NaGa DeMon: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

In the last post I revealed a few details about the rules system (which I dubbed Galaxy Core). One aspect I was not really happy with were Hooks. Yesterday I remembered that I actually had designed a similar mechanic for another game that never saw the light of day that I could easily adapt for Galaxy Core. Instead of up to three Hooks, each player now gets to pick three Traits: Concept, Motivation and Flaw.

The Concept is a short description of who your character is. This could be something like “Curious Explorer” or “Battle-hardened Veteran”. Motivation is a description of what drives the character on. It could be the quest for glory or riches, the belief in a greater good, personal revenge, whatever suits you best. Last but not least the Flaw is your character’s Achilles Heel. He or she may be vengeful, naive, impulsive, etc.

These traits are guidelines to better roleplay your character, but there are also some mechanical aspects. Each character now gets a new derived value as well: Resolve. Resolve is a measure of a character’s firmness of purpose or intent, his or her determination. Resolve can be spent in order to improve circumstances in the character’s favor and are regained when a character acts according to his Traits or achieves certain goals. You can spend Resolve to get a bonus to a Skill check if either your Concept or Motivation should give you an edge in the given situation.

A character’s Flaw can used by the GM to coerce the player to let the character act according to the Flaw, which gains the character a free point of Resolve. There will probably a couple of more uses for Resolve that I’ll introduce later.

What do you think of Traits? Do you prefer the more clearly defined traits over the rather loose hooks? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!