On today's vlog, John and Anne talk about how they love ruining (imaginary) peoples' lives in the service of mythic storytelling.
Question: Why do you keep Virtue Extremities? Every time I have ever seen a Virtue Extremity in a game, it completely wrecks everything and makes us just knock that character out.
Having just enjoyed a double-whammy Duty and Intellect Extremity Combo in last night's game, we thought now was an excellent time to talk about the subject.
Re: Tsuki-Yomi & Harmony Virtue Extremity
ReplyDeleteAre you more inclined to say that Tsuki-Yomi having Harmony is an exception among the Amatsukami, or are you leaning towards changing the Pantheon virtues to include Harmony?
Hmm... you know, I'm not sure. Gods do sometimes have alternative Virtues - it shouldn't be all of them all the time, but there are definitely cases wherein a god seems to have a very present drive that isn't necessarily shared by his pantheon. Harmony's certainly not foreign to the Amatsukami, though; I wonder if it might be more appropriate than, say, Endurance.
DeleteBut as always, our poor Amatsukami are awaiting their turn for an overhaul. :) Either way, though, I gotta stick by that example - Tsuki-tomi's freakout is a classic example of a Harmony extremity.
This video is going to save the idea of Virtue Extremities that my group is about to throw out. Thank you so bloody much for this!
ReplyDeleteAwesome! You're totally welcome!
DeleteI find it hard with wary social characters to use Virtue extremities (since they are getting more Willpower back). My players are also cautious about that. They tend to play their Virtues instead of having to roll them and risk Extremity. It does make interesting situations when I can get them low (Bacchanalia^^) with Expression.
ReplyDeleteI almost never get to make them roll Courage, they do it all by themselves. In my games, I make my players pay 2 Willpower points to ignore Virtues that are at 4 or 5. I'm not saying it's a good idea in general, but in their setup the Willpower points are flowing so it was kinda too easy to step out of Virtues.
About you're house rules that states Virtue rolls at God level roll twice the number of dice: Is this because players had higher Willpower?
In a way, though - that's good! Virtue Extremities are what happens when PCs are trying to refuse their Virtues; if you're keeping track of them as an ST and they're just always following those things gung-ho to the end, then you don't need the Extremities. They're basically voluntarily doing what the Extremity would force them to do, so they're embodying that Virtue very well. The only thing I can suggest is to make sure as an ST that you're watching for times they might need to roll against the Virtue in case some are slipping past you - but if not, then that's awesome. The insanity of Courage or Vengeance is in full force in your game more often because they do it anyway, meaning you can save the Extremities for the real crunch points when someone has to act against their nature.
DeleteWe allow Heroes to just pay the one point of Willpower to deal with a Virtue, regardless of its level; however, Demigods and Gods must pay Willpower equal to half the successes they rolled on the Virtue, rounded up (so, to use our last game's example, Sangria rolled seven successes on her Duty and would have needed to pay four points of Willpower to try to fight it off). If they roll more on their attempt to fight off a Virtue than they had current points of Willpower, they hit Extremity immediately.
Actually, higher Willpower has nothing to do with our god-level change (and, given that powers and antagonists sometimes knock off permanent Willpower points, a lot of our gods actually have less Willpower now than they did as midrange Demigods). We have them roll twice their Virtues because, as gods, they are that much more supremely bound to those core Virtues they possess; the stakes for Virtue Extremities are always higher for gods, but gods are also the beings that are least able to ignore those urges. A Scion of Thor may have trouble not charging into battle because of his Courage, but Thor himself should be almost incapable of it without great effort, so gods roll more dice and are thus more likely to embody their Virtues, either because they know what the consequences are if they don't or because they try to avoid them and Extremity.