Observations of the Fox

 It's always interesting to read other people's perspectives. Here's a review of GNS theory after a generation of games have been and gone, and have been influenced by it in different ways. I generally agree with a lot of what the post is saying. A lot of the premise with GNS indicated that the three styles of gaming were mutually incompatible, and any any to reconcile two of them (or heaven forbid all three) was incoherent, and implicitly doomed to failure. However this article recognises that there is overlap between the concepts, and having two goals doesn't necessarily make for a diluted session experience, but just combines flavours for a different experience.  I've posted a few times about the theory (I think most of those posts have " The Forge " as a tag), and have designed with it in mind for decades now, trying my hand at different focal objectives (to varying degrees of success). It's interesting how influential it's been in the hobby, ...

The last post covered the predominantly random part of the character generation system. This post works on completing the characters with a phase that allows a lot more agency from the players.  The previous step got us to... Six total attribute points (we need two more) Four total ability points (we need eight more) One advantage (we need one more) We don't have any aegises, relationships or equipment (but they can come). I'm thinking that we'll be looking at a range of templates that function like apprenticeships what will push characters in certain directions. A template for each bloodline, a template for each culture, and a few generic templates that anyone can choose (rural community, street rat, sailor, trader, crafter, heavy).    Each of these templates will boost a pair of attributes associated with the types of task that this group is known for. It will also grant four automatic abilities, an extra advantage, a pair of relationships, and a pair of basic equipment...

Just when I thought I was getting momentum, life gets in the way again. I've spent most of the last few days in hospital with my wife, or taking her to medical appointments.   I've had some ideas in recent months about the way lower classes are forced to struggle so they don't have time to tell their stories, and how it's only the elite who have the privilege of time to share their narrative, and the social capital to spread that narrative to reinforce the cultural norms, even though the wider experience of life doesn't necessary reflect the stories that are constantly pumped out. It's something that fits into Familiar, and ironically it's the very lack of time to work on Familiar, and the lack of social capital to get it noticed that has kept the stories within it from being completed. It's a game about social systems and rebelling against them, while those very social systems are keeping it down, and it's going to take an act of rebellion to get it...

Is there anything else we need to know about characters within SNAFU, and within the context of this pirate setting?  At the simplest level yes, and the first one that comes to mind is one of the thing that SNAFU is all about.  Relationships. In the worldbuilding posts, I made some characters and linked them to places, so that feels like a cool thing to make sure stays in the game and can really help tie the rules to the setting, as well as tying the characters into the potential stories.  It was also a part of the worldbuilding posts that characters might end up as a blend of cultural backgrounds. With 13 consistent elements to each culture (each has a language, a clothing style, some common virtues they aspire to, some common vices they try to avoid, etc.) Each character would pick two or three cultures that had influenced their upbringing, and with a deck of cards they'd choose a suit of each card rank. It might be a case that a characters starting abilities from each ...

We've got our general abilities sorted. Now to distribute them into starting clusters. A starting cluster in SNAFU is a culture, occupation, calling, or some other element that forms the basis of a character. The types of clusters in the game guide the types of stories that it tells. Walkabout uses cultures, occupations, and a single calling which all characters follow. The cultures describe the type of people they grew up around, and what sorts of tasks and values these people are known for. Every character in Walkabout begins their story by working out what their parents cultures were, then choosing on of those cultures to follow. They might be from a farming community, a group of travelling nomads, a scavenger enclave on the radioactive edges of an ancient city, a neo-tribal group, a formerly wealthy elite who hid in a fallout shelter, or something else. Each has a range of associated skills, talents, and knowledges that are passed down and valued. The occupations describe how s...

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...