Over the past say year or so, I've moved away from making RPGs that try and simulate the workings of the world. What seems like years ago I made the more traditional RPGs with stats and skills, etc. What I discovered over time is that what I wanted was not an RPG that simulates reality, but instead one that simulates drama and cinema. Here is my latest thought on a method to define characters in that way. I'm extremely interested in people's opinions of what has come from all the work.

A character is defined by three ratings alone. Heart, Fire, and Grace.

Heart

This is the measure of inner strength. The kind of reserve that lets one go on in the face of pain, terror, and suffering. Its usually developed by enduring tradegy, but some could possess it naturally. Heart is applied in game as a resistance to injury and as pool of strength to draw from.

Fire

This denotes ambition, and the great well of energy that comes with it. The goal of the characters, the driving motives, and likely their careers stem from this. While heart is the pool of strength, Fire is the pool of energy to enhance actions and is applied as resistance to setbacks.

Grace

Heart and Fire are both mental/spiritual qualities of a character, Grace however is just how blessed one is. Every natural strength, lucky break, special ability comes from Grace. Grace is applied as resistance when luck is the issue at hand, since this is almost a catch all- there are some complications to using it like this. Grace is a pool of favors that enhance your character.

-- chargen --
I'll now talk about how I envision chargen. Its all sketchy from here on. I'm wondering how other designers would envision it...

Step One: To generate a character you simply need to allocate 10 points between Heart, Fire, and Grace.

Note: The value of each is 'wound up'. This means a rating is worth its value plus all the values under it- 3 is worth 3 + 2 + 1 = 6. In this way placing 3/3/4 gives you a total rating of 22. While a 6/2/2 gives you a total rating of 27. Making high ratings gives you a little edge, but hurts in gameplay.

Step Two: Each aspect (H, F, and G) needs to be fleshed out with a defining concept.

Heart needs an adjective that describes the type of heart that beats in the character's chest. This could be Heroic, Dastardly, Cold, Backstabbing, Loving, etc. It will limit the way in which you can apply the full strength of your heart.

Fire needs something that motivates the character. It need not be a specific goal (that should be defined in play). It could be anything like Honor, Greed, Compassion, Exploration, Learning. Make sure its something that would spur the character into action.

Grace needs a role or career. Could be anything like Doctor, Mercenary, Soldier, etc. It would probably be best if in someway it connected to your Fire concept.

Step Three: Now that there is a defining concept for each aspect, we can build up bonus if it applies. For every aspect that exceeds 3, you will get 'bonus'. This is extra information that can widen the way the aspect can apply in play. You get one bonus for every quality level beyond 3.

Heart bonus: Each is a memory. This should be something that describes a powerful choice that demonstates the character's type of heart.

Fire bonus: Each is a something more specific the character is seeking. Could be the love of a father, stacks of gold, finding out the nature of the universe, etc.

Grace bonus: Each is an assest you can employ as a bonus to actions. (think virtue). It should be wide scoped. Think Speed, Strength, Telepath, Wizard, etc.

Step Four: Now count all your bonuses. This total is the amount of 'Trouble' you being with. There are two things you can do with Trouble. First you can turn them into Weakness (think flaws). Secondly, you can just hold on to Trouble and let the GM use it to complicate things in play.

Step Five: Create a name, backstory, and little description of the character.

-- Gameplay --

The game mechanics uses winding and success steps. In order to succeed in an action you need steps of success. Mechanically this is simple. First you need to determine what aspect is being used. If you can combine them, then use the highest and add a bonus for how much the others are above 3.

Heart applies to resistance of injury, and actions that are inspired by your type of heart.

Fire applies to any actions that further your motivation, goals.

Grace can be applied to any action that falls under role/strength. It can be applied at half (rounded up) to any action, but this always causes the implication of trouble.

Basically you roll a sequence of six-sided dice for success. You roll dice under the current value of the rating, and if it succeeds you earn a step of success. You can then roll again versus its rating - 1, and so on until you fail (a six always fails). There are two notes here. You might go wow, this could take a long time. However there are reasons you might want to stop early. The final die result has a special meaning the the mechanic:

Final is 1: You succeed with grace and style, given you have enough success steps to. If so you can describe the outcome and then roll a die and add the number of success steps. If this die comes up a six, or the roll exceeds your aspect level it goes up one.

Final is 6: You may succeed, but unseen complications make it costly. The GM will describe the situation to you. If a die roll plus the success steps exceeds your level is the aspect it goes down one.

Also, if you have a rating in excess of 6 then you just start out rolling that many dice versus a 6 or less. In this case the sixes are discarded an the remaining count as steps of success before you even being the normal mechanism above.

Easy actions need 0 steps of success. Challenging actions need a 1 step, and Quite difficult ones 2 or more. Just getting enough steps of success makes you succeed ok, but more steps make is more impressive. Three extras steps is awesome indeed.

Combat is not played blow by blow persay, but instead by combat steps per round. To get combat steps you use fire (normal step roll), and possibly combine other aspects as they apply to it.

Once everyone fighting has steps they use them for actions. This is not a repeat step test, because we already have steps. This means you allocate a certain amounf of steps to use as dice for the action. These are rolled under grace or half grace (depending on if your war minded) and result is action steps for each punch, shot, etc.

The character with the least combat steps uses them first, and the next lowest until everyone has gone. If someone wants to defer some for defense, they just pass to the next combatant. After the turn is up, repeat until combat ends.

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Well, the mechanics are all tenative. They are just some loose ideas that look like they have promise to me.

What do you think?

Before I begin I need to say that this post should go in the Indie Design Forum. That forum is for discussing specific projects. The Theory Forum is for discusses more general topics of Theory.

That said, I think I like your 3 Stat-thing. I like bing able to define how they work for your individual character. I'll have to think a little about your mechanics, however.

Hmm, Well what I really want to discuss is the theory/application of using Heart, Fire, and Grace to define a character. I supplied the rest to help envision how I'm applying it. I thought that if I didn't supply any mechanics or such, no one would grasp the concept of each.

It probably would have been wiser to just use some gameplay samples to illustrate that though.

Jason