Mad Max P&P RPG: Good and Bad Karma?

We haven’t had much time to work on this – jobs are insane, weekends go by too fast – but we did continue to mull over this idea of “feralness,” or how to have the characters be quantifiably affected by the world.

So the Dude really likes the concept of “luck.” The Dragon Age RPG sort of includes something like this – when rolled well, the dragon dice let the character do an awesome action. I need to look up the Star Wars RPG because I think it might use something similar to that.  Anyway, I think this is a good method for rewarding good rolls without punishing bad ones.

I brought up “karma” as being the opposite of “feralness.” So if feralness is going to be used to add onto certain checks (like in battle, or intimidation) then karma can be used for upping your chance of success for the more humane checks, like for diplomacy or healing. The Dude wasn’t as sold on the idea, but I think it could work.

Karma’s another thing that Fallout had. Fallout 4 doesn’t, which is too bad; I like the idea of your heroic actions impacting your future. Which is why I want to steal that mechanic! It makes you more responsible – both in the sense that you have to deal with consequences, but also in that you get a greater feeling of really impacting the world. Your choices have weight to them, and they affect you and everything around you.

So anyway, the mechanics! Still trying to figure the basics out, so these ideas are super, super rough draft. Right now we’re imaging that “feralness” and karma are separate dice that you roll on top of your regular roll. So something like:

Your base stat + d20 +d6 (feralness) or + d6 (karma)

Maybe a d3 instead? Or d3 to begin with, but then it increases as you move up in levels? Or should it be more completely luck-base, and use another d20? But then your character is punished for a player’s bad roll…

Or maybe the feralness/karma is stagnant, or like a stat? Like, you kill 10 people, you get another point in feralness? Talk to 10 people, deduct a point? if it worked that way, then feralness and karma would be on opposite sides of a spectrum, and your character could swing back and forth.

Hm.