I want to run a game with the smallest possible number of changes to the basic Spirit of the Century system, tweaking the setting and rules just enough to meld high-adventure pulp and the feel of the Corwin books. Here's what I tweaked in the SYSTEM:
The ladder of skills/difficulty is as follows:
| The Ladder |
| +8: | Legendary |
| +7: | Epic |
| +6: | Fantastic |
| +5: | Superb |
| +4: | Great |
| +3: | Good |
| +2: | Decent (I really hate 'fair' as a rating.) |
| +1: | Average |
| +0: | Mediocre |
| -1: | Poor |
| -2: | Terrible |
Skills
- "Pattern" is a skill. Anything you want to do with Pattern Imprint is dealt with as greater or lesser difficulty to the (usually not Simple) contest. Pattern Attunement has nothing like a prereq rating in Endurance or Resolve or anything, nor does it require a Pattern-related or Amberite-blood-related Aspect (due to a change to the 'rules' within the setting).
- Actually walking the Pattern, however, is a "chase" contest against a eight-stress Good (probably) opponent who is "leading" the "chase" and trying to kill you. Exchange #1 is resisted by Endurance, it then alternates between End and Resolve until the end of the contest. You don't want to go into that with stress boxes checked. This level of resistance tends to weed out the weak. So there aren't prerequisites, but you'd better be prepared.
- The Trappings for the Pattern skill are:
- Movement through Shadow.
- Probability Manipulation (often useful for Declaring Aspects).
- Shadow 'editing' (which general works only on 'background' in a scene, not living things, etc -- still useful for adding or tweaking Scene Aspects).
- Any Pattern (or other powers, for that matter) stuff that's not in the first five books is out. Pattern Defense (expressed as anything other than invoking a Pattern-related Aspect for a bonus) is out. Ditto Pattern Lens, all that stuff.
- Sorcery is accomplished using a Mysteries version of the Science stunt "Theory in Practice." Said stunt is called "Sorcery" and requires "Secrets of the Arcane" as a prerequisite Stunt. (This is just like Fred's "Simple Magic" on the SotC Wiki, except he didn't mention needing the prerequisite. The players felt that keeping the prerequisites the same in both cases was best.)
Character Generation
- Character generation is pretty much unchanged
- The Great War is just a different one.
- Your novel could have either a Pulp- or "Zelazny"-style name.
- As group, we decided that while creating "children of the elders" were fine, there was (since Oberon fixed the Pattern) no longer any Amber-blood prereq on attuning the Pattern -- you just had to be a truly exceptional person. (On the flip side, Amberite Blood doesn't destroy the damned thing, which is why Oberon changed it.)
- Trump Artist is an Art stunt. There are no other Trump stunts, as I see things like Trump Tricks and the like as an ADRPG addendum. Opening Trump Gates and/or pulling people through a trump are nothing but difficult Simple Conflicts. (Usually.)
- Elders get a skill pyramid that goes to Fantastic and around 8 stunts.
Trumps
How Trumps Work
I'm piecing together something, here, combining Art as Craft and some Engineering stuff.
1. How Art (in general) Works (this is straight from "Art as Craft")
- Any art piece you make has a quality equal to your skill check.
- Making art is time consuming. (Using Engineering as a baseline, I'm going to say one day per level of quality over Mediocre.)
- "Rushed" pieces can be done in minutes instead of days. The artistic quality of this 'sketch' is equal to your skill check, but for only one scene. Every scene they appear in thereafter degrades their quality by one.
2. What Trumps Require
- Trumps don't work for communication unless they're at least Good quality. I'm basing this on the equivalent object -- a ham radio -- which has a 'good' cost. This cost=quality thing is the system Engineering uses to come up with difficulties. (Good is actually pretty darn easy, but it is a 'hard' minimum.) For communication, there's a hard bottom line -- you need Good Trump art just to get it work for talking. It's just a flat requirement of the trump. Opening contact is an Average Resolve simple contest (unless resisted). Communication-level connections are enough for some kind of mental hammerlock attack, like Eric did to Corwin.
- Trumps don't work well for transportation unless they're quite high quality.
The base difficulty for moving one person through, using a Superb trump, is "Average." Levels of trump art quality below or above Superb make that effort easier or harder, respectively, on a 1 to 1 ratio. This effort can also be resisted, which makes it bloody hard to pull someone through against their will. Mystical barriers can also add to difficulties -- I'm sure I don't need to provide examples of that.
Moving several people through (effectively a small Gate) is a "Fair" difficulty. Levels of trump quality below or above
Fantastic make that easier or harder, respectively, on a 1 to 1 ratio.
Moving many people through (effectively a big Gate) is a "Good" Levels of quality below or above Fantastic make that easier or harder, respectively, on a 1 to 1 ratio.
"Dworkin Trumps" are Fantastic-quality, by default. P Cs get a trump of their Patron, and that's it, unless they either (a) use an Aspect to make themselves an Elder's child (which earns them a full 'Dworkin deck') and/or (b) are a Trump Artist, which lets them start with one additional, Superb-quality, self-made trump per each rank in Art.
Use of Aspects
You may only tag one 'pay for it' Aspect on each related scope per roll:
- one Opponent Aspect
- one System Aspect
- one Scene Aspect (if one exists)
- one Zone Aspect (if one exists)
- one Item Aspect (if you have a relevant Item (which usually has five aspects))
- one Campaign Aspect (if one exists)
- one Ally's Aspect
You can still tag as many free-tag aspects as you like.
Social Combat (is awesome)
Use the rules from Diaspora.
Nine Princes In Pulp | Amber Setting Tweaks for Pulp >
