Clarity Revisited: Design

For “You Can't Go Home Again” I would probably return to tweaking the game system again. Specifically, despite the name, I don’t think Integrity (from the God-Machine Chronicle rules) is a good fit for Changeling: the Lost. So this week I’ll give a rambling account of a possible replacement.

Clarity Revisited

My thoughts on a good replacement (because I also dislike Clarity) begin with the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies. I previously adapted them for use in Hunter: the Vigil where they worked to good effect. The basic concept is that you have meters of escalating psychological stresses (five to be specific with 10 ranks each). These ranks range from relatively minor stresses like being alone for a solid day to mind breaking experiences like spending months in sensory deprivation.

Each time you encounter such a stress you roll to maintain your cool. If you succeed you become hardened, marking a level of Hardened. Anything for that stress meter that is has a rank at or below your hardened level no longer affects you. Thus you can get your remorseless killers and the like who can murder with impunity. Get hardened enough and you become a sociopath. Meanwhile each failure pushes you closer to madness as well as causing your character to momentarily freak out: fleeing, freezing in place, or fighting madly for a scene.

What I love about this system is that experience never enters the equation. You can’t buy up (or down) hardened and failed levels. To return to the baseline you need therapy. You need to work out your issues and reclaim stability (remove failures) or humanity (remove hardened levels).

For Changeling, I would want to make changes to that system. The Unnatural stress would need to be altered or removed. Overall we would have way more Self, Isolation, and Helplessness triggers. I’d also want to emphasize the aspect of a character slowly losing their mind as opposed to suffering sudden shocks. So fight, flight, freeze would need to be replaced with a new system.

Design Decisions

A major question to ask before getting much farther is what are the failure modes? Other than staying at a nice level of sanity, what extremes should characters be able to reach? Obviously characters can break (i.e. fail multiple times and go insane) or they can lose perspective (i.e. become sociopathic True Fae). I’m not seeing anything else that really fits. Staying sane involves keeping the stress meters as close to zero as possible.

Next question multiple meters or just one? While fewer gauges means less to track, I didn’t find ti that hard from a player perspective. That might have been colored by the fact that we mostly dealt with Unnatural and Violence. We are dumping Unnatural already (probably to fold the relevant bits into the others). Keeping multiple gauges allows us to have multiple types of growing madness or mental scarring. In an earlier version of this post I folded it all into one gauge but I think will keep separate ones instead.

Next what happens when you fail? Since we are ditching fight, flight, or freeze as not in tune with our vision of Changeling, what alternatives exist? Well clearly these will be Conditions, sources of beats. Also the choice should remain with the PC as to what effect the failure has on them. Finally like fight, flight, or freeze, the Conditions should be resolvable in that scene or the one immediately following. I don’t want them to linger.

So what should they be? One option would be to have temporary delusions, emphasizing the madness aspect of the game. Perhaps the character starts seeing fantasy elements where they are not. Another idea would be a temporary Frailty. Like the temporary Glitches from demon: the Descent, these weakness would hamper the characters for a few hours or days. To mortals they would look like delusions (“I can’t step on cracks or I’ll break my back” or suffer bashing damage) but could have serious game effects. Alternatively it might be thematic (if not very enjoyable for the PC) to see them break down and try to escape their situation.

That’s three options each of which could be appropriate in the right circumstance. We’ll leave the choice to players of whether they take “Fraily”, “Avoidance” or “Delusion”.

Mechanics

So mechanically if you encounter a stress which you are not hardened against, you roll the lesser of Resolve or Composure. You can spend Willpower on this roll and can choose to make a failure a dramatic failure for a Beat. If you succeed you mark a level of hardened for that stress. On an exceptional success, you can choose whether gain a hardened level or not. On a failure you mark a failure and chose a Condition. The three basic conditions are:

Avoidance

Whatever stress you just suffered is too much for you. You have to get out. On the plus side while in this state you can no longer suffer from stresses as you are too panicked to process them. On the downside if you can’t escape the situation (whether through running away or fighting your way past) you shut down.

Beat: See below.
Resolved: You escape the current situation ending the scene for your character. Alternatively if you curl up into a ball or otherwise hide from the situation (and thus remove yourself as an actor in the current scene).

Delusion

You become mentally unbalanced, taking refuge in the fantasy life you escaped. You begin to interpret everyday experiences as fantasy elements. Children are goblins, doors all lead into the Hedge, that police man is an ogre, and your Keeper is watching from across the street.

Beat: You offend or creep out someone due to your madness. Alternatively if acting on your delusions causes you harm.
Resolved: You realize your delusion and take time to recenter yourself, perhaps through meditation or dreaming.

Frailty

You suffer a frailty such as being unable to lie, suffering Bashing damage from the sound of Church Bells, or having to flee if your name is repeated three times. Whatever it is, it should be fairly common and cause a serious inconvenience.

Beat: Your frailty is exposed to a new person or group of people.
Resolved: Roll Wyrd when you first get this Condition. On a failure it lasts until the next dawn (if day) or dusk (if night). On a success it lasts a week. On an exceptional success, it lasts a month. You do not gain a Beat when it is resolved.

Next

That’s it for now. In two weeks I’ll present the gauges, recovery rules and effects of high levels of Hardened or Failure.