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theironjef posted:Haha holy poo poo, this is great! By the way, I'm running a one-off Jurassic Park game soon using Dread (the Jenga RPG.) Mashing it up with Netrunner's Jinteki biotech corporation.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:09
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Luminous Obscurity posted:One of Promethean's supplements had some stuff on human cloning. If memory serves it wasn't bad, just a bit out of place for most Promethean games and kind of forgettable as a result. Kavak posted:Promethean started getting into a lot of Sci-Fi stuff with the Zeka and the Unfleshed, and I think they were looking for stuff to fill out the last book. Clones were in the core, actually, which I guess just shows how forgettable the whole thing was. All of their other (quasi-)antagonists are cool enough that it doesn't really matter, though. Tulul fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 00:16
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Dammit Who? posted:If you want to live the easy life in Unknown Armies and don't particularly care what you have to do to get it, be an Avatar of the Merchant. There's an example in one of the books that, in addition to having fat stacks of cash, has also bought other people's intelligence, health, youth, good luck, charisma... capital accumulates, and to a Merchant everything is capital. There's a great character in the later seasons of Misfits (the UK 'superhero' show) who does this. The whole show in general is pretty Unknown Armies. As is Utopia.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:18
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Luminous Obscurity posted:One of Promethean's supplements had some stuff on human cloning. If memory serves it wasn't bad, just a bit out of place for most Promethean games and kind of forgettable as a result. I almost feel like the clone thing was just a setting justification for having disposable mooks to throw at Prometheans.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:29
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Simian_Prime posted:I almost feel like the clone thing was just a setting justification for having disposable mooks to throw at Prometheans. Just make a swarm of lovely Pandorans and you're good.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:32
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From a Hunter perspective, all Prometheans are incredibly problematic in general due to the Disquiet and Wastelands, no need to get Pandorans involved. If you're in the general neighborhood of a Promethean, you are going to be affected by Disquiet, and their Wastelands can render a fairly large geographic area uninhabitable if allowed to build. Making it even more fun, every Lineage has a different Disquiet and Wasteland, meaning you can potentially be affected by more than one type if there's more than one Promethean around - rare, but possible.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:37
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Without clones, how can you play Orphan Black?quote:We get an overview of the Promethean Lineages - Frankensteins, Galateids, Osirans, Tammuz, and Ulgans. They are composed of body parts, removed and reconstructed into a new form. To create one requires a burning, driving obsession that makes all else fall away. This obsession in their creators is terrifying to hunters, because it's familiar - they feel the same obsession when it comes to fighting monsters. These creators, demiurges, will justify anything to do their work - and so will some hunters. Some demiurges are monsters themselves - mass murderers at worst, grave robbers at best. So Mechanomancers? Was there much crossover or influence between Unknown Armies and nWoD? The nWoD core book being about mortals and those setting books full of weird rumors felt closer to it than the Anne Rice influenced Vampire (which is a totally valid and fun way to play). But I see UA in everything, so maybe it's a coincidence.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:57
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Count Chocula posted:So Mechanomancers? Demiurges in Promethean, IIRC, are supposed to be extremely rare - Dr. Frankenstein, the rabbi who animated the Golem, Pygmalion, etc. Almost all Prometheans are created by other Prometheans, as it's a necessary step in the Pilgrimage.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:01
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ZorajitZorajit posted:By the way, I'm running a one-off Jurassic Park game soon using Dread (the Jenga RPG.) Mashing it up with Netrunner's Jinteki biotech corporation. Sounds great! We are fuming right now because we had a blackout mid recording.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:17
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Cythereal posted:Demiurges in Promethean, IIRC, are supposed to be extremely rare - Dr. Frankenstein, the rabbi who animated the Golem, Pygmalion, etc. Almost all Prometheans are created by other Prometheans, as it's a necessary step in the Pilgrimage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Science_%28film%29 (in retrospect that's not a premise that ages well but would be pretty loving cool if adapted to Promethean)
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Jun 15, 2015 01:17
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e: ignore me, I am a doublepost.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:18
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There are no secrets about the actual Lucifuge? Well, I do like how the Satan spawn are entirely aboveboard in their purpose and goals.
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Jun 15, 2015 02:02
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Hypocrisy posted:There are no secrets about the actual Lucifuge? I expected to hate the Lucifuge but everything about them just makes them sound like fun guys I would like to play as.
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Jun 15, 2015 02:04
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Count Chocula posted:Without clones, how can you play Orphan Black? UA was in some ways designed to be the antithesis of oWoD and Call of Cthulhu - an occult horror setting with most of the super atural was the result of human error, not untouchable cosmic entities or vast, global conspiracies of monsters. To a generation of modern horror gamers who saw how bloated the oWoD was becoming, it felt like a breath of fresh air. So when the nWoD rolled around, Greg Stolze was heavily involved much of the setting building, and many of the authors took the mindset of UA as their framework for a more humanocentric horror setting, particularly the idea that "the shadows only hide more shadows, and nothing can be fully explained. As a result, there's a lot of cross-pollination between the settings. (On a side note: were I to run a Hunter game, the mages id use would more closely resemble UA Adepts)
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Jun 15, 2015 02:30
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Simian_Prime posted:UA was in some ways designed to be the antithesis of oWoD and Call of Cthulhu - an occult horror setting with most of the super atural was the result of human error, not untouchable cosmic entities or vast, global conspiracies of monsters. To a generation of modern horror gamers who saw how bloated the oWoD was becoming, it felt like a breath of fresh air. The oft-repeated tagline for Unknown Armies is "You Did It," and to be honest it's still fairly novel in the realm of RPGs for a big occult mysteries and conspiracies game to be entirely humanocentric without any extradimensional aliens or vampire conspiracies secretly running things. Unknown Armies is, at the end of the day, a game about the weird, goofy, disturbing, and crazy poo poo people will do for power and the consequences thereof without any cthulhus or draculas for you to deflect your responsibility onto.
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Jun 15, 2015 03:23
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Count Chocula posted:Without clones, how can you play Orphan Black? I feel like there was definitely some influence. Also, Greg Stolze wrote for both.
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Jun 15, 2015 03:33
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God drat it I have one day off and then I spend pretty much all day posting Leviathan stuff. Someone send help, please. LEVIATHAN: THE TEMPEST TRANQUILITY AND TRANSFORMATION Transformation is a potent tool in the hands of the Tribe and it's also a problem for them. On the one hand, it shows that you have control over yourself and your identity. On the other, losing control of yourself and your emotions shows how little control you have. It's a double-edged sword for them. Case in point: every step along the path of transformation increases the power of your Vestige Channels and Birthright. You can outright do more with your powers when you're not human. On the other hand, the more transformed you are, the more your presence causes the lizard part of the human brain to freak the gently caress out. There are 7 stages of transformation and each stage has a benefit and drawback called Depths. Depth 0 is human, Depth 6 is full Leviathan form. There's no clear indicators of what each form should look like but there's suggestions.
It's not possible to transform higher than Depth 0 or lower than 6. A willing transformation requires 1 point of Ichor per degree of change and a Stamina+Sheol-degree of change roll. A dramatic failure inflicts one point of lethal as your skin crawls and your organs slam against each other. Failure just means that the Ichor is wasted. Success shifts you to the degree you want. Exceptional success returns 1 point of Ichor in addition to changing. Suggested modifiers: -2 to shifting to human with Tranquility 1 or 2, -1 to shifting to human with Tranquility 3 or 4, +1 to shifting to human with Tranquility 8+, +1 if in water up to your waist, +2 in a body of water like a lake or larger. An Outburst is a hard jostle to the stable nature of the Leviathan and are triggered by shock, distress, anxiety. They should happen but they shouldn't be frequent. Roll dice equal to your Tranquility to resist an Outburst. Outbursts are a threat to Tranquility at higher than 8 because they make a Leviathan question their control and situation and could result in a Tranquility check. A failure shifts you down a Depth or inflicts one Lethal if you had an Outbreak trying to shift lower or if you just can't change right now. A dramatic failure incapacitates you for 6-Stamina rounds and inflicts the rest of the failure state. Success keeps you as you are. An exceptional success might actually be beneficial to your Tranquility. Tranquility is explicitly not morality/karma. What is it? How together your poo poo is. All Leviathans have their inner Human in the middle of an arguing, demanding Beast and God vying for attention and control. Disruption and degeneration are what happens when the Leviathan is having trouble holding themselves together. When you're at Depth 3 or higher in the transformation, you roll one less die on a Degeneration and Derangement/Affliction roll. Dipping lower than 8 causes Derangements and Derangements cause Affliction. An Affliction is a physical sign of your instability that shows up in human form. Minor Afflictions are things like odd, bulging fish eyes, bleeding black blood, visible rippling gills. Major Afflictions are things like smelling like a swamp, one of your hands fusing into a claw or a dorsal hump. As a general rule, the following three types of things can cause Tranquility to slip. 1: acts of violence and bestial behavior. 2: abusing people through manipulation. 3: neglecting or denying a part of yourself by refusing to engage in your natures or by refusing to be in contact with people. Here's the Tranquility scale. PCs start at 7. Having 8+ gives you +1 to transforming back to human and +2 to resisting supernatural compulsion.
A Leviathan who ends up accepting the Beast over the others becomes a TYPHON. A Typhon cannot be reasoned with. They can never transform back to human again. All that's left is a violent, impulsive monster driven by atavistic desires. They don't care about any power they can't just reflexively used, they don't care about cultists. Most Typhons who escape getting put down by the Tribe lurk and linger in the remote parts of the world eating and killing. There are stats for Typhon and they make up an enemy class. A Leviathan who becomes a God more than the others did so because they abused their powers and their Beloved. They are called OPHION and they're bad news. See, they're scrambled and blown about by the Tempest like the Rift and they behave according to spur-of-the-moment whims and desires. Ophions are powerful but absolutely bug-gently caress nuts; their desires can contradict each other and paralyze them with indecision until one spontaneously disappears. Like Typhons, most Leviathans in the Tribe want to put Ophions down but it's harder. You can predict their desires based on their Strain and their Vices, but you don't always know where they are, they can still shift into a human form and they can build a cult in no time flat. And then there are the Leviathans who never transform, never lash out and desperately cling to the desire to be human again. Their fate is the saddest. A Leviathan who undergoes Tranquility loss by denying Beast and God is basically shutting down large parts of their own mind and personality through force of will. If it succeeds, then yeah. They're completely human again. But...they've intentionally lobotomized themselves trying to do so. A Leviathan who becomes human again will need help performing basic actions and they'll need someone to tend to them, having given up being a whole being to become a shell of themselves. It's not a pretty fate and I might change it, personally, but there really is no easy way out of being a Leviathan. NEXT TIME: Mechanics of The Wake, Weaknesses of the Tribe, Beloved and Aging. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 06:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:I feel like there was definitely some influence. Also, Greg Stolze wrote for both. John Tynes did most of the setting stuff, Greg Stolze did most of the mechanics, and they'll each tell you the other did all the hard parts.
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Jun 15, 2015 06:29
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pkfan2004 posted:I like the idea of an Arguemancer. You get charges by engaging in debate and arguments with other people. You get minor charges by winning or losing a real debate, significant charges by drawing it out for at least a hour or two and major charges if you can debate someone important in a topic, in public, to a standstill for a significant period of time. If it results in physical violence, you don't get any charges, it's not about getting someone to attack you. It's about getting the tension and the pressure raising and growing from neither side backing down, from the friction of locking horns. The paradox would be that your opinions don't matter, it's all about keeping the debate going by knowing the fallacies and knowing how to twist and shift words and points of view. There is actually the Irascimancy school in the Postmodern Magick sourcebook, an adept school based around anger, specifically generating anger from others directed at you. One of the easiest and safest ways to generate charges is just to get into pointless arguments with others. It's interesting, but the balance is terrible. Probably why it doesn't show up in the 2nd edition
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Jun 15, 2015 08:52
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quote:But yeah, one annoying tendency of new UA players is the desire to create an Adept/Avatar based on (Flavor of the Month). Very true, for every good fan-made Avatar/Adept there's two or three that are downright dumb or terrible...often missing the point of the character and/or completely failing at any sense of coherence or balance. oriongates fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 12:58
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Wizards Presents: Races and Classes Part 1 Part 2 Reconcepting the Elven Look - Richard Baker quote:If you take a look at the height and weight suggested for elf characters in previous editions, you’ll discover that elves used to be exceptionally small and slight. It wasn’t unusual for elf characters to stand only about 5 feet tall and weigh less than 90 pounds—about the size of a typical 12-year-old. It’s hard to make a character of that stature look slender and graceful without making him or her extremely small, at least as compared to the humans, dwarves, or half-orcs in the party. So we decided to revisit elf stature for the new edition. They've modified the Elves to be as tall as humans, if not slightly taller. They're physiques are now "athletic" instead of "emaciated". They're not and won't ever be linebackers, but they do have the long legs and light builds of born runners. quote:Elves retain several of their distinguishing characteristics from earlier editions, most notably the pointed ears and the slight tilt to the eyes. And elf males don’t have facial hair. They’re not effeminate; they’re lean, athletic, and clean-shaven. That’s not to say that elves never look feminine—female elves sure do! All Yesterday's Subraces - Richard Baker quote:Somewhere around twenty years ago, the D&D game started to suggest differences between varieties of dwarves and elves. Dwarves were either hill dwarves or mountain dwarves; elves were high elves, wood elves, or gray elves. Of course there were drow too, so that suggested the dwarves might have an evil variety, and thus the duergar were born. Different campaign worlds came up with unique and flavorful names for these varieties, and different abilities too, making even more subraces. So before we knew it, we had a game with a dozen varieties of elves and just as many dwarves—and most had different mechanical characteristics from the basic elf, turning one character race into a dozen.  The two archetypal Elf characters are the woodland Ranger and the highly-intelligent Wizard, so all of the other Elven subraces were just compressed to those two: Gray Elves, Sun Elves, Moon Elves are all just part-and-parcel of Eladrin, or High Elves, while Wild Elves, Wood Elves and Green Elves are just ... Elves. That trimmed it down to just those two, plus Drow, all three of which are very distinct from each other, especially with the Eladrin having their own unique noun now. The Evolution of the Halfling — Dave Noonan quote:In the beginning (which we’ll call 1974), halflings were hobbits straight out of Tolkien. The D&D game—at that point three booklets and some reference sheets costing $10—even called them hobbits. But then D&D made the transition from an overgrown hobby to a full-fledged product line, and by 1977 all the hobbits became halflings. A long quote, but I thought it was a good historical breakdown. I didn't even know that Kender was supposed to be a direct spin-off of Halflings. Richard Baker then talks about having to establish where the Halflings would live: Forests went to Elves, Mountains and Hills went to Dwarves, Humans lived in plains (and plains themselves are not very distinctive), so they chose swamps and marshes  There was apparently some apprehension with choosing that as their native terrain because of the generic perception of people that live in swamps as "backwater rubes", but Baker makes the case that it makes sense as far as swamps leading to rivers and coasts, which then follows that sea-travel is the road of choice for non-industrialized societies. As well, swamps are excellent defensive terrain, and fits the 4th Edition depiction of halflings as "waterfolk, skilled boatbuilders and fishers". Baker ends with a sidebar on halfling size: He acknowledges that their depiction in 3rd Edition as 3 foot, 35 pound humanoids was waaay too small, as that's about the size of a preschooler. The team decided to let adult halflings grow to about 4 feet and 65 pounds. That's still significantly smaller than a human, since the target was "the size of 9- or 10-year old kids", but it's supposed to be much more believable now. Tieflings - Bruce Cordell Since they're one of the new races of this Edition, I'm going to include a quote about their origins:  quote:Sundered from humanity by their ancestors’ overweening ego, tieflings are a race whose bloodline stems from an infernal bargain made nearly a millennia ago. Promotion - Chris Perkins quote:Tieflings trace their origins back to the 2nd Edition PLANESCAPE® Campaign Setting. With their horns, tails, and wicked tongues, tieflings quickly became the exotic “bad boys” and “bad girls” of the Outer Planes. Sly, sexy, and a little sinister, they afforded D&D players a chance to flirt with the dark side without actually crossing the line into full-blown evil. Why play Drizzt when you could play the great-grandson of a pit fiend? Chris continues to talk about the "cultural appearance" of Tieflings. They adopt Human culture and garb as a means of blending in, but they also try to get away with "infernal-wear" whenever they can. For Tieflings low on the totem pole, it might just be a hellsteel dagger that to a human just looks like a twisted shard of metal, but higher-level Tieflings will often shed all pretense of wanting to fit in and will don outfits specially tailored to show off demonic origins once they're powerful enough to not need to be bashful.  It's Good to be Bad - James Wyatt quote:Playing a tiefling (or a warlock, or a drow or half-orc, or any other “bad boy” of D&D) is different from playing an evil character. Part of the appeal of playing a tiefling is that being a hero is both more challenging and more dramatic when you’re overcoming the weight of heritage and stereotype to do it. If Han Solo had burst into the room to save Luke from the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi, it would have felt contrived. But the fact that Darth Vader, the great villain of the trilogy, sacrificed himself to save his son—that was powerful. Drizzt Do’Urden is a compelling hero because of the evil society he grew up in, the fear and prejudice he faces on the surface world, and the hatred the other drow of Menzoberranzan still hold for him. Bruce then goes on to describe a design concept for racial ability progression: at first level, a player would choose a single minor ability out of a list, that would grant some small benefit. As the character grew in levels, they would get to choose more traits and even feats, but the initial and succeeding selections would serve as a sort of tree that would chain to some choice while also locking out others. He then ends with a disclosure that this idea had to be refined over three drafts as being overcomplicated. Other Races: Celestials - Rob Heinsoo quote:I won’t lie: making Good-associated creatures as exciting as their Evil-curious counterparts is a challenge. I call the challenge the “Ave Maria” problem, a reference to Walt Disney’s original Fantasia, a wonderful animated film that ended with musical meditations on Evil and Good. Evil got Night on Bald Mountain, accompanied by an evil-storm orchestrated by a whip-wielding demon. Good followed up with barely animated candle-bearing keepers of the faith proceeding across the screen singing Ave Maria. It’s a sweet piece of music, and it certainly speaks to the possibilities of Good, but the animation just didn’t hold a candle to lightning storms on Bald Mountain. He then goes on to explain how he had to campaign to drop the term "aasimar" completely and just go with Celestials instead. Other Races: Drow - Chris Sims quote:Elves. Lolth. Spiders. Underdark. Drow are iconic in the D&D game, and we didn’t fix what wasn’t broken. Drow have changed only to fit into the world of the new edition, evolving in ways that make them more accessible as characters and villains. Other Races: The Trouble with Gnomes - Matt Sernett quote:Gnomes lack a strong position in D&D. If you ask someone to name the important races in the world of D&D, gnomes always seem to come in last. They’re elf-dwarf-halflings—a strange mixture of the three with little to call their own besides being pranksters. DRAGONLANCE presented an iconic image of the gnome, but the concept of tinker gnomes and their crazy machines has now been thoroughly used by games such as World of Warcraft, and many D&D players dislike the technological element that version of the gnome brings to the game. World of Warcraft namedrop alert! Sernett actually ends this section by acknowledging that they haven't actually decided yet. They considered making the Deep Gnome or the Forest Gnome as the standard Gnome, but that seemed to still have the same problem, except more exaggerated. The Whisper Gnomes from Races of Stone were advisors to Elves, so that wasn't a very good idea either since it just continued to make the race play second-fiddle to another. Finally, they thought about taking the Whisper Gnome idea and putting a darker spin on it: the Gnomes are Feywild fugitives that were former servants to Evil Fey. They weren't too hot on the idea either as being too distant from the Gnomes' roots. As a sidebar, I'm going to lift a passage from the PHB 2 to see what they had eventually decided upon: quote:In the Feywild, the best way for a small creature to survive is to be overlooked. While suffering in servitude to the fomorian tyrants of the Feydark, gnomes learned to hide, to mislead, and to deflect—and by these means, to survive. The same talents sustain them still, allowing them to prosper in a world filled with creatures much larger and far more dangerous than they are. So ... actually fairly close to the last idea Sernett wrote in the preview, but with a somewhat more hopeful tone: they're escaped former slaves, rather than actively working for the Evil Fey. Other Races: Warforged - James Wyatt quote:People are often inclined to play warforged as unfeeling robots, but that’s not how I see them at all. They’re living creatures, and part of living is emotion, attachment, grief, and love. They might have trouble expressing their emotions because of their blank, almost featureless faces, but to my mind, at least, they feel them just as strongly as humans do. Fixing Level Adjustment - Richard Baker Baker outright says that they were not happy with the concept of level adjustment. While it made sense from a design standpoint, it was difficult for inexperienced players to understand. Further, it was "absolute poison" to low-level characters and to any kind of spellcaster. It was maybe okay to compare a level 14 Human Fighter and a level 13 Genasi Fighter, [/i]"but taking a one-level hit on spell progression was just so bad for spellcasters that players quickly learned to not create Genasi wizards and sorcerers."[i] Dumping level adjustment was a top priority for 4th Edition, and Baker describes a two-pronged approach: 1. Make the basic races more powerful - if even a Human has enough of a racial modifier to be the equivalent of a "+1" or "+2 level adjustment" race, then it's easy to justify giving the more esoteric races the abilities and powers they need to match their in-universe lore. 2. Move the more powerful racial abilities to higher levels quote:everyone knows that drow can levitate and cast darkness. But they don’t have to automatically be able to do it at 1st level, do they? Now you decide if you’re playing a drow whether or not those abilities are worth a feat pick (and presumably many or most NPC drow make exactly that choice). And that ends the section on Races Next up: Classes
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Jun 15, 2015 13:52
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So I just finished writing up this UA Adept School. How'd I do? Any suggestions? The Motor-Shaman
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Jun 15, 2015 15:37
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The "taboo vs charging" seems a bit off. The charging method is somewhat lengthy (requiring about 20-30 minutes per charge if you're just driving along highways) and is somewhat situationally limited. The taboo on the other hand is extremely harsh. There's quite a few places where actually getting a parking space that close to any given building is quite tough and/or it encourages you to pop in and out of buildings periodically to reset your distance. Not to mention simply being very, very limiting on your general actions. Notably most adepts don't have taboos that force them to sit out on adventures or severely limit their options day to day. Even dipsomancers can do most anything so long as they have a concealed flask on them. My suggestion: Taboo: a better taboo would probably be taking care of your chosen vehicle: you void taboo if you badly damage or wreck your car and keep your vehicle in pristine condition. Alternatively going a certain amount of time (maybe 12 hours?) without driving. Keep in mind that you can use spells to prevent yourself from breaking taboo so using magick to preserve your car in dangerous situations is totally fine. Minor Charges: This could work for the most part. Significant charges: This is both a bit too much and too little. In most cities I don't imagine it's that easy to rack up 1000 people's attention without getting into a high-speed police chase. Conversely actually being employed at something like a race track makes it easy to rack up massive quantities of significant charges, not just because you race regularly but because of the ease of getting multiple charges at a time (which is generally a no-no. very few adepts can get multiple of any charges at a single "sitting"). Personally, I'd say a better charging ritual for a car-based adept would be speed. How about you get a significant charge for going faster than 100 mph for at least x amount of time. Possible to do in the right circumstances (at night in remote roads) but potentially dangerous/illegal to do in most situations.
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Jun 15, 2015 15:56
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oriongates posted:The "taboo vs charging" seems a bit off. The charging method is somewhat lengthy (requiring about 20-30 minutes per charge if you're just driving along highways) and is somewhat situationally limited. The taboo on the other hand is extremely harsh. There's quite a few places where actually getting a parking space that close to any given building is quite tough and/or it encourages you to pop in and out of buildings periodically to reset your distance. Not to mention simply being very, very limiting on your general actions. Notably most adepts don't have taboos that force them to sit out on adventures or severely limit their options day to day. Even dipsomancers can do most anything so long as they have a concealed flask on them. The idea with the charging is that it encourages riskier driving. By saying "one hour or 30 miles, whichever comes first", it presents the Motor-Shaman with a temptation to drive faster because it racks up charges quicker as the miles count down. I knew that it needed fine tuning, of course, but I'm fond of the idea of characters like this getting hoisted by their own petards because they can't resist going for more charges when it would be both easier and safer to get them more steadily. For the Taboo, my goal was to emphasize the Driving aspect rather than purely car fetishizing, but by attaching their taboo to their vehicle it introduces a new tension, which is that they build charges by driving recklessly, but in doing so they endanger the very tools they need to accomplish the task (which works if you factor in their origin as Entropomancers). I'll work on the Significant charges some. Again the notion sort of comes from a combination of Entropomancy (involving people in your Charging ritual) and Urbanomancy (the more people involved, the better), but I may not have thought it through fully. EDIT: Actually driving fast to build Significant charges makes a lot more sense because the idea behind Motor-Shamanism should be that Magick comes from one's connection between himself, his vehicle and the road, not with the people around him. Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 16:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:There was apparently some apprehension with choosing that as their native terrain because of the generic perception of people that live in swamps as "backwater rubes", but Baker makes the case that it makes sense as far as swamps leading to rivers and coasts, which then follows that sea-travel is the road of choice for non-industrialized societies. As well, swamps are excellent defensive terrain, and fits the 4th Edition depiction of halflings as "waterfolk, skilled boatbuilders and fishers". Wow I don't think I noticed anything about halflings living near swamps in the PHB, did that even make it? I know Celestial didn't, they ended up going with the way cooler Deva. Honestly I absorbed the Eberron halfling into anything I do immediately after I read it. Nomadic tribes wandering a Cretaceous savannah living in houses built on the backs of slow moving dinosaurs? Best halfling.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:17
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theironjef posted:Wow I don't think I noticed anything about halflings living near swamps in the PHB, did that even make it? IIRC "Swamps" became "rivers" in the final product. theironjef posted:Honestly I absorbed the Eberron halfling into anything I do immediately after I read it. Nomadic tribes wandering a Cretaceous savannah living in houses built on the backs of slow moving dinosaurs? Best halfling. Eberron has pretty much the best take on most fantasy races, TBH.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:25
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theironjef posted:Wow I don't think I noticed anything about halflings living near swamps in the PHB, did that even make it? I know Celestial didn't, they ended up going with the way cooler Deva. From the PHB 1: quote:Halflings are a small race known for their resourcefulness, quick wits, and steady nerves. They are a nomadic folk who roam waterways and marshlands. No people travel farther or see more of what happens in the world than halflings. Not that I blame you for not noticing - I think most RPG players have such a well-built preconceived notion of the standard fantasy races that we wouldn't read through them unless we're in the can or it's a particularly cool exploration of the concept.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:39
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Mortal Remains They can be anyone. It's not quick that you start to suspect someone's been replaced by a faerie. A kid undergoes radical personality change. Your husband vanishes for a few days and returns with no real explanation. A coworker gets into an accident and suffers amnesia despite no head injury. It happens all the time, all over the world. A suicide victim jumps to her death, but all they find is a pile of debris where the body should be. Soimeone disappears into a doorway that leads to dead end. Your friend is shot and bleeds tree sap, not blood. They seem so normal - they seem like everyone else. But they aren't. They might be victims of alien imprisonment, too horrible to believe. They might be simulations of the real person, left behind to cover some mystical crime, or perhaps twisted remnants broken by inhuman influence. Or maybe they're made of pure nightmare, wearing human skin. There's no way to tell if someone is who - or what - they say they're human. Hell, some of them believe the lie. Fairy tales are the first exposure most people have to the supernatural, but most never realize it. An unlucky few learn, later, that those stories were cautionary tales and protection. Hunters know these creatures exist. They can appear however they desire - beautiful, ugly or entirely human. But they aren't. No matter how desperate or helpful or ordinary they seem, they are alien, living by the rules of another world - the rules of the fairy tales. Never leave the path. Don't eat what is offered. Never, ever make a bargain with them. These Changelings were born human, many think they still are human, but they aren't. Something kidnapped them, seduced them away or stole their freedom by blackmail. They were taken to an alien world where the rules of our reality no longer applied. They were altered, modified, twisted into whatever suited their keepers. Somehow, they escaped, and now, they are no longer human, hidden only by a thin veil, a Mask. It sounds implausible, but there are perhaps tens of thousands of these creatures around the world. You might meet one and never know, so long as they're still sane enough to pretend at humanity. But their sanity is often decaying, and keeping up appearances is never easy for them. Sometimes, you can see their true nature. We get a brief overview of the Seemings and the concept of freeholds and courts, which are generally contradictory and chaotic rather than a steady foundation, and which are often based around emotional archetypes and meaningless titles. All Changelings are desperate, all of them are victims of supernatural forces of immense power. They are defined by their Durances, the experience that broke them and stole everything they were. But all of them, also, have escaped, returned to humanity somehow. Their experience has maddened them all, as they try to reconcile their past and the present. The older, more potent ones are likely to be the most insane. Some pretend at lucidity, but it is a pretense and no mistake. You might believe them reasonable and moral...until you say the wrong word and trigger their insanity. Then, all bets are off. It doesn't matter how they became what they are - their human facade is an illusion, and they are all dangerous as a result. Some of them will do anything to avoid returning to Arcadia, too - including selling others to the fate they escaped. Privateers, they're called. And the only thing worse, say the Lost, are loyalists - those who continue to serve the 'True Fae' even after their release. The True Fae are those beings that kept the Lost in Arcadia. The Fair Folk, the Kindly Ones. Faeries. They're not people - not at all. They are a living self-image, an embodiment of their own imaginations, with no filter or dilution. They inspire archetypes - they aren't born of them or mimicking them. They each rule a mad realm, and collectively, those realms are Arcadia. In their homes, they are practically omnipotent. Outside it, they are weaker - still monstrously powerful, but not gods. When they walk among humans, though, they are still as powerful as anything you might meet. However, they prefer not to come to our world, where they are weaker, and instead rely on their minions to act as their hands here. Those are the ones you're most likely to run into. Some of those minions are the simulacra known as the fetches - things that take on the lives of those the fae kidnap. They are built of trash, sticks and string. They look and feel human in all ways...until they die. They are no more human than the Lost themselves, and on death, they revert to their components. But they believe themselves to be the people they replace. Most Lost will happily destroy the fetches holding their old lives - and that'll get them charged for murder, even without a body. Indeed, it may well get a hunter on their trail. Killing a fetch draws attention - and even without it, the Lost can't go back easily to their old lives. Fetches are generally better at being the people they used to be than they are, and their families are unlikely to believe their stories. Within the Hedge - the term used for the land that seperates our world from Arcadia - there are countless other faeries, hobgoblins and hedgebeasts. They may form entire ivllages or roma in packs, unfettered by the laws of humanity. They eat, live, breathe, breed and die in their strange world, some created by magic and some warped from humans caught in the Hedge. They are strange, occasionally hostile and often thieves. Hunters rarely run into them - they don't usually leave the Hedge - but if you go into there, well, you're at their mercy. The Hedge itself is a labyrinth, a buffer zone that mirrors the plants and animals of the world it touches, but like a carnival mirror. You might be able to use the Hedge to cross a distance of a thousand miles in an hour, but it'll be a journey full of dangerous beasts and unnatural terrain - to say nothing of the smarter things you might meet. It's more than any sane human would want to deal with. Plus, the faeries and some of the hobgoblins or Lost can warp the Hedge to their will, making the path change under your feet. Arcadia itself is somewhere you should never, ever go. You'll not get in without the Fae knowing and allowing it, and escape is practically impossible without the extreme luck that each Changeling has had. Changelings hide their true appearance from mortal eyes most of the time. They can enter the Hedge via any open doorway, window or gate - any opening, really. They can do the same to exit the Hedge through any spot that has ever been used to enter it. They may incite emotional extremes in people, which they apparently feed on. They can often see and enter dreams, and are masters of back-hgnded blessings and curses in disguise. Ashwood Abbey are more likely to talk to Changelings than hun them - if they even notice they exist. There's exceptions, of course - a particularly monstrous changeling might prove able prey, after all, and some might find it interesting to see how long a thing made of stone or steel can survive before they break. But other changelings might well be suppliers of strange drugs - fae potions, exotic foods. In fact, some parts of Lost society overlap somewhat with the Ashwood mentality, focusing on desire and passion. The Abbey does love hunting in the Hedge, when they find out it exists, though. It's full of strange creatures to kill, and you don't even have to clean up after. The cops won't be investigating a hobgoblin's death, after all. If a Lost were to open the doors to the Hedge for them, they could probably write their own check...at least until the Abbey started to wonder exactly how they were doing it, anyway. The Long Night are more concerned with the True Fae than Changelings. They have drawn a correlation between the Nephilim of the Bible and the True Fae, and they believe that the fae are a race of fallen angels corrupting humanity. They see the Hedge as an infernal place, populated by imps and demons. Most of them would no more enter it than willingly walk into Hell. They believe the thorns literally tear away the souls of those that enter, leaving them corruptible. This manifests in Changelings' appearances and powers. The stronger their powers, the more likely they cannot be redeemed - indeed, they may be one of the Nephilim themselves. Because they can't really agree on what to do with Changelings, they may try to test them to see how human they still are. Still, they do agree that the most potent can't be redeemed any more - the power is proof that they gave up their souls and must be put down. The Loyalists of Thule, officially, deny the existence of faeries. They believe the Lost are a dangerous, potentially contagious supernatural race, and standing orders are to not investigate them directly, but to pass the information up the chain, on pain of reprimand or censure, under a mandate referred to as the Alpdruck Errata. The reason is simple: The True Fae are ancient gods, and Arcadia is the Ultimate Source. Or, at least, that's what the Three Old Men are afraid of. In their earliest searches, see, they pored over folklore and myth, and found that every culture had tales of a race that came before - the fae. Terrified that someone else might find that and spark a genocide, the Loyalists decided to just forbid their members from researching it. They have created a set of lies about the Lost, claiming htey're a potentially infectious threat and insisting that all investigations be handled by specialized (and nonexistent) teams. It hasn't really worked. Even with the Alpdruck Errata in place, it's impossible to ensure that a loose group of scholars won't study the topic. Still, the Old Men can't see the ineffectuality of their current path. In time, once they die, the prohibition will likely fade. And then, it will be time for a new generation to decide how to deal with the fae. Network Zero does not officially know about the Lost group called Radio Free Fae, but they've run into each other, whether they know it or not. When RFF needs toe share information about privateers or Lost gone rogue, they can rely on Netzo to signal boost without realizing it. And, well, the Lost have been caught on Network Zero camera far more than most of them would like to admit. You can't exactly open doors to the Hedge in the middle of city without being seen by someone - or something, with all these security cameras and cell phones around. And once it's caught, it gets shown on the internet. Most of the time, though, it's the door and the Hedge beyond that Network Zero is interested in, rather than the human-looking guy opening it. Few of them know enough to link the doormakers to Changelings, but what they do understand is that the world beyond the door is really, really interesting. The Lost are of little interest to Null Mysteriis - they don't do anything that scientists are likely to notice, and their abilities are easily rationalized. Even if a changeling tries to explain, they're likely to extrapolate their own answers. The more ephemeral powers of the Lost are not tangible enough for them to even notice. Most fae items also don't draw their interest. When firsthand reports come in, they often write them off as easily explained and claim that changelings are suffering paranoid delusions or mobs were exposed to mass hallucinogens. However, there are a few obsessed researchers, often folklore historians, who set up energy meters and kirlian cameras at sacred sites in order to discover why they've been associated with faeries for centuries while other sacred sites have not. Within Null Mysteriis, perhaps the greatest topic of conjecture is whether or not changeligns can move from one site to another. There's a lot of speculation amongst a certain subset about the nature of the Hedge and who can alter it. Theories range from mass hypnosis and hallucination to the possibility that Hedge gates are, in fact, wormholes as proposed by German mathematician Hermann Weyl in 1921. The Union don't bother with theory or legend. They care about the now. This is bad for the Lost - they're likely to notice the presence of a local freehold more than anyone else, and that tends to develop when there's a steady stream of emotionally unstable Lost showing up, which means there's a bunch of weirdos appearing in the Union's back yard. Plus, freeholds also happen where people start to disappear - the Lost usually return to their homes when they escape, you see. People go missing or change, when replaced by a fetch, and that draws Union attention. However, the Lost can be good neighbors, by monster standards. They don't drink blood and aren't prone to murderous rage. They have an intricate social hierarchy, and when they start to go mad, they police their own. As long as they're not hurting the locals or selling people to the True Fae, the Union may not have a beef - at least until the fae start making deals. However, Lost life is never stable for long. They try to prevent it, but their sanity does slip. The True Fae do kidnap people. Conflict happens. And when a fight between changeligns gets Union attention, odds are they aren't going to bother finding out who the good guys and bad guys are if the community is at risk. Politics and deniability don't matter when a Union cell is protecting its neighborhood, and if they have to, they will raze the entire goddamn freehold to keep people safe. Next time: Conspiring with faeries.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:44
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Strange Matter posted:So I just finished writing up this UA Adept School. How'd I do? Any suggestions? I'd argue being driven by someone else would be a fine taboo. It reinforces that the connection is between you, your car, and the road, and how anything coming between you and that communion is unacceptable. It's generally not super limiting but it has its downsides, and God help you if you get hurt and need to be driven anywhere, because you're defenseless until you can get out and on the road again.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:11
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Strange Matter posted:So I just finished writing up this UA Adept School. How'd I do? Any suggestions? I think the check for the Motor-Shaman's car being destroyed should be a Self check, rather than a Violence check, to reflect the extent to which the Motor-Shaman identifies with their car.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:59
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I'd argue being driven by someone else would be a fine taboo. It reinforces that the connection is between you, your car, and the road, and how anything coming between you and that communion is unacceptable. It's generally not super limiting but it has its downsides, and God help you if you get hurt and need to be driven anywhere, because you're defenseless until you can get out and on the road again. I think this actually makes a lot of sense. It hits the right balance between "doesn't actually come up that often" and "can still screw you" while being thematically appropriate. No public transport, no riding shotgun. No ambulances, etc.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:Wizards Presents: Races and Classes This is literally an idea that they were patting themselves on the back for with 5E, and that makes me angry.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:15
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Excellent suggestions folks. Here's my revisions for the Motor-Shaman:quote:Paradox: You believe that your vehicle bring freedom, yet in devoting your life and soul to the road you are shackling yourself to an unfeeling mass of steel and plastic, without which you are powerless. quote:Generate a Significant Charge: Drive a vehicle without heeding any rules of the road for thirty minutes or 10 miles, whichever comes first. Break the speed limit, change lanes without signalling, run red lights and stop signs, and don’t for any reason pull over for the cops. You are the unfettered master of the road, not the other way around. If you exit your vehicle or stop moving for more than thirty seconds, the charge fails. The time/distance on the Significant Charge is something I just kind of threw together and could be adjusted, of course. It also makes it hard if not impossible for Motor-Shaman to build charges by being a professional racecar driver, because there are far fewer rules to break compared to just driving through downtown Chicago. Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 18:22
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quote:Generate a Significant Charge: Drive a vehicle without heeding any rules of the road for thirty minutes or 10 miles, whichever comes first. Break the speed limit, change lanes without signalling, run red lights and stop signs, and don’t for any reason pull over for the cops. You are the unfettered master of the road, not the other way around. If you exit your vehicle or stop moving for more than thirty seconds, the charge fails. The Dead Kennedys' "Buzzbomb" just started playing in my head.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:45
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There's probably at least a few Motor-shamans that have developed an... unhealthy relationship with their vehicles, along the lines of the movie "Crash" (the one based on the Ballard book, not the crappy Oscar-bait after-school special)
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Jun 15, 2015 18:46
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And then I'm thinking of the Bean Bandit from Gunsmith Cats
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Jun 15, 2015 19:55
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Mortal Remains The Aegis Kai Doru primarily care about changelings in the context of getting new relics. If a Lost is willing to sell or trade, that's great. If not, there's trouble coming. The Aegis who steal relics rarely ask politely, as it is, after all, a sacred duty. Few changelings are likely to give up any protective item anyway, and that leads to conflict. It can easily swell up to larger scales, too, as hunter cells and Lost groups start making alliances. And if that brings in more items to steal, well, that just sweetens the pot. The entire thing changes when the Aegis learn that some changelings can make relics. At that point, kidnapping and slavery, while certainly not policy, come on the table for the greedier hunters. The Aegis would not approve, but it's hard to police. And some Aegis hunters view what the Lost do as witchcraft, and will go after them for that, especially if it means getting a relic in the bargain. The human Mask may also make them a target as shapeshifters, for the more militant Aegis. The Hedge is a mystery to the Aegis for now, but laybrinths are sacred to them, and if they discovered the Hedge in large numbers, they would find it wondrous and perhaps holy. Which is not to say they are entirely unaware. They just treat keys to the hedge as special relics, like the Silver Key (2 dots). Legend has it that if, at sunset on midsummer's eve, a young boy puts a warm, stolen hen's egg into the hole of a stone well, the fae wil lcome for it and leave behind a silver key that enters their realm. These keys are then handed down through families. They appear to be antique and tarnished silver skeleton keys with oval heads. When used to trace the edges of any door, window or gate, they open a path to the Hedge. They work only for enturely non-supernatural humans and require an act of will. The door will remain open for a minute, regardless of what passes through it. Once it closes, that key can never again be used on that doorway. It can also exit from the Hedge to any door in the mortal world, with the same single-use restriction. The Ascending Ones rarely hunt Changelings and in fact may well meet them without ever knowing it. They are far more opposed to the True Fae, though fighting them is often fatal - and while it will bring fame and respect among the Lost, that can just bring more trouble from the Keepers. More commonly, they'll end up buying ingredients from changelings for potions or elixirs, as changelings excel at finding exotic materials. Fae produce can only be grown in the Hedge, which makes the taks dangerous, but lucrative. Unfortunately, occasionally Lost body parts are also valuable for elixirs, and negotiating for blood, bile or brain matter is difficult, to say the least - and difficult also to take by force. The Hound Mark (1 or 3 dots) is an elixir that strips away the changeling Mask. It's a viscous green liquid that tastes of anise and lichen, with small and crunchy granules in it. Ecstasy is apparently involved in its brewing. The more potent version works on any hidden monster, but the less on only fae. Once consumed, it grants the ability to perceive creatures immediately nearby for what they are - perhaps by smell, or by a glowing aura or heat whispers. Rarely, it can even allow you to spot them when they're invisible. The Cheiron Group was not entirely sure, for a time, that the Lost existed, or what htey were. The Mask protected them from detection. Fetches, however, were much easier to spot due to reverting to inanimate material on death, and many early experiments were actually done on fetches rather than changelings. Because of their diversity, it has taken Cheiron centuries to suspect that different Seemings are all the same type of creature, and even now, there are misdesignated changelings held captive by Cheiron. Recently, they have discovered the Lost ability to enter dreams and communicate with them - around the 70s is recent. They've spent a long time and a lot of money perfecting a temporary way for their agents to use that power. Organic components from hedgebeasts and hobgoblins are also quite valuable, though it's unclear where they get such a steady supply to work with. The Cranial Cortex Augmentation (4 dots) involves taking thin tissue slices fro mthe extrastriate visual area of a changeling cortex and then layering them into an agent's brain. That gives the temporary ability to see, enter and manipulate dreams. This involves brain surgery, usually leaves scars and needs the changeling to possess those powers at a relatively high level of skill. A single donor could give enough tissue for a dozen agents, as only a thin slice of neural material is needed, but the removal of the brain matter is always a fatal process. The augmentation also only lasts for a few weeks before the brain absorbs the new material entirely, and subsequent augmentations have a cumulative 10% chance of outright failure. Once an operation fails, no further augmentation operations will ever succeed for you. The Lucifuge mostly ignore changelings unless they mistake them for angels or demons. They know that the Hedge is not Hell, and the Lady of Milan is quick to remind people to focus on the forces of evil, not the fae. With one exception: True Fae. The Keepers are something else entirely, amoral and nearly omnipotent. It's not hard to start wondering where they fit in the grand design. The Lucifuge herself seems to have a personal interest in the True Fae as well, and some say she is one of them, not a demon at all. The Lucifuge may call on the supernatural aura of the infernal, the Unholy Aura. The fae, even the Lost, recognize a resonance in that aura similar to that of the True Fae, making them especially vulnerable, and the effects of the aura are doubled against any fae that is not a True Fae. It grants a great social bonus against those affected. The True Fae are likely to recognize the aura as similar to their own but grant no bonus for it beyond getting their interest. (Which isn't much of a bonus.) The Malleus rarely target Changelings unless they resemble vampires. They have no official stance on the fae whatsoever, but many Catholic regions do have strong cultural backgrounds with fairies. These fairy tales may or may not actually prepare you for interaction with the Lost, but it sure can be...interesting, when that's all you have to go on. The Malleus certainly doesn't provide any further education. Saint Collen was a Welsh monk who protected his flock from evil, and so the Malleus use Saint Collen's Clarity. Legend has it he was invited to dine with the fairies and refused them three times before accepting. He was led to their king and promised great delights, but he knew that eating would doom him to slavery, so he prayed for protection and sprinkled holy water on things, revealing the illusions for the nothingness they were. Use of this Benediction immunizes the user to any supernatural power that would affect the senses. The invisible is visible, fae Masks are ripped away, glamours look and feel exactly as their true nature is. The illusions still exist - you just see through them entirely for a time. Task Force: VALKYRIE has had contact with the fae, but mostly positive contact. They don't see the Lost, as a collective, as a threat to humanity. TWILIGHT has operatives in contact with freeholds across the globe, often providing them with false IDs or resources that they can't get normally. It's easy to make contacts and allies by doing that for a freehold. FORT generally focuses more on fae magic than changelings, and it's rumored that entire cells have been assigned to the Hedge and Arcadia, though no official files exist on Arcadia at all. FORt is also responsible for trapping and containing hedgebeasts that escape the Hedge, but that's not usually easy, since they can go back so easily. ADAMSKI agents often work alongside Radio Free Fae, though neither group usually realizes the others are more than crackpots. Often, however, one group will provide tips to the other to 'prove' evidence is a hoax, while the other ensures the 'proof' is well publicized. TFV has developed Compound Rounds (1 to 5 dots) after realizing that while most monsters have a physical vulnerability to some common substance, it's never easy to know which one you need. They incorporate trace ements of the most commonly dangerous elements to supernatural beings, all in one bullet. Cold iron, gold, silver, salt, certain wood slivers, break-on-impact globules of holy water, communion wafer crumbs, mustard seed, rose petals, wolfsbane, clovers, St. John's Wort. These bullets deal lethal damage to any supernatural creature, even if they would not normally take lethal from bullets, and they get 9-again against all monsters. They don't, however, provide enough of any one material to deal agg to anything. No chip needed to use 'em, either! After that, we get some sample Changelings. Tensare Custos is an old, very potent ice elemental who thinks of himself as a force of nature that targets those that abuse women. It does not have a gender, really, as it no longer thinks of itself as human. It appears as an older man, but under the skin it is made entirely of ice and snow in vaguely humanoid form. It remembers nothing of its human life. Pearl Lawrence, on the other hand, was a black woman who was a kindly librarian and mother before she was kidnapped and forced to research terrible things, day in and day out. She managed to escape by following trails of news about her own life, including the birth of her grandchild and the death of her estranged husband, freeing herself of her bonds. She was born nearly 80 years ago, but appears to be in her mid-30s. Beneath the mask, though, all that age is there, and she looks like she's made of paper and drawings. Last is Jackson "Boss" Barrow, a fat man from the 20s who loved t o drink and eat. He was forced by the Fae to eat and eat and eat and eat, then get butchered and be eaten himself, over and over. He's started to have nightmares of that experience, and he's terrified that he'll be taken back, though he escaped nearly 20 years ago. He makes his living as a black market dealer in...well, anything. Next time: Ghostwalkers.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:59
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Night10194 posted:No, the central taboo has to be admitting you're wrong, to get a properly mentally broken and unpleasant Adept. Night10194 posted:This is probably true enough. I was just trying to think in terms of how the Adepts all tend to have incredibly destructive and inconvenient taboos, and a person who destroys their social interactions to derive power from pointless social conflict felt about right. occamsnailfile posted:Man, I can barely stand parts of the internet because of people who are already like this, I would not want one at my table even if that is totally a legit Adept type. Night10194 posted:Honestly, a lot of UA feels like 'This is a neat idea that wouldn't be any fun to play with'. Kellsterik posted:It draws a lot on the novels and short stories of Tim Powers in particular, but trust me, it's a lot of fun in play especially if your group likes horror gaming assumptions like frequent character death and going crazy. I think some of the way it's discussed and theorycrafted online, as always, gives a different idea than actual play.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:24
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The general impression I get for a non-Adept game is that you run into a situation with an adept or weirdness that's functional enough to actually cause problems and have to deal with it and figure out what the hell it is.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:30
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I've played two games of UA, and overall the game works best when everyone is kind of following their own course. The first game I played had everyone playing average joes who had only the very slimmest perspective into the Underground, and that played fairly normally as you'd expect. In the second game, I played a Personamancer, another guy played an Avatar and a third guy basically just knew ritual magic and had general street smarts. Since I was the only Adept I was the only one who needed to worry about building charges and avoiding Taboos in any serious manner. When the game is played that way, an Adept's obsession is a great storytelling tool because it promotes tension between the characters. In both games, interparty relations oscillated strongly between cooperation and extreme paranoia and mutual distrust. What was significant about the second game is that none of the characters really knew what the others were capable of, nor how deep we were into things. Since I was an Adept I was obviously the most distrusted, to the point where one of the players was much more afraid of what I was capable of than what the actual antagonists were trying to pull, which was fun. I can't really fathom how a game where everyone is on the same foot magickally speaking would work. As has been said, if half the game is spent chasing after Charges then the party breaks up. But a clever GM combined with a well constructed and balanced party can create some really interesting experiences.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:37
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