Suggestions for a "no magic" Procyon?

Forged in the Dark Scum & Villainy
1

My players and I are a couple of sessions into a promising S&V campaign (I’m the GM). We are new to FitD-syle RPGs, and are loving it so far. I feel like we’ve got a good handle on the system.

We’ve all agreed that we want a grittier universe without The Way or magic – and certainly no Jedi-types or space wizards with super-natural powers. So far I’ve gotten away with just ignoring it – I’m thinking of the mystical cults as still existing and having deep beliefs, but just without the actual magical powers of The Way. All good so far.

My concern is, what can I replace ATTUNE with? I’m concerned it will be a hole in the mechanic since Resolve will only have 3 pips now. Also, it would be nice to replace the Mystic Plan with something. I know it isn’t really game breaking just to drop them (which is a nice aspect of the system), but I’d like to try to replace them with something.

Has anyone else tried this? What have you come up with?
TIA

2

I don’t think capping resolve resistance at 3 is really going to be a big problem for you, especially since without the supernatural resolve resistance may come up a little less often, and 3 dice is pretty good anyway, and there are abilities that add resistance dice.

That said, if you’d like to have a 4th resolve action for aesthetic reasons, you have a few options.

One would be to keep Attune, or keep some of the functions of Attune and build out a new action from the functions you kept plus some new applications. In vanilla Scum & Villainy, Attune covers safely handling and using way-powered artifacts, communicating with ur-bots and animals, and getting hunches or flash of insight, among other things. Handling animals and getting useful intuitive insights could be game-relevant without being explicitly supernatural, and I could imagine non-supernatural reasons why communicating with AIs might require special expertise outside the normal social actions, or handling ancient artifacts safely might be a special resolve-based action instead of using normal technical skills. Like, what if the old technology is full of biometric sensors and scanners so that interfacing with them required carefully controlling your own heart rate and brain waves?

Another approach would be to borrow a resolve action from another Forged game, or create one. Consort, Sway, and Command already cover a lot of ground, but other games have Discipline, Marshal, Growl, Connect, and all kinds of things.

Maybe you could go halfway between; split one of the other other Resolve actions in S&V in half, and then merge some Attune functions in. Like, you could replace Attune and Command with Lead (covers animal handling and inspiring or organizing friendly people) and an action for threats/intimidation, though I’d like to come up with some secondary extra use for that one too.

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3

This is very helpful. Thanks!

I had and idea for a replacement action called Intuit which I think follows some of what you suggest. I was also considering allowing my players to come up with their own replacement action if they had something unique.

Anyway here’s what I have proposed to my players (obviously much of this language is cribbed from the book):

Replace ATTUNE with INTUIT.

When you INTUIT, you quickly gain an understanding of a situation,
being or system you are directly interacting with. You may be able to
draw accurate conclusions about a device or person in the moment
with little evidence. You might sense lies, hidden truths or other
interactions that are at play. INTUIT can be rolled only once for any
given situation. It is your first impression. To revise or refine your
thinking requires STUDY.

GM QUESTIONS
• What details do you focus on? What kinds of things are you looking for?
• What do you hope to understand? What problem might you be trying to solve?

When you INTUIT, you take in the information around you — hidden
interactions, facts, intentions, disperate clues — to deduce what
may not be obvious otherwise. INTUIT differs from STUDY in that it
comes from instinct rather than intellect and, unlike STUDY,
happens instantly. Unlike other ACTIONS, on rare
occasions the GM might ask for an INTUIT roll from a player in
certain situations.

You can use INTUIT to “read a person” to judge whether
they’re lying, what they really want, what their intentions are, etc.
When you INTUIT someone in this way, you can ask the GM
questions while you interact with them. You might wait until they
say something fishy, and then ask the GM, “Are they telling the
truth?” If you want to know someone’s intentions, you might use
INTUIT to sense what is really going on.

You can also INTUIT a situation or a place. Revealing clues, finding
out who’s in charge, figuring out why the gang you’ve worked with
before is acting odd, might all fall under an INTUIT roll whether
any clues are present or not.

When you suspect that something is hidden when you confront a
situation or system that you do not understand, you may use
INTUIT to get a sense of what is hidden or how the system
works so that you can interact with the system to accomplish your
goals.

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