Stealing from the good ideas of Baz Stevens and Brandes Stoddard, and always from Dungeon World.
In Back and Spent Again, I've got something a lot like alignment for the player characters. Its an XP trigger move, chosen at the start of session.
I'd been struggling with these, as the triggers have been a bit too vague. They also use game terms that I shouldn't expect the players to know.
I'm thinking I can structure things a little b it differently, and maybe make everything a little less complicated while I'm at it.
This'll still be choose 1 from a list, and they'll match up to certain precepts. Maybe I can even have these as dualities?
The 8 I might use are: Magic, Civilization, Gods, Thievery, Nature, Individual, Oaths, Virtue.
For the Fighter, that might be:
-- Civilization: Mark XP when you endanger yourself for a group.
-- Individual: Mark XP when you accomplish a goal while acknowledging no help.
-- Oaths: Mark XP when you make an honest promise.
For the Cleric, maybe:
-- Gods: Mark XP when you endanger yourself for the Gods.
-- Civilization: Mark XP when you promote civilization.
-- Oaths: Mark XP when someone makes a promise to you.
For the Thief, maybe:
-- Thievery: Mark XP when a stolen secret gets you into trouble.
-- Individual: Mark XP when you take something that does not belong to you.
-- Civilization: Mark XP when you directly help a group in need.
For the Mage, maybe:
-- Magic: Mark XP when you endanger yourself for magic.
-- Civilization: Mark XP when you act on secrets to benefit a group.
-- Virtue: Mark XP when the high standard you hold yourself to gets you into trouble.
Something like that, anyway. This is rough, and I'm open to kind criticism.
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Fighter (Individual) - I may not understand what you're getting at, but this looks like the more hardcore version of Fighter (Civ). I would have assumed it was the reverse (group for person)?
ReplyDeleteTypo. Now it is:
ReplyDeleteIndividual: Mark XP when you sacrifice a person or a group for your own gain.
The individual alignment idea here is Rand like, to value ones self and ones labor above others.
I might change that name, make it "Mercenary", and have it be about accumulation of assets.
I figured typo. Right on.
ReplyDeleteAny interest in a "when secrecy gets you in trouble" concept for Thief or Mage? (You may not be looking for this kind of contribution - if not, forget I said anything. :))
Ohhh, trouble. Trouble is always good.
ReplyDeleteMaybe for the Thief, and make it that for Thievery. That if you take the Thievery alignment, you gain XP for stolen secrets getting you into trouble.
Also thinking about how wizards - Merlin, Gandalf, &c. - habitually cultivate an air of mystery, seemingly for the sake of convincing people that wizards are hot shit.
ReplyDeleteMaybe ... Civilization: Mark XP when you act on secrets to benefit a group.
ReplyDeleteThe fighter ones kind of seem like you are advocating them to be jerks, since only one of those things reads as a good thing to me... and I mean, honest promise is pretty neutral really. "I promise to murder your entirely family" could be an honest promise...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Matt Johnson. Made a few more changes.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteI should add I don't really get your game, I'm trying but be sure to take my comments with some salt. :)
ReplyDeleteFighter, individual -- mark xp when you defend someone making their own choice or going their own way, even though it weakens you or the group.
ReplyDelete???
That's for sure nicer, Jesse Cox! Lemme see what I can do.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson What do you not get?
ReplyDeleteFor an entirely different take on the concept of "individual" mark XP when you accomplish something through your own prowess, accepting and acknowledging no aid.
ReplyDeleteNotably, with 4 playbooks (for the submitted version) and 3 choices, if you don't want there to be only a single example of any of them you only have room for 6 possible ideals, four if you want each to appear three times (which backs you into a combinatoric corner, so 6 or 5 would be better)
Heh, I kind of begged that question I suppose...
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to explain, except to say that we seem to have very divergent ideas of what interest in games. Economies and the realities associated with adventurer income is pretty low on things I care about when I play.
Matt Johnson That's cool; not everything is everyones cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox Yeah. I am probably not editting the submitted version for civic games. In my brain, I continue to think of these as the "basic" playbooks, but each playbook has as its defautl alignment one of them. That's the one listed first.
ReplyDelete