Game Design Thoughts
More ideas for Towerlands, the game that worms its way into my brain no matter how busy I am.
What's Your Sign?
Characters are generated using astrology stuff, probably made up astrology stuff. You get a number, 1-20, representing your "sign." I'll flesh out the signs and stuff with lots of colorful detail, but suffice it to say that the closer your sign number is to someone else's, the more affinity you have with them. Affinity can be used for bonuses and penalties in social interactions. I may complicate it all with some planetary cycles and such, but that's for later.
Pressure
When you fail a roll by a few points, you can bump your dice up to par-success by taking Pressure, a measure of the shit that's harshing your buzz -- er, a measure of stress. When Pressure reaches a critical amount or whenever you fail a roll by a lot ("critical" and "a lot" to be defined later), you lose your cool. Losing your cool means that you violate one of your own personal rules, as written down when you created your character. Say character generation requires you to write down 8 little rules, 4 medium rules, 2 serious rules, and 1 core rule. Depending on how much Pressure you have when you finally break, plus some kind of die roll, you might have to break any one of those rules. Obviously, it's really easy to break a little rule and really hard to break a core rule, so the dice and Pressure will respect the rarity, probably by assigning some kind of number to each: little rule: 2, medium: 5, serious: 11, core: 20. That number can be used as a trait during the game, too, to help you like any other trait.
Maybe the only traits you have are either rule traits like the above or bond traits. Bond traits are totally dependent on other people and groups and things. Rule traits are all you, but you can be forced to break them.
What's Your Sign?
Characters are generated using astrology stuff, probably made up astrology stuff. You get a number, 1-20, representing your "sign." I'll flesh out the signs and stuff with lots of colorful detail, but suffice it to say that the closer your sign number is to someone else's, the more affinity you have with them. Affinity can be used for bonuses and penalties in social interactions. I may complicate it all with some planetary cycles and such, but that's for later.
Pressure
When you fail a roll by a few points, you can bump your dice up to par-success by taking Pressure, a measure of the shit that's harshing your buzz -- er, a measure of stress. When Pressure reaches a critical amount or whenever you fail a roll by a lot ("critical" and "a lot" to be defined later), you lose your cool. Losing your cool means that you violate one of your own personal rules, as written down when you created your character. Say character generation requires you to write down 8 little rules, 4 medium rules, 2 serious rules, and 1 core rule. Depending on how much Pressure you have when you finally break, plus some kind of die roll, you might have to break any one of those rules. Obviously, it's really easy to break a little rule and really hard to break a core rule, so the dice and Pressure will respect the rarity, probably by assigning some kind of number to each: little rule: 2, medium: 5, serious: 11, core: 20. That number can be used as a trait during the game, too, to help you like any other trait.
Maybe the only traits you have are either rule traits like the above or bond traits. Bond traits are totally dependent on other people and groups and things. Rule traits are all you, but you can be forced to break them.