The Evolution of Elemental, Part 2
Ok, here’s where it gets good….
Elemental is a system that I’ve been working on for the past four months (not counting the bits and pieces that were my precursors to it, as elaborated in my previous post), in collaboration with several friends who have been helping playtest and revise it. At this point, it’s working fairly well for the playtest game, which has gone through ~5 full sessions. The game is diceless in the literal sense, but is not without a random factor; however, Elemental is definitely more ‘qualitative,’ or description-and-roleplaying-based, than it is ‘quantitative,’ or crunchy/rules-heavy. Read on for the basics behind the system’s current design.
System Premise
Elemental is a diceless system which uses cards for random factors and to supplement play in other ways. Characters are created in a point-buy fashion, can be created at any level of power from mortals to gods, will grow and change, and can possess unique abilities invented by the player.
What does all of that mean, exactly?
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Elemental is diceless. The game does not use dice rolls at any point, during character generation or during gameplay. Instead, it uses a deck of cards, the Trumps, to resolve actions when a random factor is needed.
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Elemental uses cards as a random factor. These Trumps are interpreted by the Game Master (and the players) to both determine the simple outcome of an event (success or failure, or degree of success) and to provide a suggestion as to why or how things happened the way they did. There are 24 Trump cards, each of which is related to one of the six Elements of the game. Beyond the outcomes of contests, Elemental includes cards that can also be used to help players create characters, help the GM decide on new challenges and adventures, and more.
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Elemental characters are created with a point-buy system. Players receive a certain number of Character Points (or CP) to ’spend’ on their character, purchasing their Elements (the basic statistics that define what the character is like physically and mentally, as well as what skills they have), their Assets (powers, abilities, artifacts, or companions that they can call on), and other character traits.
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Elemental characters can range in power from mortality to divinity, and can grow and change after they are created. Players can allocate their initial CP however they like, though the number they start with is based on the level of power at which the game is set. Then, over the course of the Stories (campaigns) and Chapters (shorter, distinct sections) that they participate in, characters may gain new Assets or alter their Elements by virtue of what happens in the game-world. In order to pay for these and any other changes they want to make, players receive small amounts of CP between Chapters of the game.
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Elemental characters can have unique, player-designed powers. Assets are anything that the character has that gives them a special edge—they could be merely uncommon (an Asset that many different characters might have in a given game world), but they can also be completely unique, designed only for that character. Assets can range from magical abilities to high-tech implants, from powerful weaponry to demonic familiars; the system for creating Assets is simple and flexible, and players are encouraged to be inventive.
So that’s the basic system premise. Hopefully it gives you a good idea of what the goals of the system are; next time, I’ll go over the rules in a little more detail. However, here’s a preview (below) of what I’m doing with cards other than the Trumps: the four below are part of a 30-card set of ‘Elemental Guidance’ cards, which can be used to aid in character generation. Players can answer the questions on a random set of the cards, giving them some help allocating their CP.
