Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Alternate Stability Track for K:DL

Slightly unhappy with the Stability Track as it is on the Kult: Divinity Lost character sheet, I decided to make a slightly modifed version that would suit my tastes better. I ended up making several versions, since I couldn't fully decide which one was the ultimate best. Here I offer them to you, for use in your own games if you will.


This one sticks the closest to the original layout, but if you compare them you can see that I added numbers (1-10) next to the Stability boxes, instead of the "psychological conditions" terms that each level of Stability originally has associated with it.

Those terms were one of my gripes with the Stab Track to begin with. Some of them, like Neurotic didn't seem to fit in there, while others, like Anxious seemed misplaced.

They also sometimes caused confusion for players, when they got the impression that they were expected to roleplay the specific condition that is given for their character's current level of Stability. 
"Uh, I've lost another 2 points there... do I have to become Distressed now? 
Does that even make sense for my character at this point in the game?"

And either way, I couldn't ever remember their order off the top of my head anyways - so I decided to throw those out and instead offer a collection of possible "states of mental desolation" for each of the Stress Brackets (Moderate, Serious, and Critical Stress, as well as Composed and Broken).

I came up with the new terms in collaboration with Kult - Elysium Discord user Victor the Villain, who conveniently has a background in clinical psychology, and helped me vet them for a sensible selection and placement.

The idea is that players are now offered a grab-bag of possible conditions to look to for inspiration, when wondering how to portray the current state of their character's emotional and psychological deterioration at any given point in the game.
You can circle or underline the one that seems most fitting at the moment, as a roleplaying reminder to yourself. But you can also change which one to act like from one scene to the next. Or if you lose another point of Stability but are still in the same bracket... Anything goes, as long as it works for everyone involved and helps improve your game at your table! 


* * *

Finally, while I was at it, I also fixed the number of boxes on that Track. Because the Broken condition should not be one of the 10 boxes (as the original has it), otherwise the math doesn't add up.
(If Composed is 10 and Distressed is 6, as the corebook tells us, then Broken isn't 0, it's 1... and that seemed definitely wrong to me.)

Here's another one I made, this one following a different approach to layout and presentation:



This one aims to present fiction before mechanics, which I find fitting for a PbtA game such as K:DL.

However, the layout still struck me as a bit blocky, so I made two more.

This one, which has them the most free-floating:


And this one, which appears to me as the ideal compromise:


I like this last one best, and will use it in my own games going forward. If you want to use one of them too, you're welcome to just copy-paste it from here onto the K:DL character sheet of your choice, print it a couple times and go see how your players do with it!

Please also feel free to let me know in the comments if you used it, which one your favorite version is, or if you have any suggestions for how to make them even better.  

We see the Truth only in fragmented glimpses, and the road to Divinity is a long one yet!


2 comments:

  1. Do you have a character sheet with this you can share?

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  2. Not a generic one unfortunately. Not yet, anyways.

    I only put it on the premade sheets for the PCs for "An Echo from the Past" so far.

    But I may make a generic sheet with one of them, one of these days.
    Which variant of the four shown here would you prefer?

    Also, which generic sheet is a good one to use as a basis?
    I feel it's highly personal, how much space one feels is needed for the various boxes. I've seen a couple variants being made, is there one that's your favorite?

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