For Dragon World, I am considering removing the conventional stats altogether and replacing them with just three: Coin, Rep, and Strings.
Why? All PCs are good at fighting monsters, that's a given or else they wouldn't be alive.
This focuses the games stats where I want the game to be focused: money, reputation, and emotional connections.
I'm looking for a different word for string, though. That's not quite what I want -- I'm thinking of a positive way of saying connection to other people in a community. Strings, ala monster hearts, is more about manipulation.
How does this sound to you? Got any cool ideas?
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String alternatives might include Sway, Pull, Influence, Favor, etc.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Medeiros Those're close. For this, I think I want "degree of acceptance within a community" ... as a stat. Favor is close. Influence. Respect. Position.
ReplyDeletesounds interesting for that Rat Queens inspired game I always wanted to run.
ReplyDeleteTim Franzke Funny you should mention that: After the first playtest, one of the players asked "So, this is Rat Queens, right?". I looked at him blankly, never having heard of it.
ReplyDeleteThen I read it. There is definite similarities.
Social. Favor. Influence.
ReplyDeleteI'd go for Coin, Clout, and Connection.
ReplyDeleteHow is Rep different from "the stat not named Strings?"
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox I think I want to avoid giving them the same starting character. I think that makes it harder to keep track, at least in my experience.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I'll explain by what I want them to do!
ReplyDeleteCoin: Spend (or roll?) coin to pay for housing / equipment / etc.
Reputation: Roll to impress people you don't know well. This is like Rank, maybe -- it is how much people you don't know you well think of you.
Strings/Social Position: This is how well people who do know you well think of you.
Those make sense?
That's...probably true actually. I love cute tricks like that, but they never seem to be the useful mnemonic I hope of them.
ReplyDeleteCoin, Reputation, Personality? Friendship? Intimacy?
Tone matters a lot for things like this. It sounds like you want to play the contrast between a quiet warrior who is engaged and whose friends will go to the ends of the world for her, and the loud asshole who's all burnished bronze and glory, but when she falls, everyone will abandon her.
Is that right?
Expenses, Glory, Heart?
Jesse Cox on same starting letter: Yeah! I want it to work, but it never really does. Heck, I even want all character names to start with a different letter -- and ideally for none of those to be a name of a stat. There are (probably) less than 26 common pieces in an RPG, so why repeat if we can avoid it.
ReplyDeleteWhen you phrase it as a contrast ... Makes me wander about combining them. But, nah, I want PCs to be able to balance both of them if you want, while absolutely having the options you describe.
You've thought up some good ones. I'll need to think on it. Glory is great, and Intimacy may hit what I need.
I wanna voice my objection to making stuff start with the same letter. Whenever I see a list with nice round numbers (10) or that spells out a clever word like SUCCESS, I can only think that they really had to stretch to make the last bits fit properly.
ReplyDeleteKinda like in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers when all the sons were named alphabetically after men from the Bible. Problem is, there aren't any F-names in the Bible, so one kid is named "Frankincense".
Coin
ReplyDeleteGlory
Intimacy
That spells CIG!
Smoke'em if you got'em?
ReplyDeleteIs the structural asymmetry between Rep & Strings deliberate?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, Tony Lower-Basch ?
ReplyDeleteThe way I'm reading you (above), Rep is a measure of the magnitude of outsiders' feelings (pro- or con-). Strings is a measure of only pro-PC feelings, among intimates.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if you're aiming for a message about what's important, through what you're letting the system represent at each social circle.
Tony Lower-Basch Maybe so, yeah. So, really, this is two stats -- Coin and Rep. Then, with each person that you know, you've got Strings / Camaraderie / Bonds, a mechanic for helping or hindering them.
ReplyDeleteHmm...
ReplyDeleteKeep: Amount of physical coin / valuable you've got on you. Gold coins, swords, torches, climbing gear. All the adventuring gear, which you also spend to live in town.
Credit: Amount you can borrow from moneylenders / your reputation.
Bonds: Strings you can pull from people to get them to help you / give you money.
Given that you're calling it dragon world I assume it's going to have a move structure and playbooks.
ReplyDeleteWhat moves would you expect to use each stat?
What character books would you want, and how could stat lines make them distinct?
Oh man, I didn't quite mean to post that trio. It wasn't there yet. Ah well.
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox While this is undergoing major revision, Dragon World as it stands is a hack of The Watch by Andrew Medeiros and Anna Kreider. The Watch is very, very good and about women and women of center warriors fighting The Darkness. Dragon World is kind of a love letter to D&D, and is really about the economics of togetherness, and the forces that make you go out and kill sentient creatures and roll the bodies.
Here's the current playtest version. Comments are always appreciated: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UNKXdtmrA3lZ41gP72M8znjwiBpCuX1Yj3OijVyvoWo/edit?usp=drive_web