Passionate Roleplaying

[frogspawner]

Personality Traits, Allegiance, Status etc in BRP deserves it's own thread. Here are the quotes from the BRP Conversion topic...

Alignment

There is no alignment in BRP.

The Allegiance system is a nice replacement for alignment.

True, but alignments really dont screw the game up any, they just add role playing guidance.

Rules for "Alignment" are really outdated. Who needs guidelines to role-play their character? Not everyone falls neatly into a category, so why should are characters?

So how does Allegiance differ from Alignment?

I agree with "Alignment" being outdated. Personally the only reason I'm using alignment at all is because it's part of DnD 3.5 and that's the current system I'm using. As soon as my current campaign ends and I switch back to BRP, alignment goes away. I'd also like to hear more about the Allegiance system that's been spoken of.

Err, you HAVE played Stormbringer 5 / Elric! at some point, surely?

Alignment (in D&D) is a rather clumsy straight-jacket which really doesn't fit the way the game is usually played, but which is inter-twined with some fundemental aspects of the rules system (significant portions of the magic and class ability systems depend on the use of alignments in 3.0 / 3.5) and is awkward to remove without fairly major surgery to the game and its core assumptions.

Allegiance is a system that lets GM's codify the divine / metaphysical conflict(s) in a setting without straight-jacketing players and allows players who want pursue a specific philisophy / code for their characters to do so and, if they choose, reap some reward for it.

One could even import some Pendragon ideas - "inspiring" on ones Allegiance for example...

Nope. Is Allegiance in BRP0?

Sounds very intriguing to me and a better way to handle those who receive help from divine beings!

Some people love the Allegiance System, some seem to hate it... You have to keep an eye on it, 'cos it can get out of hand quite easily. Basically, you can create an Allegiance to a particular god, principle, moral code, etc, and if you do something significant which embodies that Allegiance you get an increase. So, you could have Allegiance (God of Death) 12, for example. You can then compare that to any other Allegiances you or someone else might have to see how relatively strong it is.

It starts getting interesting when you start allowing special effects from Allegiance. As Nick said, you could even allow "inspiring" from Allegiance; even with the BRP rules, you could conceivably use it to augment another skill roll at an appropriate juncture. Also, the Allegiance rules suggest things like getting extra temporary PP or skill points, etc, from your Allegiance, and even becoming a "champion" of a cause or deity. It can be very flexible.

I'm toying with Allegiance Powers in my game, wondering frex whether to require a certain degree of Allegiance to a deity before you can use certain divine powers. Kind of like the Rune Priest type distinction. The problem is that quite easily you can make Allegiance a *very* powerful stat, and I'm not sure about the unbalancing effect of that. I get the feeling you'd have to keep a tight lid on Allegiance score increases.

If you also use the Status Skill from BRP (which seems to track your relative standing in your peer group(s)) together with Allegiance, you have the makings of quite a sophisticated "relationship" system. As it's presented in the BRP core book, it's very generic, and you'd have to "roll your own" to quite a large extent to determine actual game effects, but it certainly bears thinking about more. I'm definitely going to be testing both out in-game.

I am not familiar with that system…I have been using CoC 3rd-5th Edition and MRQ for conversions. I want Zero Edition, but I’ll probably just wait till 1st Edition comes out…I have no more room for games…

It strikes me Clerics haven't been handled for D20>BRP yet. (Are they in your big magic conversion/kit bash, STS?). Presumably they wouldn't have their spells as skills - since they just call 'em from on high (or low). This might be useful as a basis for priestly-types...

<quote Shaira's stuff>

Sounds good. I've been trying out personality-trait 'skills' (like Pendragon) but I'm not quite happy with how it's going - Allegiance/Status might work out better. For "inspiring" I've been allowing rolls against personality trait %s, once per session each, to double a skill for one use in a suitable situation (or halving if it fails). That works well, but my trait-skill increase/progression doesn't. Maybe Allegiance/Status will do the trick. (Is BRP's Status the same thing as S5/Elric's Allegiance? Do traits fit the usage of either?)

If you could have Allegiances to several different traits, that might dilute the unbalancing effect of a single, over-powerful Allegiance. Rather than Allegiance(Babisiya) or whatever deity, giving access to more powerful spells at certain percentages, you could have several "Trait-Allegiances" required of the god's priests (perhaps Pious, Cruel, Cunning, Vengeful, Cowardly in her case?). Presumably there'd be some normal skill requirements too, RQ-style - all to the good, I already use that approach in my converted campaign. Trait-skills would fit nicely.

For Conversion from D20 you could have Allegiance(Law) or (Chaos), but presumably not both, and a separate Allegiance (Good) (or Evil) as well. Simplistic, but opens the door for other characterful loyalties/traits, breaking-in the D&D-ers gently. What percentages? Dunno.

The more I think about it, the more I think there's a really cool "relationships" system hiding somewhere in here, struggling to get out.

First, no - Status skill is *not* the same as SB5 Allegiance. It's actually a skill, and it has two quite different suggested uses. The first of these is a completely linear, absolute magnitude measurement of a character's overall social standing - depending on milieu, Status 10% could mean "peasant", Status 50% "merchant", Status 100% "king". I'll admit I don't like this system - it seems to try to codify something which in game terms probably should be quite woolly ("hey - you get 3 extra Status as a reward for killing the dragon - you're a knight now!"). It could work for games where the social milieu is very abstracted, but personally I deal with social strata differently.

The second use of the Status skill is much more cool! :cool: Basically, it measures your relative standing within your peer group. Say you're a peasant (chorus: "I'm a peasant..." ) - you want to go to the local lord and get some protection against the BEM that's plaguing your farm. Does he listen? How influential a peasant are you? That's where the Status score comes in - Status (Peasant) 10% is some antisocial shepherd who nobody really knows that well - Status (Peasant) 90% is Sheriff Jarndyke who always buys everyone drinks at the tavern.

So then you can have Status (Temple), Status (Legion), whatever, which can act as Opposed Skills, augment other skill attempts, and so on. I think there's a fair bit of mileage here.

Regarding Traits, I've shied away just for now, wanting to avoid the "quantify everything" approach of Pendragon, but I'm tempted by the Heroquest approach of just identifying major traits - maybe "Hate (Lunars) 75%" or some such. I think as one-off abilities, particularly gained through play, they could be useful. I'm a *little* wary of getting down to too much prescriptive stuff for "Rune-level entry" type mechanics just for now, though. So, the "Allegiance (Babisiya)" stat would represent all of the Cruel, Cunning, Vengeful traits rolled into one (nice definition of Babisiya's traits, BTW - you been reading over my shoulder? ). There's a lot of scope for customisation and flexibility here, though - my opinions are subject to change at the drop of a hat!

Interesting topic - worthy of its own thread?

Great minds think alike. I've just developed a system for Mongoose's Elric game which focuses precisely on Love and Hate and uses the skills in almost the same way you intimate here. I think there's extreme amounts of mileage in these social and relationship skills, and they add a layer of extra interest to the game that's been lacking before.

I think (perhaps quite unintentionally?) BRP has actually ended up being more than the some of its parts with the new edition, and - for me at least - has taken the rules very gently in quite a new direction (new for BRP type games, perhaps excepting Pendragon) with a decent Opposed Rolls system, the Complimentary Skills rule, the Status skill, Allegiance, and (potentially) a disciplined use of Traits (& perhaps Passions).

I'm pretty cool with how to deploy all of the above (well, still a bit undecided about the extent of Allegiance) with the exception of Traits. What I'm trying to avoid with any kind of trait-based rules is a system where everyone ends up with Brave 90% and augments their attack rolls with it all the time - in my experience HQ has a tendency to go that way. I'm not sure if there's a simple answer to that yet (apart from "no, you can't do that", of course), but I'm rolling it around a bit and seeing if anything settles out.

Good to hear about the Love/Hate rules thing for Mongoose Elric. Are you restricting it to "just" the 2 passions, or also things like Envy, Jealousy, Anger, etc? Somehow I get the feeling that Passions are more manageable and less pedantic in play than Traits - they feel less like "character micro-management", if you know what I mean, and more like broad-brush character "powers" (to overuse the word). The fact they have to be targeted (ie Hate (Lunars) rather than just "Hate") whereas Traits don't to me deepens the role-playing aspect rather than attempts to replace it (which I often get the feeling Traits can do - they can get in the way, anyhow).

I think that traits, in general, can get a little out of hand. HQ frequently suffers from augment-fests, so the rules on Love/Hate are focused squarely on these as passions, without muddying the waters with similar mechanics for jealousy, envy, and the such like. Things of that nature are actually handled under the game's Compulsions and are designed to be roleplayed rather than boiled-down to a percentile roll.

However, Love and Hate are such extreme emotions, and so fundamental to the Elric saga, that I think they have a solid place. You can argue that jealousy is a sort of sub-trait of hatred - I mean, if you have Hate (Elric) at 25%, do you really hate him? Or is it more likely you're just jealous of his sword?

So no, I deliberately avoided a whole Traits mechanic because it can get in the way, and can detract from roleplaying too. Love and Hate, though, are such strong drivers that, in the Elric saga, they trigger the destruction of entire cities.

OK, I can't resist - you've made me break off from my reading.

I'm very pleased to see the Pendragon-style Personality Traits (which I like, even though they're just given as an NPC option) and an Allegiance(<religion>) skill (which can give extra PP, D.I. and maybe other GM-defined benefits, like more powerful Rune-style magic perhaps) in BRP0. I'd deploy them like this:

Allegiance increases when a character has "behaved in a manner favoured by the divine force", which I'll say is by exhibitng traits the god likes (from a list of about 5 per god). Traits would be like skills, but each could only be used successfully once per game session. In a situation where the player can justify it, and is just about to use some other normal skill, a Successful Trait-skill roll would make the other skill-roll "Easy" (i.e. double chance); Special x4, Critical x10, Fumble x1/10 with an option to abort the action but at a cost of immediately decreasing the Allegiance by the usual increment (increasing some 'opposite' instead, as BRP says, seems a bit odd to me). When a character had ticks for enough (all?) of a god's favoured traits, they'd gain a tick for that Allegiance too. Non-allegianced characters could have them too, but obviously get less benefit. Their use is entirely voluntary - only those the player chooses for personality/allegiance need be listed - so hopefully this system would not 'get in the way' of roleplaying. Though cruel GMs might call for allegiance-test rolls (as per Maintaining Allegiance, p312), if they don't act as Brave as they should when the troll-berserkers charge...

I'm thinking these trait-skills would represent the amount above normal (i.e. 50%) for that trait, so they would be on the usual 1-100% scale as other skills (not starting over 50%), e.g. an NPC with "Aggressive/Passive 90/10" would be equivalent to trait-skill "Aggressive 40%". Characterful Loves and Hates can be bunged in too. Cool with that?

So we are going to use a skill to enforce roleplaying? Or at least judge role playing?

Seems a bit heavy handed, like the old honor system from AD&D 1E Oriental Adventures.

I think that's an extreme way of viewing things. Ultimately it depends on the capabilities of the players and the GM.

The Love/Hate rules I've developed aren't designed to either enforce or judge roleplaying. They're there as a measure of a particular passion and how that passion influences other skills and abilities. The personality traits found in Pendragon and BRP (for NPCs) are again used as a measure of strength of feeling - an aid to the roleplaying rather than a strict enforcement of it. There are times when emotional and social measures can't be easily roleplayed and having a mechanic to introduce how they can have an effect is, IMHO, a good thing. We have skills for all manner of other things that aren't easy to roleplay, so why not traits, passions and, in your example of Oriental Adventures, honour and allegiance? For example, in one game I'm playing at the moment, my character is a nasty piece of Fagin-like work with a sadistic streak. I'm not sadistic or confrontational by nature, and whilst I can roleplay the traits to a certain extent, I find that using a skill roll like Intimidation helps greatly to bringing about the effects that I wouldn't be comfortable roleplaying to the full (nor the GM necessarly wanting me to!)

So I think these things definitely have a place. I don't think they either enforce or judge roleplaying, but they're a very useful device for simulating how personality or depth of feeling influences or impacts on a character's other skills, abilities and interactions.

This particular discussion, BTW, perhaps deserves its own strand? Its a very good, thought provoking debate, but not necessarily to do with BRP conversion? Just a thought.

I agree on this.

Seconds out, round two...!

[Shaira]

Cool summary Frogspawner!

PK Games (I think it was) just asked also about Warhammer Companion and whether anyone knew anything about it's "passion"-style rules. I for one don't, and also it set me thinking if there are many games out there which try to quantify passions / traits / allegiances, other than Pendragon & HeroQuest. I'm sure there must be - I just don't happen to own any of them!

Might be worth quickly surveying the existing lay of the land before hammering out the BRP possibilities further - just a thought.

One other thing occurred to me today which I thought was quite cool. My Chronicles campaign has a pantheon of gods which all have their own jealously guarded sorcery spells (as well as divine powers, but that's a different story). Under "certain circumstances", priests of those temples can gain access to those spells, and even sorcerors who aren't officially members of the temples can gain access, too.

Previously I've had no satisfactory mechanic to simulate this process - a bit like the old "satisfy the examiners" thing from RuneQuest, if that means anything. Then, this week, it's occurred to me that Status (Temple) is the perfect skill to use for this. Priests should have a reasonable percentage, unaffiliated sorcerors will want to develop a decent percentage if they're trying to get access to the Temple libraries.

So, as an example, Ulega-Bagu the P'Tek Shamaness of Babisiya the Night Hag (darkness goddess) might have Status (Temple of Babisiya) 75%, indicating she's a notorious and very well-placed shamaness with access to many of the Temple's inner circles and secret factions, and can usually get access to any Temple sorcery which is going round. On the other hand, Lord Efe'enand of Palanqa, Aspirant of the Seventh Circle of the August College of the Seekers Beyond the Veil, despite his high rank in his own sorcerous college (Status (Seekers Beyond the Veil) 70%, has only a 25% skill in Status (Temple of Babisiya), and is going to have to do some pretty heavy favours for the Darkness Temple, or bring some pretty heavy bribes to bear, if he wants to get access to that "Summon Umbrai (Darkness Demon)" spell he needs for his next sorcerous working...

You get the picture. It looks like the Status skill might be a biggie in my games!

Cheers,

Sarah

Cheers,

Sarah

[frogspawner]

Ta. Yes, if anyone knows of other Personality etc systems, please tell us all about them.

Hmmm... Status(Temple of Babisiya) versus Allegiance(Babisiya). A fine distinction - but interesting. The former convinces other members of the hierarchy to let you learn Sorcery spells from their grimoires, the latter lets you learn Magic spells from the goddess herself, perhaps?

But I must get back to my reading and learn all about such nuances...

[Shaira]

Hmmm... Status(Temple of Babisiya) versus Allegiance(Babisiya). A fine distinction - but interesting. The former convinces other members of the hierarchy to let you learn Sorcery spells from their grimoires, the latter lets you learn Magic spells from the goddess herself, perhaps?

The distinction you make is quite correct, IMHO - Status measures a *social* construct, Allegiance measures a moral or supernatural one. But actually, how (and indeed if) to use Allegiance is what I'm brainstorming - and frankly having trouble with - at the moment. I'm very wary making the Divine Powers of a deity contingent upon a priest's Allegiance score - particularly as Allegiance as it stands is basically an optional rule. Currently I'm sticking with the BRP rules as written, and if I do utilise Allegiance it'll be for those additional PP / skill points / etc that the optional rules describe. What I *don't* want right now is to put an optional rule in such a central place.

Having said that, the scope for using Allegiance in this way is quite promising. For starters, you could say that only characters with 20+ allegiance to a deity can get divine powers from that deity - effectively defining an entry level for a priest, and stopping anyone else from rocking up to a Temple, paying their dues, and getting heaps of divine benefits. But it's this very bluntness and absolute-ness that makes me nervous of using Allegiance too widely.

I think it'd also be profitable to see Allegiance in terms of a skill - or indeed a Passion - and perhaps use it to augment other skills at appropriate junctures. "May Thor protect me!" kind of thing.

Then - and this is where I blow away the BRP rules completely and am floating free in "making it all up as I go along" territory - you could actually draw an analogy between Allegiance and the various Runic Affinities which the current HeroQuest and some of its previous, BRP-derived predecessors used. So, for example, Allegiance (Babisiya) actually measures a character's tie to the supernatural forces (Glorantha would call it a "Rune") of Darkness; naturally Babisiya the Goddess approves of this Allegiance, but also, when the Allegiance gets powerful enough (say, "Apotheosis" level in BRP - what's that, 100 points?), characters could start deriving / embodying / incarnating their own supernatural powers. And so you get a path appearing towards Herodom / Demigodhood / whatever.

Just brainstorming again, but hopefully you can see what I'm stabbing around trying to describe!

Cheers,

Sarah

[The Last Conformist]

Random thought: Allegiance (Light/Dark) could perhaps be used for Kult's mental balance mechanic if/when I ever do BRP game in the Kult cosmology I've been thinking of.

[NickMiddleton]

The distinction you make is quite correct, IMHO - Status measures a *social* construct, Allegiance measures a moral or supernatural one. But actually, how (and indeed if) to use Allegiance is what I'm brainstorming - and frankly having trouble with - at the moment. I'm very wary making the Divine Powers of a deity contingent upon a priest's Allegiance score - particularly as Allegiance as it stands is basically an optional rule. Currently I'm sticking with the BRP rules as written, and if I do utilise Allegiance it'll be for those additional PP / skill points / etc that the optional rules describe. What I *don't* want right now is to put an optional rule in such a central place.

Having said that, the scope for using Allegiance in this way is quite promising. For starters, you could say that only characters with 20+ allegiance to a deity can get divine powers from that deity - effectively defining an entry level for a priest, and stopping anyone else from rocking up to a Temple, paying their dues, and getting heaps of divine benefits. But it's this very bluntness and absolute-ness that makes me nervous of using Allegiance too widely.

Funnily enough, exactly my thought (related to a setting using magic based on the RQIII magic systems) was to have a Character's Allegiance score (if Allied to that allegiance - i.e. 20 or more greater than all other allegiances AND the character has committed to the allegiance) as the source of the Characters ability to use "Divine Blessings" ( RQIII style Spirit Magic), whilst "Divine Miracles" (RQIII style Divine magic) would come from sacrificing POW as in RQIII. IN the specific setting everyone would still have limted access to "Hedge Magic" (RQIII Spirit Magic) but only Divine Priests and Hedge Wizards would have significant Spirit magic spells.

What I like about using Allegiance in this way is that as a system it is a character choice driven mechanism for power that rewards "right action" (doing things that promote the character's allied Allegiance). Likewise, if a characters actions favour a different allegiance (or are detrimental to their allied allegiance) the player can see the effect and the risk, but is left free to role play the implications /consequences in their characters behaviour. So there is a justifiable moral framework associated with particular Allegiances but one that players are free to role play with, rtaher than being straight jacketed by.

I think it'd also be profitable to see Allegiance in terms of a skill - or indeed a Passion - and perhaps use it to augment other skills at appropriate junctures. "May Thor protect me!" kind of thing.

That's definitely what I had in mind when I mentioned Pendragon - and extra short term "boost" from invoking your Allegiance, with greater benefits for Allied Allegiances.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[frogspawner]

Having said that, the scope for using Allegiance in this way is quite promising. For starters, you could say that only characters with 20+ allegiance to a deity can get divine powers from that deity - effectively defining an entry level for a priest...

Funnily enough, exactly my thought (related to a setting using magic based on the RQIII magic systems) was to have a Character's Allegiance score (if Allied to that allegiance - i.e. 20 or more greater than all other allegiances...

Was that really the exact thought? The "20+" sounds more like an absolute Allegiance percentage to me.

... AND the character has committed to the allegiance) as the source of the Characters ability to use "Divine Blessings" ( RQIII style Spirit Magic), whilst "Divine Miracles" (RQIII style Divine magic) would come from sacrificing POW as in RQIII.

Yes, that sounds good. But I'd prefer to use absolute percentages of their 'acknowledged' Allegiance (not Best minus 2nd Best, or whatever).

Previously I thought it odd to build up other allegiances opposed to your main one (e.g. a good-guy priest having Allegiance(Law) 90%, but also Allegiance(Chaos) 50%, due to dodgy deeds). But now I'm fairly happy with it - it can give rise to the classic "good priest turns evil"* scenario, flipping over to the Dark Side just by acknowledging the allegiance he has built up (spot-on for those 'Galactic Knights'!). Using the absolute values, they'd still have full powers (or more) but from the other lot - which seems more suitable (more tempting....) than having to re-start from scratch.

(* Don't seem to hear about "evil priest turns good" scenarios, though (except DV, of course!). Should it be possible that way round?)