So I'm taking a break from my big game Fourth World and doing this 90s/00s Horror RPG mashup (Don't Rest Your Head, Unknown Armies, World of Darkness, Kult) where you play awful people who get magic powers from being dickheads. The aim of the game is to fight extradimensional monsters and attempt to survive the consequences of your own fucked up actions.
Basically, the way the game works is you've got 7 Sin meters ranging from Minor, to Major, to Purestrain - these are what you've got instead of stats, and they're constantly fluctuating depending on how you conduct yourself. For instance, your Wrath is determined by how violently you react to disappointment - Minor means breaking replaceable stuff and screaming abuse at people, Major means breaking irreplaceable stuff and beating people up, Purestrain means murder and mass arson or something. Each Sin gets a move whose modifier is determined by that Sin's intensity - None at all is -1, Minor is =0, Major +1 and Purestrain +2. Additionally, doing the stuff you need to do to get your Sin to a new level of intensity rewards you with Juice, even if you've already attained that level of intensity. For instance, beating someone up when you get upset would get you some Major Juice. Juice is only awarded when it comes at some cost to yourself though - whether that's a risk or a guaranteed cost. Unlike Unknown Armies, you can use your cool powers to earn Juice.
Here's some material because the main doc's not in a state to link yet:
PRIDE
Your Pride is determined by how you react to failure:
? Minor Pride: Refuse to admit fault or defeat, even when it would be a good idea.
? Major Pride: Refuse to admit fault or defeat, even when your long term health, happiness and freedom are at stake.
? Purestrain Pride: Refuse to admit fault or defeat no matter what, and, if able, carry on as if everything had gone as you wanted.
Sketch of two Pride powers:
? You get armour which fails the first time you take harm. You can also spend Juice to resist taking harm (in excess of your armour) and Conditions, but only so long as you have none of either.
? Straight up blast people with light and stun them or melt their eyes out.
WRATH
Your Wrath is determined by how you react to not getting what you want:
? Minor Wrath: Break someone’s stuff, chew them out.
? Major Wrath : Hurt someone bad, destroy something irreplaceable.
? Purestrain Wrath: Kill someone.
If someone was directly responsible for things not going how you wanted, they’re first priority to get hurt. Same goes for your stuff - if your car runs out of gas, you get out your golf stick and wreck it.
sidebar - Pride and Wrath
So how do you get angry at someone when you won’t admit there’s anything wrong? Easy - you don’t admit there’s anything wrong, but you calmly, decisively fuck up anyone responsible, all the while insisting that’s not why you’re doing it.
WRATH POWERS
DIE, FUCKER
Wrath juice stacks damage on top of the damage you’ve done and makes you better at hurting people - you become a whirlwind of violence and more blood than seems possible jets forth from the flesh of your victims and fire burns hotter and pain stings harder. Minor juice adds 1 harm, Major adds 2, and Purestrain adds 4. This can take your harm above 6, in which case whoever or whatever you hit is exploded into a fine paste.
You can also spend the Juice to add harm when you scream abuse at people, causing your victims to break out in shingles, catch fire or kill themselves.
Lastly, you can spend Juice to improve your weapons. Minor Juice improves your weapon’s range by one grade, Major Juice gives it the area tag.
WORK, FUCKER
You can hit stuff to make it work. Minor Juice covers regular stuff - a flat tire, a password you don’t know. Major Juice will fix stuff that is not technically fixable, like empty gas tanks and severed legs. Purestrain Juice means it will never stop working again - just, please don’t hit it.
The stuff works, but it’s visibly unhappy with doing so - gears creak, grind and crash, hard drives screech and grumble, screens flicker and people moan in agony. Plus, it breaks down even worse the moment you’re done with it (Except when you fix it with Purestrain Juice.).
Also, when I say “fixed” it doesn’t have to mean fixed, I just mean it works as well as it would have if it had been - it makes no difference whether someone’s legs start working again or they run around on their hands and balance stuff on their head.
Juggernaut
If someone fucks you over, and you decide to pursue them and fuck them up, you get 2 armor against any harm you take in the course of doing that. You take the damage and everything, it just doesn’t slow you down, and you get better eventually.
Firestarter
If you stare at something hard enough, shit will catch fire. Minor Juice for small, flammable stuff, Major Juice for a car, and Purestrain for a stadium or something.
ENVY POWERS
Celebrity Skin
When you you watch a video or stare at a photo of someone and hate yourself for not looking like them, you can turn into them. For Minor Juice, you look like a really good impersonator - you can fool pretty much anyone who’s not personally familiar with them. For Major juice, you look just like them - indistinguishable. For Purestrain juice, you look just like them, but better in some indescribable way, and people will think they’re the fake - take an advantage to any move which exploits their looks.
Evil Eye
You work like a voodoo doll, but for everyone. If you give someone the evil eye, or you spit curses at them or give them the finger or something, they take ap harm up to how much you’re holding depending on what Juice you spend. For Minor Juice, you can do up to 2 ap harm. For Major juice, up to 4 ap harm. For Purestrain juice, up to 6 ap harm. You can spend more potent juice to do the prior tier’s harm to everyone inside an area - and you can pick and choose who it hits.
If you get killed, you can spend some Purestrain Juice to kill the fucker who killed you.
Sour Grapes
When you hate someone for having something you don’t - even animals - you can fuck them over.
For Minor juice, they fuck up the next time they try and do something you couldn’t. You don’t have a gun? Their trigger jams for a second. You’re missing an arm? Their arm gets weak or is wracked with spasms. You don’t know how to defuse a bomb? For one vital moment, neither do they. You can’t fly? You can’t breathe fire? You can’t talk to people you’re hot for? Well guess what.
For Major Juice, they get fucked up for a while - guns fuck up full stop, their arm seizes up or goes totally limp. It clears up after a few days, but if it’s a capability they rely on in their day to day life the MS [Master of Scareamonies] will tell you a way in which it’s fucked them over when the scene ends. Gun guy gets hospitalised by a rival gang, arm guy can’t drive his car to a wedding.
For Purestrain juice, they get fucked up forever - guns just do not work for them ever again, and their arm withers to uselessness, as does any replacement arm. It’s possible to get over this, but it takes some powerful magic.
For one tier more powerful juice, you can hex everyone you run into that scene. That is, Purestrain juice would stick the same Major hex on everyone you run into.
Whatever you’ve inflicted on others with this move is undone if you yourself exercise the capabilities that you took away from them: If you use a gun, so can they. If you get a new arm, they get their old one back. If you work up the courage to talk to someone you’re hot for, they can too.
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Next up will probably be Sloth and Lust, because those two are the hardest to handle and as such I've put more thought into them (Sloth because, if poorly handled, it can be boring as shit, and Lust because, if poorly handled, it can be creepy, offensive and genuinely damaging to people and I don't want that).