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Re: http://fictioneers.net/games/spark
I have played Spark a couple of times with the designer, years ago. I've also played one of it's descendants - Sig: Manual of the Primes. There are some differences which I will touch on momentarily.
On Crunch - the listing here has it as crunch 4. It's a pretty light game though, I'd put it at 3 myself.
World/Setting Creation
Spark has a genuinely fun/solid world creation section.
Done!
webtech - Fri, 12/10/2021 - 15:46I have not played the game, thus my Crunch Rating was merely an estimation based on a rough look at the rules.
Happy to change it based on better information!
More details, and appreciate the tweak!
jkitz - Sun, 01/16/2022 - 04:34I had more that was supposed to be in that initial post, but it got eaten somehow. Here's some more:
All "Spark" games have each player take 3 beliefs. The setting also has it's own beliefs - typically represented by a faction. If a player's belief is challenged and then changed through play (i.e. replaced by a new or modified belief) then that player gains a new Talent. If a settings belief is changed, then the players gain an attribute level - e.g. a d4 increases to d6.
Talents are in three categories: Broad for a +1, Common for a +2, and Deep for a +3. You could end up adding a talent from each category to a single roll, which would net a +6.
Example Talents:
Broad: melee, Common: swords, Deep: two scimitars (related and stackable)
Broad: thaumaturgy, Common: biology, Deep: mutable form (unrelated)
Attributes change more between iterations of the game; in the original Spark RPG it was Body, Heart, Mind and Spark - from 1d4 to max of 1d20.
Spark here is used for some "meta" stuff - framing scenes, directing npcs in conflicts, and you can always absord harm into spark.
That's weird, I can edit my opening post but not the one above
jkitz - Sun, 01/16/2022 - 10:50*Sig: Manual of the Primes* is very similar, but uses only two attributes: Spark and Smoke.
This actually flips things, with Spark being the character's own attribute, and Smoke being their control over scenes, and if they want to "act" for NPCs.
Their is some more definition here in terms of suggested Talents, or quasi lifepath based off of a characters planar origin, faction, profession. (If you are from the plane of fire, you would gain some manner of fire talent. It would also be expected that you would roll your smoke for any fire elementals in a scene - even if your character is not present.)
*After the War* changes things up more, it still maintains the importance of challenging "beliefs" and thus I feel it is still in the same family. But instead of attributes and traits, everything is replaced by "traits." This follows even more of a lifepath system for picking your traits. Origin, War Story, and Profession. Each stage gives you two traits, one for the base choice, and one from a list for that choice. For example for Profession you could chose Veteran, which would be one train, and then one of the listed trait for officers - Strategy.
Each trait gives you a d6 to roll. When you need to do a test, you assemble all relevant traits, all the die and sum them up.
Different, but clearly a kind of evolution from *Sig: Manual of the Primes*. Close enough that I still see it as part of the same game family.
All these are available at https://composedreamgames.com/marketplace/genesis-of-legend