Manifest: Emotions

Last time, I broke down a few of the requirements that a Manifestation could have in game. I also decided on four “Types” of emotional Manifestations.

So, going off of the basic four Emotions of Fear, Anger, Delight, and Grief…how do they interact?

Working with the assumption that an Anger Manifestation is fundamentally different than a Grief Manifestation, how deep do those differences go? They could be as simple as limiting some of the available actions/abilities a Manifestation has, or as complex as having completely different rules for rolling dice and taking actions.

Simple is better, though, so lets start — yet again — with the Pokémon Standard. In Pokémon, your type decided which abilities did normal, double, half, or no damage. The types were asymetrical, so a rock-type had strong defense against normal moves and was weak against water moves, but water and normal types weren’t strong or weak when defending against rock moves.

With only four emotions to start with, this level of asymetrical effects doesn’t make much sense, so we can go the simple Elemental route: In many games, Fire and Ice do more damage to each other, while Air and Earth are likewise dichotomous. For circular systems, Fire can beat Air which beats Earth which beats Water which beats Fire. Does this simple cycle work with emotions?

Yoda says that Fear leads to Anger, which is not a difficult thing to observe. Anger and hate naturally evolve from fear, which suggests that Anger has an easy time “eating” Fear, and incorperating it into itself. Let’s say that Anger beats Fear. What does Fear beat? Fear stems from a desire to avoid loss, and we cannot lose what we don’t have. Delight and Joy seem to be succeptable to Fear, for losing that which brings you joy might make you fearful indeed. That means that Joy comes from Grief, which comes from Anger. Certainly, regret often stems from our moments of anger, while grieving can help us heal and find joy again.

I like this cycle. Anger beats Fear which beats Joy which beats Grief which beats Anger. What does “beats” mean in this game’s context? It could be as simple as “double your damage,” or something more complex, but we can again find out exactly what later on.

Now, let’s veer slightly to the left and talk about the other thing that Manifestations need: Stats.

I said earlier that stats could be anything, but I’m drawn to the fact that Gen 1 Pokémon had four stats: Attack, Defense, Speed, and Special. I currently have four emotional types.

Could emotions be stats?

They easily fit: Delight is speed, Anger is attack, Fear is defense, and Grief is special. That could work pretty well, in fact.

The problem is, if the plan is for up to six Manifestations on the field at once, paying attention to 6 X 4 = 24 stats, in addition to individual abilities,¹ that puts a significant cognitive load on the player.

There are mutiple methods of handling this. One is built-in to the setting; since Manifestations are “a part of” the PC, all Manifestations could use the PCs stats.

I do like the idea that PCs have “emotional stats” rather than the more traditional Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, etc. At the same time, if Manifestations use the PC’s stats it keeps things simple, but also possibly less interesting. What if I wanted to make a team with a warrior, a mage, a thief, and a cleric? Naturally, I’d want the fighter to have more strength/anger than the thief, and the wizard to have more magic/grief than the warrior. Why? for narrative sense, of course, but also because the warrior will be running up and hitting things, and they’ll need a high strength to do that well.

Well, we can finagle that pretty easily too. An Anger Manifestation could have a bonus to Melee attacks. A Fear Manifestation could have a bonus to Defense. If your Agent is angry, all their Manifestations will be better at melee, but we can easily balance it so the PCs stats don’t mandate which Manifestations are useful. It could be as simple as they roll “at advantage” or gain a similar boost when making an action related to their type.

Hm. There are some interesting ideas here, and I think some time ruminating on them could be quite productive. Next time, I’d like to set stats on the back-burner, and talk more about Tier and Bond.