Taking a hiatus from Roundups, due to excessive work on DtD, and general exhaustion. Which, I realise, is kind of lame, as I really owe a re-cap of Don't Rest Your Head and our latest Mage session, and this weekend will be AE... well, perhaps I'll get my brain together enough to deal with it sometime next week. I'd like to (if I can muster enough will) switch up a bit to other topics, and finishing outstanding projects like the Three Gates Dungeon and the pWnies.
In the meantime, you should check out Shieldhaven's 4e Crafting Hack here, and yes.
Also, the combination of FATE, Technoir, and Don't Rest Your Head has me thinking more about adjective application RP systems (instead of hit-points exactly, you apply adjectives that do bad things to people, or accept conditions) and how that might work for a psionic and/or horror system. I like them for being RP tweaks, by and large, kind of like... well, one thing I always kind of enjoyed in early D&D was making people switch up their alignment, as a way to have them tweak their RP, you know, "Okay, so what does Lawful Neutral look like on this PC?" Now, as a rule for the length of a campaign, Alignment is kind of lame, but as a temporary effect, benefit, or penalty, I like the idea of the consequences being manifest that way, in concert with the actual, mechanical penalties (whatever they are).
Also have been talking to Shieldhaven a lot about Echo Bazaar style menaces as tabletop consequences, and how that sort of thing might work, esp in Mythos Horror. Because the tradeoff of sanity v. mythos is ultimately pretty limiting, imho.
Anyway, now that I've dumped the things that are in my head for later reference, perhaps I'll be inspired to make a more thorough post, later.
Onyx Harbor, a Gemkine Port (A to Z Challenge)
20 hours ago
I'm still interested in spending a little more time exploring what EB-style Menaces would do in a tabletop game. Scandal and Suspicion might be dodgy for some simulationist approaches (in ways that Wounds and Nightmares wouldn't). On the other hand, introducing items like EB's laudanum into a game that let you reduce Nightmares/regain Sanity in exchange for damage to Health could be a great addition.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, I should totally add something like that to my SIFRP hack, allowing wizards to turn Strain or Curses into Injuries or Wounds, respectively. I'd want it to be a 1:2 trade or worse, I think, since I don't immediately have any ideas for priests to have a parallel function.
Wouldn't priests potentially have the ability to completely heal Strain/Curses in others without penalty, except for expenditure of effort, or am I wrong in that, and they can pretty much heal wounds/injuries that way and that's it?
ReplyDeleteI've written nothing whatsoever about how priests might interact with Strain and Curses - but see, this lets them turn Strain and Curses into Injuries and Wounds (that is, spending priestly "mana" for wizardly "mana"), but the game definitively suffers if priests can heal their own Injuries and Wounds efficiently.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, it's probably not outside the target degree of verisimilitude to have a potion, medicine or mind-over-matter practice that reduces Injuries and Wounds in exchange for Strain and Curses. It needs a little more thematic tuning, but it's a reasonable start.
The other option being the kinds of spells that work on others, but not on you-- though yes, there's issues with that approach too (who heals the healer?).
ReplyDelete