Wayfarer's Song - Soulburn

[Peregrine]

Hi all

This is to try and partly answer a query put to me by Palefire regarding the taints and soulburn system in Wayfarer's Song.

Palefire wrote:

Actually I'm having the exact same concern with
Yggdrasil (my game). This ties in with the "mechanic
behind it" I was talking about earlier.

It's a bit of a problem. You run your magic as
"taint" and in a way I do the same. The problem is,
how does this taint translate into changes as the
game goes on?

Well you codified the changes for the magicians,
right? But this is just trying to avoid the problem
being obvious. Think of what would have happened if
you left out the rules for how magicians were
affected by taint.

See, I want to see a character sample the blood of
an Ogre of great power (they are a little similar to
the Giants of norse mythology as they godlike powers
too). What happens? Does he gain a power? Is he hurt
by it? Does the essence of the Ogre take him over
and controll him to attack his friends?

If I was writing a novel, any of these could be
really cool if it happened.

Now enter the game system. If I have codified
effects then the limit is gonna be by what the
tables say. If it's the GM who decides it might feel
too arbitrary.

-"Why are you hosing me and giving me such a bummer
effect when Bill got that superpower when he drank
the blood of that other ogre?"

I think the solution lies in partial randomness
(roll if it's beneficial or detrimental), but the
effect has to mediated somehow with the players and
the GM for coolest effect.

I think it's important that the rules somehow
certifies the GM to hose the player when some things
happen and have rules when the GM can give
beneficial things. That gives the players the
illusion that they're living in a consistent world.

I don't think pure lists can give a good organic
synthesis of magic. Your lists for every magician
has 10 entries, how long is it gonna take until they
feel a little stale? Well naturally it depends on
the amount of taint, but I think it's a risk you
should look into.

If you think this is something worthwhile to you too
we could start a topic on the forge and discuss it
to have some more jumping in and suggesting stuff.

Well here goes. Mostly I am still addressing Taint as it will affect sorcerers in the game, but I think the tables could be expanded in scope to cover pretty much anything with a little tweaking. Things for here on in may get a little bumpy, so please bear with me.

SOULBURN: ADVANCED
Palefire pointed out to me that the taint lists in Wayfarer’s Song are likely to get a bit stale after a while (only ten per affinity). This got me thinking about implimenting an (additional) advanced mechanic for helping Storyteller’s invent new taints when their players have run through the small lists.

There are three steps to the process…

Step One........Pick a foci
Step Two........Make some random checks
Step Three   .....Resolve the Taint

STEP ONE
Pick a word associated with the magic that is causing the taint. In particular try to choose a natural phenomena, spirit, element, plant or animal. This keyword is termed a foci. You choose a new foci each time a character is tainted.

Examples: From winter magic you could choose: storm, cold, arctic foxes, snow, ice spirits, barren earth. From healing magic you could choose: disease, wound, medicine, the process of healing, coughing, bleeding.

STEP TWO
Make a Test of Change. A random test to determine which aspect of the character is changed by the magic.

CHANGE
Mind: Causes a change to a character’s mind. May cause them to suddenly desire or despise something, or to gain any number of obsessions, delusions or sympathies.
Blood: Changes a character’s blood, and physiology as opposed to gross external changes. Changes to blood may not be initially physically evident.
Body: Gross changes to a character’s body, in shape, colour, form and appearance.
Spirit: A change to a character’s soul. Such a change will be perceivable to a character with second sight, but likely to have the most significant effects upon the tainted character’s death.
Environ: An aura enchantment settles on the character causing him to change his immediate surroundings.
Phenomena: The character gains the ability to subtly command, slow down, accelerate a given foci.
Attraction: The character finds himself a magnet for a given foci.
Conditional: The character finds himself limited or augmented in some way pending the immediate presence of a given foci.
Understanding: The character finds himself able to understand, commune with, perceive, predict, or otherwise gain knowledge into the nature or mind a given foci.
Dependence: The character finds himself dependant upon a foci to now work his magic. Whether the foci needs to be present, or whether he needs to wear a part of it, or eat it is at the Storyteller’s discretion.

BACKLASH
Very Minor: The taint is actually more helpful than hindering.
Minor: The taint could be helpful under certain circumstances.
Middling: The taint is of a general irritating nature, and of no particular advantage.
Severe: The taint is of a severely hindering nature.
Very Severe: The taint is a potentially life-threatening and painful nature.

MAGNITUDE
Very Minor: Very subtle and minor: A change in the colour of eyes.
Minor: Minor but more likely to be noticed by casual observers: eyes that turn an unnatural colour.
Middling: Very likely to be noticed: Eyes that glow under moonlight.
Severe: Obvious to most people: Eyes that shimmer and glow all the time or rapidly change colour.
Very Severe: Attracts attention: People feel drawn to stare at your changeful, glimmering eyes.

CONTROL
Voluntary: So long as the effect could be switched on and off character can control the taint at will by concentration.
Repressed: The character can control the taint by passing a test of willpower.
Involuntary: the taint is always in effect and the character has not control over its effects.

STEP THREE
Step three consists of resolving the taint into a form that you, as the Storyteller, feel comfortable with. Take the various elements suggested by the random rolls and work them along with the foci into a plausible taint. The process should hopefully take no more than a few seconds of careful thought.

1..............Mind
2..............Blood
3..............Body
4..............Spirit
5..............Environ
6..............Phenomenon
7..............Attraction
8..............Conditional
9..............Understanding
10............Dependence

BACKLASH
1..............Very Minor
2-3...........Minor
4-7...........Middling
9-8...........Severe
10............Very Severe

MAGNITUDE
1..............Very Minor
2-3...........Minor
4-7...........Middling
9-8...........Severe
10........... Very Severe

CONTROL
1-2...........Voluntary
3-4...........Repressed
5-10.........Involuntary

Examples

Winter: The Storyteller chooses Snow as a foci and rolls 7 (attraction), 7 (middling backlash), 8 (severe magnitude), 4 (Repressed). From this the Storyteller decides that the tainted character is always surrounded by cold flecks of snow that seem to appear from the air when he goes outside. Wherever he stays the night a light snow will fall, even in the middle of summer. He can choose to repress the taint by passing a Test of Willpower.

Healing: The Storyteller chooses Bleeding as a foci and rolls 4 (spirit), 3 (minor), 6 (Middling backlash), 2 (minor magnitude), 7 (Involuntary). From this the Storyteller decides that the character’s Soul now appears to be dripping blood when seen with second sight. This will make characters with second sight uncomfortable, but those without are unlikely to feel anything more than a slight subtle sense of unease which they cannot explain. Upon the character’s death however his wraith will appear bloody and bleeding.

Well, I hope none of that comes accross as simply too much table-work for the Storyteller. It would work reasonably well in gameplay I think, provides a lot more potential outcomes, and if a Storyeller were feeling lazy he could always use a random pre-determined taint of the original tables.

So, any comments?

Chris

[contracycle]

I like it.  I have only one concern: this potentially will become THE driving mechanic of magic.  Which is pretty cool, I think.

However, what this means is that you might want to reconsider the radnomness; certain types of effects may only be relevant in certain contexts.  Taints of certain kinds might still need to be specified or limited.  But there is no essential conceptual problem I can see: you could produce specific subtables or mandate specific types.

Edit: Oh and: its a good point to transfer narrative power to the player; it might get wearing if the GM had to make up a lot of these on the fly.  Hand them over to the player to come up with, or for one player to do for anothers character.  Or something.

[Christoffer Lernö]

I think Contra has a really good point with his edit... the GM making it up will tax the GM. Besides, the player is much more likely to come up with a good effect that suits the character than the GM... in many cases anyway. I could mention a few people I've played with (rolling my eyes).

If I'm allowed to bring up Ygg here, since Ygg is almost doing the same thing.

Interestingly enough, I feel that currently we have in development three fantasy-games with varying levels of mythicness (well I just had to invent that term) to them, but all still very anxious to do a magic that feels alive and legendary. On the most realistic level I see Peregrine's Wayfarer's Song, then Yggdrasil (mine) somewhere inbetween that game and Willows' Torchbearer.

Ygg also has taint, and I'm thinking of introducing flaws in the magic see this link

Ultimately what it boils down to is creating magic effects on the fly. This is applicable to much more than just soulburn. Magical spells, items, abilities, all could be using a similar mechanic or similar guidelines.

I only have a vague idea of how Torchbearer works, but in torchbearer I'd say that creation of powers is a fundamental thing, Shreyas you correct me if I'm wrong. Or maybe Jonathan - you two have been cooking up what seems to become a mighty fine soup.

However, as I see it, "who comes up with the description" in Torchbearer remains a little vague. Supposedly the GM does it, as well as the negative traits. But I guess input from the player as well(?)
In any case, it is not so important since there is not much worry to suddenly overpower a character through a magical trait (or destroy a character concept by requiring adding a negative one). I would be neat if Jonathan or Shreyas could jump in here and comment if I'm interpreting things wrong.

Anyway, back to your suggestion Chris. The parameterized thing is something I've been toying with as well, although with fewer parameters. The question is if "Snow, Attraction, Middling Backlash, Severe Magnitude, Repressed" is helpful enough for the GM to come up with effects.
And if the player is supposed to help, these parameters might be too vague anyway.

The tainted character is always surrounded by cold flecks of snow that seem to appear from the air when he goes outside. Wherever he stays the night a light snow will fall, even in the middle of summer.

If we look at this description, is it obvious that it's a "middling backlash"? Or that the magnitude is "severe"? What would the same effect but with a middling magnitude be?

And so on. I'm asking you because this is pretty much what Mike asked me when I presented similar rules for a slightly different use in another thread.

It's interesting how we kept coming back to a Hero Wars style mechanic in that thread.

The benefit of such a mechanic is that potentially you would not need to define the taint fully. You'd only have a rating for it (or maybe more than one) which you rolled against when it was time to determine effects.

For example you have your Snow thing. Now you're in a place enchanted to be like a burning and bubbling lava hell. Does that magic override the snow magic in you? How much is a light snow? Is it enough to put out a fire? If someone tries to reverse this magic, how difficult is it?
And so on.

To avoid having to think up rules for such things it would be handy to have a mechanic that could yield answers when needed.

So if I have the "Always Snow" taint above... well if I got HW right I could have Always Snow 17 or Always Snow 7W3 and they would be quite different beasts although both could theoretically look like the description you provided.

The idea I'm currently toying with is to simply assign a skill level to all and any skills, magical items, abilities, spells, powers, taints and whatever just like in Hero Wars.

However, I'm also considering to have two ratings for every skill. Kind of a width and length thing which would mean a little different things for different types of skills, abilities and so on.

In principle I'm in favour of the idea you suggest Peregrine, but I think the thing with putting things in tables is a bit premature in the sense that you are cutting away a lot of potential abilities with that without really making life easier for the GM.

And back to the GM-as-the-creator thing.

On one hand it's important for the GM to decide things in Illusionist Sim (which I assume is what Wayfarer's Song is, that's what it looks like anyway). Which means it's not really comfortable to give the players power to dictate their abilities.

For example if the GM gives me a secret ability that makes me turn into a dragon... well that is exciting and weird, espeically if I'm not sure why it's happening. If the GM then lets me elaborate on this ability, well that spoils the illusion that there's a mystery waiting to be discovered.

On the other hand the GM coming up with everything him/herself will be pretty taxing.

However, I think for the taint it might be possible to have a compromise which both allows for directorial mechanics as well as sim consistency.

It was suggested elsewhere to allow the player and the GM take turns picking defects (originally suggested for my magic, but what the heck).

(You could do it so that the more beneficial, the more the player gets to decide or something)

In any case, the important thing is the rationale as to why this is ok without "breaking the illusion of sim". Basically the taint will reflect the inner workings of the character as well as the influence of the magic, right? So the player's input can be seen as the way the influence tailor itself to the particular character and the GM's input is straight reading what such a taint could be. That way each taint not becomes a very personal thing which is different for every character.

[Peregrine]

Contra

Thanks for the kind feedback. I appreciate your point about taxing the GM. Rather than add subtables I could add some ammendment sort of rules that allow the GM to choose to give narrative control to the player, or simply invent a taint on the fly if he/she so wishes.

Palefire

A lot of saliant points there. I'll have to come back to you about the hero wars comparisons. I don't know the system very well... although I have to admit in some ways I find the freeform approach somewhat, well, worrying.

Put it this way. I use a freeform skill system. Players are allowed to invent any 'skills' they like within certain simple bounds. But, even this will leave some player's flummoxed. I've had to provide lists of ideas for skills to prevent player's getting bogged down in this phase.

Anyway, I may be misjudging Hero Wars, so I'm going to go and read it more carefully.

I'll see if I can address some of your other points...

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2002 4:00 am    Post subject:  

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I think Contra has a really good point with his edit... the GM making it up will tax the GM. Besides, the player is much more likely to come up with a good effect that suits the character than the GM... in many cases anyway. I could mention a few people I've played with (rolling my eyes).

If I'm allowed to bring up Ygg here, since Ygg is almost doing the same thing.

Interestingly enough, I feel that currently we have in development three fantasy-games with varying levels of mythicness (well I just had to invent that term) to them, but all still very anxious to do a magic that feels alive and legendary. On the most realistic level I see Peregrine's Wayfarer's Song, then Yggdrasil (mine) somewhere inbetween that game and Willows' Torchbearer.

Ultimately what it boils down to is creating magic effects on the fly. This is applicable to much more than just soulburn. Magical spells, items, abilities, all could be using a similar mechanic or similar guidelines.

Good point. All of these except 'spells' (which are kind of like temporary flares of enchantment) fall broadly in the enchantment camp in WS. I could certainly devise some sort of slightly more unified rules for all this - linking taints into enchantment as it is already discussed in the core rules in respect to places, relics, and whatnot.

The question is if "Snow, Attraction, Middling Backlash, Severe Magnitude, Repressed" is helpful enough for the GM to come up with effects.

I certainly hope so, but let's see if I can back this up as we go along...

If we look at this description, is it obvious that it's a "middling backlash"? Or that the magnitude is "severe"? What would the same effect but with a middling magnitude be?

The nature of the table demands some degree of subjectivety by the Storyteller. Magnitude defines how likely a taint is to be noticed by casual passers by.

Arguable, small fleck of snow may not be noticed, especially if the weatherr is already grey or overcast.

I personally would increase the orders of Magnitude in this case like thus...

Very Minor: The air about the is merely cold, and may attract naturally falling snow.
Minor: The air is very cold and will turn rain to sleet or snow and will attract flurries of naturally falling snow.
Middling: Small flecks of snow fall even in fine weather.
Severe: Noticable flurries of snow fall even in fine weather. Snow gathers at the sorcerer's feet if he stands around too long.
Very Severe: The sorcerer appears to be followed by a blizzard wherever he goes.

It's interesting how we kept coming back to a Hero Wars style mechanic in that thread.

Like I said, I'm not familair with the mechanic. I'll read up on it before I get back to you... but I still have reservations. The example of the bag of four collapsed winds struck me as something that a player, who has never had much contact with RPGs (as most of mine do) who has not read much  of the gamebook (as most of mine don't have time for) would not be able to come up with that idea with no prompting. *shrug* Maybe I'm wrong.

For example you have your Snow thing. Now you're in a place enchanted to be like a burning and bubbling lava hell. Does that magic override the snow magic in you? How much is a light snow? Is it enough to put out a fire? If someone tries to reverse this magic, how difficult is it?

Good point. Taints could have levels of enchantment much like, well, all other enchantments. Perhaps not random but based on how many taints a character already has? Maybe they all increase together in power when a new taint is acquired.

Anywaqy, if this were the case and the lava field where a place of Greater Enchantment, the taint would have to be of Grander or High Enchantment to have anything more than a very local and reduced affect.

So if I have the "Always Snow" taint above... well if I got HW right I could have Always Snow 17 or Always Snow 7W3 and they would be quite different beasts although both could theoretically look like the description you provided.

Like I said, unfortunately not familar enough with the system.

In principle I'm in favour of the idea you suggest Peregrine, but I think the thing with putting things in tables is a bit premature in the sense that you are cutting away a lot of potential abilities with that without really making life easier for the GM.

Not sure about this. As a GM I think I'd prefer to have a table to help *prompt* me with a general idea rather than have to just sit and invent something from scratch. Again, this may be true. I'd have to show the table to some GM types and see what they think: helpful or not really.

On one hand it's important for the GM to decide things in Illusionist Sim

Huh? I have no idea what illusionist Sim is. Frankly I no longer have any understanding of the whole GNS paradigm. In fact I'm going to go over to the theory board and post a polite, this doesn't make sense to me thread over there...

(You could do it so that the more beneficial, the more the player gets to decide or something)

That could work except that then the GM would always be giveing nasty taints to his/her players. Sometimes is nice to allow a GM to get a warm fuzzy feeling from giving a player something good - or in the case of taints, less bad.

Oh well, I hope I answered some of your questions. I'm going over the to theory thrtead now. Wish me luck, I suspect I am about to get flamed.

Chris

[Christoffer Lernö]

Put it this way. I use a freeform skill system. Players are allowed to invent any 'skills' they like within certain simple bounds. But, even this will leave some player's flummoxed. I've had to provide lists of ideas for skills to prevent player's getting bogged down in this phase.

I understand, this is a concern. On the other hand, I think some of it may come from the habit we all have of going to the skill menu and say "hey, let's see what I want my character to have for this adventure". We're so used to it that it seems like the Only Way To Do Things (tm).
Granted, a guide on how to make skills are good. I think that maybe your example skills are a bit intimidating(!)

Simply because those skills are obviously very well thought through and fits well with the system. That would at least make me worried that I'm not taking skills that are optimal enough.

A solution could be to provide a few special skills that EVERYONE has to take, which are those that govern player efficiency in combat and magic. Everything else doesn't matter whether you have them or not, they make little impact in terms of efficiency.

That way you don't have to make the players scared that they might be making "the wrong decisions" regarding their skills - because the skills don't really change character efficiency much.

Anyway, I may be misjudging Hero Wars, so I'm going to go and read it more carefully.

I think the main point is that everything is assigned a rating, and as such this rating can be used to establish new facts about the skill, item or whatever it is.

Good point. All of these except 'spells' (which are kind of like temporary flares of enchantment) fall broadly in the enchantment camp in WS. I could certainly devise some sort of slightly more unified rules for all this - linking taints into enchantment as it is already discussed in the core rules in respect to places, relics, and whatnot.

Exactly, that would be great if they were unified. It would help the GM a lot I think, and it would make it easier for you too I suspect.

I personally would increase the orders of Magnitude in this case like thus...

Very Minor: The air about the is merely cold, and may attract naturally falling snow.
Minor: The air is very cold and will turn rain to sleet or snow and will attract flurries of naturally falling snow.
Middling: Small flecks of snow fall even in fine weather.
Severe: Noticable flurries of snow fall even in fine weather. Snow gathers at the sorcerer's feet if he stands around too long.
Very Severe: The sorcerer appears to be followed by a blizzard wherever he goes.

Hmmm.. to me your "Severe" seems more like middling, since Severe should (in my eyes) make it snow heavily. "Noticeable flurries" doesn't seem very severe to me...
I bring this up because the arbitrariness of the subjective judgments can be quite big. The more finely grained you have, the harder the judgement will be. I don't see a solution unless this point is given up. But if you have one I'd be really interested.

Like I said, I'm not familair with the mechanic. I'll read up on it before I get back to you... but I still have reservations. The example of the bag of four collapsed winds struck me as something that a player, who has never had much contact with RPGs (as most of mine do) who has not read much of the gamebook (as most of mine don't have time for) would not be able to come up with that idea with no prompting. *shrug* Maybe I'm wrong.

I think the point there was that there were no Bag of Collapsed Winds from the Time of The War of the Straw Giants until the player came up with it. It doesn't need to have grounding in the setting but eventually it WILL have.

But maybe I should let people who actually have the book further discourse on Hero Wars. I only read the quickstart rules and the html version of the first 3 chapters.

I think it's a problem being brought up by D&D and WW and the like that gives us these problems "nothing new can even come unless it's created by the GM". And not even then in some cases because the setting books are supposed to overrule any GM modifications.

There are simpler magical items in the HW examples, like The Knife That Opens Any Latch (or something like that). You just create those as if they were your skills.

And the benefit is not for the players alone. It also means that all the GM needs to do to define the new magic item is to give it a name and a "skill rating".

Good point. Taints could have levels of enchantment much like, well, all other enchantments. Perhaps not random but based on how many taints a character already has? Maybe they all increase together in power when a new taint is acquired.

Yes I think you're thinking in the right direction here.

So if I have the "Always Snow" taint above... well if I got HW right I could have Always Snow 17 or Always Snow 7W3 and they would be quite different beasts although both could theoretically look like the description you provided.

Like I said, unfortunately not familar enough with the system.

Other people fill me in here ok? But if I'm right, whenever there would be a test for the taint's extent like:
"Does it also put out fires?" or "Does it withstand the power of the Wizard Belos who tries to remove it?" or "Does it still work in this anti-magic zone?"

They you'd roll for it. Usually rolling under the value with a d20. The W means masteries, and actually 7W3 is an arcane way of writing 7 + 20*3. So one rating is 17 and the other is 67. The 7W3 enchantment is obviously a frightfully strong one so the answer is probably yes on all counts, whereas the one with 17 might put out fires, but not withstand the power of Belos nor work in the anti-magic zone a little dependent on the rolls made and such.

That's my impression of how it works anyway.

Not sure about this. As a GM I think I'd prefer to have a table to help *prompt* me with a general idea rather than have to just sit and invent something from scratch. Again, this may be true. I'd have to show the table to some GM types and see what they think: helpful or not really.

If you provide it as being very clearly only a few sample of effects then sure it's ok. Kind of a sample menu. But if it's "these are the ones you choose between", then it's not good.

Also beware of polishing your samples too much. Like with your skills - people might feel that they have to make that special skills or they are better off sticking with the defaults.

On one hand it's important for the GM to decide things in Illusionist Sim

Huh? I have no idea what illusionist Sim is. Frankly I no longer have any understanding of the whole GNS paradigm. In fact I'm going to go over to the theory board and post a polite, this doesn't make sense to me thread over there...

What I mean is: your game is not about winning it and having the biggest fattest weapon, is it? Nor is it collectively to debate a subject like "how does a man change when he becomes a hero" and throw out all realism and detail just to focus on that point is it? What it looks like is a game in the standard mold which would make it simulationist, like my game too.

Illusionism is when the GM pretends he's following the rules just like the players, but in fact he might be fudging the dice, making "both choices result in the same thing", create situations around the characters' actions and so on. It's not a bad thing. I think Sim without Illusionism SUCKS very bad personally.

So when I say Sim Illusionism that's just the GNS of how you're probably running this game. It's how I would run it anyway. I know these terms are a bit confusing at first, so I think you can simply sit down and trust me when I say it's sim illusionism.It's not that important.

That could work except that then the GM would always be giveing nasty taints to his/her players. Sometimes is nice to allow a GM to get a warm fuzzy feeling from giving a player something good - or in the case of taints, less bad.

Maybe there could be clear directions on how the negative taints should be, so all the GM does is following what the rules dictate. He/she doesn't need to think up all bad and nasty taints. The main point would be to leave the creativity to the player anyway.

In the snow case, maybe the player comes up with what happens: Snow, then the GM says: "it always snows no matter what". Player says "but it's not so bad". GM: "only when you go outside and then it's only a light snowfall"

Or maybe not. I don't know exactly how it should work either ;) It is a rightful concern you raise. Maybe people playing Donjon could help out here. How is this problem solved in Donjon?

New Idea Alert!
OR you could do the other way around: The player has to think up the bad things and the GM selects the benefits :) That would be pretty neat. Then the GM can get a nice fuzzy feeling and the player can take bad things that actually are a little cool.