The rules described so far can be used for building relationships or changing attitudes. Although the game roles of these two are different, they are closely linked, and in the real world it would be hard to separate them. Therefore, the same kinds of actions can be used to modify either. So, the personae could use the rules to increase the extent to which a character loves or trusts them, or to build a relationship with that character. Some parts…
What are the sorts of things that serve as elements when trying to find out about someone? The default assumption is that the personae are not spying on and manipulating the character, although that is possible, and should be supported by the rules at some point (although not necessarily in the core book). Instead, the personae are quite open about the fact that they are trying to build a relationship with the character. The investigation elements will, therefore, include such…
What do personae do with the information they have gathered? They put it together into a theory that tells them something about the subject they are investigating. Putting the information together is another simple roll. The player rolls the relevant knowledge, and keeps the number of dice granted by the pieces of information. A persona can only incorporate pieces of information with a total incorporation cost of less than or equal to her score in the knowledge. However, the player…
The next step in discovery is mechanically simple. The player rolls her persona’s investigation dice, and keeps the number of dice indicated by the elements of her investigation. The result of this roll is the pool of points that the player can use to describe the information that her character has discovered. Again, this is done in terms of elements. Each element has a discovery cost, which is the number of points needed to make it part of the information…
The investigation phase of discovery does not involve any die rolls. Instead, the players describe how the persona is investigating the subject, and describe something of what she finds. This is tied to the game mechanics by elements. The elements of this phase describe things that the persona does to investigate. Each element has two statistics: a cost, and a number of dice. A player may only incorporate elements with a total cost equal to or less than her persona’s…
Discovery is also supposed to be an important part of Kannagara. In the grand concept, the discovery in question is things like discovering how to transform yourself into a kannagi, but discovering what sort of food someone likes so that you can cook her the perfect dinner falls under the same general category, and that’s the case that has come up first. This is also a somewhat easier case than the profound discoveries about the universe, or about the secrets…
Welcome to Mimusubi. Mimusubi is my (David Chart’s) trading name (and trademark) for the business of writing and selling original pen-and-paper roleplaying games (in the first instance), and the first of those games is Kannagara. Kannagara will be a modern fantasy roleplaying game set in contemporary Japan, drawing heavily on Shinto folklore, legends, and practices. I say “will be” because it is not yet written; I will talk about the design on this blog, and hope that the readers of…