Delta: A bit of a collision?

[iago]

I've been thinking about Sorceror, and I've been thinking about Paladin.  Paladin I've read, and Sorceror, I've at least had someone who's read it describe a lot of the elements for me, and have piecemeal read bits of it.

The both seem to be complementary to one another.

Paladin is very much about the opposite ends of the spectrum (Light and Dark), and its powerful stories come from playing around in the grey while still maintaining a firm stance at the opposite ends of the pole (whatever that pole may be).  Power is gained not from gravitating towards the grey, it is from avoiding it; it is gained by running for either end, and this is reflected by having stats sitting at both ends (I suppose Flesh sits in the middle, but that's a discussion for another time and probably another board).

Sorceror instead seems to sit very tightly at that center-point.  It too has an idea of light and dark implicitly (greatest and least Humanity), and a lot of its powerful stories come from playing around in that grey, especially close to the knife's edge of going over.  Here, however, power is gained from riding that edge, rather than avoiding it, and that focus is I think reflected by having the Humanity stat as a center of its focus.

They both seem to be taking the same idea (a "moral" continuum from light to dark with a midpoint), and they both do a lot of stomping around at one of the stronger points of tension, but that just puts them in the same universe for me, occupying -- to some extent -- different halves.  Further, they are both very much about selling you on a theme and a gimmick, and enabling you to milk the hell out of that theme with that gimmick in whatever setting most fits your fancy.

I like that universe quite a bit, and I'm contemplating putting together a game that occupies it, but takes the both things and makes a whole out of them (without, hopefully, stealing mechanics to any great extent).  I'm calling it "Delta" because of the essential nature of threes, the idea of delta as change being an appealing additional texture, and because some other company came along and took "Trinity".

But to go on.

The idea here, is that there is White, there is Black, and there is the committed in-between.  I'm not going to call that in-between the grey, because that's really the "mundane" position.  The committed in-betweeners are the ones who are actively seeking balance between white and black, and are bringing that to the world as much as the white are bringing their "good" and the black are bringing their "evil".  So I'm going to call them the Green (for various connotive purposes).

In such a thing there would be a moral continuum (a stat of some sort), with clear midpoint, but also divisible into thirds.  Which "third" you sit in determines what qualifies as a success; which "half" you sit in determines what abilities are available to you.  Haven't worked out the specifics of this mechanic; I'm still very much at the conceptual level.

Three kinds of game would be possible, potentially in coexistence, where one can play the White, Black, or Green perspective, or possibly run the gamut.  I admit the Green perspective may end up the most interesting one by dint of being at that point of tension I am talking about, and perhaps in that I am retelling the Sorceror theme, but I'd really like to end up with something that makes all three attractive options for play.

I also have a strange little die mechanic in mind which takes advantage (possibly, I fear, too much advantage) of the "third" based idea above, but I think, for clarity, I'll make that another, later post, since I have packing to get done tonight.

At any rate, my initial intention (outside of sparking some conversation on the idea) is asking, "Has someone else done this before?"  If not... I think I will.  If someone has, I would much appreciate pointers to it, so I can either decide, "Ah! Here is the thing that someone else has already designed, I need go no further," or "I think my idea is something rather different and thus worth doing."

My thanks for any help you can provide!

[Spooky Fanboy]

Yes, there was a thing where they divided the alignments into three.

It was Bloodshadows. It was a lovely idea, but the way the alignments were shoehorned into it stank, it was done so ham-handedly.

I think Stormbringer/Elric has something similar with Chaos, Law, and Balance, but I've never played that, just read it. I assume it was done much better.

So take that ball and run with it. All I'm saying.

[iago]

Yes, there was a thing where they divided the alignments into three.

It was Bloodshadows. It was a lovely idea, but the way the alignments were shoehorned into it stank, it was done so ham-handedly.

I think Stormbringer/Elric has something similar with Chaos, Law, and Balance, but I've never played that, just read it. I assume it was done much better.

So take that ball and run with it. All I'm saying.

So, would Bloodshadows be worth hunting down for research purposes, or can one just say "Yeah, I've heard of that," and skip it?

The Stormbringer/Elric thing was one of (several) things I had in mind when proposing this idea.  I've had a friend of mine who is steeped in Dragonlance lore (of which I know naught) also spoke of the White/Red/Black orders of magic and their parallel associations with the concepts I'm talking about here.

From one perspective, in the most raw reduction to numbers, Sorceror is '1', Paladin is '2', I'm trying for the '3', because I see it play out a bunch of places.  Three's a nice one to play with -- Hero = White, Villain = Black, Anti-Hero = Green, etc.  I'm hoping there's something to it that's "new" in what I intend.

[Spooky Fanboy]

So, would Bloodshadows be worth hunting down for research purposes, or can one just say "Yeah, I've heard of that," and skip it?

Skip it. Pretend I never brought it up. I only brought it up to prove my point: Feel free to take this ball and run with it. Not that many have done anything with, certainly nothing in depth.

Bloodshadows. Ugh! A nice idea, so horribly mangled. If there was ever a game that proved that mechanics need to fit the setting, this was it.

[iago]

So, would Bloodshadows be worth hunting down for research purposes, or can one just say "Yeah, I've heard of that," and skip it?

Skip it. Pretend I never brought it up. I only brought it up to prove my point: Feel free to take this ball and run with it. Not that many have done anything with, certainly nothing in depth.

It's a good point and I'm glad to hear it.  Thanks for the clarification.

On this:

Bloodshadows. Ugh! A nice idea, so horribly mangled. If there was ever a game that proved that mechanics need to fit the setting, this was it.

So, a sidebar:  I think that that is more that mechanics need to fit the theme, but I'll be the first to admit this may be a valueless semantic distinction.  I think of Paladin and Sorceror as games with a theme more than games with a setting.  Still, you come to these games with a specific purpose in mind, and they don't fit every story -- which is the spirit of the idea behind the "mechanics need to fit the setting" meme.