Torchbearer: Thoughts on Mechanics

[Jonathan Walton]

Could you not also have Crises related to specific Traits then (i.e. Crises of Flame)?

EX:  Varashi has the Flame "My Sword is Sharp as Winter."  However, in the final battle with Neranja, her (obsidian?) sword is broken in two.  Now, like Aragorn, she seeks a way to heal her sword.  Until this matter is resolved, the Flame is considered to be "in Crisis."

I'm not sure how a Crisis would affect Traits.  Maybe they would cost Fuel to activate?  Varashi might have a harder time fighting with only the broken remnants of her sword, but she could still do it (like the prince from "The Pirates of Dark Water").

Maybe a Trait in Crisis could be replaced by another?  Instead of "My Sword is Sharp as Winter," Varashi now has "I am Resolute as Iron," illustrating her new determination (not that she wasn't determined before).

What do you think?

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Logical, but now I'm confused.

A Crisis turns out to be a transformation of character.  Good.  This answers the dangerous, unasked question of character development.  They have Crises.

But what triggers a Crisis?  It seems that Duties can be resolved (thus, the Duty is 'in crisis', as you call it, during a conflict that may resolve it), and Visions can grow (they go into Crisis between the point where the character views herself as different and the world responds), but what do Traits do?  Can a player force a Crisis?

Jump back to (I'll adopt your terms; they're strong) the discussion of The Heart Myth and The World Myth.  The idea of Crises came from the point in the story where someone's Myth burns higher.

So, farther even to your Myth Levels:
A Crisis of Heart happens when someone pushes his inner Contrast past 9.  We call this the Law of 9.  That pushes the character's Heart Myth to the next rank, and resets his Contrast to 1.  This also replaces the idea of characters with permanent high Contrast.  Again, characters can act as if they had weaker Heart Myths by burning Fuel.
A Crisis of Story happens when someone pushes the Scene Contrast past 9.  Again, the World Myth rises a rank and the Scene Contrast drops, but now everyone feels the beat of Myth grow louder.  The shadows grow deeper, the sky a little bit more blue, birdsong starts to sound as if it had words.

I had mentioned earlier that characters can gain Fuel for acting consistently with their Vision or Duty.  So, a way to allow flexibility here would be to declare that quality In Crisis during some conflict where it is relevant.  Rather than gaining Fuel, if the character wins the conflict he may change his Vision or Duty.

Now, finally we come back to where we started.  In what manner do Traits come into Crisis?  Identically to Vision and Duty.  In a conflict where they come into play, the character declares a Trait In Crisis.  Should the character be fortunate enough to win the conflict, he may replace that Trait with another.  So, Varashi gives up the power of her Sword, for the time being, and gains the Resolve to have it repaired and restored to her.

What do you think?

[Jonathan Walton]

This just keeps getting better and better...

This answers the dangerous, unasked question of character development.  They have Crises.

Oh, does this kick ass or what?! :)  Now, character advancement takes place THROUGH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, like it should be.  The characters can't gain abilities or rise in power without experiencing internal/external conflicts!  Forget experience.  The gods have been around for centuries or millenia, but if nothing challanges them in a significant fashion, they could stay the same way forever.

I'm liking this system more and more.  Honestly, I haven't liked a system this much since Nobilis, and that's saying a lot.

Crisis Triggering:

I like your system of being able to declare a Trait to be "in Crisis," subject to the approval of the GM and maybe the other players.  That way, it wouldn't be a constant thing.  Also, GM's could tailor the game's dynamism to meet their tastes.  In some games, every major conflict would resolve a Crisis of some kind.  In others, Crises would be much rarer and only represent major shifts in character.

Smokes are giving me a bit of trouble.  Wouldn't putting a Smoke in Crisis be a good thing?  What would put "Swings a Sword like a Club" in Crisis?  Practicing?  Increasing speed and agility?  But I think players should be able to resolve certain Smokes over the course of advancement.  Hmm...  Maybe you could use the same rules.  Put a Smoke in Crisis, succeed in some way in resolving the Smoke, and you can trade it for a new Smoke (since you can never be perfect).  If you fix one flaw, another one will come into the spotlight.

This style of advancement looks like it'll be pretty interesting.  I'll be interested to see how it holds up in playtest.

Empowering the Myths:

Your descriptions of how to increase the potency of Heart and World Myths were perfect.  It combined a lot of the things I was suggesting, but made it all work together in a way that I couldn't get it to do.  Nicely done. So characters wouldn't have different levels of permanent Contrast, they'd have Heart Myths of different strengths?  You might have the bend the mechanics a bit to make it rather difficult to get Character or Scene Contrast to go over 9.  Or maybe 9 is the max, but there could be other conditions for making a permanent level increase (like what?).  After all, raising a Myth should be a BIG deal.

Maybe you could have it be story-based.  If the characters raise Character or Scene Contrast past 9, AND they're in a serious life-changing conflict with certain things in Crisis, AND the GM thinks it would be appropriate for the story, the Myth increases in potency.  This way, the character's actions can make it MORE LIKELY for Myth increases to happen, but they can't guarantee it.

-- To raise you Heart Myth, you need Character Contrast of at least 9, either your Vision or Duty in Crisis, and one addition Trait on the line.  Then, if the GM agrees, up it goes.

EX.  Varashi's final battle with Neranja.  Her Character Contrast is at 11, her Duty ("Kill Neranja in revenge for the death of my one true love") is in Crisis, and she's put "My Sword is Sharp as Winter" in Crisis as well, by shattering it against the demon's tough flesh.  The GM gives her the tumbs up.  Her Heart Myth goes up.  Now she has to resolve the Crises by picking a new Duty and Trait.

-- To raise the World Myth, you need Scene Crisis of at least 9, and X number of Traits, Visions, and Duties in Crisis.  Maybe you can come up with something better here, since I don't think this one is as appropriate.

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Story Myth seems to me to be a multiple-participants thing, so maybe multiple characters need to be having Crises for the Myth to intensify.  This makes sense; the climax of a story could easily involve several Duties being resolved. No one person alone can make a story into a Myth.
Characters raising their Myth through Crisis: Brilliant.  Especially the idea of layered Crisis of several things at once; something I hadn't even thought of.  So, to go with 9 there can be 3; three layers of Crisis seems enough to trigger a shift of Myth.
On Traits:  There was a reason I specifically talked about Traits rather than using terms like Smoke/Flame/Coal/Ember.  Certainly, you could put a Smoke in crisis, and exactly what you described would occur: the Smoke falls into the background, and a new one steps forward to take its place.  Maybe during your training for dropping Swings a Sword Like a Club you lost all that fine noble polish your finishing school worked so hard to create, and now you have Warrior's Ill Manners.  Also, you could call a Crisis in order to bring out a Trait that you didn't have at all.  This is a pretty major sort of Crisis, and shouldn't happen often, but it would actually create a new Trait pair for you.  You could also do this with Coals (maybe call Crisis to turn a Coal into two 'live' Traits) and Embers (which, being unpaired, would just spring out of nowhere, unpaired).

I want to avoid ideas like 'GM approval'; I realized I'm trying to build a game where the traditional GM isn't a necessity (though for some styles of play, appropriate; sometimes the players want to play games like Explore and Solve-the-Mystery, which are more fun when you're actually anticipating finding out).  Maybe putting the question to vote?

I had also posed the idea of Fuel reserve being determined by a characters Traits and Contrast.  Clearly this was foolish.  I'm starting to think that the pool should be either uncapped, or have a constant cap.  I'm leaning more toward uncapped, as it encourages dynamism and the two styles of play that my friend Josh likes to liken to the princes of Amber: Benedict uses his reserves of power, so it seems like he has a lot.  He doesn't, though, do anything really wildly exceptional, for an Amberite.  Corwin, on the other hand, is subtle.  He doesn't show his hand often, but when he does it's obvious that he's very competent in his own bailiwick.

[Jonathan Walton]

If you're going to go with "3 Crises + 9 Contrast = More Myth" you could probably have that work for both World & Heart Myths.  To increase the World Myth, you'd need to have 3 different characters all having Crises in the same 9-Contrast Scene.  I think that would be rare enough (since Scene Contrast is pretty hard to come by).

Say, can the characters pool Fuel to buy Scene Contrast?  I think they probably should be able to.

Another thought:  Do you want there to be a way for the Heart & World Myths to WEAKEN?  Say, if they put everything on the line and fail horribly: if Neranja totally takes Varashi to the cleaners, does her Heart Myth get shattered along with her sword?  Or can you only go up?  Perhaps it COULD go down (i.e. optional rule), but since all changes in Myth are subject to a vote by the players, they could ultimately decide what they thought made the most sense.

Also, you could call a Crisis in order to bring out a Trait that you didn't have at all.

I think that makes sense.  And if you go with the "vote by players" rule, it'll ensure that people have good reasons for wanting to manifest new traits.  They might expect you to discover some arcane secrets in order to manifest new Embers, for example.

Sorry I was a little dense about the "GM-approval" thing.  Game design reflex, I guess.  I personally like as little GM-control as the game can stand (both when I play and when I run games).  If we run out of other things to discuss (yeah, right), we should brainstorm about what the GM's role(s) in Torchbearer might be.

You could just have characters start with a specified amount of Fuel and just let it go from there, not mentioning anything about a cap.  You might want to think about whether you want characters to regain Fuel between stories (as in Nobilis) or whether the beginning of most stories will likely involve service to their Duty or Vision (which will help them gain back the Fuel they spent last game).  I could see either one working, but you'd have to explain how.

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

The rule of 3 and 9 is nice.
Pooling Fuel: Yeah, this is imaginable.  Maybe rather than buying discrete levels of Contrast, they just throw Fuel at the Scene, and when that raises the Contrast, it reacts.

Myth weakening... I think I'll definitely discuss it, rather than just leaving people in the dark.  I'm unlikely to use it myself, at least not often.  I tend to think that the only point that Myth might weaken is at the end of a story, when things are winding down.  It's possible that the high-ranking Crises, Vision and Duty, can cause dilution of Myth just as they can make it rise.

I've been making shady comments on the GM thing... My stance on that has been shifting, and so your unclarity on the topic is certainly not a shortfall of yours.

I think that I'll present a few different rulesets for Fuel gain and initial Fuel, because I see several things working.  A slow-paced game could comfortably force character service for Fuel, while a faster one might assume downtime, another that Fuel doesn't shift between stories (the reasoning behind this being that if something involving a Fuel shift had happened, that would be a story too).  A really high-powered Exalted-style game might have Fuel continually supplied to the characters; a low-powered game might require the Godsblood Hunt for Fuel.  Lots of things you could do here that tweak the flavor of the game.  I think I'm happy with the default system of character service, though.

[Shreyas Sampat]

A few alternate Fuel mechanics:

Tumbleweeds:
Each player starts with the same amount of Fuel.  Fuel can only be spent during conflicts.  At the end of the conflict, all the Fuel spent is given to the successful party.  It is divided among the participants if the successful party is more than one character.
Two sub-mechanics:
Fuel Theft: Actions that net Fuel for character service create 'Fuel Debt'; at the end of a conflict characters with Fuel Debt try to fill their debt before dividing the remainder among the successful parties.
Runaway Fuel: A character may willingly transfer Fuel to another.  Apart from this and the winning of conflicts, there is no way to gain Fuel.

The Hive:
Players don't have personal Fuel.  Instead, there is a single pool of Fuel that all the protagonists of the story share.  Character service adds Fuel to this pool, and Fuel expenditure removes it.

Shadows:
Each character starts with the same amount of Fuel.  Fuel usage rules are different.  You may spend Fuel to:

[*]Increase another character's Contrast.  Give that character the Fuel you spent.
[*]Ignite another character's Coal or Ember; you name the manifestation of the Ember.  Give that character the Fuel you spent.
[*]Reverse another's Trait.  Give that character the Fuel you spent.
[*]Increase Scene Contrast.  Set this Fuel aside; Fuel gained from character service comes from here.
[/list:u]

Metamorphosis:
You do not gain Fuel from character service.  Instead, each time a Crisis you participated in resolves, you gain an amount of Fuel as follows:
[list=1]
[*]Trait Crisis
[*]Vision or Duty Crisis
[*]Story Crisis
[/list:o]

Since some of these deal with different Fuel behaviors, they can be overlapped in certain cases.

[Jonathan Walton]

While trying to adapt "Quixote & Coyote" to use Torchbearer's rules (see my new thread, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38895#38895">here), I think I came up with a solution to your problems with the term "Contrast."

You don't need it.

It could be completely replaced by Heart Myth and World Myth.  

Check this out: You don't spend Fuel to raise Character Contrast or Scene Contrast; you spend Fuel to increase the roaring fires of your Heart Myth or the World Myth itself.  The Three/Nine Rule would still work, of course.  If your Heart Myth was Ordinary(+0) and you increased it all the way to Ordinary+9 (and had 3 Traits in Crisis), it would bump up to become Mystical(+0).  Likewise with increasing the World Myth.

Actually, this unifies those two mechanics even more than they already were, making things even simpler.

What d'ya think?  Does it work?

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

That solution's both intelligent and elegant.  Thanks, Jon!

(More in the morning.)

[Jonathan Walton]

So, I was trying to come up with a logo for Storypunk when I accidentally stumbled across an effect that makes really cool flames.

"Hmm," I thought, "what kind of logo could use some really cool flames?"

It's just a little sample I whipped up in 15 minutes.  If you like it, I'd be glad to make a similar one based on any suggestions you have.

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hmmm... can this be used for a kind of corona effect?  Envision the title I have on my Geocities page, set on a black rectangle , with the O(omega) replaced with a graphic like an eclipsed sun...

Here's something like what I was thinking.  (You'll have to copypaste the link; Geocities won't let me link directly to files from outside its domain.)  Something about whole-word display text effects makes me squirm.  What typeface did you use there?  It's interesting.  (I patched my text together with letters from nearly everywhere.  I think I used like four different fonts.)

As for a Storypunk logo... I imagine typewritten letters grading into hand-drawn script.  That would be holy hell to draw...  Illuminated machine-drawn text?  I dunno.

On Names:
We said earlier that you can use a person's Name to deflect Smoke from yourself.  How does this work?
If you know a Name, you can "bind" it to a particular Smoke Trace.  It still exists and you still 'expiate' it in the same manner, but you do not suffer penalties for it whil a Name is bound to it.  You can bind a Name at any time, but they can only become unbound through the dissipation of Smoke.

[Bob McNamee]

Hmm...if you don't mind maybe I'll play around with some of your graphics ideas (for both of you...)...I'll let you know if I come up with anything interesting...

I like the Torchbearer lettering you have going on willow

[Jonathan Walton]

Logos:

The font's called "Viner Hand" but it's not quite what I wanted, either.  I wanted something that looked tribal and mythic/divine at the same time, but couldn't find a font that I thought really worked.  I might try mixing up a few fonts if I make another attempt.  Really like your eclipsed-sun image.  I'll see if I can figure out how to duplicate that (maybe using a Lens Flare effect).  

After all this conceptual thinking, I think my visual art muscles are needing to stretch a bit :)  Nothing I've tried for Storypunk has really worked yet, though I like your suggestions.  I'll have another go at it.

Name Bonding:

I guess I'm still a little unclear on how you're describing this.  

So, Varashi learns of the True Name of Neranja and wants to punish him from afar, since she's currently trying to track his position.  So, the next time she's supposed to take Smoke Traces on herself, she binds the Smoke "Solitary Existence" to Neranja's Name.

Okay, so the Smoke should affect Neranja now, is that right?  The beast will no longer be able to have contact with his own kind and will be shunned by even his own family, assuming he has one.  So, every time Neranja's life suffers because of the Smoke, you remove one point of the Trace?

Or, is the Smoke still Varashi's, but Neranja's Name blocks the ill effects?  For instance, when Varashi interects with others, she suffers no ill effects, but one point is removed from the Trace (and something, presumably rather bad, happens to Neranja?).

I'm probably just be dense, of course.  Feel free to enlighten me.

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Second interpretation.

Unfortunately, this doesn't actually deflect suffering onto the victim, something I wanted to cause.

Perhaps the Smoke could be noted on the victim's charcter, along with its magnitude and source, and function as the first interpretation, with the restriction that a particular source cannot be duplicated - if you know a person's Name, you can bind one Smoke onto him, but not two.  If that person knows your Name, he can prevent you from binding Smoke onto him; the remainder of the Trace also returns to you when he dies.  If you die, the remaining Trace dissipates. (Insert whatever other Smoke manipulation... Dividing Traces over several Names?  Deflecting Traces transferred to you?  Discussions of other Name properties?  The power of Blood?)

Hey, Blood - with a person's Blood, you can transfer a Trace without its bond to you.  This means that in addition to that Trace, you can bind a second one to the same person.  Unfortunately, this tends to use up a good portion of the Blood you have on hand.

[Jonathan Walton]

Attempt #2:



Don't worry.  I'll get sick of doing this eventually :)

Name/Blood Magicks:

Coolness.

Bedtime for me,
Jonathan