Spiritual Attributes - What are they?

[O. Rodriguez]

Hello everyone,

My group just started a tRoS game and after our first session we had a number of questions. After a search of the forums I found the answers to most. One issue is still being debated however, spiritual attributes.

The issue came up when the GM suggested that the SA ratings dictate how important these issues are to the character. It struck me as wrong. After some thought I've concluded that SA are tools that indicate the story interests of the player, not importance to the individual SA's to the character. Either you have conscience or your don't. Either you have a passion or your don't. The ratings are not important, simply the presence of them. Character advancement depending on spending SA's was also a factor in what I thought.

At this point the tormented flaw was mentioned. I'll quote the e-mail for ease: "Let me also point out a flaw called Tortured.  Because your character is mentally torn between things, he/she cannot have more then 3 points total in their Passion and Drives combined.  So, I think that adds some weight to the idea that the number of dots does indicate the level of committment.  The question is...how much do you infer from those little black dots and their quantity? "

I believed I was on the right track, but this was a valid point. So the question boils down to this; do SA ratings represent the character's level of commitment to those SA's?

Thanks in advance for any discussion.

Oscar

EDIT: typos

[Valamir]

Your instincts are 100% correct Oscar.  The book is not as clear as it could be because the concept was still pretty new.  You can see some of Jake's struggling with how to describe them in the text.

SA represent the PLAYERS committment to the SAs.

In the case of the Destiny SA, the character may not even be aware of it let alone committed to it.

They most assuredly DO NOT represent anything connected to any sort of magnitude or importance.  

Love (wife) at 5 does NOT mean you Love your wife more than Love (wife) at 1.

This cannot be stressed enough.  It is an ESSENTIAL concept to fully understand because trying to tie them to magnitude will drive you mad.

So what do the SAs represent?  There are actually lots of threads in the forum with discussions ranging from "purely metagame" to various in game justifications.  But essentially, from a conceptual point of view...they represent pacing.

What I mean by that is this:

In any good story you have build up, climax, and denouement.
In TROS as you encounter things that drive and draw upon and challenge your Passion, your Passion will increase.  This is the build up.
When you have the climactic moment where calling upon that Passion saves the Princess (or whatever) and the dice provided allow you to succeed where previously you'd be doomed to failure...thats the climax.  Afterwards when you spend the points down on character improvement, thats the denouement.

When you have several SAs all building up and crossing with each other you'll have alot of mini climax moments and denouements.  But when they all start firing at the same time and you get 3 or 4 or even 5 SAs adding dice to your pool...that's the Climactic moment of the whole story arc.  That's when the theme music is crashing in the background and Conan is hacking his way through legions of enemies.

Its the GMs job in the game to make sure the situations he invents for you tie into your SAs and build towards a moment where several of your SAs apply at once.

Its your job as a player to change and swap SAs when necessary to tie your character more thoroughly into the situation.

Keep in mind that swapping out of an SA also does not mean that your character no longer feels it (he doesn't stop loving his wife...necessarily).  It simply means that issues of his feelings for his wife aren't going to be featured in the upcoming sessions of the game.  When they are, he can swap back into it.


As a final note, I recommend not getting too caught up in the specific text about what the SAs are and how they are spent and lost.  Again, there's a lot of rough edges in that section that work out much smoother when you keep flexible about them.

[Bankuei]

Hi Oscar,

Welcome to the Forge!  

You are quite right that the SAs are "interest/story flags" for the player to the GM, and not necessarily about the character's commitment.  Many people mistake this, thinking that spending out your SA to raise a stat means your character suddenly "stops caring" about things, which is not true.

What the numbers indicate is "How MUCH of a role does this SA play in the current situation".  As far as the Tortured concern, recognize that it means the hero will never be able to max out those SA types, which doesn't mean that they are not committed, they're just not able to focus enough to call everything into effect.

Another consideration is that your character can have SAs such as "Loves  Akane" and yet refuses to admit their feelings, even to themselves.  Or perhaps has "Destined to be a king".  SAs may or may not be conscious considerations for the character, but they certainly are for the players.

Chris

(Crossposted with Ralph)

[O. Rodriguez]

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm sure my group will talk about this a bit more, but this thread is a good start for us.

I'm personally still trying to figure out what role of the flaw, tortured, in the whole "rating means something ic" versus "means something ooc" debate we are having. But, I suppose it's not really important if our sessions are framed so that our SA's fire whatever a reasonable amount of times is. If they fire enough times, I the player will be happy and my character will be too.

Oscar

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, it'll probably work out fine in play.

OTOH, if you're interested, what you're running into is likely what we around here sometimes call a GNS issue. If you want to do more reading on the topic you might want to start with the articles link above.

Mike

[Malechi]

Tortured eh... thats a sticky one if you've got these questions of the *value* of an SA meaning anything more than a dice bonus.

so tortured means you are torn between an internal conundrum of sorts.  I think of SAs as a fluid potential for your character.  As others have said, the absolute numerical value of an SA means next to nothing other than your immediate potential to be more effective when acting in concert to your SA definitions. We had similar questions in our group from people who thought that once you spent out your points to get better at something (proficiencies or attributes frex) that you were no longer as committed to your SA or that you'd somehow left it behind you.  So not the case!

I'm probably just waffling on here but IC and OOC/metagame concerns about SAs can be hard to reconcile with players who are either new to the game or perhaps a little hostile towards it (funny TROS is the first game I've played where people have been hostile towards it..some people dislike D&D some people love it.. but some people *hate* TROS in some kind of way I don't understand).  I think this resolves if you show them that SAs can climb quite quickly from 0 to 5 in the space of perhaps one scene.  With this kind of progression it should become apparent that the value means little compared to the role they play in directing the actions of your character and hence the story.  

waffling too much so I'll stop..

Jason K.

[Bob McNamee]

Me?
I'm campaigning for SA's to be renamed Story Advantages whenever a revised edition comes out.

I'm of the opinion that it would better highlight the Player aspect of the advantages, rather than a set of traits of the Character.

I talked about it in a thread around here somewhere...

[Valamir]

That would be This One I believe

[kenjib]

Me?
I'm campaigning for SA's to be renamed Story Advantages whenever a revised edition comes out.

I'm of the opinion that it would better highlight the Player aspect of the advantages, rather than a set of traits of the Character.

I talked about it in a thread around here somewhere...

I like "motives."  I think the term fits better with the whole narrative aspect of SA's and highlights more clearly the role that SA's have in determining the future plot and action of the campaign.  This is the role that SA's have that is not spelled out in the book and seems to be the biggest confusion regarding TROS (for those that don't visit the forum after buying the book) and can be fixed with just such a simple change of names.

[O. Rodriguez]

Thanks again for the link and the replies everyone. Hopefully the discussion that will go on from here with my group will make for a better game.

Oscar

[Stephen]

I'm campaigning for SA's to be renamed Story Advantages whenever a revised edition comes out.

I'm of the opinion that it would better highlight the Player aspect of the advantages, rather than a set of traits of the Character.

I like "motives."  I think the term fits better with the whole narrative aspect of SA's and highlights more clearly the role that SA's have in determining the future plot and action of the campaign.

I would agree.  I think Motives is better because it can apply both to player and character levels of awareness, and because the key is to get rid of the word "Attribute".

The problem is that most gamers are so used to this term meaning "a relatively static numerical score that measures your inherent power or ability in a particular field of action" that when we see the word used in a gaming context where it doesn't have that traditional gaming meaning, we get confused.  I had the same confusion of understanding when I first got TROS.

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

The problem is that most gamers are so used to this term meaning "a relatively static numerical score that measures your inherent power or ability in a particular field of action" that when we see the word used in a gaming context where it doesn't have that traditional gaming meaning, we get confused.

This is probably the meaning a TRoS reader gets having just read through the sections on Temporal Attributes and Mental Attrributes... ; ^ )

Cheers,

[bottleneck]

I'm campaigning for SA's to be renamed Story Advantages whenever a revised edition comes out.

I like "motives."  

I like both!
"Story advantage" of course still is "SA", so it's backwards compatible. "Motive" or "motivation" is perhaps easier to grasp?

It depends whether your perspective is the story (the players) or the character.

Of course, characters can be motivated by other things than their SA's, they just don't get any 'story advantage' by following those motivations...

[Ante]

"Story Motives"?

Nah, too clunky I guess...

[Brian Leybourne]

"Story Motives"?

Nah, too clunky I guess...

Besides, then we would have to tell folk that the most important thing about TROS is S&M, which might give them the wrong idea...

Brian.