Passions, doing the math

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There is another way - you can transmute a passion once you have a reason to change the verb. Hate can become Fear, and vice versa, or could even swing to Respect. Love can turn into Hate or Loathe, and given a strong enough in game-moment, possibly vice versa, too.

Or you could broaden or pinpoint the object of the passion. Esrolians could become Esrolian Grandmothers, or a specific House or Alliance.

I fully agree, but if I said that, I would be seen as a "passion terrorist" 😛 , as it is not in the rules (Or I don't remember it), 

For sure, that is a kind of things players may propose with strong arguments (in this case, a so hard change should come from the player, I think, with GM suggestion or not) 

[Alex]

11 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Players should have a high degree of agency in their passions. If a character has a bunch of passions all at 60% then I'd encourage them to drop some of them, clearly the character isn't all that motivated about those issues. I'd certainly not risk rolling an augment on a 60% passion! The skill has to be really low for risking that to be worthwhile, and surely there's a better passion you could use.

Some of them are probably a little overlappy, too.  If a PC has emerged from chargen with a slew of similar-scoped passions but all...  moderate-valued, I think there could be scope to "smoosh two together to make one good one".  You can readily have six different Loyalties, all at 60%.  Fewer at higher initial values seems much more story-driving -- and works better for the PC game-mechanically, indeed.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Alex

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

You can readily have six different Loyalties, all at 60%.

Yes. You can even go much higher (The highest I've seen was over 10, with 3 of them at 80% IIRC)

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Fewer at higher initial values seems muck more story-driving

I don't think so. More passions can mark a character with a tortured soul, conflicting interests, or more simply a broad pattern of interests.

1 hour ago, Alex said:

and works better for the PC game-mechanically, indeed.

Definitely.

[Alex]

13 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Yes. You can even go much higher (The highest I've seen was over 10, with 3 of them at 80% IIRC)

At least there were pack-leaders!

13 minutes ago, Kloster said:

I don't think so. More passions can mark a character with a tortured soul, conflicting interests, or more simply a broad pattern of interests.

Could do, sure.  But 60% vs 60% is less of a tortured soul than a frenzy of borderline apathy. 🙂  If this comes up organically in play, or the player is delighted with it as it arrives out of chargen, then great stuff.  But if they find it bitty, meh-ish, and with a poor ratio of descriptive complexity to "oomph" (as I think I would), I think it's useful and valid to offer them the opportunity to do some consolidation.

[Alex]

5 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I fully agree, but if I said that, I would be seen as a "passion terrorist" 😛 , as it is not in the rules (Or I don't remember it), 

I don't think it is, but think of the GM, the player(s), and the rules as a three-member presidency.  If the interested parties at the table are in agreement, then cry Emerson! about foolish consistency with the text of the rules.  It's the trollkin of low-CHA souls, you know. 🙂

[Ian Absentia]

22 minutes ago, Kloster said:

More passions can mark a character with a tortured soul, conflicting interests, or more simply a broad pattern of interests.

Honestly, more than 3 or 4 begins to dilute the definition of the word "passion" and becomes just-another-game-mechanic.  Too many Passions begins to look like a personality disorder.

!i!

[Bren]

On 11/16/2021 at 3:50 PM, Alex said:

That entirely depends how frequently, and whether directed decreases and being balanced out by frequent experience ticks, or indeed by (semi-)directed or "agreed" increases, as the rules do provide some (admittedly indirect) support for doing.

I agree.

Quote

To be clear, I was talking about something else there: the idea of "mandatory" Passion increases, over the player's protests they don't want them.  Players will not infrequently be somewhat unhappy with "you took away my stuff!" types of development, but that's par for the course in RQ-style games.  What some may be a good deal less happy still with is having something added to their character, especially if it's a "telling me how I'm allowed to play my character" one.

I probably overlooked the narrower context you were using. To me, adding or increasing a passion that a player doesn't want or decreasing or taking away a passion they do want are just two sides of the same coin. In an ongoing campaign, I want the player and the GM to be in relative agreement with any additive or subtractive changes to the passions of a PC.

One thing I really liked about the Pendragon traits was that they were paired. This allowed a character to have a trait checked if the character's behavior in a significant situation reflected that trait e.g., they acted Greedy or they acted Generous. In this case the change wasn't automatic, it required a successful increase check. And it was possible for both traits to have checks which tended to mitigate extremes. (And that makes sense to me for a character whose behavior vacillates.) Passions usually aren't in opposition. (One could, in theory have both Love X and Hate X, but I haven't seen that occur yet.) So changes tend to be automatic (increase 10%) rather than conditional, (roll to see if you increase). Rolling to increase slows the rate of change and the introduction of the random die roll makes the change feel less personal since the dice decided. Both of which are likely to decrease the disagreement between player and GM.

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Bren said:

To me, adding or increasing a passion that a player doesn't want or decreasing or taking away a passion they do want are just two sides of the same coin. In an ongoing campaign, I want the player and the GM to be in relative agreement with any additive or subtractive changes to the passions of a PC.

I agree that conceptually they're very similar, and in practice with the RQG RAW they're pretty similar too.  There's no "you have a 'famous' Passion, so the GM can dictate that you act strictly in line with it' clause, as there is in Pendragon.  The only 'penalty' in such cases being a rather Yelmic-bigamy one.  "How sad, you decreased the Passion I didn't want to be increased in the first place, never mind."  I just note it's something that some players could get sulky about, so I'd have a "bonjour l'équipe, how're handling Passions, then?" chat before I wandered in the direction of making them less "by agreement" than the shared text.  I might be overly cautious from too many "I hate passions and here's why!" discussions on t'internet, mind you!

2 hours ago, Bren said:

One thing I really liked about the Pendragon traits was that they were paired. This allowed a character to have a trait checked if the character's behavior in a significant situation reflected that trait e.g., they acted Greedy or they acted Generous.

Yeah, we only get this with Runes in RQG, which partially cover this, somewhat moreso if you explicitly note a personality trope with each, in the way Six Seasons in Sartar apparently does with NPC listings.  So your closest standard equivalent of "Forgiving" would be Harmony, if you want to put that spin on it.  So that might be an option in the "somebody burned your stead down, whacha think about that, huh-huh-huh?" sitch.

2 hours ago, Bren said:

In this case the change wasn't automatic, it required a successful increase check.

I have a vague memory of their being some sort of provision for both, with directed increases for the more significant instances, but I'm not certain as to the provenance of the former.  Might be the rules, or published adventure, or house rule, or word of mouth...

[Alex]

Example of an annoying use of Passions.  In the SoloQuest: make a Hate Lunars roll, opposed by an Honour roll, then act like an automaton according to the results.  (Also, dear Kallyr, please don't blow your "in urgent need of assistance" signal, then order someone to stand waiting doing nothing in the middle of a pitched battle.  You can see why she might have got on some people's nerves, mind you. 🙂)

[Edit]  Sorry, misread on my part -- and bit of a slow-roll on the part of the SQ.  It reads as if you're being given no choice about which to do...  then the following paragraph restates the "or else reduce the passion to 80% if you act against it".

Edited November 18, 2021 by Alex

[Kloster]

11 hours ago, Alex said:

If this comes up organically in play, or the player is delighted with it as it arrives out of chargen, then great stuff.  But if they find it bitty, meh-ish, and with a poor ratio of descriptive complexity to "oomph" (as I think I would), I think it's useful and valid to offer them the opportunity to do some consolidation.

On this, we agree.

11 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Honestly, more than 3 or 4 begins to dilute the definition of the word "passion" and becomes just-another-game-mechanic.  Too many Passions begins to look like a personality disorder.

As you have already 3 from homeland and 1 from cult at chargen, it seems to me difficult to have fewer than 5 or 6, once personal history kicks in.

[PhilHibbs]

11 hours ago, Alex said:

Could do, sure.  But 60% vs 60% is less of a tortured soul than a frenzy of borderline apathy.

Yes, it's worth bearing in mind that 60% is the very minimum, it makes no sense to have "Loyalty" or "Love" at 50% or less. Anything less than 50% is an anti-passion, you're more likely to fail than succeed. When my game re-starts (hopefully next week-end) I will encourage the players to ditch maybe all but one of their 60% passions. Maybe wait until a 60% passion goes up and start dropping the others. I like leaving some choices to during play, sometimes you don't know who a character is until you've been behind their eyes for a bit.

Edited November 18, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[PhilHibbs]

I was just going to look through the system to see if it's possible to start off with passions all at 60% but I see that Aranda is in that situation.

Devotion (Babeester Gor) 60%
Honor 60%
Love (family) 60%
Loyalty (Hulta Clan) 60%
Loyalty (Nochet) 60%
Loyalty (Queen Samastina) 60%

[French Desperate WindChild]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

Example of an annoying use of Passions.  In the SoloQuest: make a Hate Lunars roll, opposed by an Honour roll, then act like an automaton according to the results.  (Also, dear Kallyr, please don't blow your "in urgent need of assistance" signal, then order someone to stand waiting doing nothing in the middle of a pitched battle.  You can see why she might have got on some people's nerves, mind you. 🙂)

[Edit]  Sorry, misread on my part -- and bit of a slow-roll on the part of the SQ.  It reads as if you're being given no choice about which to do...  then the following paragraph restates the "or else reduce the passion to 80% if you act against it".

 

I think your example is the best we can find about all this passionate passion discussion: not the use in the soloquest, but the "misread":

the point is not to say

- your character has a passion, you player must follow it

but

- your character has a passion, if you player don't follow it, there may(low passion or low transgression) or must*,** (high passion or high transgression) be an impact on the passion score (and sometimes, on other part of the play)

 

the impact's weight depends on the table, of course

* note that the rules are hard with passion >80%

** will someone accept that humakti with 100% in honor will not lose some %  after killing an innocent weak hand tied hostage ?,

and how satisfying it could be to roleplay when the humakti "must" kill this hostage because their lord ordered them to murder the hostage (loyalty versus honor)

samurai (at least in litteracy, the reality may be different) find a way to solve this issue: kill then seppuku

 

6 minutes ago, Kloster said:

As you have already 3 from homeland and 1 from cult at chargen, it seems to me difficult to have fewer than 5 or 6, once personal history kicks in.

seems to me too 🙂

but I think the point is if you have 10 different hate passion or 5 different love passion, what could mean passion then ? maybe transform the 10 hate passions in one : "hate everybody"  or "hate any foreigner" but if you love Raoul, Richard, Germaine, Sarah and William the definition of love would be special and interesting to explore

[Kloster]

13 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but I think the point is if you have 10 different hate passion or 5 different love passion, what could mean passion then ? maybe transform the 10 hate passions in one : "hate everybody"  or "hate any foreigner" but if you love Raoul, Richard, Germaine, Sarah and William the definition of love would be special and interesting to explore

Agreed.

[soltakss]

16 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

if you love Raoul, Richard, Germaine, Sarah and William the definition of love would be special and interesting to explore

It depends, those could be Romantic Love, the Love of a brother or sister, Love to a blood-brother or blood-sister, or even Love in a general term. Love is not always romantic.

[AndreJarosch]

25 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I was just going to look through the system to see if it's possible to start off with passions all at 60% but I see that Aranda is in that situation.

Devotion (Babeester Gor) 60%
Honor 60%
Love (family) 60%
Loyalty (Hulta Clan) 60%
Loyalty (Nochet) 60%
Loyalty (Queen Samastina) 60%

Samastina IS the Queen of Nochet, so no conflict there, but what COULD give some problems, is that Samastina is not from the Hulta Clan. 

[Alex]

6 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, it's worth bearing in mind that 60% is the very minimum, it makes no sense to have "Loyalty" or "Love" at 50% or less. Anything less than 50% is an anti-passion, you're more likely to fail than succeed. When my game re-starts (hopefully next week-end) I will encourage the players to ditch maybe all but one of their 60% passions. Maybe wait until a 60% passion goes up and start dropping the others.

Yeah, the things that "nest" (individual, family, clan, tribe, city, kingdom ...  geographical macrolozenge, the lozenge, Creation, Cosmic Dragon...) are good candidates for that, in that the overlap on the one hand, but potentially conflict too.  So orchestrate a mini "Karallan's Plight", suggest to the player that might be the "symmetry breaker", offer a decent-sized upgrade of the one in return for ditching the other, bish-bash-bosh.

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I think your example is the best we can find about all this passionate passion discussion: not the use in the soloquest, but the "misread":

The morale for me being, don't write one paragraph implying the choice had been made for you, and then write the next to say the opposite!  "But wait, there's more..."  What does the the following text put the reader in mind of?

Spoiler

"If Vasana’s Hate (Lunar Empire) wins, her mind clouds with rage and she is overcome with the desire to stab Horatio, despite Kallyr’s orders. Go to 98. If her Honor Passion wins, or if both Passions get the same success level, you may choose whichever action you prefer Vasana to take."

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

** will someone accept that humakti with 100% in honor will not lose some %  after killing an innocent weak hand tied hostage ?,

Given that the rules expressly cover this type of case, and that no-one is saying otherwise, is this really an outstanding question?

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but I think the point is if you have 10 different hate passion or 5 different love passion, what could mean passion then ? maybe transform the 10 hate passions in one : "hate everybody"  or "hate any foreigner" but if you love Raoul, Richard, Germaine, Sarah and William the definition of love would be special and interesting to explore

I think the question isn't so much, "how do you condense all that detail?" as "does the player even want that much detail?"

2 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

Samastina IS the Queen of Nochet, so no conflict there, but what COULD give some problems, is that Samastina is not from the Hulta Clan. 

Potential conflict nonetheless:  personal allegiance vs "the good of the realm".  See premium-cable dramas and current events, ibid.  But that pair are certainly a candidate for a "clarifying consolidation", for my money.

[Ian Absentia]

6 hours ago, Kloster said:

As you have already 3 from homeland and 1 from cult at chargen, it seems to me difficult to have fewer than 5 or 6, once personal history kicks in.

Yep.

!i!

Edited November 18, 2021 by Ian Absentia

[Eff]

Even using abbreviated family history, you'll have access to seven: 3 homeland, 1 cult, and 3 personal choice. Of course, unless you double up on the cult one, you'll have only two of those greater than 60%. 

Might be worth working out an alternate intermediate method...

[Bren]

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I was just going to look through the system to see if it's possible to start off with passions all at 60% but I see that Aranda is in that situation.

Devotion (Babeester Gor) 60%
Honor 60%
Love (family) 60%
Loyalty (Hulta Clan) 60%
Loyalty (Nochet) 60%
Loyalty (Queen Samastina) 60%

What could be interesting would be to have situations arise in play where there are dramatic conflicts between two or more of these modest passions. Then the player either chooses a behavior that aligns with one and conflicts with another or they choose to roll one passion vs. another. Then based on their choice or dice result, one passion increases and the other decreases and is removed. Perhaps that was the intent in generating multiple, modest passions in the first place?

I think I'll ask my players to suggest example conflicts in their passions that they would find interesting (or alternately tell me one's they would like to avoid seeing in play).

Edited November 18, 2021 by Bren

[Alex]

15 minutes ago, Eff said:

Even using abbreviated family history, you'll have access to seven: 3 homeland, 1 cult, and 3 personal choice. Of course, unless you double up on the cult one, you'll have only two of those greater than 60%.

Abbreviated being...  skipping grandpops/ma?  Or all ancestors and just doing the character's own "previous experience" events?

23 minutes ago, Eff said:

Might be worth working out an alternate intermediate method...

For me, the ideal version would play out a lot like a 'rules-lite' soloquest.  Which is the opposite of "intermediate" in terms of amount of effort to play through, space to print it, and above all, effort to develop it -- though RQG has done the heavy lifting by providing the actual key events and their sorts of consequences.  Giving just a little more player choice would, I think, get rid of the "bitty Passions" issues on the one hand, and the "stuck with a character having strong views you didn't buy into" on the other.

As for quicker/shorter versions; I have a vague plan to number-crunch the RQG chargen process to get the range of of raw numbers it spits out, and from there, to reverse-engineer something to generate comparable characters in fewer steps, and on hopefully many fewer pages.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

10 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, it's worth bearing in mind that 60% is the very minimum, it makes no sense to have "Loyalty" or "Love" at 50% or less

I disagree.  Sure, you won't use a passion of less than 50% to Augment anything.  But as an "ask for a favor" mechanism, it's just fine.

You character met and conversed politely with Dappled Light 2 years ago?  You can either note that in history somewhere, or note it as a 50% or 40% or even 20% Loyalty.  You meet her guards again and say "remember me, please don't kill us!", you can make that roll.

[Lordabdul]

On 11/13/2021 at 1:35 PM, Pentallion said:

I specifically started my thread by saying "I've noticed plenty of examples in the adventures released where if someone fails a passion roll, they lose 1D6 (or some appropriate amount based on the situation). " I'm not trying to call out specific adventures so I'm not giving examples, plenty can be found. I'm only saying it's probably not a good precedent to set to have passions reduced on failed rolls based upon the mathematics I explained above.

I searched "1D6%" in the two published adventure books and didn't find any example of that. There are only a couple examples of "if you act dishonorably, lose -1D6% Honor". Can you actually give us some book and page references?

And yes, failing a Passion roll should NOT generally lead to losing points in that Passion, as per RAW. That's only on Fumbles.

Passions are supposed to support roleplay. The scores go up and down because the players are playing along or against them. The scores should follow what the players are already doing, and then provide a positive feedback loop that lets them get bonuses for continuing to act that way. Not the other way around! If it feels like Passions are getting in the way, it's probable that the GM or player are handling them "the wrong way".

Episode 3 of the God Learners podcast has @David Scott as a guest to share his experience playing with Passions and Runes in RQG:

[Alex]

11 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

I disagree.  Sure, you won't use a passion of less than 50% to Augment anything.  But as an "ask for a favor" mechanism, it's just fine.

You character met and conversed politely with Dappled Light 2 years ago?  You can either note that in history somewhere, or note it as a 50% or 40% or even 20% Loyalty.  You meet her guards again and say "remember me, please don't kill us!", you can make that roll.

That sounds perfectly valid as a mechanic, but it does sound a little like a recipe for the eight-page HQ character-sheets of legend.  "I'm just adding up my Augments, be right with you."  "If you need me, I'll be in the bar." 🙂 it's also kinda stretching the intuitive bounds of the word "Passion" -- even if you never attempt to take it into the realms of "Inspiration".

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, Alex said:

That sounds perfectly valid as a mechanic, but it does sound a little like a recipe for the eight-page HQ character-sheets of legend.  "I'm just adding up my Augments, be right with you."  "If you need me, I'll be in the bar." 🙂

Not applicable, as you can use only a single augment for anything. There might be choice paralysis, unless your player is a roll player who goes strictly by the numbers.

Yes, interactions of the character with the world is bound to be complex, and hard to track. As is the character's history building up a reputation.

 

6 minutes ago, Alex said:

it's also kinda stretching the intuitive bounds of the word "Passion" -- even if you never attempt to take it into the realms of "Inspiration".

Lots of little things can hurt or at least irritate you. Look at the lengths people go to prove that someone is wrong on the internet...

There are quite a few things I have measurable amounts of bad feelings about - loathe, dislike, hate... But then those could be summed up in a single stat "irritable" with a list of things I am irritable about, to a similar effect. And on the other end, there are things I enjoy quite a bit, but which rarely will aid me in brutally inhuming whoever goes against my enjoyment.

Basically, for negative feelings, think about what makes you (want to) curse aloud.