The Forge Archives

Hello,

I'm presently working on a particular mechanic for my game Principia Novae (PN) that I would appreciate some advice on.  Before getting into it I should probably outline one or two related rules and the basic gist of the game.

PN is currently subtitled: "The World you know is Dying.  Will You Die With It?"  Its nominal setting is the fringes of the Roman Empire during its final throws (historically inspired, but not strictly historical).  It could easily be set in any other old-world type civilization.  The important thing is that civilization is ending or changing.  The main issue addressed is the creation of a new society in the midst of the old one's demise.  How much of civilized life can you preserve?  What do you choose to save?  What values do you take from the old society, and which ones do you abandon?  Who, in this increasingly dangerous world, do you trust to take with you, as you isolate yourself?  How do you practically go about building a new community?  In the rules, I sort of presume the physical creation of a new society, away from the old, but it's flexible in this regard.


Okay, so down to some nitty-gritty.

Characters have attributes and skills, but unlike in most systems they're frequently interchangeable.  In resolution, you always have a "primary ability."  You take this number as a base, and also roll as many dice, adding +1 for every six sider that comes up 4+.  For any given task, you'll commonly also have "secondary abilities" involved, which just add onto the total flatly.  

Frex, let's say you want to fight a baddy or two.  You have the skill combat at level 5, and the attribute coordination at 4 (some more flavorful names would probably be good).  You would roll 5 dice.  With 1,3,5,6,4 you'd get two successes.  2 + 5 + 4 = 11.  That's your total, against either a static difficulty, or a roll by the GM (which can be done in a variety of circumstances).

Which ability is the primary depends on the situation: whatever's most relevant and most specific.  Usually skills are primary, but if you were just running through the forest, Fitness, an attribute, would be primary while "forest survival" might get tacked on as a secondary.  You can have more than one secondary being used.

Resolution can span just about any scale, and there are various rules and considerations to deal with some of that. I won't get into it here, but suffice it to say that some resolutions will really be about actions, while others will be more conflict-oriented.   FiTM is used, especially for the larger scale tasks.  

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Characters also have Drives, which are similar to Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel (mad props to Jake), but maybe more specific, in that they advocate more specific types of actions.  Morals, passions, senses of destiny, etc. are all modeled with Drives.  Ambitions, like "become king," are not however.  Drives add on to the primary ability in resolution, and are applied in any relevant situation.  Pretty simple.

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Okay, that should be all the background you need to look at the actual mechanic in question (and thanks for reading this far).

Investment.  This is an idea I've used in the past, but less usefully/elegantly.  Investments model all that stuff that Drives don't cover, but there's also some overlap in terms of subjects.  The difference is that investments are not compulsions, but emotional ties.  If I describe the mechanic it will probably become clear what I'm going for:

All characters have a resource called spirit.  It's used for all kinds of things, like healing, upping skills, and so on.  It's also used to create investments (which are literally investments of spirit).  Each investment specifies some bond, relationship, or goal; anything you're committed to.  You can put as much spirit in as you want.  If you achieve the goal, you get your investment back, plus an equal amount (you double your money).  If you fail, you lose it.  For things without a definite ending, there are some other rules, but we needn't bother with them now I think.

That's the essence of investment, but there's another aspect that I had been planning, but have only now gotten into the guts of -- and am seeing a problem with.  I would like for players to be able to directly spend spirit to get a bonus on resolution -- maybe the same effect as with Drives, but more discretionary obviously.  Allowing this for just anything sort of defeats Drives however, so I associated this expenditure with investments, making it necessary to act in support of one in order to spend spirit.   Spirit is pretty valuable, so spending one point of the stuff should net you a big bonus.  

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Questions:

1. What kind of cap should there be on spirit spending?  I was planning to say "no more than the investment" but it'd be silly to do this since you're just invalidated the investment by spending that much.  If you can always just spend one point, would this encourage the creation of numerous but trivial investments? (I was imagining most people have one to three big ones.)

2. What kind of bonus?  Should it be all dice, just a flat bonus, both, or something else?  Not a big deal probably.

3. Should spending spirit be associated with investments at all?  As I said, one reason to do so is to limit that expenditure to certain times.  Another is to make the possession of a static investment worth while, as I'd like it do be: without this, investments are only helpful if you achieve them; but not all investments are achievable.  Should I change the definition of an investment to require a finite end?

4.  Should I allow the spending of spirit at all, or is it redundant with drives?


I know these are somewhat hard questions to answer since they may hinge partly on simple preference, or relate to subtle aesthetics of the game I haven't communicated, but they're what I'm thinking about now.  I'd appreciate any thoughts on them.