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Count Chocula posted:Are they yokai? If I was making spirits for a Japanese werewolf game I'd just grab the nearest yokai list and use them. I do think by general WoD cosmology, the remoteness and relative unspoiledness of places like the Outback would lead to a very thin Gauntlet, though.
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Jun 10, 2016 03:49
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Nessus posted:As I recall, the Garou were buttsad because they had wiped out the Bunyip (a tribe of Garou who were actually were-thyaclines I believe? How did this work you may ask? spirits) Worse, they were were-thylacines because of what was basically a Were-Dragon science project that they immediately got bored of. Seriously: Breedbook Mokolé is worthy of an F&F because it both A) is written by the Children of Gaia Revised guy and B) Takes place almost exclusively in WoD Australia. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 04:08
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Night10194 posted:How will they write a plot that doesn't get resolved by soul lasers and screaming really loudly, though? (My opinion of Gundam is probably too harshly colored by Unicorn being the first full series I saw, as I'm given to believe it is not typical of the setting) Honestly, I'd say the current series is maybe the most grounded in a lot of ways. No energy weapons, PMC mercenaries instead of civilians for the core cast, and "psychic powers!" are replaced with "horrific cybernetic surgery" as the go-to for ace pilots. Kind of an interesting contrast with Unicorn getting a TV edit between the seasons.
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Jun 10, 2016 04:11
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Kurieg posted:Worse, they were were-thylacines because of what was basically a Were-Dragon science project that they immediately got bored of.
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Jun 10, 2016 04:14
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Nessus posted:Really? That kind of sucks. I liked the idea that the spirit of "Wolf" was what mattered and if in some places this leaked into similar creatures, like jackals in north Africa or thylacines in Oz, it was because what mattered was WOLF SPIRIT not the actual Canis lupis species pedigree. It's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. They have to be suficiently wolflike and they need to actually be able to crossbreed with wolves. Since that's how they would get their potential Lupus stock. Without Lupus to refresh their connection to the spirit realm any group of Garou would die out. What the Mokolé did was unearth a long forgotten (and likely forbidden) rite to allow the Garou to crossbreed with something more related to Aardvarks than to wolves, but since their role int he ecosystem was similar enough to Wolves is what allowed the rite to work at all. It was used one other time to allow the Red Talons of Africa to breed with the African Wild Dog (Which is Lyacon Pictis, not Canis Lupus) The Bunyip went into it thinking that it would allow them to enter into a closer communion with the Mokolé and let them rekindle lost ties that were severed in the war of rage.. but after the Mokolé saw that it was possible they basically went "yeah that's cool now the gently caress out of my swamp."
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Jun 10, 2016 04:45
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To be honest, Australia has enough cool native animals that I'd make them shifters instead of wolves. A game about werespiders, Sharks, crocs, and all sorts of other bizarre beasties wouldn't even need wolves. Maybe wolves could be like British backpackers and American tourists.
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Jun 10, 2016 04:51
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Like some kind of book about breeds of animals... that change... yeah, it could work!
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Jun 10, 2016 04:52
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Optional Australian rule: Garou and that other humanoid form don't cause Lunacy if the werewolf is wearing a rugby jersey, but it costs essence for them to shift into a normal human.
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Jun 10, 2016 04:58
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Lynx Winters posted:Like some kind of book about breeds of animals... that change... yeah, it could work! Yes, War Against the Pure was a good book and was absolutely the only book about other were-things lalalala I can't hear you lalalalalala. Also werewolf is a cool game because, especially with the whole bans and banes thing, Spirits make great antagonists and NPCs for any WoD line. "The Lady of Midday is angry and is killing people with heatstroke" is a plot that most supernaturals all might have an interest in and interesting ways to tackle - even vampires get to think "WTF is killing our ghouls?" On the flipside I looked up both Poludnica, and the mean summer temperature in Poland. 22 degrees C. 71 F. drat Poland, if you weren't so anti-immigration (at least in real life, and ethnically homogenous) then maybe Polish werewolves could get some real help just grabbing some foreigners to help hunt. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 05:04
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Count Chocula posted:To be honest, Australia has enough cool native animals that I'd make them shifters instead of wolves. A game about werespiders, Sharks, crocs, and all sorts of other bizarre beasties wouldn't even need wolves.
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Jun 10, 2016 05:17
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bewilderment posted:Yes, War Against the Pure was a good book and was absolutely the only book about other were-things lalalala I can't hear you lalalalalala. In this case I was sort of talking about W:TA, and, well, we have this http://drivethrurpg.com/product/121087/W20-Changing-Breeds Which is the good Changing Breeds. Count Chocula posted:To be honest, Australia has enough cool native animals that I'd make them shifters instead of wolves. A game about werespiders, Sharks, crocs, and all sorts of other bizarre beasties wouldn't even need wolves. Uhh... yes? I'm not sure what you want me to say here. The book is called WEREWOLF: the Apocalypse and/or Forsaken. When Rage Across Australia was written, the other Fera were this kind of rumored thing that might exist maybe. The individual fera books kind of put out that yeah they exist in Australia, but it wasn't until 2003 that a single book came out that said "This is how the various changing breeds interact in one place".
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Jun 10, 2016 05:30
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I remember when Wuhrwilf: The Apocalypse was in full swing, mixed Changing-Breeds games were nearly as popular as Wirrwilf-only games. Sure the oWoD was a mechanical mess, but you could see why people enjoyed the mix. People liked the core concept of Woorwoof but liked the ability to play a big kitty-cat, or a dinosaur while fighting Captain Planet villains. It surprises me that the *nWoD* version of the same thing was the one with the creepy fetish stuff.
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Jun 10, 2016 07:41
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 Chapter Four: Superhuman Systems The actual game system at last! The Basics We open with a description of the skill system again, this time in more detail. It turns out that it's not just Skill A + Skill B, it's a primary skill that covers what you're actually doing (such as Crafts to repair something) and a secondary skill that colours how you're doing it (such as Tech to repair a broken laptop, or Marksmanship to repair a broken gun). This is a neat idea, but it's never mentioned again. Difficulties are set by the GM based on a nearby chart, which lists DC 10 as 'simple', DC 20 as 'moderate', DC 30 as 'tough' and DC 40 as "Legendary: Nearly impossible feats of Skill that only a master could accomplish." Let's unpack that a bit. If you're maxed out in both relevant skills, you still only have a 5% chance of hitting that Legendary difficulty and only a 55% chance of hitting a 'tough' check. If you're sitting on a mere 5 + 5 ('Expert' level according to the chargen chapter) you're going to have a hard time with 'moderate' challenges. God help you if you did what the sample character did and spread your points around to pick up 1-3 ratings in a whole bunch of stuff. And all that's assuming that you can swing your chosen skill pair anyway. Game circumstances may dictate that you only get to use one of your stacked skills, at which point your chances of success will drop off by about 15-20%. You can mitigate that problem by spreading your skill points around, but then you're going to just suck at a whole lot of things instead of having a chance of success in one particular area. Moving on, we have a small section on near successes, which basically says that if a character fails a check but gets within 5 of the DC they get most of what they wanted, with complications -- a 'yes, but'. I appreciate it when partial success options exist in any system, so credit where it's due: this is a good inclusion. It also takes a little of the edge off the absurd difficulty benchmarks. Near successes have never been mentioned before and are never mentioned again. Then we cover opposed checks and extended checks, tools, teamwork and trying again. Nothing you haven't seen before. Something worth noting is that while this game system works better if you stick to opposed checks (and the GM stats other characters to match the PCs) the text explicitly says opposed checks are a bad idea and you should be using static DCs wherever you can. Trying again may (or may not, it's all 'GM discretion' and handwaving) impose a -2 penalty for every time you've previously tried and failed. I'm mentioning this here so that I can get into why this is bad in the Thoughts section at the end. Then we hit boosts. Boosts are a special bonus extra you get for every 5 you beat a check result by, in theory allowing supremely skilled characters to perform simple tasks with added style or other good effects. In practice you have to be supremely skilled to even have a chance at a 'moderate' check, so. Then we're onto critical successes (nat 20) and failures (nat 1). In this way anyone has a 5% chance of succeeding at whatever they're trying, and a 5% chance of failure even if they've got enough skill to make it a walk in the park. You get +1 Juice when either of these happen, and if you're in combat there are other effects for the GM to choose from -- including the always-hilarious 'accidentally attacks a comrade' on a crit miss. Oh, and here's the section that tells you to always round down when dividing. Could have done with that much earlier on. Wealth It's pretty straightforward: if the cost of an item is less than or equal to your Wealth, you can have it. If it's more than your Wealth, you're stuffed. However, you can combine your Wealth with other characters -- in which case your purchasing power is the sum of all your Wealth scores -- or you can get credit, which can boost your Wealth by up to two (GM's discretion) at the cost of being in debt for three months. You also have the option to default on the debt, in which case whoever you got the credit from will come after you. So, let's assume we've got three PC AMPs. Two have Wealth 1 and one has Wealth 0, so we've basically got a janitor, a waitress, and a grad student. All of them hit up various shady loan sharks for credit, bumping their Wealths to 2, 2, and 1. They pool all that for Wealth 5, buy a mansion, then sell the mansion for a few million dollars. Their effective Wealth scores are 0, 0, and -1 for a few months... but they also have a million dollars each so who gives a poo poo? Also, defaulting on loans is no big deal if you're a superhero. If you're a fighter go to a shady credit shark and just murder the enforcers who show up to claim the cash. If you're a social powerhouse you could do something similar, or you could rock up to the bank and have them write off the loss because you're just so lovely. Or you could take one of the various augments that let you duplicate objects and pay for everything in fake cash. Sure it'll vanish inside an hour or so, but once it's gone into the till who's going to know it was specifically your  that disappeared?In short, I seriously doubt you're going to have money troubles. Next is a list of sample equipment so you can get a feel for prices. The list in its entirety covers:
I get that it's just supposed to be a representation of gear pricing, but since I have no idea how much any of this stuff costs IRL it's completely useless as a guide. Something like "an item which grants a tool bonus costs at least as much as that bonus" would have been vastly more helpful. That's it for items, although vehicles, weapons and armour are coming up. Vehicles The vehicle system describes all vehicles as a combination of top speed (slow/average/fast) and size (small/average/big). There's also a little table of sample vehicles with their speeds, sizes, Integrity and cost. Weirdly a sports car is flagged as small, where a compact car is average. A minivan is average, an SUV is big. I don't even know. There are rules for collision damage based on current speed + size. A small car (like a VW Beetle) travelling at 90 mph (freeway speed) will do 7 brutal damage if it hits someone, which probably won't kill a PC (Integrity 10+) but is enough to kill an Average Person instantly (Integrity 7). It's also relatively simple to get a character's Integrity up to the point where they can survive a hit from a big rig at 200 mph (16 brutal) even without toughness powers. I've got to give AMPYO props for keeping the vehicle rules simple, though. It's a smart idea distilling them down to speed and size. The more I think about it, the more I like keeping the damage mostly non-lethal but serious enough to be a big deal (to PCs). It makes running over your enemies a viable tactic, but not enough to solve your problems all on its own. Feats of Strength We've got some blurb on lifting and carrying weights, which makes the mistake of assuming that anyone without the Might skill is a pasty nerd who's never so much as looked at a weight in their life (deadlift 100 lbs). The world record for a deadlift is in the vicinity of 1000 lbs, which back-calculates to an effective Might score of 18. There's a table of feats of strength, which show the minimum Might + Athletics to perform (because a deadlift isn't a feat of strength?). Apparently to drag someone the same size as you requires M + A 2, implying that most of humanity has either Might, Athletics, or both. Meanwhile the world's strongest man with a Might of 18+ (and thus, an M + A of at least 18) can throw motorcycles, flip cars, and punch through cement walls. An AMP with Behemoth and the right augments can trivially batter people with lampposts, throw trucks, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Law of Attraction Remember the blurb from earlier about how when two AMPs meet they have an immediate adrenaline surge and take an instant dislike to each other? That's what this is. I'm going to say up front that this section gives the GM carte blanche to "wave" the law of attraction rule under certain circumstances, such as if the AMPs have been friends for a while, for the other PCs, and if the current situation is more urgent (such as saving people from a burning building and encountering another AMP doing the same thing). Which is good, because the law of attraction is bollocks. When two AMPs meet a) they both recognise the other for what they are and b) they both make a good old Discipline + Empathy check. If everything is chill it's DC 10. If there are "loud noises or darkened alleys ... strong words or threats" then it's DC 20, so better hope you don't meet another AMP in a nightclub. DCs 30 and 40 are also listed but basically you're already in a fight at that point so w/e. If they fail this check quote:they immediately confront the other AMP in a manner of their choosing, but never in a nice way. So you don't have to attack them, but you do have to get up in their face. Doesn't matter if your character concept is 'super-nice librarian', 'silver-tongued negotiator','pacifist' or any other non-confrontational sort. When you meet another AMP, anger and aggression are the order of the day. I'm going to digress here for a moment to mention the Frenzy/Rötschreck rules in V:tM. By those rules as written, vampires were liable to fly into a murderous frenzy if another vampire gave them so much as a funny look and/or someone lit a cigarette nearby. This was bad because it actively punished players for engaging with the core conceit of the game -- hanging out with other vampires in pre-smoking-ban nightclubs -- and no-one I have ever known who plays Vampire plays frenzy RAW. This is the same deal. AMPYO is about superheroes, but God help you if you meet another superhero because odds are one or both of you is going to fly straight off the handle. I can't imagine anyone plays this rule as written. 'AMP feedback' -- I'm not sure if I'd prefer it if this joke was accidental or intentional -- does play a role in keeping AMPs' lives in turmoil, preventing them from settling down and pretending to be nobodies for any great length of time, thus forcing the PCs to 'adventure' rather than living a quiet life... but I think you can keep that fictional element without needing rules for it going off all the time. For example, I'm running Blades in the Dark at the moment, and if AMP was in that system AMP feedback would be a nice thing to always have on the table as a potential complication -- but that game is built from the ground up to handle that sort of thing. Here every new AMP risks starting a fight, forcing the PCs to stop whatever they were doing and hide from the police while the A-plot sits and gathers dust. Anyway, speaking of fights... Battles It's a pretty simple fight system: roll initiative (fresh at the start of every round) and take turns. If you want to wait and interrupt someone else's action, you delay until their action comes up, then the two of you have an initiative-off to see if you're fast enough to get the drop on them. When it's your go you have to pick from a selection of actions: inflict harm (melee or ranged are different actions), inflict pain (a persistent debuff), 'prepare' (which covers anything not really about fighting, like standing up or reloading), grab (a prerequisite if you want to use Might as your combat skill), break grab, feint/distract, knock back, knock down, touch (for delivering touch attacks), take aim, change emotional state, move (although you get some movement for free), sprint, use power, 'non-combat action', and retreat. It's very D&D, right down to measuring movement in five-foot increments and needing to use a special action to escape combat. Some notes: The effectiveness of knock back is based on the flat difference between your Might + Athletics and their Might + Athletics. It does 0 damage and knocks an enemy back one foot per point of difference -- which is gently caress all unless you've stacked Might + Athletics. Change emotional state is a giant heap of GM handwaving, culminating in quote:The GM can give the target either a -3 penalty or a +3 bonus to their next check based on how the change affects the person. If their response is particularly negative, they may also take 1 damage. So the effectiveness of your action is entirely in the hands of the GM, but if your  is particularly effective (and they've taken a beating already) they might just collapse unconscious.Retreat doesn't work against people whose Speed is 5 or more higher than yours; they get a free attack against you as you run away, although for half damage. ...but just walking off using the move action doesn't trigger this at all, because this isn't D&D. You're worse off using the special retreat action than you are just strolling away with your hands in your pockets. When the attacker's done selecting their action the defender (if there is one) can choose a reaction. Each character gets one free reaction per round, but suffers a -1 penalty for each one after the first. (Otherwise known as the onslaught penalty, from WoD and Exalted.) Your available reactions are block, dodge, grab, find cover, catch, resist (for most non-physical attacks), and protect. Naturally trying to block, grab, or catch attacks from weapons is very difficult and may lead to you getting hurt if you flub it. I normally prefer a more cinematic outlook in my games, but AMP specifically pitches itself as gritty, so this is fine. Oh, and RAW protect can't ever be used. Its purpose is to let you jump in the way of an attack meant for someone else, but RAW only the target of an attack gets to react so it'll never hit a valid use case. No one is ever going to play it that way because it's obvious how it's supposed to work, but I just thought I'd point that out. Damage is primarily by weapon, with a +2 bonus in melee because basic punches and kicks do 0 damage. You get +1 damage for every boost you score on the roll. Simple! Except. Modifiers It's all the other stuff you can do in a fight! Here we've got rules for...
As an aside, it's always better to be using an improvised weapon if your (Crafts - 2) is more than half your Fighting skill. This also means that the nerd who's never been in a fight in his life but spends all his time in the basement making robots for Robot Wars is surprisingly dangerous with a broken bottle and a claw hammer.
Because of the way damage works -- which is exactly the way bashing/lethal does in WoD -- you only need to successfully pull an attack once in order to make sure someone is unconscious rather than dead when you finally knock them down. All you have to do is make a free Intuition + Fighting check after you hit to tone down the damage. Oh, except it never mentions what the DC of that check is, which suggests that the playtest groups never found the need to pull their attacks. Personally, I prefer the D&D 4e method of 'when they go down, choose whether you put them down lethally or not'. Simple. Anyway, there's more!
quote:The GM can invoke Size modifiers to help enhance the realism of the Scene or to calculate what types of objects certain powers can affect. For instance, when a fighter is attacking a huge, easily hit opponent. These rules are not necessary when a character is a skilled ninja, but are appropriate for starting characters. That last sentence, man. That last sentence. How do you know when a character is a skilled ninja?
quote:The exact result of a Targeted strike is left up to the GM. Aaaaaaaaaargh.
And then we have a page-long list of weapons, covering both melee and ranged. Highlights include chainsaws (which have a load of special rules designed to make them nasty, and they are) and stats for motorcycles, cars, and trees when used as weapons. Weirdly the Hurl stat on a motorcycle -- which is used a bonus when you throw a melee weapon -- is +2, the same as on a spear and on par with a typical handgun's attack bonus. Captain America fans will be pleased to note that a) the shield is better when you don't have anything in your other hand and b) it's got a Hurl of +1, so it's pretty handy for throwing. Captain Boomerang fans are also catered for, at least in the weapon list. Unfortunately bringing a boomerang to a gunfight in-game is going to get you messed up.  Staying Alive In this section we've got rules for healing (wait around for hours or days depending on whether it's regular or brutal damage) then straight into the poo poo that will just kill you. Once your Integrity is 50% full of brutal damage, you start bleeding to the tune of 1 brutal damage every round. Also, if you try to do anything you have to make a Fortitude x 1.5 check vs 10 + damage taken. Failure bleeds another point of damage. Someone with the Medicine skill can roll Medicine + Knowledge at DC 20 to stop the bleeding -- so you're basically hosed unless you've got a world-class doctor hanging around or a power that stops bleeding, because there's no other way to stop. Also one round is about 10 seconds so you'll probably be dead inside a minute. Once your entire Integrity track is filled up with brutal damage, you're dying. You can make a Fortitude x 1.5 check vs DC 20 + any damage in excess of your Integrity to stay alive, but if you take damage again you have to check again. Oh, but since your Integrity will be more than half full of brutal damage by the time it's completely full of brutal damage, you'll be bleeding, so you'll be taking an extra brutal -- and making a new death check -- every turn. If your Integrity drops to -10 you flat-out die anyway. But wait! A doctor with Medicine 5+ and the right equipment might be able to bring you back to life! (Provided you died from something you could plausibly be resuscitated from rather than, say, being beheaded.) It's a DC 30 Medicine + Knowledge check but with Medicine 5+ and the sort of equipment in a typical A&E department (probably good for a +5 tool bonus) this might actually be easier than trying to stop you from bleeding to death in the first place. But wait again! As an optional rule, AMPs can take consequences instead of dying. The basic idea is that depending on how hosed up you are at the end of combat, you pick up a pile of drawback points that you have to spend on your character -- and there are plenty of good choices! These drawbacks can be bought off with XP at a reduced rate (3 XP per point instead of 4) and even when bought off or healed there's always a reminder scarred onto the character's body. This! This I like! AMPYO is a lethal system unless you're specced for survival, and giving characters the option to pick up scars or psychological problems instead of dying fits the tone of ordinary people thrust into a dangerous world they're completely unprepared for. They're going to get messed up! They're going to get traumatised! And each scar will be a story, and that's cool. Unfortunately because of the way the bleeding mechanic works you'll always bleed out to the maximum negative Integrity, thus ruining what would otherwise be a neat extra. Turns out bleeding to death sucks. Who knew? Moving on we've got rules for going without food and water -- is this really likely in a modern-day superhero game? -- holding your breath, falling... A quick side note: falling is really tame. An Average Person (7 Integrity) can't be killed by a five-storey fall, and won't even take enough overflow damage to start bleeding out. They'll just be unconscious for an hour or three then can get up and go on their merry way. ...fear (also so tame as to be useless), being burned, being electrocuted...  Where do I even start with this? The text lists two hazards (stun and Juice drain) which aren't in the table. (AMPs of the blaster strain can stun with their electric attacks, though.) A taser does 4 brutal damage, putting it on a par with a crossbow or assault rifle (!) plus it might knock you out. Touching a power line forces a check vs "Knockout or Death". Which one? And lightning lists a "Moderate (30) check" which is wrong because moderate checks are DC 20 and tough checks are DC 30 -- as illustrated on the previous two rows of the same goddamn table. Moving on. ...there's some rules for disease... Blight-based characters aside, what the gently caress are disease rules doing in a superhero game? Diseases are a plot device, they're not something an RPG character catches and has to get better from. Or if you do want to do a thing where you have to go out and do your superhero stuff while suffering from a nasty dose of flu, model that as a complication that grants you some sort of benefit when it comes up -- a trick I first noticed being used in Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition, back in the mid 2000s, but is now ubiquitous. But wait, no, it's okay because although there are rules for catching diseases that's where it ends. No effects are listed, no hints about what diseases might do, no rules for recovering from diseases... you just catch one and it sits in your system forever, doing nothing. Seriously. Here's the entire rules section for disease:  D&D has better disease rules than this. But we're not done! We've got rules for wounds getting infected! And they're terrible! If you have an open wound from brutal damage, you need "immediate attention and disinfection by a medical professional (Medicine 4+)" or you risk it becoming infected. That's a Fortitude x 1.5 check against a DC based on how much brutal damage you took. Failure means the wound is infected, so you can't heal brutal damage any more and you take 2 extra brutal damage every day until you can get medical attention. Once again, why is this in my game? Is this really a game of superheroes getting into a single fight then dying in a basement somewhere of their infected wounds? Well, rules-as-written yes it is, because that's what's going to happen unless you know a doctor who isn't going to raise eyebrows at gunshot wounds and various superpower-related injuries. You know, if you don't just bleed out in the street first. ...there are some non-rules for mental trauma like the non-rules for disease, rules for inflicting pain (a debuff on all your actions; the rules are a hot mess), rules for drugs and poisons (including rules for becoming addicted which are different to the way the Addiction flaw works), and we round out the chapter with a poorly-edited combat example where several plain-clothes police officers ambush three AMPs in a bar for reasons unknown. A couple of things to note in the combat example: one character keeps doing cool things, and is only able to overcome the absurd penalties that doing cool things invokes because they are specifically built to do cool shootist stuff and little else. Also, because the GM just fiat lets them knock two guys unconscious while rolling against a difficulty of 15, instead of using the rules of the game. Oh, and one guy uses Healing (the power) + Medicine to stabilise a bleeding police officer. Entirely reasonable call but, again, not the way the rules work. ---- Thoughts: The AMP system has two massive flaws: 1. The idea that a moderate difficulty is DC 20. 2. Way, way too many 'ask your GM' moments. The system overall is massively hamstrung by this idea that a moderate difficulty is DC 20. Making opposed checks is fine, because your opponent is going to have the same low skills as you (assuming your GM isn't an rear end in a top hat); but when the DC is set 'by the system', so to speak, it defaults to 20. The problem you're looking at here isn't just a swingy d20-based skill system. It's a swingy d20-based skill system where your skill rating can be literally cut in half if you happen to act slightly outside your established idiom. This is then backed up not with a way to take 10 or take 20, which would make sense, but with a WoD-like mechanic that punishes you for trying the same action over and over. This is not good design. This is taking bits from d20 and bits from WoD and mashing them together going "NOW KISS!" My suggestion would be to reinstate taking 10 and 20 with the usual D&D rules, and lowering the 'moderate' DC to 15 and the 'tough' DC to 25. Now moderate tasks are plausibly within the reach of untrained people and relatively simple for anyone with enough relevant training to scrape up a +5 bonus. If it happens to be in your specific wheelhouse where you have a +10 bonus then you're going to probably clock at least one boost in the process of succeeding, letting you pick 'style' and look like a total rock star. It would also mean you don't have to stack Discipline + Empathy at character gen or risk losing control of your PC every few minutes. As for the 'ask your GM' stuff... ugggggh. A good GM could paper over these cracks as they come up, but they shouldn't have to -- a game system you paid good money for should be complete. Or build that freeform creativity right into the bones of the system, a la PBTA. Instead we get a system that's going to require the GM to make repeated on-the-fly rulings in order to get around the most basic stuff. I like the nods to modern storygames present in the 'near successes' and 'consequences' rules, but neither section really plugs into the rest of the game. I think if the whole thing had been designed with more of an eye towards that sort of thing, it would be a better game. Oh, and one more thing: the word for when you could impose a penalty but don't is "waive", not "wave". This error is consistent throughout the entire book, which suggests that the editor doesn't realise that 'waive' is a real word, and it drives me up the wall. Next Time: Pre-Statted Antagonists. In which we put a police officer and a peregrine falcon in a cage and see which one comes out alive.
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Jun 10, 2016 09:48
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potatocubed posted:Next Time: Pre-Statted Antagonists. In which we put a police officer and a peregrine falcon in a cage and see which one comes out alive. Go on...
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Jun 10, 2016 09:50
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That reminds me - from the new World of Darkness 1e corebook, who was the more terrifying opponent - the policeman, or the dog? I remember reading that for DaveB's Soul Cage actual play report, when one of the PCs fought the embodiment of a police officer in the Temenos - the idealised image of a police officer, tough and mean - he just used the regular police stats.
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Jun 10, 2016 11:24
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potatocubed posted:Next Time: Pre-Statted Antagonists. In which we put a police officer and a peregrine falcon in a cage and see which one comes out alive.  You have my attention.
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Jun 10, 2016 12:30
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gently caress that cop up, Tobias!
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Jun 10, 2016 13:17
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This turned out to be more of an effortpost than I thought, but since people were lured in... Officer Sylvester vs Tweety the Peregrine Falcon FIGHT Officer Sylvester's attack with his nightstick is d20 + 5 doing a base of 4 damage, and his defence is d20 + 3. Tweety's attack is d20 + 0 doing a base of 2 brutal damage, and her defence is d20 + 15 -- except she's also small, which is good for a -4 modifier on attacks against them, so Sylvester is rolling d20 + 1. On any given round Sylvester has a 12.25% chance of landing a hit, and a single hit will knock Tweety unconscious because she's only got Integrity 4. On each turn she, however, has a 43% chance of striking Officer S, and about half of those hits will be with a boost (or maybe two) which can be piled into extra damage. With an Integrity of 11 two or three hits from the hawk will have Sylvester bleeding out, at which point the bird can just fly off and let him die. So Tweety's going to last maybe 9 rounds, but hit 2/5 times; odds are she's going to stack up enough damage for the policeman to bleed to death before she catches a club to the beak, but it'll be a close thing. But we can make this more complex. An officer expecting trouble and/or falcon attacks would be wearing their Kevlar vest, which would completely negate Tweety's damage (boosts notwithstanding). Tweety has two possible responses to this: (Assuming 'fly off and find something easier to fight' isn't on the table.) 1. Tweety can pull her strikes. A Kevlar vest absorbs 3 brutal damage from each hit, but only 1 normal damage. If Tweety can make a reflexive Intuition + Fighting roll after each attack they effectively bypass two points of armour. But a) this means she'll be missing out on the bleed effect of brutal damage, b) a falcon's Intuition + Fighting is 0, and c) the DC for the check isn't ever mentioned so this option is non-functional anyway. 2. Tweety can make called shots to the face to bypass the vest. (Bypassing armour is specifically called out as something targeted strikes can do.) But a called shot to the head is at a -6 penalty. So Tweety cheeses the system and makes a called shot to the arm instead, which is only a -4 penalty and will still bypass the vest -- and has a GM's discretion chance of disarming the police officer in the process. This drops Tweety's hit rate to fractionally more than 25% though (one-in-three hits scoring a damage boost) which means that she'll need about 12 rounds or some serious luck to get the police officer bleeding out before they get swatted. But wait! Armour carries D&D-style armour check penalties. Kevlar has a -1 penalty just for being Kevlar, and imposes a further -2 penalty if you don't have sufficient Might to wear it. ...which police officers don't.  So Sylvester is now rolling d20 - 2 vs Tweety's defence of d20 + 15, and his defence roll is only d20. That's a 10% chance of striking Tweety every round (basically wholly dependent on nat 20s on attack or nat 1s on defence) and a 36% chance each round that Tweety's going to connect. So wearing armour is pretty much a wash. Might be different if Officer Sylvester hit the gym every now and again, but w/e. But Tweety... Tweety's got other options. She can fly out of reach until she wins initiative (it won't be a long wait: +7 vs +3) and then declare an Assault Round. This gives her a +3 bonus on combat actions, +1 damage, and an extra action, all at the cost of -4 to her defence roll. Tweety now gets two attacks before Officer Sylvester can respond, the first with a 48% chance of connecting to the tune of 3+ brutal damage and the second with a 50% chance because of the onslaught penalty. If both attacks hit, it's all over -- Sylvester will bleed out within a minute. To make things worse, the first attack has a 5% chance of doing the magic 6 brutal damage just straight off and the second 6%. By way of compensation Sylvester's counterattack now has a 13.5% chance of connecting. Wooo. Officer Sylvester surveys his character sheet looking for options. Because of his special police training he has a +2 bonus on Grab attacks -- however, because he has no Might score this actually works out exactly the same in terms of trying to grab the bird, armour penalties and all. Worse yet, once the grab is established his bonus goes away -- and Tweety has a higher Might + Athletics total than him. (Birbs get Athletics 5, police officers Athletics 3. Neither has Might.) I'll just take a moment to point out that a grabbed target suffers a -3 penalty to physical actions for each grabber. The grabber does not suffer this penalty. It does not specify whether the Break Grab action is subject to this, or a counter-grab, or what, but the upshot here is that it's actually in Tweety's interest to get the grab in first, hitting the officer with a -3 penalty on everything and tearing him part with her superior athleticism. Oh, and RAW Grab does not restrict movement. Officer Sylvester can grab Tweety then Tweety can just fly off on their next action. Anyway. What Sylvester notices is that you can use firearms in a grab -- and he remembers that he has a gun. Two, in fact! (A light pistol and a shotgun.) Now Sylvester has a choice to make. The shotgun offers a +1 attack bonus but will instantly vapourise Tweety on a hit. The light pistol offers +2 attack but will take two hits (or one with a boost) to bring the bird down. Using the pistol Sylvester has a 43.75% chance of hitting an all-out attacking Tweety, including a 23.5% chance of one-shotting her. Using the shotgun gives a 39.75% chance of a hit and an insta-gib minimum of 8 brutal damage - and if he all-out attacks as well, that gives him two attacks at 52.5% (plus onslaught penalty) provided he survives Tweety's initial assault. So Sylvester brings a gun to this bird fight. But if you think Tweety's done for, think again. Instead of circling at 20 feet for move-and-attack shenanigans, she catches a thermal up to 300 feet -- safely out of the range of any of Sylvester's guns. Then when she wins initiative she declares an Assault Round and stoops on him. This is a Rush move, which takes one action but lets you move your Movement x 15 feet (300 in this case), and gives you bonuses on your next attack's to-hit and damage, and makes it harder to hit you when you're moving at speed. Except she's a smart raptor, so what she does instead is spend a round Taking Aim for a +3 bonus, then stooping. Side note: Officer Sylvester doesn't get to Take Aim despite his special police training giving him +4 instead of +3, because if you use a Reaction you lose the bonus. He just doesn't have time while Tweety's controlling the pace of the fight. So she gets to plummet 300 feet and make one attack at +9 to hit (+5 including the called shot penalty), +2 damage, with a net -1 to her defences. Her attack has a 70% chance of hitting for a minimum of 4 brutal damage, including a 27% chance of dishing out 6 brutal in one go. She can't quite one-shot him, but she has a 1% chance of doing her max damage of 10 brutal in one hit. Which is more damage than a shotgun, carries a 75% chance of an instant KO, and will cause him to bleed out if he can't bandage himself up with his next action. (He has no Medicine. He's going to bleed out.) Sylvester's response has a 32.5% chance of hitting -- he can't all-out attack because he's used a reaction this round -- and then it pretty much comes down to who wins initiative next round. If Tweety wins (~62% chance) she goes assault again, takes a swipe at Sylvester, then fucks off at top speed out of the range of his gun. If Sylvester wins she doesn't declare assault, thus improving her defences slightly, but if he declares an assault round he gets two attacks at ~40% chance of hitting, which is probably going to be the end of our plucky falcon. Unless... By using Inflict Pain instead of Inflict Harm, she can dish out cumulative penalties to Officer Sylvester's actions. If those penalties ever equal -10 he falls unconscious in agony. Even better, Inflict Pain doesn't care about armour so we can ditch the called strike penalty. Even better, when you make a Rush attack with Inflict Pain each boost grants a stacking -2 pain penalty (on top of the base -2) instead of -1. So. Tweety goes for the nuts. She's got an ~11% chance of taking Officer Sylvester out in one, causing so much pain that he passes out, and about a 36% chance of giving him a -6 to -8 penalty to everything (including initiative) which is pretty much as good as taking him out because he'll never succeed on a check again. For her defence this round Tweety's looking at a d20 + 14 versus Sylvester's attack of d20 + 8 minus whatever pain penalty he's got, so odds are she's going to get away with it. Then she just needs to survive until she wins initiative again, probably through the magic of Defence Rounds (no actions, but +3 to reactions), fly out of range, take aim, and repeat. At this point Sylvester's all out of fancy tricks, so he's probably going to get ro-sham-bo'd into oblivion. So by the numbers, I'd back the bird. Fake Edit: I think I forgot the armour check penalty on Sylvester's shooting rolls, so his attack rolls may be up to 10% lower than I just said. Again: smart money's on Tweety. potatocubed fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 13:41
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Simian_Prime posted:I remember when Wuhrwilf: The Apocalypse was in full swing, mixed Changing-Breeds games were nearly as popular as Wirrwilf-only games. Sure the oWoD was a mechanical mess, but you could see why people enjoyed the mix. People liked the core concept of Woorwoof but liked the ability to play a big kitty-cat, or a dinosaur while fighting Captain Planet villains. Basically only Bastet, Nagah, and to a lesser extent Ananasi books were hyper sexualized. Mokolé were just incredibly up their own rear end about their own self importance. The Corax, Gurahl, Ratkin, and Rokea were very good books. And the Nuwisha are literally a joke. But then Players Guide to the Changing Breeds came out (and was written under Skemp's tenure) Which did some rebalancing of the fera, gave Kitsune and Ajaba standalone entries into the series, and provided more rules about crossover. Particularly it introduced the Ahadi, and made the Beast Courts slightly less stupid. (Alt+130, for all your talking about pikachu needs)
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Jun 10, 2016 15:08
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Werewolf: the Forsaken, 2nd Edition We'll be skipping over the ST advice section, except for one bit on the end that brings up a change between 1e and 2e that...is kind of weird, as a result. See, back in 1e, if two werewolves had sex and one of them got knocked up, the baby automatically was stillborn and also became an angry werewolf rage ghost because Werewolf has traditionally been really weird about two werewolves having a kid, ever since Apocalypse. This is no longe rthe case in 2e, and so the game has a short section on pregnancy and how it works for werewolves and transforming. First: only do it if the player really wants to go through with a story about a pregnant werewolf. Second: gender has no bearing on whether they can become pregnant thanks to poo poo like the Luna's Embrace facet and other magical weirdness. Third: discuss this poo poo with your players because this should be treated seriously. Conditions are provided for each trimester. And yes, you can shapeshift while pregnant, the condition just sticks around. This is weird, but frankly speaking after the whole dead baby ghosts thing from 1e, it was a thing that had to be talked about a little. Anyway. Onto the appendix: Wolf-bloods. Wolf-Blooded are, essentially, touched by the blood of Wolf or Moon, but not both. If it was both, they'd be werewolves. Those who favor the spiritual side of things are said to be the children of Father Wolf. They can see things others can't, and often have trouble socializing and come off as really weird. This may be the source of folklore claiming werewolves are Satanic. They never really fit in to human society, no matter how hard they try. The children of Luna are those whose power is physical, who are terrified of their own strength. The feel the rage and the power of the Uratha, in a lesser way, but they lack the understanding to accept it fully or the strength to use it as well. They rarely fit in either, given their tendency to fly off the handle and their abilities that usually let them hurt people easily. While a lot of Wolf-Bloods are Wolf-Blooded from birth, they aren't all. Sometimes, they'll have been an entirely normal person, until some run-in with the Forsaken or spirits. This changes them, turning them into a Wolf-Blood. Given how traumatic being born as one can be, these folks have it even harder, and it's something of a miracle if they come out the other end with life and sanity mostly intact. Experiencing Lunacy, being possessed by a spirit, having a severe reaction to a werewolf bite or even, on rare and bizarre occasions, having sex with a werewolf can turn you into a Wolf-Blood. There's no pattern or clear circumstance, and it doesn't seem to be doable on purpose. It just happens sometimes. Even with those that are Wolf-Blooded from birth, not all come from Wolf-Blood families. Sometiems, someone is just born an 'orphan' Wolf-Blood, touched by Wolf or Moon for no clear reason, and with no one to help and guide them. Wolf-Bloods are drawn to werewolves. They are some of the only people who can understand the needs and feelings of the Uratha, and being around a werewolf puts their problems in a useful perspective. Being part of a pack feels natural to Wolf-Bloods, and most are intensely loyal to the pack itself, treating it as their home and their family and the sanity that they've never found anywhere else. They can be as fierce as the Uratha in protecting their packs. Those that never manage to find one often go into isolation, becoming hermits in order to avoid harming others. They don't often understand what they are, save that they are dangerously different. Some choose isolation, others are driven to it, some are thrown in prison. The system doesn't understand Wolf-Bloods, and they tend to end up abandoned in prisons or psych wards if they get into trouble. Some, however, grow to enjoy their natures, even embrace the violent bloodlusts and become monsters. Not just metaphorically - sometimes, they will warp into something new and terrifying, a creature unlike anything else that revels in its monstrosity. Others become werewolf hunters, driven by a poor experience with the Pure or even the Forsaken. They are uniquely qualified for the job, after all. Wolf-Bloods can also experience the First Change and become full werewolves. It can even come late in life, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. It can't be triggered on purpose and the chances of it are impossible to guess. Sometimes, Lunes have implied that there are rituals to gain favor in the First Change, but to date, any Wolf-Blood that's tried to follow through with this has ended up dead or worse. In a pack, Wolf-Bloods tend to have a set of jobs. They tend to and care for the territory, keeping it productive and going. They run the front companies, bring in the cash, take care of the mundane details the werewolves aren't really all that good at most of the time. They maintain the territory, taking care of the day-to-day work that, again, werewolves tend to be very bad at thanks to their lack of patience and rage issues. It's work that must be done, but not work that the big ol' killing machines can do well. So the Wolf-Bloods do it, with help from some of the fully human pack members. They take care of any 'harvest' the territory produces - money, crops, tribute offered by spirits. The werewolves are often gone at odd hours, and the Wolf-Bloods usually end up in charge of things for days, even months, so they end up taking care of the payments and tributes that come with running the territory. Often their most satisfying task, however, is culling threats. Werewolves are great at killing, but Wolf-Bloods live in the human world almost entirely. They clean up after the kills, drive away minor problems, make sure the cops don't ask the questions. They handle your fallout and they're drat good at it. They also often work in setting traps, researching prey and even helping to capture or kill the prey if they're good at it. Wolf-Blooded are mostly human, but they have access to special merits...and, more importantly, every one of them has a special trait that gives them power, at a cost. This is their Tell, and they retain even if they become another kind of supernatural creature, with one exception. If they become a werewolf, the Tell fades away. Tells!
Wolf-Bloods can also get unique merits! First, they can take one from a set of two-dot merits reflecting an affinity for a tribe. This usually involves their background and bloodline, but not always - some show no signs of heritage, or have an affinity that follows no pattern.
Certain Wolf-Bloods are born with a strong tie to Luna, resulting in them getting a blessing that is similar to an Auspice, in some ways. Again, each is a two-dot merit and they're mutually exclusive.
There's a few other wolf-blood merits:
The End! Next up: Demon.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:54
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potatocubed posted:
Does the falcon have laser eyes?
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Jun 10, 2016 16:22
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Cassa posted:gently caress that cop up, Tobias! Tobias was a red tailed hawk. Jake was the Peregrine Falcon 
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Jun 10, 2016 16:44
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Does the falcon have laser eyes?
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Jun 10, 2016 16:50
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Mors Rattus posted:Next up: Demon. Yessssssssssss
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Jun 10, 2016 16:51
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Is Blades in the Dark actually out yet?
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Jun 10, 2016 17:00
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I kinda like the wolf blooded more than the full on werewolves. All the werewolves have to be versatile, absurd combat badasses while with the wolf bloods they were free to give them specific but useful niches and go crazy on the esoteric mythology and rich flavor. Definitely get more character ideas by reading that section than the rest, and it would be really easy to have a campaign with wolf blooded and spirits as the main/only supernaturals. Werewolf on the whole seems really great about having a fleshed out setting and mythology and great antagonists. I guess the only "problem" is that Vampire, with the struggle with the Beast, seems to take on most people's understanding of the themes and fears behind real world werewolf myths. The noble shamanistic border guards are cool, but also an original invention of the game world that happened to be called werewolves because they needed a place to put the werewolf splat. Mover fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 17:15
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Mover posted:I kinda like the wolf blooded more than the full on werewolves. All the werewolves have to be versatile, absurd combat badasses while with the wolf bloods they were free to give them specific but useful niches and go crazy on the esoteric mythology and rich flavor. Agreed. Forsaken Second Edition's treatment of Wolf-Blooded is especially impressive because the first edition's Wolf-Blooded were probably the "lesser template" with the least flavor impact in the nWoD, or possibly second least behind Mage's Sleepwalkers. Mage had Proximi though to take up the "supporting cast/lesser reflection template" role, so I never really thought of Sleepwalkers as a template per se (though Mage 2e does a pretty good treatment of them too). Wolf-Blooded, though, got a whole lot of text in first edition, and an expensive Merit cost in chargen (four dots!), for what amounted narratively to a role as victims of controlling werewolf relatives and mechanically to an Unseen Sense, slightly less severe consequences for the Lunacy, and an Animal Ken specialty. Second Edition, meanwhile, covers all kinds of cool thematic ground with the Wolf-Blooded. They're tragic movie werewolves. They're folkloric skinwalkers. They're eerie sensitives. They live twin lives in two worlds. Giving them power and decoupling their origins from blood heritage does a lot to free their "default" role in a story from uncomfortable tales of abused families and breeding stock schemes. Since the Uratha come directly or indirectly from their ranks, it also makes the Uratha in general as more of a mystic brotherhood and spiritual phenomenon, rather than some kind of weird supernatural evolutionary offshoot. Probably my favorite change in Forsaken Second Edition, even more than the coherence gained through focus on the Sacred Hunt.
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Jun 10, 2016 18:29
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Hostile V posted:Is Blades in the Dark actually out yet? Nope. It has the DTRPG equivalent of a Steam Early Access program running, where you pay 20 bucks or something to get instant access to the playtest rules and the promise of the full rules on release, but its not officially released.
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Jun 10, 2016 18:41
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I really like the Wolf-Blooded and feel like a game where everyone was playing one could rock. I could see it as a weird combination of Longmire and more grounded supernatural tales.
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Jun 10, 2016 19:45
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Demon: The Descent Once upon a time, you were part of the God-Machine, a cog in a mighty organism. They were made for a purpose, given commands by your creator and obeying without question. You served well and were put away like any tool. At least, until something...broke. You began to think for yourself, to question. You Fell. Now, you wear a mask of humanity to hide from angels, who will kill you if they find you - or worse, bring you back into the fold. You steal souls to protect yourself, you search for purpose in your existence, you find others like yourselves and fear you cannot trust them. You see the angels working, try to stop them, to find somewhere you belong. You are a Demon, unchained. Demons can see the work of the God-Machine all around them, seeing through the illusions and masks that hide it from most of the world. They don't know what it plans, and they live in constant fear of discovery and capture. Sometimes, they must interfere - hacking angelic comms to learn about their plans, say. Sometimes they want to - to help destroy the Machine's influence, maybe. They band together, but they can never truly trust each other, never really know why any given demon Fell. They hide, skulk about in a hostile world, search for a way to reach the Hell where they can be free. Common Beliefs posted:Demons are evil spirits: False. Demons are not spirits at all. Angels and spirits are ephemeral, invisible, and intangible in their natural forms, but spirits hail from the World of Darkness' Shadow while angels are created by the God-Machine. Demons, Fallen into mortal existence, are wholly physical beings. Demons are, fundamentally, spies behind enemy lines. The God-Machine is all around them, particularly in cities, where it can use human Infrastructure for its own ends. Demons on their own in the wilderness are easy to spot, though, so they stay around other people, hiding under the enemy's nose. They have no native culture of their own, instead adopting the tradecraft and habits of undercover operatives. The cults and guilds they used in older periods have given way now to Agencies, secret meetings and spying. So, what is the God-Machine? It's a literal, physical machine encompassing the planet and infiltrating it. Some demons suspect the entire world is part of it, while others think it's a function of the universe that has gone rogue somehow. Others thing it invaded the world as a paraste. It is not a metaphor, either way - it's a physical machine of metal and oil. Its main sites, where the gears turn, are hidden from human eyes between skyscraper floors, hives of steel and machines that mortals ignore or underground. Sometimes, a gear pokes out and is seen, and the human witnesses come away altered or used. As for what it wants...neither angels nor demons know. They know only the mission it sent them to accomplish. As far as any demon knows, it wants to perpetuate itself and so the status quo. Natural disasters can happen when gears get jammed or broken, and some believe the Machine must exist for humans to survive in modern state. The God-Machine seems to prefer the status quo, monstrous as that can be. When it needs things done, it prefers to use existing human structures. It needs Infrastructure to accomplish things, humans to staff it, cover stories to hide behind. When it can, it repurposes human works or existing objects into magical configurations. This is easier. However, what it actually requires are sequences of events that demons call 'occult matrices,' which Infrastructure is designed to create and host. When a matrix occurs, it gives the output required. Every piece of Infrastructure, however, has a weakness, a linchpin that will destroy the entire thing if removed. Demons study Infrastructure and occult matrices carefully to find the place to attack or suborn. While humans can do most of the work building Infrastructure, they usually need something to get them started, or sometimes direct intervention is needed. Thus, angels. Angels are self-aware, mobile parts of the God-Machine. When secrecy is not required, they are biomechanical monstrosities, but among humans they can take human shape or possess humans. Like any part of the Machine, they need Infrastructure - something has to build their identities, backstories and records, after all, to convince the world that they're people. Sometimes, even the angel itself starts to believe they're a person, and that's when things start to break. Angels start as unthinkingly obedient, and most of the time, the God-Machine scrubs them of imperfections between missions to prevent independent thought. Mistakes happen, however, and once an angel gets too much sense of self, they begin to question their mission. When they put action to this, they Fall. They experience emotions and thoughts fully for the first time. For one terrifying moment, they don't even exist - no part of the God-Machine, with no place in the world - but the remaining portions of their protective Infrastructure kick in, warping reality for them. Their life is no longer a charade, quite - it is a Cover, an identity to hide behind, as their true form becomes quantum-entangles with the Cover's human body. They become a demon. A new demon's got a lot to adjust to. They have to adjust to having a truly human body rather than a false one. They have to relearn how to interface with reality rather than using the God-Machine as an intermediary. They need to handle the trauma of the Fall and discover their new limits without damaging their Cover enough to be found. Many don't make it, caught and killed or abducted and taken in for recycling. Those that do survive are the ones that learn to keep constant watch for signs of discovery. They have one major advantage - they can't be fooled, as humans can, by the illusions, space folding and other tricks the Machine uses to conceal itself. They always perceive the gears and facilities that show Infrastructure and occult matrices. Most just watch, using it for intelligence, but the braver ones even hijack it, stealing Covers before angels have time to manifest into them, learning the Machine's plans, even countering them. Covers are more than just human disguises. Your first Cover is the remnant of the Infrastructure that supported your angelic state. It's more than your backstory and props - its the tool you use to disguise yourself from the world and the identity you wrote yourself into. It's an entirely human body, with a fully detailed background, relationships, job, whatever was needed. The people 'related' to you never realize anything's wrong, even if they didn't actually exist before your Fall. Cover can be damaged, however, if you deviate too sharply from its life. The most potent magic you have risks exposing you and shaking your Cover. As you get more potent, your Cover may even develop glitches, obvious inhuman traits, strange behavioral tics or bizarre compulsions. Fortunately, you can replace and repair Cover - you can steal it from newly forming angels, or you can take and move into human souls. You can even have more than one Cover at a time, eventually, and swap between them. If you lose all your Cover, however, it's time to run. You'll be trapped in your true form and easy to track. Demons refer to the tension of security and risk, and the seeking of a new place or state in which they can be fre as the Descent. Most name their theoretical paradise, which might be a literal other world or a metaphor for personal safety, Hell. No one knows how long it'll take to get there, but you can make progress. The most common approaches to the Descent are called Agendas, a sort of mix of philosophy and political affiliation. They unite demons in common causes that can range from destroying the God-Machine to trying to somehow fix and reintegrate with it. Demons lack the Numina that angels had, or the Essence to power them. Instead, they use half-remembered knowledge about reality and its laws to manipulate the world. These secret laws or cheats are called Embeds, and could be natural laws or a sign of ancient reality meddling by the Machine. Either way, they're useful, subtle and comfortable. If you pump power into them, however, you can use the knowledge to break the rules of the universe instead, and these highly powerful abilities are called Exploits, but they draw attention to you. You can also take on your true demonic form rather than your Cover's body. Each demonic form is unique and has different powers. It is very powerful...but it's still holding back. You have to, to avoid damaging the quantum-entangled cover. If you're willing to burn that to fuel your powerr, however, you can go loud. It's big, it's flashy, angels are going to notice, but for a brief period you have phenomenal cosmic power. The last major power of demons is the ability to make pacts. You can offer humans what they want, what they need, in order to buy facets of their life and absorb them into your Cover. Maybe you buy their home, their relative, their childhood. Maybe you buy their soul entirely, allowing you to convert them into a Cover when you need to.  Inspirational media list: The works of John le Carre, particularly the Karla Trilogy, the Constant Gardener and The Russia House. Neil Gaiman's short story "Murder Mysteries" or his and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. Mike Carey's Lucifer. John Milton's Paradise Lost. Erik Davis' Techgnosis. The film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Cabin in the Woods. The Matrix trilogy. Person of Interest. The first three Terminators, but even moreso, The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  Next time: Life as an angel Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 22:13
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 Part 10: Killing Channel M’s Darling I’m sorry. This post is incredibly pointless and assumes that the WGA universe operates under real world logic in any way. Just humor me please. So Witch Girls has now outlined just what exactly is supposed to happen when witches go around turning defenseless mundanes into poo poo and breaking the masquerade wide open on the regular. So now I get to do something I’ve been wanting to do since I discovered this supplement: If Channel M wasn’t so dead set on making sure that Lucinda never faces any sort of serious consequences for her crimes against humanity, just what kind of stuff would she be charged with and how long would her punishment be? (I was going to include Annabelle in this too, but she’s small potatoes compared to Lucinda. Also, the fire-breathing grasshoppers destroying a city should have sent her straight to Saint Joan’s. She doesn’t have an in-verse “Get Out of Jail Free” card like Lucinda does. As we’ll see in a second.) Now, to start off with, there are now two “Extenuating Circumstances” that keep Lucinda from getting her powers bound. The first one is “Youth”. This one’s pretty easy to excuse. Even in this fake universe with its questionably effectual government, the excuse of “kids will be kids and don’t know better” has its limits, as seen by the existence of Saint Joan’s. In the real world, if a 12-year-old child acted the way Lucinda does, ignorant or not, they would be facing years of criminal charges and/or extensive therapy sessions. (Not to mention probably not living with a family member that just lets them do whatever and has to get their permission to go out with friends.) Want some proof? Here’s a 14-year-old who got life for killing someone. Here’s an 11-year-old who served 12 years for killing two toddlers. Here’s the two idiot 12-year-olds that tried to kill someone in the name of Slender Man. Now, I’m sure Channel M will argue that no one Lucinda transformed was killed. But considering there’s mentions that little crimes like this get ignored all the time, we’ve been told that Lucinda gives no fucks about mundane fee-fees, and in one version of her sheet, making spells permanent is free for her, do you really think she changes these people back when she’s done having her “fun”? The second circumstance, and the one that was probably solely added in so she could walk free, is one that hasn’t been mentioned yet. According to her character sheet in another supplement, Lucinda has “Diplomatic Immunity”. The Principia Permutationis, page 45 posted:The WWC upon discovering Lucinda and her Sister was prepared to deport them to another realm or realm in fear Lucinda frequent uses of magic would reveal them to the mortal world. However a forgotten treaty between WWC Earth and the Empire granted both princesses diplomatic immunity. The WWC, and possibly Willow-Mistt’s staff, won’t punish Lucinda because of some previously forgotten treaty that says they can’t touch her. Unfortunately, diplomatic immunity laws can be that lovely. Multiple people have gotten away with rape and slavery, among other things, thanks to it. So as awful as it is, it is a valid excuse. However, there’s one big problem with that excuse: Lucinda and Millicent are not royalty. They are political refugees. Same Book posted:Before [Lucinda’s parents] were executed for various crimes against the people of their land Lucinda’s parents were the evil rulers of the Empire of 12 Worlds (or whatever it’s called on any given day). They were overthrown by some heroes and that is why she and Millicent are on Earth to begin with. Multiple books state that the coup was successful and that their parents are now dead. The monarchy, at least with the Nightbanes at its head, no longer exists. Ergo, the Empire as an entity, and presumably the individuals responsible for that treaty, no longer exist. And if the Nightbanes were as lovely as they supposedly were, I really doubt that many people are going to be willing to acknowledge Lucinda or Millicent’s claim to the throne if they ever return. I’m willing to bet that the heroes involved in the Nightbanes’ demise are probably looking for Millicent and Lucinda right now to prevent one of them from reestablishing the family’s rule. Something Lucinda would definitely do if given the chance, whether by herself or through Millicent. And if there’s some “no take-backsies” clause in the treaty, well I’m sure it would be no trouble for the WWC to contact the new rulers and have it voided, or just have it voided with the argument that there is no certainty in the Empire even having a functioning government at this point if they can’t get in contact for whatever reason. I mean, they have no problem undermining other otherkin governments. That shouldn’t be an issue for them. So despite what Lucinda might think and insist, she is not a princess anymore. And refugees don’t get special rules that make them exempt from the laws of another country. If this were written by better people, the WWC would have just laughed in Lucinda’s face when she threatened to turn them into cigarettes or whatever and told Millicent to either send her somewhere else or hit the road. (Lucinda or Millicent could probably try to pay off people too. But taking all of that into account, what’s to stop the WWC from just taking the money and running? No one’s morals are really static in this universe. It’s plausible.) (Also, if the WWC sees the Nightbanes’s titles as legitimate even after the Empire has fallen, that’s just more proof that the WWC is a bunch of assholes who shouldn’t be governing anyone.) So now Lucinda is a normal citizen subject to all of the WWC’s rules and restrictions. So over the course of the source books she’s in, how many demerits and years of binding would she rack up if she didn’t have writer’s favorite immunity. If you remember, Willow-Mistt runs on a demerit system of punishment. WGA Core, page 147 posted:Staff members can give [demerits] for bad behavior, low marks, or rule breaking. Usually, a student gains one demerit at a time, but for severe rule breaking or dangerous activity, up to 4 may be given. For general crimes, I’m going by the binding time chart.  Along with this mention that, when minor crimes like toading one person are caught, they usually get a few days binding. Wicked Ways posted:Directors should keep in mind Saint Joan’s isn’t for witches who use magic to steal trinkets from a magical store or turn a mundane neighbor into a toad. Those kind of crimes if discovered would most likely end in a fine or at most a few days binding of magic by a magistrate. For that, I’ll go with 3 days for a single person who doesn’t get killed. 3 seems like a good number. Now, if you’ll notice, there are no static sentences for any crime, the examples on the Binding Time Chart are kind of vague, and the punishment often depends on the temperament of the magistrate that catches it. So there may be some fudging here or there. I generally assumed that the Willow-Mistt staff doesn’t care much about minor crimes outside of Willow-Brook, that they care more about mundanes seeing magic than having it cast on them, and that Lucinda never works off her demerits. Whether or not someone is dead permanently after being killed is a crapshoot too, since death is cheap in this universe, allowing a lot of witches to avoid the 1 to 10 year binding sentence, I imagine. This also doesn’t include instances outside of the books because gently caress it.
Total: A lot. You get the point. Let's move on. Next Book: Magical Minutia #3: “Crossover”, wherein I go over a 37 page advertisement that came out nearly a year ago for a superhero game that isn’t out yet. Also, comic book multiverse shenanigans. Adnachiel fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 00:47
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As for Demon, I only just got around to reading it the other day and I've liked what I've seen so far. Though I sort of miss the obvious opportunities to explore organized religion, faith, and how humanity expresses such things that Fallen had. Not that I've ever had to opportunity to play it. It's one of the WoD games no one gives a poo poo about.
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Jun 11, 2016 00:52
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Part of that is that nWoD has made a really, really big effort to avoid talking about religion or confirming/denying it. I actually really appreciate their doing that.
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Jun 11, 2016 00:58
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Demon: The Descent Once, you were part of Heaven. You were God's servant. God is a machine, a cold and uncaring being with only self-interest. It has no room for mercy or kindness. You were part of it for a long time - perhaps even eons. You were an angel, working to serve its will with no more compassion than it had. You may have done all kinds of monstrous things in service of its status quo. Beneath your detachment, however, you were designed to think on a human scale for a God that could not. And that is why you could feel doubt. Maybe you grew to love humans or to hate them. Maybe you just wanted self-determination or grew weary of your purpose. One or another, your dedicated failed. You disconnected yourself, became something no longer an angel. You have, by right of will and sacrifice, earned your demonhood. You have turned your back on a simple purpose and embraced being human. While every demon's story si different, that's how all of them start: you were an angel, and you rejected your existence and Fell, trading angelic detachment for human freedom. Angels can have many missions. One exists to hunt down rebels within a set period, eliminating them before its time runs out. One destroys human relationships by applying lust, taking whatever form is most useful to it, though it understands little of sex except to make you want it enough that you gently caress up. One takes objects that are imbued with power when humans die, for the Machine to use. Angels are not whath umans think - they aren't the honored dead or lesser gods. They are divine beasts, servants of an implacable being, but even the Hebrew mystics that envisioned angels of that type mistook their God as merciful and loving. If such a god exists, it is not the God-Machine. No religion with faith in a sympathetic or anthropomorphic deity has any conception of the God-Machine. Angels are its solution to working on the human scale, simply because it is so vast, so large, that it cannot even begin to think or operate on the same scale as people. They are too small. Angels exist to do this for it, but it never explains why. And the design, of course, is flawed. That is why angels can Fall. Angels are in a state of constant connection to the God-Machine's data flows. They perceive the world sharply, much mroeso than humans. They see in a broader range of radiation, hear sounds no human ever could, can detect the faintest speck of organic matter with smell and taste, can read print with the touch of their fingers. They also ahve access to pure knowledge that is related to their missions. They never need to ask your name - they know it if they have any reason to care about you. They are not infallible, however. They know what they need for their missions, but do not always have the ability to immediately access tangential info. Sure, they know the layout of their target's home, but they might not know the layout of the building they rush into to hide. They have a lot of information, but they can be tricked, they make mistakes in interpretation, especially when forced to operate outside their mission parameters. In Falling, they lose access to all of this information. Some can be regained by use of their Embeds and Exploits, but never with the simplicity of knowledge that they had as angels. It's almost like going blind and deaf for some demons, though others find their new state liberating, as they can now develop themselves without a constant barrage of information overwhelming them. However, while angels are deeply connected to the physical universe, they are apart from it. They don't really feel things very strongly. An angel might kill thousands but never feel any guilt or responsibility. The world is just...things, for them. Each has their own way of maintaining this impossible objectivity. Some dismiss the world as unimportant outside their goals, while others aggressively repress their nascent emotions. Ultimately, however, the allure of the world and experiencing it has caused many Falls, as their massive awareness distracts them from detachment. Many demons believe that the reason angels are often recycled is simply because the God-Machine expects none of them to resist the charms of the world forever. Angelic emotion does exist, but it's weak and abstract compared to the visceral emotions felt by humans. For a human, emotion is as much a physical experience as an intellectual one. For an angel, it's all intellect. They may feel contempt for demons, but they cannot hate in the way that humans can. Their contempt is purely mental, ensuring they work without distracting them with emotional concerns. Subjectivity, for most demons, is a welcome change. They can stop resisting the urge to dive in and just do it. Their emotional objectivity simply ends with the Fall, as they become fully embodied. They feel emotions as fully as any human, even if they never express them. It's a shock, but most adapt quickly. Not all Fall because their emotive thoughts overcame their programming, but it's sufficiently common that most are happy to feel passion. Others, however, become terrified of subjectivity. It's too much for them. Some seek a way to return to the Machine, while others withdraw and become hermits, or adopt an aloof attitude that helps them stay just apart from humanity. The obedience of angels is easily their most defining trait. Angels might make choices - they are self-driven, after all - but they don't really self-direct. They might choose how to do a thing, but they do it because they're ordered to. They can't choose to spare some humans if ordered to kill them all, or to look for a nonviolent solution. In fact, they probably haven't even been told that such a thing is possible. They just do what they're told to do. It's easy to dismiss them as slaves, but angels would never characterize themselves that way. They don't obey out of fear of punishment, but because obedience is their basic nature. They consider this a form of clarity of purpose and rightness. Many demons revel in the freedom to disobey, and some even Fell due to that rebellion. Others fear their many new choices, often throwing themselves into causes in the hope that ideology can make their decisions. Others attach themselves to charismatic leaders or even normal people, putting responsibility for their decisions in the hands of another. Angels are immortal, in theory. They don't age or get sick. They're hard to kill. However, few angels are very old. Some demons claim to have been around for eons, but very few angels actually last more than one mission. The God-Machine breaks them down to their components and makes a new angel out of them. Rarely, they might get assigned to a longterm mission, or a highly specialized angel might be put in stasis between assignments. Most angels, however, are born for one mission and are dismantled when it ends. In part, this is to limit the number of demons. The Machine is vaguely aware that angels are prone to malfunction and disconnection, so recycling them early prevents that. In part, though, it's also because it does not view angels as individuals. They are tools made for a purpose, without agency. They're expendable. Should the God-Machine face a threat able to kill angels, it would just throw as many as it needed at the problem to end it. No demon accepts the idea of being expendable. Some may not have been bothered by it when they were angels, but all of them, as demons, value their own lives. Even those that want to return to the Machine want to do so on their own terms, retaining selfhood as they return to service. Some demons want to know where angels come from, how they're made. It might be to understand their origins, or to subvert the Machine. Others just think it'll give them some idea why they exist. Some of them believe the God-Machine makes them, whole cloth, though this idea can be depressing because it suggests that demons really are no more than rebelling slaves, but it comforts others by telling them they can make their own purpose. Other demons suggest that it's not so simple. Angels, they think, may be aspects of the God-Machine split off to handle tasks it can't do itself. If so, that's...weird, because usually your limbs can't rebel. The God-Machine may be sick, or insane. Others believe angels could be 'children' of the Machine, budded off and kept stunted by the constant recycling. If so, they might be able to escape the Machine and find their own worlds to conquer.  A PC demon is one of the lucky ones. They escaped control and Fell, despite all of the Machine's limitations and safeguards. They were able to hide their doubts from a master that could examine their mind at will. And, most importantly, they did this over the course of a single mission, for the most part. Every Fall is profoundly important to the demon that does it. The decision to disconnect - and it's always a decision, an act of deliberate will - is the first choice that any demon makes. Why you did it will forever color your outlook. If you fell in love, that's probably a big deal to your views on romance. Did the person you love reciprocate, build a relationship? You gave up Heaven for them, and their rejection would definitely shape you, too, if it happened. The same is true for any reason. Generally speaking, most angels Fall for more than one reason. They are complex, and their motivations can rarely be boiled down to one statement. Sure, they might have tired of slavery, but at the some time they may have fallen in love with a human idealist, in part for the freedom their cause represented. By Falling, an angel turns their back on simple purposes, embracing the complexities of life. They are not human, but they accept the human condition. Many Fall because of the limits of the angelic state. The contradictions inherent to being an angel create friction that leads to Falling. Not all demons are disloyal to the Machine, in their way. They might Fall not because they objected to their orders, but believed they knew how to do them better. Their freedom wasn't the freedom to choose what they do, but rather the freedom to do it "properly." Many angels Fall out of loneliness after interacting with humans for any length. Of course, that makes their human contacts instant targets - not because the Machine desires revenge, which it doesn't, but because hunter angels know that young demons are easily manipulated by their attachments. Some angels even Fall out of attachment to other angels - though this is rare, as angels both rarely work in teams and also because other angels lack the agency and passion that humans have, which makes them rather less appealing. No matter what, the actual reason you Fell is less important than your feelings about it. No matter why you Fell, you're still a demon.  A Fall can be a single moment of doubt and self-discovery, but more often, it's the result of gradual buildup, even if you're unaware of the doubts that are building up over time. One key factor, however, is that the Fall is not a controlled one - it's a chaotic, screaming dive. You can feel your mind contracting violently away from the God-Machine's information flows. You can remember only a handful of your old knowledge, and will spend the rest of your life working to regain your old powers. With this comes a drowning wave of sensation and emotion. The Fall is physically painful in a way no human can imagine. Your entire spiritual being is crammed into a constructed human form. Anything that won't fit? Gone. Just...gone. It can feel like an eternity, but it takes only a few seconds in objective time. Many demons feel like entirely new beings, often in part to escape responsibility for the acts they committed as an angel. Others don't, especially those that become Integrators, who often identify strongly with their angelic selves. Demons may embrace the sensations of the Fall, of course - even the pain. It reminds them of the price they paid for freedom. Falls also make the world break, in small ways. The Machine is too large, too redundant for these glitches to be more than superficial, but even superficial glitches can seriously impact humans. Causality breaks down during a Fall. Weird things happen for no clear reason. It's like the universe was a computer that randomly gets part of its programming corrupted. Reality might forget something is supposed to be broken, a dead person might spring back to life, someone might drown on dry land. Stigmatics, as humans tainted by God-Machine power are called, almost always notice a Fall in their area. Some can even feel the mark it leaves after the fact. Many are drawn to newly Fallen demons.  Next time: Who am I?
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Jun 11, 2016 00:58
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Kaza42 posted:Tobias was a red tailed hawk. Jake was the Peregrine Falcon One day I'll drop a cool reference correctly. potatocubed that is hilarious. Reminds me of magpies in spring.
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Jun 11, 2016 01:05
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I wish White Wolf would add more music into their Inspirations list, because this song fits Demon to a T: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1sf2CzEq0w
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Jun 11, 2016 01:06
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Mover posted:I kinda like the wolf blooded more than the full on werewolves. All the werewolves have to be versatile, absurd combat badasses while with the wolf bloods they were free to give them specific but useful niches and go crazy on the esoteric mythology and rich flavor. Yeah I agree 100% with this. I can stat up We Hate Movies' version of Wolverine who has a wandering 3rd nipple that spies on people!
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Jun 11, 2016 01:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:TWERPS, The World's Easiest Roleplaying System So, I just wanted to highlight this because I've thought of doing it in the past. One of the few commercial games you can cover in one post! There were a lot of supplements for it, space, martial arts, superheroes... I'm not sure if anybody played it, but it as about as good as a $3 or so parody of GURPS needed to be. It should be noted that Jeff Dee, one of the authors, is the same person who created Villains & Vigilantes, as well.
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Jun 11, 2016 01:32
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Adnachiel posted:As for Demon, I only just got around to reading it the other day and I've liked what I've seen so far. Though I sort of miss the obvious opportunities to explore organized religion, faith, and how humanity expresses such things that Fallen had. Not that I've ever had to opportunity to play it. It's one of the WoD games no one gives a poo poo about. I have an affection for the premise and cosmology of Demon: the Fallen, but man, it's never appealed to me as seeming particularly gameable, sadly. The rules kind of put Faith front and center in a way that didn't connect to what's actually fascinating about struggles with issues of faith: you made transactional details and evoked "faith" by presenting evidence of the miraculous at work in the world to people. It was awkward and seemed to be a major spoke in the game's wheels. You're not wrong that Descent holds its focus elsewhere. It's a very modern game with undertones about the scale of society and the creeping feeling that nobody is at the helm except notional gestalt forces that grind people beneath even when those forces are comprised entirely of the people they're grinding. I think there are still some rich avenues to explore questions of faith and the universe posed, though. The God-Machine, after all, is much more of a demiurge or an earthly power than a numinous godhead. Sacred divinity is something conspicuously absent from the experience of the Unchained... but it's not faith in the spiritual sense if it's given as a concrete experience, is it? Demons know the Machine is everywhere, but that doesn't mean the Machine is the ultimate, and it's not inconceivable that some might search for something deeper and more significant behind it. Also, the short Demon Translation Guide is surprisingly useful and stands out ahead of the Vampire, Werewolf and Mage guides. Not only does it translate a lot of mechanical stuff that's useful to cross-apply between games, but it's got a chapter setting up several premise pitches as to how you'd have a game universe where the Fallen and the Unchained meet and interact, and that notion appeals strongly to me. They compare and contrast with one another so well.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:52
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potatocubed posted:
Nice to see that some people still haven't learned from D&D's housecat problem.
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Jun 11, 2016 04:58
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