s)he is interested in, and must strike up a conversation with the person in question.

The member of the group with the lowest score in that character's Casanova Attribute gets to narrate the reaction of the NPC, if the object of affection is not a PC.  For instance, Jimmy's got high Eros.  Way high.  He approaches a bored-looking redhead near a smoldering turret at Normandy.  The redhead is not a player Character, so Robert, who has an Eros score of 1, gets to narrate her reaction.

Okay, there's more, like combat resolution -- damn, I mean, Attraction Resolution, but I'm not sure how that will all work out.  In essence, I'm looking at the following:

* Player makes conversation, tries a few gambits
* Player rolls appropriate Casanova Attribute against his object's Casanova Attribute (however, if both have the same Casanova Attribute, the player gets to roll a number of dice equal to his/her Skill score).
* Most successes wins
* If the player fails, (s)he may try again, but the player must first roll his/her Casanova Attribute against the Flaw (the person who is the object of desire, or who is subbing for an NPC, must roll the Flaw dice).
* In every case, high roll narrates -- no GM, just players taking turns narrating or engaging in dialogue with one another and NPCs.
* Reservoir of Passion is a pool of dice -- you spend them to get extra dice on a crucial roll, and you get more for being a good narrator (group vote...?)

Right, then.  More later.

-- Rafael

[S.Lonergan]

nice...

Combat... err.. i mean :) attraction resolution?? I have no ideas..

Nice idea though

[Mark D. Eddy]

* Agape: selfless love, almost platonic in nature -- the love of a friend
* Eros: fairly carnal -- sorta hot love, if you will
* Caritas: serious, mutual love founded upon respect and understanding

Just a minor quibble here, but if you're going to be using foreign language, use the same foriegn language. Caritas is Latinate, while the other two are Greek. The third of four Greek words for love is Phileo, and is the love of a friend. So, I'm suggesting:

Phileo: love of the mind – applies to a relationship that is good for casual dating.

Eros: love of the body – applies to a relationship that wants to end up in the sack.

Agape: love of the soul – applies to a relationship that wants to  be permanent.

Does this help at all?

[rafael]

Just a minor quibble here, but if you're going to be using foreign language, use the same foriegn language. Caritas is Latinate, while the other two are Greek. The third of four Greek words for love is Phileo, and is the love of a friend. So, I'm suggesting:
Phileo: love of the mind – applies to a relationship that is good for casual dating.
Eros: love of the body – applies to a relationship that wants to end up in the sack.
Agape: love of the soul – applies to a relationship that wants to  be permanent.

Does this help at all?

Hey, Mark.  Neat idea.

But religious scholars have spilled a great deal of ink discussing Agape, Eros, and Caritas -- Phileo isn't part of that particular equation.  And while Agape isn't part of the conventional American/English lexicon, it's used often enough when discussing affairs of the heart that I hesitate to call it "foreign" -- same goes for Eros and Caritas.  It's like deja vu -- sure, the words are foreign, I guess, but you know, it's something people say here, like it means something in English.

But thanks, hombre.

-- Rafael

[deidzoeb]

Sounds fun, Rafael.  I'm curious about the title, though.  It's a cute pun, but are you also trying to make a statement about marriage?  Whether these matches "ideally" end in marriage?  Does the game assume monogamy is the ultimate goal or best possible goal?

I don't mean to get into a political or religious argument over whether monogamy or marriage are necessary to have a good relationship.  But these things are so sharply defined into our culture, it would be easy to finish designing this game and realize afterwards that you've built all our cultural expectations into it.

What would happen if a player plied their "wicked wiles" on two or three NPCs in the hopes of making long-term commitments with all of them?  Is polyamory possible with these game mechanics?

I love the inhospitable settings, curious to hear more examples.

What do the skills and flaws do?

[J B Bell]

Is polyamory possible with these game mechanics?

Deidzoeb, while a 'net search would turn it up, it's still an unusual term, so, I offer:  "polyamory" refers to a kind of relationship (really, many different kinds) where the partners are not monogamously committed, but are not "cheating" on each other.  It is intended to avoid the specialized sense of "polygamy", which refers to a marriage with multiple partners (itself nearly always actually meaning polygyny, that is, multiple wives).  It also usually is distinct from "swinging" where married couples swap partners as a diverting pastime.  Polyamorists do not lack for commitment, they just lack for sexual exclusivity.

That is the ideal, of course.  Since this game simulates a lot of dysfunction along with the happy stuff, I would suggest some kind of rule that makes polyamorous relationships require a good deal more energy for every person added to the group beyond two--and it ain't a straight (so to speak) algebraic relationship, either.

Maybe save these crazy wrinkles for "Marital Arts II--Beyond the Altar"!  :)

Perhaps Ron could give you some math for the various cheating strategies--I seem to remember that the populations of cheaters and cuckolds hit stable percentages in many organisms.

--TQuid

Edit:  I could see this game greatly enriched by the possibility of interference, in the time-honored tradition of Milles Bournes.  ("Ha!  Total success!"  "Maybe so, but--[snap of a card on the table]--ha ha!  It turns out you're gay!  No happiness for you until you get the Coming Out card!")

Edit II:  Of course, once could work in all kinds of "diversity" and end up with a Cosmic Encounter-like plethora of expansions.  (Carnal Encounter?)  I would hope that rather than being a mad scramble to include everyone whose feelings might be hurt, it would just make the game more insane and cynical.  You could get Dan Savage to playtest it, he has just the right sense of humor . . .