The Blog of Justice

I’ve been thinking about Eidolon for awhile now. I haven’t been happy with what I’ve written so far but I think some of the core concepts are solid. This morning an idea hit me and I think I finally know how to make this game. What I am going to do is outline a few bits of game design theory that I’m a big fan of. For some of it I have very specific ideas of how it applies to Eidolon and I’ll outline those as well. If you’re curious with the direction I want to take Eidolon from a game standpoint read on. My plan is to do a second article for Setting Design Principles to go over the key features I want to see in Eidolon’s fiction. I also might expand this later as I start digging more into my mechanics.

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There are five basic senses, Sight, Smell, Touch, Hear, and Taste. Every memory is made up of these five parts. Some memories are stronger in some Senses and weaker in others. The Rating of the Memory will determine how many points you can spend across the five senses. The five sense all determine different ways in which that Memory can affect things.You might call Senses your ghostly powers.

Sight memories help you whenever you are looking for something.
Smell memories help you whenever you need to react to something.
Touch memories help you whenever you are trying to physically affect something.
Hear memories help you whenever you need to understand something.
Taste memories help you whenever you are trying to gain Æther from something.

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Before we go on, Control is optional. Ask your game master to determine if you’re going to be using Control or not. Control is exceptionally powerful and could be very easily abused. It does have obvious benefits but it’s not something every group will be comfortable with. This rule is not optional because it’s not a “good” rule. Some groups simply don’t want a narrative play style. Control is presented for groups that want to let their players have a little more say in the game but at the end of the day it’s not truly needed to play the game. Make use of it at your leisure. So, what is Control?

Control is a Meta stat, meaning it’s not something your Character is aware of. Control is equal to your characters Conscience but that is pretty much where it stops being about the character. It represents how many dice the player gets to roll in order to assume narrative control of a story. It no longer represents a success/failure rate but an ability to assume control and state facts. The target number for all control rolls is 5, and that allows you to narrate one single fact. For additional facts you must raise the target number before the dice are rolled, for every interval of 5 the target number is increased you may narrate one additional fact. Make sure you read that correctly, you determine BEFORE you roll what your target number is. If you make it, you get everything, if you don’t then you get nothing.

Lets just say this now; Ghosts cannot directly touch the world of the living. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. When it does it’s because of another source. Mechanically, Interaction is a cheap way to a character to boost their dice pool. A player can choose to push beyond the veil and affect the world of the living for this boost but they must describe what happens. Some suggestions of effects and appropriate bonuses follow, but feel free to make up your own.

Creating a cold spot      +1

Electrical Disturbances   +1

Creating an EVP            +2

Creating writing            +2

Hurting a living person   +3

Throwing Objects          +3

When creating your own Interactions the bonus should correspond with how adversely the character affects the living world. A character that only needs a small bonus can do simple “haunting” effects but for those that need a big boost for free they can hurt people or destroy places. One die bonuses should be things that aren’t easily detectable, something that would require special equipment or someone to be at the right place at the right time. Two die bonuses are things that anyone of the living could notice and likely be freaked out by. Three die bonuses are undeniable or painful for the living.  You can never gain more than three dice from Interaction, if the player comes up with a really clever interaction feel free to give them some bonus Æther (or just refund their Æther spent for the interaction).

Interactions aren’t free; they still cost Æther but far less Æther then normal. Any Interaction, regardless of bonus, coasts five Æther. It’s the same price as activating a Memory, but cheaper than pure Æther spending. Interactions can be used along with Memories, Investments, or dice gathered by spending Æther as long as the proper amount of Æther is spent.

Investments are another way to get dice but Memories and Investments do not add together and cannot be both used on the same roll. Investments can be used with other means of gathering dice, just not Memories. Investments also can’t be used with other Investments, only one Investment per roll. Investments are bought by spending Æther but after that they don’t cost Æther to activate. Investments are expensive but if a character doesn’t have a memory they can be an exceptionally powerful asset.

The cost of the Investment is determined by a two factors, its rating and its range. The rating is how many dice the Investment adds to the character in any check it makes with that investment and the range is how close or far the character needs to be to his Investment in order to use its power.

Every rating point costs five times the rating in Æther and the cost is accumulative, meaning you must have a rating one before you can buy a rating two. For a one point rating it costs five Æther. If the character wishes to turn a one point into a two point it costs an additional ten points of Æther. If the character wants to make a brand new investment starting at rating three it’s going to cost thirty points of Æther, five for the first, ten for the second, and fifteen for the third. The maximum rating for any Investment is Five and is limited by the items Size.

Portable items are Size 1. Small but stationary items are Size 2. Anything human-sized are Size 3. Objects larger than a person but smaller than a room are Size 4. An entire Room is Size 5. Investments are always objects on the other side of the veil, in the lands of the living. As such, a character can not carry an Investment around with them.

Range costs five points per ten feet and like rating it is accumulative. Five points will setup a ten-foot Investment and an additional ten points will turn it into a twenty-foot Investment. For a brand new fifty foot Investment it’s going to cost seventy-five Æther! Of course, you can always choose to not spend points in Range, in that case the Investment can only be used when you touch the object in question. There is no limit to the maximum Range of an investment but there are a number of things that can stop the usage of an Investment, such as doorways, running waters, and special sigils inscribed by the living.

You can only have a number of Investments equal to your Conscience Power score and you must nullify your Investments before you can raise you Conscience. In order to nullify an Investment you have to spend ten Æther points and the Investment is nullified. Characters can only nullify their own Investments, never those of other characters, but living people can sometimes destroy or exorcise Investments and forcibly nullify them.

Thematically Investments allow a ghost to return a place or an object to the physical representation that they remember from their past. This is why a creepy old mansion might be haunted, because to the ghost it’s not worn down but in fact as posh as it was they day they lived there. A creepy looking doll in the real world might… well… its likely to still be a creepy looking doll to the Ghost.

Why do ghosts gather into groups? Simply because they are stronger in groups, groups they call Haunts. Whenever two or more characters decide to work together they can gain a bonus from each other. This bonus is only granted when both parties are willing to help each other; no one sided bonuses. The bonus is based on of the Conscience of the character granting the bonus, not the character getting the bonus. The bonus is one-half of the granting character’s Conscience score. In order to grant the bonus in the first place both characters must spend two points of Æther (two from the granter and two from the benefactor) , paid per roll. This opens up the two-way Haunt and gives both parties a bonus equal to the other character’s Conscience. Also, both parties must be able to see each other. Characters can form Haunts with as many other characters as they can afford to pay Æther for but they can never gather more than five dice from Haunt bonuses. This means the higher Conscience characters tend to form smaller groups than lower Conscience characters, simply because there is less benefit for it.  Below is a chart illustrating Bonus at Conscience level.

Memories are your basic skills; they are the best way to get dice without spending too much Æther. Five Æther and you can roll a Memory, all the dice. Of course, your Memories are limited and the higher your Conscience gets the weaker your memories become. You can have as many Memories as your Conscience score but your Memories can only be as powerful as 11 minus your Conscience score. The chart below visually illustrates those limitations.

There are three parts to every Memory: the Memory itself, the emotional resonance, and the rating. The memory is a simple phrase, comment, or statement that your character knows. All of your Memories come from your time when you were alive and the Memory itself is the written representation of that. Below are examples of Memories:

I remember the first time she kissed me.             (Love)         2
I remember the day we were married.                 (Joy)          1
I remember when I found her with another man.   (Surprise)    1
I remember that I found him alone one night.       (Anger)       4
I remember how he stabbed me in the heart.       (Fear)         2

The Emotional Resonance, there are six Emotional Resonances Love, Joy, Surprise, Anger, Sadness, and Fear. These are pulled from an article written by Parrott, W. in 2001. Parrott classified the six primary emotions with secondary and tertiary emotions. While this game doesn’t deal with the secondary and tertiary they can help better understand what the primary encompasses.

The last part of every memory is the rating. The rating is from one to ten and is limited by your Conscience score. You can never have a memory more powerful then 11 minus your Conscience score. Every character has ten points to spend on memories, limited by how many memories they have and how powerful those memories may be. continue reading…

Conscience is a measure of your character’s power level. It determines various facts about your character, most of which will be covered later. Conscience is rated from 0 to 11, although you can only remain active between 1 and 10. Once your character reaches Conscience 11 they “Go White” and transcend to the next plane of existence, if your character drops to Conscience 0 they “Go Black” and descend into madness and evil. More on all that later.

Conscience can be used for a quick boost to your dice. You can roll a number of dice equal to your current Conscience rating on any roll, the costs is five Æther but afterwards your Conscience drops one point.

Conscience can be lowered for a number of reasons or by simply choosing to lower it. A player can only opt to lower their Conscience once per game session for free but it can be forcibly dropped multiple times. Whenever your Conscience drops you lose a Memory of the player’s choice.

Conscience can only be raised after nullifying an Investment and spending forty Æther (a total of fifty Æther points, ten for nullifying and forty for advancement). A player isn’t limited on how many times they can raise their Conscience a session but it is never forcibly raised.

Conflict is simple and one thing to keep in mind is that we’re calling this Conflict. This isn’t combat or fighting, although it can be used for combat it’s not limited to just that. Conflict is the system used whenever a character (or more than one) faces adversity.  It might be between two characters or a character and an enemy, or a character and his environment.

To start a Conflict the Game Master determines the Conflict’s Resonance. The Conflict’s Resonance is the best Memory to use for this conflict, everything else it penalized. If you are part of a conflict with a Memory that doesn’t have the same Resonance as the conflict then all of your rolls are docked two dice. This also goes for any rolls you don’t use Memory for, if you use an Interaction, Investment, or just spend Æther. Thats a two die penalty to the entire pool, add up all the places you gather dice from then drop two of them.

Once the Resonance is determined everyone gathers their dice pool, spends Æther and rolls. Then everyone compares their results. Whoever has the highest result comes out on top and doesn’t lose any Æther. The second highest losses Æther equal to the difference between the highest result and their result. The third highest result loses Æther equal to the difference between the second highest result and their own result. Ties are just that, tied. They fall into order wherever they do and are treated the same.

Conflict goes until either characters run out of Æther and vanish or until someone gives up. The Conflict system can be used for normal fights or it can easy be an argument or debates. Use this whenever a character has to invest themselves into something in order to achieve their goals, when a simple check won’t cut it.

Example: Mike, Art, Elder, and Paul get into a fight. Rob is running the game and since this fight started with general aggravation with each other Rob decides this is an Anger fight. Art looks troubled, since he doesn’t have any Anger Memories. Mike has an Anger of three, Elder has an Anger of 3, Paul has an Anger of 1 and Art will be using his Fear of 4, rolling only 2 because he’s out of Resonance. Mike rolls a 10, Elder rolls a 10, Paul rolls a 1, Art rolls a 7. Since Mike and Elder tied for the highest result they take no Æther loss. Art was second highest with a 7, a difference of 3 between Mike and Elder’s 10, so he takes 3 points of Æther loss. Paul came in dead last with a 1, a difference of 6 between Art’s roll, so he takes 6 points of Æther loss.

Example: Elder and Art are trying to research a recently captured Black. Rob is running the game and decides that this isn’t just a basic check, but a Conflict and that Elder and Art are in conflict with their Research. The Research is Fear based because of how the Black operates. Art has a Fear Memory of 4 that he’ll be using, and he decides to create a cold spot inside the  library for a bonus die. Art grabs five dice. Elder has a Fear Memory of 2 but he’s also invested heavily into the library itself, a rating a 5. Elder decides to use his Library Investment instead of a Fear Memory and grabs three dice, two less than his Investment because he’s out of Resonance. Rob thinks about it and decides that this Black is a pretty simple creature, the Fear rating for the Research is only 2 and it has a personal pool of ten Æther. Everyone rolls, Art gets 18, Elder gets 12, and the Research gets 9. Art doesn’t take any Æther lose, Elder loses 6 point and the Research looses 3. So far, it’s not looking good for Elder but luckily he has plenty of Æther to spend. Round two and everyone is using the same die pool, they spend Æther to roll and Art gets 21, Elder gets 7 and Research gets 7. Both Elder and the Research take 14 points of Æther loss, defeating the Research and getting the information they needed.

Æther is everything. In the game it represents everything your character can do, it measures your ability to continue existing, it allows you to roll dice, it acts as currency, its spent to use special abilities, and its gained in numerous ways. Eidolon is, in a way, resource management and Æther is your sole (or, if you will, soul) resource.

If you run out of Æther then your Conscience drops a point and you get ten Æther. You also fade out for the rest of the scene, the ghost equivalent of being knocked unconscious. Your character can never die from Æther loss, but running out of Æther can remove you from the action for a while.
You are never limited on how much Æther you can have but since its gained and lost so quickly and often we suggest using tokens to track Æther at the table and only recording it on your character sheet for between sessions.

Since Æther can be held in vast amounts there are a handful of ways to track it via tokens, the easiest being with pennies. Think about it, you can get 100 tokens for a dollar. You could also use poker chips, White = 1, Red = 5, Blue = 10, Green = 25, and Black = 100 for example. Another suggestion made to me was Hell Bank Notes, Hell bank notes are a form of joss paper, an afterlife monetary paper offering used in traditional Chinese ancestor veneration. However you track it, it’s important you keep track. Player’s who don’t keep track of their Æther loose it, the simple rule being that if you’re not sure if you have it, you don’t.

One of the most common ways to spend Æther is to roll dice. If you don’t have any other means to gather dice you can always spend ten Æther to roll a single die. Remember that most of the time you’ll need to reach a total ten, a single die won’t likely do you any good.

There are a couple mechanical methods for gathering Æther, those are covered later, but its worth mentioning the easiest, fastest, and best way to get Æther: from your Game Master.

ATTENTION GAME MASTERS: Reward your players with Æther points! What should you reward? How about being a ghost, making decisions based on character perceptions and not player perceptions when its detrimental, doing anything that adds to the game’s fun or cool, and most importantly reward them for getting involved in your game. Someone gives you a journal entry in-between sessions? Five Æther points! Someone describes a brilliant interaction? Ten Æther! Æther is not only the character currency but also the GM currency and you should give it to your players when they do something you like.