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View Full Version : powers cause insanity/corruption: making it matter (any sys, but also DRYH)



JeenLeen
2014-06-11, 03:57 PM
After getting and reading the Don't Rest Your Head (http://www.evilhat.com/home/dont-rest-your-head-2/) (DRYH) sourcebook, I think it solves a problem I've seen in a few games, the problem being how to have use of a player's powers have a real detriment that keeps the powers fun to use. Sanity mechanics in d20 feel too mechanical and managable, while World of Darkness' morality systems usually have too little of a mechanical effect to matter for my group. Too often when seeing a system or trying to homebrew something, there appears a 'trap' on one of two poles: 1) using the power screws me over, so I will never use it; or 2) using the power drives me insane/evil, but there's no mechanical detriment that really matters, so who cares?

DRYH looks like it finds a fitting middle path with how Exhaustion and Madness work. Using them to fuel your powers is really useful, but it can cause an increasing odds of real harm.

Anyone have any opinions/thoughts on finding the balance/solution to this issue, and anyone experienced in playing DRYH who can comment on if it actually does find a good balance? Any experience with other systems that don't fall to either 'pole' mentioned above (or particularly humorous examples of one's that do fall into such a trap)?

Actana
2014-06-11, 04:17 PM
One of the biggest things a system can do to make corruption matter is to make it too useful to pass up. Instead of the players asking themselves "do I want to use this?" they should be asking "can I afford not to use this?". That way, you have a far better mechanical representation for the temptation corrupting power can have, instead of just another additional mechanic that the players won't use because they have other risk-free ways to getting what they want.

Furthermore, to make the best of what you have, it should be fairly prevalent in the game you're playing. Giving ample opportunities to use the power, even if only for trivial things (especially for trivial things!), and make them feel good about it. At start, have the positive consequences outshadow the negative ones, and only once they're hooked on the power the bigger cons of using it appear.

Edit: this is mostly about a "corrupting power" system, not insanity or passive corruption. For those, subtle changes and screwing with the player's perceptions and the metagame can work, though is risky in terms of losing a player's trust which is not a good thing.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-11, 10:33 PM
You need the corrupting powers to actually be worth it in the short term, and ideally to have no feasible alternatives for thwarting the forces of evil.

Not using dark powers at all should turn the game up to "Nightmare Insanity Extra Hard" mode, as mortal weapons are like toothpicks and pea-shooters against the daemonic hordes.

Leviting
2014-06-12, 01:07 AM
You can make sufficiently strong magic and maneuvers and whatnot require inherently evil components. i.e.: more blood from a newborn than that is found in a single baby.

Grinner
2014-06-12, 06:58 AM
Not using dark powers at all should turn the game up to "Nightmare Insanity Extra Hard" mode, as mortal weapons are like toothpicks and pea-shooters against the daemonic hordes.

Won't they just either turn tail or throw themselves uselessly at the hordes, and then later complain that the game's too unbalanced?

Slipperychicken
2014-06-12, 07:32 AM
Won't they just either turn tail or throw themselves uselessly at the hordes, and then later complain that the game's too unbalanced?

I was exaggerating a lot. I was basically trying to say that it should be very hard to win without the dark powers at all, and they should be a tempting last-resort for when things go wrong (or even for when the PCs just want to "kick the door down" instead of thinking). To adequately tempt the 'purist' PCs (by which I mean those who attempt to avoid the corrupting influence), it shouldn't be very difficult to mutter the first few incantations.

Perhaps it could be analogous to a credit card. Using it responsibly can potentially be beneficial, as it's a decent tradeoff between corruption and convenience, but it's also easy to rack up huge amounts of corruption if you overuse it. To make this effect easier, perhaps the character's current corruption score might be known only to the GM, and expressed to the players as a series of semi-random effects later announced?

Also, to make corruption/insanity-management harder, it could have sources aside from the dark powers, such as seeing people die (even if you're the killer), enduring nasty things like corpse-odors, and facing down the monsters or spending too much time in their domain ("He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.").

Grinner
2014-06-12, 09:00 AM
I was exaggerating a lot. I was basically trying to say that it should be very hard to win without the dark powers at all, and they should be a tempting last-resort for when things go wrong (or even for when the PCs just want to "kick the door down" instead of thinking). To adequately tempt the 'purist' PCs (by which I mean those who attempt to avoid the corrupting influence), it shouldn't be very difficult to mutter the first few incantations.

I was really just pointing out that when the players can do what is sensible and can do what they want, they'll usually pick the latter.