Trait Morphing
I have this idea about Traits, I think they need to morph and change, malleable they are, swaying in the breeze of experience. So, how’s about this for something to include in the experience section of the game:
Trait Morphing
Traits can change almost imperceptibly over time. As a character develops in light of experience, the nature of their already expressed Traits will subtly change. At the end of any game session a player can choose, or a Guide can suggest, that one of a character’s traits should be re-written. Traits will keep their numeric value when morphed.
Part of the reason for this is that a player uses Trait words to form a description of their character’s actions in a challenge. By morphing the description of Traits around, those descriptions can stay fresh. Perhaps a Thesaurus should be recommended at any Wordplay session?!
example
A character has ‘Watchful’ as a Mind Trait. At the end of a session a player changes this to ‘Ever Vigilant’. No real material change to the Trait, well not much, but a slight change in emphasis.
I like it
I can see this working well with the player who is a bit stuck and creates a rather generic trait during char gen, yet refines and modifies it during play.
Would this work for themes were the characters under go drastic personality change, perhaps as a form of sanity/imbalance rules? For example Cpl John Smith, who has the trait Happy Go Lucky, gets a good dose of shell shock, and morphs that trait to “Wary and jumpy”.
Possibly, and it should certainly be possible to radically change a Trait, but if it’s a big change or it forces a move in BMS the maybe it loses some of its numeric value.
In the example you quote the way that I would model the experience of shell shock may well act as a Soul Damage Trait ‘Wary and Jumpy’ 2D, which will add to difficulty ratings when trying to use BMS Soul Foundation Traits.
However at any time a Guide could impose a Trait on a player if she felt that an experience really affected their character.
Cold City allows you to do something like this, but I think you can just add new traits or delete bad ones if you are successful in a challenge. I like the idea of using a thesaurus style approach to drive the way that traits morph normally. If only because it is true ‘wordplay’.
I’ll try and dig out CC for tomorrow and come back to you exactly how that works, but it was always a bit disconnected for me.