System with changing skills

[earwig]

Okay, I'm going to try to be as short with this as possible, since I have a habit of rambling.

I am working on an RPG where the players play fragments of a soul.  They can travel through time and are able to temporarily possess someone there.  Once they possess a host they have access to that "characters" memories, skills, and even personality.  However, when they leave the host (to the next adventure) they can take some of these skills and traits with them.  They will have a limited number of skills they can possess at any given time, so in order to take some skills they must leave others behind.  Eventually the characters will gather enough "BINDING" (this is a gameworld term) that they can become one soul, incarnate on earth.  The child will never remember the previous fragmented souls' journies, but will have a "predisposition" towards certain skills and traits.  This is the end of the game for this particular group of PCs. 

I have a lot of background info that I'm not going to go into here, but I wanted to get everyone's feelings of "changing" characters each game, having new skills and abilities available, and having the GM have some control over the current "character" the player is running.  Here is the feedback I am looking for, though any additional thought ideas, or insight is welcome:

1) Do you think as players this game is workable?  Would many players resent the idea of having limited control over who their character becomes?
   Note: The only reason I give this a sort of "Quantum Leap" randomness is for the sake of the GM.  If the players wind up in Medevil England, for instance, and the players possess royalty, while the GM has created a whole story around peasant life, the GM would have to be very good at improv to make it work. 

2) What type of system would run best.  Any suggestions?  I was thinking of using a variation of FUDGE, since I would need something that would be easy to move skills around.  Also because of the various time periods aspect, I need something that will adapt to that smoothly as well.  Personally, I am not a fond of crunchy systems.  I am willing to sacrafice realism in order to keep the story moving.  Plus we're dealing with fragmented souls, posession, and time travel.  I doubt realism is a serious concern.

Any other advice, help, or input would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks and have a great day.


Christopher M. Pfeifer

[opsneakie]

This sounds like a great idea, very unique and interesting. It sounds like a roleplaying-heavy game, but that might be fine depending on the composistion of your group. Time travel and possession allow the characters to change up what they're playing every adventure, which would be really great for playing out a lot of different character concepts.

This system sounds perfectly workable, and sounds like a blast to play. I'm assuming it works kind of like this based on your post: Characters advance by gaining more points to carry skills over, until eventually (as an ultimate goal) they can get enough points/skills/whatever to become fully animate like a normal person, right? They're carrying some parts of their previous character over into the next one, and these eventually merge to create a whole from bits of their previous characters.

[earwig]

Yes.  However, they may also sacrafice skills as well.  So if they are only able to carry five skills and they figure that knowing Medical Science (or whatever) might by important later on, they can sacrafice one of their other skills (Motorcycle Maintenace) in order to take that one on.  Their is also this idea of Emotional Anchors which are used in creating the binding to eventually combine them into a single soul to be born in the present.  In essence, they will be able to lift emotions from their hosts as well.  So if someone inhabits an abusive husband, they can carry that RAGE with them.  The stronger the emotion the stronger the binding.  However, these emotional traits will play a lot into what happens to that soul, and the type of person it becomes.  It might be countered with Love or Enthusiasm or whatever.  So if one character lifts Rage from his host, the others will need to lift counter emotions from theirs in order to balance the soul.  This is not something that has to be done at the same time, but once you gain enough "binding" the fragments will merge and be born as a soul in the present. 

In the mean time, the Fragments will grow closer and distant to each other as their identities form.  There may cases where one fragment has high levels of an emotion that completely conflicts with the emotional makeup of another (ex. Love vs. Hate).  These Fragments may never agree, and the one strong in Hate will more than likely dislike the others by it's very nature.  This can lead to true tragedies, as the Fragments natures pull them apart.  For instance, one character was always very introspective, reserved, and avoided violence at all cost, but in the course of a couple of sessions, he tapped the anger of his host (a way to fuel skills, powers, and modifiers) as last resort, eventually absorbing too much anger.  He is now an incarnate of anger.  This anger changes him from a meek, introspective philosopher into a dangerous, brilliant psychopath.  He still carries this anger with him to the next possession.  But who will possess and how will this anger effect those close to the host?  Furthermore, who will the other characters possess?  In what ways will they relate to the the Anger Host, and how will it effect them?

When the fragments travel through time, they will always possess as a group, and the group that they possess must have some emotional line, though it does not always have to be a positive link, to one another.  Perhaps they possess a banker and members of a family about to lose their home to the bank.  This will place the characters at odds with one another, but...

There are ways to destroy Fragments.  If one Fragment is destroyed, the others are destroyed with it, as there is no possability of those Fragments uniting into a whole soul.  So regardless of their feelings towards one another, inside of their hosts or not, they must keep each other alive and hope to help those against their emotions "see the light" and move towards the more positive end of existence.

I'm still working on ideas for mechanics on this, but I thought that once the fragments merge, the soul is born, and the characters will work together to complete the story of the life of that soul.  So they will work through different periods of his/her life from birth until death to complete the cycle.  It is rumored that good souls go to a paradise, bad go to torment, and those inbetween are wiped clean, shattered, and start again.

As far as Time Travel, our present is the present.  Nothing exists beyond our current present, each new "day" created new.  So the fragments will never venture past this very moment, but may find themselves at anytime from the dawn of time until now.   Though there are rumors that some Fragments have found ways beyond this barrier, but found themselves in complete nothing-ness, as reality has not been created yet.  Since time consists outside of space, they always move forward in time and thus reality never catches up with them.  If they cannot get past the barrier now in the other direction they exist forever in infinate nothingness.

Sometimes they do find a way back, but their sanity is no longer intact, and they become something evil and dangerous.

Anyway, I caught myself rambling again.  But that's a very "brief" overview of the game world.

[Simon C]

Hey, you should check out the latest edition of FATE.  It's got the kind of modular skills you're after, and I think their system of "Aspects" will really work for the traits like "Rage" and so on that you're interested in.  As a variant of Fudge, it should be familiar to you as well.  It will still be a bit of work, but it might be a good place to start.

This sounds like a cool idea, and I look forward to seeing where you go with this.

[earwig]

FATE is Evil Hat, right?  "Don't Rest Your Head" was one of my first indie-game experiences.

I'll check it out.  Thanks. 

I'm going to writing the game on a wiki for starters and see where it goes.  But I want to get the basics down before I throw it up online.

This is my first try at writing a game, so it's all pretty new to me.  So far, it's a good time.  Ask me again in a few weeks.

[Marshall Burns]

I don't really have anything constructive to add, but I must say that this sounds seriously, highly interesting.

[earwig]

Thanks.  I'm hoping it will be interesting if nothing else.

I am approaching this with three ideals in mind
1) Rules Lite
2) Character Driven
3) Definate End to a Story


My hope is to make a game that can run as long or short as the group wants, but has a definate end that is based on the characters' actions.  However, the end should be something the players will see as closure for these characters that they developed throughout the course of the game.  This is why I want to add the ending where they develope the life of the soul on Earth, so they can see (and be collectively responsible for) how their actions throughout the course of the game played out in the longrun.

Once this is completed, they can go back and start over if they would like without affecting the continuity of their game universe.

I wanted to make sure that even through infighting the characters need to keep one another alive, regardless of their feelings towards one another.  If one dies, they all do.  In many ways the characters are all part of each other.

Having played RPGs for many years, I know how hard it can be to keep a steady group of players going.  Someone always has to stop for awhile, someone moves, someone starts a job that doesn't allow him or her to make it when everyone else in the group can play, etc.  Since the characters are all linked and it is hard to lose players, as if the game is to go one, all the Fragments must be present.  However, I feel with this game, one could hand their character over to a new player replacing them with little problem, since the attitudes, characteristics, and knowledge can change drastically and quickly.  Yet, another way around this, and bringing me back to my 3rd Goal, is to end that game.  So the GM can come up with an epic storyline, with spoils being enough "binding" to reuinte the soul.  This epic can be played out in a session or two.  End the series, and start over next time with less or new players.  This also helps if everyone is just simply tired of the game and wants to move on to something else.  They can wrap up the game, have closure, and move on.  If they want to pick it up down the road they still can, but this time all new and fresh posabilties await them.

Sorry for the grammar and spelling errors.  It's 3 AM here and I just don't have it in me to look for them anymore.