An idea I had for how to treat "souls" in TROS, espicially with an eastern setting, would be that spiritual attribuites are tied to them, I.E, if a person is killed, their soul may still exist as a ghost, a ghost has no physical or mental attribuites, equipment, profiencies, all it would have are spiritual attribuites, which it can still use to attempt actions, except it has noother modifiers to help it do so. Ghosts also have to make a roll to be seen, which is handled inversely of the rules for stealth.

Fitting with the definition of spiritual attribuites, the ghosts are not empowered by the strength of their emotions, but the importance of their motrivations to the story.

If you wanted ghosts to dissipate after awhile, youcould have it they that can lose spiritual attribuites, but they cannot gain them. If one of their spiritual attribuites is satisfied, than it's lost for that ghost with no replacement.

If something "Possesses" a soul, than it is treated as having all of the spiritual attribuites of that soul. I could see this working for reincarnation or weapons possessing the souls of their former masters.

I would also think there would be an additionial sorcery vagary for the manipulation of souls, unlss one already fits.

Hey, that's pretty cool.

Brian.

Yes, but if someone were to be murdered, in such a horrific way as can be imagined... and the soul entered into that ghost form, would not the ghost be hell-bent on revenge? Therefore that would be his ONLY spiritual attribute and a strong one at that? And it could possibly be used in any situation that leads to the revenge that the ghost is after? I could then see a nice flaw for a character to have 'haunted'. Unless such a thing already exists, but it fits it either way. There of course, could be major and minors to that, for example... more than one ghost is after you.
This way a ghost could torment a target, make it paranoid, make it have nightmares so it can't sleep.. etc etc. Create sounds only the target can hear, etc etc.
*shrug*
The variations on this topic are limitless for seneschals... and that's cool.

-Ingenious

I really like that idea. It could really add flavor to gameplay.

I like this, the way I read it is that ghosts are made up of vagerys (say, Movement 1 or 2 and glamour 1) but the only time ghosts would have dice for anything at all is when it's having to do with their own goals. I'm already picturing very powerful poltergist spirits with multipul SA's aimed at one concept.

example:
Movement 2
Passion 5: I hate bad men, they hurt me!
Passion 5: I want to be left alone!
Drive 5: Make them all go away!

Here we have the spirit af a child, who when confronted, reacts in the manner of scared, angry children everywhere. This one just happens to be telekinetic and invisable.

Most ghosts probably wouldn't have that many spirituals, but I thought it would be a good example. 15 dice of magic without having to worry about aging is a scary thought. I'd immagine most ghosts would be more along the lines of:

Glamour 1
Passion 2: love my children

Much lower scale. Manifesting could be handled like creating an illusion. it's just making an illusion of itself. If it wanted to become fully physical than it would have to use sculptue to make a body and then imprison on itself to animate it. I'm already coming up with ideas on how to simulate the concept from The Crow using this system.

I'm also thinking of flaw-type things that could be assigned to ghosts like:

"I'm not dead" The ghost would not be able to percieve or acomplish anything it couldn't do in life and would be totally unable to comprehend the fact that it is dead (like in the sixth sense)

"Flashbacks" Maybe the ghost died in a fire, and any flame larger than a candle renders it powerless as it relives that moment.

I tried to come up with a way to do these as spiritual attributes, but I couldn't come up with anything. Wasn't there an old thread about Curses acting like negative SA's. Maybe it could work like that.

one more idea, what about Possession working like Imprison only backward.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

Ingenious - The "tragic death" related ghost wasn't really what I was shooting for, much more the "unfinished buisness" type. while it obviously has many avenues to explore in stories obviously, I would immediately think it would have problems in a Riddle of Steel game unless it played a very central part. For starters, I think any death in battle is pretty grisly, and yet would every combatant that falls generate a ghost that's any kind of threat? Or would you limit ghosts to people who died of more ritual torture?

I think we're thinking of different kinds of ghost though, a ghost that's obsessed with the moment of it's death hits me as out of line with being powered by it's spiritual attribuites, wheras I was thinking of the idea that your spiritual attribuites can form a shape after death, that the driven soul being one of the few that struggles against death defining it's existence, and is purely concerned with what pushed it so far in life.

A quick ruling for the idea anyway would be that something feeds into new SAs related to vengence at the moment of death, possibly the level of "tragedy" one would percieve. I guess I'd find it more palaptable if the ghosts current Spiritual attribuites were modified to being very much in focus with the cause of it's death, such that Drive: To uphold the law and Passion: Love of my free-spirited daughter changed to Drive: To get those damn skanks that gave me syphilis and Drive: Protect my daughter from the filthy world outside.

wolfsong - (Did you mean there ghosts in the mainbook that are made up of vagarys?? I should probably fess up that I don't own it yet.)
On the disadvantages, I would imagine they "I'm not dead" be represented to a fair degree by the fact that a ghost couldn't change it's spiritual attribuites, I think it would be really meaningfull that way, as only a degenerating shadow of what it used to consider important, by nessecity, as the only other existence possible for it is a void completely unrepresented in this world.

That "Flashback" effect would be pretty easy to do with a negative modified-Destiny SA.

On the possession thing, I at first struggled somewhat on a simple, logical way to do standard possession, where the ghost uses the body of a victim, but than quickly realized that I prefered the idea that ghosts don't do anything but give SAs to others. Partly because I don't see a whole lot of potential with body control type possession and partly because I'm excited about the idea of ghosts just providing additionial willpower and motivation to a character with compatible goals, and that character deciding for themself to act on it. This would be a whole lot more exciting to me if I was a PC as the ghost or the possessed.

I ment the way I Was reading the thread. Sorry, it's more of a figure of speach I picked us somewhere. No, there aren't any ghosts in the main book at all. Nor in OBAM.

I think that a ghost's ability to truly possess would be dependant on it's strength. A low power ghost could probably only give nudges, like you say, using what SA's it has to use it's Conquer 1 ability for a while. They'd all start out small, unsure of how to react or interact to the world as a ghost, but just like a normal charecter they could spend SA's to improve themselves. When you're a ghost, the only thing they are in the first place are a coulple of Vagarys. I think that this system could model Patrick Swaize's charecter from the movie Ghost really well. Acting in acordance with SA's allows a ghost to learn how to interact with the real world in more and more effective ways.

One of the problems with being a ghost is that your spirituals themselves are static. The values can change, but their Drive: See justice done SA would always be there. For a ghost, changing an SA would be like one of us cutting off an arm and getting a new one.

I was going to mention Ghost, but you did it first. Grrrrr.
However, it is a good model to show for how when a ghost focuses really intensely for a moment(SA's firing) that it can move objects, throw stuff, hit people... etc. It is not though, a good model for how one would appear to another person... but it is good for the possession part, what with all the jumping into other people's bodies and such.

Oh and sirogit, I was thinking more along the lines of someone being killed, dismembered, and set afire as being one of those deaths that would spawn a ghost, not just an everyday sort of death that you would see in either a battle or elsewhere. That death, in itself would be interesting should a PC party hear about it, and having perked their curiosity they investigate it... eventually find the people who did it.. but realize that the people that did it wanted help themselves, because they were being haunted and pursued by this ghost, or phantasm or whatever you wish to name it.
See? That can add a hell of alot more color and intrigue to a standard hack em up style of game. But it might not be the best thing for an adventure that is being run with little or no magic involved. Regardless, it would require more elaboration that I don't have the time for.

-Ingenious

wolfsong wrote: No, there aren't any ghosts in the main book at all. Nor in OBAM.

There are ghosts and spirits in OBaM. However, they are generally very.. specific types of ghosts. I think what Wolfsong meant was that there are no Ghosts, not that there are no ghosts.

I really like these ideas, but I'll probably borrow a bit from both WolfSong and Sirogit's ideas rather than take either whole-cloth.