One Dice Wife Vs No Wife? No Dice: Conan vs Seven Part Pact

Seeing our last two stories back to back made me think of something. Namely, Jim and my time with Conan and my time with Seven Part Pact and how each game chooses to treat your companions.

Let us talk about wives.

To reprise the basics from the Conan piece: an NPC attached herself to the party. Zabihi was a clearly ethically-questionable witch, rebelling apprentice of our main enemy and a whole lot more. Jim and her had an emotionally fraught and intense relationship. It was all a lot of fun.

She also reliably added a dice to Jim character’s dice pool.

Hence, one-dice wife.

It’s a joke, but one should also wince, and it’s interesting to think how we got there. In part it’s streamlining – assistance mechanics are not exactly sexy, so a simple, efficient choice tends to be pursued. I’m picking Conan, as it’s the one where the running joke came from, but I could have picked any game. Hell, pick my own – DIE RPG’s does exactly that too.

But while that sharpens it, there’s another reason, and it underlies the philosophy that’s underlies most traditional games (and quite a few that aren’t) and it’s so omnipresent that it’s easy to not realise there’s other ways to conceptualise it.

The 7 Part Pact you play a wizard, who spends his (always his) life doing – to use the technical terms – wizard shit. They have four stats, one for each of the classical elements. Some are high, some are low. It’s a character build. You know character builds.

You also have a companion for each element, who supports you in that element of the life. The water companion is your emotional life. The earth is your physical well being. The fire is your creative life. The Air is your private life. You get to define them, lifting from a pick list. One is a wife. You’ll probably have a wife. It’s likely that the other players won’t even known you have a wife, because all you do is talk about is your wizard shit, while she’s at home ensuring there’s food on the table and earth-element-stat in your build.

Which is all fun, but where it gets sharp is what happens when you lose one of your companions. They’re not doing this stuff. You suddenly have to do it for yourself, spending 1/4 of your turns every month badly and self-destructively doing the stuff your companion was doing all along. Imagine the Wizard, in the kitchen, setting fire to the ready meal. Too long throwing fireballs, and that’s inevitable.

And if you choose to not spend that 1/4 of your time doing it?

That stat drops to zero.

What Seven Part Pact is modelling is the amount of support that it takes for someone to be a wizard – or anything. Why does that person get a chance to be a wizard? Because of other people. If the other people weren’t there, they don’t get to be a wizard.

It’s a particularly cold way at looking at these people too – that no single person actually fulfils multiple areas. The person who inspires you is never the person who makes sure the kitchen is clean. It’s a world of emotional and often physical affairs… but that’s outside the context of this piece.

To head back to what the Conan-esque school’s philosophy: it sees humans as individuals who have a fundamental capacity by themselves. Sure, other people can help them… but they are them, and their victories are their own. Through this filter, it’s one of the tells of the culture where Dungeons & Dragons emerged – American, the country where the all-men-are-an-island libertarian philosophy took root.

Conversely, the Seven Part Pact is interested in modelling a different model of individuals – that, no, we’re really not individuals in that way, and that labour (often unseen, uncredited, under-appreciated) enables whatever these “hero” figures do. Which is a perspective worth remembering.

I sit here writing, aware that if my daughter wasn’t in Nursery, it’s a day where Chrissy would be taking primary childcare. That’s because my job has traditionally just earned more money. But this sentence isn’t earning me money. Or this one. Yet I am still here, wizarding away, and you wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for that support network.

Different games do different things, of course – but I am interested in chewing over models of seeing what people are, and can be seen as. I think this is another are where Seven Part Pact is extremely interesting, mechanising something with intent and precision.

That said, there is one thing I’ll have to note which made me smile.

If you spent an action – one quarter of your free time – you can spend extra time with a companion.

That gains you an extra point in the element for the rest of the month.

Which, when casting a spell, let’s you add an extra dice.