Hi,

I was just finishing Sword and I noticed that the character rules say that an experienced character might have multiple Pasts. What mechanic would I use to add a Past?

1) When making the Humanity role for development at the end of a story, roll Humanity vs. 1 die to acquire a new past at 1. Or should it be at a number equal to Will or Stamina as appropriate?

2) Arbitrary awards of extra Pasts between episodes? This seems in line with the suggestions for playing episodes out of chronological order.

Ideas?

- Alan

Hi Alan,

This is an especially relevant question to me, because my Sorcerer & Sword game just hit its between-adventures phase. I go with #2, because I don't see much point to having a chance to "fail" to acquire a Past.

Best,
Ron

So, the player would get the idea when reworking his character between episodes and the GM would just give permission to add an appropriate Past. At full dice level?

How about bound demons? I would guess those should only be acquired in play.

It might be fun for each character to keep a chronology card. They could record adventures as they happen and note inter-episode professions. It would be like Howard exploring the career of Conan. It might also be a creative tool to suggest what adventure they'd like to have next.


- Alan

Hi,

Yeah, it's pretty vague, isn't it? On the other hand, it places the games-mechanics emphasis on the adventures themselves, which is where I think it should be.

I'm perfectly OK with "new Pasts" being at full Past value, as the concepts in Sword are very far away from the old-school RPG notion of "learning" skills. I'm thinking of Conan's whole pirate sequence in The Hour of the Dragon, in which we find ... hey! He was a pirate! Right here, on the Black Coast! Really? Yeah! So the galley slaves recognize him, and they revolt, see?

Best,
Ron

You know, I really like this last example... it implies that a Past can grant a character more than just a "skill set" but also implies reputation, renown, old friends (or enemies), and worldly experience beyond just knowing how to do something or other... and mechanicaly, it works just how you'd expect. Avir Cormoumas arives in the oaossis city of Sav, and decides to go looking for an old friend who might put him up for the night- as it turns out Avir spent some time as a Caravan Outrider and made friends with several of Sav's wealthy merchants. Avir's player rolls some dice based on his Past score agianst a difficulty based on how plausable the GM finds the player's intended goal.

This is a marvelous way of tieing Pasts, characters, and current situation together.

Thanks for highlighting it... its not something I'd considered before.

I've always treated Pasts as Covers that don't quite apply anymore. That said, Simply Ghastly [which has just finished, look for a write up in Actual Play in the next few days] had a Cover of:

Wealthy Landed Industrialist Who Spent Some Time In India

Which implied, amongst other things, membership in the Masons, and a seat in the House of Lords.