The Future of Humanity

Today's rather pretentiously named update will be picking up on the rewrite of the Sanity and Humanity rules from last time. Here, let me quote where we last left off:

"The one idea that comes to mind would be writing in again the discarded plot element of humans transforming into Fiends and replacing Sanity with Humanity entirely. This would be, in essence, the deletion of Humanity as it exists and giving Sanity a makeover in terms of what it represents in game. I still don't have any clear rules in mind to represent PCs that have become Fiends and they would also need a page or two of advice telling groups how to handle the going berserk scenario, concluding in how to either bring them back to Humanity 1 or making them antagonists permanently."

It's probably not a surprise that I ended up going more or less with what is quoted above. The changes list proper is as follows:

• Humanity mechanic deleted. For the sake of clarity, the original mechanic will be called oHumanity when it is relevant to the discussion.
• Sanity mechanic renamed to Humanity. Conceptually, Humanity tracks how much in control of your powers you are, losing control and becoming a monster at 0.
• Characters do not lose Humanity from burning down orphanages or kicking puppies. It is not a morality mechanic like oHumanity was.
• Characters do not lose Humanity from traumatic experiences. It is not a madness mechanic like Sanity was.
• Characters lose Humanity as a consequence of Twists, using certain Tricks, Negotiation and using Limit Breaks. In essence, Humanity loss cannot be forced on PCs and is always at the control of the player.
• Characters can now Limit Break to gain Orgone Points during combat. Each Orgone Point gained this way results in a loss of 1 Humanity, from a starting maximum of 10.
• Listening Negotiation Skill renamed to Contact. It represents mentally contacting the target and seeing a glimpse of their life through their eyes.

The gist of it is that now Humanity represents the purity of your orgone field and how much control you have over it. When you mess with it too much, such as by storing parts of it in a philactery, making mental contact with another or pushing it past your body's safe limits, it corrupts. When you fail to purify it regularly and let it corrupt too much, it transforms you into a monster known as a Fiend. Sanity and oHumanity were related to many other rules, so let's do a quick skim of all the other stuff that got affected.

First and most obviously, we no longer have a morality mechanic. I considered keeping the oHumanity mechanic as a Reputation system, but honestly it wasn't that good anyway and it doesn't really seem like a big loss to cut it. The consequence here is that there's less modifiers to Negotiation Tests (which is fine, those are always super dependent on their context anyway) and less ways to lose Sanity Humanity, which is addressed by the rest of the rules. All's fine on this end.

Second is how it affects the Bonus/Twist economy, or rather, how it doesn't. One of my worries with doing significant changes to Sanity was that it would make the lives of PCs much harder by giving them less things they could afford to lose on the events of rolling a bad string of Twists. Humanity fills Sanity's shoes as if Sanity had never left us, so that's a plus. The corruption of your orgone is not as easy to justify as stress making you go crazier and more radical, but it is always a player choice so they can just use it when appropriate. Of note: You can never cure your own Humanity, another PC has to help you.

Third is how Limit Breaks affect combat and class balance. The game was actually very well balanced on the PC vs NPC side before this last series of changes (most notably the removal of Character Feats) tilted things towards favoring NPCs quite a bit. The addition of Limit Breaks helps push the PC side of fights quite a bit, to the point where it potentially makes PCs near-invincible if they're willing to burn tons of Humanity. I suspect most combat scenes will end with all PCs losing 1 Vitality, 1 Humanity or both, which is more or less how it was with Sanity before.

Fourth is the Listening Negotiation Skill, which used to trade a point of Sanity for doing a ton of HP Damage. With Humanity this is no longer conceptually feasible, so it's being renamed to Contact and the Humanity damage is represented as a loss of self from becoming someone else for a round of combat. It's not a big change, especially if you're reskinning what the negotiation skills do, but it bears mentioning.

Lastly there's Obsessions and the potential of character retirement. Nearly all Obsessions were rewritten at the low end of the scale to properly represent a transformation into a Fiend (or Majin as the blurb calls them). Fiends are, in essence, serial killers themed around their obsession. The more they indulge the extreme ends of their obsession, the stronger they get, and if they do it while going on a killing spree and feeding on the life energy of their victims they get twice as much. Humans that change into Fiends still look the same and Fiends don't belong to any of the 12 playable Monster races. There's more, obviously (they've a whole page detailing their behavior, how to cure them and a feature of their own as NPCs) but this is getting long enough already. I want to end this bit making it explicitly clear that the default approach to PCs with 0 Humanity is restraining and healing them so that they become human PCs again.

And that about sums it up, I think. The new Humanity rules are much more focused on giving PCs the opportunity to string combos of limit techs and do cool things on the mechanical side while encouraging character development and tight party relationships. I suspect a lot of tough fights will end with a PC breaking the limits of their power level, going berserk, and getting saved by the power of FRIENDSHIP. And I think that's awesome.

Gimmick Out.