SYSTEM 7 LARP
Grab 7 Cards and Go Play!
YOU DIED
Ghost
Ghost was created to give Dead Players something to do and provide instructions for being Dead. When a Character dies, what does that Player so, someone who paid to be there? Some systems send them home. Some force them to join the Crew. Others leave the Storyteller scrambling to figure out a solution while everyone waits. System 7 offers a unque approach where the Player can continue as a spirit, possibly for the rest of the game, and still be able to participate in a dinimished capacity.
History of Ghost
Ghost is the most reworked Card in the entire game. It kept having little problems that needed to be fixed. Originally Ghost was an extra 8th card but to streamline it, the concept of Burning a Shard to activate it, like a Magic Item, was added. As more Cards of this nature were created, it was changed from a Shard to a Dead Card. Notice Me originally offered no healing, a bit of an oversight since you would be at 0 Hit Points, so you should be unconcious and how would getting damaged work? After the healing was added it was clarified that if you were at 0 Hit Points, the effect ended. This added more risk and kept it from being a mini raise dead.
Solving the HP situation lead to another problem. You can't normally act while unconcious. This lead to adding 'you can act' as a Spirit, since you were at 0 Hit Points in this state and should be unconcious. We wanted it to be clear that the Dead Player could get up, walk around and stay with the other Players. The term Spirit was created to reduce the number of words. Notice Me used to say "you are now corporeal and visible and can use cards" and that was shortened. Real estate on cards is at a premium. There are only so many words possible.
The Card originally had +3 Mana so you could use Notice me once for free. The problem was it was never clear how that worked. Did your resource totals change when you activated this Card? Did you regain mana? That needed to be explained and that would take up too much space. Instead, all Dead Cards have +0 resources. Using space saved by the term Spirit, we added the usable 1/day for 0 Mana. Free 1/day would have been shorter but that gets confusing on other cards which have non-mana costs so the term 'free' isn't used. The only rule that isn't on the Card is that every Character gets Ghost for free when they start. That rule remains in the Character Generation rules. Hopefully we've found the final version of Ghost.
More Dead Cards
One thing we noticed with Ghost is that, Dead cards are fun! You have total liberty as a Dead person and don't have to worry about pretty much anything, except when you activate Notice Me, but even then dying again doesn't do anything to you. So we created more Dead Cards. The first was a Norse themed Dead Card and this was when they were changed from Shards to Dead Cards. From Valhalla, coming out in the combat expansion, gives you more health if you died in combat. From there we realized there would be Players who -want- to use Dead Cards and we created more so that there would eventually be enough to focus on them as a Character theme. We even created a Dead Card that you can only get by having the Crew give it to you in the Crew Cards expansion. So have fun being Dead.
