Connecting Worldbuilding to System (Part 4)

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 culture are balanced against these elements. The more starting abilities they have from a culture, the more they appear as a stereotypical member of that culture, because they identify more with that group and it becomes a stronger part of their persona.

Then we can probably add in some relationships between people. SNAFU does this with a simple scale that judges how familiar someone is with another element of the story (whether person, place, or thing), then flavours that with a simple positive or negative, do they like it, or don't they? The stronger the familiarity and relationship, the stronger the emotional reaction to it. Low levels reflect a passing interest, or vague dislike. High levels reflect a passionate love or a deep hatred.

The thing about each of these relationships is that they function as a two-edged sword. You might be able to use a strong relationship to gain leverage over your target, you might gain a bonus die to harm them oif you hate them, but that bonus die becomes a penalty die if you are ever in a sitiuation where you are trying to heal them or work with them. If it's a place you love and where you're a regular, you might gain the bonus die to be recognised as someone associated with the location, but if might flip to a penalty die if you're trying to hide your association with it. There are other factors at play here, and other ways that the mechanisms of play might be translated into storytelling elements, but the important thing to consider is that each relationship works as a string that can be pulled by the characters to influence the world around them, but can just as easily be pulled by other elements within the setting to pull on the characters. They're neither good nor bad, they just are.

Adding relationships into the character generation is an important part in both Walkabout and Familiar, so now there just needs to be a way to incorporate that into this pirate game.   

The next thing about SNAFU is something fairly conceptual at the moment. In each incarnation of the game, I'd like to make sure characters can be built with depth and richness, while also allowing a quick mode to rapidly generate supporting characters that are still adequately anchored into the story and setting. In Familiar, the fundamentals of the mystic characters are rapidly built using a 5-card tarot spread because they're quick, dirty and disposable. In Walkabout a ore complex life-path system is used because the characters are more epic, more heroic, more anchored into their world, and more the focus of the story. In both games, a supporting character can be built by combining two templates, then making a couple of other quick choices to quickly get someone who might make a good ally or antagonist. 

I'm thinking that some kind of life path system feels good for this game. Maybe not as detailed or rich as the one in Walkabout, but still something that can be used to tell the story of these characters before they come into the collective story of the group.

With a starting agency die of d4, there's nothing to play with there.

For the 8 starting attribute points, four are automatically allocated with one to each attribute. I'm thinking that each bloodline and each culture should add a point to a specific attribute, then maybe leave the last two attribute points free to be distributed as the player sees fit.  

For the 12 starting ability points, we need to consider the 7 abilities associated with each ability cluster, and what we've just discussed regarding relationships to cultures. Here's where a lifepath system can really come into it's own. We have a starting point where a character gains some abilities from their genetic make-up, but how many of those points. The SNAFU system says that once a character has 3 abilities in a cluster, they can pick up the advantage associated with it. So we can tie in the other traits that the heritages have, and since a character can only be linked to a single heritage, we might let them choose one bloodline trait if they've chosen 5 abilities from that bloodline, and the second bloodline trait once they pick all 7. I need to work out a better way to write this. Additional abilities can be picked from the culture(s) a character grew up with. Then finally either a random assortment of abilities, or some remaining skills coming from an occupation picked up along the way.

The 2 advantages are chosen from those presented by the bloodline, culture, or the occupation. I'm working with the idea that if a player has chosen a bloodline advantage at character generation, they can't generally gain it later... unless magic, or notable storyline elements are encountered. Cultural advantages might be gained later, but a character would have to spend years among the culture to justify gaining it. So it's not something your could just pick up in play. Occupational advantages would be less important to acquire at the start of play, because they can be picked up later.  

The default for 4 aegises in SNAFU is allocating one to each. 

So then we can add in the relationships, maybe a dozen point spread across a variety of people, places and things, a bit like backgrounds in the old World of Darkness games. In this case, the things might be pieces of equipment, I'm still working out details, but bits for this amalgamation are falling into place. Just a couple more bits and we'll be there.