Cortex Plus Design Diary 02: Components of Character, Part 2

As I said in my last post I have not actually played any of the other Cortex Plus games I'm about to talk about, so hopefully I won't draw things out by referring to mechanics like I did with the Marvel one.  Here we go:

Dragon Brigade

Dragon Brigade is a game about swashbuckling action, intrigue, and romance.  It seems to be high fantasy with some Victorian and Steampunk elements mixed it.  Lets see how the components of the character sheet help portray this theme.  They are Action Traits, Distinctions, Specialties, Talents, and Signature Assets.

Action Traits:  These are a list of five characteristics that make up each character.  They are Courage, Faith, Guile, Reason, and Vigor.  Each character will have various dice of different sizes assigned to each one; to show how much a given Action Trait is a part of a given character and his personality.  Using these descriptive words definitely helps drive home the feel and theme of the game in my opinion; and once again the beauty of Cortex Plus can be seen in that one can just pick the right set of words for the theme they want and plug them right in.  The fact that your actions are defined by using one or two of these words and their associated dice I think really also helps drive home the theme and RP with each move taken.  By rolling the dice associated with Courage and Faith you show to yourself and the whole table that you are acting out of these specific motivations.

Distinctions:  these work exactly like the ones in the Marvel RPG; giving you character specific RP and description cues that you use to either help or hurt yourself; whichever is most interesting in the fiction.

Specialties:  A bit more specific in this game than Marvel, but once again they fill the place of skills, giving you extra dice when you act in areas where you have knowledge and training.  Because they are broadly defined and very customizable they easily embody the feel of the setting and game.

Talents:  Talents strike me as being like Feats in D&D, and a little like SFX in Marvel.  They are basically special abilities that let you manipulate or change the rules for a given action to achieve things you might not normally have been able to.  They set you apart by giving you things others can't do, and give you the extra little heroic punch that makes a good PC.

Signature Assets:  To put it simply, these are gear.  Your special weapons and items, magic stuff, etc etc.  Fantasy games are usually all about gear, and steampunk loves its gadgets; so I think this trait definitely helps reinforce the feel of the game.

Smallville

Smallville is about high school teen drama plus superpowers!  Okay that might be a bit of a simplified description.  The book lists the themes of the show as things like "love and loss, friendship and betrayal, trying to find your place in a world that doesn't always seem to accept you".  So ya, what I said.

Anyway, the Traits in Smallville are grouped in three big categories, each with sub-categories:  Drives, Assets, Resources.

Drives:  Drives are broken up into two divisions, Relationships and Values.  Both of these are presented with a statement that helps define the particular nature of the Relationship or Value, and a die size that denotes its strength and importance to your character.  For example, Tess is playing with fire d8 or Truth I decide who knows it d10.  Whenever the Relationship of Value can apply to a given action you can use it in your roll; and by defining the nature of these Drives your able to define what type of situations you'll be able and suited to take action in.  Everybody will have Relationships, many of them with the same people; and everyone will have the same 6 Values.  But the die rating and the details phrase will distinguish one character from another.

Assets:  The three categories of Assets are Distinctions,Abilities, and Gear.  Distinctions are once again thematically the same, unique character and personality quirks that define you, though they do work mechanically differently here.  Abilities are the superpowers and special abilities in this game.  They are similar to Power Sets, they have a die rating that defines their strength as well as extra, unique applications that personalize them to each character and limits that illustrate flaws and the like.  Gear works just like abilities; except that all Gear shares the same limit in that it can be lost, stolen, or broken because it is a physical piece of...gear.

Resources:  These are either Extras or Locations; or important, helpful NPCs or special places that provide bonuses to those that control them, respectively.  These once again tie in to the theme really well; both by reinforcing the focus on relationships and by connecting in the physical world setting.

So as you can see a lot of the traits in Smallville deal with relationships and values, how you feel and connect with things.  Very much in keeping with the theme.

Leverage

Leverage is a game of super competent thieves, hackers, and con men using their skills to help take down bad guys; in a very Robin Hood-esque manner.  The Traits that define characters in this game are Attributes, Roles, and Distinctions.  (Which shows us that Distinctions are the common thread Trait in each game; which makes sense since they are so about the unique character)

Attributes:  These are things like Agility and Willpower.  They are the closest type of Trait to the old school D&D attributes.  While they aren't really adding much flavor or theme to a given character, they are definitely going to be easy to understand and comprehend.  Also, they fit the theme of the overall game iself, which is about doing bad-ass things with your bad-ass capabilities.

Roles:  There are five roles in Leverage:  Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind, and Thief.  They obviously fit very thematically into the feel of the game; all those heist shows and movies always have a collection of skilled specialists who are the best at what they do.  Each character will have a Primary Role that they are really good at, and a Secondary Role that they are cross-trained in.  Each Role will also have Talents and Specialities; which once again are specific special abilities or skill sets that relate to the overall category and help make your character unique.

Distinctions:  Just like in all the other games these are flavor text and descriptive phrases that help define your character and can both help and hinder your character depending on the fiction and the circumstances.

So that is that as far as defining the various Traits that make up a given Cortex Plus character.  As you can see there is a decent amount of similarity to the Traits from each game, and next time I'll look at some of the patterns that I see there.  I'll also kinda sum up my feelings on the whole subject in general before moving on to setting out the framework for a general character creation.

Design Diary 02:  Components of Character, Part 3