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jadarx posted:I'm going to have to stop with my review of Houses of the Blooded. I don't have the time to make reasonable updates and frankly don't have the writing skills to make them interesting. And if you don't mind, I'll pick up where you left! I could restart the Dragon Warriors review I was doing oh, around the time the last thread ended, but I think no one was reading it anyway. But this? Oh boy. And now that we're fresh out of the Eldritch High review... Houses Of The Blooded - Part 6 You don't get it, it's art Sorcery is blood magic. Remember, the ven are essentially sentient spell components created by the sorcerer kings. (Aside: I really like the idea of "yeah, your entire race was created just to make this ritual work better" but the only settings I've seen that roll with it are HOTB... and Carcosa.  ) The ancient and unholy art of senvu should have gone forgotten but alas. quote:Scholars do not agree on when the ven began using sorcery. You know, it must be a weird world where Ven Scholar!Wick is writing from. Sorcery is "sure, they used it, no biggie" and Atlantean and Hyperborean civilizations are taken as fact. I think I'd rather read about than than the ven but it's what we have so. The Serpents are, as we know, the most sorcerous of the Houses. They pushed to make sorcery illegal through the Senate so as to strengthen their position - after all, everyone was knee deep into sorcery by then. It's still used all over the place though, and it's still considered a crime anywhere, but because the Blooded are Ven are also fond of ritual: there's a proper form to do everything, from saying goodbye to smoking a joint. You want chaos, go live with the orks, that's bad form, yadda yadda. Wick also invite us to make sense of the "sh'vla controversy" over ven weighs and measures, but he's magnanimous so he won't bore us with that poo poo! Ven measure things the same way humans (and that is to say, specifically Americans) do: pounds, gallons, etc. He also swears he can write an entire book on the complicated way ven had of keeping time but nah, let's use our own measures. Which is weird seeing as Seasons take a specific amount of our months to pass. The Blooded sent their children off for education at a young age, six or seven. The kids have a ritual last supper with their parents, some last minute gifts, and they're gone by morning. Noble schools teach their students manners, etiquette, politics, self defense, and so on, and are technically independent. Not so much their faculty, however.  Other ven prefer private instructors, and considering we're dealing with doomed murderous highborn manchildren here I wonder why any ven would send off their kids away unless they were trying to get them murdered. Which, honestly, they might be. Let's talk about capital-A Art! Ven loving love it. It's what transforms us, strikes us with awe, it's quote:Try explaining the Grand Canyon with just words. “Big” isn’t big enough. “Enormous” isn’t big enough. In fact, there is no word big enough to convey the BIG of the Grand Canyon. Sure okay. The greatest ven art is the Opera. It's "Jim Steinman meets John Woo" and where all hell breaks loose. It encompasses all other arts, and it is called "The High Alchemical Art". Ven are so particular about Opera they only recognize seven basic plots as fit for it: Wick tells us it's like how King Arthur automagically evokes images of the Knights of the Round, Guinevere, Mordred and so on. If the plot strays too far from what we know, "we feel betrayed." But the plots can be used to tell many different stories, so they're not repeating the same seven plays all the time. They all end the same though. Tragedy and Blood. Also they all need that the hero dies or is undone, and always by their own hand. Even in in-setting fiction, PCs can't catch a break in Wickverse. The seven plots are represented by the Seven Fools, the archetypical protagonists of each: The Actress: she (or he, the Fools can be any gender) is a ven that rises through society by means of an Art, lose sight of her beginnings by the praise of others. Usually commits suicide at the end. The Dowager Duchess: an old ven that refuses the call of Solace. She acts like a young woman until the hard truth of the world comes around, and is ultimately robbed of Solace. The Husband: the archetypical neglectful spouse, undone by underestimating his wife's desire for independence and happiness. The Rake: an unmarried ven, rising in society through romantic conquests, undone by his own shallow heart. The Swordsman: a high Prowess, high pride type, he refuses apology for any slight and answers all threats with Sword. Of course he's hosed in Wickland. The Wife: the Wife is  demanding, selfish and proud. That's how she got as high as she did, that's what will cast her down.The Wise Man: the rarest and hardest to write for, the Wise Man isn't really described other than he's the most difficult to make compelling for a ven audience. Hint! Manchildren. The sample Wise Man is actually a common soldier that ends up in a hosed Chance The Gardener situation. You know, I think Wick is trying to make a point on what the PC's fate will be. Maybe? There are also two Servants, always named the same, that work as the Greek chorus of the play. The boldest writers use them to comment on the moral of the play, which is dangerous because of Reasons. And then there's Theater, which is basically improv theater for the masses. No self-respecting noble would be caught dead at the theater, but they usually show up in hooded robes anyway, because it's a loving riot. Theater actors are essentially extreme LARPers, and audiences can tell when they're faking it. But no one can blame an actor for what a character demands them to do, right? Love, revenge, murder... Something something ven instruments. Meh. Ven music tends to be repetitive, and uses silence a lot as punctuation. At the time the game is set, ballads did not exist. Ven painting was akin to German Expressionism, and always focused on people. Ven did not paint still lifes. No Truth in apples, you know. The Senate! It's the voice of the ven - the ones that matter, the ones with land. They sit on the Senate because they fought for it, bled for it, killed for it. Senators are ranked according to, well, their noble rank, and have as many votes as land they control. The dukes lead the Senate, recognizing speakers and so forth. Once a Senator is recognized (by three others that outrank him) he gets to talk as long as he can, and must answer questions directly. Else, he is removed from the floor. There are no duels and no bloodshed on the Senate. The Senate gathers on the first new moon of each Season: emergency meetings can and have been called, but they're rare and difficult to pull off. Senators also engage in dachanau, the dance of words, which is basically one-on-one debate. They're mostly used to illustrate the finer points of complicated issues, and multiple debates can be held over a single vote. Dachanau is popular in the Senate, and has spread as a pastime to parties and taverns alike. If the Senate needs independent eyes, they can call in vashna, Senate investigators. They dress in black and silver to signify their lack of identity and subservience to the Senate, and no ven is above their authority. Of course, that black cloak does poo poo when you're deep in Count Assh'le's lands and you get offered a cup of poison wine or have a chance encounter with 'orks.' The vashna are usually disgraced or indebted nobles, or those who want the power of the Senate and its vengeance. But wait! The Senate does not declare Revenge, no. Just vengeance. Ven fashion is exaggerated and opulent. Wick plays the "it's so complex and scholars don't agree" card again then tells us to play it up however we see fit. Some details that are clear are that men wore common stuff like hats, gloves, boots and coats, and that women crossdressing was not seen in any form of positive light. And colors, colors mattered a lot.
Let's talk about the economy! No money, no coins. Ven economy is based on barter, trade and promise, and Contracts. Contracts are formal and ritual, and it all makes the economy bureaucratic as gently caress. And don't you dare break one, it's against the law. We go back to sorcery (because gently caress editing, right), and specifically the two main rituals for nobility: Blood Oaths are magical agreements to ensure noble loyalty, which is kind of a big deal when everyone is a doomed murderous highborn manchild. If a noble bound by Blood Oath breaks it, the old tongue word for oathbreaker is magically tattooed on their forehead, which is kind of lovely for your social life. And then there's the Senvu Swordsman ritual that binds swordsman and sword as if they were one. It's very secret, and the senvu Swordsmen see themselves as an elite brotherhood that will murder anyone that so much hints at revealing the ritual. There are other rituals, of course, and ven are always getting themselves killed in sorcerer-king ruins and palaces looking for them. Next: Romance and Revenge, or the 'murderous' and 'manchildren' sides of the foursome.
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Oct 24, 2013 08:47
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Houses of the Blooded Just like high school. Except... no, just like it. A small aside for ven hospitality. It's really important for reasons. A ven invites you into their house? They protect you from all harm. No poison, no treachery. In exchange, the guest agrees not to sneak around the house or be a douche in general. This is one of those that are taken seriously. No one said anything about being a douche to other guests though. And now, Revenge! quote:Vrentae. The Hate. The Old Tongue. A red spirit possesses the Heart. Hungry. It can only dine on retribution. To satisfy the Hate, one must undertake High Revenge. It's a big deal, because see, for ven there's no such thing as justice. Wick says it's the only time we'll see this word in the book, in fact! (He lies. It shows up about five times.) But Revenge, that's in every Opera, in the mind of every ven. They're obsessed with revenge because first, since Shanri really can't support armies or large-scale warfare and war is forbidden by law anyway, ven turned to small scale action. The smallest scale action is, of course, the ritual duel. It's all Artsy and stuff because nobles have to uphold civilization, you know. Second, there's no word for "crime" in Venspeak. There are only the Three Great Offenses, and only Blooded may commit violence (no unblooded, not for any reason, so I guess there are no legal peasant hunters or anything in the entire world). So the idea is, if a ven breaks the Law, they have committed Insult or Injury. The wronged party goes before a Jury, makes a case, and if found to have merit, then they're allowed to seek Revenge. Again, this is not about justice: this is about making the other rear end in a top hat suffer as much as you did. It always ends in tears. And now, Romance! quote:Vrentae. The Lust. The Old Tongue. A red spirit possesses the Heart. Hungry. It can only dine on the rage of Passion. To satisfy it, one must undertake Romance. SPOILERS ROMANCE AND REVENGE ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN WOOOOOOO. In fact, it all depends on how you pronounce the drat word - VREN-tae means Romance, vren-TAE means Revenge. Anyway, the thing about Romance is that basically, love in ven society did not exist as a concept, at all. Because this is a Wick game, all marriages were politically convenient alliances. No, no love, but there was lust because ven are horny assholes. And then someone, somewhere, came up with the idea that maybe this whole funny butterflies in the stomach business wasn't wrong. Maybe it was right, maybe it was worthy, even sacred. Ultimately, both Romance and Revenge are obsessions (the word literally means "holding my heart"), which is why ven under them wear red. If they're wearing it for Revenge, they're marking themselves because legal Revenge means they simply cannot be bound by anything. No law, no ven. But this vrentae is ritual, of course, and must be carried out in a given period of time, or the ven's reputation will be severely harmed. Ven under Romance wear red for similar reasons: they're considered not to be thinking with a clear head so they're expected to have some more lenience from their peers. But just a bit. And neither Romance nor Revenge last forever - just enough to ruin a ven's life. Romance isn't silly, by the way! Did you know those fantasy novels you care about so much would have been called Romances in old times? Yes, even "The Professor's War of the Ring." quote:(Technically, he called it a “history,” but we’re willing to allow the Professor a mistake or two now and then.) gently caress off, Wick. gently caress off. But yeah, people would do crazy poo poo for Romance! More than those murderhobos and their quest for gold coins. That's boring. Anyway, I need audience participation for the next one! I want doomed highborn manchildren concepts to run through character creation. However, I can't promise exact faithfulness to the concept because... Next: random generation? Really?
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Oct 24, 2013 19:39
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In Wick's head, I'm sure that's the game he was designing. The examples of rolls are actually pretty drat swashbuckly. Houses of the Blooded Colonization was a pretty cool game  What passes for art in this game goes between chapters, like this. As jadarx mentioned, there's a lot of "I, John Wick, discovered this" in here. This one is fairly unsmug. So it's on to character creation! It's long and scary but don't worry, we have John Wick creating a character along as we read through this chapter. Said character is Blooded of the Fox Shara Yvarai, and many of the fake book quotes are from the pillow book named after her. She's also the star of the sample scenario such as it is, but fortunately she's no Kachiko. Still, Wick fawns over her a little too much for a Spring character. What's a Spring character, you ask? You'll see. So let's use our two character sample concepts as we go through this. R'shana Al'gri (Al) and D'io Bu'land'o (Dio) will be our merry companions through this post. As hinted earlier, there's an element of randomness in chargen, and it's the background phase. See, Wick thinks we can't pick our family, so we might as well roll for it, and he gives us a number of tables to roll on. We get three pips to modify our rolls up and down, but that's it. Now, we can just pick our options if the GM agrees; Wick says he's just a control freak. Hey, words from the man himself. First, we roll for the Houses our mother and father belonged to. This matters because the House our character will be part of is going to be one of these two. For Al, I rolled Falcon and Serpent; and for Dio, I got Serpent and (using up all the pips) Wolf. Then we roll to see which parent was yvestra (dominant) and which was ytola (submissive). See, instead of the man always wearing the pants in the house, ven marriages arrange for one partner to rule the roost - and thus be exposed to greater social risk - and the other to stay quiet and have no authority - but no responsibility, either. It's all in the contract. Let's say Dio's dad and Al's mom were the dominant partners. Finally, we pick a House: both our characters take after their parents, being Serpent and Wolf respectively. The Wolf idea of "being a tool or a weapon" suits an rear end in a top hat like Dio. Then, we roll up our siblings: first our personal birth order, then the number of surviving siblings. Dio was born sixth but he's the only survivor (I wonder why  ), and Al was born second but he's also the lone surviving child. Had they had living siblings, we would roll for their genders as well.Our names! Names have meaning, and that thing matters in this game. A name is composed of the family name (we get that from our house), the secret name (the one mothers whisper to ven children at birth, it's sekrit) and the public name (your real, regular name). So Al is Al, and Dio is Dio. Then we decide on our age: our characters can be Spring (10-19 years old) Summer (20-49) Autumn (50-79) or Winter (80-100). And Shara is Spring, and Wick is a little too appreciative of her. We'll say our guys are both in the Summer of their days and leave it at that, holy poo poo.We also roll for marriage. This one is optional, because hey, we do get a bit of a say in whether we get hitched or not. Most likely, our characters are married and have kids. quote:While such trivial matters would not matter if you were a wandering mercenary, looting and pillaging your way through the countryside, without care or ethics or morals, but you’re a noble now, and your priorities have to change. Besides, there are mechanical advantages to having a spouse and child. WHAT COULD HE MEEEEAN Anyway, I used the charts: both of our characters are married with a single kid. As starter characters, our characters are Barons, the lowest land-owning noble rank, but we still get to roll for our parents' rank. Remember, ven don't really do the inheriting thing. As it turns out, Dio's parents were just Barons, while Al's folks were Marquises. Now on to actual stats! Like in Blood & Honor, our characters are defined by Virtues. There are six Virtues, conveniently mapping to the six Houses in the corebook:
We get one Virtue at 4, two at 3, two at 2, and one as our weakness. Our weakness gets nothing. 0. We add one more point to the Virtue our house represents, but nothing if it happens to also be our weakness. Now here is the thing: your weakness is not something you're mediocre at. It's not something you're bad at. It's something you're absolute poo poo at. Right from the start, all characters have a glaring weak point to stab at. Just how Wick likes it. So for Dio, I decide to go with a Str 2, Cun 3, Cou 3, Bea 2, Wis 0, Pro 4+1 spread. Yes, I know, he should have Beauty at 9 or something, but I work with what I have. Al, in a stereotypical nerd way, gets Str 0, Cun 3, Cou 2, Bea 2, Wis 4+1, Pro 3. Next, we go to Phases. We take the age we got for our characters, then look up which Phase they're in. The older they are, the more Aspects and Contacts they get, but also the more Solace Aspects (age-related infirmities) they get as well. Aspects are, as we know, words or phrases that describe our character. We'll go into deeper detail with them later, but I'm sure most of you are already familiar with FATE already. Contacts are the connections the ven made through their life. Each Phase, you pick one of the other player characters as a contact. There are a number of advantages from having contacts, but they'll come up when we talk about the domain management rules. As Summer characters, Dio and Al get four Aspects and two Contacts each. Let's say their contacts are each other and Shara, because nothing wrong ever came of trusting Wick characters. As for aspects, I go over the sample list and give Dio Treacherous (of course), Ikhalu's Kiss (good at stabbing people in the face with knives  ), Swordsman and Thief; Al gets Academy Educated, Meticulous, Strange Intuition, and Warlock ( ).Our characters also have Devotions to the Suaven. Some of the ven that go into Solace are essentially worshipped the way saints are in our world. There are Suaven for everything, except for "winning rolls" because that's totally a thing a Bad Form player would ask for. We get three points to divide between Suaven devotions, with a maximum of three per Suaven. Nothing says you have to worship a Suaven of your house either. I say that scheming rear end in a top hat Dio puts all his faith in Tyane Bran, Suaven of Intrigue, while Al worships both Bran and Ashalim Avendi, Suaven of the Road - handy for a warlock explorer. The other major half of chargen is Domain. Our dudes are just Barons, but they're still land-owning nobles, and they have a whole Province to begin with. Each province is divided in ten Regions. Of them, two are already claimed: the character's Castle and one Village. We get five points to buy regions with, or improve a region up to Rank 3. Yes, this does mean parts of the province will be unknown: they're still lesser nobles after all. Protip: you need Food at first, just like in Sid Meier's Colonization. The regions may be:
You can buy more than one type of region if you want. We also get five points to spend on Vassals, ven under our command that help us run our Domain. Not full NPCs, though, not yet. They need at least one Food per Year to stay on our side, and they can be bribed or turned by our enemies unless we spend more. But that comes later. For now, we can buy or improve:
We get three Style Points to begin with, but we're not told what they do just yet. Only that we can accumulate a maximum of five from session to session. Finally, we get five Bonus Points to buy up more Aspects, Contacts, old Artifacts, Suaven Relics, sorcerous Rituals, and buy/improve Regions or Vassals. We'll buy up a new aspect or two, some extra regions, improve staff a bit... Rounding up, our character sheets look like this: code:code:Next: wait, run Aspects by me again? Traveller fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 03:54
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I want you to make Space Mary Poppins, which is most certainly an appropriate concept for this game I know nothing about.
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Oct 25, 2013 04:21
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Houses of the Blooded Risky business quote:Now, in most roleplaying games , this section is called something like "game system" or "mechanics" or "task resolution." Sounds about as sexy as repairing your dishwasher. I will not be kinkshamed by you, Mr. Wick.  Anyway, actual mechanics! Like in other Wickgames, the basic roll is a risk. Roll a number of dice, and if you get 10 or more bam, you get privilege. This has nothing to do with the actual success or failure of the action you're attempting, mind you. If you make your roll, then you get to describe what happens. If you fail it, the GM gets to do so. But where do you get those dice anyway? Let's talk about Style. Remember those points we got at chargen? Style is flamboyance and panache. You get those by acting ven: dramatic, tragic, lovestruck, hotblooded, etc. You don't get it by reading other game books, answering your cell phone, arguing about rules with the GM, or getting off of Mr Wick's wild ride in general. Anyway, they're used for a lot of things, most of which have to do with aspects. As mentioned in chargen, you can only bank a maximum of five Style on your own, but fancy gear (a good hat, good boots, a nice sword) lets you bank more. Like 7th Sea NPCs, you can be measured on how floppy your hat is and how ruffled your collar is. To make an actual roll, you first declare your intention. For instance, let's say Dio's intention is "I want to kick this puppy." This is what you get if you succeed. Then you gather dice for your pool. These come from:
If the roll succeeds we get our intention, but that's it. Dio kicks the puppy. To get extra effects out of our risk, we make wagers. Like in L5R, we can penalize our own rolls by setting dice aside. Say Dio gets ten dice to kick the puppy: that's overkill for the TN of 10, so he can just set, say, five dice aside and trust he'll get a 10 with his remaining five. Wagers can be used to take narrative control of the scene and add elements. So if Dio makes his roll with five wagers, he could say "I kick the puppy: it lands on a brazier, and its coat catches on fire, and it runs away yelping through the dance hall, and it sets the dresses of several dancers on fire, and finally dies right on top of an expensive carpet." His intention, plus five extra details from his wagers. Wagers cannot contradict previously established elements of the scene or do something that would require a risk to happen. If another character opposes the risk, it becomes contested. The resolution is mostly the same: characters announce their intentions, then go through each step of gathering dice in turn (A declares or not their name, B does the same, A asserts a virtue, B does so, etc.) until they both run out of dice sources. Wagers are made in secret, then shown, and then the dice are rolled. The player that rolls higher is the winner, as long as they get over 10; the loser gets only half of their wagers rounding up, or none if they don't even make 10. If they both fail to roll 10, the GM takes over. The winner decides who spends their wagers first, then they do so until they run out of wagers. Ties are solved either by the largest pool, or by the GM asking how much Style the involved ven are willing to give up to win. All rolls that involve 2 or more characters are contested, even if they're trying to help each other. So let's say Al doesn't want Dio to kick the puppy. They make their declarations and gather their dice. Dio again rolls five dice and wages another five, while Al wages four out of his seven dice, rolling three. They both make their rolls, but Dio rolls higher, and decides to go first.
So far, so good? Great, because now things go to poo poo. You can lie on your rolls. Those bits about gathering dice, declaring name, and all that poo poo? Lie as much as you want, as long as your lie is not greater than the dice you can actually roll. If you don't want to reveal your name could be used for rear end in a top hat poo poo? Say it's no good. You can roll less Virtue dice than you actually have. You can say you have no appropriate Aspects. And you can lie about the result of your roll as long as your lie is not greater than your actual roll. You can lie on your rolls. You can LIE ON YOUR ROLLS. Why would you do this?
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Oct 26, 2013 17:01
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Houses of the Blooded Compel Aspect:  The following chapters deal again with Virtues and Aspects. Broadly, they repeat and expand on what we've seen of them so far, and they're another chance for Wick to get on his soapbox and preach. Still, they clarify some things, so you might as well read them if you've not set your copy of HotB on fire yet. Virtues! Mostly, this chapter is about how to use them in game, and when they're good for risk calling. Strength is for all physical risks, as well as unarmed fighting. Strength lets you do things like leaping across rooftops, grabbing wind vanes, swinging down into balconies and rolling through glass doors. You know, swashbuckly, stylish things! Cunning lets you put together facts, think on your feet, spot the important details. You roll Cunning when trying to find clues - but, since this is all about cooperative storytelling, what Cunning lets you do is actually make up the clues yourself. quote:Now, when I say “find clues,” I truly and honestly mean “find clues.” Because right now, I hear a bunch of players saying, “But won’t that mess up the Narrator’s plot?” See, look how you’re being responsible! That’s so cute. And we Narrators really do appreciate it. But don’t worry about the Narrator’s plot. Honestly. I’ve got him covered in the Narrator Chapter. Git. Courage is used to, well, be courageous. Want to do something dangerous? Roll Courage. (What is this, Rock of Tahamaat?) Most Courage rolls are simple risks, and you have to spend a Style point if you fail it and still want to go through with the action. If you make wagers, though, you can turn them into Style at a rate of 2 wagers per Style (if it's a non-dice action) or extra dice for the next roll (if it's a risk.) quote:Courage is often overlooked by the players. “Ah, my character is as brave as I want him to be.” Also, orks have something called Terror. quote:I’m not going to tell you how Terror works because the Narrator will show you that soon enough. Beauty is used to create stuff. Moving, heartrending, passionate stuff, the details of which are still a while away. It's also used for Contract writing (contested Beauty risk) and for debate (contested Beauty risk, people who agree with the winner gain Style, people who agree with the loser lose Style). Wick tells us Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but in the hands of the Fox; if Serpent are Soshi, the Fox are Bayushi, I think. Speaking of Serpent, Wisdom is knowledge. Cunning is Sherlock Holmes examining the guy that walked into the room; Wisdom is Sherlock Holmes knowing that an object is not in the room. Wisdom risks are also used to define the world of Shanri. You can make up an ork out of whole cloth with a good roll and some wagers. You can also add details to other characters: they can spend a Style to veto it, but if they accept it they get one Style. Don't try to drain them of Style this way, that's Bad Form. Prowess is all about martial matters, but in general it's about determining advantage. If Cunning tells you the guy in front of you is lying and hiding a knife, Prowess lets you know he's a capable fighter and that it's better for you to get between him and the door. Prowess risks can also be used to give Aspects to a scene - in particular, Aspects that works as martial advantages.  :fakehistoricaltruths: The Aspects chapter opens with a long tirade about how Wick found out about Fate, and how he thought Aspects were the poo poo, but--- quote:My experience with player-vs.-player roleplaying games—and I’ve played in a lot of them—made me realize that Aspects were too open-ended for that kind of environment. In a PvP game, every player is looking for any advantage, looking to exploit any weakness.And, frankly, players can get drat emotional, exploiting every loophole, interpreting vague or unclear rules to far extremes to protect their own characters and crush those they didn’t like. This is PvP after all, and there’s a reason board games don’t have Aspects, but clear and concise rule sets that can’t be “interpreted.” So why allowing lying in the rolls? In a bit. Anyway, Wick limits Aspects to deal with one single thing to stop these damnable PvP players. But you can play them up as broad as they were meant to be, honest! Wick isn't going to stop you! There's a lot of blah blah on the invoke/tag/compel mechanics and how they work with Style. Some things stand out, though, most importantly that you can't tag or compel an Aspect that you don't know about. You have to see the Aspect invoked/tagged/compelled first, then get on a contested Cunning risk with the target (if the target wins, they gain Style: secrets are cool.) So not playing to your full strength all the time makes sense: you can imagine a situation where Dio is dueling some two-bit Blooded that can barely hold on to his sword. Dio could easily trounce him with his Prowess and Swordsman Aspect, but there might be someone else in the audience that Dio wants to shank later. So Dio could not use his Aspect and thus not allow the other guy to spot a weakness in his fighting style (the Swordsman tag), or allow him to see it while keeping his Prowess in check. See, that's actually cool. What's not cool is straight up lying on your rolls, and it's telling that in Blood and Honor there's no mention of it. It's also worth mentioning that tagging only works when there's dice rolls involved, and that you can't compel an Aspect when rolling risks - compelling is strictly for narrative advantage, not mechanical. Incidentally, you can resist a compel, it costs you two Style to do so. Other than that, it's repeating things already mentioned about using Style to invoke/tag/compel, Free Aspects, and Solace Aspects (which are never secret, everyone can see you getting old.) And this gem: quote:Perceptive readers will notice that denying the compel actually costs you three Style: the two Points you give up to deny the compel and the point you would have gotten if you accepted it. Wick is perfectly right, of course. This is not Legend of the Five Rings. Then there's some talk about specific Aspects and what makes a good or bad Aspect. You can already suss out how to build a proper Aspect from what we've seen so far, but there are a couple of sample Aspects that are essentially hotb.txt:
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Oct 28, 2013 01:52
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Ratoslov posted:Wait, does 'Dolt' even work mechanically? It's an aspect with no invoke, and you can only tag or compel it if you've seen it invoked, tagged, or compelled first and win a contest. There's literally no way for anyone to get into a position to actually use this Aspect. The GM gave it to the Really, a big issue with HOTB is that, for all of the "no, this is totes cooperative, I swear" stuff Wick throws at us, the GM still had a lot of power the players won't even get close to. Which wouldn't be as bad, if this were a comedic game like Paranoia. But we're meant to play HOTB seriously.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:47
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Houses of the Blooded MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA The next chapter is about Poison. jadarx said the Poison chapter in the Wick of the Scorpion was a teaser of this and well, it was. Wick says one of the most common forms of murder in ven opera and books is poison, so there's the temptation to make the system very complex... only not, because when you get poisoned you die. No one makes "saving throws" against arsenic, cyanide, mercury, spider venom, etc. (Disclaimer: I've been bitten by these beauties twice and well, I'm still kicking. And I'm not nearly as tough as a doomed murderous highborn manchild!) But maybe we want rules that are more than just "poison fuckin' kills you."
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Oct 28, 2013 22:29
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scissorman posted:Just so I get this right, as a ven you have to use a sword when fighting? You don't have to use a Sword, but if you're not using one and the other guy is, you're a Tool. Not a Weapon. You can use a poisoned spear though, that's cool, but other than having/not having a Sword there's no mechanical difference at all between weapons. Oddly, Wick references the Riddle Of Steel to justify why weapons have no mechanical differences, which is just plain wrong. Alien Rope Burn posted:
Just like Americans. It's you, you are the ven. I think you can play as orks, actually? I don't have the Wilderness sourcebook.
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Oct 29, 2013 00:07
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scissorman posted:Well, that's disappointing; I almost expected there to be support for fighters to try to out-smug/out-sperg each other concerning their weapons before the fight. The Weapon-user can tag the Tool for two bonus dice.
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Oct 29, 2013 00:44
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Halloween Jack posted:And like ARB said, they're the strongest and the smartest and are secretly controlling and manipulating everyone because they're sooo awesome and smart. oWoD seemed to have regular trouble with that, making antagonists and factions within the super duper COOL FACTIONS what are you stupid staying with the old and busted. The Camarilla rules the nights, and they fight the villainous Sabbat! Only the Sabbat are actually trying to hold off the monstrous Antediluvians (what are you, stupid?) The Traditions fight to awaken humanity, and they are opposed by the villainous Technocracy! Only the Technocracy are trying to make the nights safer for everyone and they fight the real monsters (what are you, stupid?) The Garou Nation protects Gaia and the spirits from harm, and against them is the villainous Pentex Corporation! Only--- wait, I don't think Pentex are ever shown in any kind of positive light ever. But you get the idea.
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Oct 29, 2013 02:51
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Naruto d20 sounds like a  of bloat. Someone should take up that one d20 40K book for the full dose of d20 cholesterol.
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Oct 29, 2013 05:37
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Houses of the Blooded In case I’m being too subtle, let me be perfectly clear about one thing. The only way to maintain a Romance at its potential is with sex. This is the Romance chapter. Still your hearts, we're in for a ride. The chapter opens with this quote from one of Wick's doomed highborn manchildren:
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Oct 29, 2013 21:09
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AccidentalHipster posted:It's hard to tell if he's shaking his fist in impotent fury or fist pumping in triumph. One and the same in the Megaverse©
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Oct 30, 2013 01:00
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The problem is that HOTB is not an adversarial LARP game where you can take people in private to shank them in the face, it's a tabletop game of quote-unquote cooperative storytelling with everyone's character sheets in the clear. Except, again, for the GM's NPCs. Have a :wick:  before we go on.Houses of the Blooded Break out the party hats The following chapter is the Seasons chapter, the longest crunch section in the book. quote:Unlike other games — where the characters are perpetually stuck at the vague age of “about 25,” never growing older, the passage of time never ravaging their youth — in Houses of the Blooded, days, months, and years click by. Sure whatever. The ven measure time just as we do, with four seasons per year. I guess Wick doesn't need to write those volumes on ven timekeeping after all! The ven year begins in Spring rather than Winter. One season lasts around 90 days. For each Season, characters can get involved in up to three Stories (adventures). More than that and the Narrator may judge they can't spend time handling other important stuff. Each Season also has a modifier of its own: Spring adds +1 to any Romance that begins in the season, or +1 to the potential of any Art created during it; Summer lets one region per Province make an additional Resource; Autumn gives all PC nobles one extra action; and Winter makes all regions roll one extra Trouble die because Winter sucks. Let's talk about Regions! They're the building block of the Provinces ven own. Ten Regions to one Province. Regions are an abstract, unspecified amount of land. quote:(I like abstract. Gives players room to be creative with their stuff. If you want to be more precise, there are a ton of other games with similar systems that deal with specifics. Use those.) You copied the same line and pasted it in Blood and Honor, jerk. Bad form! Regions can be civilized (there are roads, tax collectors, some population and a measure of protection) or wild (still ork-held); they have a type and rank, as we saw during chargen; and they're rated by Loyalty and Security. As a Baron/Baroness, starting characters have one Province mostly under their command, and to rise in noble rank they need more Provinces. Three Provinces for a Count, nine for a Marquis, eighteen for a Duke! You also need nobles of lesser to help you rule your lands, and apparently Barons need three Knights to rule their barony? Could've mentioned that in chargen, Mr. Wick. Could've also mentioned chargen characters start with one Resource from each Region they begin with. Seasons go by in order, with four Phases per Season:
The Resources are:
So what can we build? Holdings! That's a Season Action to begin building, and two Seasons to complete. And you need to spend another Season Action to continue building during the second Season, so 2 actions total. A region can only have one Holding building at a time and can support one Holding per rank, and you can only use one action for building. So if you're building two things at a time, you have to choose what progresses that Season.
You can also conquer a Region owned by the enemy. First, you have to spy on them: your Spy Network can look at as many Regions as ranks it has. That tells you the Region's rank, improvements and the presence or absence of enemy vassals. You still have to burn an action to do this even if you find out about the region through a story. The following season, you spend an action to send your Personal Guard in. The region's Loyalty goes down a number of ranks equivalent to the Guard's rank. The region is useless when occupied, and once it hits zero it's yours with a new Loyalty equivalent to the Guard's rank. Of course the enemy can send in their own Guard to kick out yours: rank vs rank rolls, the winner stays, the loser leaves with one Rank less. You can only send one Personal Guard at any single region, but Secret Armies can do everything Guard can and they don't count as Guard for this. You can Create Art as a Season Action. First, gather one Resource appropriate to the Art (Food counts for banquets, and Wick chides us for thinking otherwise as the dumb McDonalds-eating Americans we are), with Luxury substituting if you can't come up with anything. Then, a Beauty risk, with wagers. You fail the risk, the muse has failed you. You make it, you make a Rank 1 Art. Any wagers go into the Art's Potential, which means we can spend one action per season to improve the Art's Rank up to its Potential. So if Dio makes a 2-wager Risk to build a sculpture of The World, he can spend the next two Seasons perfecting the statue until it's a Rank 3 Art. This also requires one extra Resource per Season. Finally, you can show off the Art at any social event, but you want to do it at a Party. When you show off the Art, you get Style equivalent to its rank + the Party's rank. You can bank Style on it too, up to its rank. The artist can give it a positive Aspect: any ven that looks upon the Art and spends one Style can acquire the Aspect, which has a rank equivalent to the Art's rank. This aspect has only an invoke that gives dice relevant to what the Art is meant to inspire: let's say The World is meant to inspire Ambition, then any ven inspired by it can roll 3 extra dice for risks involving climbing in station. The Aspect loses one rank per Season, and you can't be inspired by the same Art twice. Finally, the artist gets the Art's rank in bonus dice for any risk involving their fame or reputation. As before, one die is gone per Season. You can't upgrade Art, that's "Lucasism." Opera is a special Art, requiring both a Luxury and another Resource. It must be based on one or more of the Seven Fools we saw earlier, and ven watching the Opera can spend a Style to get a Free Aspect related to the Fool(s) in the Opera. Theater plays are... uh. No rules for them at all!  You can also explore the archipelagos of Shanri in order to expand your Domain. This requires that your starting Province be explored in full. Spend a season action to go down to one of your wild regions with a band of guards: this lets you determine what the wild region actually is. The exploring and developing of the region only finishes during the Harvest phase, though. Once your first ten regions are civilized, you can go outside! You can explore additional regions the same way, but they only count as a Province when you have another ten, with at least one of them a Castle. Building a Castle is done the same way as exploring a region, but it costs three Lumber and three Stone on top of the action. You can also explore forgotten sorcerer-king Ruins... but that comes later. PCs have to do their exploring themselves. You can make new Contacts. Just pick any ven you know (vassals don't count) and spend an action. You get one free action in a Contact's domain, you can spend a Style for two bonus dice to protect a Contact, and you can spend Style to refresh their Aspects. Personal training! You can use an action to learn an Advanced Maneuver for dueling (rather, the instructor spends an Action on you), or to add an Aspect to your Sheet. Unless Wisdom is your weakness! Remember the limits on Aspects at chargen? Dio is boned in this regard. You can also train your Vassals to upgrade their rank, spending as many actions as the vassal's new rank to do so. But you can only use one vassal training action per Season. You can quell Trouble in a region. Just spend an action and all the Trouble there is gone. You can develop a Region, which repeats the exploring regions rules for extra confusion. You can also increase a region's Rank in one per Season. Urban regions have special rules! Building a Village costs an additional 1 Lumber and 1 Stone, and improving its rank costs more Lumber and Stone. The Village cannot produce anything if it's being improved. If you improve a Village region up to 3 and spend three Lumber, three Stone and three Luxury, it becomes a City at Rank 4. There's a mention of a Town region in the Holdings list but it doesn't show here or anywhere else. Villages and Cities have Craftsmen that turn your Resources into stylish Goods. The Craftsman has a rank equal to the Village, and can make up to their Rank in Goods, so a Village 3 Craftsman can make three Rank 1 hats, one rank 1 hat and one rank 2 cloak, etc. Only one Craftsman per Village, but a City can have up to four of them - one rank 4, one rank 3, one rank 2, one rank 1. The exact Resource that is turned into Goods depends on the nature of the object being built. Guidelines? Industry for clothes, Metals for weapons, you figure it out.You can research Sorcery rituals, with one action and one Herbs. You can transport Resources from a Province to another Province or to another Domain. It costs one action to do so, and as a free action you can transfer one Resource or Goods to a Contact. You can hire a Vassal. They start service at rank 1, and you can improve them in turn. They need at least one Food per Year as payment, and they can be paid more in other Resources to keep them from getting bribed. Vassals also get fancy titles if you want - ven like pleasant sounding stuff. Master of Flowers instead of Master Poisoner, etc. quote:(I’m personally fond of “High Lord Protector” myself.) Cromwellian jerk! Anyway, there are regular Vassals, Vassal Bands (groups of men, ten per rank) and Master Vassals (actual NPCs). As a rule, Vassal Bands cannot be Assassinated and Master Vassals cannot be Bribed. Vassals have one Aspect per rank as well because we're not doing enough bookkeeping. Most Vassals get one Season Action per rank relevant to their role. You can even name other PCs as Vassals, but if they have prerequisites you must fulfill them all the same (so, Rank 3 Personal Guard before Al can name Dio his Swordsman).
Loyalty! It's how much your people care about you. The more Loyalty, the better. Your Domain (Province/individual Regions) has a starting Loyalty of 1. You can increase Loyalty by giving Luxuries (Spices or Wine) to either a single region, raising its Loyalty in three, or to an entire Province, raising it in one. If any region hits 5+ Loyalty, they produce one extra Resource that doesn't need to be the one they're already tasked to produce. If at least half the regions in one Province have 5+ Loyalty, the Province's Security increases in 1. If a region hits 10+ Loyalty, it produces two extra Resources, and if at least half the regions in one Province have 10+ Loyalty its Security increases in 2. Vassals also have a Loyalty score (but not NPC Vassals), which is equivalent to their Rank and can increase by gifting them Luxuries. Espionage! You need at least a Spy Network to get up on shinobi shenanigans. An espionage action has a rank, equivalent to the rank of the Spy Network + the Cunning of any PC or NPC helping the spies. To spy on an enemy Province, the action must defeat the Security of the target Province, which is equivalent to the Spy Network present there (or zero if there's no Spy Network opposing espionage.) Spy Networks can also use an action to add their rank to a Province's Security. Spies can:
And at the end of the Year, characters Age. Roll 1d6 at the end of the Year. These are your Age Points. Once you get 60 of them, you progress to the next Phase of your life. When you do, erase all Age points. As mentioned during the Blood and Honor review, this may mean ending up with some highly wonky ages for your characters (codgers over 200 years old, or 69-year old Spring children) If you hit 60 Age Points at the Winter of your life, you enter Solace. There are also pregnancy rules because who doesn't love making random rolls when two ven bump uglies but the most side of this is that ven pregnancies last one Season and children mature at double the age of human children, so an eight-year old ven sprout is basically 16 years old. Maybe it's the literature cheating to get more characters on stage sooner, or maybe the sorcerer-kings wanted their servitors to grow up that fast. A 16 years old ven becomes a Rank 1 Child Vassal, equivalent to a Spouse. They can train just like other Vassals and eventually become NPCs. If you move to another Phase at the end of the year, you can change around your name, gain new Aspects, a new contact, or turn the contact into a Friend. A Friend gets three bonus dice to put you or your relationship into danger, but you and your friend get to keep all wagers in a contested roll (remember, even helping each other is a contested roll in HOTB) All your Provinces lose 1d3 Loyalty at the end of the Year, and all unused Resources not moved into storage spoil. Winter is also when you throw Parties! 
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Oct 30, 2013 23:58
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MonsieurChoc posted:Part 3  gently caress everything.AccidentalHipster posted:So I'm guessing Dio is the most boned due to the stupid Wisdom cap on Aspects. Speaking of Dio, I didn't see him "kick the puppy factory" like you said he would. It was a long post! And he made a Za Warudo sculpture, what do you want from me? Also, the exact reason why Dio is boned is in the next chapter. It's the Wickest loving thing.
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Oct 31, 2013 04:33
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Well no, not necessarily. The book explicitly discusses playing in "Diplomacy mode" where the game is VampLARPlike PVP. It's a useless rule for NPCs since it can be replaced with "make extra poo poo up to make the antagonist more challenging." But yeah, this seems to be a wacky design goal given the cooperative play language elsewhere, and not so much guidance along the lines of "use this for PVP play." The "you'll figure it out" bit is kind of irritating here, because if you don't play MET you probably have no idea what the hell this is for, and if you do play it, and know the section of Laws of the Night where they describe exactly the same rule and why you might use it, it's not an emergent discovery at all--it's kind of a "big ups to my LARPers!" in-joke thing. Blood and Honor also has a "we'll be utter dicks to each other, we won't be crybabies when we lose, etc." Cutthroat Mode, but that game still doesn't have the lying rule. Even Wick figured out it was not a good idea, shoutout to MET rules or not. Anyway! Houses of the Blooded At least Elric could handle himself in a mass brawl The Sorcery chapter! Yadda yadda, highly illegal, ven are still butt deep into magicks, the Serpent pushed to make it illegal to make themselves stronger, you know this already. Sorcery works with Rituals. To make one work, you just need knowledge of the ritual, sacred herbs and enough blood. In game terms, you take one Injury and spend 1 Herbs to use a ritual. To learn one, you spend one season action and 1 Herbs.
The popular senvu Swordsman ritual that binds sword and user as one? Nowhere in sight. Anyway, Artifacts! The doodads the sorcerer-kings left, they're powerful! And nasty! So nasty that most of them are traps. These are not your dad's magic items. This isn't Jack Vance or Harry Potter. These are Artifacts of doom! No, seriously, in literature carrying an Artifact is sign of certain doom. I hope you see where I'm going with this. First, you must raid sorcerer-king Ruins. Like the Tomb of Spooky that is conveniently in Al's Domain. Part of these rules is actually in the Seasons chapter but I chose to bring them up here, since Ruins matter more for magic purposes. Ven may explore a Ruin once per season with an action, giving it one rank per expedition. When it hits Rank 3, it's empty of any possible goodies and it can be replaced by a normal region, or it can be turned into a Puzzle House: essentially, a Ruin turned to ven habitation. They can hold any size of Party, even Rank 5 Parties (!) but they're difficult to navigate. Ven that enter a Puzzle House roll their Wisdom against the House's 6 dice. The ven uses their wagers to find their way around the House, while it uses its wagers to force the ven to get lost. While exploring a Ruin, the ven grab whatever looks shiny and/or powerful to bring back home. Most will be rubbish, but every now and then they find something good. Each Season, the Ruin produces Artifact Points equivalent to its rank. Going with a ven party into an adventure to explore a Ruin (dungeon crawl, woo!) doubles the Artifact Points. Players divvy up the points as they deem fit. While exploring the Ruin, spend a Style to "find" an object. Then, you can research it. Wisdom risk with wagers, with success indicating the Artifact has a Potential of 1 + wagers made. Then you may spend Artifact Points to give Values (special powers) to the Artifact, up to its potential. This is a one-time offer: once you've spent Artifact Points, the Artifact is set for good. So let's say Al raids the Tomb of Spooky-- nah, the Tomb of REAL Spooky, a Rank 2 Ruin. Because he's not an idiot, he sends in a bunch of disposable peasants first. Cunning! Al finds himself a weirdly shaped wand and brings it back home. Because he went in alone, he gets 2 Artifact Points as loot. He rolls a Wisdom risk and the GM decides to let him use one of his nerd Aspects for three bonus dice. He makes his roll with 4 wagers, so the wand has 5 Potential. Alas, he only has two points to spend. Looking over the Value list, he decides the wand is a Key to further sorcerer-king secrets, and it is a Leech, allowing him to steal Style from other ven. Cool!Except that it's not cool, because Al is now Doomed. If a ven owns an Artifact, the GM can at any time after they make a roll declare DOOM! by pointing and screaming at the player. The roll is considered to be 9, no matter what they rolled. Just short of the TN of 10. The Doom may only be invoked once per Phase, but still: the GM can, whenever they feel like it, declare the character to be hosed beyond help. And Blood Swords count as Artifacts. Hell, let's see what Wick has to say about it! quote:A skillful Narrator will wait for the right time to hit you with your DOOM! He’ll cultivate a villain for months. Picking away at your ambitions, your desires. He’ll screw with you and screw with you and screw with you until you can’t take it anymore and then you’ll challenge him to a duel. With your cool Blood Sword. Because you’ll want every advantage you can get. And then, you’ll know why having a slew of Artifact is a bad idea. I'll give it 4 of 5, Alex.And that is why Dio Brando is hosed. Not because he's a gigantic bastard, not because he's stepping on someone else's toes, but because he got a piece of gear that the fluff says every single duelist worth a drat in Shanri owns. Because he tried to measure up to the game's power level, the GM is specifically encouraged to gently caress him over. By the way, it's the GM that calls for DOOM. Not the players. Of course they would not be able to call Doom on the NPC duelists with their Blood Swords. That would be bad form.  Here's the Values list. I don't feel like writing more for tonight.
Next: Populous?
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Oct 31, 2013 07:09
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scissorman posted:Expect in those stories cursed artefacts are rare; here it sounds like DOOM is an everyday event. Admittedly, the Phase limitation is pretty big, since if you survive a Doom's triggering you're scotfree for years of game time (unless Wick actually meant Seasons instead of age Phases, which with the book's wonky editing might very well be a possibility). But the Doom not only steals privilege from you, it also ruins whatever wagers you could've made, which feels especially lovely when players are supposed to get a say in world building through the rolls they make. Wick's intention is pretty drat clear: the GM must build a situation in that everything hinges on one roll for an Artifact user - whether they're bearing the Skull of Ven-cna or the setting equivalent of a +1 sword in terms of availability -, then screw the roll. That shouldn't get a pass. The book does tell you Blood Swords are DOOMED - in a small sidebar you could easily miss, since the swords don't really have that many rules. To make things worse, there's another sidebar hidden in the Seasons chapter that mentions how regular swordmakers can make quality regular swords that also grant bonus dice. Which actually seems like a trap option, on second consideration: a blood sword can easily cut through a regular iron sword. Alien Rope Burn posted:As mentioned by others, the problem is that blood swords are, well, uncommon if not common. It's the kind of thing that should have more of a profound effect on the society than it does, akin to the Yogo Curse from Legend of the Five Rings. In theory, somebody walking around with a blood sword should be under a stigma, because, well, they've got doom on their hip. Of course, when he first gave us bloodswords in Legend of the Five Rings, there were only four, so they made some sense... not that he didn't like to throw in others, like Togashi Nyoko's Five Swords of Legend, which have some pretty severe drawbacks despite being crafted by one of the best smiths in history. Yeah, that's the thing. Blood swords here are not unique foozles, they're a constant reminder to ven society that sorcery powered by their own blood is a thing and they better not bring it up if they don't want to get skewered. (My own reactionary fantasy setting idea is wuxia heroes kicking the poo poo out of the ven. Swords, meh, I've got FISTS )
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Oct 31, 2013 16:26
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Houses of the Blooded Special Spooky Saint Soliloquy So, Suaven! As we know, when ven start going into Solace they emanate a white substance called altrua. Eventually, the ven is entirely wrapped up in altrua, sleeping and dreaming.  These ven are known as Suaven. The ven revere their Suaven as saints and ancestor spirits. They pray to them at shrines, collect artifacts (but not Artifacts ) from their lives, and maintain their bodies. The altrua shroud protects the Suaven, but they're not invulnerable. In fact, they're highly susceptible to fire, and many Suaven have been lost like this. Not all Suaven are held to the same regard: some are only cared for by their immediate family, while others have temples in every city and are revered by everyone. It's not rare for ven to find a special relationship with a Suaven not of their own House. Many ven join mystery cults devoted to the Suaven, with priests, temples, ceremonies and rituals revealed only to the most faithful. Then there's the fashuva, the fell Suaven, the ones so terrible Wick can't bear to talk of them anymore!  Ven pray, but they do it... quote:With Style. That's... uh, I don't think that's humility, Mr. Wick. Anyway, rules-wise every character has a Devotion rating for the Suaven they worship. Each Suaven has Blessings to give to the faithful, but the ven must prove themselves by joining the mystery cults and not just being conveniently faithful when the need comes. A character can only start with a Devotion of 3 for any particular Suaven, the maximum Devotion for a single Suaven is 5, and no character can have more than five ranks of Devotion total between the Suaven they worship. Wick says the Suaven should be the only element of Shanri out of the player's hands, and as such Suaven cannot be defined or modified by risk wagers or Style points. The ranks of Devotion are:
Gaining Devotion for a Suaven requires a Season Action. Going from zero Devotion to Devotion 1 is, uh... it doesn't say! From Devotion 1 to 2, it requires sacrificing one resource. Roll a die: odds you get nothing, evens the Suaven finds the sacrifice pleasing and your Devotion rises. Additional sacrifices give you extra dice for this rolls, and if even one rolls evens the Suaven is pleased. Luxuries provide two dice. Devotion 2 to 3 works the same, but you must sacrifice at least two Resources. Devotion 3 to 4 requires sacrificing at least three Resources, as well as going into an adventure given by the Suaven's devoted, like building a Shrine for the Suaven, writing an Opera about it, or some other act of faith. Gettting to Devotion 5 is essentially GM fiat, but at the very least it requires an adventure. But don't you just get one Devotion point for every Temple you build? Hmm. The Greater Suaven are those available at chargen. One for every House. Ashalim Avendi, Blooded of the Falcon. Master of the Road, Falcon's Friend, the Beggar Brigand. Avendi appears most often as a blind beggar that teaches miserly ven not to mock the unfortunate. In life, he was one of the first roadmen, and once he was made Baron he married a Blooded of the Serpent lady. The marriage was arranged for by her father - a Duke of ill, sorcerous repute - to clear his name using the young hero's reputation. Eventually, Avendi put an arrow through the sorcerer Duke's heart, and declared himself Grand Duke of the Falcon with his lands. As the Suaven of the Road, he now rests in the Western Reaches, his Shrine guarded by roadmen along with his bow. It's said that no ven can string it. Avendi blesses only those who realize fortunes are easily lost and assist those who have lost their luck. Holy poo poo, he's a non-dick ven! His devotees literally help old ladies cross the street! And he made it to saint!  Falvren Dyr, Blooded of the Wolf. Swordsman, Old One-Eye, The Crimson Cloak. Dyr is the Suaven of , appearing as a large man with flowing red hair, with armor, blade and shield, and a body seemingly made of scars. Dyr despises those who petition him with prayer, and his followers embrace a life of self-reliance. He never assists those who ask for it, only protecting those who show courage and prowess in battle. A Suaven that doesn't like being relied on, worshiped by those who don't like relying on others. "Prayers" to Dyr sound more like curses or boasts than anything.Manna Renay, Blooded of the Bear. Holy Mother, Protector, the Green Lady. She personifies Hospitality, and as such there are temples dedicated to her in every city. The Bears recognize her as their first great matriarch, and the House's entire structure is based on her own family. Her famous book, House and Home, sets proper methods for cooking, cleaning, and the rules of hospitality. Her blessings are for those who respect the concepts of manners and hospitality. Architects and stoneworkers also call upon her wisdom. Children are most often witnesses to her interventions as she looks out for them, especially orphans.  Talten Steele, Blooded of the Elk. The Iron Heart, Winter's Promise, The Ruthless. He was the first ven to fly the banner of the Elk in the Senate. He was imposing physically and mentally, a Duke at the age of nineteen and Archduke by the age of twenty five. But then he lost his heart to a woman, who slowly destroyed everything he had built until she had her Revenge, with Steele falling to his knees and begging her not to leave. He recovered, mind you, and then executed the mother of all Revenges. His blessings are based around his life, bending the wills of others to accomplish his goals. A ven's ven. Maybe we should've made Dio worship this guy. Talia Yvarai, Blooded of the Fox. The Celestial Muse, Sacred Harlot, Keeper of Roses. She has exotic temples and her cult only admits priestesses, skilled in all the arts, love included. All artists revere Talia as the muse of muses. In return for their Devotion, followers of Talia learn secret arts no other school or academy knows, including ~*magic kisses*~. Seriously. Tyane Bran, Blooded of the Serpent. Keeper of Secrets, The Blind One, Whisperer. Also called The Patient One, or The Indefatigable. In his tales, even the smallest of actions have monumental significance. He only acts when it's most appropriate and most effective. His devotees follow his example, acting only when necessary, and despising the "corrupt world of temptation." True devotees become ascetics, casting away everything that distracts from pure thought, reason and truth. His blessings come as bursts of enlightenment or insight. Blessings! There are nine Blessings per House. Each of the Greater Suaven grants five of them, the others are so that the GM and players can make up Suaven of their own. Characters pick up to their Devotion rank in Blessings from the Suaven to use, but as an optional rule it's the Suaven who decides which Blessing they will provide when the ven calls upon them. All Blessings require at least one Style to use, and they may only be used once per Story. Blessings with lasting durations last until dawn of the next day by default. Bear
Elk
Falcon
Fox
Serpent
Wolf
You can also become a Suaven! If you actually manage to survive all the way to Solace, you become a Suaven. You must choose your portfolio, then you start as a Rank 1 Suaven, and get to pick one Blessing from your House to deliver unto your faithful. You get more Blessings as you grow in rank. The Suaven are ranked as:
And then there's the forbidden fell ones we will certainly never talk about, no sir. PC Suaven start at Rank 1, Family. To become a Lesser Suaven, they must have Shrines built to their memory by five different nobles in five different Domains. When five Shrines to your memory have been built in ten different Domains, you become a Minor Suaven. You become a Greater Suaven once you have one Temple to your memory built in ten different Domains. Temples require ten Shrines in a Domain to be built (aha! But this wasn't on the Seasons chapter. ) Finally, to become a Grand Suaven you require... one Temple to your memory built in ten different Domains. Editing! You get Suaven Points to execute your Blessings. Shrines give you one Suaven Point per season, Temples give you five. Each Blessing you bestow on your faithful costs you one Suaven Point. Finally, you may turn your Wrath on those who offend you for three Suaven Points. The unworthy get an Aspect relevant to your portfolio (like, if you're the Suaven of boogie, they get an Aspect that makes them suck at boogie) with a tag that grants bonus dice equal to half your Suaven rank rounded up, and an appropriate compel. Your Wrath lasts one season or until you feel the ven has made amends. I don't know what to make of these rules, really. They certainly bring the PC's power level up (and some Blessings are almost game-breaking, I'd say - The Heart's Riddle Revealed, holy poo poo) and it's nice to see that not all ven are doomed highborn manchildren, but still they feel kind of... off? Like some Blessings are almost straight up Sorcery. And seriously, how the gently caress does dual wielding require literal divine favor? And I'm really not sure where you would get to use the PCs as Suaven rules, though an interesting campaign would be the PCs trying to get their family Suaven to rise on the pantheon by hook or by crook.  An extra fortified dose of to make up for this post.Next: This chapter is for you, the player. Traveller fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 06:42
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I dig you idea for The Nanny! Training minispies all over the cosmos. And your point about the two faces of John Wick is incredibly spot on, as I will comment on later. But first! Houses Of The Blooded I need to spend Style to do what? The next chapter is for the Players. This contains Wick's advice on how to play HOTB and get the most out of the system. But it's also about troubleshooting and keeping the game together! In his experience, 90% of the problems players have are because the group is not communicating effectively. So far, so good. Most RPGs, he says, are designed "with cheaters, wankers and munchkins in mind." But not HOTB! Wick trusts the players. In fact, he trusts them so much he's given them all sorts of storytelling power in the game. It's not just the GM's role to make sure everyone's having fun: it's everyone's role. But if you're going to ruin everyone else's fun, go find yourself another game. That's good! Then he goes into a tangent about Diplomacy, and how he loves Diplomacy, but that game is capital-C Cursed because you must do everything to win and as such he doesn't play it with friends. Games like Vampire, L5R and HOTB also have this Curse. So be warned! You may not be comfortable with that, or have the Courage to play! Gamers are obsessed with details. But that's okay, wagers make the details! So Wick doesn't feel bad about leaving holes in ven Law to exploit because... quote:See, I don’t believe “good game design” is about fixing holes. So if the Law is vague or ven economy just plain doesn't work, that's okay! It's not like our culture has clean cut answers. Also something something never watch Rome with historical reenactors. But yes, Wick has  made stuff up about the ven, but you won't know the difference anyway unless you're a ven scholar. The point is, there is no ven canon, and as such you should feel perfectly comfortable with adding details to the setting. Is it a small yes/no thing? Spend a Style, decide. But don't make rolls for everything to bank wagers into Style, that's bad form. Also, you can Spend style to correct errors of yours that your ven character would never commit. "Of course I meant..." Also:quote:The ven are portrayed as brilliant, scheming masterminds. Of course, not all of us fit that bill. To simulate the games of 11-dimensional chess ven play, there is The Kibitzing Rule. When you're in a sticky situation, other players can give you suggestions about how to proceed. They just have to spend Style to do it. Also, you should be used to the idea that, since everyone has a measure of narrative control, then other people's ideas about your character can be equally as valid as yours. But it's a good idea to get together and talk with the group about how comfortable you feel about other people messing with your PC like that. Still, give it a shot! Wick also struggled because it seems that in every game he runs he has a moment where some twist he makes makes everyone stand and clap and call to give him Void Points/Drama Dice/whatever. Only, well, those are pretty drat useless for a GM. So Wick had to come up with a mechanic that encouraged players to reward the GM. Wick does not want you to forget about his PCs. He wants you to hate some so bad you will do whatever it takes to kill them. Or protect them. He works hard to make his NPCs as real (or even more!) than the PCs. As such, NPCs can also receive Style points from the players, and they can use them the same way PCs do. The Narrator chapter has more rules on this but the point is, players can give Style if they like NPCs or feel the GM is doing a great job. Then he talks about friendly and cutthroat games. I brought this up during the Blood and Honor already so, in short: Friendly games are those where everything is over board, no secret notes. Players set betrayals for each other and willingly walk into them because hey, we're all friends here and we like grand tragic drama. Cutthroat games, on the other hand, are, well, cutthroat. Everyone's out to win and to drive everyone else into the ground. But Wick actually doesn't like to play like that! He cares too much about his characters to do so. If you play Cutthroat, then you should have as much attachment to your character as your average roguelike guy. There's some "min-max" advice for Cutthroat games: get vassals, specialize, get married, build-expand-build-expand, and have an escape plan. This all comes from the famous ven book on politics, philosophy and strategy, The following advice is for non-cutthroat games. Make sure your character's hooks are for everyone to see. Your rich internal narrative does nothing for the game if others can't interact with it. So write no more than one page of background, and leave yourself open to build your character through play. Don't play the game "safe", ven are ~*tragic*~ and have weaknesses and your character is not going to die well. Don't make Mary Sues! No one likes them! Ever! Insert Wick's Vietnam con flashbacks here. No secret notes and no secret meetings: everyone is a grown up here. Share your plots: you've got a hated uncle? I have a favorite uncle, maybe they're the same guy! Use wagers and style points to trigger other character's plots. Someone's interrogating a character's shy, easily frightened maid and used a Blessing or something to force them to tell the truth? Bam, spend Style and make the maid change demeanor and answer she's a House assassin spying on her lady. As long as your wagers are leaving openings for others to work with and moving the plot forward, you're Doin' Fine. Spend style for flashbacks or whatever else is cool, just have fun! And don't make John Wick look like a jerk. That's Bad Form. There's some advice on playing the game troupe-style, like Ars Magica: everyone makes ven nobles, then everyone makes vassals for those nobles. Every season, they play one ven and their servants. There's some stuff on how some ven scholar defined ven literature as either dramatic, operatic or epic, but it's not too interesting. What is interesting is The Dragon: for ven, dragons are not firebreathing beasts, but those moments in time where everything seems to stop. When characters and players stand with jaw open. Pay a Style, declare you've "seen the dragon" and change an Aspect to reflect the moment. Moments are poo poo like seeing your best friend cut down by arrows, seeing your lover leave on the deck of the ship, that sort of thing. To finish this chapter: John Wick trusts you. No, seriously, he does. Do you want to have a friendly game with him? Next: Being John Wick.
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Nov 3, 2013 05:41
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Kurieg posted:Do style points turn into XP at the end of a session like similar points do in other games? HOTB doesn't really use XP, characters advance through training during season actions and getting older. What mystifies me is that you have to use an in-game resource to suggest a course of action for someone else (who, incidentally, isn't compelled to listen to you or anything - if they don't do what you're suggesting, the Style is gone), to the point that there's a specific Aspect with a pretty big drawback that says "no, you don't need to spend Style to do this."
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Nov 3, 2013 07:27
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Houses Of The Blooded The end run, and some thoughts The final part of this book is the Narrator chapter, about as long as the crunch-heavy Seasons section. Wick opens by warning players to stay away: quote:And trust me, learning how a trick works is a lot less sexy than watching the trick as a sucker sitting in the audience. The GM's job is to make players believe that the ven existed, so he (the Narrator is always a he in this book) is kind of a magician. The ven actually had a name for this, altrua, pathos. Which, for some reason, is the same name as that ectoplasm-like substance that cocoons Suaven. Coincidence? Oblique reference? Lack of an editor? You be the judge! So yeah, don't read this chapter if you're a player, but read it if you're the GM. It has all sorts of tricks, including one for that one player that will read through this section anyway. First Wick opens with some basic advice, basic in the sense that you could apply it to any game. The "Big Secret" is that players will make up the plot if you let them, and part of the design of HOTB was precisely to let them do that. So pay attention to the group, ask them what you think is going on, and so on. Communication! Let the players use Wisdom risks and define Shanri: this is why the game has no map of it. Even though gamers love maps. He also plugs his original Play Dirty column from SJG's Pyramid magazine. quote:Play Dirty was, all at once, one of the most popular and least popular columns in the mag. People hated it and loved it. I figured that meant I was doing my job. He insists on the idea of letting the players run the game for you, and shows off his Three True Things technique: Wick tells the player three true things about an NPC/location/whatever, then lets the player fill up the details so that Wick can run along with it. He knows the concept of blurring the line between Player and Narrator is alien to most gamers, but nuke it all the same! And remember that now you have to adapt and not be stiff with the plot. He talks about mood and atmosphere, which should be old hat to anyone familiar with the original L5R corebook: show, don't tell, use props, move around, act out the actions of NPCs, and so on. Then he talks about the one time players completely blindsided him. The players were at the capital between Senate sessions when one "remembers" that there are catacombs under the Temple of Talia and wants to check them out. Wick is nice and lets the player have a Wisdom risk. He does it, comes up with a few details, and before Wick can react the party is armed, bearing torches and kicking down a secret entrance. So Wick does what everyone does, panics, and goes into the bathroom to figure out what to do. quote:The blowhard who wanted to come down here was the Serpent. He wanted to find lost scrolls, rituals, knowledge. He used that drat charisma of his to convince the other players this was a great idea. Okay. This is his fault. I’ll punish him. But I’ll also give him what he wants. So what does he do? Obviously he turns into The Wick and springs the Tomb of Horrors on the players, right? Or he has Serpent ninjas waiting to kill the entire party, or Shara Yvarai shows up at the end and cuts off all their pinkies, right? Well, actually, he doesn't. He considers the character's strengths and weaknesses and sets up encounters that engage them all. The comedy relief guy with the Courage weakness ends up with a literal silver eye as he's split from the party while fleeing the catacomb orks. The two characters with an one-sided love between them end up with a chance to save each other from harm. The two fighty guys get a puzzle fight holding off orks at a bridge LOTR-style while some of their fellows try to pepper them with arrows. The Serpent spots an ork executing a blood ritual (!). Everyone has fun, not bad for a five minute bathroom break. Wick then talks about Style. He brings up 7th Sea Drama Dice and, yes, in his games he gave them out like candy, a dozen or so per session. Style should also be given out like candy, at least ten points per session if not more. Let the players talk, let them make up the world, let them get themselves into trouble. Give them Style! quote:This game was designed with the noble class in mind. Playing a kind of character you really can’t play in that other fantasy roleplaying game that shall remain nameless but who’s initials are “D” and “D.” I don't know what Wick's beef with Drakar och Demoner is but anyway, he mentions some suggestions if you want to play a non-noble HOTB game. The Midnight Game is essentially Rosencrantz and Guildensten Are Dead: The RPG, with players taking on the role of their own maids and valets. It's meant as a fun distraction between noble ssessions, with the maids and valets getting into all sorts of backstage shenanigans. If players are particularly good, let them elevate their vassals to NPC status. And then there's the Roadman game, which is all about playing kickass ven knights, solving troubles and stabbing orks. A variant of this is the Ytavia game: ytavia are "the lady's roadmen", and this type of game is all about being the guardian of your lord's wife and all the ~*drama*~ that comes with it. There is some advice on what to do with the Style given to players to NPCs they like/hate/like to hate, which was already covered in the Players chapter. And then there is the sample adventure, Roses & Thorns. The signature character of the game, Shara Yvarai, is the centerpiece of the action. But don't worry: again, she's no Kachiko coming here to steal away the spotlight and get away with it willy nilly. This is the adventure Wick uses for demoing HOTB at conventions. Anyway, Shara is basically a hothead Fox, beautiful and deadly with a sword, but a little too ready to hurt people and lacking the Wisdom to fully realize the consequences of her actions. The PC's Count/Countess wants her to sign a Contract of servitude, and they get the mission to go to one of Shara's parties at her puzzle house to convince her. The thing is, other than Shara's sheet, descriptions of the other NPCs they may find, a very rough story outline and the Puzzle House's stats, that's the entire adventure. The real trick is that all players, before starting, roll a Wisdom risk. Then, they use their wagers to define the circumstances of the story about to play out. Wick says that he's ended up with wildly different scenarios out of this: one group decided that their Countess was blind and that Shara was the one to blind her, so they couldn't decide on whether they should win her favor or kill her in revenge. Another group defined their Countess as a sorceress of terrible reputation that wanted Shara under her yoke or dead. And yet another group had their Count in a very complicated family tree involving Shara and the PCs, and he was in love with the young baroness and wanted to marry her. On one hand, this is seriously loving cool: the same basic idea, very different outcomes, and the players are invested from the get go. But tying it to the risk mechanic means that one player will inevitably get to define more of the adventure than the others, and woe betide anyone with Wisdom as a weakness (Wick suggests giving those players a free wager if he's feeling merciful, but mercy is for the weak )So on to the various doomed highborn manchildren at this party! There is Shara, of course, armed with a new sword at her hip, very bold and flirts with everyone, but she's really careful about it. Her main goal at the party is making Contacts so that she can protect her father's lands. The appearance of Valin Burghe disturbs her. Also.
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Nov 4, 2013 05:04
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Ork is fat, can be tagged when the ork's size proves a disadvantage and compelled to prevent the ork from running/climbing/etc.
Roll the ork's rank + ten loving dice of Fire against the ven's Strength and whatever dice they can come up with to shelter themselves from the fire. Ork must spend one Style for each additional character it wants to affect.
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Wraith is and but this book takes it to another level. drat.
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Nov 6, 2013 21:33
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Plague of Hats posted:Hey so I made a site to put F&F reviews on both in case of thread archiving, to make them a bit easier to read (site formatting aside) and to allow them to be read despite the paywall. It is currently sparse, but I can copy-paste with the best of them. I am interested in getting permission from reviewers, though I can also abandon all my heroic work in the face of stern disapproval. Suggestions and pointers on how to make things look better or more readable are also a plus. Sure thing, you can copy my stuff. I hope you can keep up with the archiving! Also, would people be interested in a FnF of: Burning Empires (in the grim darkness of the far future, there are only bodysnatching worms and food logistics), Bellfahle Magic Academy (jRPG, looks cute) or Almogavers (Catalan , no seriously this thing is in loving Catalan)?
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Nov 8, 2013 01:54
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Almogavers it is! Almogavers Desperta ferro!  dig the sword hilt "e" Almogavers is a 1995 "epic medieval" roleplaying game by Enric Grau and published by Joc Internacional. If you're familiar with Spanish games, you might notice the name of Ricard Ibáñez in the credits page: Ibáñez is the creator of Aquelarre, the seminal Spanish role playing game. Almogavers in freaking Catalan, which is close enough to Spanish that I can make it out with a dictionary and Wikipedia at hand. So what's it about? Back cover posted:"It is the year 1303. Our army heads to central Anatolia to face the Turks. The march is hard, but we believe in victory and our leaders. Such is our life, battle after battle, village after village, never stopping anywhere. We are... Almogàvers." The Almogavers were a type of mercenary shock trooper that served the Crown of Aragon and other kingdoms during the Middle Ages. The game focuses on the Catalan Company, a mercenary company that fought for the Byzantine Empire and others during the 14th Century. The book begins with a small introduction to role playing games (as all good games do), what PCs and NPCs and GMs and those funky dice are, and then drops us straight into the historical background of the game. Have a seat, it's going to take a while. It starts in Sicily. After the death of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the Papacy (a rival of Frederick's) grants right of conquest over Sicily, until then Germanic territory, to Charles of Anjou. By the year 1266, the island is in the French sphere of influence, and thus allied with the Papal State. The new King of Sicily is not well received by the Sicilians, though. All public posts are given to Frenchmen and the provincial capital is moved to Naples. In 1282, a revolt against the French takes place, the Sicilian Vespers, and Sicilian nobles offer the crown to Peter III of Aragon, who was married to Constance of Sicily and thus had a claim to Sicily. Peter invades the island, takes over as King, and from then on a long conflict between Sicilians/Catalans and French/Papacy forces takes place. Peter dies in 1285 and leaves the Catalan-Aragonese crown to his eldest son, Alphonse, and the Sicilian crown to his second son James. But Alphonse dies an early death, forcing James to take over in Aragon and leave Peter's third son, Frederick, as regent in Sicily. With the international situation taking dire turns, James sees as the only way out to give up any claim to Sicily, but the people don't accept it and proclaim Frederick as their king. James can either accept the terms of the treaty he signed and help the French capture Sicily or support his own brother, and after reconsideration (which included the Pope trying to bribe him with sovereignty over Sardinia and Corsica) he leaves Sicily to its own devices. The Almogavers brought by Aragon to Sicily fight for Frederick against the French and the Pope, and it is here that one captain starts making a name for himself, former Templar Roger de Flor. By the year 1300, the fight is going well for Frederick, but general attrition and exhaustion makes all parties sue for peace at Caltabellotta. The Almogavers are suddenly out of a job, and led by Roger de Flor they leave Sicily for the Byzantine Empire: this is the beginning of the Catalan Company. The following period is divided in three stages:
The tl;dr of it: the Wiki, unsourced but I buy it posted:In the regions of Attica and Boeotia, a popular saying included: may the revenge of the Catalans fall on you. In Bulgaria, the expressions "Catalan" and "Son of Catalan" mean "wicked man, soulless, torturer". This negative connotation reached beyond the boundaries of folklore to influence poets such as Ivan M. Vazov in the poem Pirates, first published in 1915. Vazov includes the Catalans with the Turks as the greatest oppressors of the Bulgarian nation. In the region of Parnassus, the following saying is popularised: "I will flee from the Turks to fall into the hands of the Catalans". Next: on a roll of 96+, you're Jewish. Traveller fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 01:22
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The following Battle of the Cephissus sees the end of French presence in Greece. With the Duchy under their control, the Company writes to Frederick of Sicily to make one of his sons claim it; Manfred of Sicily is chosen.
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Almogavers But no ratcatchers, goddamn It's on to character creation! We get a description of the character sheet, which is nice, then we are told how characters are defined by their stats and attributes. The stats are further divided in passive, active, physical and mental, with a total of six stats: Constitution (passive physical), Willpower (passive mental), Agility (active physical), Dexterity (active physical), Memory (active mental) and Perception (active mental). To generate these stats, roll 3d6, rerolling any dice that roll 1, and add the dice for a range of 6-18. The player chooses which stat gets the roll, but once a stat has a value fixed to it the player can't use another roll for it - except for the very last extra roll done after all the stats are rolled, which can be used to replace any stat at the player's choice. Attributes are also rolled in a similar way, but they use a different five-rank scale: Very Low, Low, Normal, High and Very High. There's a table for reference. The attributes are Strength, Size, Appearance and Charisma. Around 40% of people have Normal attributes, 20% are Low or High and 10% are Very Low or Very High. Then the player notes down the character's initiative modifier, which is influenced by Agility, encumbrance and the armor they are wearing. As well, they note the character's damage modifier which is provided by the Strength attribute, and their damage capacity (hit points) that depends on their Size and Constitution. Damage capacity comes in three types: A (capacity/2 +2), B (capacity) and C (capacity*1.5) An average character has a damage capacity of 12 and a damage mod of 2d6, but I can't tell how bad (or good ) this is until I get to the combat chapter. The character's height and weight are given by their Size and damage capacity, with a little wiggle room for players to adjust - a Normal Size man is 1.65 m, for instance, and can raise or lower that in 10 cm. Characters also have Prestige, which begins at 0 and represents what others think of them. A high Prestige is necessary for certain positions, like army commander!  Bon cop de falç, bitch. Now it gets interesting. First, the player can roll for (or straight up choose) the character's Origin. The options are:
The next step is finding out their Social Class. These can be chosen by the player from Soldier, Burgher or Peasant, or rolled on the table. Only one roll and the result stands, but the player can potentially roll into the nobility! The social classes are:
 Swole and stabby. The table restricts some classes depending on the character's Origin: for instance, Jewish characters cannot be nobles because, well, they're Jewish. As Greece is the focal point of the setting, only Catalan, Greek and Jewish characters can be Peasants, as verisimilitude is broken otherwise (how would peasants from other lands even get there? Nevermind that most line Almogavers were Catalan peasants and got there by ship...). Turkish and Arab nobles are also not a possibility as most people of those nationalities in Greece are traders or soldiers. Sure, whatever. Then, the character chooses their Profession. No roll here, just pick up whatever, but the character's social class and origin restricts some choices.
 gyahahahaha look at his face Now it's time for Skills, Knowledges and Combat Techniques! Skills are physical abilities, relying on Dexterity and Agility; Knowledges are the things the character knows, and they are influenced by Memory and Perception; and Combat Techniques, which are defined in the Combat chapter (still relying on Dexterity and Agility, mind you). Abilities are rated in six Experience Levels: Ignorant, Neophyte, Apprentice, Initiate, Master and Grand Master. To buy them, the character needs Experience Points, which are at first dictated by their starting age. The game says that the older the character is the more XP they get, but they also begin losing stat points! We'll only bother with the XP for now, and we are recommended to use 27 years (180 points) as a baseline. Characters also get a number of free abilities based on their Profession, which also restricts buying some of them - try justifying why your Laborer knows Alchemy, for instance. No, seriously, try it, maybe the GM will let you do it. Or not! Characters also get starting languages depending on their origin: their native language starts at Initiate level and everyone gets Catalan at Apprentice level (Catalan characters get Greek instead), so everyone can talk with each other. The exact cost of raising a skill, knowledge or technique varies depending on its ruling stat, and it bears noting that there are sublevels as well starting from Neophyte, so a character needs to go through Neophyte-, Neophyte and Neophyte+ before they can become Apprentices. Spare XP can be banked for later use. Stats also limit the maximum level of an ability, with a minimum of 16 in a stat to reach Grand Master+. We also get rules for getting old at this point. For every year over 35 the character has, make a Constitution roll with a difficulty of (Age-35)/5, round down. Failing this roll means losing one physical stat point, player's choice, and a disastrous failure means losing two points. Beyond 50 years old, the player may choose mental stats. Attributes may also be reduced, but they only ever go down one level. Then it's on to money, gear and possessions! Whew, this has taken a while. For simplicity reasons, the game uses silver and gold coins: one gold = 20 silver. Characters roll 3d6 and reference a table: of course, nobles get more munneh, peasants get zilch. Possessions are determined next. Characters get a number of points to buy possessions that are determined by their social class (again, nobles get more) and they can then buy anything from weapons and armor to land and castles, if their class permits. Some assets they can buy come with an upkeep cost, while others actually make money for their owner. Characters must pay 1% of the total value of their lands and stuff in taxes at the end of the year, or lose 10% of their possessions. Spare points from this stage can be converted to silver coins at a 1:1 ratio. Finally, there is a gear list, with items rated as Common, Infrequent, Rare and Exotic: starting characters can only purchase Common and Infrequent items. In play, traders may sell stuff for 1d4 times their list price, so be wary!  Fat Bro wouldn't rip us off with his potions, would he? To finish, there is an optional Personal History section. You can roll for your day and month of birth, and that can make you a Lucky or Unlucky person. Lucky characters get to reroll one roll per adventure, while Unlucky characters get one of their rolls per adventure rerolled by the GM. Characters can also get Destiny Points (Age-16) and use them to purchase positive, negative or neutral Events. Buying positive events must be balanced by buying negative events of the same value. Any Destiny Points not used at the end of this step are lost. Positive events can be stuff like Being Happily Married (+Charisma) or Killed An Enemy Leader In Combat (+1 Prestige), negative events can be things like Was Stuck In A Tiny Place As A Child (claustrophobia!) or Swore Fidelity To The Genoese ( ), and neutral events can be things like Having Siblings or Having A Dead Child (hey, no stat reductions or anything )Characters gain XP by getting older (they get the points they would've gotten according to the table for every year they live) and by surviving adventures, which give them 2-8 points depending on the adventure's length. Characters may also train their abilities with teachers, who should have the ability at a greater level than them. The XP spent in an ability trained with a teacher are multiplied depending on the difference of level between teacher and student (a teacher with just one level above their student makes one XP worth 1.5 points, while one with three levels above them makes one XP worth 2.5 points!) Training takes one week, and the teacher's wages of course.  I don't know what Beard Sage is reading here, but it doesn't look good. Probably some French poo poo Next: d20s and Resistance Tables, oh my! Traveller fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 07:06
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PurpleXVI posted:
I don't want to believe that RPGs called Pantera and Sepultura could ever be bad things 
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Nov 10, 2013 07:13
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Overeds seem to be less sociopathic than the average Contractor, even with the virus eroding their humanity.
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Nov 10, 2013 19:04
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Almogavers A table for you, a table for me  but stillA short update this time. Let's see how the game system works. It's based around an Universal Table in which you roll a d20, use the result to locate a row, then note the level of the relevant skill, knowledge or technique to find the final result. Rolls can be Disastrous (poo poo doesn't work and you gently caress up even further), Failures (poo poo doesn't work), Normal Success (poo poo works), Special Success (poo poo works pretty good) and Critical Success (pro poo poo working right here) As we can see, low rolls are better.  Table!
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Nov 11, 2013 05:02
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I vote Strike Legion just to make your life harder
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Nov 11, 2013 05:52
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AccidentalHipster posted:This is for voting for Bellfahle Magic Academy isn't it? What, no. I'm totally doing that after Almogavers anyway.
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Nov 11, 2013 05:58
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Thread moves fast! Almogavers Stabbing dudes in the dong since 1300 REPRESENT  AW poo poo Alright, let's get down to combat. The rules assume the use of miniatures and terrain to represent combat situations, but it doesn't push them as hard as, say, WFRP 1E. There are a couple of detailed explanations on what "combat time" (initiative) and combat round are, and it reads as if the game assumes players aren't just unfamiliar with RPGs, but the entire idea of turn-based gaming. So we're told that, for instance, while some actions like "I grab the book and start reading it" happen as fast as declaring them, during combat everything goes slow-motion, as it takes minutes for players to declare things their characters do in a few seconds. I mean, yeah, it's right, but I don't think I've ever seen RPG combat described like that. Anyway, actions! They are divided in long (lasting over 2 seconds, an elaborate movement or sequence of movements), short (1-2 seconds, a simple movement) or complementary (barely take time, done at the same time as other actions).
 Oh no you don't, you literal neckbeard During a combat round, a character may perform 1 long action and 1 complementary action, 2 short actions and 1 complementary action, or 1 short action and 2 complementary actions. Actions are declared in reverse Agility order, so that faster characters can see slower actions coming. Players only have one or two seconds to think before declaring, because there's so little time to think during combat: the GM should have the actions of slower NPC considered beforehand so that PCs have something to react to. Apparently, the weapon used, the character's Agility and the difficulty of getting an action done faster modify the action's initiative rank. After actions are declared, they take place. Short actions go first, then long actions; complementary actions go when they're needed (parries happen when the character is attacked) or when the character wishes (short movement, for instance) Within short and long actions, they're ordered by the character's Agility and their modifiers for armor and weight. If two actions are simultaneous but one is a ranged attack and the other a melee attack, the latter goes first. Since, as we will see later, an action may be hastened or not, in order to prevent conflict between GM and players the game suggests that the GM declares all the NPCs' actions first and let the PCs act according to them. Of course, a character cannot be touched by a weapon if they're outside its range, and interestingly if two weapons clash they roll damage, and if one rolls twice as much as the other the loser is sent flying away.  "My arm is hosed? Well, the axe it is wielding will make you just as hosed." So, combat rolls! They're opposed rolls using the rules we saw earlier with the Universal Table.
Damage is calculating by referencing the weapon's base damage (each weapon has a base damage score for each of the three degrees of success) then adding the Strength modifier. As an optional rule, an additional difficulty modifier equivalent to (attacker's initiative mod - defender's initiative mod) can be applied to attacks. Actions can be hastened by adding a +3 difficulty modifier to reduce the initiative mod in -1, or delayed in +1 to get a -3 difficulty modifier, but no action can go earlier than initiative mod 0. A character can also increase the damage they deal on a successful blow by adding +3 to the difficulty per +1d6 they want to add. Wounds are classified as Light, Normal, Severe and Grave. Damage up to Damage Capacity A is light, up to Damage Capacity B is normal, up to Damage Capacity C is Severe and anything worse than that is Grave. Once damage is dealt, the specific wound is located on the character's body depending on the attack's location: each weapon can deal one or more of high, medium or low blows that can affect different parts of the body, and some weapons can deal general attacks with chances to damage any part of the body. Armor reduces the damage, and if the wound is Severe or worse a d20 is rolled on one of the three damage tables (Slashing, Bashing or Piercing) to know the exact organ, muscle or bone that took the hit. I know this sounds like Historical Medieval Phoenix Command, but it's easier than it reads, honest! Damage can also come from falls, drowning, poison or malnutrition. Damage effects! First, damage reduces a character's Blood Points. For every five Blood Points lost, the character's actions and rolls are further and further penalized. The same table is used to see just how bad a disease or poison harms a character. A Light Wound makes the character lose 1d6 Blood Points, a Normal Wound takes 5+1d6 Blood Points (half rounded down for Bashing weapons), a Severe Wound takes 10+1d6 Blood Points (again, half rounded down for Bashing weapons) and causes bleeding (internal for Bashing), while a Grave Wound takes 15+2d6 Blood Points and great bleeding. Losing 25+ Blood Points means the character is pretty much agonizing, with further chances to lose consciousness, enter a coma, and finally die. Bleeding means rolling a Constitution check for every round the character is up and running (or every five minutes if they're resting), with failure making the character lose even more Blood Points.  No, it's not a scratch, loving stop referencing that already we're not British Then it's time for the Damage Tables! Once we know how bad the wound is and where it landed, we reference these to learn what exactly happened. Take a Severe Slashing wound to the neck? Great bleeding, death in five minutes if it isn't stopped. Take a Grave Wound to the underbelly? "Loss of virility" and gangrene And it's entirely possible to take a Piercing blow to the urethra The tables are even more painful to read than the WFRP ones, so you really want to invest in armor or not getting hit. After a couple of handy tables that summarize the combat procedure and all the Combat Techniques (including which weapons can deal which blows, minimum Strength and Dexterity, range, etc.) we are introduced to the Armor tables. Armor pieces are, aside from its weight and initiative modifier, further defined by their resistance to individual damage types, location and layer: it is possible for PCs to wear, for instance, a woolen cap and a leather or iron helm on top of it. There are common armor sets for Almogaver infantry and cavalry, as well as those of their foes, and a single generic armor score for NPCs because who the gently caress cares to track individual armor pieces for every two-bit mook.Recovery! Bleeding is stopped by a First Aid roll. If the wound requires surgery as indicated in the damage tables, then the First Aid roll can only reduce great bleeding to regular bleeding, and the patient has to survive the 30 minutes the surgery requires (Medicine roll, can be hastened by increasing difficulty). Then, the wound must be treated, and can become infected depending on local conditions (hint: don't go dumpster diving with a sucking chest wound). Once the wound is treated, the character recovers 1 Blood Point per hour. As they heal, wounds are treated as diseases, which have a Potency that is rolled against the character's Constitution once a day (or more, in the case of poisons). If the Potency wins, the character loses one or more fatigue rank as described in the Blood Point table. If Constitution wins, the Potency is reduced in one or more points. This ends when the Potency is gone or the character is dead. This chapter ends with a description of common diseases, illnesses, and poisons.  For God! For Aragon! For not taking hits to the urethra! Next: 
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Nov 14, 2013 03:54
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Almogavers Suddenly, magic  sup guys So far Almogavers has been a detailed, purely historical game, without any more fantasy than "hey, let's play badass Catalan warriors in the rear end end of nowhere kicking rear end and taking names." Well, so much for that! There's a Magic and Alchemy chapter, and we're about to see some serious poo poo. Magic in this game is the province of initiates brought into the mysteries by masters, and as such this chapter is GM's eyes only: characters need Magic at Initiate level at the very least to know some (and even then not all!) of the information present here. But first, cosmology! In the beginning, the Solar System was but a cloud of dust. The only energy present during that time was cosmic energy. Through millions of years, the Sun and the planets are formed. With the creation of Earth, a new type of energy is born: elemental energy, less powerful than cosmic energy but with greater influence over the planet. Contact between these two energies and matter brought about the existence of spirits, beings of energy. Most of these spirits associated themselves with the forms developed by organic matter (living beings), while others associated with inorganic matter. As living beings evolved, they generated yet another type of energy, vital energy - the least powerful of the three energies, but the one with the most influence over life. In the first millions of years of Earth's existence, only these three types of energy existed. Spirits were formed by vital or elemental energy, but there were no spiritual beings of cosmic energy. But then some highly evolved spirits learned to combine their own energies with cosmic power: the combination of elemental and cosmic energy brought about luminous energy, and these spirits became very powerful beings. These beings became primitive gods, almost completely unbound by matter. The spirits that combined vital and cosmic energy created dark energy, and they grew powerful as well but not as much as the gods. The beings of light (Gods) were the most powerful in the planet, no longer bound by matter, and the only self-aware beings in the planet aside from darkness beings (who lived in the depths of the Earth and far away from them anyway) As the gods were pretty much alone, they decided to create other spiritual beings from their essence, thus making pantheons of gods and celestial choirs - which turned out for the worse as pantheons were terrible families and choirs devolved into open civil war (ref: Paradise Lost). The second solution was inducing self-awareness in the most evolved animal lifeforms. This is where Man shows up. By the time Man appeared, though, there were few gods left and mankind was breeding like rabbits comparatively. Thus, the gods developed a system to make men channel elemental and cosmic power to them, namely worship and its rituals. The remaining gods thus forestalled their own disappearance, but they later began to fight over the control of Man, and so the first wars began. As a result of internal conflict in the celestial choirs of the One God, a group of beings were cast out from His realm and thrown into the depths of the Earth along with the darkness beings. Furthermore, they were blocked from feeding on elemental energy as part of the expulsion. The leader of this group, however, learned how to feed from vital energy (perhaps taught by the darkness beings). And that would be the end of it, except that these guys also know how to use Man to channel vital energy to them through bloody ritual sacrifice. These beings become demons, with their leader being none other than Ol' Nick himself: Satan. So the conflict between the gods and the demons began, ones profiting from Man, the others feeding upon him. And then demons figured out pacts with the devil and the sale of souls...  Shhh! A description of the types of energy follows. Cosmic energy is the energy that comes from space, the stars, planets and such. It is the most powerful type of energy: in a 1-10 scale, it is a 10 in space and an 8 in Earth. It is raw, alien power, without feelings or thoughts. There are no beings associated to cosmic energy in Earth but there are in space: only the weakest cosmic beings can be summoned, because the great cosmic entities are so powerful and terrible that gods, demons and darkness beings will do everything they can so that they're not summoned. If somehow one of these entities were to be summoned, it would suck all the energy from the area, killing all living beings around it. It might spare the caster and even reward them if they somehow manage to hold on to their sanity (Very Hard Willpower roll). Cosmic beings are pitiless but highly intelligent, and ruled by pure logic. Magic associated with cosmic energy is obviously called cosmic magic, the most logical and disciplined form of it, and magic circles associated to it are qabbalists, alchemists, the Egyptian school and the Pythagoreans. Elemental energy comes from earth, mountains, forests, jungles, sea, and so on. It's a 6 in the power scale. Unlike cosmic energy, it does have feelings, dominated by ideas of immensity, harmony, serenity and violence. Elemental beings are known as (duh) elementals, and those closer to matter are known as faeries, which cannot be summoned as they lack enough entity for it. However, as elemental energy is very stable, its spirits can live for a very long time, though they will never get even close to a god's power. Elemental magic is used by mages close to nature to reinforce the land and the spirits bound to it. They use elementals as allies and they respect the faeries. Druidic circles, hermits and shamans use elemental magic. Vital energy is the closest to man: in fact, human souls are made of vital energy. It is the force of change, transformation and evolution. Only a 2 in the power scale though  Magical creatures related to vital energy are dragons, minotaurs, sea wyrms and many other mythical or legendary monsters. They're physically very powerful, but cannot be summoned as they are too bound to matter for it. Vital magic is the province of mages related to blood sacrifice and the use of the human mind and body: examples are Greek mystery cults, witch covens, and the cult of Mithra. Luminous energy is the energy that forms gods and lets them work their great wills. It's a 7 in the power scale. This is the energy of faith, great convictions, order, hierarchy and obedience. It is used in sacred rituals and it's the most powerful type of energy in Earth short of cosmic power. Its associated beings are, obviously, gods and angels. Divine magic is used by priests of pagan religions or prophets, monks and people in "contact with God". Formal master-student teaching is more common in pagan religions, while others just get their instructions directly from the Big Sky Wizard. Related magic circles are the Order of the Great Meteor, the Guardians of the Grail, wandering monks and enlightened hermits. Darkness energy is the energy of darkness beings and the demons cast out of the One God's realm. It's a 5 in the power scale. It is the energy of silence, chaos, freedom and disobedience. It's used in demonic rituals, and while powerful it's not as powerful as divine power. Its associated beings are darkness beings (a rare sight), demons and hellspawn. The latter are particularly interested in humans, as they can use pacts and sacrifice to gain vital energy. Black magic is used by devil-worshiping Satanic sects. They are the largest magic circles, as black magic is "easier" than the other magic types. There are no corresponding cults to darkness beings, however (they might have existed in a very remote past). Examples are Satan worshipers, priests of Baal and witches and warlocks corrupted by evil.Rules! Magic is conducted through rituals and powers. Rituals are magic working, usually taking a great deal of time to work, while powers are innate gifts of a character obtained through ritual. Rituals need a number of magic points, which are gathered through components; and spirit points, the (normally) vital energy from the mage's own spirit (Charisma). A ritual usually needs 3-5 magic points to work, as well as a minimum level of Magic knowledge. devoid of people. If a ritual requires elemental or vital magic points, cosmic magic points can be substituted by them as long as a single elemental or vital magic point is used in the ritual. If the mage doesn't have components stocked for the ritual, they must source them: depending on the type of magic involved it will take a different amount of time to obtain components for a single magic point, for instance components for an elemental magic point will take 1d6 weeks to gather in a purely natural environment, or 3d6 weeks in a city. Components can also be stocked beforehand or outright bought, but it will take an adventure to do so. They usually expire in a year, though certain rituals can start before components are obtained if they take years of casting. The ritual binds a certain number of spirit points from the mage, that can't be used again until the ritual's effect is gone and a day passes. Only one ritual may be in the works at any given time, and any interruption ruins all progress, including magic point usage. Rituals can also be modified or enhanced through magic research, and rituals from other magic types can be "translated" by a Master mage to their own type. All rituals have extra conditions to be performed, usually belonging to a relevant magic circle.  loving dipshit wizard loving sending me to pick up loving herbs in fuckistan gently caress gently caress gently caress quote:AUTHOR'S WARNING (The Satanic panic over RPGs of the '80s is a '90s phenomenon in Spanish speaking countries - as late as the early 2000s I remember news about Spanish teenagers killing each other "trying to reenact roleplaying scenarios." Vampire: The Masquerade was particularly singled out in this regard, as evidenced by the terrible horror movie Sangre Eterna) Cosmic magic is the most "magicky" of the magic types. You get to summon COSMIC POWAH, create magic mirrors, contact beings from outer space, create Golems (!) and even become immortal. Elemental magic lets you do all the druidy stuff like making healing herbal potions, control the weather, contact faeries, and creating the Fountain of Youth. Vital magic makes magic blood potions, summon spirits, create homunculi (special component required: fetus ), raise the dead and transform living beings. Pretty much all vital magic rituals can be used by black magicians as well. Divine magic rituals require to be in good standing with the god in addition to belonging to a relevant magic circle. Divine magicians can turn their vital essence to luminous energy, summon angels and archangels, bless stuff and straight up open portals to Paradise (!!). Black magic is all SATAN, usually requires human sacrifices, and lets magicians do poo poo like transmute their life essence to dark energy, gain demonic powers, summon demons, curse stuff and open gateways to Hell. Powers work in a similar way to rituals, but they take much less time and there's no dealing with magic points as they're fueled by the mage's own soul. They do use up a mage's spirit points though, but that just means those points cannot be used to work other magics until the power is gone. When channeling powers, the mage must make a Willpower roll for their soul to generate enough spirit points to fuel it, which usually involves physical exhaustion. You can end up agonizing if you summon too many powers one after the other. Many powers have different magic sources, for instance Heighten Senses can come from elemental or vital rituals. Powers in general are less :holyfuck: than rituals power-wise, but they're more useful for adventuring: telekinesis, fireballs and control over creatures are examples of things you can do with powers. Yes, there is a Lust power that only works on the opposite sex. Increasing the Magic skill is a little more involved than raising other skills, but it's enough to say that it involves a number of initiations and the casting of the more simple rituals. Now, Alchemy is and making alchemical products requires a series of Alchemy rolls depending on the exact type of thing being made. Failing an Alchemy roll means blowing the whole process and being forced to start over, with the corresponding loss of ingredients, but the main obstacle for alchemists is obtaining ingredients in the first place: they're at least Infrequent, and a proper alchemist will require ready access to them and a laboratory to work their stuff.  Power Word: Imminent Bonk To The Head Next: Adventures!
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Nov 14, 2013 22:20
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PleasingFungus posted:Does this mean that someone has to be at watch at all hours of night, or else the kingdom will be destroyed when everyone goes to bed? Don't Rest Your Head: Dungeon Hazard.
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Nov 15, 2013 00:55
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Almogavers Dracs i donjons It's adventure time here in Almogavers. Adventures for this game are described as first, second or third era adventures, following the descriptions from the background chapter. The sample adventures in the book are all first era, but could be adapted for the others. The first adventure, The Tower of Wisdom, takes place after the Almogavers take Philadelphia from the Turkish. The game can actually begin during the battle itself, and the book suggests using mass warfare rules taken from somewhere or making Roger de Flor roll against the Turkish commander to play out the battle, but it seems kind of pointless as the adventure assumes no TIME PARADOXES happen and things go as they did in history. So, the adventure actually begins with the Almogavers looting the city. The PCs are actually expected to take part of the looting; the Almogavers are mercenary troops after all. They are, however, highly disciplined, and no bloodshed will be allowed (explicitly, there will be no rape and no murder, gently caress you "realism" grogs). The PCs should be able to get around 10 gold pieces for their efforts. After a couple of days of rest, the PCs will be ordered by their commander to escort a wealthy Venetian trader from Philadelphia to the shores of the Aegean Sea, where a ship is waiting for him. The merchant, Marco Talafallus, claims to be a close friend of the PC's commander (which should put the fear of God into them) and explains that the route they're meant to follow isn't too dangerous, but there may be Turkish bandits prowling around. The PCs will get 5 gold pieces each for their troubles. The journey should take around five days, with Marco riding a cart and bringing five mules loaded with goodies, and servants to tend to them. The PCs get to do the journey on foot The journey shouldn't be hard, but the GM may throw a Turkish ambush in the works if they feel like it. After the PCs fight off the bandits (or one day before arriving if nothing happened), Marco reveals the true goal of his journey. There is a strange Tower near their location, used as an university by an order of monks with friendly relations to the Order of the Great Meteor. The children of the most important families of the Byzantine Empire go to that place for learning, and studying at the Tower confers a measure of prestige. The Tower has a library with precious, rare books, and its greatest treasure is "the most important book of the Order of the Great Meteor"! The merchant has an interesting offer for the book, and he's willing to pay 100 gold pieces (200 if they push it) to the PCs if they go to the Tower and find the book. The Tower is a ziggurat-shaped building five stories high, with around twenty guards to give any robbers trouble. The PCs can try kicking the door and dealing with all of them, climbing the Tower from outside, or infiltrating it through a well outside the Tower that leads to the underground river that the Tower uses for water. There's also an electric trap and an alchemist to deal with!  There's some fancy loot in the library, including the book they're searching for and a load of treatises on all skills, alchemy and magic grimoires, but when the PCs return to where they were supposed to meet with Marco they'll find the merchant dead: the crew of the ship that was waiting for him decided to keep his goods for themselves. A note near his body mentions the offer for the book (1000 gold pieces) and a place: Frangokastello. Tower of Druaga it ain't. The second adventure, The Donjon, takes place in the isle of Crete, currently Venetian domain. The PCs try to figure out how to rejoin the Company while they stay at a local inn run by Callos de Malveure, a former adventurer that traded his sword for an innkeeper's apron a long time ago. While the PCs drink and eat, a group of Alans mercenaries not particularly friendly to Almogavers will start making a ruckus and throwing insults their way: if the players forget they're headstrong Catalan mercenaries that take no poo poo from no two-bit mercs, the Alans will jump them. They're more than the PCs by one man, but as soon as one of them dies or takes a Severe injury they'll flee the inn. As the PCs try to calm down the innkeeper, a mysterious stranger will walk into the inn, with a heavy bag of gold and a knife at the hilt. The stranger will search around then ask the innkeeper in Italian about the mercenaries he was supposed to meet: the innkeeper will explain, and the stranger will then ask the PCs if they care to join him for one round of drinks. Prosper the Norman merchant speaks Greek with a heavy French accent, and he says he was supposed to hire the Alans for "a little job with nothing to lose and a lot to win." A day and a half from Frangokastello there is a guard tower (which he calls "donjon" using the Frankish term) long time bereft of soldiers. Only an old man and his servant live there. Some time ago, Prosper came upon an old scroll that claimed that the treasure of Belisarius, the greatest general of Byzantine Emperor Justinian, is there. The job is simple: go to the "donjon", eliminate or force the tower's denizens to flee, take the treasure and return. He's willing to pay half of the treasure's value in gold, and he'll give the PCs a minimum amount of money for supplies. Too easy? If the PCs ask around in town, they'll learn that the old man of the tower is rumored to be a powerful sorcerer, and that aside from his hunchbacked servant there is an evil, ferocious creature, covered in thick black fur. None of the locals would even sleep near the tower for all the gold in the world. If the PCs still go, they'll find the "donjon" to be ruined and seemly uninhabited, but it's still an imposing sight. If they stay and watch it for one night, they'll hear a terrible scream, like that of one of Hell's own damned... The truth is less spooky, though. The old man was Ezanah, a wise Ethiopian vital mage that had to leave his empire's capital due to politics. As a Christian, he took shelter in Crete rather than Muslim lands. His general lack of social life, his creepy servant and the gorilla that he brought from Africa as a baby gave the tower an aura of mystery and legend that suited him just fine, as he wanted to be left alone to his studies. He even enhanced the mystery by barring the tower's gate and making his servant use an underground passage to go in and out so that people thought he could walk through walls and letting the gorilla run loose from time to time. But Ezanah was dying of old age, and not all his magic could help him - which is why he needed the last vital magic ritual, Change Bodies, which coincidentally is the one the PCs stole from the Tower of Wisdom. Ezanah died before he could get his hands on the book, and the grief-stricken gorilla killed the servant in a fit when he tried to bury his master's body. The donjon is spooky, but the greatest difficulty the PCs will have is actually getting inside, navigating the ruins, and then dealing with the poor gorilla that will defend its master's body to the death. Aside from his library (again, the loot is treatises and stuff) the PCs will find Ezanah's diary in Greek, and they'll realize Belisarius' "treasure" is nothing but Saint Bartholomew's wooden bowl, given to him by Justinian. The bowl is magic (7 luminous magic points for the Dispel Magic power) and could be of interest for philosophers or sages, but not for rough mercenary types like the PCs, and certainly not for Prosper - who will be convinced the PCs tried to keep the real treasure for themselves. Temple of Elemental Evil it ain't. The third adventure, Beyond the Sea, is actually meant for one or two characters and can take place in all eras, but it can be run as a continuation of The Donjon. The PC(s) are aboard the Santa Caterina, a Catalan merchant ship on a trip to Constantinople. Its captain, Aleix "The Crow" Ginesta is a seasoned sea wolf, but as he has never navigated the eastern Mediterranean the trip is considered "risky" by Catalan bankers. The Santa Caterina will make several stops, and just as it leaves Candia (modern Heraklion) in Crete ends up in the sights of a Genoese galley, all too willing to jump a slow Catalan cog. Captain Aleix knows he can't let the ship get captured, so he does everything he can to flee the Genoese (jettisoning cargo, full sail, finally pointing at the island of Karpathos) trying to make the chase last until night. The Genoese draw closer and closer and the sailors are freaking out, but fortunately the Genoese lose time trying to recover the jettisoned cargo. Note that so far the PCs get to do nothing in this longass cutscene. Finally night falls, and since night sailing is pretty much asking for trouble the Genoese captain settles for the cargo the Catalan cog lost and lets them flee. The ship sets sail to Olympos, but alas! The island they're close to is not Karpathos, but Rhodes. Not that anyone on the ship knows about it! The ship unfortunately crashes against rocks by the shore and starts sinking quickly: it's now up to the PCs to find something to hold on to and fight off the maddened sailors as it's Everyone For Himself O'Clock. Three Swimming checks (PCs do know how to swim, right?) will take them to the nearest shore: Rhodes. Once the PCs figure out where they actually are, they should try making their way to the city of Rhodes, where there are consuls from all the major trading powers, Catalonia included. But to get there, they must pass through the village of Kastellos. The people of the village use to loot all the ships that end up wrecked near them, and they will kill or finish off any survivors they find. They're not too interested in letting anyone get to Rhodes, as that will bring about law enforcement and some awkward questions about the things they have looted from the wrecks. It's up to the PCs to fight their way through or flee and hide, but their gear will be at the bottom of the sea most likely Eventually the PCs will come across a small cave where they can lose their pursuers, but because this adventure is not assholish enough yet it will lead them to a nest of vipers over half a meter long each. Should the PCs manage not to get bitten to death and take out the vipers (silently-ish!) they'll come across an old wall that, when taken down, reveals treasure! Perhaps icons from the Monastery of Atramitis, not far from their location; or a trio of scrolls that, when translated from Greek, reveal the journey of a ship to three mysterious islands that we would later know as the Azores, not "officially" discovered until 1432. It's up to the GM to decide what the PCs will find behind the wall, depending on their proclivities. Finally, the PCs will be able to get to Rhodes and ask for help: before 1309, the corrupt Byzantine administration will care little for them, but after 1309 the island will be under the Hospitallers and they'll be quick to help the PCs. Either way, the authorities will send men to Kastellos to deal with the looted cargo and, in the case of the Hospitallers, arrest some of the villagers for murder. Anyway, gently caress this adventure. Shadow of the Colossus it ain't. The last adventure, A Cry In The Night, is first era only. The Emperor and part of his court have gone to Bursa for their hot spring baths, leaving in Constantinople just the Pinkerne (royal steward), the Megadomestikos (commander in chief of the garrisons) and other lesser functionaries. And strangely enough, the Emperor's own son and co-Emperor, Michael, returned to Constantinople soon after leaving with the Emperor. He's actually setting up the final touches for a cunning plot against the Emperor, gathering loyal cronies and troops to take over the city and proclaim himself the sole Emperor of Byzantium. All that is left is persuading or eliminating the Pinkerne, the Megadomestikos and the Patriarch of Sophia. For whatever reason, the PCs are hanging around the Valente aqueduct late into the night. Taking a turn, they'll come across a woman, wearing little more than a cloak around her body. A Perception check will tell them she's scared to hell and, if they don't show hostility, she'll beg them for their help once she notices they're fighters. Sobbing, she'll tell them she was at her lover's house when they heard noises in the first floor. He made her escape through a ladder and went to check: once she heard sounds of fighting, she fled the scene. She won't answer anything about her identity or that of her lover though. The fighting seems to be over by the time the PCs get there, but they'll find a man bleeding to death in the bedroom. With his waifu crying over him, the man (Anastasi) will beg the PCs to "save... the... Megadomesti..." and then he'll dramatically die... unless the PCs can roll some First Aid, in which case he can tell them he is Anastasi Fieromonte, Pinkerne to the Emperor, and they are to warn Megadomestikos Emili Porrano at the Fortress of Seven Towers. The PCs will have to hustle! As they make their way through the city, they might notice there are no night patrols, which should tip them off that shenanigans are afoot. When they get to the Fortress, they'll hear fighting from one of the alleys near it, with one man in Imperial garb fighting off four hooded goons. That's the Megadomestikos, and he'll identify himself as such if the PCs don't take the hint. The PCs should have little trouble dispatching the assassins, but they'll find nothing on their bodies. They will be able to tell they're military sorts (and wearing guard weaponry to boot); if one of them survives, he will say little of importance: they only know the names of some officers they know from secret meetings. All that these goons know is that they had to kill the Megadomestikos, but they assume whoever is running the show must be someone very important. Emili will demand that the PCs follow him into the Fortress, where the guard (loyal to him) will recognize him and have a surgeon brought to him. If the PCs tell him the whole story, he'll put two and two together and tell them he thinks there's a plot to remove the Emperor from office. If one of the killers was interrogated, he'll have the troops near the fortress swear again the oath of fealty to the Emperor, and he'll have Megadux Roger de Flor summoned to get extra hands against the plot. The Almogavers will be tasked with replacing the city guard and arresting the known conspirators. Roger will congratulate the PCs in person for their efforts and order them to guard the Hagia Sofia, where nothing bad is expected to happen. They get there without any incident, but while they're informing the Patriarch of the current events a number of armed men burst into the temple - followed by some of the "loyal" troops that came with the PCs! The leader of the rebels is the Domestikos (commander) of the city wall, and if the PCs win he will flee for the palace. A chase begins through the city, but the GM is expected to let the Domestikos reach the palace with the PCs hounding his steps... only to find him dead at the hands of Michael himself. He will claim he had to kill him in self-defense: a Perception check will reveal he's lying but hey, it's the word of the freaking co-Emperor himself. Once the Emperor returns, the subsequent investigation will reveal the Domestikos was the sole ringleader . As for the PCs, they will receive public thanks from the Emperor, and they will be offered the position of city guards if they so wish.And, with a bestiary of creatures mundane and magical and a list of generic NPCs, that's the end of Almogavers!
Traveller fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Nov 16, 2013 |
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Nov 16, 2013 05:12
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Hey, what the hell. Bellfahle Magic Academy Brought to you by MS Paint So, there's this site called J-Comi that hosts out of print manga and books. It's the brainchild of Ken Akamatsu, creator of Love Hina and Negima if that tells you anything (of course it tells you something, you weeaboo~). Turns out, it also hosts a few TRPG-related downloads, like the original Ryuutama, a supplement for Golden Sky Stories, cyberpunk RPG Metal Head and this thingy right here. I wonder what's it about?  "A TRPG that anyone can play." Presumably it involves an academy, magic, and questionable proportions. But before we dive into that: loving MANGA (Quick and dirty scanlations, I know. I'm not one of those fancy groups with credit pages, goddammit! Read right-to-left, as is the custom in Nihonland.)       Next: zany adventures!
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Nov 16, 2013 07:22
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You guys just can't handle the  , for shame.AccidentalHipster posted:Looks "promising". Are we gonna follow the zany escapades of Sir Naps-a-lot and Airhead McLoveinterest throughout this TRPG? Are we ever. Bellfahle Magic Academy Doesn't get more anime than this On with the introduction! In A World brimming with magic, where spell casting mages can do anything (caster supremacy from the get go ) there is an academy where those children that are meant to become mages go to study. This is a TRPG ("tabletalk RPG", Japanese parlance for a pen and paper tabletop RPG) where players play the role of students of Bellfahle Magic Academy, learning magic and having ZANY ADVENTURES. There's an explanation on what TRPGs are, how the book is laid out, and the other things we'll need to play aside from the book: pen, paper, and a number of six-sided dice. And just like that, we're thrown into a replay! Replays are cleaned up logs of actual RPG sessions. Japan really likes these, to the point that popular replays are sold independently of the games they're based on. This one is called The Disappearance of the Magic Academy, and starts with the GM explaining the setting to their new players. This world, Promacia, is a magic-rich land where magic lights go up at night and people use flying brooms instead of bicycles. Then they go to character creation, by which they mean just picking up pregens. The gang is:
 Left to right: Chris, Remi, Ein and Raius. And the game begins! It's homeroom time for Class 1-A and the teacher is nowhere in sight, so the kids are goofing in the classroom as they are wont to do. Ein is still head over heels for Remi, Chris and Raius give him a hard time about it because kids. Then the teacher arrives, Professor Clayton, and cheerfully dismisses everyone early - except for our gang. Bummer! Clayton leads them to the teacher's lounge and introduces them to one Mr. Aslem, who tells them the sad story of his bedridden daughter Sera, who can't go to school but always watches the gang walk by every day. He asks them to go pay her a visit: Chris and Raius aren't too convinced but Ein and Remi drag them along. And off they go to Aslem's fancy mansion to visit the poor girl! First Impression rolls are made (remember, this is a RPG replay so we're told all the rolls people are making) and Ein rolls well, so Sera takes a shine to him, while Remi and Raius get more normal rolls. Chris, on the other hand, rolls poorly and her player fluffs it as Chris disdaining the "poor" girl living in a much better place than the one she grew up in. Still, Sera introduces herself and the kids start talking about life at the school, the town and all those things she doesn't get to see. Before long Aslem shows up and asks Sera to excuse herself: she wants to continue chatting, but her face turns all sorts of funky colors and Aslem cuts things then and there. He apologizes to the kids outside the room, and explains that Sera has some form of congenital illness that makes even the least effort potentially deadly. Chris grumbles something about not even getting a souvenir; the GM scolds her but says they still got to have tea and cake. The following day, the kids are going to school. They walk in front of Sera's house, and Ein performs a knightly salute for her: she waves back. They're a little late, so they pick up the pace... but suddenly their surroundings shimmer, and when they recover their senses they find everyone around them is gone, except for the four of them. Remi grumbles that everyone just warped in rather than being late, but Raius says that no one knows that kind of powerful magic. Maybe everyone's hidden? Nope, says Chris. The four get to the Academy, but there are no signs of anyone inside. The bell is ringing without anyone near it, but that's okay, it's a magic bell Raius says he'll leave a note on the desk and then go search for people in town, while Ein observes from the academy's rooftop. Chris summons a familiar, and we're told PCs in Bellfahle all have one "special item" each, like Chris' magic pigeon familiar. Remi goes to town with Raius. The GM says that Ein sees no one in town from his vantage point, but the town walls seem to be kind of blurry; Chris gets in contact with her familiar Uriel and asks it to fly to the Academy, and using its eyes she sees people in the streets and classes beginning at school, but Uriel can't find her. She figures out that's not the real Academy they're in and worse, they're late for class.  Scoobies! Remi and Raius, meanwhile, actually spot someone in town. Raius wants to stay back and watch first, but Remi ruins the element of surprise. The figure turns around and as it turns out it's actually Sera, somehow out of her room and in her pajamas. She looks pale and about to faint, and when Raius calls out to her she passes out. Remi casts a Diagnose spell on her but fortunately it was just the strain that made her pass out, and the GM tells her Sera will recover once she has some rest. Remi easily lifts her from the ground as she's wearing a magic bracelet that doubles her strength (!) They go back to the school and the four meet and share notes. Raius shares Chris' concerns about being late for class. He figures Sera has something to do with all of this but they really won't know anything until she wakes up. And she does after they shake her up a bit! Raius asks her what she was doing in town, and she says she woke up at night, finding it hard to breathe, and that the mirror in her room started glowing with a red light. She lost consciousness, and when she woke up it was morning and there was no one home, or in town for that matter. The gang remembers there was an antique wall mirror in Sera's room next to her bed. Chris figures that they're all somehow inside the mirror world and Ein suggests finding the mirror. The Gang of Four + Sera go to her room and Chris casts Magic Sense over the mirror. Hint: it's magic! So is the space around them, actually. She follows up with some Magic Analysis and finds out that the magic in the mirror is some form of space control power. She decides she can trust Raius with this important information! quote:Remi: "What about me?" Ein is ready to break the mirror, but the GM calls for a Perception check! Dice are rolled and everyone but Remi notices that someone was watching them from outside, through the window! Raius and Chris go outside to chase the peeping tom while Remi stays behind and Ein has the bright idea of jumping through the window. Sera's room is in the second floor. His Agility check fails and we are introduced to the concept of Damage! 24 damage for Ein, to be precise. Remi is fortunately there to cast Healing Finger on him and patch him up a bit, and while she's bringing him back inside Raius and Chris chase the mysterious stranger. Agility checks are made, but they can't catch up... and Raius decides to throw a stick at the intruder's legs. It's okay, he's got a Lucky Stone! He gets an autosuccess on one ability check per day and he uses it to great effect. The fleeing man crashes to the ground and the kids catch up. However, Ein calls from behind, and strangely it's the GM that's talking for him. It is strange, since Ein is not an NPC and the real Ein is with Remi now, but since Raius and Chris don't know that the players have to play along for the moment. The GM calls for Perception checks and they make it, so the kids hear the sound of a sword being drawn... "Ein" tries to sword at them, his eyes bloodshot. The kids dodge in time and Raius uses Telekinesis to take his sword away. The GM makes an Evade roll for Fake!Ein, but blows it and he is disarmed. Raius questions him at swordpoint, and Fake!Ein only says he was this close to killing them. The kids decide to go back to Ein and Remi but not before Raius tricks Fake!Ein into taking the sword, only to knock him out at the last moment. He figured that the real Ein would fall for that after all. (Ein's player does the "someone's laughing behind my back" routine.) While they were busy with the fake, however, the mysterious man disappeared...While Ein is totally pretending it didn't hurt that much, "Raius" returns to the room. He says he came in first and that Chris will join them soon and hey, can't you see her by the window? Perception checks are made and while Remi is busy searching for Chris, Ein feels MURDEROUS INTENT behind him. He turns around and uses his special move:  KAMEHAMEHA TO THE FACE Helpfully provided by his special item, the Bracelet of the War God The GM asks for an Agility check to shoot in time and once Ein nails it, he rolls to hit! Also a success and "Raius" is pushed back by the blast.quote:Ein: Remina, did you see it? Fake!Raius is still standing and Ein figures out he's a fake. Time to break out the combat rules! We don't get a full explanation of them yet, however, only that though Ein is the better fighter, the dice are not with him and he misses, while Fake!Raius nicks him a little - and with the damage he already took from the fall, he's dangerously close to getting knocked out. And bam, Fake!Raius whacks him again and he's down for the count When he's about to finish Ein off with his own sword, Remi suddenly remembers she's there and punches the fake through the wall and outside the house The real Raius and Chris return, hauling along Fake!Ein, and once Remi patches up Ein again they interrogate him. After asking them not to be so wary (he's back to his senses, honest!) he says there is a spirit that was trapped in Sera's mirror, and that it trapped humans inside it to assume their appearances in the real world. Chris checks with her familiar Uriel and yes, there is a pretty girl in the real world version of the house. Fake!Ein explains that it was because of the real Sera that the gang got stuck inside: she has the knack for magic and unconsciously she worked it to have them come to save her. The spirit felt the intruders in its world so it had the reflections try to eliminate them. He mentions the gang could easily go through the mirror and return to their world, but as for Sera, as long as the spirit is out there... The kids resolve to beat the spirit and get Sera back to the real world.And out there, Fake!Sera is waiting for them! She's not letting them escape now that they know about the mirror world. Ein is perfectly happy with that, he wants to get in a fight. He at the spirit while Raius backs him up with magic, while Chris and Remi, uh...
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Nov 17, 2013 05:31
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Chris Catlan: she comes from a poor household, and wants to become a first-class mage to help her mom lead a better life. She has a grown up, sarcastic tone to her, but she's a kind girl really. She's always trying to keep Remi out of trouble and her specialty is searching and perception magic.
Raius Stilton: his grandpa was a master thief notorious through the kingdom and he looked up to him, but his father wanted to keep him on the straight and narrow and had him apprenticed to a mage to keep him out of grandpa's influence. Now an Academy student, he has no real future plans other than enjoying his school life. He's knuckleheads with Ein since old times and though Ein tends to drag him into trouble, he sticks with him because the shenanigans they get up to are fun. His specialty is ??? 
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Bellfahle Magic Academy Gotta cram for those midterms The following chapter is divided in two sections, both written "in character" as it were. The first one has Ein and Raius reading through the Academy's guide for new students. They are welcomed by Academy headmaster Appentsera, blah blah blah congrats on passing the hard tests and joining the Academy, blah blah blah first step to being a mage, something something train your body, mind and magic, etc. The Academy was founded "many hundred years ago" by famed scholar mage Harman, who obtained permission from the ruler of the time to build "an institution of learnings for the propagation of magick throughout the worlde." The Academy grew and gained more and more students until a hundred years ago it was moved to its present location at the royal capital and an even fancier campus was built for it.  Really loving fancy. In ancient times, only a small fraction of the population could wield magic, as mages kept their knowledge for themselves. As mages behaved like, well, mages (no sense of right or wrong ) and carefully hid their lore, magic was on a decline. Harman, the first modern mage, didn't care for this situation too much, which is why he came up with the idea of the Academy. Magic is something anyone can do with practice, so he figured that if the idea spread both baseless fear of magic and the conceitedness of wizards would go away. By giving mages a place where they could exchange knowledge, magic could be revitalized. Anyway, young sports, that's the pedigree of the Academy so take your studies seriously!The Academy's curriculum covers magic (duh!), particularly its origins and means of work, but also teaches martial arts, liberal arts, sciences and many other subjects. The ideal mage does not just know magic, they are Renaissance People of sound mind and body. There are four years in the Academy, with students progressing from one to the next after a year of study and good grades. Honors students can be fast-tracked to higher years as well. Each year is further divided in classes of 36 students each, with around 5 classes per year. Each class has one assigned head teacher from their first year onwards. Lessons are from Monday to Friday, with each lesson lasting one hour. There are 30-minute recess periods between lessons and three lessons per day.
 Sweet terrain tables! There are also special lessons off the classroom, particularly those dealing with magic that doesn't work indoors (like weather control) or those that need access to nature like art sketching or animal observation. The Academy also hold an "outdoors school" week in August. Speaking of months, the school year begins in April and is divided in three three-month periods, September-December (after the August summer break) and January-March. There are exams halfway through the trimesters and at the end of each. The exams are both written and live, with the students demonstrating proficiency in magic before a teacher. As for the Academy itself! It is built over a bunch of hazel trees, 30 meters above the ground. The trees are enchanted so that magic that simplifies magic working is sealed, so no magic cheating for Academy students. There's a magic teleport circle that works as the entrance and exit. There's a garden, a bell tower, a teacher's lounge (entrance forbidden for students!), rooms for the different classes including a "Strategic Research Room" for Martial Arts classes because the kids need to get their Warhams on, a flying astronomical observatory, a school store with everything from stationery to magic implements, a library with an underground section that holds books that can only be perused with the headmaster's permission, sports grounds and separate dorms for boys and girls (with running water and air conditioning!). Also there's an old wing of the school that's very deteriorated so like, don't go near there you drat kids.  Ladders are for muggles. Students should not abuse or misuse magic. They must wear the school's official uniform and crest while in Academy grounds, and formal dress uniform for special occasions like the beginning and end of the school year and graduation. They get Saturdays and Sundays off, as well as holidays and April 10 because that's the school's anniversary. Classes begin on April 7! The guide also comes with the class schedule for our guys. No, seriously.  Mondays: Riding or Home Ec, Basic Magic, Martial Arts. (Gender segregation? gently caress this!) Tuesdays: Medicine, Social Studies, Craft. Wednesdays: Divination, Etiquette, Magic Studies. Thursdays: Physics, Phys Ed, Art. Fridays: Biology, Music, Free Study. That bit at the end says "Free Study" has no assigned subject and thus players can use it however they see fit. Also, there's no "Craft" class on the guide (or anywhere else in the book anyway) so I dunno. Things we've learned today: this is total escapist fantasy, only three periods and no classes on Saturday? Come on! Next: let's ruin a date.
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Nov 18, 2013 07:22
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Bellfahle Magic Academy Grand Theft Broom: Marslan City Classes are over for the day and a stammering Ein offers to show Remi around town since she's just moved in and all. Remi is happy to go with him... and Chris and Raius too, since they decided to tag along. Raius worries about leaving Ein alone  Since Remi doesn't know a thing about, well, anything (she confuses the Royal Castle for "that huge house over there") and we need an excuse for exposition, it's time for some world background! Hey, I didn't make the city. We are in the continent of Fermia, right in the middle of the world of Promacia. (Raius is drawing up a map as he explains, it's kind of adorable really) The Vashlan Kingdom and the city of Marslan is where the Academy is located. The Queen, Her Majesty Yumi La Vashlan III is the ruler of the kingdom, and she lives in that "huge house", Castle Arwin. They say a famous architect built it! The gang makes their way through Sage's Road, a wide avenue that leads to the Academy and is named like that because of all the schools, research halls and related businesses located there. There's a number of schools for subjects like arithmetic and calligraphy, as well as other smaller magic schools. Aside from the Academy itself, the largest school in Sage's Road is Balkas School, a place of learning for ancient history whose library stocks some very rare books. Balkas himself is the city's foremost book collector, and for a fee he can grant access to his personal collection of precious ancient manuscripts.  Castle Arwin and Sage's Road. The gang takes a turn from Sage's Road to Spell Road, which is packed with fortune teller's stalls and other magic shops. There's also a strong smell in the air, but the kids are used to smelling it in the school: it's --- I mean, medicinal herbs. Ein finds it all kinds of freaky but them's the breaks when you're a mage. About half of the stores sell supplies to mages from herbs and books to flying brooms, while the other half offers spellcasting and fortune telling services. You can buy bottled magic from these stores: actually, you can buy them from pretty much any general store, but these are more powerful. The fortune tellers are kind of hit or miss, but while there are not 100% safe predictions, they can get close enough to it. There's Muroll, who while young has the best or second best hit ratio in town, but she doesn't tolerate stupid questions; or Guliyu, who charges 10,000 silver per session but his reputation is such that consultations have to be booked days in advance.At the end of the street there is a large tower belonging to the Association of Mages and Chris is in DESPAIR because Remi, as our surrogate, has no idea what that is. The Association deals with mage affairs and hands out official mage licenses to those who pass their examinations. This is so that high grade magic isn't used lightly, but by people of proper strength and disposition. They're also involved in magic research and support mages by selling them magic implements at low prices. The Academy also falls under the Association's purview, as they have an interest in the proper spread of magic throughout the world. The kids then take a familiar turn and end in Student's Road, which has its name because it's always full of said students. There's stationery stores here, as well as restaurants, like the Goatling's Inn which is cheap but serves some really odd dishes with things that aren't really food on them, because his owner is a mage and does some haute cuisine poo poo with . And the odd lady at the general store gives candy when you buy something from her! Next to Student's Road is Boarding District, named for all the boarding houses there. Many students from the Academy and the Sage's Road schools live here, like about half of Ein and company's class. Finally, they reach the city square, complete with an open market. Chris teaches Remi the finer details of haggling for stuff! The guy they were buying from explains that the market is said to have everything - if nothing else, it's probably the best in the world. Near the plaza there is the Reol Theater, a very high class and formal establishment, and the Arda Church, where those who believe in God (not many!) go to worship. It's really pretty anyway. During holidays, performers come out and put up shows for everyone to watch. Student's Road and the city square. A bell rings three times from a clock tower, which gives its name to Clock Road. It was built by the Association and, of course, is powered by magic. Now it's Remi that drags the group there, as it is where the Crochett Company has its offices. The manager explains that many other traders have offices in this street, and that millions of silver pieces are traded here every day. There's a government office here to regulate trade, which is why the businesses have gathered around the location. The kids are rude and leave before the old guy finishes his report on quarterly profits, though.  The gang spots the Residential District, which is where they live! But that's boring so instead they show Remi around the Artisan District, where craftsmen of all types live. From shoemakers to tailors to bakers, it's all there. They gather because it's more convenient for their guilds to keep them together. The guilds do for regular folk what the Association does for mages: support, licensing and research. The Guild Halls at the center of this area are built in all sorts of styles and getting around and through them is a bit hard since they're built all over the place. At the Shopping District they stop at a jewelry store, where Chris admires a brooch and acts all girly kawaii for a change. The owner does the designs herself and they're quite popular with the young ladies. Close to that is the Inn District, packed with inns and hotels as Marslan gets a lot of visitors with all the trade going on. There's regular inns, inns for caravans, inns for your monkeys, inns for everything. Beyond that there's the  Pleasure District, where most places are closed as it's still daylight. By night, it's a lively place with bars, gambling houses and brothels. Remi doesn't need to know what a brothel is, thank you very much! Ein's face is going beet red for no reason! The largest gambling house, August Hare, has magic-assisted gambling going on, while Angel's Cheek is a high class cabaret popular with nobility and wealthy people.Remi is about to take a turn and the gang stops her: she was about to go into the slums, the wrong side of the magic tracks. Guards don't go there. It used to be part of the Development Zone but one day it became a den of outlaws and criminals, dangerous even in broad daylight. The Development Zone itself is where poor people live, but they are of a better kind than the slums' denizens and try to help each other to survive. Chris believes them to be a better sort than the self-righteous jerks living at the Old District, and Ein takes over the explanation even though his family no longer lives there. The Old District used to be the entirety of the city, but then it grew around it. It's where the nobility has their residences: regular people don't go in here. Guards are posted at its entrances and you don't get in without a permit. These guards are knights of the White Knight Order, a specially formed guard unit. They spend their time training and patrolling, but when it comes down to blows they fight as knights. All boys want to be White Knights when they grow up!  Pleasure District and Harbor District. The gang splits and everyone goes home. Remi tells her dad about her trip around town, and he mentions there's one place they didn't go to: the docks. Properly known as the Harbor District, the docks are where the shipowners' offices and the warehouse where they store goods to be carried by their ships are located. It's where her dad works! He says he'll take her next time: there's people from all countries there. Maybe they will meet someone from her mother's country... and dad just made himself a little sad.  Next: Finally some goddamn rules--- IS THAT A FLOWCHART
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Nov 21, 2013 06:52
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Bellfahle Magic Academy In which fictional characters realize the falsehoods upon which their existences are built  Shenanigans! On to character creation! But first, some fourth wall breaking. quote:Ein, do you know how you and your friends were born? Then Chris joins in on the wall breaking and mentions that they exist because they were chosen from between their classmates. Bellfahle's primary method of character generation is actually character selection, as the idea is that players pick one of the book's pregenerated characters. Like Ein or his friends, or actually any of the 36 members of Class 1-A: they're all pregenerated already so that you can pick one up and start playing right away. Since it may be hard for players to choose a character, they can also roll for one with 2d6, or follow handy flowcharts! These are actually at the end of the book, but we'll take a look at them now. The pregens are broadly divided into eight types:
 There's one for the boys, one for the girls. These types are just general categories in which the pregens fall into, they're not classes or anything. They come with everything, even with a small background, with relationships with other characters the only thing up to players to figure out (so if you pick Ein you don't have to be hopelessly smitten with Remi, for instance.) Stats are rated from 1 to 5, with 1 being very bad and 5 being very good. The stats are Perception, Appearance, Dexterity, Agility, Intelligence and Strength. The kids comment during all of this: Ein boasts of his Agility of 4, while Chris counters that he fell off a second floor and got himself knocked out twice during their adventure There is also Spirit, which measures the character's ability to endure emotional shock. It is reduced when facing scary things or taking ~*wounds to the heart*~, as well as powering magic. Going down to 0 Spirit means getting knocked out. Endurance is the physical equivalent, i.e. hit points. Spirit is restored by one point per hour of rest, while Endurance recovers at a rate of one point per day of rest but can be restored by medical care or magic as well. Charm is a measure of how likeable the character is at first glance (Ein wonders how Chris has a better Charm score than him )Characters also have Interests, Relationships with other characters, Special Skills, Personality Traits, Spells (of course!) Belongings which also include the character's monthly allowance, and their Special Item. They also have a Battle Level which shows how experienced they're at fighting and a Magic Level that shows how used they are to magic. Battle Level starts at 0 and Magic Level starts at 1. But, but, but! Where's the character generation rules? Right here, after everything is explained. First, you must pick an Interest and Personality Traits. There are lists for both, in Easy to Roleplay and Hard to Roleplay favors. Beginner players should pick from the Easy to Roleplay lists; players can also roll these at random if they want. The Personality Traits come with a score that modifies the initial Charm rating: the fun thing about these is that they apply differently if the character is a boy or a girl, so for instance a Chatty (negative) boy is more annoying that a Chatty girl. One trait in particular, Lonely, is negative for boys and positive for girls; in other words, Bellfahle mechanically supports sad lonely little girls being adorable. After these are chosen, you get 18 points to assign to stats. Spirit is equal to (Intelligence x 4 + 4), Endurance is (Strength x 5 + 5) and Charm is 7 + Appearance + trait modifiers. You can pick a number of spells equal to your Intelligence, one Special Item from the item list, one Special Skill, and the character's belongings and monthly allowance which can be anything the character would probably have - within reason. Ein is ready to have ALL THE GOLDS but the book says you should probably check in with the GM first. There's a worksheet at the back of the book for character generation but you should probably just pick a pregen if you're not used to TRPGs or anything.  Bellfahle really doesn't mind if you play a gender other than your own. Rules! The basic roll is the Action Check, which is based off the stats. Perception checks are made to search or notice things, Appearance checks are for being prettier than someone else or trying to seduce (dammit game you're in highschool don't do this ), Dexterity checks are for using or manipulating objects or sleight of hand tricks, Agility checks are those Ein fails when he tries jumping from second floors, Intelligence checks are used to know things or negotiating with people and making tests of willpower (pretty much anything where the character's head comes into play that doesn't involve reasoning or deduction - that's the player's job), and Strength checks are for anything that needs physical power or resistance. The check is first done with a roll of 2d6 + the relevant stat: the example has Remi rolling her own Intelligence check to remember a piece of triva, which the book admits it's basically screwing with the fourth wall on an Inception level but it's a special occasion But we're missing the other half of the check, and that is its difficulty. The roll needs to meet or beat that difficulty to succeed. An easy peasy check has a difficulty of 6, average is 8, and something practically impossible has a difficulty of 14. And now that Remi has the entire concept of checks explained to her, pop! she remembers the trivia. The higher the roll goes over the difficulty, the better the success is. The Special Skill is one unique thing that separates the character from others. So for instance, Remi is good at healing: she says the teachers praise her for it , and on her character sheet her special skill is Medical Treatment, which gives +3 to Dexterity checks to provide medical aid. Special skills provide bonuses from +1 to +3 for various rolls or stats: your character could be a Prankster and get +2 to Dexterity rolls related to setting up pranks or traps, a Fashionista whose great dressing sense gives them a +1 to Charm, or a Brawler with +3 to attack rolls in an unarmed fight. Sometimes things go perfectly right and other times they blow rear end: these are Criticals and Fumbles, which happen when you beat a check's difficulty and also roll sixes on both dice or roll ones on both dice (even if you would have succeeded) respectively. In another of those notes that show how the game is meant for people that have literally no idea at all of how RPGs work, we're told that it's not only the players that call for rolls, but the GM can do so as well (like Perception checks when someone is stalking you, for instance.) Contested rolls are made simply by rolling for each party and checking who got the highest result: Ein and Raius do the stereotypical RPG example arm wrestling and Ein wins. Ties are resolved depending on the nature of the contest: in a race the opponents would cross the line at the same time, but when arm wrestling they would just keep pushing and would have to roll again, and if ties are not a possibility (hide and seek, frex) the active party wins the tie. If one side fumbles, they lose instantly; if they both fumble, the one that got the lowest result loses; and criticals only count if you both roll two sixes and get a higher result than your opponent. Sometimes checks have no difficulty at all, normally when they're about just seeing how well you did at something: a roll of 6 or worse is terribad, 10 is average, and 14 is a master piece. Criticals cannot happen in these rolls, but fumbles can  Godfuckingdammit, Ein. The tone of this section is educational as hell: after every new rule or type of check, there is a small summary detailing everything that happens at the table from the moment someone declares using that section. It's a little repetitive if you're familiar with RPGs but again, the book assumes you're not. Next: meet and greet people, then punch them through walls
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Nov 22, 2013 04:57
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