The Three Integrities

[Octavia] Butler asks us to consider . . . how might we parse what is harmful transmutation versus what is merely different or unrecognizable or strips one of a certain phantasy of mastery and control?—Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (132)

Cairn's simple attribute as save system is part of the reason I chose to use it as the basis for Zoa Tan. Attributes only come into play when you need "a roll to avoid negative outcomes from risky choices," i.e., they come at the end of a process of exploration and communication, and even then only when the choices made as a result of that are risky.

It preserves the fundamental aleatory function of the die roll as suspense that is integral to my experience of Dungeons & Dragons while removing it from the parts of play where suspense is poorly served by a roll. Because it comes at the end of a longer process of communication between players and the game master, the game master has a lot more context for imagining what success and failure look like. A cautious crew of explorers might still set off a deadly pit trap on a failure, but if they have positioned themselves well, perhaps they don't fall into the pit, but now have to figure out how to traverse a pit to get to the other side of the room.

I am especially interested in the application of this to social encounters. Deferring dice rolls to points of risk encourages play that dwells in motive and interest. What do these people want? Is there a way to negotiate passage or the acquisition of a needed treasure that doesn't entail combat? Are there high-stakes conflicts that never come to blows? Also, maybe, are there joys to be had just spending time with these people in their weird little world?

So far, so very good.

But I want Zoa Tan to explore receptiveness and transformation in a way that neither traditional D&D nor Cairn does. Following the line of thought Jackson take above, I want to make more space in Zoa Tan for the aleatory play around ambivalent outcomes having to do with the potential costs of change and adaptation to risk and threat. This is a game for a queer little girl who has experienced a fair bit of abuse, and I want a world that acknowledges those realities without collapsing it into a story of victimhood.

The attributes de-emphasize the mental attributes—the three traditional mental and social attributes of Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma reduce to Willpower while three physical attributes of Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are better preserved in Strength and Reflexes. Gal does this for good reason, pushing players back on their own mental resources while confronting the challenges of exploration. It helps give more agency to the players rather than limiting it with an idea of the character's "mental capacity." And I don't want to undo that because agency is key to compromise, but I want a richer sense of social and psychic threat at play in Zoa Tan than an attribute like Willpower provides.

I also don't want to add a bunch of attributes to the game system. That starts to undermine the simplicity that I admire. I can collapse the attributes in the opposite direction, though, reducing the physical attributes of D&D to a single one and the mental attributes to two.

I also want to make social and psychic conflict more prominent, which means that I want to be able to expand the combat system a little to encompass that. "Hit Protection" applies too narrowly. "Resilience" captures the mechanical sense of Hit Protection and suggests broader application to all of the attributes, so that's probably going to be a thing.

(I am looking forward to putting together a module for this when all is done; that feels like a necessary piece of this revisioning of D&D histories. One thing at a time though!)

Hmm. "Attributes." There's an essentializing dimension to that term which it might be worth pushing back against for a game like Zoa Tan. Since they are primarily a means for resolving the results of risk and threat in Cairn, they are already doing less work to define the character than D&D's attributes. I want to try out "Integrity" as a replacement term for "Attribute." Integrity tells us a little more directly what it is that the characters are putting at risk while implying that they are fundamentally hoping to preserve them in spite of the risk.

Here's some language I am toying with, using the presentation in Cairn 2e's Player's Guide as the bones.

Integrities

Each of the three Integrities are used in different circumstances. (See Saves, below.)

• Bodily (BOD): Used for saves against threats to the body, like performing feats of strength, dodging, resisting poison, carefully disabling a trap that requires steady hands, etc.
• Social (SOC): Used for saves against threats to your authority and influence, like attempting to deceive or provoke, weathering attacks on your reputation, winning a skeptical person's trust, etc.
• Subjective (SBJ): Used for saves against threats to your sense of self, like resisting magical influence, manipulating spells, enduring cutting insults, taking action in the face of terrifying circumstances, dealing with the stress of being unable to take action, etc.

Saves

• A save is a roll to preserve your integrity in the face of a threat to it. Players roll a d20 and compare the results to the appropriate integrity on their character's sheet. If they roll equal to or under that integrity, they endure the threat without change. Otherwise, the threat changes them, most often resulting in damage and failure. A 1 always preserves integrity, and a 20 always results in change to the character.
• If two opponents are each trying to overcome the other, whoever is most at risk should save. If the person most at risk preserves their integrity, they may then force the other opponent to save.
• If two characters need to take an action together, whoever is most at risk should save (usually the character with the lowest relevant Integrity).

I added the second sentence in the second bullet point of Saves. I may not keep it! I just like the idea of the weaker opponent having to weather the stronger opponent before turning it back on them. It also feels like a nice way to have some back and forth conflict without escalating into more complicated combat-style rules. And it gives the opponent least at risk a little extra security since they get a save to avoid being overcome, redistributing the value of escalation and compromise.