Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Apropos of nothing, I was just thinking on the structure of play, here. There's a lot of assuming that Blades style approaches are good, and so there's matching of Blades mechanics to slightly different takes, but I wonder if that's really a good thing? Blades works due to it's very tight coupling of subsystems -- heat/wanted/stress/trauma/rep/tier/factions all work to create the feeling of the seething mass of barely controlled chaos that is Duskvol, and especially the criminal element of Duskvol. I'm wondering if just riffing off of this is sufficient, or if a different tack is needed?
My thoughts then went towards "what's the purpose of adventuring in this game? How is this operationalize to create a feedback loop?" I was inspired by Doom to think, what if there were an overarching Doom? What if the characters were doomed to begin with, and are adventuring to find their doom and potentially stop/embrace it? What structures would be needed to enact something like this?
Clearly, we need a stress analogy -- this is too integrated into basic play loops to remove, and that's fine. Stress is almost entirely mechanical anyway (there's no real fictional changes based on how much stress you have, it operates even more like hitpoints than hitpoints). That's good, keep it, no changes needed.
What about factions? Yes, but no. The tight integration of factions in Blades works because everyone is piled up on everyone, so anything impacts someone (lots of pronouns there). I think this gets strained a bit when things become more spread out. And I think pacing will absolutely be different in this fantasy hack than in Blades, so immediacy is lessened and the faction game weakened perforce. Heat is a neat idea, but I don't see how you can integrate the wanted system on top because the incarceration loop really doesn't work well (not a fan of the quest mechanic you have). It seems really strained. Reputation is good, and I like it, because that fits.
So, maybe... let's say the PCs are Doomed. They earn Doom like heat -- managing Doom is managing the big bad thing at the end. When you earn enough Doom to gain an equivalent of a Wanted level, you get Curse, which could be either a persistent debuff or a new aspect to the lands that causes new problems -- the game escalates. You can clear Curse, but not through an incarceration loop, but through undertaking a special score loop that you earn no other rewards for. This, however, ticks the Big Doom, and, when you clear Curse, you have to also announce a bad truth about the Big Doom. This creates a loop where the game becomes increasingly about this slowly built Big Doom, and also a nice end point, which would be dealing with the Big Doom.
Reputation can work to improve tier, which I like the tier system pretty well for mechanical and fiction reasons.
This is rough, but it I'm really trying to grasp what the end play loop/goal/focus is, and this was a thought I had about how you could maneuver some of the Blades systems to do new things and make it very thematic to the game. Fantasy almost always ends up fighting the big bad, and I love the idea that this big bad is created through play as you try to get strong enough to face it. It also allows for a lot of replayability, which may or may not be a design goal.
I'm still stuck on factions. They really work best when you're piled in on top and can't get even fictional separation, but I feel like the idea you can just wander the wilderness for adventure (not really, but a week long perilous journey means the faction game is that much slower paced and less visceral) cuts against.
My thoughts then went towards "what's the purpose of adventuring in this game? How is this operationalize to create a feedback loop?" I was inspired by Doom to think, what if there were an overarching Doom? What if the characters were doomed to begin with, and are adventuring to find their doom and potentially stop/embrace it? What structures would be needed to enact something like this?
Clearly, we need a stress analogy -- this is too integrated into basic play loops to remove, and that's fine. Stress is almost entirely mechanical anyway (there's no real fictional changes based on how much stress you have, it operates even more like hitpoints than hitpoints). That's good, keep it, no changes needed.
What about factions? Yes, but no. The tight integration of factions in Blades works because everyone is piled up on everyone, so anything impacts someone (lots of pronouns there). I think this gets strained a bit when things become more spread out. And I think pacing will absolutely be different in this fantasy hack than in Blades, so immediacy is lessened and the faction game weakened perforce. Heat is a neat idea, but I don't see how you can integrate the wanted system on top because the incarceration loop really doesn't work well (not a fan of the quest mechanic you have). It seems really strained. Reputation is good, and I like it, because that fits.
So, maybe... let's say the PCs are Doomed. They earn Doom like heat -- managing Doom is managing the big bad thing at the end. When you earn enough Doom to gain an equivalent of a Wanted level, you get Curse, which could be either a persistent debuff or a new aspect to the lands that causes new problems -- the game escalates. You can clear Curse, but not through an incarceration loop, but through undertaking a special score loop that you earn no other rewards for. This, however, ticks the Big Doom, and, when you clear Curse, you have to also announce a bad truth about the Big Doom. This creates a loop where the game becomes increasingly about this slowly built Big Doom, and also a nice end point, which would be dealing with the Big Doom.
Reputation can work to improve tier, which I like the tier system pretty well for mechanical and fiction reasons.
This is rough, but it I'm really trying to grasp what the end play loop/goal/focus is, and this was a thought I had about how you could maneuver some of the Blades systems to do new things and make it very thematic to the game. Fantasy almost always ends up fighting the big bad, and I love the idea that this big bad is created through play as you try to get strong enough to face it. It also allows for a lot of replayability, which may or may not be a design goal.
I'm still stuck on factions. They really work best when you're piled in on top and can't get even fictional separation, but I feel like the idea you can just wander the wilderness for adventure (not really, but a week long perilous journey means the faction game is that much slower paced and less visceral) cuts against.
