Tags
Georgian, Ghastly Affair, gothic game, Gothic Gaming, Gothic Horror, Gothic Literature, Gothic Romance, Gothick, GROOVY Ghastly Affair, Regency, role-playing game, Romantic Horror
The Dark Bible of the Second Edition, a work in progress. Picture by Wendy R.
Over the weekend I met again with Ghastly Affair’s contributing editor Wendy Rosalsky, and her husband Stan (who played the the first Libertine PC). After assuring ourselves that certain unnamable abominations remained imprisoned in the dark vaults under Chateau Rosalsky, we started really hammering out the shape of the proposed Second Edition of Ghastly Affair. Here are some things we discussed.
The most significant change to the game we are considering is in character creation. Rather than just having character Classes, we might make the default method of character creation involve choosing any five Special Abilities, and two Weaknesses. The current character Classes would still exist, but as suggested packages of Special Abilities and Weaknesses. Everyone PC would gain Levels using the same basic Advancement Table – but certain Special Abilities (such as “Use Incantation”) might increase the XP cost to attain 2nd Level (and/or have Basic Ability requirements). In other words, Player Characters would be built using the same method of mixing and matching Special Abilities and Weaknesses that the game already uses to create NPC Adversaries. You would still be able to play a classic Libertine or True Innocent if you want (and the rules will encourage it), but you can also play an equally flavorful character of your own design. This system needs to be thoroughly play-tested of course, and may prove to be too unbalanced. But I think the possibilities are good.
Our plan is to reorganize the game so that “Ghastly Affair Second Edition, Volume I” will be the complete basic system in one book. It will be focused, like the current edition, on the historical period between 1765 and 1820. “Ghastly Affair Second Edition, Volume II” should follow shortly thereafter, and expand the game into other historical eras (The “Gothic Age” of 13th century, the Edwardian Era, the Groovy 60s & 70s, etc.).
The base measure of distance in the revised game will probably be the 5-foot (or 1.5 meter) Pace, which is the distance an average person walks in 1 second. Therefore, the base Speed of a character would be raised from the current 9 to 10, corresponding to a rate of 50 feet in one ten-second Round. (This dovetails perfectly with modern games where the movement rate is 30 feet in a six-second Round.) Other units of distance employed for combat and magic would be “Hand-to-Hand” (25 feet / 7.5 meters), “Nearby” (50 feet/ 15.25 meters), “Musket Range” (300 feet / 100 yards / 91.5 meters), and “Visual Range” (self-explanatory).
In line with raising the base Speed to 10, the average Basic Ability rating of PCs would also be raised to 10. Therefore, each PC Ability would be determined by either taking 10, or rolling 3d6 and taking the result. The basic resolution system of Ghastly Affair is going to remain “roll under modified Ability on a d20”. However, I think we might also formally institute the concept of “success at cost”. Roll exactly your modified Ability, and you can chose to either fail, or succeed in a way that means you cannot do whatever you were doing again that day. You dance well and catch the eye of the Duke, but sprain your ankle in the process. You make the shot, but your trigger finger gets hurt. Etc.
We want to fully integrate LARP (Live Action Role Playing) and miniatures rules into the base game. LARPing is a natural fit for Ghastly Affair as a game of Gothic Romance set in an era (in)famous for its sumptuous fashion. I was previously opposed to including miniatures in Ghastly Affair, as I felt the “gods-eye view” creates a calm detachment that works against the immersion necessary for credible horror. I still feel that combat, especially in a horror game, is more thrilling with the slight disorientation created by “theater of the mind”. However, miniatures or tokens have great utility when running dances, balls, and salons in large rooms – keeping track of who can see each other and credibly interact can be difficult otherwise.
So, that’s the “State of the Sausage” this week. More updates to come!
The Engine of Oracles 
I found myself repeatedly muttering, “Yes!” as I read through your current thoughts surrounding a second edition. The shift to a default ability score of 10 and succeeding at cost will be eagerly implemented in my upcoming game.
My only hesitation surrounds the potential move from classes. See, in Ghastly Affair, more than in many games, the classes truly represent genre archetypes beyond just their class abilities. The archetypes look like they will still be heavily encouraged but I’d still love to see them as the system default. Perhaps an option to swap class abilities with some cost, such giving up two of your class abilities or taking on an additional weakness for one ability of another class, may work? I have all the confidence that your play testing will show the best path, but I just had to cast my vote for keeping tight genre emulation.
Any further thoughts about the gypsy class? While one could argue that even the name is part of the genre archetype, it is certainly problematic (and I’m three generations removed from my Hungarian roots!) I’ve played with renaming it Outsider to step further away from the Romany stereotype and to speak to the class’s outsider status not just culturally but in their connection to the spirit world.
Thanks again for sharing your progress! I look forward to the next update.
I definitely don’t want the game to lose its strong grounding in the classic Gothic archetypes. That’s the whole reason for it to exist! But, I would also like to expand the possibilities of character creation. “A Ghastly Potpourri” actually already includes guidelines for swapping out Special Abilities and Weaknesses to customize the Classes. So, we’re going to see if we can have the best of both worlds here. If we can’t make it work, it doesn’t get published!
The “Gypsy” Class seems to be the most controversial part of Ghastly Affair, and I do understand why. For starters, the Class is almost certainly being renamed something like “Itinerant”. “Outsider”, as you suggest, is another possibility. Also, the Class’s Special Abilities will be reconfigured slightly to ameliorate implicitly racist tropes, but in a way that still keeps the strong Gothic archetype intact. Playing the Class should be about sympathy with the outcast “Other”. Confronting racism – not contributing to it.