Thursday, August 17, 2017

What does a self-help book and a roleplaying game have in common?

I stumbled upon this video about Ed Latimore's The Four Confidences: https://youtu.be/aAbW8QoqHTo. I became very excited when I realized this philosophy supports the game mechanics of Golden Oceans.
In Golden Oceans, character creation is primarily focused around the accumilation of special abilities called "Confidences". These confidences unlock areas of expertise for the character. It is Confidence which seperates the heroes from the average people. Without confidence... knowledge and power fall to the wayside.

The following is a summary of Ed Latimore's Four Confidences and how each one relates to the rules of Golden Oceans.

1. Confidence in the Process. Rome wasn't built in a day. Goals come with time. Improvement is a process. Have faith that things will get better. In Golden Oceans, characters recieve Experience just for participating. The Experience they collect furthers them in the game by allowing them to unlock Confidences.
2. Confidence in Instruction. You learn at a quicker pace by relying on trustworthy teachers. You can save valuable time by not having to learn the hard way. In Golden Oceans characters can train, teach, and be taught in order to accelerate the learning of skills. This is much faster than learning on the job.
3. Confidence in the Past. You need to understand where we've been to know where we're going. In Golden Oceans, an emphasis is put on backstory. By choosing the character's Cultural, Occupational, and Motivational Confidences we define what is important to them and why. This makes for stronger roleplaying, by giving the character a starting point and a direction.
4. Confidence in learning. Given enough time, anybody can learn anything. In Golden Oceans there are no class or cross-class skills. Any character can attempt any skill. Every failure is a chance to learn from your mistakes. When your character recieves a Critical Failure on a skill roll, that skill goes up a point. You win or you learn.

In the game of Golden Oceans, Experience leads to Confidence!

Golden Oceans is available here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Papposilenos/shop
Purchase the Four Confidences here: https://edlatimore.lpages.co/the-four-confidences

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