Attachment Extra
A Charge RPG Extra to bring more focus on certain character details.
- By René-Pier Deshaies, Nugat & Keita Creation
The Attachment Extra is an extra that you can use to make certain aspects of your characters more important to the game.
Attachment Extra Rule
Characters are defined using details to represent who they are, what they are like and who they are linked to. By default, details don't have any mechanical uses in the game apart from providing narrative liberties.
If you want some of those details to feel more important in your game, you can consider them as attachments.
An attachment could be an important piece of equipment (a sword, a shield, a staff, a book, an armor), a relationship (an ally, a tie), or even a familiar.
An attachment is a character detail that you can choose to temporarily lose to resist an incoming consequence.
Doing this is called "breaking" the attachment and cancels the consequence outright. That means that the player does not have to make a determination roll.
However, this can only be done when it makes sense narratively, and that particular attachment cannot be used until time is taken to repair or reacquire it.
Since they can be used to cancel consequences entirely, characters only have between 1-2 attachments each.
Example
Jean-Loup's character is surrounded by a horde of monsters while inside his Mech. He just failed a desperate action rolls which will tick 3 segments of his character's stress clock.
To avoid this, Jean-Loup proposes to break his attachment Mech's Core Reactor to trigger an explosion, kill some monsters and give his character an opportunity to escape.
The GM agrees and ask Jean-Loup to start a new project progress clock if he wants to require a new core in the future.
Recovering an Attachment
Like character details, attachments provide narrative permissions to characters. When they are broken, those narrative permissions are lost.
To re-require or repair an attachment, the PC needs to start a project progress clock and track it on their character sheet.
The clocks starts at 4 segments, but may have more segments if the attachment is complicated to repair, if it was heavily damaged, or if it is difficult to reacquire.
To make progress on the project, a character may only roll to repair a "broken" attachment when they have the appropriate amount of downtime.
The amount of action rolls taken should be narratively related to the amount of downtime the character has. Pulling an all-nighter by a campfire may only be one roll, but if the character has a free week they may get three rolls or more.
Depending on what is being repaired, the player may have to make different action rolls, or may have multiple progress clocks at once. Repairing an armor may just require a Tinker action roll and some time at the forge, but contacting a demon and convincing them to work with you again may require first to Focus on a ritual, then try to Bond with them. The amount of segments ticked is usually tied to the effect rating of the action roll.
Once the project is completed, the character is permitted to use the attachment in the fiction, and is allowed to block a new consequence by breaking it once again.
Attachment Condition
Maybe you want an attachment that degrades over time, with use or by soaking up consequences. You can do so by introducing the Condition mechanic from the character sheet on your attachment.
Then, the more damage your attachment takes (or the more you use it), the more this clock fills, and the attachment's condition changes.
Once the clock is full, the item is either irredeemably lost or unusable until it is partially or fully repaired (Which can happen during downtime or through action rolls).
If using the aforementioned repairing mechanic, you can have the repair clock be used as the item's stress clock, with each succesful repair clearing one (or multiple, your choice) segments.
Credits
- Parts of this Extra were originally part of a work by Keita Creations which you can find on his itch.io page. Reprinted with permission.
- Thanks Nugat for the addition of Attachment Conditions
- Thanks Lynn Jones for finding the name attachment which is way better than the previous name this extra had.
Recap
- Each character has 1-2 attachments
- Attachments are like character details. They give narrative liberties to the PCs.
- If a PC wants, they can choose to break their attachment to outright cancel an incoming consequence. Doing so renders the attachment unusable in the narrative.
- A PC can repair/require their attachment by creating a 4 segment project progress clock that they can work on in their downtime.