OK, so you have paired sins and virtues, as has been suggested. - e.g. Lust/Chastity. Each of these will have a value and ala Pendragon, they will be linked and the value of the sin/virtue will be reflected as a dice pool. So, for example, you could have Lust (4)/ Chastity (3). When acting lustfully, you roll 4d6, when acting chastely, you roll 3d6.
When you make an action within the game that falls into the realm of a sin or a virtue (Almost all actions can be stuck into one of them. A combat situation is Wrath. A chase scene is Pride. Stealth is Sloth, Social skills are Lust, Endurance style situations are Gluttony, Medical can be Envy (its more like Kindness, the virtue). Still struggling a little for Greed) you roll your dice against a target number. Roll over, win etc.
The trick comes when the GM takes the role of the Tempting Devil. In any action, the GM can offer you extra dice, but will cost you points from your virtue. So, for example, the GM might off you an extra +2d6 on your roll, at a cost of 1 point of virtue. You stand a better chance of succeeding if you move towards the 'dark side'.
I'm also looking at having the difficulty numbers being ... fluid ... so that the more infernal influence there is in an area, the higher the difficulty numbers are - so you may have to be tempted or risk the horrors of probability.
The final arm of this mechanic would be that whenever you are successful tempted 'Hell' gets a point to their total and this would eventually move Hell towards an endgame. And yes, this would get to a point where the agents might well tip the scales and start that endgame.
Now, this is about the vaguest representation I can think of, and as usual my initial mechanics for games tend to rotate around some sort of bluff, barter, game-theoryable mechanic.
I would appreciate your thoughts on whether this is madness!
3 comments:
I'm still digesting the above. I was actually thinking of something more familiar - though I admit I've probably not thought it through as much as you have the above.
In brief, you basically have aspects like Fate 2.0, but each aspect has to be linked to a Sin or a Virtue and can be compelled and invoked.
So you might have Lusts after Ex-Wife (Lust). My Brother's a Senator (Envy). You get the drift.
What I was seeing here is it naturally does all the aspect stuff - brings story in in terms of events, decisions and framing (people, places and stuff) and also links it to the sins and virtues and makes the game about those particular things in the character's life that relate to them.
As I say, I've not thought about it much, but the missing bit is how you relate this to some sort of 'sanity mechanic' to represent some sort of spiral down into 'sin' or up into 'virtue' assuming that is what you want.
I tend to think the spiral isn't necessary, as the decisions and choices in the game will see these things come out.
I'm not sure yet on the linking of these things to skills, it seems artificial at the moment to me - but you could get the same thing with aspects as he could have Fantastic Doctor (Pride), etc.
It might also need some thought on the endgame thing - who knows! :)
Thats really good. I like it.
I think that in a game about Hell, the spiral into sin has to come from temptation. You get tempted to undertake sinful acts. The problem is that this is, as I understand it, a very narrative goal and adding a mechanic to it brings all sorts of consequences to it which may not have been desired (which probably means it is a bad mechanic)
In essence, what I want is 'If you act in a sinful way, Hell wins. But the only way that you can 'win' the battle against Hell is to embrace those sins and use them against them. How close to the edge dare you take it?'
I can see however, a lot of semantics in play and the game creating either a bunch of holier than thou characters, a bunch of plummetting to Hell psychos or players who feel they have no control over the game.
I'm still thinking...
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