Author: Jay Iles

We’ve been thinking about the interplay between Families and Characters, and how to best guide the flow of the game from Family-level to Character-level and back again. Simple Characters (see linked post) are one piece of the puzzle, but we’re also trying out a mechanic for Character Roles. Here’s the relevant section of the text:

Bringing Characters In

All Family moves are triggered by a group of your Family members attempting a course of action – getting information, claiming a resource for your family, holding fast despite adversity. When the move is triggered it abstracts away a lot of the details – in particular, who’s present on the mission, and the ups and downs of the mission they go on. As Family moves can take a long time to wind up, you may only find out things went bad when the few survivors limp back to your family’s holdings – or when it’s been a month and nobody’s returned.

If you want to keep a closer eye on your family’s actions, you can send your Character along. When the group of family members that triggers a Family move includes your Character, you can gain a bonus according to their role – Leader, Agent, Rebel or Outsider.

A character’s Role is a free choice at the point they’re created and the choice can be changed over the course of the game. Simple characters don’t provide this bonus.

Leaders are willing to put the Family before themselves. If a move tells you to gain a need or erase a surplus, the Leader can instead take 3-harm (ignores armour).

Agents are experts at navigating the wasteland and its factions. Your family’s agents can either travel twice as fast through the wasteland, or travel unnoticed through a faction’s territory.

Rebels have different loyalties than the rest of the family, and have contacts in surprising places. They can call on a contact to boost the move as if a surplus had been exhausted, but the contact gets 1-Treaty on you.

Outsiders have a unique piece of kit that has a specific, weird function. If an action they’re part of would benefit from their gear, you can boost the roll as if you’d spent a point of Tech.

Assuming Control

If main characters are helping a Family move, you can choose to enter Character-level play immediately after the family move’s completed rather than waiting for reports to make their way back to the Family’s holdings. If you do this, the GM will describe the situation the main characters on the mission find themselves in, the other players pick up quick characters to flesh out the rest of the group if they wish, and you start playing. The family move’s effects – good and bad – will still happen, but this allows you to keep the momentum going on a success or try to mitigate the catastrophe on a failure.

Originally shared by Jay Iles

Listening to the most recent podcast about character death, I realised that while Legacy has rules for character death (triggering a Death Move and creating a relic that lets family members use one of the character’s moves) it didn’t really have space for mourning. I’ve sketched out a move to try and explore the space of returning from the wasteland and breaking the bad news to a fallen character’s family – what do you think?

When you return a relic to its holder’s family, you may spend time with them telling and hearing tales of the deceased character’s life and final moments. If you do, the family’s player picks one:

– Their family gives your family 2-Treaty.

– Your character is now treated as a member of both families for all purposes.

– Their next Character will help your Family with one task.

As the turning of ages brings 2016 to a close and takes us into a whole new year, I’m pondering what direction to take Legacy in.

The game is something I’m very proud of, but people consistently seem to have issues with the character /family divide. Particularly, how you shift from the character level to the family level and back again, and how to arrange things so you don’t have endless scenes of character X in their own talking to their family. As I’m starting work on writing the revised edition, I thought I’d present some possible solutions to the community and hear your thoughts!

First up, keep things basically the same as they are now, but better explain the desired flow of the game and add a lot more examples of play.

Second option is to add in strict Family and Character phases, and rewrite moves where needed so that all Family moves have roughly the same scope and timescale, as do Character moves.

Third, focus much more on one side of the game. Maybe remove character playbooks and have each family give some simple character templates to choose from, or maybe simplify family playbooks down to just the effect they have on your character.

Finally, you probably have your own ideas. Let me know what they are!