[The Order] Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[knicknevin]

I was trying to explain this game to a friend, quoting from the .pdf you were kind enough to send me Kirk, when we hit a wall: maybe it's us not reading it right, so could you just check this for us?

1.You start the game with 10 points to be spread among your 3 stats, so you could start with Authority:4, Zeal: 3 and Humanity: 3, for example.

2. During the game, you can spend/lose these stats but not gain them, so you might end the game with Authority:2, Zeal:1 and Humanity:0, for example.

3. At the end of the game, you get a number of extra points to add to your character...but each one added takes a point away somewhere else, so if you get 5 points at the end (for 5 conflicts), you would have to end up with something like Authority:7, Zeal:0 and Humanity:0 (assuming the minimum for any stat is zero & that they don't go into negative figures)

4. So you start your next game with your final stats from the previous; during that game, your stats can only go down, as usual, and at the end you get more points to add, etc.

So, if I've got this right, after your first game, you will pretty much only ever have any points in one stat? In other words, if you decide to put your new points into Authority at the end of your first game, that will almost certainly zero-out your other stats; then at the end of your next game, if you put points into any other stat, it will cost you the points you put into Authority at the end of your first game (assuming you didn't spend them all during your second game), so there's no reason to do it and you would put your points into Authority again and so on. Is this the intention, pushing the players more rapidly towards their endgame, or have we missed something out?

[Kirk Mitchell]

That was essentially the idea. Sort of like the dark side of the Force. Once you step down a path, you can never go back (or at least it is very difficult). I should probably add something that says if you two of your stats are zero, you don't have to reduce anything. However, you can't just discharge all of your reductions into an already empty stat if you have two to choose from.

For example: If you have Authority: 7, Zeal: 0 and Humanity: 0, and you get 4 points at the end of the Interrogation, you can't reduce 4 from Zeal or Humanity, because they can't go into negatives. You could conceivably decide to reduce Authority by 4 and increase Zeal and/or Humanity. However, if you have, say Authority: 7, Zeal: 3 and Humanity: 0, and you get 4 points at the end of the Interrogation, you can't try and reduce Humanity to get out of reducing one of the others. If you increase Authority, you would have to reduce Zeal to 0 and the last reduction just gets ignored.

Does that make any sense? We'd have to see how it works in play before we tweak it further.

Thanks for your comments,
Kirk

[knicknevin]

Yup, that clears it up nicely :-) Have had 2 people from my RPG group say they are free to playtest the game this Friday, so who knows, I might get some feedback to you before Xmas! Assuming we can find somewhere to play it now!

[Kirk Mitchell]

Sounds great. Let me know how it goes!

Kirk