[FADE] Prelimary concepts & riffy early work

[Bailywolf]

This is something I've noodled around with a bit- do I want parity between the traits of the two scores, or something different?

Not entirely sure, and to be honest the art/arcana/patron thing is somethign I've played with since the begining.  Mostly because it follows the breakdown in magical scaling I want- arts are personal direct and limited.  Arcana are external, self-sustaining, and semi-independent, and a Patron is something entirely external you can call upon- if you dare.  I think you can fit just about any kind of magical or supernatural power you can think of into this, and work your particular "flavor" of magic into your Initiation description.  Crowley, for example, hears the whispers of green growing things and can speak to them, and expect them to obey.  A shaman can do anythign that fits his Initiation description with his gratis die for all Mystery checks- and if he does them with apropriate external advantages, he can gain more dice without even having an Art that fits.

I'm less fixed on the Skill/Conviction/Relationship thing.  Skill and Relationship makes good sense, but perhaps your Wealth suggestion would be better than Conviction.  In creating sample characters, I find myself using Conviction the least.  Perhaps "Resource" might be a better description for this, and have it cover any and all useful temporal influence- friends, money, property, or a really kickass car.  It works like a Relationship, but is based on either using the resource to further your desires, or being motivated by your felings for the resource.  

I do like the idea of picking relationship "slots" and keeping them open, and picking them out during play.  The empty slot would give a character an incentive to flesh out his connections to the setting quickly, but it works both ways.  Picking "Ex-Wife" as a Relationship immediatly adds something to the setting, as would "Sworn Vengence against the Cult of the Black Star."  Bam- you're got an Ex-Wife you still love, and an evil cult to fight.  More than anything, I want to setting to exist in service to great dynamic characters.

I'll monkey around with the traits, and the die bonuses they give (and any particular specific constraints on them) this weekend.

Spooky, you've been a hell of a lot of help on this.

Thanks,

-Ben

[Spooky Fanboy]

I'd personally be leery about dropping Conviction, as it makes for some good drama when a character is screaming "MUST! SUCCEED!"/"OH, HELL NO!" when supporting his Conviction/opposing someone interfering with it. Magic types, at least in books and movies, tend to have some pretty strong thou shalt/not's hardwired into their decision-making processes.

I like the idea for Resources, though. Much better name.  Perhaps Skills, Convictions, and Resources?

It's up to you, but I'd keep "name-worthy" Relationships (on both sides) as an entirely separate category, which also fluctuates up or down depending on the Score in question. Either the player or the GM has to narrate how screwing up the Crisis had a negative impact on the Relationship as well as the negative impact on the Skill, Resource, Art, etc. Kinda does what you see happening in books, movies, or graphic novels, where a Crisis resolved (one way or another) is somehow reflected in a Relationship the character has. Helps to personify the outcome a bit.

Only bit of problem I see is: if Relationships are a seperate category (removing the need for Patron), and Approach is already covered during Initiation, what the hell balances out the Mystery side of the sheet? It should be something meaningful (like Resources), but something not already covered. Unless, of course, you keep Patron as an uber-relationship, and keep the other Relationships on the Mystery side as someone more than an ally, but less central than the Main Figure.

[Bailywolf]

I think I have a better handle on my traits now, and I'm going to stick with the skill/conviction/relationship thing, and with the art/arcana/patron thing.

They aren't quite the same thing, and I think I'm comfortable with that.  Something like a Resource can be rolled neatly into Background- if you describe your character as a 'Spoiled Rich Boy recently shocked into a revelation of the larger world' then right off you know you get a Gratis die when rolling in conflicts involving money and buying power, and the GM would assess any penalty dice based on your Background.  Tommy Monroe (of the Connecticut Monroes) could easily manage to pay off the back taxes on some land he owned- it wouldn't even be a conflict for him- but John Crowley will have to scrape to manage the same conflict.  

What really matters- and what makes it a Trait- is how the character feels about his wealth.  Tommy might have a "Hates money as only the rich know how" relationship trait which describes his attitude to and relationship with his money.  When engaging in conflicts which involve wild spending, he'd get the bonus dice for it.  

I've also refined the number of dice you get for a given trait, thusly:

Art/Skill:  Grants one die to all checks, and can be used as often as it applies.  Cross-purpose use grants 1 Trouble.

Conviction/Arcana:  Grants 1 die to all score checks and 2 to all cross-purpose checks.  Can be so used once per session per score, and cross-purpose use grants 2 Trouble.

Relationship/Patron:  grants 2 dice to all score checks, and 3 to all cross-purpose checks.  Can be used once and only once per session, and grants 3 Trouble for cross-purpose checks.  

There is a fundamental difference in Relationship and Patron, despite the identical mechanical function.  A Relationship is internal- the character's feelings towards and outside person/place/thing which are powerful enough to drive and motivate.  A Patron is an entirely external force upon which the character can call for intervention and power.  One drives the character to do better, the other sweeps down and helps the character do better.  

Here is the hinky bit- it is entirely possible to have a Relationship based on Identity for a creature or patron of the Mystery.  

Say you have a gothy teen girl with a Mystery trait Patron "The Vampire Byron."  She could also have a Relationship under her Identity with something like "In love with the Vampire."  or "Byron's Lover" or something like that.  One is her feelings for the vampire, the other is the vampire's power itself.  Her feelings- even for a supernatural thing- are part of her Identity, while the thing itself is part of her Mystery.  

A Conviction could be "Cabalistic Mysticism"  or "Ritual Magic" if they are things you believe in and which drive your actions.  The Mystery doesn't need you to believe in it for it to be real- it is real, you see it, and it is so.  

-Ben

[Spooky Fanboy]

So, a seer's style of magic is basically background unless the player makes it a Conviction? Good. Makes sense.

As for how the Trouble points work out, I'd actually have to play the game itself to see them in action. Do you have a playtest doc? Or are you ironing out the extended conflicts and other mechanics first? Please keep us informed!

[Bailywolf]

I'm hoping to have a basic playtest doc cooked by this weekend- and I may get to try it out on my group next Thursday or so.

Right now, I'm pretty comfortable with the basic nuts and bolts, but I'm still trying to formalize the conflict and conflict scaling.  

One thing I'm playing with is based on your suggestion to 'up-scale' a Crisis at each stage of resolution, and I'm trying to formalize this somewhat in terms of an expanding sphere of consequences (with general guidelines on how many people/how much area/how long it lasts for each step).  Each successful check to resolve a Crisis upscales one step, and a failure ripples outward at the same scale.  

For example, Kate Blake (our goth girl) is attacked by the hypnotized human minions of another Seer (her ex-boyfriend she dumped for her undead lover).  She uses a combination of her Athleticism and The Vampire Byron's intervention to avoid injury or death, but the conflict triggers a 3 point Crisis which threatens her "Basically a Good Person" conviction- seeing the Vampire rip her attackers apart and drink their blood was both revolting and alluring to her, and Byron's offer to take her way from the despicable mortal world was tempting...  but she still thinks of herself as basically good, and is justly horrified by her demon-lover's actions.  

So, on the line is a point of Identity and specifically her "Basically a Good Person" conviction.  

It requires three successful Identity checks resolve the crisis, but three failures mean the trait is lost.

She puts on jeans and a tee-shirt, wipes off the makeup, and goes home to visit her family in North Carolina for a weekend, trying to reconnect with the normality of daily life, and perhaps get some kind of confirmation from her folks that she still IS basically a good person.  She makes the check.  

We move from Scale 1 (affects only the character) to Scale 2 for the next check (affects those close to the character- family and friends).  But this check she blows, and now her family is threatened by the Crisis in some way.  The GM gets narration rights on this (because her Trouble total is now less than her Identity score), and narrates how, during the early evening, a knock sounds at the door.  Kate's father opens it, and the Vampire is there, dressed like the pre-med student Kate told her family she was dating.  He says, "Hi, I'm Byron- Kate's boyfriend... she said it might be OK if I stopped by this weekend if I was visiting my relatives in Ashford."

On the next successful Crisis check, the Scale bumps to 3, which expands outward to affect the local community.  In this case, her family's friends and associations, her father's coworkers, neighbors, and whatnot, and the success/fail of the check is narrated by whoever wins that right based on the trouble/score interactions.

I need to formalize this conflict scale thing, and figure out if I want some kind of complex or extended conflict mechanics.  Group conflicts also need some attention.

I'm not sure if the basic math is sound, and I'll have to playtest and tweak the numbers to get things to fall out just so.

-B