Thursday, January 13, 2005

[Astral] Character Change

Players have total control over the development of their character.* If you want to be more proficient at astral travel, take actions in that direction. If you want to meet darker, more evil entities, go out of your way to run into them.

When you state an action, you get to shift all the relevant Ratings one step in the appropriate direction. This means you can change multiple Ratings with only 1 action – if the action has ramifications for all the Ratings.

Example:
Jenni wants to fly through a mountain. Clearly this is a use of Attunement (which is currently rated at 6). She shifts her Attunement score down to 5, one step closer to the Soul end of the range.

A Bigger Example:
Jenni wants to fly through a mountain in order to save an airplane filled with strangers from a malevolent entity that Jenni believes is more powerful than her.

She has Attunement (6), Focus (3), Ethics (7) and Fear (2).

As a result of deciding to take this action she shifts her Attunement down to 5, her Focus up to 4 (because she's widened her focus from herself), her Ethics up to 8 (it's a good action) and her Fear up to 3 (she's being courageous).

* OK, there’s one exception – automatic Fear rolls whenever you fail an action.

If a character hits the extreme of either Rating (10 or 0), they enter Endgame. By the end of the session their story gets wrapped up in a way that's consistent with the descriptions under each of the Ratings. [Add in a more fleshed out 'Endgame' section later.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this mechanic, and the principle behind it, is gold.

is this from somewhere or All Your Own Work TM?

carry on.

- svend's mate morgue

hix said...

'Tis mine, Morgue AFAICT.

Obviously there are some inspirations: 'Pendragon' springs to mind. And I was pretty much originally going to rip off the system behind Ralph ('Universalis') Mazza's new game 'Robots & Rapiers' until I realised I could take it a wee bit further than he did.

Thanks for the comment! You've brightened my day.

hix said...

Also, the 'two outcomes' idea is taken from Zak Arntson’s Shadows.

The idea of Endgame (when a Rating hits one of the 2 extremes) is inspired by Violence Future and My Life with Master and (especially) Sorceror’s Humanity mechanic.