Here is a google doc link for a very much WIP draft of Maximum Recursion Depth, my Bastion Jam entry. I would definitely appreciate any comments or suggestions!
Below is a list of what I think are some of the key mechanical differences between MRD and regular ItO / EB:
I really like Propriety as a mechanic, it fits the tone well, I also really enjoy the Ability Damage Die doing damage to relevant stats (government documents, hah!).
How/what exactly does Ability Armour do? Is it provided by items? So like a properly filled out passport prevents Propriety damage? If so that could make a fun micro-game with in the large game of collecting/doing the relevant things to get armour (kind of like collecting oddities).
It may be a neat/good idea to tie Arcanum into Ability Armour and Damage, with particular items providing one or both. So like, the Pen of Immortal Bureaucracy can do propriety damage and defend you against it.
Reincarnation looks like it could create an interesting dynamic. Would it work analogous to traditional replacement characters but carrying over karma and such? Karma should defiantly affect how you reincarnated (perhaps affecting nature score?) though I would assume you already have that in mind.
This system looks like it has a lot of potential. Can't wait to see the end result!
Thanks!
wrt Abilities, I was trying to find a balance between flavor and clarity. I had considered using actual terminology and specific concepts from Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, but that seemed overly limiting, beyond my purview, and too difficult to use. Instead, the three attributes broadly represent these philosophies (Nature <-> Buddhism, Wisdom <-> Taoism, Propriety <-> Confucianism), but also each represent some aspect of play (Nature <-> Things that are physically or mentally exerting, Wisdom <-> Investigation, noticing, perceiving, willpower, Propriety <-> Charisma, social conflict, mundane tasks in the world). I'm glad you liked the government documents as propriety damage ;).
Ability Armor will most likely just come from items like Armour in Into the Odd, although it might also get tied into some of the character customization stuff I haven't written yet. Your idea of a passport as a form of Propriety Armor is a good example of what I'd be going for, thank you! Very reassuring to see that came across.
The way I'm using Karma in this setting is very different than the American / New Age colloquialism of Karma. It's not about good and evil per se, but about attachment to the material world. The material world is intrinsically flawed, so even if your intentions are good, you are just adding more Karma into this broken system. So unless you want to be an ascetic or nihilist or whatever, you have to find this balance between doing good in the world, because for those of us here in the material world, Black Lives Matter and we need a corona virus vaccine, but also detaching yourself so that you can see reality more holistically (I am trying very hard to avoid saying "spiritually" lol because that's become a kind of loaded and meaningless term).
So in game terms, your Karma goes up when you get involved in new quests and adventures and such (Karmic Attachments), and you get more powerful, but if it goes up too much you become an Ashura (an NPC Karma Devil). So you need to lower your Karma by resolving or divesting yourself of these Karmic Attachments, either by actually resolving them in some capacity, or dying and reincarnating.
Unlike most humans, the PCs have the ability to reincarnate with continuity, meaning they basically come back into existence as if nothing had happened, but only if they kill themselves in a specific ritualistic way. I'm still deciding on the particulars both from a setting perspective and game perspective, but tentatively I'm thinking it'll be something like if they resolve a certain number of Karmic Attachments and then ritualistically kill themselves, they level up mechanically, meaning either they gain some permanent buff, or a new item, or maybe an increase to their Karma Die, and in terms of the setting, it means they're closer to having a "negative karma footprint" so to speak, and closer to exiting samsara, the karmic cycle of death and rebirth, and entering Heaven. Within the context of the setting, this would mean the campaign "levels up" because now they have to save Heaven from the Monkey King, but I'm not at all prepared to start working on that yet, that would basically be like a supplement to a hypothetical full campaign book for this game 0.o...
EDIT: To elaborate further briefly because now I'm getting self-conscious about it (I had originally intended on calling this game KILL YOURSELF: The Karma Punk RPG), my intention with the ritualistic suicide thing is not to trivialize or mock depression and suicidal ideation. In the classic "-Punk" sense, it's meant to subvert your expectations. It's intended more as a metaphor for being able to face yourself, and challenge your perceived identity, to accept "ego death". Being willing to put your weaknesses or failings behind you and grow, and fundamentally change as a person. That's what this game is supposed to be about; about how to manage all of these things- the mundanity of life, the very real problems in the world, and also yourself, and how all of these things are connected and you can't really manage any one of them well without managing all of them, otherwise you're just going to create more problems for yourself or others.
EDIT2: Also superficially the suicide idea was somewhat inspired by Persona 3, where the characters would shoot themselves in the head with this special gun to summon their personas.
Very nice! I love the idea of Karma as mechanic where the higher it gets the more power but at greater risk. It can be hard to work that kind of dynamic into a game but it sounds like karma would catch it well. Might I suggest the inclusion of kind of a checklist/"if the players do this" or what have you for karma so that a GM has a nice list to quickly consult to see if players gain karma or not? :)
The Requiring a ritual too creates a nice dynamic that encourages planning ahead and preparations since there is still a fail/die state.
So I'm thinking that in place of Failed Careers / Starter Packages, there will be something like Poltergeist Forms, the form they would take in one of the Numberless Courts of Hell if they died, prior to reincarnating, if they for-real died, but these will include some items or abilities and a short roll table if starter karmic attachments, all of which tie into the theme of the Poltergeist form and collectively should give a GM an idea of what some Karmic Attachments might look like. Probably for this initial release I'll just do a handful. Then there will also be roll tables for Karmic Attachments that aren't as specific to a character but are more like quests or things the party can interact with. So you can still sandbox to an extent, but if you're really mucking about without resolving anything, you're going to accumulate too much karma. This whole thing is loosely inspired by my vague recollection of Tenra Bansho Zero, but in a way they're also kind of like aspects in Fate.
I'm glad you appreciate the ritual idea. That was also part of my thinking; reincarnation is a central concept of this game and setting, but I also want there to be real stakes where characters can die, besides just becoming an ashura (although that is also basically like dying). Of course, if they die but don't become an ashura, they could still potentially be found as a Poltergeist in one of the Numberless Courts and rescued, if someone in the party can afford that Karmic Attachment...
This conversation has been really helpful, thank you. Here's tentatively what I'm thinking for advancement:
```
A character must resolve at least one Karmic Attachment and bring Karma down to 1 in order to level up and gain (some bonus). If a character would become an ashura, they can instead level down (and Karma defaults to 5).
```
The idea being that you have to gain Karma in order to do stuff, and it empowers you (given the Karma Roll affecting degree of success), but then to ever actually advance, you have to resolve karmic attachments and impair yourself (less likely to fill succeed in any roll). You have to be willing to give up that material attachment. For this to work, resolving Karmic Attachments needs to divest more karma than is accrued by taking the attachment and/or I need to think of other ways Karma can be divested, but I'm ok with that.
And then, I like the idea that you can level down instead of becoming an ashura. It creates a buffer if a character gets in over their head, it's consistent with the themes of the setting, and because you'll be at a high Karma you're not significantly impaired, but it's going to take longer to bring your Karma all the way back down just to level back up to where you were before, making yourself weaker as you lower your Karma, which again feels fitting with the themes. It should be easy to gain Karma or level down, and enticing to do so, and difficult to resolve karmic attachments and divest their Karma. A player must divest their own Karmic Attachments if there is any hope for their character to do so ;).
I've been working on the core rules and character creation stuff. I've now got four Poltergeist Forms, which are kind of like Failed Careers in Electric Bastionland. Every character rolls their abilities (except Karma, I've decided at least until I've tested it out to have Karma default to 3 for new characters), a career (broad category), a regular special item (I've only written a few so far), and a Poltergeist Form. For their Poltergeist Form, they roll 1 Quirk, 2 Starting Karmic Attachments, 1 Reincarnation Ritual, and 2 Poltergeist Items or Abilities.
I hope the Poltergeist Forms as concepts are coherent and interesting and not too... I dunno, intense (?)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qTv_n0nQIe8TnBhz31TySZhRAWE8PajlY2f8BOSi...
Just ran a "one-shot" (it's going to slip into a second session) and it went really well! Granted it's a group I've played with before and people who have very similar sensibilities as me so it was stacked in my favor, but it basically played out as a best case scenario of what I was expecting, so I'm really happy about it. For the most part the mechanics worked well; I'm sure they could be refined further but the core of it worked well. The players were able to understand the abilities and the karma system, and I really liked how an encounter could be framed either as a Save challenge or a "Combat" and how that affects how things play out, that was probably the stand-out part of it imo even if someone were not at all interested in the setting or the karma system.
