Saturday, October 24, 2015

Cool disadvantage post

Charles Saeger over at The Lands of Nandêmē had an excellent post yesterday on disadvantages, something that's become an accidental daily theme on this blog for the past few days.

Getting Your Points' Worth

For all that I like to strip down the options for my games, I like to have a lot of options in the first place. The more well-developed rules and options there are, the better I can fine tune the ones I use.

The more internally and externally consistent those rules are, the better.

Charles did a lot of internally and externally consistent expansions and development of existing disadvantages. I like this, because they aren't changes to what is in the books but rather more specific definitions of how that works. I especially like the treaments of Gluttony (so it's not just "I eat extra when there is free food and complain once per session when I'm on normal rations") and Overconfidence. And I already do with Compulsive Carousing what he's doing - your cost of living goes up.

I'd suggest an expansion to Laziness: You're at -2 for any self-directed roll in town. Making your own weapons, brewing your own paut, fixing your own gear, finding hirelings, doing your own research, etc. If something involves real work to do and it's binary, make a Will-2 roll capped normally (14+ always fails) to get around to doing it. If a character with laziness also has a compulsive disadvantage, they must roll against the self-control roll for that before doing other work. The Lazy guy with Compulsive Gambling or Addiction will certainly find a way to be industrious about gambling or getting a hit. Guys with Laziness should consider getting a servant hireling and having them do important stuff for them.

3 comments:

  1. 1) Thanks for the link.
    2) I like that about Laziness, in part because it gives me an idea of how I would play such a guy: a 1990s slacker. He gets into town, gets to the tavern, drinks a few drinks, romances a few barmaids, and the next morning, he sits on his ass, singing Beck songs, debating Ginger or Mary Ann with whoever happens to be getting a drink. He's absolutely useless in town, and if the stay is longer than a week, the other party members start getting really annoyed with him and stop sharing, leaving him to vegetate on his ass in the gutter, with all that entails, until they get a backer and a new mission. And on that mission, they reduce his cut because they're all still mad because they had to pay to top off his power item last time. In fact, they had to drag him to the hedge wizard to top it off, and only found out then that he didn't have any money.

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    Replies
    1. #2 sounds like a lot of disads wrapped into one. :)

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  2. His modification to Lecherousness really makes that worth 15 points in DF. A lot of good ideas there.

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