Goal System: Origins
The original Goal System was actually developed with several friends of mine, largely due to Wheaton!Mike, who was running a Planescape/oWOD-Mage rules-mix game (I believe my term for this was "Magescape," and so I shall refer to it hereafter). My friends Bekka, Eyk, and Wheaton!Chris were primarily involved, though there was someone else who showed up once or twice and whose name I don't remember (not Michigan!Chris, of course, though he did also end up at a game or two). Anyhow.
Wheaton!Mike wanted a better system for determining how to give us experience, and (with the exception of vote points) the Goal System actually became a substitute for our normal experience--assuming, of course, I recall this correctly. The Goal System was one of many alterations we made for Magescape, but it was one I found intriguing. I have chosen to use it as a supplement to normal experience, rather than a replacement, and have lowered the experience rewards from what they orignally were (3,6,9, I believe, though we did lower them somewhat later).
I am not certain yet how many goals I will allow players to take. I may simply limit them to one of each. In Magescape, we could have a number of goals of any level equal to Willpower, but this helped to make up for the fact that it was the only source of experience and would probably be overpowered in a game--such as mine--where Goals will be supplemental to normal experience. Perhaps I could allow players to have any number of goals as long as their total rank does not surpass their characters' respective Willpowers (a Minor Goal being rank 1 for this example, Moderate, rank 2, and Major, rank 3). In this case, Willpower could represent the ability of the character to hold onto Goals that might not be directly attainable or relevant to what is immediately at hand. A mage with 6 Willpower could have one Minor, one Moderate, and one Major Goal, or two Major Goals, or three Moderate goals, or one Major and three Minor Goals, or six Minor Goals.
This could also pose problems when a character loses a dot of Willpower (not a point), such as in crafting a new rote. In all likelihood, the character can still meet the requirements of the Goal, but without the Willpower required, cannot gain what she would otherwise have gained from it (i.e. the additional experience). Perhaps the character simply cannot fulfill that Goal and get the experience from it; even if the mage in the previous post's example learns her dot(s) in Firearms, her heart is just not in it--she keeps the new dots in Firearms, but does not gain additional experience since she lacks the Willpower to fuel the Goal. The Goal will either fade completely (though once the player spends the 8xp to regain the lost Willpower, his character may take a new goal of whatever available rank) and should be erased, or it is set on the back burner, so to speak. If a character instead manages to hold off on meeting a Goal until she has sufficient Willpower to, well, power it, she can regain the Goal immediately and fulfill it at her leisure to gain the rewards normally (and maybe even regain a point of Willpower in the process for her discipline).
New Rule(s):
A character may choose a number of Goals whose total rank does not exceed her Willpower. A character may start the game with all of her Goals in place, but cannot otherwise add more than one Goal to her character sheet per session.
On losing a point of Willpower, a character who can no longer power all of his Goals must choose one to either give up or put on hold; he does not have to declare which. In other words, he must choose a goal that he cannot fulfill right now, but he doesn't have to declare until later (if ever) that he has truly given up on the goal, or that even though he couldn't put his heart into it, the longing was still there. With Storyteller permission, even if he does declare which path he has chosen for that Goal, he should be allowed to change his mind later. Sometimes, things we thought we had given up on turn out to be things we still work for, after all, and other times we do everything we can to reach a certain place, and then find out we don't remember why we wanted to be there.
Wheaton!Mike wanted a better system for determining how to give us experience, and (with the exception of vote points) the Goal System actually became a substitute for our normal experience--assuming, of course, I recall this correctly. The Goal System was one of many alterations we made for Magescape, but it was one I found intriguing. I have chosen to use it as a supplement to normal experience, rather than a replacement, and have lowered the experience rewards from what they orignally were (3,6,9, I believe, though we did lower them somewhat later).
I am not certain yet how many goals I will allow players to take. I may simply limit them to one of each. In Magescape, we could have a number of goals of any level equal to Willpower, but this helped to make up for the fact that it was the only source of experience and would probably be overpowered in a game--such as mine--where Goals will be supplemental to normal experience. Perhaps I could allow players to have any number of goals as long as their total rank does not surpass their characters' respective Willpowers (a Minor Goal being rank 1 for this example, Moderate, rank 2, and Major, rank 3). In this case, Willpower could represent the ability of the character to hold onto Goals that might not be directly attainable or relevant to what is immediately at hand. A mage with 6 Willpower could have one Minor, one Moderate, and one Major Goal, or two Major Goals, or three Moderate goals, or one Major and three Minor Goals, or six Minor Goals.
This could also pose problems when a character loses a dot of Willpower (not a point), such as in crafting a new rote. In all likelihood, the character can still meet the requirements of the Goal, but without the Willpower required, cannot gain what she would otherwise have gained from it (i.e. the additional experience). Perhaps the character simply cannot fulfill that Goal and get the experience from it; even if the mage in the previous post's example learns her dot(s) in Firearms, her heart is just not in it--she keeps the new dots in Firearms, but does not gain additional experience since she lacks the Willpower to fuel the Goal. The Goal will either fade completely (though once the player spends the 8xp to regain the lost Willpower, his character may take a new goal of whatever available rank) and should be erased, or it is set on the back burner, so to speak. If a character instead manages to hold off on meeting a Goal until she has sufficient Willpower to, well, power it, she can regain the Goal immediately and fulfill it at her leisure to gain the rewards normally (and maybe even regain a point of Willpower in the process for her discipline).
New Rule(s):
A character may choose a number of Goals whose total rank does not exceed her Willpower. A character may start the game with all of her Goals in place, but cannot otherwise add more than one Goal to her character sheet per session.
On losing a point of Willpower, a character who can no longer power all of his Goals must choose one to either give up or put on hold; he does not have to declare which. In other words, he must choose a goal that he cannot fulfill right now, but he doesn't have to declare until later (if ever) that he has truly given up on the goal, or that even though he couldn't put his heart into it, the longing was still there. With Storyteller permission, even if he does declare which path he has chosen for that Goal, he should be allowed to change his mind later. Sometimes, things we thought we had given up on turn out to be things we still work for, after all, and other times we do everything we can to reach a certain place, and then find out we don't remember why we wanted to be there.
Labels: house rules, nWOD
posted by aseariel at 6:16 PM
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