Here's another public post from my Patreon about the development of Dream-Quest. As always, I invite comments on the post, since I'm still turning over ideas in my head and appreciate other perspectives. In this particular case, I'm pondering a fairly big change to the mechanics and presentation of the game as I've imagined it so far, which is why feedback is important.
You could combine mutability and advancement, by having the characters change as they gain XP, with a small disadvantage and a bigger advantage, so they get better on the whole.
ReplyDeleteSo a character might gain the ability to use a new spell or class of weapons, but gain a deadly fear of cats. Then next time they lose the fear of cats, but also lose a couple of hit points.
It's a great idea. This dynamic reflects the RPG player themselves. Each of us are an individual who wears multiple guises - our PCs; all different personae, all linked in a meta way. Each one is a different facet of us. It's a very eternal champion sort of idea.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it would be more fun for the player to choose when to alter their dreamselves, rather than rolling randomly for each dream, for example.
Very interesting!
It is interesting. Whether it's workable is something I've not yet decided. I'll need to think about this some more before I choose to develop it further – but I guess that's what playtesting is for!
DeleteThat concept reminds me of TSR's short-lived Amazing Engine system. When you earned XP you had to choose between improving the PC you were currently using or spending on your "character core" - that is, yourself as a player. Spending on your core meant that every Amazing Engine character you every created in the future (either for the current campaign or in a different setting entirely) would strat with slightly better stats, with that slowly building up over time.
DeleteWell, in theory, anyway. The range barely lasted a year before getting canned, and I'd be surprised if anyone played it long enough to see much core improvement, especially over multiple campaigns. Probably for the best, really. Imagine what it would be like if D&D worked that way. All us old grogs who'd been roleplaying since the 1970s would be coming into new games in 2025 with characters whose stats were several times better than new players. What jolly fun that would be.
Monte Cook's The Strange does something like this. The characters explore pocket universes based on stories and myths. Their characters "translate" when travelling into these miliue, gaining new abilities whilst retaining the same persona. I think in practice you have your main character sheet and then a short sub-character sheet for Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy and other genres that you use one of when having an adventure in one of these worlds. I may have some of the details wrong here but I think that is the gist of it.
ReplyDeleteThank You, Ken. Your suggestion of 'The Strange' has helped me think through issues involved with simulating essentially non-physical reality for my own RPG, similar to those James is confronting. While I think some details of the Strange's 'cypher system' are clumsy abstractions of simple 'percentile chance of success', I loath rule sets, and this system provides good inspiration towards a 'rulings not rules' alternative for more free-handed and genre-free game scenarios. Cheers, Matthew.
DeleteThis could totally work. I think you'd have to keep the class complexity down though. The first thing I thought of was roll a d8 and have one of 8 pre-prepared classes ready to go with simplified abilities and class options, maybe just one para. stat. block. I guess in core d20 you have options like polymorph self, so this is on that spectrum.
ReplyDelete