Composition Note

This is the 2nd draft of this game, in which my inclination in the design has drifted towards the complex in some areas. My sense is that dueling, chases and hunts should take some time to play out and that the disasters of brawls and battles should run quickly at small scale. Agility should, absolutely be the primary damage reduction mechanic in body. Hence, it should be the corollary Esoteric ability that helps preserve the sanity of the combatant.

Some other nerd should be writing this section—but I’m the only nerd I have. So here it goes…

Spirit

Spirit, and its three components, Animism, Social and Esoteric, are the ability to deal emotionally with the world, or control your emotions within that soul-bending matrix. The stuff that other meatheads try to do to you on the battlefield is child’s play compared to what philosophers, politicians, priests, merchants and userers—not to mention their yummy analogues, women who have manlike intelligence—will do to your once bright, flickering soul!

Spirit skills deal with, or dispense, since the world is iniquitous, blessings and curses upon the spirit of a person. The spirit is its own field of play. A person’s Overall Spirit points equal his sanity, with a score of 3 to 18. Establish spirit hit points, for sanity determination, just as one does with Overall Body points being used for Hit Points. These will represent the emotional resilience of the character. In horror settings, Sanity Points, or SPs might be more important than HPs. Even Herakles went insane and cremated himself. First, let’s review Spirit as presented thus far:

Step 7

Spirit 3-18

Animistic: 1-6

In play, Animistic spirit serves as bravery, and also as empathy with animals, and is the key ability of the mounted warrior. The down side of a high animistic score is its sets you up to be manipulated by men with higher social scores or terrorized or befuddled by bad guys with high esoteric scores, basically the fate of the bugman who has been mesmerized by philosophers.

0 = The postmodern bugman out of touch with nature and afraid of his very shadow.

1 = Modern home owner

2 = Liar, Zombie whisperer

3 = Criminal/Military Leader, Mob Whisperer

4 = Empath, Horse/Dog/Grunt Whisperer

5 = Heroic Leader, Warrior Whisperer

6 = Primal Leader, Wolf Whisperer

Social: 1-6

Social ability is used to convince peers, negotiate with allies, make treaties with enemies, etc.

0 = Modern Voter/Sports Fan

1 = Church Lady, “There Should Be A Law!”

2 = Functionary, lower management

3 = Manager, Sergeant

4 = Politician, Captain

5 = Cunning Politician, Commander

6 = Master Politician, General

Esoteric: 1-6

0 = Atheist with Promethean aspirations to becoming a node of the collective Eater God.

1 = Secular Humanist, denying Eternity

2 = Agnostic, vaguely aware that greater powers than man menaces his steps.

3 = Deist.

4 = Poet, keenly aware of the Other Side, able to conduct rites of sacrifice and oath binding from an honest heart.

5 = Seers, Yogi’s, Oracles, soothsayers, etc.

Having reviewed this, after having forgotten it, one can plainly see:

… that Animism is the Honorable, Honest, barbaric, virtuous aspect of the warrior, with those who have low animism inspired by those with high animism, to follow where they go, for this reason, characters from heroic cultures: Greek, Germanic, Celtic, Nordic, Amerindian, American frontiersmen, Confederate soldiers, should, after their first adventure experience, get to re-roll their animism score, keeping the old score if it is better. More on this later. High Animism, honorable characters tend to follow their ken and to reject social and esoteric leadership. Therefore, politicians and philosophers, who naturally manipulate or indoctrinate their lesser ken, must learn arcane skills to undermine the honor and trick the hero to be mislead through his own better nature!

… that Social is the duplicitous, civilized, managerial, slavish aspect, with those with low social enslaved by those with high social, which encourages manipulation, strict class division, and being driven by the lash or fear into battle, such as Persian, Roman, Conscript soldiers, British Empire and Union Army soldiers. Once a private in such an army is inducted or trained, his social score is reduced by 1. Social skill includes the talent for hurling insults between battle lines, for being a camp crier and herding reluctant men into battle.

Conversely, an officer in such an army, after his first battle may re-roll his animism score, potentially becoming a pariah among his class like Burton, Forest, Custer, Gordon, Patton & Hackworth, now becoming a better leader but less likely to climb the political rank ladder.

Or, player’s choice, he might bend the knee in his heart and re-roll his Social score, keeping the better of the two and develop a taste, indeed a thirst for, BOOT POLISH!

… Esoteric is the quality of penetrating, understanding, and articulating [communicating to other big-brained nimbi] the human condition. Expression is a function of Animism. The ability to convince the less enlightened is a function of Social. Composing songs and poems, these are esoteric things. But performing them are social exercises. So, very often, the most brilliant insight is acquired by one without the talent of a painter or musician to express higher values or deeper truths and is rarely paired with a high Social skill permitting the enlightened one to convince others and gain disciples.

After the God of Battle has made his pitiless will known on the field, a soldier that has not been positively active and has suffered or who has seen suffering, must make a Spirit check. If he succeeds, he should gain a Pathos and a Rout. If he fails, he shall lose a Social point and have it randomly reassigned, on a 1d6 to: 1-2 Animism, 3-6 Esoteric.

Much of the use of Spirit scores is focused on improving those scores. Spirit is the motivating force of a person and a group they lead. Also, the extreme imbalance of the 3 specific abilities, with a separation largely in kind at 3 and 4, with increasingly materialistic [low Animism], slavish [low Social] or Atheistic [low Esoteric], makes high scores on behalf of leaders important, and when combined with low follower scores, potentially world bending. This is the entirety of Postmodern Social Media influence mechanics: politics and sorcery writ in ether, exactly what Robert E. Howard presented as sorcery in his various Conan yarns. A GM will find that the rules of Grunt are perfect for converting any Robert E. Howard story into an adventure.

Example: if Moses came to the Crow tribe in their migration from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, he would just be a chief that did his job. But, among a slave population in Egypt, he became The Deliverer. [I’m not placing the big man as an example, out of respect to his residence on the Cross.] Apollonius of Tyanna and Epictetus were so effective as teachers, to count emperors among their students, in large part because they lived in a world whose people had become slavish from bottom to top, with even leaders now behaved as slaves and emperors cowered before their guards who moved them like puppets and slew them at will.

Likewise, Sidartha, Zoroaster and Gandhi would have been just another wise counselor among the tribal peoples of North America. But, in a slave society, their humanity, which would simply be above the average in a heroic society, shone like a beacon, like a very sun.

The general idea of Spirit is that the user of a spirit power makes 2 checks:

… 1. Overall Spirit check [1d20] to determine if he has the current power to use his specific ability: Animism, Social, Esoteric. Failure is not penalized, unless the petitioner of the unseen powers rolls a 20, in which case he has a crisis and must make sanity check. If he succeeds he gains 1 Spirit Mania. If he fails he now makes a Pathos check. If he fails this he secludes himself for a number of days equal to the die difference and gains a Pathos. If he succeeds he gains a Pathos without seclusion. The careers of Alexander, Burton, Forest, Gordon and Patton are thick with these regenerative seclusions. Conversely, a 1 on such a check gains a Mania, or a Pathos, or a re-roll of Esoteric, at the player’s preference.

… 2. Specific ability check [1d6]

If this is a personal, individual action, it is done, and success or failure is ranked by the die difference with the score, with the GM positing some graduated intensity of experience. Perhaps a 6 roll over a 4 ability smites the confidence of the Philosopher in his attempt to formulate a theory on the afterlife, or a doctrine for Christian observance, and he must seclude himself to regain it. A 1 should be treated as a great epiphany, with the cosmically-inclined character gaining some boon.

In the case of human interaction, like a hero using his mesmerism to inspire his men to charge a vast army or to stand against Grendel in fight, then the followers need only make an Animism check. Conversely, mesmerism, using animism to manipulate a person or persons, requires the object of this attention to fail his check!

So, when Thulsa Doom attempts to mesmerize Conan in the “unarguably greatest movie of all time,” the sorcerer has made his spirit check, and his Animism check as per his Mesmerism skill, forcing Conan to make an Animism check. A moneylender trying to deceive the barbarian would use his Social ability to force the barbarian to make a Social check or be cheated. As will be noted under Spirit skills, these are tied to abilities and sometimes target the same ability in another, or a different ability, as described below.

In social, a counsel of war, in which a rival character controlled by the GM is opposing the honestly thought out plan of the hero [like Parmenio objecting to Alexander before the Granicus] Alexander must make his Social roll and his companions must make their Animism roll, as he is appealing to that quality, to their sense of honor, for Animsim is the seat of honor.

However, in the case of Alcibiades giving a speech to the Athenians he seeks to manipulate for HIS own good and to their collective demise, he must make his social and they must fail their social!

If, on the other hand, a pirate captain is suggesting a dastardly deed in order to get rich, in violation of the Pirate Code the crew is operating under [these were drawn up and signed], he must make his Social check and most of them must fail their Animism [honor] check to go along with the evil act.

Oh my, the section that I almost subtitled Brainy Bullshit, has grown overlong. I will break here and return with the actual Skill, Action and Mania portions of Spirit for Grunt, the RPG that should be hidden from your wife and played in a bunker in New Zealand while the Orks rise from the defecation zones of Western Civilization to do their unseen masters’ bidding.