This is a reference to The Dying Earth RPG. In this game the different categories of traits have concrete stats that represent a different style of acting. It's a wonderful idea and the implementation is just great. I have decided to plunder something for Rough Quests from it, most likely as an optional set of rules. For a start let’s look at how TDE works:
TDE defines abilities in several fields of action: active persuasion, resistance to persuasion, hitting, avoiding being hit, doing magic, and resisting temptation. Each one of these fields of action has six different abilities that each correspond to a specific way of performing in its domain, as summed up in the next table:
For instance, if you hit through strengh you attempt to finish your adversary by reducing him to pulp with the power of your blow. On the other hand, if you avoid being hit through intuition you are able to survive because you outguess your adversary. Of course, each character has a particular ability in each field of action.
What occurred to me is that there are some equivalences between the abilities in each field of action if we rearrange their order:
Ok, this is not rocket science and the equivalences may not match that well. In any case, more than trying to find an exact match between the abilities present in the TDE, my purpose is to show that we may tame the thing in order to come out with a smaller set of qualities that define different styles of action. These styles can then be applied to the abilities of the character.
Furthermore, in TDE combat offensive abilities have a favoured weapon associated with them. Once more, we can generalize this in terms of favoured abilities that will go with each style, and abilities that don’t go with it.
Styles are work in progress. In any case, they will be left for the advanced rules since I think they may be a little tricky to play.
Other Traits
Until now I have discussed six sets of traits, those that represent congenial ability (Attributes and Characteristics in Rough Quests), those that represent acquired ability (Social Background, briefly mentioned in the last column as Experience Fields and Skills)
In one of my June 05 columns, Which Descriptors?, I mentionned that I will not include things like advantages, disadvantages, or special points in Rough Quests. Yet, there are other things I may have an interest in. It’s time to look at some of these.
Body Locations. Several games including RuneQuest discriminate between body locations (sometimes with different tables according to body shape or creature type). Any time the target suffers damage the player rolls to determine which body location is hit. I like body locations and plan to keep them; at the present stage I'm just not sure how I will deal with it.
Passions and Personality Traits. Needless to say, I am referring to Pendragon (and through it to RuneQuest, when we consider that the concept of personality traits debuted in a source book for this game before it was turned into a central aspect of the Arthurian game).
I'm not opposed to this type of traits, but my question is how to implement them and for what purposes. My current thinking is that since I am relying to a great extent on psychological traits (two psychological primary attributes and one psychological primary characteristic), I may be able to subsume passions and personality traits into instances of application of those attributes and characteristics. In this case I don't need to create a separate set of stats.
Status Traits. By this I mean things like Hit Points, Magic Points, Fatigue Points, etc.--things that trace the status of the character in a particular field of his action, life or being. Usually these are derived from the basic traits. Once more, I will work on the assumption that I don't need to create specific stats to cover the status of the character. It will be handled through the basic traits.
How? Through something like "saving throws" based on characteristics. The exact details will be worked out in due time but it's worth mentionning that the system will cover the whole set of characteristics in the same terms, not only those directed toward combat or physical health.
1. I know, not everybody is happy with the break up between congenial and acquired (just check the forum thread), but I keep it because I like it, because it seems to be empirically correct to me and because it is a good gamist device.
