[TRoS] Destiny Spiritual Attribute

[Frank Tarcikowski]

No, I don't have an actual play account (yet) where the Destiny spiritual attribute played a role. I will be running a game on Friday in which several characters have a Destiny. I'm kind of struggling with it. Therefore, I am asking for your actual play experiences with Destiny. What was it? How did you bring it into play as GM? When did you award points? Any accounts would be much appreciated.

- Frank

[Callan S.]

The time I ran it (just the once - I just haven't lined it up again) I just completely forgot about them. I just got so wrapped up in doing the usual game stuff (which usually takes alot of me) that I forgot. There's nothing really in the design that says 'Stop! Hammer SA time!'. If I play it again, I'm writing some reminder notes for myself...

Also I played it with not my regular group once and at the end of the session the GM just said 'Okay, take three points and distribute them as you see fit'. I forgot, but he didn't get them to begin with.

And as a side note, I ran a game of rifts for a couple of friends about three months back, who are brothers. They tended to bicker on things semi in character (of course a reflection of their brotherhood). At first I started giving XP to one when they interacted, but then I realised it took two to tango and even if one of them just was on the recieving end, they both got the exact amount of XP (I had it around the 50 to 75 mark, which isn't too bad. You might not get that though - seemingly not many other forgites have much of an XP hunger). Anyway, giving them both the same amount made it more like a team...I dunno? Not sport. But they were both in the same boat. It's interesting to note how it's different from TROS where players are rewarded seperately.

[Judd]

No, I don't have an actual play account (yet) where the Destiny spiritual attribute played a role. I will be running a game on Friday in which several characters have a Destiny. I'm kind of struggling with it. Therefore, I am asking for your actual play experiences with Destiny. What was it? How did you bring it into play as GM? When did you award points? Any accounts would be much appreciated.

- Frank

Let me see what I can remember.  I tracked down this thread.

Destiny - To Redeem Father

For this one, I had the character have interactions with the father and made the father out to be a total bastard.  Destiny isn't a goal, it is something you can chew on for an entire campaign and furthermore, it might not come to pass.  When a character puts a destiny on their sheet, I give them opportunities to work towards (and eventually attempt to) fulfill it.

Destiny - To restore Karhoun's Keep for our people of the north

Again, this was a really difficult thing with a family of vipers inhabiting the keep and a nigh-immortal father sitting on its throne.

It has been a while and I don't remember exact moments when I awarded points for pursuing Destiny.  Sorry.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Thanks for the replies! I guess part of the trouble was that the two players who had picked Destinies both picked negative Destinies of the general kind (a brutal death, respectively to be haunted by your past). Guess I should've worked with the players to tune those. Anyhow, we played for a good 6 hours and there wasn't a single point in any SA gained. I was a little disappointed to be honest, I was used to TSoY keys, where you rarely have a scene that doesn't reward any XP. TRoS has a slower progression, doesn't it? The conditions for gaining SAs ware quite strict, it's not enough to just somehow address them in a scene, it usually requires some danger or sacrifice. What was your typical rate? How many SA points would a player gather in a session?

Also, the only fight we had, an ambush by a bunch of robbers (armed peasants, more or less) who outnumbered the PCs 2:1 turned out to be no challenge at all to the heavily armored PCs. Up to now I hadn't done fights in full plate, or even full chain, with the TRoS rules. It seemed that with a fighter in full plate and high TO, it's rather unlikely to hurt him at all. And much less so with the low Combat Pool of a peasant. We did not use Maneuvers, maybe that was the problem? What's your experience with this? I'm kind of fearing it's the same thing as in Reign, where combat is fast, exciting and fun in a leather jacket, but becomes dull and tedious in full plate.

Also, does anyone use the terrain rules? The ambush was in a forrested mountains / foot hills area and the peasants basically would have needed all their Combat Pool of 6 for movement had I used them.

Last thing, I couldn't find the rules for cover or dodging missile attacks in the book, can anyone direct me to them? I figured that you can't evade them like melee attacks, and simply increased the Target Number by what I thought fitting.

- Frank

[Ben Lehman]

Yeah, for heavy armor you want:
1) The right weapons (flails ftw).
2) The right techniques (power hits).

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Frank,

The first brief game I played was at Origins 2002, with Jake as GM. The setting was essentially Venetian, and Ralph Mazza's character was a rabble-rousing man of the people, whose Destiny was To Be Hanged. As a game, it was a bit of a mess and relied heavily on Jake pretty much shoehorning people into one or another situation, but that was no big deal because we were mostly invested in figuring out the combat mechanics anyway, as well as learning more about the basic dice-based features of the Spiritual Attributes. The character did end up being hanged, but only due to several steps of simply narrated events by Jake. The story came to a climax when some canals flooded, and I think the character was swept along by the water, or maybe fell off a wall or something, and ended up being strangled by his cloak, for a symbolic rather than socially-inflicted hanging.

When I was GM for a more extended game, I think we didn't get to the point of resolving anyone's Destiny (at least one character had it), but it came into play as a source of dice fairly often because its content was relevant to the overall situation. In that sense, Destiny wasn't different from any of the others. I'll have to review the rules to be sure - it's been a while - but as I recall, I think we were assuming that some day, we'd look at one another and say, "Hey, he's fulfilled his Destiny," or play an adventure which in content was very likely to see the Destiny go one way or the other.

As far as the general acquisition of SA points goes, as I recall, in my long-term game, they accumulated steadily by 1 or 2 points across the SAs that saw only a little use in a session, and jumped up fast - sometimes to 5 - in a session or two for SAs that were directly involved in the events. So for us, they were indeed more like TSOY Keys, although not quite that fast. This might be due to my way of preparing sessions, though, which were always aimed very hard at either destroying or providing tempting opportunities for specific Spiritual Attributes.

Other things ... I used the terrain rules a fair amount, and liked them quite a bit because they are so simple compared to what one might expect from a game with such detailed damage/armor rules. I was also dealing with player-characters, and usually foes, with a lot of straightforward combat dice, so I rather liked knocking them all down with fights on treacherous footing. (My visual touchpoint for this, in play, was the long, multi-combatant sword fight on a frozen river in The Four Musketeers.)

I don't want to speak for Jake, but my guess is that he went with the concept that one does not actually evade an arrow, but rather is missed by it. Your solution concerning target values seems consistent with that and very reasonable to me.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

The conditions for gaining SAs ware quite strict, it's not enough to just somehow address them in a scene, it usually requires some danger or sacrifice.

As I recall, no, the character just has to try - even if they fail.

But I don't have the text next to me.

It'd be lame if destiny were an exception to all the other SAs and is 'Do X to get Y' - essentially a transaction and doesn't hinge on character expression and instead hinges on a book defined exchange rate. I wouldn't think it was, but I don't have the text near me.

[Ben Lehman]

Oh, so to help SAs fire and build, I think that the primary thing is to keep the players informed as the when the SAs add dice, and when they gain dice, and what actions those require. I would encourage not just playing the game without thinking about them and then seeing after the fact whether an SA applies. Rather, make character decisions (as a GM or a PC) with the PC's Spirituals in the forefront of your mind.

The combat rules of Riddle naturally provoke a certain caution. The SA rules provoke a certain degree of recklessness. You need to have them both in hand to play the game well, I think.

[Ron Edwards]

This is giving me flashbacks; we used to chat up Spiritual Attributes all the time here at the Forge. Here's the relevant thread I remember best: Give me your SAs!, which also includes links to useful older threads. A search for "Destiny" in the old TROS forum will turn up more, I'm sure.

Best, Ron

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies, keep it coming! I had actually prepped the scenario around some of the SAs, but we didn't get to the point where the characters would actually "defend" or "overcome" something in pursuit of their SAs. I didn't frame scenes very aggressively because I wanted to take my time and let events flow naturally. Probably I overdid that a little, so we had a lot of dialogue and little action.

I actually didn't mind the slower pace at all, but I would have liked the players to gain a few SA points along the way. I guess if we continued the game, the next session would get more into the juicy parts of the conflicts and deliver more on the SA side.

- Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Frank,

Well, I spent some time I didn't have, but I found what I wanted. First stop: rules questions (Destiny SA and missile combat) - this is the big one for your purposes, Frank! I should have remembered this immediately when you began this thread.

Here are some others: More prep help requested, Setting up the drama..., Rules confusions (long!), Destiny SAs in game play (includes a solid pithy guiding point from Jake), Destiny and other SAs in game play (mostly a tantrum but there are some good bits), 10 Assorted Rules Questions (numbers 8 and 9).

Wading through old TROS threads is kind of a headache. Great questions and discussions may be found in a sea of sword-fetish ego jostling, plus what appear to be the most sensitive, argumentative egos to touch a keyboard.

Best, Ron

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Spending time you don't have? Yeah, I've been known to do that, too. Thanks for the links, some interesting reads! I actually didn't even think of the TRoS forum, as I wasn't around when it was still active. "To kill a king" is a fantastic Destiny for a loyal servant of a king. Also, it seems you can evade missile attacks after all. Huh. Not that it mattered much, seeing as the arrows bounced off the plate armor.

Realistically speaking, probably the best thing to do when fighting a knight in full plate on the wooded flank of a mountain is tackle him, trip him, and leave his broken bones to rot down at the bottom of the slope.

- Frank