Arts, Names and God Tools - Character Growth in Mangayaw

This blog was originally posted on my Patreon. Check it out!

I really admire Cairn’s approach to player character development, now dubbed growth. Rather than levelling up and advancing mechanically, it’s instead very rooted in the fiction. What the PCs do in the game determines how they will grow, maybe get better or worse, but overall change. 

I admire it, I really do. But it doesn’t come as naturally to me as I would like it to be. I’m never quite sure when to bring change to my players’ characters. Even when I do, I don’t know if I make things interesting enough for the players. That said, I’m giving myself a framework for character growth in Mangayaw.

Arts

Arts are skills, abilities, and sorceries that PCs gain in character creation and in play. Studying an art for a period of time or trying to apply it in the field with the chance of failure could gain a PC an art.

Arts could be a specific skill or body of knowledge, active abilities used in combat or wandering, or sorceries with mystical effects. I put all of these in one category because I think Arts is a general enough term. Mun Kao put it really nicely in Kala Mandala; even magic is a skill, a vernacular knowledge that can be learnt. Right now, I don’t see the need to categorize these differently, but we’ll see if I will have to do so later on. 

I’m still working on the list of arts in specific, but there are four different vibes:

• Fighting Arts, that I’m unleashing my Filipino Martial Arts nerd for.
• Singing Arts, for the spiritual, social, and charismatic stuff. 
• Trade Arts, for trade and crafts stuff. Honestly, I’m not satisfied with the name, might change when I think of a better one.
• Skulking Arts, for stuff better hidden in the dark of the night, like thieving, cursing, and shapeshifting.

Names

Names are ascribed to characters by the GM, earned by building up their community, affecting the world significantly, and making themselves known. They are declarations of an aspect of a character, the societies and structures they are tied to, or how other characters see them.

I’m inspired by Philippine ethnoepics once again for this one. Heroes tend to have multiple names that describe their different aspects. The number of names a character has speaks to their significance and power. Older versions of Gubat Banwa (I haven’t been keeping up with the development of the game, unfortunately) has the player characters give themselves multiple names as they go up in Legend. I plan to give Names more narrative and mechanical power, somewhat.

Invoking Names have narrative weight and power. It can scale up the scope and effects of a character’s Art. It can allow a character the use of Arts they don’t have. It can be used by a player or GM to push the narrative and affect the world, to both positive and negative ends. So long as the Name is relevant.

In character creation, I think a player character’s first name should be structured like so: [Chosen Name], [Role or Occupation] of [Community]. This declares what they are able to do and ties them to their community. 

God Tools

In the current release of Mangayaw, I used the term Anting-Anting for D&D-like magic items. It is one of the more common terms in Philippine (maybe mostly Tagalog?) cultures for amulets and talismans imbued with power. I always felt it was a stretch to use the term the way I did, though.

If Arts are going to be ubiquitous in the world of Mangayaw, magic items the way they are in D&D and like TTRPGs might end up not being that special anymore. If I lean into how magic is vernacular, then gear with magical properties are just common, everyday gear. 

In a world of everyday magic, how can certain items be special? To answer this, I look to Philippine ethnoepics once again.

Heroes are not the only ones with multiple names. A hero’s weapons and tools can also have names following the same logic as Hero names. Each one declares a different aspect, a different personality. This implies that these objects are alive, or have spirit in them.

The answer I came up with is God Tools. God Tools are alive and powerful. They are weapons, tools, or objects with a Name, even multiple Names. They will work the same as Names for characters, just ascribed to objects. Characters can use a God Tool in ways that make sense for the God Tool’s Names. A God Tool may gain new Names based on how they are used. A common object may even be elevated to becoming a God Tool with enough use and care. 

What’s Next?

• I’m working on a list of Arts. I plan to just dump ideas and polish them up later.
• Advancement is all well and good, but not all developments in a story are positive. I see the need to bake Flaws into Mangayaw’s character creation and character growth. After all, even Philippine ethnoepic heroes are very flawed characters, sometimes with questionable morals.