RPG: Looking Under The Hood.
I’m working on a solo focused, hex crawling RPG with the working title Onward to the Horizon. I’m forging it in the dark, because Blades in the Dark by John Harper is a game that rewired my brain.
Reflecting on Blades, I stumbled into a thought that opened up my game space a bit.
Publishing of Blades is handled (in part) by Evil Hat, home of the Fate roleplaying game.
That connection sparked a link in my head a while ago: in some versions of Fate, skills are replaced by approaches. Approaches are how you do the thing, not the thing you’re doing. “I Cleverly hit the weak spot we found earlier” is as valid a framing as “With all my physical Force, I strike the weak spot.”
The three attributes most Blades games use can be best seen in this framing— they are the approach to the actions under them, how they are mentally framed by your character.
I’ve always loved how you gain dots in Blade Attributes— by getting the first dot in a new action. With this framing, you are expanding your mind by adding an action— “Oh, I can do this with this approach”.
But while working on Horizon, I had a realization.
A set Attribute to Action link is not required.
Horizon is going to, by its nature, be a little… broader in scope than typical Forged games. Because typical games made in the Dark (where the dirty work needs be done) usually have a defined setting to hang all the fiction around. And Horizon does— you are a wanderer, exploring a world. That gives us something. I just wanted a bit more variety in my wanderers.
My self playtest character is an adventurous chef, after all. But every character doesn’t need a cook action.
Every character doesn’t need that.
Every character…
Well, we don’t need to give it to every character, do we?
Each attribute in Horizon is ranked one to six. Each will have two “typical” adventurer actions linked to them by default.
And four empty slots.
Playbooks can include playbook actions that while not exclusive do mark what the character is focused on, and that combined with special abilities define each playbook.
So, yes. The fighter can take Cooking and make perfectly acceptable meal with the meat he bought off that hunter… but a Chef can work wonders because of his focus.
I think I’m cooking. But maybe it’s raw. Tell me on mastodon at @edwardclaytonandrew@kind.social
Later Note: Eddie was in fact, dealing with Raw stuff. It was okay, though.