Wraith the Transcendence devlog: Logos
Hello, this is the first devlog about my project Wraith the Transcendence, if you don't know what I'm talking about here's an explanation.
As the title says I'll be talking about Logos, a new character trait I plan to add into WtT. First I'll be talking about the original design of Wraith to explain the precedents of this idea. Then I'll explain this new addition, what is its purpose and how it works.
If you want to read about the new thing you can skip the design background and go directly to the section Explaining Logos.
Also thank you for reading, I post these to get feedback, so any opinion, suggestion, or comment is well received. Again, again the objective of to people to like this and get interested in Wraith.
Design Background
One thing that caught my attention while playing Wraith is the lack of a character trait to indicate general rank or power. Players of other WoD games will familiar with concepts like Generation/Blood Potency for vampires, Renown for werewolves, and Arete for mages. Yet an equivalent for wraiths is not present.
From a game design perspective this is not an oversight, the creators of Wraith stated that characters in the game are meant to be the weakest type of supernatural creature in WoD, so removing the power-scaling trait makes sense to keep characters at low power.
However, this conflicts with the own internal setting of Wraith, there's a hierarchy of power in the Shadowlands, much like the ranks of the Camarilla in VtM, wraith society is stratified by age and power, there's a clear stratified scale between the helpless newcomer wraiths, and the rulers of the underworld.
The game somewhat addresses this issue, first by just giving the important SPCs higher stats over the normal maximum a playable character can reach, and also by giving important characters Artifacts, that is special powerful items with a value of Background points.
Explaining Logos
Between the objectives I set myself for WtT is making the game more familiar for WoD players, and facilitate different styles of game without diminishing the original vision of Wraith. So I identified the following points I wanted to tackle:
Give an easy way of denoting a scale of power through game mechanics
Make powerful characters rely less on Artifacts
Define a method to give special characters traits over the normal limit
Tie this new mechanic into other game systems for cohesion
Make this trait a useful meaning for roleplaying
So this is what I came with: The new Logos trait
All wraiths posses a trait called Logos, it indicates the power of a restless' soul. It is slowly strengthened by thriving in the Shadowlands throughout the years and by the wraith's own resolution, allowing them to even surpass the limits imposed by mortality. It is what dictates the Hierarchy and what sets apart the helpless spirits of the dead from the rulers of the underworld.
Logos is a special trait that dictates a lot of aspects of a wraith, it ranges from 1 to 10 and it naturally grows in value the longer the time a wraith have existed in the Shadowlands. Logos can also be increased when a wraith completes an important milestone such as the resolution of one of their Fetters or Passions, forging their soul in preparation for Transcendence.
The maximum limit of a wraith's Pathos point pool is dictated by their Logos. If a character reaches Logos over 5 it also indicates the maximum dot rating they can achieve in traits such as Attributes, Abilities, and Corpus.
Increasing Logos has one major downside, as it reaches higher values the wraith has to spend more energy to interact with the Skinlands, each time a wraith travels to the land of the living they have to spend an amount of Pathos per scene according to their Logos. If the character has Logos over 5 dots this also affects any kind of action that requires spending Pathos while on the Skinlands, increasing their normal cost.
As characters increase their Logos they have less ties to world of living, this marks preparation for leaving it all behind and achieve Transcendence. However, some wraiths see this as a signal to stop worrying about their past, and instead look for a new future in the Shadowlands, where their power will reign supreme.
