Blackbirds: Abilities under fire/Adverse conditions

[Jeffrey Miller]

Some people have asked me why I was leaning towards a scale of 2-6 to rate abilities in Blackbird, and here's the explanation, plus a chunk on abilities in Blackbird in general.

Keeping with the general thread, here's the questions I think are interesting to ask (but if you have something else to say, by all means, PLEASE!)

- Does the concept of adverse conditions as explained (or as I explain it in followup conversations) 'work' for you, as both a player and a designer?

- Does the concept work in terms of trying to create a game that slides from goofy Peter Pan to "Return To Monkey Island" over-the-top with a shovel of grit to "Treasure Island"?

- The adverse conditions listed here are suggested ones for the baseline version of Blackbirds, but I'll be adding 2-3 options for each ability, and encouraging people to, as a group, select the ones that best suits the tone of game they want.  Any suggestions as to what those might be could be appreciated.

- Mechanically, does this function?  One thing myself and the people who've seen the first draft liked about about it was that it allowed
Plunder to have modifiers that end up being penalties when dealing with Pirates and pirate-related situations, but bonuses when you're dealing with, say, landed gentry.  Any thoughts?

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Abilities

There are four Abilities in Blackbirds ? Sailing, Cursing, Fighting, and Drinking.  These Abilities are measured on a scale of 2 through 6, and are generated by selecting Plunder.  Starting with a base rating of 3 in each Ability, each item of Plunder you select adds or subtracts modifiers to these scores.  The score itself is both a way for you, the player, to have some sense of the relative measure of your character, but it also serves a mechanical purpose.  For Brief and Extended Contests, the rating of the ability is the number of cards you will draw as your character tests themselves against the world.


Adversity

For every situation in which life lands you in which the key to success lies in your strengths and talents, there's a situation in which those same advantages don't  turn into liabilities.  A wise man, educated in the leading universities of Paris, Rome, and Lisbon, may be able to conjugate irregular Latin verbs and hypothesize about the nature of knowledge, but drop this same man of vast knowledge on the deck of a sloop and ask him how to patch a sail, cast a cannon, or distill gunpowder out of urine and burnt timbers, and he's out of his element.  Take a pirate raised on the streets of Port Royal, raised on a ship who can shoot the stars on a foggy afternoon, brew grog that no one ever goes blind from, and knows how to make a nun blush in 7 different languages, and send him to court in London to speak to the Queen.  Who's the more "intelligent" man?

Likewise, not every situation in which your character finds themselves will work to their advantage.  Each ability therefore is accompanied by its Adversity, a state of affairs in which the characters natural ability works against them.  When a character finds themselves in such an environment, rather than use their normal Ability score to determine number of cards drawn, basic aptitude, etc, they instead use the Adverse Ability value, which is equal to 8 - the normal value of the Ability.  Note this down during character creation in the space provided on the character sheet, and be sure to update these values if ever your Abilities should change, either through in-game occurrences or the acquisition of further Plunder.

If the Adversities supplied here are not to your liking, or if they clash with the flavor of game you wish to create, then by all means concoct your own.  Whatever you may decide, any Adversities you arrive at apply must to every member of The Crew, so discuss this before hand.

Sailing (diamonds) - How well you can manage a ship, your ability with Pirate skills, also anything that requires quickness or dexterity, balance.  Sailing a ship is no easy task, requiring skill, precision, and wisdom.  This skill therefore also applies to any mental effort you may find yourself faced with.  
Adverse: Any dexterity-based check made when you are not at sea, or any situation outside your characters general realm of knowledge.

Fighting (spades) - Although its generally better to scare your opponents, sometimes pirates have to bust heads ? it goes with the territory.
Adverse: Whenever you are fighting for non-selfish reasons, whenever you're protecting the innocent, or whenever there isn't a payoff in the end.

Cursing (hearts) - Pirates tend to be a foul-mouthed bunch, poorly educated and full of coarse & rough manners.  Have you ever /listened/ to the songs they sing?  This covers not only your ability to get along in Pirate society, but also it inversely reflects how well the gentry looks upon you.  
Adverse: When dealing with those who look upon the Pirate lifestyle with anger, disdain, pity, or envy, use the Adverse score as noted on your character sheet.

Drinking (clubs) - A Pirate without a bottle is like a ship without a figurehead.  Of course, not every Pirate drinks themselves silly at every port of call, preferring instead to save their coin for a rainy day.  This stat accounts for your ability not only to swill grog, but to keep it down.  It also covers your general health, ability to function under stressful situations, endurance, etc.
Adverse: The adverse score is applied if you have been at sea for longer than 2 weeks, far away from dry land with its debauchery, good food, and a real bed.
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[Mike Holmes]

I like how drinking propells you towards plot by penalizing inaction. I don't like how Fighting seems to keep Pirates out of relationships. Am I misreading that? I'd personally have it be a penalty to resist a fight.

Mike

[Jeffrey Miller]

Mike, that's a good point re: fighting, and I think it does fit much better with encouraging gameplay behavior (as opposed to trying to enforce a morality of action).  One of my checklist items is to evaluate what the Adverse situations encourage players to do.

Perhaps Adversity is the wrong term here, as for some characters, Adverse situations will be the opposite than for other characters.  

Let me try to 'splain -  one effect I had in mind while mulling this over was to try to never penalize a player, oddly enough.  Since abilities are detirmined by choosing Plunder, which has some positive and some negative ability modifiers attatched, why would anyone -ever- take the fluffy shirt, the spectacles, and the degree from Oxford, as that lowers your effective "Cursing" ability score to 2 (giving you only 2 cards to draw in social situations involving Pirates).  The flip side is, while you may only draw 2 cards when dealing with scurvy sea-dogs, you can draw 6 when dealing with the harbor master at his mansion.  You're The Face, the one who talks to the British Navy when they pull you over..

Hopefully by providing choices of adversity for the PCs to decide upon, it is the players themselves who are setting the boundries of what the environmental challenges to their PCs are, and thus have a direct stake in not only the creation of that environment, but in the nature and context of the narrative of the game.

At least, that's the theory. ^_^

As always, thanks for the input

-j-

[Mike Holmes]

It's all good. All this seems to me to protagonize the character. As long as that's the case it's all good.

:-)

Mike

[Jeffrey Miller]

It's all good. All this seems to me to protagonize the character. As long as that's the case it's all good.

Mike, you're scaring me - "all good"?  In the computer software world, we call a situation like that "all good except for the bugs we didn't find yet" *grin*

-j-

[Mike Holmes]

Hey, just one opinion. I'm sure other's can find something to bash. :-)

Besides, bugs are detected best by playtesting. Heck that's how I debug code. :-)

Mike