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It is, but it's also the best take on fighting styles I've ever seen in a swashbuckling game.
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Apr 17, 2016 00:53
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I think it's this barebones so that people can easily make their own trees. The best template is no template at all.
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Apr 17, 2016 01:02
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God damnit. I'm hovering over buying the PDF for that right now. That combat system sounds slick as hell.
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Apr 17, 2016 06:27
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We haven't seen the default setting for Spellbound Kingdoms yet, but the conventions presented through the rules don't seem like Glorantha levels of fantastical meta weirdness to me. There are narrative rules that measure the importance of drive and willpower, and important characters have plot armour, but it looks like nothing that would be out of place for playing Lord of the Rings.
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Apr 17, 2016 06:30
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Halloween Jack posted:We haven't seen the default setting for Spellbound Kingdoms yet, but the conventions presented through the rules don't seem like Glorantha levels of fantastical meta weirdness to me. There are narrative rules that measure the importance of drive and willpower, and important characters have plot armour, but it looks like nothing that would be out of place for playing Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings doesn't have those exist in the setting. People in Spellbound Kingdoms know that if you love someone/thing enough you'll become immortal. Its an established part of the worldbuilding, or at least thats what I got from what we've seen so far.
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Apr 17, 2016 08:06
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mcclay posted:Lord of the Rings doesn't have those exist in the setting. People in Spellbound Kingdoms know that if you love someone/thing enough you'll become immortal. Its an established part of the worldbuilding, or at least thats what I got from what we've seen so far. Yeah. It seems like in Spellbound Kingdoms, it makes perfect rational sense for a head of state to murder people to ensure that he and his closest advisers are happily in love, because their love-lives are a vital matter of national security.
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Apr 17, 2016 08:18
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mcclay posted:Lord of the Rings doesn't have those exist in the setting. People in Spellbound Kingdoms know that if you love someone/thing enough you'll become immortal. Its an established part of the worldbuilding, or at least thats what I got from what we've seen so far. This isn't mathematically realistic but it feels dramatically realistic, if that makes sense. It seems to accord with how a lot of stories go, where either our heroes have to take down the bad guy's evil bosses and bust up his drug factory before they can challenge him, or the bad guys go after the heroes' allies and homes or even their links amongst themselves.
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Apr 17, 2016 08:19
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For some reason I keep thinking of Persona's Social Links. And Undertale.
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Apr 17, 2016 08:31
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 Pathfinder Bestiary 2: Dinosaurs to Elementals  Dinosaurs Allosaurus (CR 7 Huge Animal) After its discovery in 1877, Allosaurus briefly had a period of being a really popular "big, nasty predator" in media before being ultimately eclipsed by Tyrannosaurus rex and acting as second fiddle in popular fiction where both species appear. This is a bit of a shame, as Allosaurus and its kin aren't really all that close to the tyrannosauroids and have interesting traits of their own such as extreme jaw articulation, but it is what it is. Comparing the two mechanically in Pathfinder, you are effectively exchanging the rex's ability to swallow prey whole and deal lots of critical damage for Big Al's slightly higher speed and a claw attack that is augmented by the Pounce and Rake special qualities. Compsognathus (CR 1/2 Tiny Animal) Compsognathus is well known in the public consciousness for two things: being the size of a chicken, and appearing in the movie version of Jurassic Park: the Lost World. The only two interesting notes here are that it has a venomous bite that deals 1d2 Strength damage per round and that it has a swim speed. The former is a Jurassic Park legacy, while the latter is possibly based on someone doing their research about the fact that Compsognathus lived in what was an island chain during the Late Jurassic. These tiny saurians can be taken as familiars, basically granting Improved Initiative to their master. Parasaurolophus (CR 4 Huge Animal) A large hadrosaur with a tube-like crest. You can take it as an animal companion, but it doesn't really have anything noteworthy about its stat block, and its flavor text is literally two sentences long and only notes its weight, length, and that it's known for its crest. Tylosaurus (CR 8 Gargantuan Animal) Not actually a dinosaur, but instead the largest of the mosasaurs, a group of marine lizards that branched off from the varanids (monitor lizards). The text informs us that Tylosaurus are known to attack ships that they mistake for whales, but they surprisingly don't get the Capsize special quality. What they do get is a land speed of 20, which means that they're going to be scooting along the dirt at the same speed as a halfling, something that actual mosasaurs almost certainly couldn't do. Primal Dragons "True dragon" is a term for the chromatic and metallic dragons, right? Wrong, it turns out that there are even more groups of true dragons out there, and one of these groups are the primal dragons. Primal dragons have most of the same things associated with the other groups of true dragons: sapience, spellcasting, age categories, all that jazz. Their main gimmick is that they are all extraplanar dragons with elemental subtypes that live on the elemental planes. All but two of them are some shade of Neutral as well. Brine Dragon (CR 3 Tiny to CR 19 Gargantuan Dragon [Extraplanar, Water]) Lawful Neutral blue-green dragons with fish-like scales and fins that are native to the Elemental Plane of Water. Brine dragons aren't evil, but they're colossal assholes anyway, being selfish and power-hungry beasts that get depressed if they don't have a retinue of "lesser beings" to rule over. On top of an acid breath weapon, brine dragons are good at capsizing ships, have spell-like abilities that include Control Water and Horrid Wilting, their natural attacks shove salt and acid into wounds to force a Fortitude save to avoid being stunned for a round from pain, and the bite of an ancient or great wyrm brine dragon deals 1d2 or 1d4 Strength damage on top of their normal damage. CR 5 Small to CR 21 Colossal Dragon [Air, Extraplanar]) The blueish-white cloud dragons of the Elemental Plane of Air are free spirits that roam across the boundless skies in search of new and interesting things to look at, talk to, or collect. Their breath weapon replicates the Fog Cloud spell rather than deals damage, and they can also innately replicate a special variant of the Gaseous Form spell that allows them to retain their normal fly speed. They also produce thunder when they bite, dealing an extra 2d6 sonic damage, and have spell-like abilities that include Cloudkill, Fog Cloud, Solid Fog, and Storm of Vengeance. Crystal Dragon (CR 2 Tiny to CR 18 Gargantuan Dragon [Earth, Extraplanar]) These dragons are entirely made out of various colored gemstones, dwell deep in the Elemental Plane of Earth, and are our only Good primordial dragons. Unlike the stereotype of "stone = Law" you see with things like dwarves, though, crystal dragons are in fact Chaotic Good. They are obsessed with cleanliness for both their lairs and their crystal bodies, but at the same time are vain and quick to become violent when they perceive something as an insult to their Magma Dragon (CR 4 Tiny to CR 20 Gargantuan Dragon [Extraplanar, Fire]) Big, ferocious Chaotic Neutral dragons with black scales that constantly leak lava. Their actions are seemingly inscrutable to outsiders, with acts of violence or peace being impossible to predict by anyone but other magma dragons. The magma dragon's breath weapon is fire, but at ancient age this gets boosted with an extra 1d3 rounds of the damage after the initial blast due to it being sticky lava. It gets upgraded again when the dragon reaches great wyrm age, as once per day it can vomit lava that deals normal breath weapon damage but also instantly cools, entrapping the victim for either 3d6 minutes or until they break free. Their spell-like abilities are a similarly conflagrational mixture that includes Scorching Ray, Delayed Blast Fireball, and Wall of Lava, and they tend to have at least one of their Sorcerer spell slots filled up with the Grease spell as insult to injury. Umbral Dragon (CR 6 Small to CR 22 Colossal Dragon [Extraplanar]) While technically a primal dragon, the slimy, snaky Chaotic Evil umbral dragon comes the Plane of Shadows rather than any of the elemental planes. These merciless beasts eat ghosts and the undead, but will kill the living anyway because they are just that evil. Their breath weapon deals a special type of negative energy damage that acts normally against living targets but doesn't heal the undead, and their abilities are legion: immunity to energy drain and death magic, Ghost Touch on all their natural weapons at young or older age, a second 3/day breath weapon that forces a Fortitude save to avoid blindness for 1d4 rounds and 1d4 Strength drain for adult or older individuals, any kills it makes creating a shadow or greater shadow 1d4 rounds later in ancient or older individuals, 1 level of energy drain on bite or claw attacks at great wyrm age, and spell-like abilities that include Vampiric Touch, Shadow Walk, and Finger of Death.  Dragon Horse (CR 9 Large Magical Beast [Air]) The long-man/lung-ma, or dragon horse, is a wondrous horse from Chinese mythology that has the scales of a dragon, can swiftly race across the sky, and is believed to be an omen of good fortune and leadership. When it appeared in the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons through the Monster Manual II, this was translated into the AD&D mindset by having the dragon horse be Goodly relatives of the kirin that are all for peace and happiness. In Pathfinder they lose the association with kirin, simply being weird sapient pacifist horse-things that freely travel between the Astral Plane, Material Plane, and Elemental Plane of Air. They try to avoid violence and even prefer to use nonlethal attacks on Evil mortals, though a creature with the Evil subtype gets the full brunt of their rarely seen violent side. The dragon horse's main weapon is a breath weapon that can shift to either replicate the Fog Cloud spell, whip up a severe wind, or deal 10d6 cold damage. Giant Dragonfly (CR 4 Medium Vermin) and Nymph (CR 3 Small Vermin) Giant dragonflies are found in and around swamps and marshes. Their dog-sized nymphs eat carrion and small animals of various stripes, while the adult forms specifically hunt warm-blooded prey. Boggards and other primitive swamp races often assign religious significance to specific colors of giant dragonfly. Drakes Referred to as "degenerate" versions of true dragons, drakes are vaguely pterosaur-like dragons with below-average Intelligence scores and none of the extreme powers and spellcasting that mark true dragons. Flame Drake (CR 5 Large Dragon [Fire]) The drake version of red dragons, known for being extremely violent and ruthless. They travel in packs that attempt to bully humanoid settlements into giving them lots of tribute, engaging in raids against those who resist. Rather than a true breath weapon, flame drakes instead can belch out the equivalent of a Fireball spell every 1d6 rounds. Forest Drake (CR 4 Large Dragon [Earth]) Atavistic green dragons. Forest drakes are more or less the same in attitude and action as flame drakes, to the point that some of their entry is just copy-pasted from the flame drake's flavor text. The only information new to forest drakes compared to the flame drake is that they love to eat elves and fey. Their vomit ball is an acid glob that deals 4d6 damage and replicates the Obscuring Mist spell on the impact site for 1d4 rounds. Frost Drake (CR 7 Large Dragon [Cold]) Atavistic white dragons, though they are blue in color.  Their entry is yet again a big copy-paste job with nothing really new, and their ball attack deals 7d6 cold damage and creates a 20 foot spread of slippery ice at the impact site.Sea Drake (CR 6 Large Dragon [Aquatic]) Unlike the other drakes, the sea drake has no true dragon immediately connected to it, and it is described as being an inbred beast rather than a degenerate one. Did a true dragon gently caress a sea serpent, and this was the result? Maybe, but nobody really knows. Sea drakes are solitary rather than pack hunters like other drakes, though they will band together to attack large prey or harass shipping lanes. The sea dragon's ball attack replicates the Chain Lightning spell.  Draugr (CR 2 Medium Undead [Water]) The draugr is an undead monster of Norse mythology, a bloated corpse that was often (but not always) associated with the sea. You may recognize them as being a thing you saw very, very often in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Here, they are pretty much what you'd expect, being angry Viking corpses that walk out of the sea to terrorize the living. They're big, beefy, and typically armed with large archaic weapons such as greataxes that nauseate those they deal damage to, but they aren't very bright. A variant, the red-eyed draugr captain, gets 3/day Obscuring Mist as a spell-like ability and deal a negative level when they deal melee damage. Draugr captains also often have levels in Barbarian, Fighter, or Rogue as an added incentive to worry about why one particular draugr in the encounter is described as having glowing red eyes. Dullahan (CR 7 Medium Undead) Traditional fairies aren't always nice, nor are they always pretty. Hell, they're frequently the opposite in both cases, which definitely applies to the terror that is the dullahan. It is a headless rider whose weapon of choice is a human spinal column, and when it comes riding into town death is sure to follow. Pathfinder's version is somewhat...less exciting. It's an undead from Hell, wields a +1 keen longsword that deals +1d6 cold damage, and can cast a special curse (DC 22 Fortitude save negates) that causes the victim to be staggered for 1d6 rounds, automatically suffer any critical hit for the next day, and automatically fail any Constitution check to stabilize while dying in the same time period. I can understand the change from Fey to Undead, but it seems like a huge lost opportunity to not have it flailing around someone's spine as a magic weapon instead of some dinky sword. Dust Digger (CR 4 Large Aberration) A monster from several AD&D modules themed around deserts and the Monster Manual II, the dust digger is a giant starfish with teeth that hides in the sand while waiting to ambush prey. Thanks to our good friend the Tome of Horrors, the dust digger appears unchanged in its description here, though the artist apparently didn't get the memo about it being a starfish-thing and instead drew it like the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi. As weird as a giant land starfish that acts like an antlion is, I wonder what it would be like if the Tome of Horrors had been stuffed to the gills with the really weird/dumb/hilarious AD&D monsters instead of the (admittedly sometimes still weird, dumb, and/or hilarious) ones it actually got. Imagine Pathfinder Bestiaries crawling with gello monsters, plush golems, saluqis, and stwinger faeries. D'ziriak (CR 3 Medium Outsider [Extraplanar]) Weird termite people from the Plane of Shadow, d'ziriaks create massive cities consisting of hives decorated with various alchemical and magical decorations. Unlike many natives to their plane, d'ziriaks have no shadow-related supernatural abilities. In fact, they have just the opposite, with the power to erupt into a light show once per day that forces a DC 13 Fortitude save to avoid being dazzled for a minute. Their bodies are also coated in multicolored runes that constantly emit a dim light in a 20 foot radius around them. D'ziriaks are a True Neutral race that prefers to engage in trade with outsiders rather than fight, selling particularly strange wares such as light beams woven into physical artwork.  Elementals Since there's only one entry in this letter, I figured I might as well shove it into the end of this post rather than have the next post cover even more letters than it already will. Ice Elemental (CR 1 Small to CR 11 Huge Outsider [Air, Cold, Elemental, Extraplanar, Water]) Ice elementals are found where the Elemental Planes of Water and Air meet, a rather breathtakingly described place where "giant icebergs careen off of world-high waterfalls into the open sky". Unsurprisingly, the ice elemental's natural attacks deal cold damage, but they also have the interesting effect of forcing a Fortitude save to avoid being staggered for a round from just how bitingly cold their cold is. The ur-cold. Lightning Elemental (CR 1 Small to CR 11 Huge Outsider [Air, Elemental, Extraplanar]) A vaguely humanoid storm cloud that constantly sparks with electrical discharge. They dwell within immense world-hurricanes that roll across the Elemental Plane of Air, and are known for being ridiculously violent: they are more than happy to die if they get a good fight in on their way out. If you are either wearing metal, wielding metal, or made of metal, the lightning elemental gets a +3 bonus to attack rolls and a +10 bonus to bull rush, disarm, overrun, and trip attacks against you. Magma Elemental (CR 1 Small to CR 11 Huge Outsider [Earth, Elemental, Extraplanar, Fire]) Magma elementals live on the border of the Elemental Planes of Earth and Fire, and tend to take on beast-like forms. Their main claim to fame is that they can turn all the squares they occupy into lava terrain once per day. Mud Elemental (CR 1 Small to CR 11 Huge Outsider [Earth, Elemental, Extraplanar, Water]) Natives to the meeting place of the Elemental Planes of Earth and Water. There's nothing really interesting about them to note. Next Time in Pathfinder Bestiary 2: F, G, and H are all a bit small, so in the next post we'll just cover them all. F is for fetchling, G is for gar. And H is for hippo, the cruelest by far.
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Apr 17, 2016 11:04
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Ratoslov posted:Yeah. It seems like in Spellbound Kingdoms, it makes perfect rational sense for a head of state to murder people to ensure that he and his closest advisers are happily in love, because their love-lives are a vital matter of national security. Doesn't have to be happily in love - unhappily in love works fine too. As long as you feel strongly about them.
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Apr 17, 2016 12:29
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SPELLBOUND KINGDOMS PART 5: MOVEMENT, ENVIRONMENT TRICKS, GEAR AND THE REST Whenever you want to do something that isn’t a maneuver on your style, whether that’s move around the location the combat is happening in, switch to a different style or just do something not listed, you need to do a miscellaneous action, or trick. Tricks force you to rebalance afterwards (unless you’re doing another one right away), and they can disrupt the flow of your fighting, but sometimes they’re essential. Movement doesn’t work in fixed lengths, but rather abstractly. The location of the combat is divided into areas in a qualitative fashion, and this is broken down with some examples: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:the library, the balcony, the space inside the giant cake before the royal chef’s birthday feast. Moving around inside an area is free, and you do it just through description. Moving between areas requires an action (one action moving one area), and though some styles have movements as the effect of some maneuvers, mostly you’ll be using tricks to move about. In duel initiative, just to keep everything functional, you can be attacked in both areas of your movement, but you can only attack in the area to which you’re moving. In play, we rarely found we needed a map to play, and when we did it was just a rough sketch so everyone could fix the layout in their minds. It’s very simple, but with the meat of combat sitting with the styles, it’s nice not to overcomplicate matters when it comes to movement. Environment tricks are the other kind of trick you’ll probably do a lot in a combat in Spellbound Kingdoms. They’re special actions that involve the scenery, with the recommendation that the good ones should destroy bits of the scenery in doing them. Environment tricks involves rolls against the doom, then might produce attacks, movement, defenses and lots of other things. The specifics of a trick are up to the GM, but unlike with histories there are good examples provided:     There are a couple of additional rules: basically, if it’s amazing and swashbuckling, the GM should endeavour to say yes, and you raise the difficulty of a trick each additional time in a single combat someone tries to pull it off (to encourage variety). Armor and weapons are pretty odd in this game, because they have almost no stats. Fighting styles require certain things, but other than that they just have a Quality. Armor absorbs damage - for every two points of Quality absorbs one point of physical (not magical) damage per combat. You can do minor fixes and adjustments after a combat to “restore” those points lost. Weapon quality is important pretty much only applicable when it comes to weapons breaking, and to penetrate armor. Some of the more impressive armors ignore a point of damage from weapons below a certain quality rating. There’s a bunch of other stuff: critical hits (when the defender rolls a 1 and the attacker rolls more than half on his die, do two extra points of damage), grabs (when grabbed you can’t move and can only do balancing or grab maneuvers), surprise (when surprised defenders use a d2), modifiers (penalties and bonus dice as per the normal rules), terrain (force people to make checks to do things in some environments, or prevent a full range of maneuvers in others), and coup de graces. Healing and death is also covered simply. Healing happens in a burst after a combat ends and then slowly after that, you are out at 0 Body (so in effect when you run out of mood and body), and dead at -1 (unless you have an inspiration is high enough). The chapter ends with a full, and excellent, example of combat. It’s a good addition, and made running a combat for the first time much easier. Next up: MAGIC
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Apr 17, 2016 13:38
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SPELLBOUND KINGDOMS PART 6: MAGIC (OR HOW TO BLOW UP A CITY BY MISTAKE) I’m going to let Brunner open on this one: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Magic is the greatest curse and the greatest treasure known to man. It is a force of nature, and a wild one. With no cause or warning, it can burn down a city of 10,000 people or sicken every first born son in a kingdom. People fear magic. People resent magic. Magic in Spellbound Kingdoms is phenomenally powerful. In general, there are no limits on how much of it you can use. The checks to use it are usually pretty easy, and there’s no mana, or Vancian recovery of spells. Wizards are phenomenally powerful individuals. But magic is insanely dangerous. In some ways, it makes 40K psykers looks like solid and reliable individuals. There are two kinds of magic: natural and artificial. Magic is an intrinsic part of the world of Spellbound Kingdoms, and natural magic occurrences are relatively common. There’s some good information on this: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Magic events on a minor scale are uncommon. In a town of 10,000 people, roughly one minor- to medium-scale magic event occurs each week. These events are almost always destructive. They might be a magical disease striking a young woman, all the glass in a church’s windows suddenly shattering, or all the cheese in a fromagerie deliquescing. In a larger city, something like this happens somewhere every day. You read that last one right. Setting tidbit: 99% of dragons are basically big dumb lizards. The handful that are intelligent are that way because they were hit with magic. The other kind of magic is artificial. Those who can cast spells, magical creatures and even powerful mystic items are all spellbound. They have a unique magical “frequency” that is what allows them access to their power, and that frequency is sensitive. When two or more spellbound entities are in the same vicinity and one or both of them use their powers, there’s a risk their frequencies interfere with each other. Mechanically, when you roll a 1 and there are other spellbound creatures or items in the area of effect of the spell (most spells have an area of effect that’s strictly immediate, but… there are exceptions) then a wild surge happens. A wild surge is where magic lashes out at all the spellbound in the area, and one random poor bastard, causing damage - the more spellbound in the area the more damage it causes. In a room full of wizards a rogue spell might literally kill them all. The damage is caused by rogue magical effects, and some unusual surges might rip out memories, damage minds and so on. Basically it’s bad. It can get worse. If a spellbound rolls a 1 when they try to resist then the interference has caused a tidal wave of further interference. The surge meets another surge and then the whole thing… cascades. That’s when there’s a crisis surge. Spellbound Kingdoms posted:A crisis surge occurs when a wild surge critically hits. Crisis surges are the largest single reason that people throughout the Claw fear and despise magic. When a crisis surge occurs, almost anything can happen. There are ways around surges. Apprentices and their masters can purchase a talent that means that their magic doesn’t interfere. Cabals can gain a cabbalistic casting power from being part of an Arcane Order. Other that that you’re left to cope - that’s why wizards live in tall towers and away from population centres. When you learn a magical style you learn it as a neophyte, an apprentice or a master, just like a combat style. In combat that works exactly the same - you either have balancing (called re-casting for magic) maneuvers and a couple of extras, all but the mastery maneuvers, or all of them. Out of combat there are two types of magic: Close and High spells. Close spells only draw on the immediate area for their power, and are limited in effect (but still quite potent). A neophyte only knows two close spells from the list of that style, while apprentices know all but the ones marked as a mastery spell, and masters know all of them… and can cast them as much as they like. The spells are pretty cool, and vary from the simple but useful: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Repair. You can repair simple objects with no interior structure and no complicated moving parts. To the potent: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Listen to the Same Stars. After listening to the stars for a night, you learn the name of the most powerful organization in the region and have a vision of one of the organization's recent actions. Close spells can also be cast freeform - there are some guides on that, but it’s mostly in the GM’s hands. They can only be attempted by a master. And then there are high spells. Most high spells have a much larger radius of effect than close spells, and that means they’re very dangerous. They’re also insane. Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Vortex. An arcane twister roars through the region along a path you specify up to half a mile long. Anything alive and touched by the vortex is transported elsewhere. Creatures aware of the vortex and attempting to avoid it can make a chase roll against the Doom (or, if appropriate to the game, run a Chase scene against the vortex). Determine the destination of those caught in the vortex by rolling percentile dice. Oh and Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Hush. You steal the voices of every person living in an area the size of a small town. The voices are placed in a puzzle box, cameo locket, or corked bottle. Only spellbound creatures have a chance to resist by rolling their Magic against yours. The town silence continues as long as you maintain the box, locket, or bottle, which counts as your trapped high spell. If the voice vessel is broken, all voices are returned and cannot be stolen again for one year. and Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Void. After a night of casting with at least two acolytes, you drop a hole out of the magic in an area. One type of Inspiration - your choice - is now unusable in the region. Void persists indefinitely; it counts as your bound high spell. Any wild surge caused by casting this spell results in a crisis surge. You can only cast one high spell a day. You can also trap spells in objects: scrolls, potions and candles being the common choices. You can have up to 1 close or combat spell per 3 magic levels trapped at any one time, and up to one high spell trapped at any one time ever, and when you do it you can’t cast another high spell until it’s released. It can be released by anyone by doing the action specified when it’s trapped - reading the scroll, drinking the potion, burning the candle, etc. The released spell uses all the original wizard’s abilities and rolls, but the releaser chooses the target. You can choose to specialise in one kind of trapped spells (only scrolls or only potions or otherwise) totally unable to trap in any other form, but in exchange you can trap a high spell and still cast another spell. That’s it for magic. Next up: CHASES (YES THAT’S A WHOLE CHAPTER)
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Apr 17, 2016 14:56
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That list of tricks is fantastic.
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Apr 17, 2016 15:20
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Nifara posted:SPELLBOUND KINGDOMS PART 5: MOVEMENT, ENVIRONMENT TRICKS, GEAR AND THE REST That's all. I just wanted to point that out.
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Apr 17, 2016 15:44
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I think I am in love.
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Apr 17, 2016 16:29
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I was sold at "fling cat at enemy's face". If strong emotions cause immortality, does that mean you can get that way because of hate?
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Apr 17, 2016 16:31
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Almost feels like there's mechanical support for a Live-a-Live style campaign in Spellbound Kingdoms from the skimming
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Apr 17, 2016 16:36
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Hostile V posted:I was sold at "fling cat at enemy's face". Yes. "I can't die until I track down the motherfucker that killed my family."
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Apr 17, 2016 16:46
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Hostile V posted:I was sold at "fling cat at enemy's face". Yep. Love is the most powerful of Inspirations - hence it bestowing immortality at 3 instead of 4 like all other Inspirations - but any inspiration at 4 saveguards the character. My character in the campaign I played in was kept alive by his Hatred of the King, for example, and PCs in the game I'm currently GMing are kept alive by things like Bettering The World Through Technology (wait until Nifara gets to the Engineering rules - holy crap) and Loyalty To The Pack. If you're wondering whether Love Inspirations at 4 have any point, then let me tell you that True Love is a thing and the game isn't kidding when it says it's the most powerful force in the world.
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Apr 17, 2016 17:00
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Well what the gently caress have I been doing wasting my time with other systems
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Apr 17, 2016 17:45
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"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." AND Twoo Wuv? Yeah it's a Princess Bride RPG.
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Apr 17, 2016 18:41
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I meant it more in the sense of "can so many people hate the King that the King is made immortal by people's hate" although now I read that sentence and think "Elvis never died, he's just preparing to do a Dread Pirate Roberts on his comeback tour".
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Apr 17, 2016 18:49
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Evil Mastermind posted:"Sip tea while fencing" "Skewer apple on sword, eat it while fencing". It even gives you COMBO BONUS to your reputation if you also had some tea during the same fight.
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Apr 17, 2016 19:37
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Hostile V posted:I meant it more in the sense of "can so many people hate the King that the King is made immortal by people's hate" although now I read that sentence and think "Elvis never died, he's just preparing to do a Dread Pirate Roberts on his comeback tour". From what I'm gathering, the hate has to be felt by the person being protected by it. So being a royal poo poo (no pun intended) and getting everyone to hate you may juuuust end up backfiring when a peasant rebellion to can't stamp out happens. But the king could loathe the unwashed masses so much that they can't actually kill him out right until they clean themselves up or impress him. You can inflict as much tyranny and cruelty you want in your kingdom, driving Doom up and making it harder for heroes to take action. I think. I should probably buy this.
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Apr 17, 2016 19:51
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Tasoth posted:I think. I should probably buy this. I think. You probably should.
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Apr 17, 2016 20:06
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SPELLBOUND KINGDOMS PART 7: CHASES… AND A SOCIAL SYSTEM THAT DOESN’T SUCK, BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT THE CHASE CHAPTER IS SUPER SHORTSpellbound Kingdoms posted:There are many reasons to run in the Kingdoms. You could run for your life, like the thief dashing through the palace with the spell in her pouch and the guards on her tail. You could run for something more important than your life, like the groom on horseback galloping through the canals, jumping bridge to gondola to barge, trying to catch up to the pirates and the abducted bride. And of course you could run a race, like the ice sleds sailing and skidding around the walls of Thyre at the Neverlight Festival. In summary when a chase happens the GM describes the locale, and then sets a chase difficulty. This is often the doom, but the GM is free to raise or lower it according to the pressures of the situation. Once that’s done, each PC says whether they want to:
Then PCs and NPCs take actions. If you keep pace, you just roll against the chase difficulty. If you choose to push it, you roll against the chase difficulty +1, but if you succeed you make up ground (getting closer or far away, depending on the circumstances). If you take it easy, then subtract 3 from the chase difficulty, but you lose ground regardless - it’s best reserved for when failing results in your falling into lava or get hit by a chariot or something. You can also use environment tricks as you would in combat, which adds a nice element of flexibility to your actions. Whelp, that’s all I can say about chases. The rules are good, but there’s not a lot else to say. I get the impression the reason it had a whole chapter was that there wasn’t anywhere else obvious to put it. Oh yeah, there is a really good example of a chase! I like all the examples, it really helps with putting this stuff into effect.  So social! While not as in depth as the physical combat system, the social engagement rules have a lot of support. Since mood is the defining statistic stopping you from dying, social damage takes on a whole new level of lethality - intrigue can turn deadly, stripping you of mood and leaving you open to inspiration loss or actual bodily harm. Broadly, social attacks use Charisma and are resisted in kind, with histories and skills adding into the mix smoothly. We should also probably talk about reputations, since this is the venue in which they really kick in. Reputations are very similar to histories, adding dice to checks where they apply. They measure how others perceive you, and you gain and lose them pretty fluidly in play. Negative reputations are also a thing, and can act as penalty dice on checks (particularly social checks). Just like with physical combat, you can make a critical hit with a social attack. Another neat thing in these rules is how they handle secrets. If you know a secret about the person you’re targeting with the attack you can reveal it to increase the attack three die sizes - but just the once, of course. So, we know how social combat works, but what about social weapons and armor? High fashion is the answer, with it granting bonuses to attacks and defenses according it its quality. There are some neat special attacks: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:
There are some neat ideas on improv social scenes and how to run them too - there’s some good stuff in there. It’s jumping ahead a little, but let’s look at the social equipment:  A lot of these things do cool stuff that’s not as simple as their quality. My favourites are pets: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Tortoise, familiar, canary. You can always stare at your pet (your fashionable pet!) and pretend not to have heard someone's biting remark. In any round in which you use your fashion pet, you can ignore a point of social damage. You may use your pet once per scene. The pet must be fashionable; no one brings a hound dog to a coronation. And tattoos: Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Tattoos. A tattoo has double its quality when first revealed: a fighter ripping his shirt off to reveal a death's head inked on his pectorals, a woman raising her dress to expose the ink on her thighs, a forbidden sigil tattooed on a disciple's scalp under hair that must be shorn before the tattoo is visible. That’s all on chases and social encounters. Next up: WAR. HUAH. WHAT ARE THESE RULES GOOD FOR? TURNS OUT QUITE A LOT.
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Apr 17, 2016 20:30
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I don't have the ability to buy this game but holy poo poo when I do it's first on my list. What a good game.
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Apr 17, 2016 21:56
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Doodmons posted:Yep. Love is the most powerful of Inspirations - hence it bestowing immortality at 3 instead of 4 like all other Inspirations - but any inspiration at 4 saveguards the character. My character in the campaign I played in was kept alive by his Hatred of the King, for example, and PCs in the game I'm currently GMing are kept alive by things like Bettering The World Through Technology (wait until Nifara gets to the Engineering rules - holy crap) and Loyalty To The Pack. Second only to a nice mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.
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Apr 18, 2016 00:25
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Someone put the Spellbound Kingdoms review on the offsite mirror ASAP. I need to show this to my non Goon friends.
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Apr 18, 2016 00:30
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I will have to pick this up sometime. I wonder how easy it would be to play it as less of a grimdark world, more as light romantic fantasy.
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Apr 18, 2016 01:48
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For some reason I don't agree that a setting where finding love means you can't die and the stunt examples specifically highlight using actual shenanigans in combat is "grimdark."
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Apr 18, 2016 02:27
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Lynx Winters posted:For some reason I don't agree that a setting where finding love means you can't die and the stunt examples specifically highlight using actual shenanigans in combat is "grimdark." It's grimdark because the concequences of 'finding love means you can't die' and 'being in a better mood means you're a better fighter' is that it is in the best interests of the powers that be to make the lives of everyone but them a living hell and have secret police everywhere watching for people who like each other a little too much, lest some peasant become an invincible swordsman who kill their entire army while drinking tea.
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Apr 18, 2016 02:37
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Yeah the mechanics favor romantic fantasy but the setting as described sounds like you're starting from a bad place.
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Apr 18, 2016 02:46
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 This review part was brought to you by the Stasis and Undeath runes. Mechanics and Melee Chapter III of RuneQuest 2E covers a somewhat confusing group of topics: for whatever reason, the authors decided to group together more general rules about adventuring time and movement with RQ2E’s melee combat system. From a modern perspective, I suppose that grouping the subject matter like this was an attempt to describe what we’d now call the “action economy” of the game in one concise location, though it does still feel somewhat disjointed. (Spoilers: I just finished reading it and it is just as disjointed as I thought at the beginning). The Sections on Adventuring in RPGs That Everyone Doesn’t Look At Despite Them Being Important for Running the Game as Intended There are three common rule concepts in old-school fantasy games that everyone likes to ignore: time measurement, travel movement, and encumbrance. Usually this is because these either don't seem actually critical to running the game, or the rules as written require such a tedious amount of bookkeeping regarding all three that it's just excised by a group of players to save the parts of the game they enjoy. However, this does cause players to ignore the design precept where for these games (sometimes intentionally on the part of the designer), time and space within the game world are meant to be finite resources that had to be tracked. Removing these rulesets does change how the game plays, even if they're seemingly secondary to other rules. RQ2E covers how all three of these work, regardless of if anyone uses them, in just one half of a chapter. RQ2E uses three different forms of time measurement within the game rules: the Game Week, the Full Turn, and the Melee Round. Much like in AD&D, turns and rounds are not arbitrary lengths of time that determines what a character can do, but is meant to represent actual measurements of time– a melee round lasts for 12 seconds, and a full turn is 5 minutes (25 melee rounds) long. While the melee round’s purpose in tracking game time is self-explanatory, the full turn “is used to denote passage of time during a scenario.” I know that for AD&D, the DM is supposed to keep track of the passage of time down to an exact value, since time and resource consumption is meant to be a major challenge in classic dungeon crawling. But I don’t really get why RQ2E also tries to give such fastidious time management rules. I suppose it’s probably a mix of tracking long-term conditions and magical spells, and then it being part of the RPG design zeitgeist from the time. The last length of time, the Game Week, is meant to represent a period of a week within the game: ”GAME WEEK” posted:This describes the passage of time for the characters in the world of Glorantha. Training, Rune Magic, and other considerations are based on the game week. Wait, so do Steve and Ray suggest that one play session is one game week, or that one actual day is one game week? In either case, it’s interesting that this time length can be controlled to scale the frequency of long-term character advancement and the passage time passage. Since what we’ve seen of character advancement relies on a system of training, you can really only improve yourself once an adventure ends and time passes within the game. So, RAW the game can limit a PC’s access to advancement both through time (game weeks) and space (finding an actual trainer nearby) And speaking of that, the next section covers movement on both the macro- and micro-scale for characters. The usual RPG staple of daily travel rates and the terrain modifiers that can alter them show up here, with a bit of complexity thrown in to explain how they act cumulatively. “Scenario Movement” is a description of how far a character can move in a full turn. Surprisingly enough, there are no modifiers based on character race or SIZ, or really anything, besides the rule that riding animals can run twice as far. When we get to the rules on Melee Movement we start to see the granularity we’d expect from the most realistic and at the same time most playable RPG of the 1970s: creatures have something called a movement class, rated from 1 to 12, which determines the amount of movement units you get in a melee round. A movement unit in RQ2E is “3 meters or 10 feet” in length. The distinction in difference between melee movement and scenario movement is explained by noting that people generally move more slowly when other people are trying to kill them. All in all, it’s a pretty barebones system that does a good job making a quantitative movement system to use for melee combat. So, we now get to the most hated and ignored set of rules across all fantasy RPGs: player character encumbrance. It’s been an issue for such a long time that even the authors here admit that most of them are trash. Surprisingly enough, RQ2E has a fairly loose system: you’ve got a max encumbrance equal to avg of STR and CON, a “Thing” is a generic unit of measure for random stuff equal to one point of encumbrance, and all items listed otherwise have a set encumbrance value. A character’s camping/adventure gear always weighs 2 encumbrance units, no matter what. The only real issue with this encumbrance system is that they then go and mess it all up by forcing you to sum up all coinage and jewelry you’re wearing to determine how much (if at all) your valuables add to encumbrance, and each type of coin or jewelry weighs a different amount. It’s a sudden drop into tedious bookkeeping that they managed to almost avoid, which makes it all the more jarring. Going over encumbrance gives a scaling penalty to defense and speed that increases with each point over encumbrance, rather than a fixed penalty. Melee Combat Melee rounds don’t follow an “I go, then you go” setup like in games that descend from AD&D. Instead, RQ2E has a combat round that is more similar to things I’ve seen in most wargames, where the round is divided into several action types which are then simultaneously resolved (movement-shooting-melee, for instance) rather than character-by-character. Interestingly enough, the first phase is just the players and referee saying what they want their characters to do during the battle– all real decisions by the players are supposed to happen at the top of a melee round. The four steps are:
Backing up a second, let’s go back to the attack resolution rules. Here we see the first real appearance of the d100 system used for the melee combat system of RQ2E. ”RESOLUTION OF MELEE” posted:The attacker rolls D100 to see if he succeeded in attacking and a D20 for hit location (see end of this chapter). Remember to subtract the opponent’s Defense, if any, from the attacker’s chance of hitting. If the defender attempts to parry, he rolls D100 to see if he succeeded. In the case of RQ2E, melee is an opposed roll with four possible end states composed of the interaction between attack success/failure vs. parry success/failure: pre:Atk Success | Atk Failure ________________|__________________ | Parry Success Weapon/shield | Attacker’s weapon of defender hit | takes damage ________________|__________________ | Parry Failure Attack actually | Ineffectual hits location | flailing The book then takes an entire section to go into more detail on Strike Rank. SR gets modified by a character’s SIZ, their DEX, the length of the weapon, what attack type they’re using, and a whole bunch of other situational modifiers. Outside of melee, strike rank also acts as a more general action-point based economy, as up to 12 SR points worth of activities can be done in a turn. Which, explicitly in the rules, includes multiple magic and ranged attack types. Characters in melee can only attack, parry, defend, or attack with magic. At least in this case, RQ2E manages to avoid too much complexity when it comes to options in combat. I'm a bit leery of action point systems, but apparently only ranged characters can abuse the whole "multiple attacks a round" issue that pops up in these action economies. Melee combat again seems to be the main focus for Steve and Ray. Hit Locations: Your HP Stat is Just a Helpful Suggestion Until You Die RQ2E’s combat is generally known for having a hit-location system built into the combat rules. From a game standpoint, each character has two separate sets of values to keep track of when it comes to HP: their total HP, which is calculated using the rules from Chapter II, and their body part HP. Each part of the body has its own HP pool that is determined based on your total HP. Thankfully, they give a table to determine HP per location, and it isn’t just dividing your total HP over your body– otherwise, characters would be like tissue paper. Whenever a character is hit, they take damage to whatever location was struck. If the total HP lost exceeds a character’s total HP, they die. If a body part loses all its location HP, then various nasty effects happen, often including “death within 2 turns unless healed.” Damage that exceeds the total amount of location HP on the location hit will be reduced to just twice the total amount of HP of that body part. If a character takes damage to a location that’s equal to 6+ max location HP, then either the body part is severed or they instantly die. Fun times in Mythic Bronze Age Fantasy! Next Time: Combat Skills, or- Wait, Why Did They Divide Up The Rules Like This? Spiderfist Island fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 05:28
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Spiderfist Island posted:This review part was brought to you by the Stasis and Undeath runes.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:32
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Maxwell Lord posted:I will have to pick this up sometime. I wonder how easy it would be to play it as less of a grimdark world, more as light romantic fantasy. It would be perfect for superheroes, since it provides a narrative justification for keeping your secret identity secret so that your loved ones can't be harmed. The metaphysics also echo the climax of Harry Potter, but that did have magic secret police, death squads, and depression monsters.
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Apr 18, 2016 06:13
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Maxwell Lord posted:Yeah the mechanics favor romantic fantasy but the setting as described sounds like you're starting from a bad place. Yeah, thinking about it, if you know that strong emotions produce unstoppable warriors then 'rule by fear' is a godawful plan. Rule by fear is practically guaranteed to produce heroes, revolutionaries, and invincible bandit kings all fuelled by hatred of the idiot in charge. You'd be much better off making your country a chill, relaxed place where everyone has a good time, because 'contentment' isn't really a weaponisable passion. If you start with that as a baseline then you can introduce a villain driven by Ambition or Greed or some other destructive passion, who has to resort to rule by fear because they don't have any other redeeming characteristics, and the PCs can be inspired to rise up against them a la Zorro.
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Apr 18, 2016 08:43
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potatocubed posted:Yeah, thinking about it, if you know that strong emotions produce unstoppable warriors then 'rule by fear' is a godawful plan. Rule by fear is practically guaranteed to produce heroes, revolutionaries, and invincible bandit kings all fuelled by hatred of the idiot in charge. You'd be much better off making your country a chill, relaxed place where everyone has a good time, because 'contentment' isn't really a weaponisable passion. We haven't gotten to the setting proper yet, but you're actually on the money, and that conflict is one of the reasons that I think Spellbound Kingdoms is one of the most interesting dystopias I've ever read. The goal of the nobility is not to cause fear, terror and anger... but to reduce the connections of their populace to each other, to systematically undermine and sabotage their devotion to and investment in organisations and society, and to suppress any form of true inspiring tale, fiction or otherwise. The "re-education" camps run by wizards who can strip emotions out of people, the entire religion is based around being calm and complacent, and the secret police inform on people for having marriages that are too happy, or being too angry at a business rival. The goal of the nobility isn't to rule with fear and terror, but to rule with an iron fist to ensue as much grey monotony and low-level hopelessness and misery as possible.
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Apr 18, 2016 09:47
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SPELLBOUND KINGDOMS PART 8: WAR. HUAH. WHAT ARE THESE RULES GOOD FOR? TURNS OUT QUITE A LOT. Spellbound Kingdoms posted:War never changes. Oh yeah, we went there. So, in short war can be handled in two different ways: abstract and actually playing out the battles. In abstract mode the battles (or entire wars) are fought in the background of the campaign, but not through GM caveat. Instead such engagements are resolved by contested organisation checks (we’ll come onto organisations in a later entry), with the outcomes narrated by those controlling the organisations. Again, there’s an example which makes the whole thing much clearer. If you want to actually play out a battle (and the book suggests you could use the abstract method for resolving the opening conflicts and then actually play out the climactic clash) then you have a whole new suite of rules available to you, which are functionally similar to personal combat but with some new ideas and spins on some thing. Put simply, Chapter 6 of Spellbound Kingdoms is a complete fully functional war game. Brunner is insane. Armies are divided into units. The smallest kind is the troop, which is recruited as one group and cannot be usefully broken down further. A troop can range from infantry with dozens of members to mammoth cavalry with just ten mammoths to a loving dragon on its own. Roughly, all of those things have more or less the same combat effectiveness - the 75 pikeman are roughly equal to 10 mammoths are roughly equal to a not terribly powerful dragon. Brigades are two or more troops combined who receive orders, from up and maneuver as if they were a single unit. There are some rules on “stacking” troops into a brigade, and basically the increased numbers just increase their effectiveness rather than giving them additional attacks and so on. There are other rules for stacking siege weapons, and how to disband brigades in combat and so on. Each troop is capable of being in a number of different formations, and each round of a battle you can reset a troop’s formation. Formations are a lot like personal combat styles, and while in a formation you may have access to a number of maneuvers - these cost you “command points” to activate, but are quite powerful. Command points are a measure of your ability to communicate with and control your troops. Basically, a PC being in charge of an army generates a small number of command points, but class levels, class abilities, talents and magic can all grant more. Command points are allotted in secret at the start of each round and are used to do a bunch of different things including moving units to new areas, executing maneuvers, creating or breaking up brigades and rallying troop. Each formation and maneuver lists attack and defense dice, and you use these as you’d expect. Damage hurts the health of a unit, but units also have spirit, and some formations and maneuvers hurt the spirit of your targets - if they drop to 0 health, the unit is wiped out, if they drop to 0 spirit, they break and run (though you can try to rally them). One neat thing that’s included is the concept of secret troops, allowing you to use scouts and infiltrators to spring surprise attacks on your opponent, and forcing your enemy to waste time hunting for them. It’s neat, simple and effective. Heroic actions are of course a thing in battles - PCs can leave the command structure to go off and do heroic things, like challenging people to duels, opening parleys and completing specific missions. You basically play this out as short scenes that then have an impact on the units in the battle. There are pretty good rules for terrain and weather, which are mostly expressed in this table:  Moving around the battlefield costs command points, but otherwise works as personal combat does (with areas), though there are some extra rules about moving into an out of areas with enemy units in it, and some nice exceptions for hidden units. Oh, yeah, it’s worth pointing out that magic surges are still 100% a thing in battles. You didn’t think it would be that easy to get away from it, did you? Spellbound Kingdoms posted:Crisis surges are possible and probably catastrophic. There are then a few rules about how long battle rounds take (as long as you like, mostly, as long as everyone agrees), how units recover after battles and how to escape a battlefield. There are some decent rules for buildings and sieges, and how siege warfare works, and for starving out fortifications. There are also some impressive rule for how to determine the aftermath of a battle, the effects on each side and the organisations they represent, and even the economic and social effects of warfare on a region, with solid mechanical impacts. Finally in this chapter there’s a section on shadow wars - secretive wars of sabotage, assassination, blackmail and other nefarious activities between thieves guilds and secret societies. The rules play off the rules for battles, and also the organisation rules, and are actually really good. I’ve never seen treatment of this in the same light as open battles in a RPG, and it’s an impressive addition. That’s the end of the chapter, but I think it makes sense to jump ahead a bit and look at the available troops before wrapping up. Troops are attracted either by being paid a certain amount on a fortnightly basis, or by attracting them as part of your wealth level or that of your organisation (we’ll see more about wealth levels in the next part). There are a lot of troops on offer:    Each of the troops has their own set of formations and maneuvers, and their own special rules. Here are a few to give you a flavour:     Next up: WEALTH AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF RULES THAT ARE IN THE CHAPTER FOR NO EXPLICABLE REASON
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Apr 18, 2016 10:15
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 PEOPLE, PART 7 "Hopkins" The person who wrote the third generation of notes in the Dossier. Tech-savvy, youngish, almost certaintly dead by the end of the campaign, if not the beginning. They could be a lot of people, even someone new - the book suggests a number of options in the individual character bios.  "Mr. Hopkins" Oliver Tate. Hopkins's boyfriend, unaware of his partner's investigations and impending demise. After she/he disappears, Oliver becomes obsessed with finding them. Asset: Tate's being blackmailed by a foreign agency, and will sell thte PCs out to protect himself. Minion: Bring us the Dossier and we'll give you everything you can imagine. Unfortunately, he poo poo the bed on that, so now he's on the run from the Conspiracy.  The Human Rights Activist Aishe Balan. Advocate for the Roma minority in Romania. Will help the party if she believes they are hunting genuine threats to the Roma, and not just using them as scapegoats. Dismisses all claims of vampires. Asset: She's been a spy for the CIA, MI6, and BND, and will do anything in her power to bring the party down if they're cheap with Roma lives. Minion: Dracula protects his own Ruvari Szygany, Balan wants to extend that protection to all Roma.  The Human Trafficker Vasile Chitul. Moves people out of Moldova and into Bucharest, usually not willingly. Hypochondriac, which can be used to leverage or manipulate him. Asset: Former KGB, doing favors for favors within his sphere of expertise. Minion, option 1: Low-level node, a useful but expendable minion in Dracula's arsenal. Minion, option 2: Vasile believes that if he can find a new Bride for the Master, he'll be rewarded with immortality. Whatever his allegiance, seems like a good pick for a throwaway villain, nobody's gonna miss this guy.  The Icelandic Diplomat Thor Halvarsson. Negotiator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. High society contact, can provide support if the party can convince him that vampires are real. Asset: Being blackmailed by the CIA to send info back their direction. Minion: Dracula's apocalyptic machinations sound like a great way to deal with the overpopulation crisis, right?  The Journalist Laurel Dene. Works for an English newspaper known for her criticism of the War on Terror. Now, she's on Edom's trail. Asset: She's working for FSB to drive wedges between the UK and US governments. Minion: She thinks Dracula is Edom's tragic prisoner, and she's working against Edom for him.  The Madman Richard Crinn. Modern-day version of Renfield - schizophrenic, methadone user, hears voices commanding him to do things. He's attuned to Dracula the same way Renfield was, and becomes more unstable the closer Dracula gets. Asset: His condition is a side effect of the Seward Serum - he's ex-Edom. Minion: This is pretty obvious.  The Medievalist Memet Lucasi. History teacher at the University of Bucharest, minor TV personality "Dracula expert". Asset: Key link in al-Quaeda's Balkan network. Minion: His obsession with Dracula goes a bit deeper than it probably should. He gave up his soul willingly.  The MI5 Agent Daniel Biggs. Bodyguard for important targets, but also keeps tabs on their activity to make sure that they're not doing anything MI5 doesn't like. He can be a source of MI5 intel, either via deception or by proving that MI6 is doing things they shouldn't. Asset: Biggs is one of Hound's agents in the UK, cleaning up after vampire attacks. Minion: Does lamplighting work for the Conspiracy. He's in it for the money.
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Apr 18, 2016 14:28
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