STILL Not Dead (Terrors & Tactics Updade)

Yeah, I’d go with a list and maybe which backgrounds work best with it (commoners are unlikely to motivated by nobilis obliege, but it’s common to aristocrats), but any mechanics would need to be amazing for me to do more than that.

My one thought would be something akin to natures and demeanors in Mage/OWoD or Virtues/Vices in NWoD where they tied regaining Willpower to acting in accord with your nature or virtue (or regaining lesser amounts if true to your demeanor or vice).

But that’s a little too abstract for my tastes. I’d much prefer set bonuses to certain tasks related to your motivation. The one who wants to strike it rich gets a bonus to appraise the value of items. A PC whose goal is prove themselves gets a bonus resist intimidation, one with nobilis obliege as their motive gets a bonus when using persuade others to act selflessly. One out for revenge gets a bonus to Insight checks against a given category of opponent. Etc.

I don’t even think they’d need to be big bonuses; say +2 to the specific check. But my thinking is that it were to have something mechanical to it, players would be more inclined to pick an adventurer appropriate motivation for their PC.

Then again, I thought Allegiances with some minor mechanics might encourage roleplaying too, but from all my testing it’s probably the least used mechanic in the system.* From near as I can tell maybe one table uses it consistently, a minority of players will use it the same way they leverage all mechanical bonuses (and ‘forget’ to apply the negatives for opposed Allegiances) and the majority don’t even bother putting them on their character sheets.

So maybe anything other than encouragement to think about motivations (and Allegiances for that matter) is the only thing worth even bothering with.

*The number two least used mechanic is the one for languages. Honestly, there are days I think I should just scrap them and adapt 13th Age’s language rules...you know your own language and enough of those used around you to get the gist of what’s going on. So you know enough orcish to know he’s insulting your mother, but not enough to understand what the orc guards are chatting about. Then you make Int checks (with background bonus if appropriate) to understand less common stuff and there’s a feat chain to let you know uncommon/rare languages.

In game terms, if you set your game in the Free Cities you’d probably speak Praetorian (though Ironholders and Riverholders have a distinctive accent) and broken Elven and know what the orcish war chants mean, but you’d need an Int check to understand the Primal or Abyssal tongues used by Eldritch and Malfeans or a traveler from a distant land who only knows their own native tongue without an INT/Culture check or a boon.

Sounds like 5e's Inspiration. Maybe you could run a few tests with Allegiances and languages removed, with the tables that are using them, and see how that goes over.

Now, I do like the idea of having a list of common motivations, just to spark player ideas. Not every player's going to be an actor or storyteller.

What might be worthwhile is take the major player types (renamed a bit) and then come up with a list of say, 2-4 motivations that fit each of those player types so they can pick an adventuring motivation that also compliments their preferred play style.

Like the slayer player type might have "Batman-style vengeance on the forces of evil" and "prove you're the biggest badass around."

The explorer might have "Find and cross the edge of every map to find what's there" and "your insatiable curiosity drives you to find and solve mysteries no matter the risk."

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As to testing with the game with Allegiances and languages removed... I already know it pretty well works from the tables that have ignored them entirely and new tables probably wouldn't miss them if they never knew they were there in the first place.

Ultimately, I might just keep them for the same reason 4E kept alignments. They're useful hooks for people who like them and, as demonstrated, clearly it also works fine without them too.

Its just something I'm pondering because the Christmas engraving rush is upon me and its difficult to make much new progress when you're doing 14 hour days of swapping out mugs every 2-3 minutes. Just this reply took me about an hour in between swapping out mugs and being able to do that much is about the only thing saving my sanity from the monotony at the moment.

Yeah, I hadn't considered that you had functionally already done the testing on removing those rules. Oh, well.

The idea of using the major player types to recommend PC motivations is a good one - players can learn which player type they resonate most with, then look at the associated PC motivations for inspiration.

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I hear you on the Christmas rush - I work grocery retail, so it's not as crazy as working at WalMart or Target, but I get what you're talking about. Good luck, man.

Yesterday was 8 am - 12 am with only some meal breaks. Today started at 4:20 am. I did catch a nap after the first job and got a breakfast break about 9:30 with about 10 hours of cutting to get through today.

So it could be the lack of sleep talking, but I'm really liking the idea of putting the Player Types into the Player's Guide with the motivations so that a new player can hopefully self-identify what they're looking for in a campaign instead of the GM having to guess. I mean, they might self-identify wrong... but its better than going in completely blind.

It also means re-framing the negatives into "things you should keep in mind." So for the power gamer instead of...

Make sure that the power gamer doesn't...
* Become a lot more powerful than the other characters.
* Try to make more than their share of the treasure.
* Treat other characters as lackeys.

Have this...

Keep in mind that...
* You're part of a team and don't need to be the best at everything, just best at your specific thing.
* Your party will be strongest if you split the treasures you find evenly.
* Getting feedback from your fellow players can help make your PC more effective.

I'll see how it looks, but having an "Identify your play style" section in the Player's Guide might actually be a much better use of pages than Allegiances and Languages.

Putting the Player Types into the Player's Guide sounds like a good idea as well.

You could probably move the Allegiances and Languages to the GM's Guide if you run out of space. If I recall correctly, the languages are already mostly in the GM's Guide.

Regardless, given the hours you're working, I'd put a pin in adjusting anything until your schedule becomes more reasonable (and you're not running on a couple of hours sleep).

Technically, I’ve got 15 pages in the Player’s Guide before it hits 365 (my ideal length because that puts it at the same thickness as the 4E Rules Compendium) so I do have SOME room to add things before I’d have to cut anything yet.

Making Allegiances into an optional GM facing rule wouldn’t be a bad idea though since the GM could scale the modifer or even change the Allegiances relative to the PCs actions (sure they say they’re loyal to X, but they’ve twarted X’s plans because they interfered with their own several times so no one actually loyal to X would regard them favorably).

The only downside to that is there are a couple elements based on using Allegiances that would need to be dropped or reworked... eleven caste allegiance, the ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘reputation precedes you’ boons, astral servitors’ ‘unbreakable allegiance’ and mechanics for how well artifacts work for you are based on Allegiances. While that’s way fewer things than I remembered (I think a bunch got wiped out when I merged Courtiers and Nobles) its still something to account for.

It could also be an opportunity to rework some of those mechanics a bit.

Like change “double allegiance bonus with caste based elves and penalties with dark elves... just make it flat out “roll twice use best/worst for all PRE-based checks” just to really emphasize the fanatical classism of the elves.

Cosmopolitan might instead be “gain +X to Persuade checks if the target is unfriendly or hostile.”

“Reputation Precedes You” could be the counterpart of that with “+X to Persuade checks if the target is already neutral, friendly or helpful.”

Astral Servitors are already Optional so just changing it from an Allegiance to a particular astral god’s aspect that they can’t choose or be compelled to break my is probably okay and then change it from “Allegiance (the mechanic)” to “allegiance (rp-fluff)” for artifacts and it’d probably be okay.

... and that also kinda points out how rarely GMs use artifacts too in that a lot of their use and flavor hinges on how well their user conforms to its allegiances. It almost makes me think Gary had the right idea by just presenting a list of random mechanical quirks you’d roll for with each artifact so it’s power is balanced by downsides instead of RP elements.

I'd go ahead and rework them just for simplicity's sake. Cosmopolitan and Reputation Precedes You look like good ideas, as does the elven caste bonus/penalty.

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Random side note: the Outlaw's Bad Reputation and Sly Threat boons do the same thing, granting a +5 bonus to cow and goad targets.

Thanks for the catch on that. I suspect it's because Sly Threat got ported over from Courtier in the Aristocrat merge. +10 to those is a LITTLE extreme.

Bad Reputation will stay as is. Sly Threat will now give bonuses to Attitude Adjustment and Interrogation.

I'm going with my usual +5 for the Cosmopolitan and Reputation boons. It's a number big enough to feel meaningful on its own instead of 4E's multiple +1's and +2's. But I decided to leave the bonus to neutral disposition off of Reputation so each works with two extremes... and if the GM decides they're neutral to you, they probably don't care about your reputation or how tolerant/cosmopolitan you are one way or the other.

Here's the revision of Caste Allegiance...

Caste Allegiance: You can roll twice and use the better result for all PRE-based ability checks with other elves who also have this trait, but the worse result with dark caste elves. Your background must be aristocrat or astral religious (high elf), artisan, entertainer, military or traveler (common elf) or commoner (low elf) and your class must be a fighter or astral spellcaster to take this option.

Note: You do not have to take this trait even if you qualify for it. Elves who are known to not meet the requirements for this trait are labeled part of the dark caste.

Repurposing Sly Threat for the other two Intimidate functions is a good counterpoint to Bad Reputation, and having Reputation not affect neutral relationships brings it in balance with Cosmopolitan. And Caste Allegiance works perfectly.

All in all, nice work.

Chris24601 wrote:

Yesterday was 8 am - 12 am with only some meal breaks. Today started at 4:20 am. I did catch a nap after the first job and got a breakfast break about 9:30 with about 10 hours of cutting to get through today.

So it could be the lack of sleep talking, but I'm really liking the idea of putting the Player Types into the Player's Guide with the motivations so that a new player can hopefully self-identify what they're looking for in a campaign instead of the GM having to guess. I mean, they might self-identify wrong... but its better than going in completely blind.

It also means re-framing the negatives into "things you should keep in mind." So for the power gamer instead of...

Make sure that the power gamer doesn't...
* Become a lot more powerful than the other characters.
* Try to make more than their share of the treasure.
* Treat other characters as lackeys.

Have this...

Keep in mind that...
* You're part of a team and don't need to be the best at everything, just best at your specific thing.
* Your party will be strongest if you split the treasures you find evenly.
* Getting feedback from your fellow players can help make your PC more effective.

I'll see how it looks, but having an "Identify your play style" section in the Player's Guide might actually be a much better use of pages than Allegiances and Languages.

Wow and awesome!!!!

I’ve been pondering the player types idea a bit more (two minutes between swapping mugs out of the engraver means watching, reading and pondering about the only things you can actually do to keep occupied) and I’m definitely going to be changing up the names a lot.

Frankly, terms like Power Gamer and Slayer have a lot of negative connotations. It also betrayed a sense of elitism in a way; they don’t call the actors “drama queens” or the storytellers “frustrated authors.” Those get positive names.

I think the 4E devs were okay with that because the analysis was tucked away in the DMG, but it doesn’t look nearly so inviting if you put it in the Player’s Guide.

So in laying it out, I’m going to refer to Player Motivations (something they desire) rather than Player Types (implying its something they are) and going to the root of the labels. They’re not “slayers” they’re players looking to blow off steam against imaginary opponents. They’re not “power gamers” they’re someone who wants to feel powerful or who wants to test their skill with the rules against a campaign world.

I honestly get a little sick of some reputed GMs demeaning those who don’t play quite the way they want. Just because someone enjoys gaming as a way to vent their frustrations (in a healthy way, no less) by slaughtering imaginary monsters doesn’t make them inferior to one who always speaks in character.

I don’t care what your motivation for role-playing is; just the fact that you’re willing to sit at a table using my system makes you my favorite type of role-player.

Slayer's also redundant with the class role, so there's that. The funny thing is, while power gamer and possibly watcher could be seen as negative, I never really saw slayer that way. I looked over the player types, saw that I fit right in slayer, and was fine with it. I'm pretty sure that some players might even look at "slayer" as something to live up to, as in they stack monster bodies like nobody's business.

Another point of interest is that a lot of the categories aren't mutually exclusive - somebody could take a concept and optimize within that concept, while ensuring that their character fits in organically within the setting.

The fact that the player types aren’t mutually exclusive is probably all the more reason to focus on player motivation instead of player type. Having multiple motivations is a natural status for people and, particularly if I keep PC motivation non-mechanical, it doesn’t actually matter if the player picks more than one.

The important part is to encourage players, particularly new ones who might view things through the lens of popular fiction where there’s an inciting incident that’s often out of their control and pulls them from their ordinary life, to pick a motivation that will send them out into adventures.

One element also worth stressing is that if there is an inciting incident for a PC it’s something that happened BEFORE they reached first level and the player should come up with it for their PC.

As a practical example let’s look at the tv series Arrow. Oliver Queen returns home after 5 years and becomes a vigilante. That’s his level one (in point of fact I built an extremely effective Arrow-ish PC in one of the more recent playtests and he already had the tools to pull off Arrow’s early s1 stunts as a starting character), not the flashbacks to the five years of torment that turned him into a justice seeking killing machine.

In other words, most level 1 PCs are the hero AFTER their origin story is over.

That's a very good point - with the mass proliferation of modern geek culture, especially superhero stories, the general nerd populace has been conditioned to accept heroes that have had their origin stories in the past. Batman: had his inciting incident when he was a boy, dedicated himself to becoming a hero. Punisher: lost his family in a gangland shootout, became the scourge of the underworld. Optimus Prime: the Great War started millions of years ago, and he's been going ever since. The only reason that origin movies are a thing is to introduce the character to the general audience, and to establish that particular continuity's take on a character.

I'd definitely encourage players to think about what their inciting incident, what put them on the road to being an adventurer.

I was going to post something about how best to frame inciting incidents in this system, but honestly I just heard some early reviews and am too bummed to do so today.

No spoilers, but from every indication its absolute garbage in the "Game of Thrones Season Eight" sense of the term.

I dunno what it is about the entertainment industry recently, but they've just been wrecking long established series with nihilistic BS lately and its to the point where I'm basically done with them.

But rather than being bitter about it, I'm going to instead add a goal to my game design, including in my OGL license.

Unbridled optimism.

The night is dark and full of terrors, but you're playing heroes and they're going to kick those terrors' asses, get the girl/guy and live happily ever after after doing so. The world suffered greatly, but you're going to to help it rebuild and even live to see those better days.

Frack this nihilistic BS in today's media. I refuse to participate.

What were the reviews about? Star Wars, I take it? Don't worry about spoilers, I don't plan on watching any of the sequel trilogy, so it's not a real concern.

Yeah, it was Star Wars... they just had their premiere screening and the general consensus seems to the unholy union of “Game of Thrones S8” and “Batman vs. Superman.”

That you haven’t watched any of the Sequel Trilogy fills me with envy. I’d love to have the three hours I invested in the theaters and the dozens more in fandom back. I’m not even gonna discuss the stupid in the plot because you still probably hold some fondness for the Original Trilogy and the ST ending is so awful it’s even destroyed my desire to watch the older films.

But as I said... I’m mostly going to my disappointment to feed my desire to make this a game of Big Damn Heroes who get happy endings.

A part of that is going to be pushing PC motivations so that they have a goal to help define what would qualify as a good ending for the PC.

Another is that I want to tailor the first published adventure towards the heroic and highlighting how dealing with each mini-dungeon helps make the colony safer and more prosperous.

An author I respect termed this approach “superversive” (i.e. the antithesis of subversive) and its something I heartily approve of (and as a sidebar, I’m really going to have to post an apology to him for my defense of the ST and where I thought it was going after TLJ came out... I believed there might still be some people who cared about the art of storytelling in Hollywood. I was wrong).

Anyway, Superversive means extolling classic virtues and using classical story construction. In my case I’m almost wondering if there couldn’t be something done for the PCs and their motivations actually linking them to say, the cardinal virtues (prudence/wisdom, courage, temperance/self-comtrol and justice) and maybe the theological virtues (faith, hope, love) if needed (the main difference being that the cardinal virtues were self-evident even to non-Christians and so would be as recognized by the Via Praetorium as the Old Faith).

I’m just spit-balling a bit because there’s still a ton of work to get done before Christmas so I’m typing this up in two-minute chunks.

I know enough about the sequel trilogy to want no part of it - I read through John C. Wright's spoilerrific rant/review of the Last Jedi. I've got a general idea of your pain.

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I've heard of superversive before, I think through John C. Wright. It's basically going back to basics in terms of actually having a functioning story structure with a sound moral foundation. I fully understand you there - there's no point in fighting the darkness if there's nothing worth fighting for. And if there aren't heroes, even darker ones, then there's no one to root for. And this is coming from a Punisher fan.

The thing is, The Punisher actually does embody many virtues. Courage he has in abundance. He shows temperance/self-control in avoiding civilian casualties in his war on crime. His enemies are typically depicted as being beyond the law’s reach so his pursuit of them is an act of justice in what is depicted as an unjust world.

One could argue the prudence/wisdom of his path, but A) he is meant to be a flawed/anti-hero, and B) he exists in a universe where being bitten by a radioactive spider leads to super-powers and fighting crims while swinging through a city on web-fluid invented by a teenager (who doesn’t patent it, become a multi-millionaire and STILL fight crime)... so some suspension of disbelief when it comes to a proper reaction to having your family murdered is required for the genre.

He’s not a jovial figure, but he IS a heroic one.

And by the same token, I’m a huge Arrow fan, particularly his evolution from being perfectly willing to kill as a means of getting justice, to going out of his way not to after a traumatic event to finally coming around to the true warrior’s ideology of “will use exactly the level of force needed to end the threat posed including lethal force if necessary.”

Anyway, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think some variation on the Virtues could be the way to go because, as the saying goes, everyone is the hero of their own story and will have some reason that they justify their actions as virtuous.

Their probably need to be some finer distinctions in their too, but it seems like a solid place to start in terms of adventurers’ motivations.

And in some interpretations, he's doing it to prevent his tragedy from happening to others. The Netflix version in particular is extremely protective of the people around him, and has been told, "you always did care too goddamn much."

It's why, barring The Slavers, I'm not really a fan of Garth Ennis's interpretation - too cold and nihilistic for my tastes.

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Your idea regarding adventurers and the virtues makes sense - these aren't your Joe Average people, and the kind of adventurers you want to encourage in the system aren't the old "ale and whores" type.

Well, "ale and whores" has its place. Even the Three Musketeers went in for that. The key is that if that's all you wanted, there are probably much safer ways to do it than being a full-blown adventurer. So its more "ale, whores AND X" than an either/or.

Heck... "Make the world safe for ale and whores" is a ridiculous but still sort of valid motivation.

The main reason I've been looking at using the virtues directly is simply because I've been looking at how other systems handle motivations ultimately a lot of them just boil down to words that essentially mean one or more of the virtues anyway.

Take "Responsibility" and its kin "Noblesse Oblige"... they're both ultimately the virtue of Prudence (i.e. the knowledge what is right to do... in this case, use your abilities to help others). You'd certainly have other virtues (ex. courage to actually act, a sense of justice and mercy), but the core of your motivation is that you know you have a moral duty to act and do so.

Or the classic "Doing Good" (see Superman) could be summarized as the virtue of justice; considered the pinnacle of the cardinal virtues as it requires all the others to function properly and seeks to externalize the virtues into the world around you.

To be fair, I'd probably need to add a few extras like "Fame" (the desire to be known for one's deeds) and "Fortune" (the desire to be able to live in comfort and security) to the list and some virtues could stand to be split to further differentiate them, but they're definitely a good place to start.

Adding Fame and Fortune to the list is a good idea; not every adventurer is going to be motivated by a traditional virtue. I'd also add a sidebar about just because a character is motivated by a virtue doesn't mean that they have to be a squeaky-clean paladin.

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Random sidebar: the war wizard's bonded weapon feature states that the bonded weapon is treated as a runic weapon; if you pick a versatile weapon like a longsword, does that mean that you have to pick whether it's a light or heavy runic weapon when you bond with the weapon, or can you switch on the fly by changing your grip?

After thinking on it, I think that the war wizard would pick the type of runic weapon each time he makes a bond with the weapon.

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The clever tricks description on page 162 still references the rogue, not the brigand.

There’s still a Rogue reference? I’m pretty sure that was a change made at least two or three years back and it’s just slipped through this whole time? *sigh*

Thank you for actually catching that. There hasn’t been much to update because I’ve been taking a short break from design work to recover after the Christmas rush (especially given that, other than Christmas day itself I’ve not actually gotten a day off from actual work during the entire Christmas break).

* * * *

And yeah, the intention is they’d choose each time they attune a weapon to themselves, but I should make that more clear. Another good catch on your part.