Core System - Character Development

This post will temporarily conclude the Core System development, demonstrating how the Empyrean Core System is sufficient for more than a few sessions of a single story, but can also support evolving characters as part of evolving storylines.

Empyrean Characters

Empyrean Characters begin life as regular humans with a quirk and evolve into super-heroes with a twist.

So there is a lot of character development that happens between point zero, where the character has no clue as to what is going on, to point A where the character has begun to see the tip of the iceberg, and realize they're looking at an iceberg.

From a storytelling standpoint it is a powerful and dramatic development. In essence, it is the convergence of two storylines. The mortal wakes up and remembers glimpses of who the godlike alter-ego used to be. Not the whole thing, but enough to realize they have a mission here. A destiny.

And destiny is the keyword here. Empyreans do not understand willpower, but they understand destiny. They don't believe in it. They breathe it. Not as some power that dictates what must happen, but as the power that enables them to change things for the better.

So as they awaken to their Empyrean self, these people begin to unlock their hidden powers, from the more subtle ones to the most powerful ones and this is more or less a standard process, where they first pass through a powerful ordeal, where essentially they go through the journey of death and rebirth.

So the first power they probably awaken is their Inner Fire, their ability to self-heal and recover from lethal wounds. It is possible that some of them may have already awoken their Second Sight, their ability to see into the world of Spirit, perceive auras and communicate with other spirits, or perhaps they have developed their telepathic talent Soul Speech.

The development of Second Sight is important because, among other things, it allows them to connect with other Empyreans, and that's exactly what happens in the beginning. Someone more experienced than them finds them after they begin to awaken and helps them learn their powers.

The rest of the powers, and the order of their development have a lot to do with the character's Empyrean backstory that will be revealed in due time. There's a sense of a bigger picture here. The character's drive and their overall makeup connect with their backstory and their "destiny". They're here to achieve something, and that something relates to their value system.

As long as the player unlocks powers little by little, there is enough ongoing character development.

What follows is some improvement on their drive, and then it's all up to how the player plays the character out.

Story - driven Development

Remember that the character's story unfolds in parallel to the ongoing storyline, and these things interweave. The storyline is tied to the character and vice versa. 

So our first option to develop characters is to use strictly Story-driven development. Ie. change the character according to how it is established in the story that they've developed in some way.

This is an entirely free-form thing. The storyteller and the player decide together how the character evolves.

It's a good idea, however, not to make a habit of developing the character each and every time. Some times characters just need more time to grow. It is also a good idea to develop one area at a time. A single ability, or some development with willpower, or a specific power, are good types of development advances.

Understandably Story-driven development can sometimes appear utopian. Not everyone has the same idea about how fast a character should develop, and of course it's only human to attempt to push or delay character development exceedingly.

This is why all RPGs have an experience system, which is their development system. The players choose how to build their character separating this process from the ongoing storytelling. This helps remove guilt from all power-leveling and character-tweaking, much to the eternal chagrin of fanatic narrativists everywhere.

Still, we should concede that sometimes such a system can actually work to the benefit of narrativism, adding opportunities for additional "offline storytelling" that perhaps adds some spice to the story.

Development Point System

Award each participating player 1 Development point for each completed story chapter. 

A story chapter is equivalent to a coherent story unit within the ongoing storyline. A storyline can consist of many stories, and each story can consist of many chapters. A single gaming session will rarely complete more than a couple or three chapters, and sometimes a single chapter is barely completed during a single session, and may need to span across two or three sessions. You can devise additional story milestones and achievements that award bonus Development points as necessary. 

Avoid handing out Development points for feeling generous, because these tend to create a precedent of expectation, it must be clear why someone has gained a Development point.

Avoid handing Development points to specific players. Players share their achievements, it is part of the benefits of group play, so the results of achievements are also shared between the players.

If you do choose to award individual development points, at least make sure you are being very clear as to your reasoning and justification.

Whatever award system you devise, take care to be transparent with the players and explain ahead of time the reasoning of your choices.

Remember that the ultimate goal of the Development point system is to have a balance with character development, so that the characters have some "natural" evolution between stories.

The things that can improve once the empyrean character has been established are as follows:

- Increase Willpower: Next Rating x2 DPs

- Improve an Empyrean Power: Next Rating x5 DPs

- Improve Character Drive: Next Rating x3 DPs

- Learn / Unlock a new Empyrean Power: 7 DPs

- Learn new Lore: 5 DPs
- Learn a new Talent: 5 DPs

- Ability / Specialization: Choose a specific action type, and discover how the character has earned this specialization or mastery through the story. A character cannot gain more than 1 bonus dice, or have their Success or Critical numbers reduced by more than 1. They can combine all three of these effects, by spending development points for the same specialization

• Calculate a number adding 1 for every dice already rolled, 
• then a second number by adding 1 for every success number below 16 and 1 for every critical number below 20. 
• Multiplying these two numbers is actually a somewhat balanced cost in development points, for any improvement that reduces the success number by 1 or the critical number by 1. 
• For adding an extra dice to the roll, just add these numbers together to determine the cost.