Fire & Fatigue

Writing Legends of Alba as a 24XX game (see last post) helped solidify some ideas about what I want from a ruleset for this game. I want it to be brief, the core rules should take up no more than 2 sides of A4. I want it to be intuitive, appealing to common sense through plain language. But I also don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater: There needs to be enough design space to play with to give interesting benefits for Character backgrounds, equipment, magic items, and rewards during play.

So expanding on the core resolution mechanic I talked about here, I've added a few concepts which I consider essential. You can read the WIP ruleset here.

Fire

I like having ways to reward Players for great role play, creative thinking, clever tactics etc with the chance to turn luck in their favour when it counts. Things like: Rolling with Advantage in 5e; making an Enhanced Attack in Into The Odd; Creating an Advantage in Fate. So I'm thinking about "Fire" for my take on this. I mentioned Fire briefly at the end of the last post, and that it would essentially be the Character's inner fire. On the edge of cheesiness perhaps but even so I really like it, so I'm sticking with it for now. So with Fire as a reward, the behaviour I want to reward most is Characters acting "in-character". So this seemed like a good way to encourage players to engage with their Character's Clan* as well, so for now fulfilling a Clan Virtue is the main way to get Fire, which you can burn for a re-roll.

Fire Digital Art CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 by MayGoldworthy

Fatigue

I'm curious to see whether or not this actually works in play: I'm not planning to have Hit Points in Legends of Alba (!). Characters will however be travelling around in harsh conditions and fighting dangerous enemies so I think it's important to reflect the toll of this mechanically. I also want to give players an incentive to seek out hospitality because in doing so they'll get to speak to folk - the best source of info on the locale. My concern with Fatigue as it's written is that it might just feel lousy for players to have this number sitting on their Character sheet as a constant debuff till they can clear it. Might players simply prefer hit points that get whittled down harmlessly till their Character drops dead?  We'll have to see!

Wounds

Why have lasting injuries in this game? The story of Nuada The Silverarm mostly. I'm not sure they need to be strictly enumerated like this (Minor, Major, Mortal) but this felt like a natural way to go, and I quite like this loose representation of a Wound as an answer to the questions: "What treatment is required?" and "How long will it take to get better?". It took a bit of spinning to get here however because the main way to get Wounds is going to be through Combat. So what does Combat look like in this game? While I don't want unique rules for Combat - ultimately it's just a Check, right? But it's such a common situation, and the stakes tend to be higher, I think it would run more smoothly if there was a procedure to follow, so I'm thinking about that.

This feels like a good point to take a step back. Even working out a Combat procedure is a big job. The main things I want Combat to do in the game is first provide opportunities for dramatic, memorable moments and, second, complicate the lives of the Characters. That's a decent start. Having had a think it feels like the main question I need to answer next is what sorts of things might Characters be able to do, so my plan next is to keep these principles in mind and try to build some Characters!

* Clans are a big deal in Legends of Alba and probably need their own post later on! For now the important info is that each Clan has a unique Virtue they hold sacred (e.g. Truth, Status, Friendship)