1: Character Sheet Driven

This is really important to me. Too many games have terrible character sheet design and I think its a real failing in the design of the game. You can come up with an interesting and dynamic system for managing land but if you don’t include a solid character sheet for tracking it, or if your concepts are difficult to track in the first place, you’re game design has failed in some way. This isn’t to say that the mechanics or concepts are bad or wrong, but part of every game is being able to quickly and easily manage your various mechanical statistics. If I have to create a spreadsheet, on my own, just to keep things in order then you’re game failed to provide me with something.

With that said, I’ve seen some fantastic uses of character sheets. The first that comes to mind is Mouse Guard and it’s gear section. You have a small box on your sheet and you can carry as much as you can write in there. I really like this concept. Luke Crane created a mechanic around the physical space on the character sheet. The Warhammer RPGs print your main stat line on both sides of the character sheet. Dogs in the Vineyard provides a quick reference to the basic mechanics on the bottom of the sheet. All of these are, in my opinion, good things. They make playing the game easier. Mouse Guard clears up all the traditional game bullshit of counting weights. Warhammer stops me from flipping back and forth to see my main stats. Dogs always has a helpful reminder in case I forget.

With all that, I’ve decided to make Eidolon driven by its character sheet. The front of the sheet is going to be you’re Ghost and the back is going to be your Haunt. The front page will be divided into eleven shades (0-10) and each shade will divided into columns for powers, memories senses, and notes. The back page will be a rough outline for a house, lining out the four main parts of every Haunt (Foundation, Walls, Door, and Roof) with one large open area in the middle for the player to build the various rooms with. This is also going to help inform the mechanics. For example, if you’re character is a Shade 4 they will have access to the Shade 3, Shade 4, and Shade 5 powers, memories, and senses. You’ll be able to tell, at a glance, what you can do. Yes, this means characters at Shade 1 and 9 have access to less then other characters. It is, in fact, better to be Shade 2 or 8. This is intentional. Shade 0 and Shade 10 are the Transcendent Shades, so they are technically playable.

2: No Penalties

Damn do I hate when shit is taken away from my character. Houses of the Blooded did something I loved without even realizing I wanted it. You never get any penalties to your rolls or pools. Instead, you give your enemies bonuses on things. If you have a Rank 4 Injury, you still roll the same amount of dice… but anyone can Tag your Injury to use it against you. I love that idea. Going forward, I’m going to do everything I can to ensure you’ll never see penalties applied to your character. There are a ton of ways I can achieve this and it will force me to think more creatively about challenges instead of just relying on a -5 Penalty.

3: Quick, Simple, Dirty Conflicts

Anyone who’s heard me talk about gaming for more then five minutes knows how much I hate combat in games. This loathing has recently been extended from just physical fights to social conflicts now. I’m talking about you, Burning Wheel, and you’re over complicated social combat system. Fuck that noise. I want any conflict between two or more characters to be resolved in under five minutes. I want conflict to be poignant, brutal, deadly but I want it resolved quickly. I believe that it isn’t the conflict itself that provides an interesting narrative but the escalation to and cleaning up the mess after. For me, having someone beat the living hell out of  you isn’t the fun part, its what you do after. I wrote a conflict system previously for Eidolon that I think accomplishes this. I’ll be revisiting it, tweaking it, but sticking to the core idea.

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.

The Emotional Resonance of the memory also limits Senses. As a ghost you can only use your Memories on things with the same Emotional Resonance. Not everything has an Emotional Resonance but some do, a child’s cherished Teddy Bear might have a Resonance of Joy while a murderer’s knife might resonate with Fear. Living beings are the hardest to resonate with because of their constantly changing Emotions. Some things have a Null Resonance and can’t be affected by your character. In the world of the dead, EVERYTHING has a Resonance and removing it destroys the item (or ghost).

You have as many points to spend in Senses as the Rating of the Memory. No single Sense can exceed ten points but they can be at zero. For example, I remember that I found him alone one night. (Anger) 4 uses with the following senses:

Sight: 0
Smell: 1
Touch: 2
Hear: 0
Taste: 1

Sight Memories
As mentioned, sight memories are rolled whenever you are looking for something.

Smell Memories
As mentioned, smell memories are rolled whenever you need to react to something.

Touch Memories
As mentioned, touch memories are rolled whenever you are trying to physically affect something.

Hear Memories
As mentioned, hear memories are rolled whenever you need to understand something.

Taste Memories
As mentioned, taste memories are rolled whenever you are trying to gain Æther from something. To do this you have to eat the object in question. You can only eat items (or people) with the Emotional Resonance of the Memory; a Teddy Bear of Sadness can be consumed by using a Sadness Memory or a person who’s feeling Angry can be consumed by using an Anger Memory. Your character simply walks up and takes a big bite of the object (or person) in question, rolls a number of dice equal to the Test Rating and regains a number of Æther equal to the total rolled. This, of course, removes the Resonance from the object (or person) in question. If this object is a living thing then its Resonance becomes Null, if the object is in the world of the dead then the object (or ghost) is destroyed. What? YES! You can eat other ghosts, but only those with a single Resonance. This means other ghosts can devour only ghost with Conscience 1, a ghost who has only one memory and one Resonance.

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.

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.

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.

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.Below is Parrott’s chart.

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.

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.

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.