The first of the character pages, dealing with the nine player character attributes and what they represent in TWE, has been completed. Attributes in TWE are the main numbered facet of a player character's abilities. They are the things that determine what a character can do consistently and what they can only attempt to do in the most extreme circumstances. They help define a character's strengths and weaknesses and they are the main numbers that get bigger over time as a character increases in level. Many of TWE's attriubtes are fairly conventional in terms of what they represent. People familiar with roleplaying games probably will not see many surprises with what you can do with things like strength, beauty, wisdom, etc. But there a couple things that break from the conventional mold.
The first are things called knowledges. Each of a player character's three greater attributes in TWE not only represents an affinity for a certain type of action, but it also represents proficiency with certain kinds of skills. The beauty attribute, which is the primary social attribute, also represents a character's affinity with the many languages in Chaesharin. Strength determines a character's proficiency with weapons, and wisdom determines a character's proficiency with various trade skills. This is a bit of a simplification in comparison to other systems, which tend to create a distinction between attributes and these sorts of skills. But creating a bit of a simpler mechanic here allows more room for other mechanics more important to TWE's setting and unique vaishineph player characters. While weapons and languages and trade skills can play important parts in TWE's many stories, TWE is primarily about magick and supernal powers. And that is the second thing that breaks with gaming conventions.
There are three supernal attributes in TWE. Each of these attributes represents a character's ability to harness a magick substance. The vaishineph player characters wield miraculous spell-like abilities called Whispers, but the power source of these Whispers is determined by the players. Each of these supernal attributes corresponds to one of these power sources. Whenever a player character casts a Whisper they choose one of these magick substances to give their Whisper its potency. Some substances are more readily available than others, and player characters will be stronger with some more than others. Whispers are powerful and dangerous things to use. The consequences of failing a Whisper are determined by the source a player chooses. This allows players to pick their poison. The player gets to decide what they risk when they cast. Are they risking their sanity? Their memories? Their bodies? Should they choose their strongest attribute or the safest for the task at hand? Some substances can put allies in danger. What do they think of the player's choice? The goal in giving the players a few options is to raise interesting questions like this.
The second major update is the actions page, which, while not rules heavy, nevertheless establishes some of the central gameplay concepts at work in TWE, and lays the groundwork for the game's unified conflict resolution system. In TWE, there really is no mechanical difference between a combat scene and an argument, or between a large scale battle and a chase scene. All conflicts in TWE run on the same hardware, so to speak, a system which uses contested actions and a set list of possible consequences, each with enough narrative room to describe in a wide variety of ways. Exploiting gaps in an opponent's defense, for example, has the same mechanical outcome whether it is a feint in a sword fight, a shocking revelation in an argument, or a sudden cavalry charge on a battlefield. TWE's system allows the ultimate goals of a conflict to differ (to defeat an opponent, to persuade a character, to route an army, to escape a battle, etc, etc.) while keeping the mechanics of how those goals are reached consistent across different types of scenes.
I also added a progress bar which sits next to the links for the main content pages. It's very, very approximate. But given that I've created roughly 40 pages and have completed roughly 8, twenty percent at present seems like a pretty good estimate. I have a lot of material in rough draft form, and some more only in outline form, but now that I am getting the hang of writing and updating things for the blog format I think stuff will start happening a bit faster. Of course, once the progress bar fills up it will be time to start play-testing in earnest, and readers of the blog can expect to see opportunities to get in on that in various ways.
Last but not least, there is now a glossary page, which was requested by a reader of the blog and which I was happy to put together. It features the most common in setting language terms. I think the tactile feel of a language can go a long way toward seasoning a world's flavor. The most common spoken language in TWE is called Redevin and it is heavily influenced by biblical Hebrew. In the future, when I get some more time, I will do a full write up on adapting biblical languages and etymologies for a fantasy setting, because it provides a lot of fun and interesting ways to communicate story and theme in a very sneaky sort of way.
- ABH
- ABH
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