So I am in the midst of world building, and had a couple Q’s that involve BW. Not all systems are good matches for certain worlds, and as much as I like BW, it may not be the best match for the world I have in mind.
What I want is a society set up on different caste levels, seperated by a geographic level. That is, the lower castes live on a lower level, possibly underground, while higher castes live in the clouds.
I want to represent tje castes for the various races somehow, and one option I was considering was to remove the emotional attributes from the various races.
Humans do not present a problem to me, as the most physically and culturally diverse races. But what would happen if you remove Grief From Elves (aside from giving them free and consequence free immortality)? Spell songs would not be an option, obviously, but otherwise? Is it crippling or broken? Same with the other races?
Another option I’m investigating is simply giving races of the different castes an extra Common Trait to their stock (to represent consistent living in the geographic strata). OR I could restrict certain LPs to the Castes.
Off the top of my head I think it’d be fine for the most part. You can even leave spell songs. Obviously ones rooted in or relying on Grief need some work, but that’s the tiny minority. Dwarves are even easier; they’re less Greed-reliant. Just excise the stat.
I’m considering having the Elves with Spite on the lowest caste, Elves with Grief higher up, and then the ones without emotion on the highest caste. Not sure how this plays out necessarily, and it may be better to put the emotionless elves on the lowest caste (as they have less access to some of the inherent Elven Magic).
The various stocks will essentially become funny looking humans. It will affect elves the least because past a certain point, Grief is actually pretty difficult to advance and Deeds to power Deeds of Grief is also hard to come by. It will profoundly affect dwarves and orcs. Dwarves will lose a great deal of potency without being able to spend Persona to power actions with Greed. You also lose out on the wonderful dwarven arc where dwarves with high Greed tend to become ultra honorable and virtuous as they struggle against the gravity of their Greed. It will have a similar, though lesser, effect on orcs.