Karma

[drostie]

In the Amber diceless RPG, there is a neat thing which allows you to "even out" a character who you want to create, called Karma. The way it works looks like this: if you want extra points with which to add powers to your character, you may buy them, but it requires taking a corresponding number of points of Bad Karma. A Bad Karma character is a mean and nasty character -- nobody likes them, nobody helps them, and they are chronically unlucky. Of course, this gives the character a better chance to play the game that they want to play -- a loner's perseverance game where power is the most important quantity and everyone else can go get out of the way.

On the other hand, if you have spare points, you may buy some Good Karma. Good Karma characters are nice, forthright, and upstanding people who tend to be very lucky, have sparkling teeth, and everyone likes them. They may often be gullible. Or you may leave yourself at neutral karma, so that you have all of your options open -- people don't especially help you out but also don't evade you, your luck evens out in the long haul, and so on.

One nice illustration shows three characters entering a room to a flurry of arrows: the bad karma character has been hit in the shoulder and looks enraged; the neutral karma character has a shield stuck with arrows and has eyes darting across the room, and the good karma character has just been totally missed and is smiling triumphantly.

I'm not saying that this *exact* idea should be implemented in Haven and Hearth, but the general principle might help everyone get more out of the game. Imagine if, for example, village work and house-building and so on increased your karma, which increased your learning rate -- but you would lose the ability to do various criminal acts as you got to higher and higher karma levels. Destroying things, killing animals, logging forests, murder and theft -- these would send you into negative karma, which decreases your learning rate, but enables further criminal actions. Bad-karma characters could find themselves fighting higher-level animals while good-karma characters are penalized with lower-level animals. Meanwhile, just like how high-agility characters dodge arrows by getting out of the way, good-karma characters dodge arrows by being excessively lucky. I think farming would be a good neutral-karma activity: perhaps planting a tile offers good karma while plowing a tile offers bad karma, or something like that.

I also think that this would add a nice element to hearth magic: via hearth magic you might be able to inspect a character's karma, perhaps also letting you see some other sort of personal history -- villages you were exiled from, the people you have murdered, and that sort of thing.

[Seren_Elder]

Infact, this should be revised

When killing, or leaving scents, you lose karma

If force-summoning and hunting someone, you increase karma

some more can be made

[Phizuol]

"Sorry, I can't help you build your house. I don't want to lose my bad karma I've been grinding."

Sorry, but:
-1

[Sotsa]

no.

[aso11]

"Sorry, I can't help you build your house. I don't want to lose my bad karma I've been grinding."

Sorry, but:
-1

This made me lol.
Either way, regarding the post, Sorry, I'm neutral, no comment.

[bitza]

wtf are you smoking

[jgudge]

Maybe being penalized for being good isn't a good idea. Even balance, everyone can do good/bad things, but the good get a heavier Dark karma blow if they do a bad deed. The evil get a heavier Light karma hit if they do good things... Stat boosts are the reward, and i think it should be left there. Not being able to chop a tree is kinda odd, because alot of things need wood, no? Why be good when you can be bad and not have any really important penalties?