For various reasons I won’t go into, I have not been sleeping very well this week.
I walked into the lunchroom at work this morning and saw the latest AVON brochure on the table, and misread the title (something about something that is ‘Super’, don’t much care what).
I have to think “Von Sniper” is a name made for an RPG villain, yeah?
Just because I felt like it, I did one up in Hōpara. [link fixed –kjd]
Captain Von Sniper
Desire: Restore the king to power.
Occupation: Soldier IV
Mana source: Shooting people who don’t know where he is. III
Mana: 3/21
Ability: Combat [rifle] V
Ability: Political Lore III
Ability: Camouflage IV
Ability: Violin II
Ability: Forage III
Special Equipment: Helga the sniper rifle IV (mana 1/7, rank I)
Fixed the link. Love his mana source.
You might look into FATE (derived from FUDGE), your mana source sounds more than a little like FATE aspects — character traits (and potentially actions) that can give you mojo for further actions.
Interesting reading; I think I’ve seen FATE before but had forgotten about it. The declaration system was quite interesting but I suppose isn’t very necessary in Hopara since all players get a turn in the driving seat anyway. I am trying to think about a way to “tag” the environment like FATE does as it sounds quite nice and encourages good narration.
Possible approach: while the tohunga is describing the environment, he can decide that something mentioned in the description is magical or sacred. Such things might be obvious, like a glowing fountain, or non-obvious like a tree that sprouted under a full moon; they might not even be objects, perhaps a tune playing softly in the background or a patch of darkness. He writes them down secretly. If the role passes to another player then the new tohunga can add another secret thing from his own descriptions. After somebody interacts with the scene element in some way (drink from fountain; touch the tree; hum the tune; attack the darkness) it is revealed and that character gains one mana straightaway; each character can benefit from a given element once.
Desired effect is that the tohunga will come up with scene descriptions sufficiently detailed to conceal where the secret lies, and players will pay attention to their surroundings and interact with them. Even if they go with the obvious approach (e.g. glowing fountain) it will still put something interesting in the environment.