I looked over a review of Polaris and was reminded of this mechanic I had once long ago. What brought it to my attention was this whole ritual mechanic. This ritual thing, I once had a game where the only three things that mattered was temperament (fire water air void, sound, etc.), attitude (conservative, republican, reckless, etc.) and path (rebel, solider, monarch, hunter, dandy, etc.) and their unique interactions with each other. A rebel interacted with a solider this way and they both interacted with a monarch this way and a monarch interacting with a solider has these results in relation to a hunter and fire element with a reckless attitude did such and such with this thing and that.

This of course meant nothing to the player except all he had to remember was he was A Conservative Winter-born Rebel or something or other. Then my detailed notes on how plot would go sort of railroaded them according to the established structure. The idea was that magic ruled the fantasy setting and horoscopes were really and powerful and the players lived tapping into this "myth energy" that was as real as newtonian physics is for us. Of course knowing and not knowing whose horoscope was whose and working through them in trial and error.    Players would have to role-play out their chosen horoscope. There were sub attributes that interacted with the primary ones and tertiary attributes that further represented  circumstances.

It reminded me of Polaris, where you have all of those rituals and things. Locke-Spinoza Horoscopes were designed to work well with even large groups[ the GM would so ever gently narrate the rules, ie "In matters social a Conservative Water temperament quelches hungry Reckless Flame." The players became immersed in the setting because the rule reflected this. The players of the Elements of Destiny (the name of the campaign) were encouraged to be artful and search out their goals in prescribed ways based on other tropes that the game ran on. The way you, "won" was mastering the protocols of the game. Making you a powerful character was being a wise player.

The problem is railroading. I hated railroading. There was nothing, and i mean Nothing that changed the outcome of anything. There were things you could do and thing you couldn't do. just like that. If you wanted past this guy, go get some help, or do it another way otherwise your screwed. It wasn't like people hated it, but i certainly felt drained.

I was thinking about using something similar with my Vonnegut's Crapshoot.or even tacking these two together with the pyramid which again is mentioned in my work in the Vonnegut's Crapshoot Thread. Both VC and L-SH have similar ideas going on where the "random" is thrown off in exchange for the "occult." I want the unknown to really be the unknown, not just chance. You can buy trick dice or min-max your character but you never know what the unknown will throw at you. It reminds me of that Luke Crane thing where he says "My character will be changed in some way and I don't know how." sort of chance.

This one might be a poison idea that needs serious modification or even deletion.  In so far I haven't figured out what to do with the brownie points yet. Perhaps use them as currency for opening and closing scenes? Oh they can have so many other uses before play starts again. Burning wheel has three types and I love that Idea, some kind of economy involving the brownie points at the table, using even trade debt and barter between players. 

Man I love RPG's :))

I'll try and use pretty generic tersmin my response here. If you think they apply in a specific way because you've seen these terms used in other places, I'll try to clarify later...

Let's work on the concept that each character has a fixed pool of energy traits. This energy can be used to manipulate storyline effects.

The VC method you described, seems to imply that two characters can come head to head, and whichever character is willing to risk the most energy into a task is the winner (Presumably, unopposed tests would have a fixed but unknown resistive energy that represents a difficulty level).

I'd apply this ritual mechanic as free traits that are added to the energy pools when the wager is risked.

For example. Bob risks 6 energy traits on an action, John risks 5 energy traits. Normally Bob would win, but since it's an action where a "Fire" nature helps, John is two traits up.

It wouldn't be hard to develop some kind of system where these two schools of thought compliment one another to produce an eloquent system.

You could probably develop a series of "quick reference" tables to see how the traits related to one another in different circumstances.

There are numerous ways that you could interact skill levels with these mechanics as well.
1. Comparison of [Risk + Relevant traits + Skill level].
2. Comparison of [Risk + Skill Level], where ties are broken by the relevant traits.
3. Comparison of [Risk + Relevant Traits], where ties are broken by the skill level.
4. etc.

V

The point of the hierarchy, is not to make higher tiers superior. I don't think we are doing that. I think that the higher tiers include better skills, not more skills.  In fact the most specific filled area usually trumps another. Not where you pick it but how you pick it.