Mysteries of the Yokai uses a pretty unique mechanic for damage tracking: The Morale and Tide bars.

In MOTY, the state of the battle for each of the sides is tracked by the Morale Bar. The players represent one side of the bar, and their foes are on the other side. As either side takes actions that affect the battle, they shift the Tide Bar, which tracks the individual actions of combatants. When enough Tide damage has been inflicted, that side suffers Morale damage. Each player and NPC has a Morale Threshold; the point at which they withdraw from battle because they can no longer fight (or choose not to).

Why abstract the Hit Points of individuals into a single tracker? Partly because the focus of MOTY is cooperative. The players are working together, and seeing a comrade taken out of battle can cause even brave warriors to reconsider the tactical situation (brave is not stupid).

In addition to building side fellowship, abstracting out Hit Points allows us to let players take all kinds of actions to shift the tide of battle. A character less invested in Combat but more in talking and interaction based abilities can now still be useful on the field of war. That character would have to wait for the right time (bellowing commands at the enemy works better when you’re already winning), but could use their way with words to demand the enemy retreat. If this demand was phrased in a way that reminds the foes that they are losing, but allows them to keep honor and face (a tempting prospect for many in the world, supernatural and human alike), it is likely to succeed.

In the same way, the Morale System is not just used for physical combat, but can be used by the Game Master for any situation when two sides are competing against each other. And by using the same overall system, we keep the ability for players to still be useful. That combat heavy character may generally not help much in delicate negotiations, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a strong arm at the diplomacy table, especially if you’re talking to someone who respects strength.

We chose to go with the Morale System because we strongly feel that encouraging teamwork and allowing players to stay useful in any situation, is an exciting system that fits the heart of Mysteries of the Yokai. That said, we’re very aware that this system is a bit different than many players are used to, and has potential problems that have to be addressed to avoid frustration.

The first concern most players are likely to have is ‘Why am I getting ‘hurt’ just because another player is?’. After all, why should the brilliant tactician suffer just because his barbarian teammate runs headfirst in to combat?

We address this partly by giving each character their own threshold before they must leave combat. Brave characters need not flee combat simply because their cowardly thief ally took a mere 3 arrows in their limbs, and can fight on with a jolly bellow and brag about the 5 arrows they are sporting. Still, even if you’re keeping your head down while all these idiots are getting decorated with arrows, there comes a point where you have to decide to exercise the better part of valor.

Besides just having characters react to the values of the Morale Bar differently, we can take advantage of the same abstraction noted above to let players restore Morale without being restricted to traditional ‘healing’. The character who is more a student of ‘human interaction through talk’ instead of ‘poking with sharp things’ may not be able to mix healing balms in the midst of combat, but they could play on the fact that the barbarian and thief have a rivalry going. By playing on the thief’s pride, they may inspire the thief to fight on just a little longer, boosting their Morale to keep them in the battle.

All this may sound very high level and conceptual, but we’re building it around a simple mechanical framework that uses the same rules for all these situations. We want players to have to worry less about where to find the specific rules to do something, and more about telling the stories of their characters.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these issues. We’re doing something new here, and that tends to lead to bumpy roads at first. We want to smooth things out for as many different play styles as we can.