Rambling Background Stuff

Okay, I've been rethinking my game system for a few months now (part of the reason I came back and starting posting here lately), trying to retrace my steps and look for ways to make it pop, so to speak. What I have is a generic fantasy game with a rather detailed combat system. I am very close to polishing that system off, and it would be easy to call the game done at that point. I'm really happy with lots of the core combat mechanics and even the general approach to social interaction we took in the game. At the same time I keep thinking something is missing. It's that sense that I just missed a connection somewhere, or that I left something under-developed. I'm thinking with the keyboard here, so please excuse the ramble.

I had 4 initial goals:

1) To make an RPG compatible with a Skirmish Game I had designed earlier. The initial idea was to develop all the role playing concepts in such a manner as to be able to lay them over the top of the Skirmish Game, and use the exact same combat engine. This goal is no longer guiding production as the skirmish game has been set aside for the foreseeable future.

2) I wanted a general (tradition) fantasy game, the kind that people could use for a variety of settings and play in a variety of ways.

3) I wanted a system that could be used to explore a variety of different types of cultural source material (e.g. standard Tolkeinesque materials, Native American, African, Polynesian, etc.) I also wanted the system to facilitate interaction between such settings, i.e. to give them just enough meaningful connections to encourage contact scenarios rather than isolated mini-campaigns.

4) I wanted a mechanism in place which would facilitate more focused game themes than the combat engine would provide. I didn't want a game that would play out in short order, but I wanted a means would enable a GM to set up a campaign about _______.

So, what I did was to crib a notion from Claude Levi-Strauss, namely the use of binary feature systems. This approach is sufficiently general to reach a broad number of themes and sufficiently flexible to do so without overdetermining the significance each such theme can have. It won't do, for example to just ask who is good and who is evil in this world as opposed to that one, or to skip the question of values altogether. What I wanted was a system that would enable me to say; "here, the real battle is between good and evil, but over there it is between beauty and ugliness, and over there it is between old and new."

So, ...In addition to all the conventional skills and abilities a player might possess, she also gets Traits. The traits are always arranged in opposed pairs. With respect to any pair, a Character may be neutral (i.e. unmarked) and generally uninvolved in that particular dynamic. Or she may possess either one of the Traits in question. This gives her no concrete abilities, but it does structure her relationships with others. If she shares a Trait with someone, then she will be much better at helping them (adding 3 to any relevant roll). If she has a Trait opposed to one possessed by another player, then she can potentially hurt them more (a lethality bonus of +5 applied on a successful attack).

So, if I take a character with the Trait, "Fair," (which in this instance means beautiful) she can help other fair creatures (elves, angels, faeries, and so forth) really well or she can hurt Brutish (Orcs, Gnoles, Trolls, etc.) creatures really badly. Humans BTW choose their natural Traits, other creatures have these set for them.

There are several different types of Traits, Natural Qualities (as illustrated above), Moral Qualities (divided into Values and Memes), Age, Sex, Social Class, Color Manifestations (e.g. the White Wizard, the Black Knight, etc.). Traits are indirectly related to abilities in that abilities have traits and possession of abilities that match one's own traits raises one's strength in the traits in question. Magic Items also possess traits and wielding a magic item with which one shares a trait means it is that much more powerful in your character's hands.

Toward an Active Environment

So, punch-line: Locations in the natural environment also have traits. So, for example the river that flows out of the elven forest may possess the Traits 'fair' and 'nature' at a power level of say 6. When the party decides to swim across the river (because that is their only option in this scenario), anyway, when they do this... The Swim check requires a Target of 12 with 3d6 modified by the character's Pure Physical task Rolls. (I don't really want to focus on basic mechanics here, but let's say this is a roll that should be close to even odds for a beginning character. Now the elf (who automatically has the Trait fair) may spend a point of her Affinity Allotment ( a limited resource by which she determines how many times she can take an affinity bonus when helping others) to take a bonus equal to the power level of the river on her swim Task. At +6, she's a shoe-in. The orc on the other hand has the Trait 'Brute' which means he must make his own swim roll at a -6 (the power level of the river). Now the 12 is more difficult, ...much more difficult. In short, the river will happily take care of her own, but she wants the orc dead, and if she can she will drown him.

So, the whole point here is that the Trait system does not simply shape the relationship of the character to others; it also defines her relationship to the natural environment.

This was a much bigger of the first campaigns we ran using this system, all based on a kind of twilight zone concept with monsters. It culminated with actually the slaughter of an elven village and a transformation of the elven forest from elfy-like values to "Cruelty." (The PCs weren't very nice.) And the second campaign began with a new set of adventurers sent off to determine why the elven forest had now become a place of cruelty.

I have rules for changing the Traits of the local environment, but of late we haven't been pursuing this aspect of the game much. Too busy ironing out of the combat engine. Now I am beginning to think I need to go back to this. The first campaign was about shaping the world around the characters as much as it was about their personal growth and ever increasing bad-assitude.

So, this strikes me as a two-step process: 1) I need to systematize the rules for letting characters modify the environment, and 2) I need to establish some guidelines for GMs to design that physical environment. When a GM makes a tower or a magic fountain for example, she will need to say something about its moral qualities. I am also thinking that in terms of world-building, the general dynamic can change a little. For instance, if Middle Earth is perhaps a struggle between good and evil, one might imagine other lands around it in which the principle opposition is between 'art' and 'science' perhaps, or maybe 'light' and 'darkness,' perhaps even between 'youth' and 'old age'. The GM may thus choose a theme for any given region, boosting all bonuses for affinity and opposition based on those two traits and then arranging the NPCs and locations with those traits in mind.

One concern I have here is that this could become too fiddly. ...but it could also be damned interesting. If the players do not merely walk through a dark forest and then cross a dry desert but actually content with the will of the natural environment, then the epic travel narrative becomes that much more rich. And one may lose, not just because the creatures in that strange land fought one off, but because the land itself rejected you.

The game is in this sense, not simply about defeating the bad guy, but rebuilding the world he has destroyed. I don't think I want to see simple magic as a resolution here. ...cast a spell at power level ??? and voila! the bad forest is now good. I think I want that to work only if some appropriate gesture or act is finished first.

A given location would have the following...

1 Traits, one for Natural Qualities and one for Moral Qualities.
A Power level (which interacts with character abilities).
A source of the Power Level: the evil witch who keeps the grove evil, or a band of elves that influence the moral qualities of the river, perhaps a deity, or even simply a great historical event (the first sword was fashioned here).

Transforming the environment would require elimination of the original power source (or symbolic counteraction), a symbolic gesture  toward the intended (new) Trait, and then a ritual in which the principle actor will need high strength in the intended (new) trait.

Simply put, I think the game as it now exists meets design goal 2, and the framework is there for 3 and 4, but I think I have fallen short somehow. The Trait system is currently too close to another combat stat. There are other implications, but they don't carry enough significance, not yet anyhow. Going back to this theme might be a step in the right direction.

Hm, that was all a big ramble. I'll come back and frame a specific question or two later.

Ok first responce: how much can people ignore the terrain? It occurs to me that if the perfecting of the combat system was associated with power creep, then the mechanical effects of natural setting will have been bleached a bit, just because every fight is now a little more similar, in that it depends more on the characters and perhaps the minutia of placement and tactics than on the fact that the world is turning away from beauty.

Sometimes you can pull even the most theme averse player into changing the world either as a shift from tactics to strategy or because those engines of horror are messing up his garden! So two methods present themselves there; get players into a setting and then shift it, or use the balancing above.

I quite like the idea that going up against a land that doesn't like you will wear you down faster, or produce threats more frequently, as I suggested before. In that sense the strategic situation is like that of facing an enemy generator; unless you are just moving through, (and even so if the enemies can follow you) you will want to take out the enemy generator and eliminate the threat totally.

Actually the moment I consider the possibilities of enemies following you, I can imagine the dynamics of general war, where sphere's of influence of opposing elements naturally cause warzones, where they effectively trigger encounters for each other! It's pretty cool if you can have unopposing traits, as that means that centres of a certain influence can vie for a piece of "neutral ground" which is actually aligned in a way they don't care about, but they wish to either fight through or shift to a form that suits them better, flicking it from neutral chaotic to fair chaotic or brutish chaotic, with varying consequence for those providing the power source, whether they wish to share it or give it to someone else more inclined to them. This could lead to a diffusion effect as every piece of land starts to take a stand on one side or another of every conflict going, except for a few places who's neutrality is fundimental to their power.

In such a situation, mapping is made really useful; it's not just about looking arty or saying "no it's too far" any more, it's about keeping track of the soul of the world!