Courts
From AdamWiki
What kind of game do I want to play? A pseudo-Renaissance fantasy game based on court intrigue and kingdom building. Characters get to have really powerful magic, but so does most of the rest of the NPC world.
Characters are defined by:
- Internal Qualities (attributes like Reason and Wit)
- Virtues and Sins (the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues, of course)
- Appointments (measured by Responsibility, Authority, Power, Resources, etc.)
- Relationships (measured by Public and Private sets of Loyalty, Trust, Leverage, etc.)
How to avoid the game becoming another D&D romp?
- I'll dedicate very few rules to combat. Combat is just another scene to be resolved.
- Characters will be very powerful, so that violent conflict doesn't occur every day. When it does, it'll be dramatic and world-changing.
- I'll make it unprofitable to go killing people. There'll be no advancement track related to combat.
- I will provide mechanics that allow characters to resolve conflicts and "win" in non-violent ways, and make those methods more interesting to play than combat.
- The system will reward creative, non-violent role-play.
The system must revolve around creating interesting situations, resolving them, and using the resolution to propel the story into the next interesting situation.
Conflict resolution will use the idea of "what's at stake?" and put numbers behind it. Anything that matters to a player (or the character) can be enumerated and scored. The system will standardize certain traits that are important to the setting, and those traits will make excellent at-stakes during play. For example, every character will have an Honor rating. A conflict might put 2 points of the character's Honor at stake. That immediately gives the character 2 dice towards the conflict. The player can escalate the situation by putting more at stake. More dice of Honor, perhaps, or the player might bring in other traits. Every character will have a Life trait, as well, and violence will put Life at stake. When Life reaches 0, Bad Things Happen. But likely the rules will never force the player to put all of his Life at stake — risking continued existence is the player's choice. The extra dice might be worth the risk.
The dice mechanic will probably be something like "roll a bunch of dice; for each 1 you roll, permanently lose one point of a trait that you placed at-stake (you choose where)." The success mechanic is probably something like "count the 6's and compare to the other side's 6's." Maybe whoever wins the contest gets to choose where everyone's 1's apply.
Play Example
Duke Bir Canriste confronts Cardinal Luche Garounes at a ball. It seems the Cardinal has been spreading rumors that the Duke is sleeping with the Princess. The Duke wishes to clear his name and take the Cardinal down a peg or two. The Cardinal, once confronted, holds to his guns and acts indignant. He says it's a sin to lie and that his accusations are true.
The truth is irrelevant here. What's at stake is the Duke's reputation and the Cardinal's honor. The tools the Duke will use in the confrontation are intimidation, his (lessened) reputation, and his court skills. The tools the Cardinal will use are indignancy, his reputation, and his priest skills.
The Duke wishes to get back the 1 point of Reputation he's lost so far. In addition, the GM says that bringing the issue to the forefront puts 1 more point of the Duke's Reputation at stake. Also at stake is the Cardinal's Reputation. The GM says that only 1 point was at stake, but the "it's a sin to lie" comment increases that by another point.
The Duke gets 2d6 for his stakes and the Cardinal gets 2d6 for his stakes. The Duke has two useful traits, Intimidating and Master of Court Intrigue and those get him 2d6 more. The Cardinal has one useful trait, God Is On My Side, and that gets him 1d6 more.
Looking at the dice, the Duke's player puts more at stake. The Duke says, "I am neither a liar nor a sinner, and you shall burn in hell for your accusations!" The GM puts 2 more points of Reputation at stake for both characters.
Both roll their dice. The Duke rolls 1,1,3,4,6,6 (two botches and two success). The Cardinal rolls 1,2,4,5,6 (one botch and one success). The Duke wins the contest. The Cardinal loses the 2 points of Reputation that he voluntarily added to the stakes. He also loses 1 point of Reputation due to the botch. (Since the Duke won the contest, he could choose to let the Cardinal ignore that botch, but he doesn't.) First, the Duke gets his 1 point of previously lost Reputation back. Then the Duke has two botches that he applies to his own Reputation. While he feels he won the contest, the lasting repercussions are that he's made his scandal more public and people are talking about him.
Imagine that they rolled and got different results. The Duke rolls 1,3,4,5,6 (one botch, one success) and the Cardinal rolls 1,2,4,6,6 (one botch, two successes). The Duke had voluntarily placed 4 points of Reputation at stake (he escalated the contest, not the Cardinal), so he loses 4. He also does not regain the 1 Reputation that he'd lost before the contest. The Cardinal won the contest, so he doesn't lose the 2 Reputation he had at stake. He does lose, however, 1 Reputation for the botch. The Duke's words did not go unheard in the court.
