Madness Meter and Traits

Howdy All.

I'm posting this here for your eyes. Tell me if you see anything obviously unfair or breaking in it? Tomorrow I'm running a Ravenloft game and I am keen on using both the Madness Meter and Traits, because I think they both feed well into the concepts of Ravenloft.

So MM works much like it does in Unknown Armies. I've narrowed the Categories to Violence, Supernatural, and Self. When making a check, instead of rolling against the UA Mind stat I've decided to use something I'm calling Stress for now. Inspired by Ben and Nick's article in Uncounted Worlds, Stress is determined by averaging Intelligence and Constitution. Failed notches and hardened notches work the same. Twelve hardened notches or ten notches in one single category means that the character is now a sociopath.

I've narrowed the Traits down to three categories too; Generous/Selfish, Honest/Deceitful, Merciful/Cruel. They work a bit more like Allegiance does, in that they are a point tally system, rather than a point on a scale between 1 and 100. Characters will slowly increase their point totals in the traits through play. To start, characters begin by distributing ten points in the positive traits and five in the negative. This next part is inspired by Uncounted Worlds too, but from Sarah's article. If appropriate in play, the character can call on their trait to augment their roll. If the character is using Fast Talk, for example, they are being completely honest with their information, they can add whatever is in their Honest Trait to their roll. If they have Fast Talk 80% and Traits 10 Honest/Deceitful 12 their effective Fast Talk roll is 90%. Should they tap the Deceitful Trait while using Fast Talk their roll would be 92%.

This holds unless the character has become a sociopath. If they've hardened themselves too much, they lose their connection to humanity and can no longer invoke those traits until they get some mental help.

This will all feed into Dark Powers points, as this is Ravenloft we're talking about. I can go into that a bit more later if there is interest.

I had a brief run through, about an hour and a half game. I'm leaning towards dropping Traits for something else, but I don't know what. Granted it was a short session and there was a lot going on, but nobody thought to touch traits, including myself. I think part of the reason why is the Traits that I selected feel disconnected from play. Something that in more dear to the individual character, like the rage, fear and noble passions.

Not familiar with the systems mentioned, but I've also been trying to introduce Traits to my BRP/RQ game - and met with a similar lack of use by players.

Just one short session may not be a fair trial. It may need more time for the players to get used to your new Traits mechanism.

However, I had a Traits mechanic as simple as I thought possible (characters have about 3 Traits, and can get a re-roll if they do something "in the manner of" that trait) - but still it was virtually never used.

As mentioned in another thread (the Kult thread on the Legend forum), I will use traits myself in our RQII/Legend campaign. I have some experience with using traits before in Pendragon, and they have worked there pretty good. I am surprised to hear your players didn't take on traits Chaot, especially if you grant certain skill bonuses on basis of them. I mean, everybody wants bonuses right?

Maybe the issue was there weren't enough suitable traits for a given situation? Anyways, in Pendragon traits aren't used so much to grant bonuses, but to guide the players in social situations, how their PCs would act absed on their personalites. Of course, you do get bonuses (and fame), if certain traits are high enough, and so on - but maybe best not bring that into the discussion right now?

I am not sure how the opposed traits work in your example, though. I mean if you got honest/deceitful, how do you decide which one to use, or can the player just decide himself? And how do the opposed traits interact with each other, can you be honest one minute, and deceitful the next? Wouldn't the other (bigger value) be dominant in most cases? So would you first do the opposed trait test to see how the PC would proceed?

I like how the traits work in Pendragon, and intend to use it almost as is, except that I won't used a scale of 20, but 100 (to fit within the d100 system). I will also think about which traits to use, my campaign is historical medieval one, so quite like in Pendragon, but maybe less emphasis on the Malorian ideals? And I was toying with idea of adding sane/insane pair to cover sanity mechanism. Of course, RQII has the optional fear rules in Necromantic Arts, and the system itself has this skill called Persistence, so I need to combine these with the sanity trait. Sane/Insane would probably work just as scale of your mental health, and you'd use persistence checks mostly in insanity/fear inducing situations. I havent really worked it out yet.

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Originally Posted by Verderer

I am surprised to hear your players didn't take on traits Chaot, especially if you grant certain skill bonuses on basis of them. I mean, everybody wants bonuses right?

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Nor did my players, despite the full Pendragon trait-range and simplicity: Not even a fiddly bonus - just a re-roll. And everybody wants re-rolls, right? ;)

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Originally Posted by frogspawner

Just one short session may not be a fair trial. It may need more time for the players to get used to your new Traits mechanism.

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You know, that's very true. Also it occurs to me that the traits in question are geared to social interaction, which my brief test run wasn't. There was also a lot going on and I really didn't concentrate on the Traits aspect myself until the game was over. Happily, the Madness Meter worked really well.

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Originally Posted by frogspawner

However, I had a Traits mechanic as simple as I thought possible (characters have about 3 Traits, and can get a re-roll if they do something "in the manner of" that trait) - but still it was virtually never used.

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I'm wondering if I might need to tailor the traits to the given character? Make it something the Player already associates with the character to keep it firmly in their mind? Alternatively, I might have actually been aiming for was a system to rate how altruistic/self interested the characters are. I have to rethink this because I don't think I'm going about it in the most elegant way.

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Originally Posted by Verderer

As mentioned in another thread (the Kult thread on the Legend forum), I will use traits myself in our RQII/Legend campaign. I have some experience with using traits before in Pendragon, and they have worked there pretty good. I am surprised to hear your players didn't take on traits Chaot, especially if you grant certain skill bonuses on basis of them. I mean, everybody wants bonuses right?

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Oooh, I had to run over and check that thread out. I don't have a whole lot of experience with Kult, but from what I've read it looks really fun. I'm confident that traits work well for Pendragon, though I've only read and not played it. It feels like such an integral part to the setting. I think it's more my fault. I am trying to use them more as an Allegiance system rather than a character guide.

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Originally Posted by Verderer

Maybe the issue was there weren't enough suitable traits for a given situation?

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I think there's a lot of truth to this. The session revolved much more on reaction to circumstance than social interaction.

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Originally Posted by Verderer

I mean if you got honest/deceitful, how do you decide which one to use, or can the player just decide himself? And how do the opposed traits interact with each other, can you be honest one minute, and deceitful the next? Wouldn't the other (bigger value) be dominant in most cases? So would you first do the opposed trait test to see how the PC would proceed?

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No opposed traits test, the player decides which they use, which adds to the trait tally. Negative traits add to Dark Powers points. Positive traits give the bonus without consequences. They are a pretty even minded group and I largely trust them to make the call depending on their concept of character. I hold right of veto and the power to assign negative traits if I think they are needed, of course.

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Originally Posted by Chaot

I'm wondering if I might need to tailor the traits to the given character? Make it something the Player already associates with the character to keep it firmly in their mind? Alternatively, I might have actually been aiming for was a system to rate how altruistic/self interested the characters are. I have to rethink this because I don't think I'm going about it in the most elegant way.

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Yes, rather than all characters having all traits to whatever percentage, my way lets the player choose 2 traits (which they either have or don't - no percentages). So it's as per their 'character concept' - and they get rewarded for acting accordingly. (Although other traits may develop later, perhaps displacing originals).

If you rate the available traits for altruism/self-interest (I do for Good/Evil and Law/Chaos), that could give each character's 'allegiance' (or alignment).

Is that system elegant? (Better not get me started on 'elegance' - some people round here don't like it! ;))

PS: Just to clarify, when I say 'trait' I mean one aspect of a trait, like 'Honest' (not 'Honest/Deceitful'). And you can't have opposites unless you're insane!