This is just something that has been festering at the back of my head for a while, and I'm wondering what you guys think of it.

The SA system in TROS is excellent, of course. I think we all agree on that. What drives a character? What is his destiny? Who does he love enough, or hate enough to be rash for/over? What will his conscience override? Etc.

The only one that for me has never fitted into the system is Luck. The rest of the SA's denote what's truly important to a character, and in a lot of ways are responsible for the shift from Simulationism to Narritivism that is TROS. Luck... well, doesn't. It doesn't have anything to do with how a character acts, or feels, it just is.

So, I say lets drop Luck as an SA. I still want to keep the attribute, because I like my games to be slightly more... hmm... what's the word? Epic? Yes, epic perhaps, and slightly less gritty than canon TROS. For this reason, I love Luck as a meta-mechanic (ala 7th Sea or Buffy) that the players can use to assist OTT-ness. I would also remove the ability to use Luck points as experience or insight, and keep them as pure drama dice.

That does, of course, leave us with the problem (?) that there are only 5 SA's to pick 5 from (of course Passion may be taken more than once). Maybe a new SA is needed. Can anyone think of anything not already covered? A new SA?

Thoughts? Lets discuss, this board tends to the quiet at times :-)

Brian.

Okay, so there is Destiny and Drive which defines where your character is going. There is Faith- which defines what they believe in, and there are passions, which is what the character cares about. There is also Conscience which defines the way that a character approaches the world (the hallmark of a "good" character).

None of these covers honor, which is separate from conscience in a big way. It is facing an opponent on even ground, refusing to show weakness, and maintaining face.

A character with honor does not have to be a a character with conscience, they do not have to care how anyone is perceived other than them. It is also not lowering themselves to the level of those without honor as it is as much an internal as an external quality.

Obviously, having this SA can put characters into a bit of a bind as they would lose honor foracting, well dishonorably. Thoughts?

As an aside: I don't mind Luck as an SA simply because it does fit into the sort of all-around intangibility of the other SAs. There are people with better luck than others.. those blessed by the Three who are One, or who have the Dark One's own luck.

Virtue could cover honor, amoung other things (patience, courage, loyalty).

I like luck. If you want an example of luck as an SA read the Ringworld series by Lary Niven. I can remember her name but there is a character who is bread over generations to be lucky. In the end she screws up the pupeteers (?) plans because her luck is lucky for her and not for the pupeteers.

I think I got that right. It has been a long time since I read those books.

I suppose her luck could also be considered destiny but in the books it is decribed as luck.

I just think of luck as something that reinforces destiny or drive...

NT

Honor's a good one. I'd call it Code to make it more generic, but I can think of a lot of settings (within Weryth) where Code would fit perfectly.

I think of honour as a passion or a drive, "Passion: to maintain personal honour", or "Drive: To achieve honour" or "Drive: To be Honourable". etc...

I just let my characters lump that into a faith but having it as a seperate SA is but a nominal change. I say go for it!

The only advantage for luck is that its a catchall for santaschaling, if you want to give a player points but cant figure out where luck always works.

Although to answer your original question,

I think you could use passion to cover a large range of possible SA's. I played Pendragon for a long time, so Passion might cover Honor, Loyalty to one's Lord, Loyalty to one's country, love for a woman and what ever. I can't think of any particular SA besides the ones listed in book, but Passion would seem to be pretty openended and cover just about anything you want.

If you drop luck as an SA but keep it as an atttribute, how does it function. Does it fill up similarly to the present system and get burned up similarly to the present? Does everyone get it automatically or are some people naturally luckier than others...

I would use it as a drama mechanic. Gain points for extremely lucky or extremely unlucky rolls (As in the book) but also gain a point whenever you roleplay extremely well, achieve astounding success in something, save the day, win the girl, etc.

A lot of tjhose kinds of situations would be covered by an SA of course, but I'm talking Luck rewards as being entirely different from SA rewards. Literally a drama mechanic - you get it for being dramatic and can spend them to assist in being dramatic, which is a different slant than determining when SA's apply.

I kind of like Honor/Code, but I would like some more examples of how it's different from Conscience. If we're discussing Honor, what about Valor? Is it the same thing (not IMO). Is it another valid SA possibility? I'm just throwing ideas out, you understand.

Toni/Salamander, I can see what you're getitng at, but your examples are not valid Passions as defined in the rulebook (you can "rule 0" anything you like of course). A passion must be towards a specific person or entity, so you can't have a passion to be honorable for example, and technically you can't even have a passion to be loyal to someone or something (that's covered by the gifts and flaws).

Brian.

Heh. We're crossing into Ultima territory here...

If you're a fan of the Ultima series, you're probably already familiar with the Virtues and the Principles. If not, you can get MY interpretation here.

Conscience is the desire/instinct to do what is right; but right is such a nebulous word. What is "right" is generally what you were taught growing up. I doubt any born and raised cannibal would ever find anything wrong with it, but we as "civilized" people know that it is wrong. To me, Code would simply be Conscience, but with a descriptor which defines your framework.

Now, on the other hand.. Specific Virtues, such as those in the Ultima framework, are a little different. Following a specific Virtue sometimes forces you to choose which "right" you're going to do. In the character selection portion of the video game series you're faced with a series of these situations where you choose one way or the other. Valor... or Compassion? Justice... or Honesty?

As an unofficial addition to the SAs, I could see Virtue, but as it is an idea already copyrighted by the Ultima series, you'd either have to change it immensely, or not use it at all for official content.

In a lot of ways luck already is a pure metagame mechanic. Sure, it's called an SA, but it doesn't really work the same way as the other SAs. I like Brian's suggestion, but I think as a practical matter that it's more a matter of terminology than anything else.

I also like the idea of giving luck for great roleplaying or great ideas or whatever else doesn't fit handily into the SAs. You make your own luck, after all. ;)

With respect to other SAs, again, it depends a lot on how loose you are on the definitions. One that has bothered me since I first read the rules (which is pretty recently) is conscience. As written this is strictly a 'good' conscience. This means that evil characters or NPCs can essentially never advance in this SA, which seems inappropriate. What about the old 'do as thou wilt?' Personally, I like to play good characters, but I want the villains to be as tough as the good guys.

The trick here is that an anti-conscience can be just as challenging as a good conscience. FOr example, if you have an evil conscience (do as thou wilt), then that will bring you into active conflict with the law and others. You like that barmaid? Your actions may land you in a duel or the jail. Or even the hangman's noose.

I haven't really thought through all the ramifications of this, but that's the one SA that doesn't seem to apply to villains. Any other thoughts on how to fix this?

ashampine wrote: In a lot of ways luck already is a pure metagame mechanic. Sure, it's called an SA, but it doesn't really work the same way as the other SAs. I like Brian's suggestion, but I think as a practical matter that it's more a matter of terminology than anything else.

ashampine wrote: ... Conscience...

I haven't really thought through all the ramifications of this, but that's the one SA that doesn't seem to apply to villains. Any other thoughts on how to fix this?

Hi Ashampine,

Regarding your concern about conscience, of course an evil character can have it. Just look at the Godfather movies, or Chow Yun Fat in the Killer. The character simply has a narrower view of who earns your compassion.

Chris

Actually I'd have a strong aversion to Honor as an SA.
1) its almost obnoxiously cliche.
2) it is so undefined that it could be claimed for almost anything with the proper mental gymnastics
3) there's nothing for a GM to sink their teeth into. Passions, drives, destinies...those are all story generators. Honor...that's just color to make a character look cool. A player who's into that sort of thing will just roleplay it anyway.
4) Honor is external. OTHER people percieve you as honorable or dishonorable. Other things like passions and drives are internal. Any kind of sense of adhering to an internal code of honor regardless of what others might think sound alot like simply Faith to me.
5) The external effects of Honor are already covered by the Good Reputation, merit.

IMO: Honor...as a simple generic SA in not a good idea, any more than "Lust", or "Greed" without further qualifiers is not a very good SA.

Luck...Luck I agree 100% with Brian's analysis of Luck relative to the other SAs. I don't have a problem with it because in my mind you don't have 5 SAs. You have Luck and 4 SAs. I can't imagine ever creating a character without taking Luck, unless I was intentionally trying to play someone unlucky. It would be like declineing to take ones Hero Points in Hero Wars or one Bennies in Savage Worlds.

In fact, if I were rewriting TROS, I'd set it up that way. Luck is earned mechanically as opposed to being granted by the GM. Luck is spent differently than other SAs...its just a completely different animal, so I'd set it up as a completely different animal and not even try to call it an SA. In my mind the only reason to call it an SA at all is to make it obvious that it can be spend on Spiritual Points for improvement.

First, of course villains can have regular consciences. And it's quite interesting to have spiritual attributes that are in tension with one another. However, I dislike having thorough villains not having access to this spiritual attribute. All I'm saying is that I like the idea of allowing anti-conscience as a viable option.

With respect to luck, I'm starting my first campaign in a couple of weeks and I'm wrestling with how to handle this. I'm leaning towards allowing luck points to be cashed in at any time for a lucky break. I don't have a problem with them being used in combat, since I, as the GM, will be the arbiter of what a 'lucky break' is in those circumstances. The question is how much authorship do I want to allow the players. I'm not sure about this. I can see pros and cons either way.

Anyone have any experience with allowing players authorship with respect to their luck?

There are a few reasons why I don't believe that Honor (or Code if you prefer) can properly be handled by other passions:

1) Faith is something that you have a strong belief in, outside of the character. Be it in the Seven Vows, the Three Becomes One, Thayrism, or just the fact that there are no Gods at all. Belief in your own honor? Doesn't work for me, and it removes the fact that you can have a character with faith in something outside of themselves as well as honor.

2) Drive: To achieve honor. What I am proposing is that the character already has honor to a greater or lesser degree.

3) Destiny: I could see where achieving (or losing) great honor would work.

4) Passion: something that you care deeply about, again usually outside of oneself and that covers emotions- be it love, loyalty, hate, etc. I find it hard for all but some to be really passionate about their honor, even if such people have honor.

5) Conscience. There is a marked difference between code and this. A character whose code primarily drives him to obey and show loyalty to a master will show little remorse in striking down the peasantry (unless of course they have the conflicting SA of conscience). The Code SA also covers things like not allowing oneself to be dragged down into acts that violate the code even when told to do so by a conflicting SA (say a lord to whom the character has a Passion: Loyalty).

I'm not saying that it could be done, but that the same argument could be made for the other passions:

Drive: protect one's lord as opposed to passion: loyalty
Destiny: to become the king's greatest bodyguard (see above) for examples.


I like the concept of Code, because it covers a much broader base and is even vaguely historically relevant- what with bushido and chivalry (and the mythical nature of both to one degree or another)

A final point is that a character with the good reputation merit is not necessarily honorable or has a code of any kind. I can think of several instances where following the SA could cause trouble for the character and could be put at odds with other SAs.

Belief in your own honor? Hardly what I was getting at! I meant that faith:honor is a belief in a code of honorable conduct, take the samurai of film and literature who believe that honor above all else matters. They believed that honor brought them strength while dishonor would be worth commiting suicide. thats alot like a faith if you ask me.

Your other criticisms I think are well placed though. As for passion, I usually declare that some sort of reciprocation must be possible thus honor does not work.

Hmm, well, I don't have a problem with luck, and I think that many more SAs would be redundant, at least with the way that I view them.


Luck
TROS is a game that is deeply concern with the exploration of character, and it does this through spiritual attributes. The mechanics for the SAs can be summed as 'what do you care about so much that it makes you stronger?' With this in mind, let's look at how different heroes with different dominant SAs succeed:

The Driven Hero wins because he wants to
The Destined hero wins because it is party of The Plan
The Faithful hero wins for the glory of his world-view
The Conscientious hero wins because he is Right and the enemy is Wrong
The Passionate hero wins in the name of whatever he cares about

and then there is the Lucky Hero, who wins.... by accident. Luck is the ultimate non-answer to the question of what makes you strong. It is 'None of the Above.' The lucky hero is a hero who really has no powerful beliefs pushing him forward; he just kinda stumbles through. This carries through both how luck is used and how it is increased.

So the question is, is it valid for TROS to allow heroes to exist who aren't strengthened by their resolve? My answer is yes. TROS is very agnostic when it comes to ideology and in-game theology. It doesn't tell you what is right or true, it just tells you what is and that belief matters. If it was designed, say, more like Pendragon, then luck would have no place, because in Pendragon, the most chivalrous Christian knight is supposed to be the one who woops ass.

In TROS, if you see someone woop ass, you ask, how can you do that? You can get a ton of answers back, ranging from it was God's will, it was right, he killed my father, and even... "*shrug* I dunno. Just kinda happened." To insist that there always is a reason, always a motivation, breaks the agnostic character I see in TROS. I apologize for babbling in psuedo-philosophy, but this is the best I can word what I mean.


Code
A code of honor is an internalized set of behavior. It is an inherently social and public thing. Honor is a non-issue for the hermit who has seen no one for decades. For me, what I just described can be expressed by the pre-existing SAs.

I reject the notion of honor as a thing you have more or less of. It is a practice, a way of acting, a way of being. As such, it is something one must constantly uphold. Because of this, I see no problem with Drive: To be Honorable. When a situation arises where one can say "an honorable person would do ____", then you do it. If one has the goal of maintaining a certain state of being, a certain form of practice, then he or she has a Drive.

I'm agreeing a lot with Nick's points. Luck has it's place as an SA, though I likewise have no problems with Brian's ideas to make it a purely meta-mechanic.

Code: I still say that Code and Conscience are pretty much the same thing. Only Code defines conscience with a different morality than what is considered "normal" (killing without cause is bad, stealing is bad, eating human flesh is bad... etc) The Code of Bushido defines things differently than the Code of Chivalry, but both are about defining right and wrong for a warrior caste.

I think something that should be acknowledged is that the SAs as written in the text are probably more restrictive than Jake would write them today. I'm speaking of Limitations on the number of times a Passion can be called on, or how many Drives you are or aren't allowed to have, etc.

Relaxing these restrictions makes it easier to define things by creative combination of existing things rather than defining new things...combinations that may be disallowed by strict interpretation of rules as written.

Valamir wrote:
Relaxing these restrictions makes it easier to define things by creative combination of existing things rather than defining new things...combinations that may be disallowed by strict interpretation of rules as written.

That's right, Nick.

Lovin' this discussion.

Jake

Small Thematic Aside-

When you look at how SAs are selected, and you think of villians, many villians aren't going to choose to have Conscience(unless modified) and many may not have Faith(although some scary ones will)...which means there's really a limited choice of SA's left to fill the gap.

But doesn't it aways seem that (cinematically) villains are always some of the luckiest bastards around?

Chris

Bankuei wrote: Small Thematic Aside-
But doesn't it aways seem that (cinematically) villains are always some of the luckiest bastards around?
Chris

Nick,

I'm with you on that note. As I've said in another thread, conscience can be very different for different folks. Consider characters from the Godfather, or Chow Yun Fat from the Killer. Both have a different view of who deserves help, and who doesn't. Both do have a conscience, it just happens that it applies in what most people would consider a "narrower" range than the typical hero.

Chris

We're in agreement.
I apologize if my posts are argumentative. I should learn not to write posts while listening to King Crimson & reading marxist commentary on pop culture :)

I am intriged by the idea of Luck being used purely for drama. But as I think we're seeing it is very hard to come up with a replacement Spiritial Trait.... I like the idea of honor but I believe it belongs under Drive.

Also my opinion on:

Brian Leybourne wrote: I can see what you're getitng at, but your examples are not valid Passions as defined in the rulebook (you can "rule 0" anything you like of course). A passion must be towards a specific person or entity, so you can't have a passion to be honorable for example, and technically you can't even have a passion to be loyal to someone or something (that's covered by the gifts and flaws).

If almost everyone takes luck, and you are moving luck to a different rule, why not just cut back to 4 SAs per character?

First I want to thank Brian for bringing this up. What a great discussion!

Of course, part of what makes me say that is seeing the same disparity between Luck and the other SAs.

I also agree with a lot else that has been said: it might do to re-examine the definitions of the SAs to broaden their definitions; honor does seem to belong under Drive; Luck makes a great drama mechanic, etc.

As for redefining the SAs, I think someones bound to point out that it's likely to be house-ruled in any case, but I for one always appreciate those extra guidelines that come down from "on-high," (plus I like putting Jake on a pedestal--speak, o guru, speak!)

Now as for recommendations: I'm going to take the approach of asking "what seems to be missing?" in the context of what helps define heroes from legend, myth, and story.

My first (and possibly only) answer is Hubris. In classical terms it's arrogance or foolish pride. And as often as not, it's the flaw that brings the hero down.
But hear me out!
I think it could be defined in game terms as any of those things above, but it could also be defined as Boldness, Recklessness, or even just getting caught up in the moment. The way I'm thinking about it now, it could be seen as a Flaw that makes a character the hero he is. In terms of a mechanic, it would be the thing that drives the hero to get into trouble, and the thing that also pulls him out; call them SA points for "in deep sh*t" dice. It may be that it would need a secondary definer, like Passion or Drive. Hubris: Single Minded or some such. I'll have to think on it some more.

I've only just thought of this, so I haven't got it all figured out, but I thought I'd throw it out to the hive mind to see what can be made of it. Any and all ideas welcome.

~PO

Hear ye, hear ye, the guru speaketh, o the Font of Riddling knowledge!

Jake 25:16
"Um, the Spiritual Attributes represent the issues of the meta-world; those things that aren't physcially tangible in the "real world" become so via SAs. So Luck for me fits in just fine, especially since you're rewarded in that SA by doing things that entertain the meta-world viewers (the players). So Luck fits my definition of SA's just fine."

25:16
"However, in a game where the players can effectively carry an extra SA (a game that is really actively thriving on them) and Luck is still a neccessity (and Luck's role as "oh crap!" dice shouldn't be underestimated), then I think that the idea Brian proposes works great. SAs, more than anything, should be house-ruled until the really fit the group make-up. Personally, though, I like them where they're at."

Jake,
who basks in the light of his subjects

“And Jake of Norwood did come unto them and spake saying, “Say what?” And it was good…”

Yea, verily, we art blest; the Almighty GD* hath spoken, blessed be his Forum. But as the scripture also has it:

“Blessed are the RulesTweakers, for they shall inherit Mirth.”

So at the risk of invoking His unending Wrath, let me add just one more little comment--

(And by the way Jake: really need to work on the whole Wrath thing; so far you’ve been showing too much of the Patience and Understanding bits, and that just doesn’t make for a very convincing GD.)

Still trying to make the Hubris idea work:

I’m going to compare it to Destiny, an SA I didn’t much like (not that it's a bad SA--it's just not for me; to many of them ‘Child of Destiny’ stories running around in games/fiction/movies these days,) UNTIL some kindly folks on this forum taught me the error of my ways. These folks proposed that Destiny could as easily be something you’re running away from as something you’re moving toward.

The function is the same as the rest of the SAs (and this is the important distinction to me): The Hero is being Compelled by an aspect of his personality. And I can say the same thing for Conscience, Faith, Drive, and Passion.

I’m having a little trouble with Luck though, (obviously.) Don’t get me wrong, now. I think Luck is absolutely essential to a Hero, and to the game as a mechanic. I just think it sticks out a bit as an SA; you might 'buy down' any of the others as you grow your characters personality, but Luck will be the One Eternal because of the way it operates in the game.

So all of that is why I’m interested in this whole proposal Brian has come up with.

NOT that I want to antagonize our illustrious leader, but I did want to try and make myself clearer on where I was coming from, and where I wanted to go with it.

And I promise not to say any more about the Hubris thing until I’ve grown me one of them Intelligence things, that’ll let me express the concept better.

So you’re probably safe for a good long while--

~PO



*Game Designer