Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at extending the already cool system for Warrior, Rogue, and Mage for my new project. I’m trying to incorporate a few of the concepts we developed for Moebius Adventures as well as some new skills and talents.
For example, at character creation time in the base W,R,&M book, you get 3 skills and a talent. I’d like to tweak that slightly so that players pick skills based on different broad age groupings. So if I’m playing a young character, I should pick 2 skills with an eye towards childhood and 1 with an eye towards adulthood. Or if I’m playing an older character, perhaps only direct 1 skill to childhood and the other 2 to maturity.
I’m not quite sure yet how that will play out. I suspect that most players with such a small set of skills would focus on the usable skills for the character as opposed to how their childhood went. Perhaps this will be an optional rule players can use to help them define the life of their characters up to the present. I definitely don’t want it to get in the way of what players want – just to propose it as an option.
Beyond that, some of the new skills I’m considering adding include:
- Animals (Mage): The ability to train and control animals. This would mostly be for domesticated animals, but could be expanded to wild animals as well.
- Art (Mage): The ability to create a visual, auditory, or other sensory work to evoke an emotion in an audience.
- Food (Mage): The ability to cook, prepare, and preserve food for consumption or storage.
- Games (Rogue): The ability to play various games and apply strategy.
- Performance (Rogue): The ability to perform (via acting, dance, or some other skill) in front of a crowd.
- Wilderness (Warrior): The ability to hunt, track, trap, and live off the land in the wilderness to survive.
In addition, there are thirteen different wizardry skills ranging from Alchemy to the Supernatural, each with a particular spell book and magical philosophy. The first book will only cover a couple of these more closely tied to the sea – Supernatural Magic (similar to Voodoo) and Divine Magic (prayers to deities or forces of nature to help with a particular aim). I figure sailors (in fiction at least) have always been a superstitious lot and can use all the help they can get when rough seas come around.
Talent-wise, I’ve only really come up with one so far:
- Healing: The ability to heal oneself or others using Mana.
I’ve thought about a few other possible talents that may come out of the old Random Fates list from the Moebius Adventures books, but haven’t defined them so far. These would be relatively minor talents such as the ability to see ghosts, knowing what direction they are pointing in regardless of position, and so on.
The existing skill lists in the base W,R,&M book are perfectly open-ended, so I don’t want to add too much clutter to it. My goal is to define these additional options for the rules and focus on the world of Immortals’ Wake. Each subsequent book will further define additional magic and talents as well as flesh out additional areas.
What do you think?
(By the way, if you’re looking for more details about WR&M – check out the website here at Stargazer Games.)
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