So I’m working on a setting for this game and I’ve got a question. The game is Robin Hood, but if Robin Hood were a heist film. Think A Knight’s Tale meets Ocean’s Eleven and Gone in 60 Seconds or The Fast and the Furious.
Think Idris Elba as Robin, a returning Iraq War Crusades veteran who takes up a lie of crime to get back what was taken from him unjustly. He coordinates with his unit’s former chaplain, Friar Tuck (played by Michael Caine because of course he is) as he tries to overcome the ghosts of his past and to redeem himself and King Richard against Prince John’s treachery.
Anyway, my question is this: What would you use to replace Attune? The game isn’t supernatural. It’s more gritty and realistic (minus the wagon and horse chases and such).
Sounds awesome. A little like Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood. If it’s real-world medieval era, maybe something about faith (of your preferred flavor)? As an action, maybe Invoke? That could also appeal to invoking the various authorities, beliefs, laws, and values in the world’s system like respect for hierarchies, titles, honor, hospitality, codes of conduct, moralism, the great chain of being, taboos, etc. It could also still sneak in some dabbling in non-existent sorcery or miracles of prayer.
Adam Minnie I like this idea. The other 11 skills cover just about everything else.
Look at other hacks, not all have supernatural. The ones that don’t, replace Attune with something that is specific for that hack.
If you are channelling Fast and the Furious, it should probably be Family.
“The game isn’t supernatural. It’s more gritty and realistic.”
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have supernatural in it! I’m serious! Include it anyway!
Assuming that people within the setting believe in the supernatural, it might actually feel more realistic if you include the supernatural. Because then the players are making in-game decisions that are more ahem attuned ahem to what the characters would be deciding.
If real-life Robin Hood would see it as a risk to cross a graveyard while doing a robbery, because it might anger the spirits that they are disturbed for such a poor reason – well, that makes it more daring, more exciting, more heroic.
When there is movement in the shadows, do you go investigate? Heck no, you’re in a graveyard at night with greedy intentions and revenge on your mind! You get the hell out of there before whatever has come out of its grave grabs you! You run through the mist – sure that the dogs of hell are at your heels! You don’t stop until you’re out of the graveyard and back in a warm circle of firelight!
Even in a realistic historical setting, if that’s how the character would think – how do you convey that experience to the player?
By making it “real” – the ghost doesn’t have to be real, but the player needs to be equally afraid of it. The NPCs certainly need to be afraid.
Without that, something moves in the darkness of the graveyard. Oh, it’s obviously the wind, or maybe bandits. I’ll go investigate, I’ll creep up and ambush them. No fear, only tactics. That’s fine – tactical games are fun, but you lose that historical-feeling superstition.
You can build this into the game in a number of ways. Make it something positive as well as negative. Not all supernatural fears are real – setting up your hideout in a haunted forest should certainly feel dangerous to the players, but once they’ve established it’s safe, then they have the added advantage that bandits or travellers are unlikely to stumble on their camp, that guards will be unwilling to search for them. If they were the ones to start the rumours of the forest being haunted they know they aren’t at any risk.
Do the same with faith. A prayer beforehand, by a PC that is regularly pious, should matter. Should give a bonus to the dice. Honestly, the dice are already random, and there’s still no “proof” that God intervened, but if the players know that asking for intervention grants them a bonus they will behave as if divine intervention is a real thing, because for them in this game it is. And that’s the feeling you want when they’re playing a character that believes divine intervention is real.
It can be kept super subtle. Rolling a success because of the bonus vs rolling a success because of luck is exactly the same as far as the in-game story is concerned. It won’t make the game feel non-historical. And anyway, maybe the increased chance of success is actually because they are more confident when they think God has their back, placebo-effect style.
Same with ghosts, they don’t have to sword-fight with a wraith. If they investigate the noise in the graveyard rather than running from it, that could just be “game over” and cut back to the other PCs who know their friend went into the graveyard but never returned. Maybe it WAS bandits. The drag marks in the mud leading to a shallow grave with their dead friend doesn’t prove supernatural exist, but it certainly creepy and a good reason to avoid the graveyard! If they REALLY want to investigate, you can build a non-supernatural story around it if you want. Or build a supernatural story.
My point is, you can imply the supernatural without outright proving it. You can mechanically support the character’s beliefs without outright stating that the character is right.
Ideally, the players never know whether the supernatural actually exists or not.
… and then you can still use Attune. The character with Attune, while travelling through the graveyard, gets a feeling and knows when they should run. Or doesn’t get that feeling, and knows when they can creep up to see what was moving in the graveyard. Maybe the character with Attune finds a lot of non-supernatural stuff – but gets the hell out of there those few times they get a bad feeling. They might be the one who says “Ignore the haunted forest, it’s just tricks” when searching for the base. Or other times says “No way am I going in there at night. We’re waiting for dawn.”
Or use it as a “luck” trait. As in, the one with high attune does the appropriate rituals. They don’t invite bad luck by hanging horseshoes upside-down, they say their prayers, and so on. So when bandits burn the town, it’s the PC with the lowest attune rating that gets their house burnt. Just bad luck, right? Those little rituals didn’t actually matter, did they? The characters will never know for sure.
(And yeah, it probably makes sense to rename it as Faith or something setting-appropriate. Christian legends are full of the pious character who gets a bad feeling and leaves before the goblin catches them, and the faithful often do all the little rituals necessary to maintain good luck/benevolent intervention.)
And GET THE PLAYERS TO ROLEPLAY IT INCIDENTALLY! Lucky roll? They can whisper a prayer of thanks. Complimenting someone? They can comment that God truly has blessed them. Give them an XP reward at the end of the session for roleplaying a believable character from a setting where pretty much everyone believes the supernatural is real.
Tony Demetriou I really appreciate this post. The thing is that I am going for more modern sensibilities within the aesthetic of Robin Hood. Maybe I should frame it to you as The Italian Job or even Mission Impossible with Robin Hood instead.
Aha. Ignore everything I said, then 🙂
But it was so lovely. I mean that
What about woods- or nature-craft? Robin Hood has a strong association with the forest, and it can cover both finding secret escape routes and brewing potions from herbs.
S. Tan Good idea! I think nature-craft would fit pretty well under Tinker/Hunt/Survey/Study and maybe even Consort (with animals)?
yeah, that kind of thing, for sure. I am going to include the Tinker, one of the classic Merry Men, but instead if being a tin Smith this one is going to be a clockwork expert. like the “hacker” of the group. plus, yeah, potions and stuff like that, maybe drugs and stuff.
Jacob Ross Like a Leech?
Yeah, but I’mma do ground-up playbooks. Might have strong thematic similarities.
I was thinking e nature craft could be pagan or hippie-like, where it’s still called Attune but relates to some kind of nature/animal sense instead of the ghost field. So, like the ghost field, everyone can access it a little bit.
Jacob Ross Kinda like this? robinhood.movie – Robin Hood – In Theaters November 21, 2018
I think the obvious question to ask before replacing it is: do you need to replace it? That is, can you tone down the impact of magic and be rid of the Ghost field, but keep attune and still have a setting that satisfies you? Or, similarly, can you just get rid of that whole stat?
Getting rid of that stat has some knock-on effects–most notably that resolve is now more limited as a resistance. This doesn’t immediately strike me as a problem for the setting, so I’d probably start here and then ask instead if my action list is missing any verbs without explicitly seeking to replace Attune. From there, I’d sort out if it needs to be Resolve-based or if further reshuffling or asymmetry is in order.
If I wanted an Attune skill but didn’t want it to be related to the Ghost Field and wasn’t sure exactly how to scope and theme my magic system, that’d be one thing. But trying to replace Attune just because the base game has it doesn’t make sense to me. If you don’t want Attune, start by just getting rid of Attune. If nothing breaks (and in my opinion, nothing does) proceed from there.