StarORE Rules Tweak
For those looking for a fast, easy-to-learn system for playing Star Wars, StarORE, which is essentially an adaptation of West End Games' d6 system to Greg Stolze's One Roll Engine, is an excellent starting point. However, the rules for the Dark/Light Side balance seem a little bland to me. This is an attempt to fix them.
Those of you who have been reading this for a while will know of my love of Unknown Armies. One of the features I like so much about it is the madness meters - a series of guages that show how increasingly psychologically screwed up your character is becoming. NEMESIS adapts the guages for the ORE. I want to do something similar here.
Unknown Armies has five guages, NEMESIS has four. For my purposes, I think I can get away with a single 'Dark Side' guage. So I'll create something like that. For reasons that will become aparrent, I'm going to expand the 'failed' side out to ten notches instead of the usual five.
NEMESIS introduced the idea of having a stat+skill roll with a certain difficulty (see p.2 of StarORE) to avoid gaining a failed notch. I'll do the same, using Cool+Meditation (see p.9 of StarORE). This is already the roll that you use to draw on the Light Side (p.11), but considering the emphasis that the Jedi put on meditation and emotional control in the Star Wars universe, I don't think it's making it more important than it should be. The difficulty of the roll will vary on the stimulus - for example:
Frustration at repeatedly failing to use a Force power: 1
Drawing on the Dark Side (p.11): 5
Betrayal by a loved one: 8
Failing the roll means you give in to the Dark Side for a little while (a round or two, as dramatically appropriate), and gains you a failed notch, but this isn't all bad. Henceforth, when you draw on the Dark Side, you automatically gain a pool of temporary willpower points equal to your number of failed notches. The Dark Side is always there, just waiting for you to call on it.
However, you can only use these Dark Side willpower points to fuel Force powers when your actions are governed by your baser emotions - hate, fear, anger or what have you. Also, any attempt to use your regular willpower points instead imposes a difficulty on your roll equal to your number of failed notches. This means the more aligned you are towards the Dark Side, the more you must operate that way. The Dark Side is powerful, but it tends to enslave those who follow it.
If you make your Cool+Meditation roll against the requisite difficulty, you gain a hardened notch and, as is usual with the madness meter system, are thereafter immune to stresses with a rank equal to or under your number of hardened notches. You've gained enough control over your emotions that stimuli of that level no longer bother you.
This sounds pretty sweet (and it is), but there is a downside. Force sensitive types can only attain this kind of emotional control by separating themselves from the Force a little. Gradually, you learn to feel the Force's ebb and flow less and less, until at 10 hardened notches, you've cut yourself off from it entirely. A character wtih 10 hardened notches cannot use willpower points of either stripe, can't use Force powers, etc. A character with fewer than 10 hardened notches can use Force powers, but applies their number of hardened notches as a difficulty rating to any attempt to draw on the Light Side.
You can get rid of hardened notches through extensive meditation with some sort of master/mentor figure. You roll Cool+Meditation while your master rolls Command+Meditation. Each roll has your current hardened notches as its difficulty rating. Each time both you and your master succeed, you remove a hardened notch. Each attempt takes 16-width (of the widest roll) hours.
Now for an example: Wroon the Jedi knight currently has two hardened and one failed notch in his guage. During a fight, an enemy threatens to kill the secret love of his life. This is a difficulty 6 challenge. Wroon rolls a 2x5 on his Cool+Meditation roll - not bad, but not enough to see him through. He spazzes out for a few rounds and gains a failed notch. If he choses to draw on the Dark Side during the fight, he'll have two bonus willpower points that he can only use to smite his enemies or betray his friends.
After the fight, Wroon wants to clear his head and recover some willpower points. He rolls Cool+Meditation again, getting a 3x4. This is above the difficulty imposed by his two hardened notches, so he recovers three willpower points over two rounds.
Eventually, Wroon will have an opportunity to meditate with Master Boshk and try to re-centre himself. He rolls Cool+Meditation, getting a 2x3. Boshk rolls Command+Meditation, getting a 4x1. While Wroon is making slow progress, Boshk hasn't yet figured him out well enough to be helpful, and Wroon keeps both his hardened notches. The attempt has taken 12 hours.
Those of you who have been reading this for a while will know of my love of Unknown Armies. One of the features I like so much about it is the madness meters - a series of guages that show how increasingly psychologically screwed up your character is becoming. NEMESIS adapts the guages for the ORE. I want to do something similar here.
Unknown Armies has five guages, NEMESIS has four. For my purposes, I think I can get away with a single 'Dark Side' guage. So I'll create something like that. For reasons that will become aparrent, I'm going to expand the 'failed' side out to ten notches instead of the usual five.
NEMESIS introduced the idea of having a stat+skill roll with a certain difficulty (see p.2 of StarORE) to avoid gaining a failed notch. I'll do the same, using Cool+Meditation (see p.9 of StarORE). This is already the roll that you use to draw on the Light Side (p.11), but considering the emphasis that the Jedi put on meditation and emotional control in the Star Wars universe, I don't think it's making it more important than it should be. The difficulty of the roll will vary on the stimulus - for example:
Frustration at repeatedly failing to use a Force power: 1
Drawing on the Dark Side (p.11): 5
Betrayal by a loved one: 8
Failing the roll means you give in to the Dark Side for a little while (a round or two, as dramatically appropriate), and gains you a failed notch, but this isn't all bad. Henceforth, when you draw on the Dark Side, you automatically gain a pool of temporary willpower points equal to your number of failed notches. The Dark Side is always there, just waiting for you to call on it.
However, you can only use these Dark Side willpower points to fuel Force powers when your actions are governed by your baser emotions - hate, fear, anger or what have you. Also, any attempt to use your regular willpower points instead imposes a difficulty on your roll equal to your number of failed notches. This means the more aligned you are towards the Dark Side, the more you must operate that way. The Dark Side is powerful, but it tends to enslave those who follow it.
If you make your Cool+Meditation roll against the requisite difficulty, you gain a hardened notch and, as is usual with the madness meter system, are thereafter immune to stresses with a rank equal to or under your number of hardened notches. You've gained enough control over your emotions that stimuli of that level no longer bother you.
This sounds pretty sweet (and it is), but there is a downside. Force sensitive types can only attain this kind of emotional control by separating themselves from the Force a little. Gradually, you learn to feel the Force's ebb and flow less and less, until at 10 hardened notches, you've cut yourself off from it entirely. A character wtih 10 hardened notches cannot use willpower points of either stripe, can't use Force powers, etc. A character with fewer than 10 hardened notches can use Force powers, but applies their number of hardened notches as a difficulty rating to any attempt to draw on the Light Side.
You can get rid of hardened notches through extensive meditation with some sort of master/mentor figure. You roll Cool+Meditation while your master rolls Command+Meditation. Each roll has your current hardened notches as its difficulty rating. Each time both you and your master succeed, you remove a hardened notch. Each attempt takes 16-width (of the widest roll) hours.
Now for an example: Wroon the Jedi knight currently has two hardened and one failed notch in his guage. During a fight, an enemy threatens to kill the secret love of his life. This is a difficulty 6 challenge. Wroon rolls a 2x5 on his Cool+Meditation roll - not bad, but not enough to see him through. He spazzes out for a few rounds and gains a failed notch. If he choses to draw on the Dark Side during the fight, he'll have two bonus willpower points that he can only use to smite his enemies or betray his friends.
After the fight, Wroon wants to clear his head and recover some willpower points. He rolls Cool+Meditation again, getting a 3x4. This is above the difficulty imposed by his two hardened notches, so he recovers three willpower points over two rounds.
Eventually, Wroon will have an opportunity to meditate with Master Boshk and try to re-centre himself. He rolls Cool+Meditation, getting a 2x3. Boshk rolls Command+Meditation, getting a 4x1. While Wroon is making slow progress, Boshk hasn't yet figured him out well enough to be helpful, and Wroon keeps both his hardened notches. The attempt has taken 12 hours.