[Devout] Help with varying an ability

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

Ok, so my own first try at a game design is represented by Devout. The seed for it came from a conversation with a relative of my wife's who's a priest with the Catholic church and working towards his doctorate in Belgium. It didn't obtain any real form though until bumping into the Forge, Sorcerer, and Paul's MLwM. It was initially going to be a Sorcerer setting, and it shows a lot of influence as such, but some of the things I wanted to do didn't quite fit into the Sorcerer realm.

So onto the real question. The basic mechanic is karmic with some additional modifications, and a metagame shortcut (Calling/Grounding and Faith respectively.) I want Grounding to be able to rise and fall, sort of in the way that Faith does currently, but I haven't figured out a way to handle it just yet.

Things I've considered include:

*When Faith goes up, Grounding goes down and vice versa
*Grounding tests, like Faith tests, when Faith changes

I'm having trouble settling on one though. I'm looking for suggestions, and references in the canon on similar scales and how they're handled. I'm also interested to hear if folks spot anything they feel is glaringly missing relative to the premise. I'm aware that the text is pretty rough, and I expect to add some additional clarifications and examples. Feel free to let me know where you feel it needs it most.

-Tim

[Tim Alexander]

I'm going to grab this just before it slides off the bottom of the first page. I've made a group of revisions, as well as pumped the game out in PDF format instead of html. You can reach it at the same address here. It's still basically character generation with system, but I'm thinking it's getting towards the point where I plan to grab a couple of my players and work out some characters and give things a whirl. So, if anyone has it in their heart to take a look at it, and see if the system appears to accomplish the following to them:

A) Low handling
B) Supporting the premise ("Is faith alone enough?")

Along with the standard question of "Does this sound fun?" In addition I'm considering doing sort of an initial pregame discussion and character generation online, perhaps via forum. If anyone would be interested in participating drop me a line. I'm expecting to use that first generated setting as the example in the text as things proceed.

Thanks,

-Tim

[AgentFresh]

I've read over Devout a few times, and I thing I keep coming back to a couple of ideas in regards to the idea of Temptation.

1. Yield yourself as instruments: This is an idea brought up in the New Testament in regards to holy living v/s giving in to temptation. Neither come up and grab you by the nose, you hitch your wagon to one or the other and let it drag you in its particular direction.

The key idea in this is CHOICE. I kept wanting to see Choice made more central in the rules. For the Choice to be meaty, there have to be perceived gains and losses to be risked. Which brings me to my second point.

2. Paying the Cost: It Costs something to go down either road. If you want to have your Character stand their ground and take the high road, there will be a price to pay (alienation from the world, persecution, loss of material success, denial of self.) Likewise, if one decides to lay aside that High Calling, a bill will come due (lack of aid in time of need, slipping morality and, the very soul.)

I guess I'd like to see more teeth in the this area of the game. This may just be my personal inclination, being that I'm a Christian who identifies with this struggle.

Just my two shekels...

[Big Simon]

I'm downloading it now...

But I just wanted to mention that I'm very interested in the development of a game like this, since it mirrors a project I'm working on right now.

I'll let you know what I think when I've read the book over.

EDIT:  I think AgentFresh is right in many ways.  In my game, Echo, I've been trying something different to handle the problem of temptation, because some things are just too over-powering, temptation-wise.  I've added a different stat called "Despair" that fluctuates much like Faith.  Despair can hinder character growth, and increased your contact with darker elements of the game.

Paying the Cost, as AF suggested, is a good element and would fit in with your system very well.  I'd also like to know what kind of setting you're looking at, and if Faith/Grounding/Calling will determine all conflicts.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Guys,

First off thanks for the comments, it's helpful to get some feedback. Let's see what I can say for them.

Jason: You've hit on some things that I've been trying to figure out how best to implement right now. Temptation is one of the newer parts of the game, and it's going through some revisions. I definately agree with you that there needs to be more bite to choices in the game, but I'm having some trouble getting at it. Do you feel like the cost of submitting to temptation is too lenient, or the cost of taking the high ground, or both?

bigsimon: Yeah, I like the Paying the Cost element as well, I'm not certain how best ot handle it though. I also like the Despair stat, though I'm not sure it fits quite as well in Devout. As for setting, it's pretty open ended, though I've got some ideas for the initial example that I'll be doing a roundtable for. Faith/Grounding/Calling pretty much handle all conflicts where Heart/Body need some amplification. Is that not clear from the text?

Thanks again,

-Tim

[Lxndr]

1.  I'd be tempted to hand out an odd number of points for the two attributes, such that it's impossible to be "equal" in Body and Heart.  One would always be higher than the other.

(More generally, this is my philosophy for attributes in general, handing out a # of points that ensures that they cannot be evenly distributed among the # of attributes)

2.  Remember, "Tenets" not "Tenants."  A few other minor spelling/grammar errors (like "players have at their disposable"), but that's the big one.

3.  Why not suggest the gamers sit down over a meal of nice, juicy, barbecued steaks?  Instead of salty snacks.  Mmmm, steak.

4.  Some concrete examples on character creation and resolution would be nice.  I had to read through some parts several times before I really felt like I grokked them.

5.  What happens if Faith reaches zero?  This is certainly possible in Devout, yet you don't address it (or if you do, I don't see where).

6.  What was the design decision behind only having Grounding ever go up?  If grounding was tested for a drop every time Faith went up (or perhaps it automatically goes down if Faith is tested for a raise, and fails).  That would, I think, give relying on Faith more teeth (and thus give the choice between Grounding and Faith more teeth).  Of course, then you'd have to decide what happens if Grounding reaches zero too.

7.  Also, what was the design decision behind the implicit suggestion that a strong person (large Body, thus smaller Heart) would be less faithful than a weak person (little Body, thus higher Heart).

By setting yourself up that way, it seems like you're encouraging a bunch of weak yet charismatic PCs, because stronger players would have less faith to support themselves.  I'm not sure I like that (it also leaves out the potential for a charismatic preacher on the verge of losing faith).  I'd suggest a separate pool of the same # of points that you use for Body and Heart to be available for Faith and Grounding, and let the player decide for himself how faithful his character is.

Just some thoughts, as a non-christian.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Alex,

Thanks for the response, let me take them in turn.

1) I can see your point, I'm not entirely worried about the equal division though. I wonder if it sort of subtly draws people towards that choice though.

2) Yeah, I thought I looked that over again, but perhaps not. I'll fix those this evening.

3) Point taken, in fact it's ironic given we had steaks last week at our session.

4) Yeah, the whole thing needs more examples I think. I sort of intentionally left them out in the early drafts to get a feel for the clarity of the text on its own. Anything that was specifically difficult?

5) Wow. It's astounding that I missed this. I need a section on it, but it's envisioned much like Sorc. Humanity, with the character being rendered unplayable. Basically you've lost all faith, and the root question of 'is Faith alone enough?' is answered, and the answer was nope. I'll need to write something up on that though, thanks for pointing it out, it's a pretty glaring hole.

6) I'm still struggling with whether I like that decision. It was made specifically to reinforce the need for growing Faith. As it stands, grounding is more versatile, though less powerful than Faith. However, by relying on Grounding, you're limiting Faith. If you don't continue to work towards growing your Faith, you'll find yourself in a donward spiral of Grounding larger than Faith, causing failures of Faith, causing loss of Faith. This was considered desirable, as a systematic reinforcement for attempting to grow Faith, if a somewhat negative one. This may be misplaced though.

7) It was somewhat glib, and not terribly reasoned. Remember though that Faith isn't necesarily a measure of how Faithful they actually are. It's a measure of how likely they are to get their way through Faith. Since Faith isn't guaranteed to go up (or down) it's not a one for one. I certainly see your point though, that there needs to be some seperation there to allow diversity.

Also, just for everyone's reference, I'm agnostic for WIW. My wife however, is a Catholic, and there's a lot of Seminary school in her family tree, so I've exposure to it.

-Tim

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

I had a thought on things this morning. I'm considering having grounding be set to either Heart or Body, player's choice, and having Faith be set initially by the number of Temptations the player takes. As time goes on you could buy off temptations with Faith, and perhaps take on temptations to increase a waning Faith. I'm hoping it adds some bite, while giving some flexibility to character gen. I'm thinking it will require some fleshing out of the temptation angle though, any suggestions on how to handle that?

-Tim