Conecting Worldbuilding to System (Part 2)

SNAFU is a system about relationships and connections. If we think about relationships as strings connecting different elements of play, then the first thing we need to do is establish a framework to attach those strings to.

I've done the math in the background, I've done some playtesting through "The Law" and other one off games, and I've generally worked out how the degrees of success obtained by characters will reflect upon their agency in the narrative. Generally, this has led to a few different "base levels" of character...

 

In the "Familiar" game, most characters are based at "street level" with the benefits provided by the familiars pushing them toward "veteran" level. On average, the numbers mean that players generally have a better than average chance of succeeding at their task attempts, but there will quite often be some kind of fallout (with better success or less fallout when attempting tasks in their specialty area). Each action slightly moves the story forward, or at least pushes it in a new direction.

In "Walkabout", most characters are already locally known and generally considered "veteran" level gradually moving toward "paragon" in their stories. This often means their actions have bigger consequences, and their stories have bigger drama. Choices have more significant impact, as the characters have more agency in the world (and the players have more agency in the story).

For this pirate game, we'll probably stick to the street level for starters. Gradually allowing characters to grow more competent as they explore the world and learn their place in it. That gives them a starting agency die of d4, 8 starting attribute points, 12 starting ability points, 2 advantages and 4 aegises.

We'll need to work out how those points are distributed, how much of a starting character is randomised and how much is chosen (with most SNAFU games beginning characters somewhere between the two ends of the scale). I'm thinking a 50/50 split at this stage, because I'd like to see players get the chance to start their characters in a direction to get where they want, but not quite there yet. Since there's a bit of inspiration from Warhammer Fantasy RPG in the career progression system, and since this setting has a bit of a vibe that works with that, it ties in with what I've got in mind. We'll get to more specifics in a later post.

For now, the next foundation for linking worldbuilding to the SNAFU system is choosing the array of abilities that characters can choose from. If each character has 12 abilities, then we definitely need more than 12. We usually aim for 40 or so, with 15 base abilities common to most RPGs, then a menu of selections that reflect what might be found in different story genres...so to makes things simple, we add two or three of these submenus to the selection...

  

Page layout in progress from the SNAFU SRD 

With around 40 abilities, we can split half of them into common abilities for the game, and make the rest less common. Most characters will have access to the common abilities, the uncommon ones might be available to specific groups chosen at character generation, then a few rare ones might get added in later to tweak the setting in a quirky way to add a point of difference to it. Note here that what we consider common abilities across most RPGs may not be common abilities specific to the setting. As an example "Brawl" might be a common ability in a variety of games, but it might not be a common ability in a game about courtly intrigue... it's still a viable ability to include, but it's not necessarily something that a lot of characters will possess.

I've got a dozen or so submenus of abilities to try to make things easy for a homebrewer to mix and match to quickly get a game that matches their needs.

For the moment though, the general abilities of the game need to reflect steampunk, piracy and late renaissance. So...

We start with General Abilities...

Academics, Athletics, Awareness, Brawl, Crafting, Etiquette, Investigation, Medicine, Music, Navigation, Perception, Riding, Stealth, Survival, Swimming

...then we can add in Fantasy...

Alchemy, Arcana, Artificing, Blacksmithing, Herbalism, Swordplay, Occult, Ritual

...then we might add some core Characteristics (which basically reflect the attributes from D&D, to give players something familiar to fall back on)...

Agility, Appearance, Charisma, Constitution, Intelligence, Reflexes, Strength

...and finally a few more abilities that might reflect the types of swashbuckling and adventure that we'd typically see in a pirate story, or the types of nefarious abilities that we'd expect our adversaries to possess (we can just add these in to fill in some gaps)...

Bluff, Gambling, Honour, Intimidation, Leap, Poisons, Ropecraft, Seafaring

That gives us 38 abilities, which sits in our ball-park range. We might drop some of these, or add some others later as we need them. Nothing is set in stone yet. From the whole list so far, we can divide the skills into common and uncommon skills for the setting. Common skills can basically be acquired by anyone, given time... uncommon skills will be specifically linked to certain cultures, occupations, or other key elements of the setting. (The "characteristics" will automatically go to the uncommon group because they tend to be the kind of thing that has to be picked up at character generation, or gained by magical means later)

Common Abilities

Academics, Athletics, Awareness, Bluff, Brawl, Crafting, Etiquette, Gambling, Herbalism, Honour, Intimidation, Music, Occult, Perception, Riding, Ropecraft, Seafaring, Stealth, Survival, Swimming,

Uncommon Abilities  

Agility, Alchemy, Appearance, Arcana, Artificing, Blacksmithing, Charisma, Constitution, Intelligence, Investigation, Leap, Medicine, Navigation, Poisons, Reflexes, Strength, Swordplay, Ritual

That gives us 20 common abilities that should be regularly found among the player characters and the people they meet, and another 18 that will be less common. We could add a couple of rare abilities like knowledge of "firearms" (for certain pirate and military occupations), "archery" (for tribal groups) or "prayer"  (for the Church and the mysterious cults). It's playing with stereotypes, but sometimes getting everyone on the same page quickly allows for more interesting storytelling to develop when characters start playing outside the expected norms. The next step of our game design will involve distributing these abilities across the various cultures and starting occupations, to start anchoring these concepts into our setting.