Sunday, February 24, 2008

Tactics or drama? Edges or screentime?

So if you want to combine a screentime mechanic like from Primetime Adventures and Spirit of the Century (the aspects) and a more tactics oriented system like Savage Worlds, obviously there are problems.
The question you have to ask yourself is: when do you feel good about an Edge and why? Actually especially more backgroundish Edges like followers or Fame often don't work as well as you hope (and dream about) during character creation or advancement. Here a screentime mechanic opens new possibilites as the player himself (for the cost of a bennie) can decide, when this stuff comes into play and still not controll the whole game.
The more straight mechnic Edges (like Combat), give a +2 most of the time in Savage Worlds anyways. This can also be easily done by Aspects, but here the screentime modification could create some problems.
Generally only something that creates an action should cost bennies (and therefore be an Aspect). Passive aspects (better defense and so on) could be tied straight to the Main Attributes (and skills) and be active all the time.
Another solution would be to make all active action PC action, while the NPC always provide only the difficulty. So NPCs never roll attack, but PCs instead roll actively their defense. In my opinion more active oponents are cooler though.

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