Adversity

I had another half-idea for how the GM can accumulate Adversity to use against the players: Keys for the GM! Some kind folks are helping me thrash it out over at Story Games.

Adversity and sorcery

I've been working some on Adversity, the GM's resource, and how it's earned and spent. It's there to (a) challenge the players, and (b) provide the GM with pointers for play in the same way that Drives and Keys do for players. That last bit's the tricky one. I'm also thinking of renaming Adversity to Peril.

Added the rule that any use of sorcery (by a hero or an Adversary) generates Adversity, because it's vile secrets that man was not meant to wot of, and attracts the attention of inhuman powers. I like this rule - it means PC sorcerers will seem freaky and somewhat disliked by other PCs, and makes using sorcery a more difficult decision.

Osh pointed out that I was missing any way for sorcerers to turn into giant snakes. So the new Lore sorcery trick "Shapeshifting" was created, which when cast lets you rewrite your descriptor to represent your new form, and grants you access to one Horror quality of your choice. It's the only way for heroes to be able to use Horror qualities, which is potent and somewhat freaky.

I also wrote out a big list of conditions that can occur in play which I can use of triggers for mechanics. Things like "Hero wins/loses a conflict", "Hero takes injury", "An Adversary enters the scene". Might come in handy, and it's an interesting exercie.