I remembered we're forgetting ghosts! Do you have any advice on that?
Ironically ghosts were the one part of the WoD I never bought into at all. I've always believed that to tell a story from the Ghost's point of view is to basically destroy everything that makes the trope horrifying, especially when in order to maintain the stakes necessary to a character-survival game, the game had to sneak the ideas of Transcendence and Oblivion in through the "back door" of the setting anyway. I loved the concepts and the art of
Wraith: The Oblivion, which is why I've always kept my copy, but I think a Ghost protagonist/PC is just a fundamental category error for horror or dark fantasy gaming/storytelling.
I recognize that's supremely unhelpful, of course, and I apologize, but I could certainly provide reactions to any ideas you had.
This appeared in World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness as the various karma meters. ...Do you have any specific suggestions?
Well, to make up for dropping the ball on the Wraith setting, I did in fact come up with my own very generic version, which I post in full below. Some of the internal references here will not be applicable, but the basic structure should still be yoinkable:
Psyche and TraitsTraits are of three types, all rated from 1 to 5:
Virtues: Compassion, Faith, Honour
Passions: Devotion, Drive, Hatred
Flaws: Hubris, Hunger, Rage
All Virtues start at 1; Passions start at 0. Distribute points equal to your Willpower score among your Virtues and Passions. Your Psyche begins equal to 5 plus your highest Virtue score.
Vampires start with Hunger 1. Wyrfolk start with Rage 1. Mages start with Hubris 1. You can take additional points in Flaws at -5 XPs per point, but cannot start with any Flaw score over 2.
To
Call Upon a Trait: spend 1 WP, then add the rating of that Trait to your AP for the appropriate roll. You can call upon more than one Trait (at 1 WP per Trait), but the maximum bonus is +5 AP, as this is an Effort Bonus.
- If you are Calling Upon a Passion or a Flaw, you can spend 1
Urge instead of 1 WP. However, this may count as a Violation.
To
Conquer a Trait (which must be done whenever the character wants to do something that goes against the Trait, or to refuse to do an action encouraged by the Trait), characters have several options.
- Spend 1 WPR to act against the Trait, but take an AP penalty equal to the Trait's value to any Action Roll involved. If Conquering a Passion or a Flaw, this adds 1
Urge to your running total.
- Spend 2 WPR to act against the Trait with no AP penalty. If Conquering a Passion or a Flaw, this adds 2
Urge to your running total.
- Roll Willpower against a DF equal to (Trait + 4). One success allows you to act at an AP penalty equal to Trait's value; every additional success reduces this penalty by 1. No Urge is added to your running total if making a roll; however, if you are trying to Conquer a Passion or Flaw, add current total Urge to DF. (Maximum DF is 10, if this totals more than 10.) If your character is
On the Edge and you lose this roll, character suffers an
Eruption.
- If you are trying to Conquer a Virtue, you can spend Urge instead of WPR. However, this will almost certainly count as a Violation!
If you do not do any of these, the character cannot take the action that contradicts the Trait in question.
Urge and EruptionsUrge is a kind of "anti-Willpower". It represents the internal tension of being unable to act on your Passions and Flaws, and adds to the difficulty of Conquering them. It starts from 0 and accumulates from various sources:
- Vampires automatically gain Urge whenever they wake for the night with a BP reserve lower than their Hunger + 5 (a fledgeling vampire with Hunger 1 gains Urge whenever he wakes with fewer than 6 BP). They gain 1 Urge for each point their BP is below this limit. This Urge is accumulative--a vampire who skips feeding for three nights after he begins feeling the thirst will have accumulated 6 Urge total (1 when he wakes with 5 BP, 2 when he wakes next night with 4 BP, 3 when he wakes again with 3 BP!) Vampires can reduce Urge by 1 for every BP taken from a victim, even if that Urge was not gained from their blood-hunger
- Wyrfolk gain 1 Urge for every three days they go without shifting into their Therios or Myrmidon forms at least once, and this Urge cannot be reduced at all until the wyr shifts; every shift eliminates 1 Urge point.
- Mages gain 1 Urge if they go for a week without using a single casting of any type, and cannot reduce this Urge at all until they cast at least one spell; every spell cast eliminates 1 Urge point.
Once Urge surpasses your current WPR reserves, a character is
On the Edge. Roll a Contest of Willpower vs. Urge (both DF 6) whenever more Urge is taken; if the Willpower roll loses, character undergoes an
Eruption. If Urge hits 10 or higher, an Eruption is automatic and irresistible. All Urge currently possessed is expended in the Eruption, dropping to 0 when done.
Scope of Eruption varies with the amount of Urge being expended:
< 4: Minor
5-7: Major
8+: Critical
A character's actions during an Eruption are chosen by the Director, NOT the player, and will almost always be direct gratifications of the character's strongest Flaw. This is almost certain to cause Violations to the character's Psyche.
ViolationsA Violation is the term for any event, experience or choice that constitutes a fundamental injury to your very self. Conquering a Virtue, Calling Upon a Flaw (or a Passion in the wrong circumstances), choosing to commit a morally questionable action, or undergoing a traumatic or shattering experience can all be Violations, incurring psychic damage to one's morality, identity and personality.
Violations are ranked by their Scope, from 1 (extremely minor offenses or traumas) to 5 (world-wrecking sins, betrayals, horrors or losses). What exactly constitutes a Violation, and how severe it is, is left deliberately vague, but it is often defined by the cultural paradigm in which someone grows up. Different characters may consider the same action to be widely different in scope of Violation; wyrfolk Call Upon their Rage all the time without incurring much damage, but a vampire who constantly Calls Upon his Hunger will fall to madness faster than one would believe. A Violation may also vary in effective scope depending on the specific character's Psyche; the higher your Psyche, the "purer" and more idealistic and innocent you are, and the more damaging a particular action or experience will usually be. Screwing over, or getting screwed over by, a co-worker is probably only a 1d Violation for a jaded cynic with Psyche 6, but for the innocent newbie with Psyche 9, it may well be a 3d or even 4d Violation!
Whenever a character experiences or commits a Violation, he must make a
Degeneration Test. This is a Contest Roll of the Violation's Scope (1 to 5) against one of his Virtues; both rolls are DF 6. The Virtue used depends on the cause and nature of the Violation:
- If the Violation is the result of
an action you took or choice you made yourself, roll against your
Honour--you are struggling to come to terms with your own betrayal of your principles, conscience and integrity.
- If the Violation is the result of
someone else's action against you, either an individual or an identifiable group, roll against your
Compassion--you are fighting to understand and forgive the one(s) who hurt you.
- If the Violation is
a general event that "just happened", with no identifiable necessary reason or directly responsible person/group, roll against your
Faith--you are attempting to reconcile the fact of your misfortune with belief in a supposedly meaningful, impartial or benevolent universe.
You cannot spend WPs or Call Upon another Trait to help with a Degeneration Test. With a sufficiently clever explanation (the GM must decide if it fits the specific Violation), a player may substitute another Virtue for the one normally used, but the DF for the Virtue roll rises to 7.
If the Virtue roll wins or ties the Contest, the character has integrated the experience, action or event into his Psyche without significant permanent trauma--he may be "sadder but wiser", but is still essentially the same person. At the GM's option, if the Virtue roll beats the Violation roll by 5 successes or more (remember that 10s count for 2 successes), the insight or enlightenment of the experience may allow the character to raise his Psyche by 1: his suffering has literally made his spirit stronger!
If the Virtue roll loses, the character undergoes Degeneration. In its basic form this causes the character's Psyche score to drop by 1, permanently. At the player's preference, an alternate form of Degeneration may be incurred:
- The player may permanently reduce the score of the Virtue used in the Degeneration Test by 1.
- If the Violation was related to the subject of a Passion (a loved one betrayed the character, for example), the player may permanently reduce the score of that Passion by the amount of the Violation's successes--if the Violation roll beat the Virtue by 3, for example, the related Passion must be reduced by 3.
- The player may increase the score of an appropriate Flaw by 1.
- The character may gain a Trauma Trait of 1, or increase an existing Trauma by 1 if appropriate.
- The player may reduce his character's permanent Willpower score by 1.
The player may choose any one of these options, but cannot select that same option again until he reduces Psyche by 1. If he has already used all these options and then undergoes Degeneration again, he must reduce Psyche by 1; at this point he can use any of the options again, but each kind only once until Psyche once again drops.
A character whose overall Psyche falls to 0 has suffered a complete break with humanity, and can no longer be played as a PC.