Alternate Core Documents

[Ilushia]

I believe that nothing should ever in terms of game mechanics aid or hinder the way one roleplay one's character. I think that that way would easily lead to people choosing certain roleplaying styles over others because they benefit more from the mechanics of the game, how little that may be.

To put it simply, I believe that game mechanics should be completely separate from the roleplaying of a character.

This is part of the purpose of these rules. Mechanics which reinforce that the sort of story the rules are meant to tell and to play out is also encouraged mechanically. Something to avoid the situation of "Well all my family is dead and I hate everyone and everything so that nothing and no one can ever be leveraged against me or used as my weakness by the GM. I'll kill, murder and maim everything in my path for laughs and not care who or what they are." by giving a solid, mechanical reason why that style of play is a bad idea.

It also reinforces the core concept of the FoE setting: That heroes can compromise themselves for short-term gains or fall apart under the stress of the wasteland and become the sorts of monsters they're supposed to be fighting. FoE is -full- of characters who have essentially allowed themselves to be corrupted by the wasteland. The Goddess and Red Eye are the two biggest ones I can think of, who have allowed their virtues to decay to the point where they may be following the letter of the virtue, but have completely lost the spirit of it.

The purpose of these rules is to give mechanical chops to those sorts of stories. Something which FoE claims is quite common. If it enforces the idea that someone who is unvirtuous has to struggle harder to cling to what little ideals they still have? Mission accomplished. If it encourages people who are only interested in what is mechanically the best choice to be great heroes and change the world? That's the point.

Mechanics do not just describe the way the world work. They also act to put players in the right frame of mind and encourage the style of play which the rules are meant to reflect.

[Ilushia]

the type of player that plays a super murder all the faces get all the powers, character would just be playing the "saint" to get all the powers. the important thing to remember is that all systems, mechanics, and rules are there to be exploited by any player who is clever enough to figure it out and get that shit past their DM.

Good. Job done. Now players who play that sort of character will have to willingly open themselves up to non-pragmatic options because they're forced to choose between 'virtue' and 'survival'. That's the point.

now on a more practical side:
Integrity: problem 1: your virtue, and player interpretation: my mane character is a Ghoul [now ghost] Zebra spy from the war. Her virtue was Duty, her duty during the war was to follow her orders and defend the zebra nation, that included seeing to planting a mega spell that would level a city. now i would lose karma for mass murder in nuking a populated city, but gain integrity at the same time. following your virtue is VERY open to interpretation, and more then that, debate between the DM and the player on what that should mean to the character in the worst way. There is nothing worse then having some one else tell you that you are playing your own character wrong for the campaign, this is just fights waiting to happen.

This is something you should talk with the GM about before the game begins. A good selection of basic Virtues is important to lay the groundwork for how others might work. And yes, sometimes following your Virtue can lead to you doing rather negative things. Usually not, though.

problem 2: No bad choices: so as long as the choice is between two things the character would not want to do choices i have nothing to worry about in losing integrity,

That's not what it says. What it says is "If you're forced to choose between two options, both of which compromise your integrity, with no alternative options to avoid that situation, then you don't lose it". Basically, the GM cannot put you in a no-win situation and then say "Haha! Now you lose Integrity!" as a cheap means to diminish characters and 'force' them to become corrupted.

problem 3: Not allowed to play a bad pony: how about no.... in Dark herasy and rouge trader, both have this same system of being "to evil to play" has much much much more wiggle room, complexity, and frankly depth, to make them not horrible systems. But telling players they can not play characters that are evil, or even morel grey ponies takes the all the fun out of playing anything other then literal living saints of characters.

I've read the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader rules. They're also intended for a bit of a different purpose than the FoE rules are. Though this does not prevent you from playing a negative-Karma character or jerk or the like. It enforces the idea that heroes, by nature, must have a virtue to which they cling against the horrors of the wasteland.

problem 4: be good and gain super powers: Ya, if you want to encourage your players to play good ponies, then do roleplay for it, having NPC's acting friendly and helpful, being nice, polite, and making the player WANT to protect them is the good way to do this, "hey you don't want to loose your bonus!" seems like a really shitty way to play a good pony character.

Giving bonuses gives a player a reason to WANT to maintain their Virtue. Something which is SUPPOSED to be quite hard. Karma is what determines how other people regard you and feel about you. Integrity is about how good you are at upholding your Virtue. Sometimes these align with one another, sometimes they don't. That's fine, and deliberate. A negative Karma character who's still high Integrity is not unreasonable to play. Steel Hooves is probably a decent example of that in FoE itself.

problem 5: Being good offers crappy rewards: other then the regeneration of a huge ass pile of hit points for free, these are pretty crappy bonus's to get, skill bonus's that don't break the cap are less then useful at high levels, the amount of strain regeneration is embarrassing, what the hell are focus points?, and if that up to +5 to a SPECIAL breaks the 10 cap, assassins with high integrity, sneaking up and pile driving peoples heads in for the highest bidder, great thing a virtue of "profit" can be.

Numbers for the rewards probably need some help. The reason why rewards are a bit less impressive at higher levels is because it gives higher-powered characters less reason to care about maintaining their Virtues. As you become more independently powerful you tend to believe you need friends and companions and ideals less.

As far as Profit being a virtue, it probably isn't. Virtues are the way you interact with others and the things you bring with you to your relationships. Laughter, Loyalty, Duty, Hope. They're about the way you view the world and what you offer others when you're close to them.

problem 6: Major and minor: this should not even be a thing, first off how about you don't tell me my virtue is not as important since the mane six didn't have it, their virtues didn't seem to do a whole damn lot to stop the world from ending last time anyway. And how about not having the 11 aligments to kill the creativity of the players.

There'll be more than that. Just eleven as starting reference points. The idea is that the 'major' virtues are ones which apply to may situations, but tend to be the hardest to hang onto. They're the easiest to use, but also the easiest to lose. That, in my mind, is -why- they're the most central virtues to pony-kind. They represent something more fundamental than most other Virtues. Like primary colors compared to secondary colors.

Problem 7: stupid good for fun and profit: I hate X so ill kill all the X. awesome my virtue can be genocide!

Connections and Virtues are different. The connections rules even specifically spell out that they don't apply to Integrity changes the same way.

Honestly the best way for me to say this is, take a look at how the Dark Heresy system dose its system for this, hell it has a system of corruption along with evilness that can render your PC unplayable due to excess mutations even! i bring that system up a lot, i know, but it is a 1d100 based system, with guns, in a dark/grimdark setting so it makes for very good comparisons to FOE.

I'm familiar with them and I've seen the rules for madness and corruption in Dark Heresy. But mostly Corruption in Dark Heresy is of the 'The gods from beyond have reached out and twisted you to their whim!' variety. Which doesn't fit FoE very well. Likewise, Dark Heresy has some very different groundwork points for its setting. FoE is fundamentally of the ideal that everyone is at their core good and that becoming evil means losing that part of yourself, but that no one is truly beyond any hope of saving. Dark Heresy, and the 40K setting, is distinctly of the opinion that humans are bastardly bastards who backstab, destroy and murder one another for shits and giggles and that much of the problems of the setting are endemic of humanity's inability to work together beyond the short term.

The two are similar in fundamental mechanics, but differ greatly in message and purpose. As such, they differ in detailed mechanics as the type of world they're attempting to portray is different.

[Kkat]

problem 3: Not allowed to play a bad pony: how about no.... in Dark herasy and rouge trader, both have this same system of being "to evil to play" has much much much more wiggle room, complexity, and frankly depth, to make them not horrible systems. But telling players they can not play characters that are evil, or even morel grey ponies takes the all the fun out of playing anything other then literal living saints of characters.

How about extreme amounts of YES. This is not Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. This is Fallout: Equestria. This is a game with a core morality that is based in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and is about holding to those idea in dark and desperate circumstances. This is the game where you have to play a character with a virtue -- an actually virtuous one. If you don't, the GM has every right to tell you that your character is not playable as a PC. Morally grey is acceptable, but that is because all grey has some white in it. This is not a game where you are allowed to play villains and raiders.

the important thing to remember is that all systems, mechanics, and rules are there to be exploited by any player who is clever enough to figure it out and get that shit past their DM.

I think that's a pretty crappy way to play. A good GM will spot such a player, block their abuses when possible, and not invite them to future games.

problem 4: be good and gain super powers: Ya, if you want to encourage your players to play good ponies, then do roleplay for it, having NPC's acting friendly and helpful, being nice, polite, and making the player WANT to protect them is the good way to do this, "hey you don't want to loose your bonus!" seems like a really shitty way to play a good pony character.

This is actually a concern for me. Isn't this pretty much why we decided not to create a lot of mechanical benefits for Karma? Doesn't this somewhat go against the nobility of the struggle against darkness?

Fallout: Equestria is about heroes and how hard it is to stay a hero in the Wasteland.

Thank you!

[Ilushia]

I really have to agree with this. In fact, isn't this pretty much why we decided not to create a lot of mechanical benefits for Karma? Doesn't this somewhat go against the nobility of the struggle against darkness?

The thing is, there need to be a reason why characters would choose to face the slings and arrows of being virtuous. A reason to choose to hold onto Integrity rather than pick a pragmatic option. The mechanical rewards are there to incentivize that. And to help those who DO choose that path to not get rolled over by the wasteland too easily. Primarily the idea is you should usually be choosing between "Hard path where I'll need to utilize Effort to succeed" and "Easier path which means losing Integrity". Mechanical benefit to choosing integrity gives you a reason to cling to it beyond roleplaying, and helps to allow heroic characters who have it to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds.

The other reason for this mechanic is because it means that as your Integrity decays, you have less reason to cling to your remaining Integrity. It makes the downward spiral of "Well, I've already done bad so doing more won't hurt that much" and compromising yourself again easier and more likely.

The numbers associated with spending Effort probably need to be fixed. But that's the basic idea behind it.

[TyrannisUmbra]

I really have to agree with this. In fact, isn't this pretty much why we decided not to create a lot of mechanical benefits for Karma? Doesn't this somewhat go against the nobility of the struggle against darkness?

The thing is, there need to be a reason why characters would choose to face the slings and arrows of being virtuous. A reason to choose to hold onto Integrity rather than pick a pragmatic option. The mechanical rewards are there to incentivize that. And to help those who DO choose that path to not get rolled over by the wasteland too easily. Primarily the idea is you should usually be choosing between "Hard path where I'll need to utilize Effort to succeed" and "Easier path which means losing Integrity". Mechanical benefit to choosing integrity gives you a reason to cling to it beyond roleplaying, and helps to allow heroic characters who have it to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds.

The other reason for this mechanic is because it means that as your Integrity decays, you have less reason to cling to your remaining Integrity. It makes the downward spiral of "Well, I've already done bad so doing more won't hurt that much" and compromising yourself again easier and more likely.

The numbers associated with spending Effort probably need to be fixed. But that's the basic idea behind it.

I'd also like to add: It feels really good to have the hard work you put into RPing your character pay off with a tangible gameplay benefit. The numbers might need tweaking, and maybe even less of a 'penalty' for low integrity, but the idea is one that as a player makes me want to play with these rules, now!

[Kkat]

The thing is, there need to be a reason why characters would choose to face the slings and arrows of being virtuous.

Because it's the right thing to do?

I dunno... it just feels like giving mechanical bonuses for being good is something designed to provoke the worst sort of players to be not as bad as they would otherwise be. Not something that makes the game more rewarding for good players.

I'm not sure we should be catering to that. I'd rather see players who have no grasp of the value of virtue just booted.

Mechanical benefit to choosing integrity gives you a reason to cling to it beyond roleplaying, and helps to allow heroic characters who have it to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds.

I can see some benefit in that. At the same time, I tend to think that roleplaying should be all the reason a good player needs to cling to their virtue. In the very least, though, this will make it necessary for players to chose their character's virtues early in the game. And makes a good avenue for inserting a rule allowing GMs to not only insist that the characters have a virtue, but veto any attempt by some players to chose a "virtue" that wouldn't require them to act in any way redeemable.

The other reason for this mechanic is because it means that as your Integrity decays, you have less reason to cling to your remaining Integrity. It makes the downward spiral of "Well, I've already done bad so doing more won't hurt that much" and compromising yourself again easier and more likely.

I do rather like that idea.

[Kkat]

What I don't totally understand is why characters would be getting bonuses, especially, as Silverlight points out, as substantial as those. Being a virtuous hero of the wasteland is supposed to be significantly harder than being an "unrepentant murderous shitbag," as Thanqol quite eloquently puts it, hence why the virtuous heroes are so rare. These bonuses for being virtuous kind of fly in the face of that as a concept. Not saying it's a bad idea or that I'm against some sort of hero points/morale alternate rules system, just food for thought.

Maybe a different kind of bonus, instead? Rather than bonuses to things like strain and hit points, perhaps something akin to the "Edge" system in Shadowrun? (I know Icekatze has implemented something like that based on luck. It might be awesome to implement it based on Integrity.)

Also, I'm not sure virtues should be divided into major and minor. Spike held the virtues connected with the Elements of Harmony in extreme regard for obvious reasons. But that doesn't mean virtues like Hope and Beauty are not equally as valuable.

[Ilushia]

Maybe a different kind of bonus, instead? Rather than bonuses to things like strain and hit points, perhaps something akin to the "Edge" system in Shadowrun? (I know Icekatze has implemented something like that based on luck. It might be awesome to implement it based on Integrity.)

Originally I wanted these to replace the Destiny system that I was using in my own game. To sortof be a stand-in for the Fate-points in Dark Heresy, but based on your clinging to heroic ideals rather than just being 'blessed' to be more awesome than others.

But I also wanted the mechanics to have scaling impact which went down as your Integrity went down. Hence why most of them are based on 'well you can get a bonus of X based on integrity'. They probably need fixing, but I'm not at the moment having great ideas on how to replace them. If you have any ideas what to do, let me know.

Also, I'm not sure virtues should be divided into major and minor. Spike held the virtues connected with the Elements of Harmony in extreme regard for obvious reasons. But that doesn't mean virtues like Hope and Beauty are not equally as valuable.

This seems to be a majority opinion and when I get around to revising the rules I'll probably remove the distinction. Mostly it was just a naming thing, to separate the more fundamental virtues from the less fundamental ones. Since the Major virtues were intended to be the most wide-reaching and hardest to hold onto. But I can see why people don't like it so I'll remove it when I do a revision run on the rules.

[Ilushia]

Because it's the right thing to do?

I dunno... it just feels like giving mechanical bonuses for being good is something designed to provoke the worst sort of players to be not as bad as they would otherwise be. Not something that makes the game more rewarding for good players.

I'm not sure we should be catering to that. I'd rather see players who have no grasp of the value of virtue just booted.

Rules exist for a couple reasons. One is definitely to enforce mechanical ideas on the players, to set a 'Here is the optimum path' designation for those who choose to follow it. But they also serve to put players in the right frame of mind. By saying "Heroes are awesome and bigger than life, but suffer greater tragedies and pains for it", you convey a particular idea behind the world. It helps to get the players to understand what virtues -do- to a character. That those who are virtuous help to change the world, but will find life harder for it.

Virtues grant you strength. And force you into situations where you'll need it. That was the idea I wanted to convey with the rules, though I may have failed to. Like LittlePip putting herself in danger for others, yet crawling through it alive (even if barely), heroic characters who are close to their virtues suffer for it, but draw strength of purpose from it.

[TyrannisUmbra]

What I don't totally understand is why characters would be getting bonuses, especially, as Silverlight points out, as substantial as those. Being a virtuous hero of the wasteland is supposed to be significantly harder than being an "unrepentant murderous shitbag," as Thanqol quite eloquently puts it, hence why the virtuous heroes are so rare. These bonuses for being virtuous kind of fly in the face of that as a concept. Not saying it's a bad idea or that I'm against some sort of hero points/morale alternate rules system, just food for thought.

Maybe a different kind of bonus, instead?

Maybe something closer in line to the quote from your previous post is applicable?

Mechanical benefit to choosing integrity gives you a reason to cling to it beyond roleplaying, and helps to allow heroic characters who have it to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds.

These bonuses are already allowed only when actively upholding your virtue. It only makes sense to keep them something that gives an inner strength fueled by the power of your own conviction. To give an example, Littlepip fighting for her friends in strenuous circumstances allows her to tap hidden reserves that she may not be able to access otherwise -- In a pure gameplay perspective, the rules don't allow for this kind of surge of strength outside of the new virtue rules. I just absolutely love the idea of having rules to define this sort of thing, which is an iconic element in every traditional story of heroes. It really makes it feel like each character has their own inner potential that comes to life at peaks of character development.