underside dev diary #7: statless in seattle pt. 2

so when figuring out what approaches to put into underside, citizen abel and i talked for a while about what we actually wanted out of them. in the end, to help guide the choices, we split the eight approaches across four axes, creating matching opposite pairs that offered an interesting range of characterisations. these axes don't have any mechanical effect: they're just there as scaffolding, to indicate to you what decisions you're making about your character's personality when you take an approach. the four axes are as follows

• cold-hot, encompassing ruthless/collected and wild/passionate
• planned-spontaneous, encompassing devious/smart and quick/intuitive
• passive-proactive, encompassing patient/careful and aggressive/brave
• subtle-showy, encompassing sneaky/elegant and loud/stylish

these axes also give you an idea of what the core element of that approach is, in case you want to rename it to fit your character. they also provide the framing device for the book's detailed descriptions of approaches: rather than go into long detail about philosophical precepts or try to define exactly one definition of an approach, i decided it would be best to focus on giving diverse and evocative examples to help you figure out how these words could apply to your character. 

you might notice there's a lot of focus on social situations--another reason that we moved from stats to approaches was that a more trad 'stat' system suits itself very poorly to a game where social mechanics form a key pillar of a campaign. any game that has something like a 'charisma' or 'persuasion' stat is going to inevitably lead to these kind of scenes locking out a good half the party while everyone who bothered investing into that mechanic takes the spotlight. this is fine if it's a once-in-a-while thing--but we wanted a system that would let people use the exact same attribute for fighting and talking, as one unitary expression of a fundamental character trait. now your big nasty brawler with two points in Aggressive can also get bonuses to snapping at people to shut the fuck up, or brandishing their weapon menacingly. 

as well as forming the core of your dice pools, approaches play another role in underside: they allow you to perform lapses. a lapse is exactly what it sounds like, an in-character fuckup or mistake that expresses a character flaw. why would you want to do that? simple: it relieves tension, a resource that accumulates throughout play as you spend it on bonus dice, special abilities, or avoiding consequences. if your tension track is full, you lose access to all these abilities--and one of the two ways to empty it again is to take a lapse that matches an approach you're invested in: 

there's a lot of nasty lists and tables in this game. as a general design philosophy rule, underside prefers having players roll or pick from these types of lists and tables than letting the Administrator do it. characters in underside are self-destructive, damaged, spiralling out of control: it's a lot more fun to grapple with a nasty choice or bite a bullet yourself than have it forced upon you. 

sorry this one's a bit late! things have been a little hectic for me the past couple days. on the bright side, work on underside continues at a brisk clip.