Homemade Distinctions

[Darth Mauno]

I've posted new Distinctions that I've designed for my Smallville campaign on my blog at address: http://mygamingtable.wordpress.com/2012 ... tinctions/

Take a look and tell me what you think.

[dvus]

I think they look perfectly useable. I have an initial feeling that the Infamous Villain Distinction may be combining a couple Distinctions already out there, but I haven't bothered to look that deeply, yet. Probably won't. That Distinction fits a game where there are well-known villains.

The Secret Identity one is also pretty cool, but seems like it would be limited in scope and useability. Were I the player of the Lead with that Distinction, I'd really push Watchtower to bring my secret identity into the spotlight.

Cool stuff! I love seeing custom stuff for Smallville.

[Darth Mauno]

Thanks! You're quite right with the Infamous Villain, it has bits from Family Reputation (d4) and Heroic Reputation (d8), it was just easier to take them whole cloth than to write up something completely new. Then again, many of the distinctions in the rulebook tend to have triggers quite similar to each other too.

Which brings to my mind a question that has sometimes bothered me with Smallville's distinctions: two distinctions might have more or less the same trigger, but at different levels, prime example being the d8 Feature Relationship trigger that is d4 on Connected and d8 on Manipulative. While this hasn't at least so far been presented any problems while playing the game, it has made a little difficult to gauge which kind of triggers should be on which levels when designing my own distinctions. It would be interesting to hear from the designers of the system about the principles and guidelines that they were following when balancing the distinctions against each other.

[dvus]

Honestly, I don't think it's about power level. There's no "balance" to the Triggers. The Triggers are only as powerful and the benefits you give them. And, each Trigger fits the Distinction that it's in, to a certain degree. I think it's all about, what special "ability" does that Distinction give you at each level. And they should be increasing in benefit across the Distinction, but I don't think it matters very much to balance one Distinction against another. Each one has a Cost/Benefit to it.

[craggle]

I think generally the d4 and d8 Triggers are considered to be about equivalent in "power", whilst the d12 Triggers are kept for the "peach" options. I guess this could be down to rolling against at least a d12 in Tag Scenes to be able to reach that level most of the time, but I think dvus pretty much has it with it not really being a game where options are compared alongside one another to a large degree.