Monday, February 26, 2007

Spirit of Iron, Part I

It struck me today like an eighteen-wheeler that Spirit of the Century just might be the perfect match for the Iron Kingdoms (the setting of the Warmachine and Hordes miniature games). I had recently been doing some thinking about adapting SotC to Conan, as you can see in this thread from RPGnet. See, I've always felt that the Iron Kingdoms D&D setting was inadequate for really expressing the coolness of this setting, so I've done a few quick homebrew conversions in the past (most notably one for The Shadow of Yesterday), but none of them really satisfied me. But as I was rereading the GMing section in SotC, it struck me that the Gadget rules would model the arcane mechanika of the Iron Kingdoms world very well. Then I started thinking about a potential conversion, and it become clear to me that IK is, in fact, very pulpy. I know, I'm sure most of you have already realized this, but it hit me like lightning. No wonder I'd been dissatisfied with IK using D&D! It didn't have any explicit mechanical support for the type of action and narrative I was looking for! And so I was off, full-steam ahead on some conversion notes. I present them here.

Character Creation
Character creation is mostly the same as in SotC proper; I'll only note the differences here.

Phase 1: Background - You must choose your nationality or race, and describe the circumstances of your birth and early childhood. At least 1 of the Aspects chosen during this Phase must reflect your nationality or race.

Phase 2: The Shadow of War - You must describe your young-adulthood, in particular what effects the looming threat of war had on your life.

Phase 3: Novel - Come up with the title for a war story starring your character. At this point, hostilities have broken out between the major nations of Western Immoren, and no one is left untouched. Come up with 2 or 3 sentences to act as a "back cover blurb" for your war story.

Phases 4 and 5: Guest Star - Functionally the same as in SotC, except you're guest starring in the other characters' war stories, instead of pulp novels.

Skill Pyramid - There are a few changes to specific skills, detailed later.

Select Stunts - In addition to selecting stunts based on your skills, there are some stunts that may be selected based on nationality or race.

Skills
Changes to SotC's skills are as noted:

Art is removed.

Drive is renamed Ride.

Engineering is renamed Artificing.

Mysteries is renamed Sorcery.

Pilot is renamed Jack/Beast Handling. When taking this skill, a player must take either Jack or Beast Handling, never both. Taking the Jack Handling skill requires an Aspect reflecting your character's nature as a warcaster. Taking the Beast Handling skill requires an Aspect reflecting your character's nature as a warlock. Characters who do not have such an Aspect cannot use the Jack/Beast Handling skill at all, instead of it defaulting to Mediocre.

Science is removed.

New skill: Faith. If the Faith skill is taken at any level above Mediocre, the player must specify which deity the character worships.

The Faith Skill
Faith is a skill representing your character's personal connection to the god he worships. Faith Stunts allow the character to become a priest or shaman of the god or goddess he worships, as well as a druid if he follows the faith of the Blackclad. Trappings are as follows:

Prayer: The character can recite a prayer, setting his own heart, and the hearts of any believers who listen, at ease. This functions much like the Medical Attention trapping of the Science skill in SotC, except that it can only remove check marks from Composure Stress.

Providence: The player may initiate maneuvers during a conflict that revolve around prayer. If successful, such a maneuver allows the player to place an Aspect on his enemy that centers around luck or divine providence.

Blessing: The player may roll, as a maneuver, to place temporary Aspects on fellow believers that they may Invoke in the pursuit of a specific endeavor, indicated by the nature of the blessing and the wording of the Aspect.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People should read this.