David Chart’s Blog

And as the process of creation gets underway, things change. In writing the initial scenario, I found a significant problem with the proposed revision mechanics. They were as follows. Roll the assessment dice and double the result. Subtract the current progress from this result to get an assessment total. Subtract the assessment total from the…

The frequency of posts to this blog is likely to drop off a bit for a while. I’m working on the playtest scenario, and while it’s coming along nicely it doesn’t lend itself to posting on the blog quite as easily as the initial, more abstract, development. In addition, things are changing as I make…

As I mentioned earlier, simple harae and misogi rituals are an essential part of any visit to a jinja, and all matsuri. I don’t think I need special rules for them; they are something to be mentioned as colour. Shinto believes that people acquire kegare through their normal activities, and the standard harae rituals can…

Harae is normally translated as “purification”, and this is not a bad translation; harae is how one gets rid of kegare. Harae is very closely linked to misogi, which is also a way to get rid of kegare. Indeed, in contemporary Shinto it is not clear that they are really different, and it is not…

So, how will kegare work in the game? As a resource statistics, like shin’i, it will come in points. Most resource statistics, including shin’i, are spent to get good effects. Kegare is the opposite. A persona can accept kegare to avoid bad effects. If a player does not like a die roll, she can accept…

The basic framework of the game is now largely complete, but one extremely important element is still missing: kegare. Kegare is a central concept in Shinto, and is normally translated as “impurity”. This is not a bad translation, but it is also not quite right. Sometimes, kegare is referred to as “tsumikegare”, which is translated…

A character’s resistance is not a one-off thing. If it remains at the same level, the personae have to persuade her to get involved every time the issue comes up, and that is a long-term problem for the jinja. If the resistance represents a bad relationship with another character, then the removal of that resistance…

As I mentioned in the last post, a character’s resistance will be a number tied to a description. To overcome it, personae roll dice. The easiest way to do this is to have the resistance be the difficulty for the die roll, and, as yet, I don’t see any reason to make things more complicated.…

The ways in which characters become obstacles to the personae will be defined with numbers, to fit with the rest of the mechanics. However, I think they will be defined with simple numbers, not dice. This is because the active force in the game should be the personae, not the characters. The personae drive things…