I basically like your Madness rules: I like having a normal person at 0 points and going up, rather than at 99 points and going down -- it behaves like an undesirable skill instead of a special case that way. And I like having a game mechanic for small consequences, and yours fits in well with the standard rules.
However, I would tweak so that the cracked die/dice had weird consequences whenever you rolled X on them (not 1 or 6, I think -- maybe 5 for Eris) not whenever they were the highest die. Having to come up with a weird way to believe *every* time you used a completely cracked trait strikes me as an annoying role-playing challenge. Every time you roll X gives you a 1 in 6 time consequence for a cracked trait, scaling up with the number of cracks in the trait rather than the proportion of cracks to the size of the trait. This feels better to me: why should a bad association hurt you more for a weak skill than a strong one, and it makes the weird behavior bite often enough to be interesting but not often enough that the game mechanics force it to dominate your role-play.
Also, in straight OtE/WaRP, your Fringe powers are 1 die for a good trait and 2 dice for a superior trait. (I've always actually played with them scaled to 3 and 4 dice per normal skills, but that that's a house rule.) I think both reducing the number of "hit points" a Fringe trait can have and having it start at 1 point of "damage" is a bit much, so I'd only consider having Fringe traits start as cracked in a campaign with the scaling-up-fringe-powers rule.
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Date: 2012-05-18 04:04 am (UTC)However, I would tweak so that the cracked die/dice had weird consequences whenever you rolled X on them (not 1 or 6, I think -- maybe 5 for Eris) not whenever they were the highest die. Having to come up with a weird way to believe *every* time you used a completely cracked trait strikes me as an annoying role-playing challenge. Every time you roll X gives you a 1 in 6 time consequence for a cracked trait, scaling up with the number of cracks in the trait rather than the proportion of cracks to the size of the trait. This feels better to me: why should a bad association hurt you more for a weak skill than a strong one, and it makes the weird behavior bite often enough to be interesting but not often enough that the game mechanics force it to dominate your role-play.
Also, in straight OtE/WaRP, your Fringe powers are 1 die for a good trait and 2 dice for a superior trait. (I've always actually played with them scaled to 3 and 4 dice per normal skills, but that that's a house rule.) I think both reducing the number of "hit points" a Fringe trait can have and having it start at 1 point of "damage" is a bit much, so I'd only consider having Fringe traits start as cracked in a campaign with the scaling-up-fringe-powers rule.