Sunday, December 29, 2024

Wizard Dad's Workshop: A Pocket Game with the Mythic GME Mobile (for Android) , Part 2: Tags, Making Inspiration into Gameable Content


While in the end this project is going to become untethered from the MM31 article, we are not there yet. Specifically we will be using the Ranks chart from page 15 to change descriptions into Tags with Ranks and numeric values. 

Let's take our Moorcock pastiche from part 1. We are going to boil each statement down into something that can be used either for or against the character. 
  • They are outsiders
  • They are masterful warriors
  • They live with a depressing sense doom
  • They wield some terrible weapon
  • They have at talent for leadership
  • They tend to lose friends and loved ones with a disturbing frequency
Moorcock wrote a wide variety of books about his Eternal Champion, but they tended to fall into the Sword and Sorcery or Sword and Planet genres (broadly speaking). As an outsider in those settings a lot of distrust can fall on a character that is from an unknown somewhere else. So we can define him as:
  • Outsider (social) Low -2
What this means is in a social situation in which he is an unknown factor his Outsider nature drags down any Fate Check by -2. 

Masterful Warrior is a fine description. It is broad, but that fits here. While Masterful isn't named in the Ranks list, Incredible is. 
  • Warrior Incredible +4
As is true with any character who knows he is at the whims of a terrible fate, our Champion can get quite depressed over it.  This could manifest in many ways, but I am seeing a Resigned Lassitude so lets use it.
  • Resigned Lassitude Low -2
(When in this state all non action situations are dulled by his sense of doom. Episodes could be triggered by a loss or as part of an Interrupt scene)

Moorcock's Champion usually is wielding some terrible life sapping sword, in which he has to have a battle of wills to keep in check. He fails those with some frequency, but sometimes he wins. It looks like we have a couple of traits to describe here. 
  • The Black Sword Incredible +4 (This bonus will become a number that works against the Champion when he is trying to resist the will of the sword. Lets also add the caveat that the sword cannot make a non wounding attack)
  • Iron Will High +2
(Maybe as he grows more experienced in resisting the sword he will be able to raise that score up a bit more)

In the various Eternal Champion books his primary calling is to protect humanity from some immediate threat. To do that we know he has a talent for leadership. Not everyone falls in line with him though so this isn't going to be an exceptionally high score.
  • Leadership High +2
We have saved the hardest for last. The Champion loses friends and lovers, sometimes even to his own black hearted sword. This seems to be part of his curse. This Tag will represent the amount of peril that an Interrupt could place his loved ones in. Usually the closest loved one to hand. We don't want this dominating every encounter but doom is part of the character so lets make it a bit challenging to save them. 
  • Doom of Loss Weak -3 (this doom is a modifier played against his attempts to rescue or save them, thus it is a negative number)
With a little effort and imagination every aspect of the character has been converted into a Tag, and we have worked out their mechanical effects. 

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