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Kalirren
2013-05-31, 11:26 AM
Hello Playgrounders,

I've recently been thinking about running a game on these boards that would deal thematically with magic, faith, purity, corruption, the oppressive vastness of the world in its periphery, the ever-present need for self-expression, the horrible familiarity of the perverse, and the formation of a new national consciousness born of such an environment.

This would otherwise be a game ad, except that I don't know how to answer the 16. Specifically, I'm looking for a gaming system where advancement is neither based upon an increase in personal power, nor upon the accumulation of loot, but through interaction, entanglement, and attachment to other facets of the world.

Would anyone be so kind as to point me in a potentially fruitful direction?

Kol Korran
2013-05-31, 11:45 AM
I'm not sure, but FATE core can do this, at least partially. On one hand, the main mechanic in the game is narrative based- Aspects of characters, places, situations, and basically everything define what is important about them, and can then be used to great effect. They are also the main feature of characters. Characters' aspects may change as they adventure to signify their adventures, connections, attachments, rivalries and more.

To a lesser degree there are the skills.while most do deal with generalizations of abilities and capabilities of characters, some deal with more social/ mental "skills", such as Contacts, Rapport and such. It's very easy to alter the system's skills (Fate is made to fit many kinds of games, similar to GURPS) to your own needs and desires.

FATE is a system best suited to telling a collaborative story, much less for simulating the actual game world, but it's great fun. Makes improvisation quite easy, and thus many times supports much more free roaming.

I hope this helps. Good luck! :smallsmile:

shadow_archmagi
2013-05-31, 11:59 AM
through interaction, entanglement, and attachment to other facets of the world.


So like, trading favors with the Fey, blackmailing politicians, that sort of thing? So at the end of the campaign, my endgame character is special not because he can do things better than anyone else, but because everyone in power listens to him?

Or are we talking more like Greek mythology, where being favored by Zeus lets you shoot lightning or somesuch, and my endgame character has all kinds of crazy abilities like you'd expect from a high level RPG character, but each one was acquired through an adventure IE: "Well, there was that one time we went into the mind of a madman and cured his insomnia, and in return he taught us the secret language of dreams, and then there was that other time that we went to the time-rift in Chernobyl and learned how to quiet the whispering darkness when it comes for our souls, and of course Zeus has always been a bro with us ESPICIALLY after we threw that surprise birthday party for him..."

Kalirren
2013-05-31, 01:19 PM
Kol Korran:

I'd been pointed at FATE once already for other reasons. Thanks for a corroborating opinion. I never really took a good look at its advancement. I remember coming away from my first readthrough of FATE core with an negative impression of the system in that it seemed to reward drama over narrative in gameplay. If you can activate an aspect on the fly for less than you can activate an aspect that pertains to your character, doesn't that discourage you from taking the world into your character? (I suppose the alternative, that you might activate an aspect associated with your character for equal cost or cheaper, is worse. There'd be nearly no way for GMs to force characters to adapt to situations in different ways.)

Any FATE players willing to comment on the (ir)relevance of my concerns in practice?

shadow_archmagi:

My vision for the game involves a low-power-level world, so it's closer to your first scenario than your second. I wouldn't be adverse to a system that was also capable of handling the second, but it must be able to handle the first. If you've played WoD, maybe this analogy will help. I don't see Discipline ratings going above 2 or 3, in general, even deep into endgame with well-developed spiritual rapports. However, I do see Background ratings going to 5 or 6 by late midgame.

In case you haven't inferred already from what I've said, I hope for the game to contain horrific elements. It's difficult to cultivate horror when power is common or cheap.

Slipperychicken
2013-05-31, 07:01 PM
[surprise birthday party for Zeus]



Other people's games are so much more awesome than the ones I play. I should learn something from you guys and start DMing...

Rhynn
2013-05-31, 07:17 PM
Artesia: Adventures in the Known World is an awesome RPG, and one of the reasons is because it does exactly this.

You can advance slowly in one skill at a time by studying on your own or with a trainer, but you can advance hundreds of times faster (I wish I was kidding!*) by gaining Arcana Points. Arcana Points are gained for doing something meaningful (translation: GM determines whether it actually pertained or contributed to the story) that the Cosmos takes notice of. There's 22 different Arcana (the Tarot Major Arcana, from I. Magician to XXII. Fool), and each has different actions with different point values. Arcana points are used to increase skills, attributes, and gifts related to the specific Arcana.

For instance, you can get Magician Arcana for writing a new poem or discovering something new in the world and naming it; Lovers Arcana for nurturing a secret love, becoming jealous of your beloved, forgiving your beloved, or choosing love over marriage; Sword Arcana for defeating an opponent in combat, etc.

The amount of Arcana gained depends on the significance of the action: defeating an opponent in combat is worth 2 points, for instance, while leading your side to victory in a war is worth 21 (or more); killing a living creature is worth 3 points, but dying is worth 13. (Good luck coming back, but at least you can use those points to buy your ghost more abilities!)

My group would end every session with a 10-15 minute debriefing, the players suggesting actions that they think earned Arcana (based on the lists for each Arcana), and the GM making judgments on whether it did.

* The GM needs to be strict with Arcana awards, because just giving points for every action according to the lists (and ignoring the critical advice that the action must be important for the story being told) can result in completely unbalancing numbers of points (100-200 per session, which is way too much!). I'd suggest having each player declare what they're trying to do that session, and limiting their gains to very closely related activities. (E.g., if a player declares he's going to pursue his unrequited love towards Lady Elenore, he's definitely eligible for Lover arcana, but won't be eligible for Death and Sword Arcana from running off to hunt down and kill some bandits - unless they've kidnapped Lady Elenore or something!) If the book has a fault, it's that it should really give more advice on this aspect of GMing, and on really using the Arcana as a metagame tool.

An important part of developing your character is gaining Bindings, which are "negative" (not always) qualities that affect your behavior, can be activated by the GM (you can resist), and modify your attributes and test rolls. Bindings include Fury, Love, Hate, Jealousy, Madness, Ennui, and many more.

The game also has relationships to people as an important aspect of play, which ties to Bindings. Having a Lover die can saddle you with Grief, and so on. The PCs are thrilled when they manage to make an Ally out of a powerful person, I can tell you, and one of my players is hell-bent on getting the Gifts to Create Followers and Create Worshippers and start a Hero Cult and presumably ascend to the Heavens one day...

Also, a side-tip: don't let PCs get magical principles, only shaped forms. Once they get Folk Enchantment or something, they'll soon be adding twice or thrice their magic skill to all rolls, becoming invulnerable machines of destruction... a lesson learned the hard way.

A:AKW is easily the best RPG I own, though, beating out ACKS, all editions of D&D, etc. I've never seen a RPG make my players so involved in the world through its mechanics. (Although I expect ACKS may, honestly.)

Kalirren
2013-05-31, 11:10 PM
Rhynn:

Many thanks for your lead. I used to live next to a games store with a used library that I would idly sort after work. It's spoiled me. I will only buy RPG books when I think they have the potential of being -exactly- what I need. Nevertheless, your review, and the others on Amazon, make me seriously consider buying this volume.

Artesia's based off of Fuzion, which is free, but it seems like the advancement in Fuzion isn't quite the same. I searched the Fuzion wikipedia page for "Arcana" and it's blank, though I did find mention of the Fuzion advancement system. It seems generic, though.

Have you played any other Fuzion game? Do you think advancement by involvement is inherent to Artesia, or does Artesia inherit this from Fuzion?

Rhynn
2013-06-01, 12:10 AM
A:AKW is "based" on Fuzion, yeah, which means that Mark Smylie took the Fuzion framework and turned a dull generic ruleset into something wonderful and specialized for his own world and setting. More than half of the system is his own additions. Only the very core is similar to, say, Sengoku (a Fuzion RPG), and that doesn't even include "what dice do you roll for basic actions"...

A:AKW's character advancement, specifically, is completely unique to it, and modelled after central cosmological/mystical/magical components of the world, established in the Artesia comics (which first came out in 1998). The magic is very much based on real-world hermetic traditions (astrology, alchemy, tarot, etc.), which paradoxically makes it unusual in RPGs. (I think Mage and Ars Magica may draw on those sources, and that's about it.)

Arcana is slightly based on Fuzion's Improvement Points, but those are entirely generic and just handed out or earned without any special mechanic, same as XP in any game that doesn't do "killing this monster is worth this much XP." That is to say A:AKW and standard Fuzion both give you points that you use to increase your skills. That's so broad it's true of dozens of RPGs, easy.

I've played Bubblegum Crisis (AFAIK the first Fuzion RPG) and own Sengoku, and have played Cyberpunk 2020 (Interlock system being the precursor to Fuzion), and none of them are very comparable to A:AKW. None of the A:AKW stuff I described at length above applies to them, for a start.