Thoughts on Changes to Vitality & Shock

Okay so it started with this post from Vincent Baker on BlueSky from three weeks ago:

I shared this in the Unwritten Earths Symposium Discord server, and Andy H responded: “Consequences are communication; when you take a consequence, it sends a message to you and says something in the game. Far too many injury systems in games aren't used to communicate intentionally.”

Something proceeded to shake loose in my brain. Three weeks later and I think I have a pretty good handle on what I want to play with.

(1) Rework the shock track. Dice are pretty darn precious. Have 3 shock states: shocked (force a yield of 1, aka -1 die, aka next highest die down), incapacitated (unconscious), negated (dead if not treated by the end of the encounter). The biggest penalty would ever only be the -1 die at shocked.

(2) Everyone has 3 vitality values: Interaction, Power, Attack, progressing in order of violence from nonviolent to violent, maybe sometimes jumping that track straight into violent depending on the type of challenge issued.

• Interaction Vitality: you choose, but makes most sense to be either COM, KNO or PRO

• Power Vitality: you choose, but makes most sense to be CNG, PRO or RES Attack Vitality: you choose, but makes most sense to be PRO, CNG or STA You take hits to one of these Vitality values depending on the type of challenge and the type of encounter.

• When you reach zero (0) in any, you start taking hits against the shock track, the same way it stands right now (one hit per shock level, hits don’t roll over, etc.), which might encourage someone to try to either escalate or deescalate so they can take hits to another Vitality they have more points in.

For context/reference, see this post: Challenges → Encounters → Actions (Oh My)!

Will have to hit the table and playtest to see how well it holds up.