What's the Inverse of A Curse?

Summary:

How does one model the opposite of Curse or is it already there?

What's the Inverse of A Curse?

MxOberon 01 Jan 2024 01:40

So I've been loving everything about Sorcerously Advanced this past month that I've gotten into it. Made tons of test characters, some custom founts, and some traditions. Recently I've started working on ideas for custom Expressions, and while designing one that's like a bigger idea I realized that there wasn't really an Expression that was the opposite of Curses. As such I'm here just to inquire a bit as to why as well as what would it even look like?

In general the thing that's interesting and elegant about Curses is how they easily slot into the Conflict system to create Complications. With the curses made getting to in-setting replicate more insidious or clever ways of harm/getting what one might want. However, when imagining what the inverse would be (what I'll be referring to as Bless) I'm kind of running short. As an expression it would ideally serve to create Advantages in the same way that Curses create Complications. Yet when taking that forward it would mean situations where players would likely want to just accept the Blessing. At which point, how do you then adjudicate the level of Advantage that could be generated? Would it just become a matter of the expression requiring more Flow contingent on the size of Advantage seeking to be generated? I just have so many questions, so any insights people have is definitely appreciated. Mainly cause once this is past I feel like it'd be easier to continue working on the actual expression I want to make.

Re: What's the Inverse of A Curse?

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2024 17:25

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I don't have a good single answer for blessings yet, so I'll give you some options to consider.

Depending on how the blessing works you might be opposing the people around the recipient, but honestly that just feels like too much work - you'd have to track the strength of the blessing and compare it multiple times per game. Plus in some ways it's an action economy problem. If you get to do something *and* the blessing gets to do something, your team should definitely all bless each other every day.

"More flow required for bigger blessings" makes some sense, especially if you're interested in having blessings be Loud.

You could simulate blessings with the Enchantment expression. The balancing factors there are time for the ritual and locking up your own flow.

You could *require* resistance from the recipient, using the appropriate Nature, under the rationale that it'll be harder to actually improve the effectiveness of someone with high Natures.

I hope that helps! This will probably keep rattling around in my brain for a while, so I'll let you know if I come up with other options. Let me know what you decide to use!

Re: What's the Inverse of A Curse?

MxOberon 15 Jan 2024 04:44

(Just wanna say, I'm slightly fangirling because I love this game so so much and its enriched my life, lol)

Seriously though, I think more flow for bigger blessings makes sense in terms of scale. Similar to how the flow increases work for Weather-work.

I do think that requiring resistance could make tons of sense actually. Could position it as a Blessing being a warping of someone's fate. mechanically, the stronger you are the more firm you are and your fate would be pretty interesting to play with as well. Also (if I have the rule right) in the same way that someone applying a Curse can still end up with a Complication from the casting of the curse. You can have the caster of a Blessing suffer potential consequences of the action, almost like fate is snapping back into the caster.

I really like this actually as I think about it.

Re: What's the Inverse of A Curse?

Colin_Fredericks 22 Jan 2024 15:28

Nice. Let me know how it works out in play!

I can imagine some serious cultural implications for powerful blessings requiring a lot of flow to create, and even bigger implications if they continue to consume or twist the flow as they function. What would a civilization that centers around blessings look like? Let's say that the ruthless upper class who demand regular blessings get overthrown before the game starts. Now people who are well-liked, either because they're kind and good people or because they're manipulative, probably become centers of local power in the civ. You could end up with a cult-of-personality effect, or with families focusing their power on one promising individual at a time. I can imagine some people being very disgruntled about who's chosen and who's not.

The effect on their downstream neighbors could be really bad. Civilizations who use up more flow than others can cause major flow shortages or poison the flow. Good fodder for Archive interventions.

Also - if you can bless people, can you also bless land? It might resist using the average Nature score of the civilization itself, since presumably the people and/or their government are already working to enhance it.

Re: What's the Inverse of A Curse?

MxOberon 25 Jan 2024 06:24

Oooh this is good stuff. One of the things I was thinking, was like playing with the sort of technologies that could be created using Blessing. Like, if you had a bunch of theurges engineer some Blessing star, and then used magic to basically control when the star was out so you could basically turn the Blessing off and on. In a way, an astrological Wonderwork that feeds into Flow naturally rather than how directly trying to Bless a big swathe of area could eat up tons of Flow.

Would also make a civ that used a lot of Blessings perhaps develop towards a lot of like, initiatory lodges/mystery cults. Where they monopolize specific Blessings alongside whatever mundane professional expertise would be needed to construct the Blessing appropriately. So you could end up with lodges of midwives skilled at birth related Blessings, and Blessing as post-natal care. Or architectural lodges who know specific Blessings to put upon buildings and will only do so for certain fees. In the same way, could have the other side of that coin being a civ that has Curse knowledge be really defused throughout these same organizations. While of course there'd be families who cultivate their own Blessing and Curse techniques.

Though the downstream effects are definitely something to think of. Since it feels like the type of Blessing and scale would do a lot to effect neighbors.

And you should def be able to Bless the Land. In the same way that I think it'd be really cool if one could Curse the Land (also resisted by the appropriate Nature score for the civ).