@PerfectPathways
I read your doc. The system lenses that influence how I look at it are Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and Marvel Heroic RP (plenty of play experience): The Dying Earth (Pelgrane version) and Wuthering Heights (a bit of play experience); and The Riddle of Steel and Pendragon (no play experience, but conceptual familiarity).
The presentation could be clearer. There is repetition (esp on pp 2 and 3), and I would suggest replacing the narrative paragraph structure with a dot point structure - even if you ultimately don't like this as a way of presenting your rule, going through this structure in your drafting will help you cut repetition and establish clarity in respect of your procedures.
The mechanic itself lost me in a few places. I gather there is a "roll under" component to tests, as well as the comparison of success levels in an opposed test. How are ties resolved? (Sorry if I missed this, but maybe you can take that as an indicator of how the presentation could be clearer.)
More importantly, when are value tests called for? I saw two statements of this:
Page 2: During gameplay, Characters will face moments of internal, and external conflict that challenge their Values. These moments trigger a special type of Test called a Value Test. Value Tests occur when a Character must choose between conflicting approaches to a problem, an internal conflict arises, the GM deems it appropriate, or if the player recognizes a moment of significant moral or ethical weight. The GM will most often call for these, but a Player can ask for one as well.
Page 3: During gameplay, Characters with Values will face moments of internal conflict - these may be prompted from external events, upon reflection of past events, or any number of situations. These moments trigger a special type of Test, called a Value Test. Value Tests occur when a Character must choose between conflicting approaches to a problem, an internal conflict arises, the GM deems it appropriate, or if the player recognizes a moment of significant moral or ethical weight. The GM will most often call for these, but a Player can ask for one as well. A Value Test can also be triggered without any conflict, to spur the Character forward - this is resolved like a Value Test, but it has a few key differences.
I think it would be useful to have greater clarity in respect of
who gets to decide there's a conflict, and also in respect of
what happens if the player disagrees with the GM's reading of their PC.
I also think that the
statement of actions probably needs to be thought of in relation to the broader context of the game's approach to action resolution. For instance, is
I turn around and return home a permissible statement of an action? In BW probably yes; in D&D probably no (except perhaps in 4e, to be resolved as a skill challenge).
It wasn't clear to me what the point of the Weak, Moderate, Strong and Defining descriptors is. Do these just correlate to percentage ratings? Do they have some other meaning? Can I have a Weak value rated at 90%? EDIT: I just found the chart that explains this. I think the chart and descriptors are redundant - just write the XP rule by reference to the percentage thresholds. (You might also want to look at how Wuthering Heights handles sudden changes in personality ratings.)
It also wasn't clear to me how values
drop in ratings - the growth rules imply that acting against a value nevertheless increases it (via the "dot" system). It seems that to drop a value requires challenging it, which seems a slightly complex additional subsystem. Whether the growth system will work in play I couldn't say, as it seemed to depend on a lot of factors - how often dots are filled in, how downtime works, how ingame time passes, etc - that I can't really assess in the abstract.
You asked about the general categories of value. Why are Love and Loyalty separate? And why do I have to start with one from each category? What if I want two loyalties (say, I'm loyal to the bishop and loyal to my mother) as well as my love? What if I want to start out not hating anyone or anything? What if I want two hates (I hate Orcs, and my rival Golin - and now I can get at Golin by going along with the Orcs' plan . . .)? I didn't really get this.
Finally, examples: your example said that the bonus is +10, but the chart says +15 for 5 SL, so I got confused by that.
Sorry that the above is mostly critical: I'm taking it as a given that you want the system to work more or less as you've set it out and described it in your posts, and I'm reading it taking all that as a given.
If you don't know Wuthering Heights, I strongly recommend looking at it, given how close it is to what you're trying to achieve. Here is an English version (
wuthering heights), and another English version (
https://www.geocities.ws/soner_du/files/wuther.pdf,); unfortunately the French version, which is a bit more complete, seems to have gone offline. I think
Ron Edwards' review of it will also be helpful for you. And
here's an actual play report from my own Wuthering Heights play.
docs.google.com
