Initial Thoughts on Paladin

[Jonathan Walton]

Hey Clinton et all,

Just bought Paladin a couple days ago, planning to use it to run an Engel game at an upcoming con.  Anyway, I absolutely love the concepts behind the game, but find myself not as attracted to the 6-siders and counting successes.  This isn't really a surprise to me, because my tastes are very focused on Fortuneless games these days, but it seems to be that a Fortuneless system would, perhaps, suit the material of Paladin better in many ways.  I'm not trying to rag on Clinton's system (which is marvelously elegent as Fortune-based systems go), but I'm asking more of a theory question.

Since Paladin is a game about moral absolutism and making hard choices in an absolutist environment, having a Fortune-based system that adds factors of chance and uncertainty seems to undermine the rigid certainty of the morals behind the game.  I do realize that the morality system (with the Code and the Light/Dark Animus) is completely Fortuneless (aside from the dice you get from spending Animus) and I applaud that, but I was wondering if a resource-allocation system (i.e. something more Nobilesque) wouldn't provide for interesting choices, based completely on Gamist questions of how best to balance your points, but supporting the moral conflicts that already exist in the game.

On a similar note, I'm not sure that the 3-tiered attribute system (active, reactive, social) would work in a background that is less combat-oriented.  I know that fighting is an integral part of the original concept and backstory, but there are tons of setting possibilities that involve difficult moral choices and not much fighting (for instance, stories where the characters are demigods/angels trying to influence the world for good, but end up getting corrupted by wine, women, and whoopee).  In those cases, I might ditch Social completely and expand the meaning of Active/Reactive to include everything, not just combat-based things (as the original material seems to imply).  This would set up a dialectic, where, in any given situation, a character would be either Active or Reactive/Defensive.  Social situations would become conflicts as well, which I think also supports the moral themes, as the Paladins work to convert everyone to support of their cause/morality.

Anyway, I haven't plotted out an adaptation/conversion yet, but wanted to post my initial ideas here first to see if people had considered/tried them before.  In any case, I'm going to be developing something Paladin-based for the Engel game in a few weeks, so I'm interested in what people think about these ideas.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Jonathan -

All good ideas. Your idea of active/reactive covering everything is actually already in my rewrite of the game that I've been piddling on.

I'm a Fortune junkie, but I've often thought of a Fortune-less system I wanted to write, where certain attributes would be limits on resources you could spend.

In the current version of Paladin, it might work like this - you have 10 Light Animus and an Active Attribute of 2 and a Light Attribute of 4. Normally, you would have a score of 2 to do things, but by activating that Light Attribute, you could allocate up to 4 Animus to help you, giving you a score between 3 and 6.

[Jonathan Walton]

All good ideas. Your idea of active/reactive covering everything is actually already in my rewrite of the game that I've been piddling on.

Coolness.  Any chance you could put an optional Fortuneless system in there as well?  I mean, being a Fortune junkie is fine but us Fortuneless junkies like being thrown a bone every now and then (besides, the more Fortuneless systems out there, the more people will begin to see it as a legitimate design option and not some scary, chaotic thing).

Your response actually reminded me of a few other thoughts I had:

For the revision, would it be possible to change the names of the "Light/Dark Animus" attributes to something like "Light/Dark"?  During my initial reading of the text, I often got Light/Dark Animus (the attributes) confused with Light/Dark Animus (those points you spend to do stuff).  Having the exact same name for two distict things is VERY headache-causing.  I'm going to have to do that for my Con game, just so I don't make the players go insane.

I really like Flesh as the counterpart to Light and Dark, because it has cool gnostic overtones.  The Flesh is the tainted substance that conceals the divine spark within, so it's nicely situated between Light and Dark (which makes me want it centered between Light and Dark on the character sheet, but that's a minor matter).

I don't see any real reason for a Light Paladin to raise their Dark attributes.  Am I just missing something?  If not, it'd be cool if there was a way to trigger an automatic increase by playing around with Dark Animus too much.  Something similar to the way Crises work in Torchbearer (which itself, I'm starting to see, owes a great deal to Paladin).  Then again, maybe I just don't understand the system enough.

I love the way abilities work.  It makes it really easy for Engel too, because the default ability would be "Flying," and the rest would depend on Order and individual Engel.

What font did you use for the title lettering on the cover?  I was going to make a character sheet for my Arkana/Paladin hodgepodge system for Engel and really dig that font (much more, in fact, than the one you used to letter the interior titles).

Thanks again for such a thought-provoking design, Clinton.

Later.
Jonathan

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I don't see any real reason for a Light Paladin to raise their Dark attributes.  Am I just missing something?  If not, it'd be cool if there was a way to trigger an automatic increase by playing around with Dark Animus too much.

Not missing a thing - it's a big design mistake on my part. A comment from one of the players last week gave me an idea on this. (In the re-write, you have two Flesh attributes (active and reactive), one Light, and one Dark. Your Dark goes up whenever you get a Mark and your Light goes down one. That should solve the problem.

What font did you use for the title lettering on the cover?  I was going to make a character sheet for my Arkana/Paladin hodgepodge system for Engel and really dig that font (much more, in fact, than the one you used to letter the interior titles).

I actually don't know - hive did the cover and sent it to me that way.

[iago]

What font did you use for the title lettering on the cover?  I was going to make a character sheet for my Arkana/Paladin hodgepodge system for Engel and really dig that font (much more, in fact, than the one you used to letter the interior titles).

I actually don't know - hive did the cover and sent it to me that way.

No idea what the byline font is, but the title is the "angel" (as in the show) font.  Search around the buffy inclined internet, I don't recall it as hard to find.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Jonathan,

When was this convention game? How did it go?

Paul

[Ben Morgan]

The font used throughout the game for titles and such is called Matrix Tall. Some will undoubtedly recognize it from Wraith.

I have it up on my site here, along with about 500 others.

-- Ben

[Jonathan Walton]

When was this convention game? How did it go?

Hey Paul,

The convention was at the beginning of March, but I never ended up running the Paladin/Engel game, because not enough players showed up for it.  I did manage to run a Nobilis game and the Storypunk playtest that ended up in Actual Play, but no Engel.  Sigh.

Next time, Gadget.  Next time.