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Abilities

Abilities

Ability Checks and Karma

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Abilities

Abilities are what seperate your persona from those lesser wireheads around you. The liquidsun game revolves around how good you are at "that thing you do!!"

Abilities are broken down into the following "levels" of ability:

"No Ability(0)"

Not a rating per se. No one is ever totally ignorant about something, even if they have have the wrong information, its still information.

"Basic(level 1)"

This level is equivalent to a beginner or amateur,someone who has just learned the rudiments of a skill or ability..

"Advanced(level2-3)"

This represents general competency,the ability to perform average tasks with ease .

"Exceptional(level4-5)"

At this level, you areextremely competent in the given subject, coming from an advanced study of the ability.

"Beyond(???)"

It is possible to exceed the skill level of "Exceptional", such levels denote true mastery of an ability and equate with the skill to perform the most difficult tasks with relative ease.

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Ability Checks and Karma

In the liquidsun setting,ability checks come into play in one of two ways:

Firstly, when two or more players are trying to resolve an action/actions between themselves.(ie.COMBAT) Secondly, when individual personas are attempting to perform some type of action.(eg. Hacking a dataclave)

In the case of the first, the higher combination of attributes ,abilities and equipment wins. In the case of the second, the player sets a difficulty rating based on what the player is attempting to do. Again, if the player's total of attributes,abilities and equipment bonuses exceeds the target number based on the difficulty, the task succeeds.

It should be noted that "COMBAT" is treated as a special situation as it includes elements of both types of ability checks.

The players will never see a complete ability list or difficulty rating as these parameters are left very much to the discretion of the master system.

This determination is based on the referee's judgement,the needs of the story andhow detailed and/or creative the persona is being in her roleplaying.

Example 1:Argentyne the hyper,played by Holly, wants to smooth talk a Spirex security guard into letting her into a private corpse party. Holly really lays on the smooth seductive bit with the security guard,weaving in a wild but believable tale. The referee(who is playing the guard) does not bother comparing numbers, as Holly has just aced it with roleplaying.
• Example 2:Hard Burn, a ticktock played by Nick, is trying to rewire a Holz-Polytek biolock. The master system decides that this is a difficult ability test and asks Nick for the combined total of his Electronics and Education. Nick adds his Education of 4 and his Electronics of 3 giving him a total of 7. The standing value for a difficult ability check is 6-8.Nick squeeks it.

  Unlike that other big LARP system which uses all those neato hand games to bring the element of randomness to ability actions, liquidsun relies on something that is much more simple. All personas have an intrinsic "Karma field" that dictates how the different components of their being are in alignment on any given evening. .

  If you recall, during persona integration, all the attributes are divided into four different groupings. These are the "Karma groupings" of that individual. They are"physical", "mental", "spiritual" and "social".

  At the beginning of every Login, each persona performs a "Karma Challenge" whereby the master system has the player draw a random "Karma Pin". Each karma pin will have four different coloured bars across its length, corresponding to the different Karma groupings of the persona's attributes. These colours also correspond to a different Karma balance for that particular day. Specifically, these colours represent either a negative or positive modifier to that particular group of attributes(which in turn will influence any ability or attribute checks involving said attributes).These colours/modifiers are as follows:

  COLOUR	KARMA BALANCE	MODIFIER
  white	optimal high	+2
  green	high	+1
  grey	neutral	no modifier
  red	low	-1
  black	absolute low	-2

  Having received a Karma pin, the persona will be aware of their Karma for that evening's Login. This series of modifiers reflects what kind of "day" that persona is having.(eg. The player may be having a real "spiritual low" day and having a real "physical high" day.) This may or may not affect how the character will act for the evening. Ideally, if the persona knows that physically, he is having an off day, he will use other more "creative" methods to achieve his goals.

  This system proves inadequate is in dealing with combat and healing. The next sections of this booklet take you through the various type of combat, damage and healing.

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