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ZeroCount posted:Telling Hunter players that they shouldn't team up with Heroes because they're too extreme in their methods when 'monster-hunter that is too extreme in their methods' describes a lot of playable Hunter splats seems...misguided. I just keep getting an image of That Guy lurking around the game store every time I hear more of the "you must be friends with Beasts" bullshit. Just some toxic rear end in a top hat who relies on the geek social fallacies to keep from being kicked out of the group, and who babbles incessantly about "nerd solidarity" or whatever to try to reinforce it. Who apparently, according to Beast, is a guy we all need to put up with or its truly us who reek of cat piss and failure.
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Feb 8, 2017 21:00
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Asimo posted:And going back to the cyberpunk humanity stuff a page or two back, it's pretty transparently a game balance mechanic that got handwavey justifications in the original games with it ("Pondsmith really loved AD Police" for CP2020, something something magic uh whatever for Shadowrun) and kinda got cargo culted into later games. It's an interesting theme to deal with in fiction... but only when you're considering stuff like full-body replacements or intentionally discarding parts and similar things that mess with the sense of self. But anything less than that? I mean I'm technically a cyborg and I'm pretty sure I have only the usual goon levels of misanthropy and low self esteem. LatwPIAT posted:This comes off as really weird, because in the tons of Hero descriptions we just got in the Hero book, none of them really seemed to care about personal glory in their cause. They're mostly about killing Beasts because Beasts tried to eat them and/or their friends. They were basically very driven Hunters. The Sin of Onan posted:I'm not super qualified to comment, but a lot of people have said that Beast embodies most of what was terrible about OWoD. So you're probably on to something there.
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Feb 8, 2017 21:08
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On the topic of Cyberpunk 2020's Humanity rules, I always felt that any version of the therapy rules was thematically inconsistent with the rest of the setting, to the point of wrapping around into comedy. I keep picturing a chromed out professional killer capable of reacting faster than humanly possible sitting across from Robin Williams' character from Good Will Hunting, telling him about how he blew the heads off of a bunch of Araska assassins and Robin just nods understandingly, having heard the same stories from 3 other clients. One way to possibly fix this is to make it explicit that "cyber therapy" is a brutal process, a mix of conversion therapy and micro-lobotomy, and instead of reducing Empathy it reduces Cool. This isn't a full solution, you'd need to add levers to make Cool important for everyone, or make the combined Cool of a group of PCs important in the standard Cyberpunk game. While I don't have the experience to come up with such a mechanic, it would fit with what I feel is the tone of Cyberpunk, or at least the 2020 version. One thing I got out of CP 2020, and what differentiates it from what I've heard so far about Shadowrun, is that the game is at it's heart optimistic. It's true, things are pretty hosed up in the year 2020, but the attitude the game presents is that its time to turn things around, and the player characters are going to be the ones to get things started. But doing this meant not just fighting The Man, but looking good doing so. Because exuding '80s coolness is sold as important in the fluff, then at least in theory adding mechanical support would enhance the game Those twin cyberarms will let you throw an engine block as an improvised weapon, but if you have the charisma of, say, Hayden Christensen in AotC, you're deeds are not going to move many hearts and minds.
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Feb 8, 2017 21:53
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MJ12 posted:The thing about Tooth and Nail which bugs me is how the Beast writers seem to not have gotten Hunter when they talk about Heroes being too fanatical for Hunters. Yeah, as far as I understood Hunter: the Vigil , one of the fundamental elements is that becoming a hunter requires a certain level of obsession and emotional damage. Even if you start out like that, you're going to get it. It's fundamentally healthier as a human being to keep your eyes closed and ignore what's going on. That's not to say what some hunters do isn't absolutely good or necessary, but that there are real sacrifices in terms of one's emotional well-being and ability to function in everyday society. Heroes are just presented as just irrevocably so, as far as I can tell. Of course, that's the only real issue with heroes - they're presented as being unredeemable, which doesn't quite work if they're still fundamentally human. If they're unable to change, then they may as well just be robots running some spiritual HEELTURN.EXE.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:36
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The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG Part 17: A brief stopover in Core Earth and metaplot points in-between  A few years after Torg was released, the writers seemed to realize something: they never gave Core Earth any real attention. I mean, yes, in each realm book they do talk about how that realm is affecting the nations around it, and yes the core book listed Core Earth's axioms. But there was never a book focusing on Core Earth itself. So two years after the release of the core set, we got The Delphi Council Worldbook Volume 1, which is the closest we got to having a "realm book" for Core Earth.  Just fyi, the book isn't written as an in-universe document, although there are "excerpts" throughout. That said, I'm not going to cover it like I did the other books for two reasons. First, there's not really much here setting-wise that isn't going to be touched on in the other books. Second, we still have four other books to get through before we're completely done and I gotta cut corners somewhere. So what we're going to do here is touch on the axioms and World Laws of Core Earth (the latter of which didn't exist until this book), point out some things that will come up in the metaplot later, and cover the Core Earth character templates. Sound good? quote:The axioms of Core Earth are not new to most of us. We live in a world comparatively rich in technology, and fairly socially advanced. Magic is uncommon in our world, though it does not have to be, and spiritually we have a certain amount of strength. This is the world we know. The axioms listed here reflect the world that we know, as well as giving the gamemaster a few ways to enhance the feel of Core Earth. Right? Wrong! Turns out that magic and miracles are totally possible on Core Earth! I guess nobody ever thought to check until the invasion happened. Magic axiom: 7 At this level, only divination magic can work with any sort of regularity, but even then magic's incredibly hard to pull off. Attempting to cast any spell allowed by the low magic axiom gets +5 to difficulty and backlash because apparently the low magic axiom resists spellcasting, which is apparently a thing. The reason that anyone is capable of casting spells in Core Earth at all due to the reawakening of Core Earth's possibility energy, which is apparently also a thing. Now that people know that magic is totally real, Core Earthers have begun experimenting with various forms of magic. Spiritual axiom: 9 At this level, direct intervention of the divine is possible, despite that not being a thing that's ever actually happened as far as I know. I mean, it might have happened; I don't get out much. Not that I'd be able to tell one way or the other. quote:At any given point in time, a character may become the object of divine intervention - but there is truly no pattern by which this intervention works. A character with a high faith skill seems to have no better chance of being aided in time of crisis than one with no faith at all. Characters with high faith, however, recognize the signs of divine intervention far easier than those who do not possess this skill. Interestingly, the book actually contains a whole chapter on how magic works on Core Earth, because heaven forbid we get a sourcebook without new subsystems. However, the majority of the chapter is about Voodoo: how it's a spiritual belief system that's really magic and therefore you can substitute skills for casting, news spells, and the new skill science: folk medicine. I'm not going to go into detail about it because really there's not much to go into detail about. Well, except for the fact that some areas of Core Earth have a slightly higher Magic or Spiritual axiom because. For sake of completeness, Core Earth's Social axiom is 21, and the Technological axiom is 23. I'm not going to go into depth on those apart from saying they're basically the world in 1990. And that brings us to the World Laws. As has been pointed out before, when the game line started only two realms had World Laws (Nippon Tech and the Nile Empire), and everyplace else had them retrofitted in the realm books. In the same way, Core Earth finally gets a few World Laws here to explain how the cosm has been able to fight back against the High Lords so effectively. Well, technically that's what they're about; what they're really about is how much awesomer Core Earth characters are than everyone else. The Law of Prodigy states that some people are just inherently better than others. No, really. quote:Some people in Core Earth are born with greater abilities than others. There is a small percentage of humankind that seem to have innate talents, or who can figure out even the most difficult problems in certain areas with minimal effort. These are the people that have been influenced by the Law of Prodigy. The Law of Hope is why Core Earthers have such a strong will to fight and have refused to give in to despair in the face of the Possibility Raiders. This law has two effects. The first is that it's harder for P-rated characters from Core Earth to transform, and it's easier for them to reconnect. The second is that any group with a Core Earth Storm Knight can invoke the "Sieve Initiative" effect of a Drama Deck card for free as if he'd just played the card. This can only be done once per Dramatic conflict. Lastly, The Law of Glory helps characters plant story seeds. When a Core Earth character attempts to plant a story seed or was involved in the event that's allowing the seed to be set up, you get +2 to the Persuasion roll. Man, we're just awesome, aren't we? So I promised some hints at upcoming metaplot things, right? There's only two, but they're both equally "important" in that they're metaplot points that only the writers care about. Those of you who're familiar with the details of Torg's upcoming metaplot points are already rolling your eyes. The first is the mysterious figure known only as the Guildmaster, who has begun recruiting and organizing Storm Knights the world over. She operates out of Hawaii and works closely with the US government, hiring out P-rated operatives around the world. Rumor has it that she has detailed dossiers on thousands of Storm Knights, even ones who don't work for her. What are her long term goals? Who is she really? What role does she play in the Possibility Wars?  The second is...this. quote:In the early days of the war, a new roleplaying game appeared from a small company called S&W. Entitled The Five Realms, the game offered the players the chance to be Storm Knights battling the forces of the Cyberpapacy, Orrorsh, the Living Land, the Nile Empire, and Aysle (Nippon Tech was not included, perhaps because the US government has never officially acknowledged that it is a realm).   Fuckin' nerds ruin everything. So yeah, we're doing the "there's an RPG in the setting that's the RPG of the setting!" thing here. What's more, and believe me I hate saying this as much as you hate reading it, this is actually important to the metaplot. I'm not even kidding. Despite only being mentioned like five times all told in the game line, Jeff Mills actually has more of a metaplot impact than Baruk loving Kaah. Those of you who remember my original Torg post (i.e. none of you) may remember that I called Jeff Mills "the worst NPC ever." I still stand by this, but the reason why will not become fully clear until we hit the end of the game line. All you need to know right now is that Jeff Mills is basically an expy for Torg's creation Greg Gorden. And as a side note, maybe it's just me but people getting into playing an RPG about a potentially world-ending war that's actually going on around them at the time seems just a tad uncool.  Just another night on the town. Well, despite that there's not much else to get into. So let's check out the Core Earth templates! Even though all but two of them were created long before this book came out, so don't have the requirements for their focus skills or have the +3 to their tag skills! The templates from the Core Set (and the Living Land book, which was the "unofficial" Core Earth realmbook) are:  The Adventurous Scholar spent most of her life studying in universities before travelling the world to work on her doctoral thesis. Then the world was invaded by alternate realities, and her talents suddenly became very in demand. Groups of Storm Knights needed information on ancient cultures, on obscure survival techniques, on who knows what nowadays. Of course, now that all these other realities have showed up there's just so much more to learn. She starts with some basic survival gear, a pistol, and her tag skill is scholar (player's choice).  Good thing he's not dressed to stand out. The Covert Operative had the dumb luck to be working in Africa when the Nile Empire touched down, and wound up being stranded without his support networks as reality started shifting. But the thing about covert ops organizations is that they adapt quickly, and soon enough new orders came through: seek out the leaders of this whole mess and eliminate them. Easier said than done, of course, so right now he's mainly in information gathering mode until he has a better view of the big picture. He starts the game with a Beretta, some 90's spy gear, and $2000 in gold coins. His tag skill is persuasion.  The Doubting Cleric is yet another template that's actually a character from the novel trilogy; in this case Father Christopher Bryce, who was the first ally and sort-of-love-interest for Tolwyn of House Tankred; he's the guy on the cover of the main book/boxed set. Presumably this template is set up the way it is so people can play the novels? Well, regardless there's not much to this you couldn't guess from the name. His starting equipment includes envelopes and postage for some reason, and his tag skill is evidence analysis also for some reason.  The Human Tribal Shaman has been hearing the voices of the spirits since he was a child, but unlike most he listened to what they had to say. They showed him, and I quote, "what the white man could no longer see, heard what he no longer was able to hear." The spirits warned him of the coming of the High Lords, and in response he began walking the world, helping those who would accept him. He starts with a war boomerang because of course he does, and his tag skill is conjuration magic since he was made at the start of the game line, even though two years later we learn that conjuration is really f'ing difficult.  "Coming to you very much live and direct..." The Intrepid Reporter has been on top of the invasion since it started. Why did Indonesia drop off the global grid? What really happened in New York City? Why did this self-proclaimed "Pope" choose Paris? That's what she's here to find out. And the only way to get to the truth is to get into the field and mix it up with the invaders. Yeah, her journalist's objectivity has gone out the window, but there's larger truths at play now. She starts with a news van, a camcorder, a Macintosh portable computer, Samsonite luggage, and her tag skill is persuasion.  Let's rock, baby! The National Hero started out as a sports superstar, but when that started to take its toll on him he was maneuvered by his hangers-on to shift into politics for their own ends. Despite his handlers, he still tried to do the best job he could, putting the people first. Attempts to discredit him by his former "allies" were cut short when the invasion happened, and now is serving in the field, rallying the people and inspiring hope. quote:"Times which need heroes usually get the heroes they need, but probably not the ones they want."  The Soldier of Fortune is just in it for the money. At least, he says he is. But once in a while, his morals shine through and he winds up "forgetting" orders or getting in his superiors' faces. This got him fired, so he began working freelance in Africa and wound up fighting against some wingnut proclaiming himself Pharaoh. Maybe now it's time to fight for something besides money. He starts with a bunch of guns, some stolen maps of Nile Empire installations, and $700. His tag skill is fire combat.  The Story Teller was always happy to hear the shaman tell his stories of the past. What she never expected was that she'd end up hearing the stories of the wind or the land told by the spirits themselves. They told her that her destiny to tell stories, to learn the tales of hope and spread them across the world to the people who need to hear them. She starts with a spear, a bow, clothes, papers, pens, a tape recorder, and a copy of "Winnie the Pooh". The reason I'm pointing out her full equipment list is because she's technically a Living Land character (and operates under those axioms), and even without being a follower of Lanala shouldn't be using most of that stuff. Her tag skill is charm and she has a terrible character quote. quote:"Time was different then than it is now... this is a story of that time." The Delphi Council book adds a few more templates.  "I...am the Lord of Deadside. The Haitian Bocor has been a faithful follow of  The Inform Agent is a member of a new Soviet intelligence agency that's formed from the remnants of the KGB in the wake of the Possibility Wars. She was part of the KGB up until the Soviet Union collapsed, and her skills made her too valuable to liquidate. Good thing, too, because now the Soviet Union needs to help Europe stand strong against the invaders. She starts with "nice clothing", a portable computer, and a Glock 17. Her tag skill is evidence analysis.  The Magic Practitioner has been studying magic his entire life. This has had a few obstacles, such as the fact that nobody else believed magic existed at all. Philistines. But now that the Possibility Wars have begun, and places like Aylse and the Cyberpapacy prove that magic exist, who's laughing now, eh? Yes, he's not that good at magic yet but it's really just a matter of time. He starts with a spellbook with only one spell of magic axiom 7 or less, as well as some "magic" props. His tag skill is divination.  The Revised Realm Runner spend her entire life in the same space most people do when they bum around Europe for a year before going to college. She was more interested in seeing the world than settling down in one place. Now that there are so many more worlds to explore, she's discovered that being good at a lot of things rather than being awesome at one thing is a much more useful ability. She starts with a Sharps 1855 rifle, a GWI GodLight pistol from the Cyberpapacy, an elven longsword from Aysle, two trinkets from other realms, and a spellbook with two spells if she buys any casting skills. Her tag skill is reality, but she has access to skills that are contradictions on Core Earth for no real explained reason. I hope people aren't upset that I'm glossing over most of the content of this book, but really it's pretty dull. The majority of it is either backfilling mechanics or updates on what's happening around the world. That said, another reason I'm not going into detail is because this book came out after all three of what I've been calling the SPOILER realms came out, and as such involves them pretty heavily. Most of the high points will be touched on when I do the last three realm books. Speaking of which...it's finally time to begin covering the SPOILER realms! I know you've all been waiting with baited breath. We're going to start reviewing the latecomers with the realm that was late to the whole party, the one that was supposed to land in Russia but was repelled in Core Earth's first real victory, the one that was down, but not out... NEXT TIME: In the grimdark present, there is only war.
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Feb 8, 2017 22:42
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, as far as I understood Hunter: the Vigil , one of the fundamental elements is that becoming a hunter requires a certain level of obsession and emotional damage. Even if you start out like that, you're going to get it. It's fundamentally healthier as a human being to keep your eyes closed and ignore what's going on. That's not to say what some hunters do isn't absolutely good or necessary, but that there are real sacrifices in terms of one's emotional well-being and ability to function in everyday society. Heroes are just presented as just irrevocably so, as far as I can tell. Of course, that's the only real issue with heroes - they're presented as being unredeemable, which doesn't quite work if they're still fundamentally human. If they're unable to change, then they may as well just be robots running some spiritual HEELTURN.EXE. Evil Mastermind posted:So yeah, we're doing the "there's an RPG in the setting that's the RPG of the setting!" thing here. What's more, and believe me I hate saying this as much as you hate reading it, this is actually important to the metaplot. I'm not even kidding. Despite only being mentioned like five times all told in the game line, Jeff Mills actually has more of a metaplot impact than Baruk loving Kaah. If you don't mind me trying to call this before hand.. The game-within-a-game is Mills doing the 'restore hope' step of removing stellae on a worldwide scale, right? Greg Gorden inserted himself into the game as a storm knight. also: There are dinosaur-men living on core earth? Like, native to core earth and didn't get reality-stormed into a human? Kurieg fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 22:58
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Kurieg posted:If you don't mind me trying to call this before hand.. I'll just say this: You're incorrect. The actual answer is even dumber. Like...The Unity-level dumber.
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Feb 8, 2017 23:01
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SO MUCH DUMBER. Are you going to cover the adventures that lead up to 'calling' one of the Spoilers in?
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Feb 8, 2017 23:39
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Right, okay then. How about dino-jeff up there rocking it out in a pool bar?
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Feb 8, 2017 23:54
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unseenlibrarian posted:SO MUCH DUMBER. If you mean the stuff that was only in the fiction of the newsletter, yes I will.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:07
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Is that Magic Practitioner meant to be John Constantine? Makes sense, he's dealt with all this poo poo before (even a soul-sucking Internet, in a particularly weird issue of his first solo series). 'Living Land? This is like when my pal Swamp Thing took over Gotham, but less cool'.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:28
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Halloween Jack posted:When I was homebrewing a cyberpunk game many years ago, my rationale for a Don't Go Insane Get Sick Or Die attribute was that neural interfaces gently caress with your brain, while comprehensive implants gently caress with your organ systems. Your immune system can deal with a hip replacement but not so much with sheets of kevlar under your skin or artificial organs secreting adrenaline on cue. I usually try to build such systems on a mixture of phantom limb pain, body dysmorphia, the traumatizing effects of mutilation (especially facial scarring), stress, and the psychological distancing that happens when someone decides to retool themselves as a killing machine. I never got far, but I imagined it as an Unknown Armies-style Madness Meter.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:32
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unseenlibrarian posted:SO MUCH DUMBER. My turn to guess: He's Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater played totally straight.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:39
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The Self meter in Unknown Armies should cover all of that, including how different people react. Software engineer who's already got a pacemaker? You start with a Hardened notch in Self, so you're less likely to freak out with cybernetics. Plus since you roll for them, you create interesting storytelling possibilities. Huh, turns out being a cyborg isn't as cool as your hologames made it out to be, since you just failed your Self check. Hell I remember one adventure where we did find out we were robots. Maybe change Unnatural to something like 'Superscience' that only triggers when you get properly weird mods. So everyone's got a cyberjack and they're fine, but implanting a skullgun is going to make you roll. And if you see somebody turn into a nanite swarm, you roll. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 00:42
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SirPhoebos posted:My turn to guess: He's Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater played totally straight. Dumber.
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Feb 9, 2017 04:04
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 Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes - Beasts: Part 1  The chapter fiction this time is a hero who realizes he's being stalked by a Beast. He knows that she's stalking him and that she's been on a serial-killing spree to draw him out, so he figures that she's stalking him as her next victim. He ducks into an alleyway and readies his gun then turns around to shoot her, but she teleports behind him and stabs him in the kidney with a stiletto then starts undergoing her incarnation while the Hero laments that his failure allowed this. Also I'm pretty sure Stilettos are not the size of a grown man's skull.  There's a single page of fluff before we get to the sample Beasts. Mainly that Beasts sometimes come into conflict because they have no real greater social structure beyond that which they construct themselves "Family ties grant a lot of freedom, but such freedom comes at a cost." Sure. quote:Some Beasts fall to their Horror and become the Beast Rampant, while others make a last-ditch attempt at survival and become Unfettered. Some Beasts plunge headlong into a union with their Horror and become the Beast Incarnate. Whichever path these Begotten take, the end result of claiming an Inheritance is often remarkably similar: an extremely powerful creature devoid of all moral or ethical sensibility. For the majority of Beasts, this is a condition to aspire to, the end result of being what they are. How the hell do the writers not get why we think Beasts are the bad guys, particularly after we see this rear end in a top hat right here.  Luca Rohner: The Corporate Ravisher The fact is, your firm simply has not been performing to the standards set at acquisition. Let your personnel know we begin liquidating assets tomorrow. Why yes, his title is "Business Rapist". The only only child of wealthy Swiss bankers, Luca never heard no while growing up. He had a small army of personal tutors and servants who tried to tell his parents about his anti-social personality traits but his parents simply thought he was just "too clever" for them. quote:Luca did struggle at times with the sense of social isolation that plagues most Beasts in their childhood. He alleviated his angst by virtue of the fact that most of the people he spent his time with were paid to pay attention to him. The semblance of companions was generally enough to satisfy Luca’s social desires — though they ensured the boy never learned how to relate to others as equals, only as servants, or later in his life, prey. For college he went to Oxford, because of course he did. And he engaged in some youthful rebellion, mainly he fed the poo poo out of people, attracting a hero named Dennis Brand. They fought for two years, Lucas used his financial ties to undermine Dennis' livelihood and attacked and killed Dennis' family. Eventually Luca set a trap, he went to a lavish New Years Eve party and lured Dennis to the roof. quote:Dennis came prepared for physical combat. He didn’t expect Luca’s mind games, nor the traps Luca had carefully laid out beforehand. Luca kept baiting the Hero, wearing down Dennis’ confidence by luring him into these traps. Dennis got in a few lucky shots, but not enough to turn the battle in his favor. The Hero eventually realized Luca was merely toying with him, but by then it was too late for him. Despite the injuries Dennis inflicted, Luca quickly gained the advantage. quote:One of Luca’s favorite tactics is to find well-performing, mid-size firms with solid bottom lines and thriving corporate cultures. He’ll buy a firm out, then institute a long list of changes, ostensibly to maximize efficiency and profit. These changes, however, have nearly the opposite effect. Luca gleefully runs the firm into the ground, destroying profitability and morale alike while blaming the firm’s managers for failing to live up to his expectations. The sordid business usually ends in late November, when he lets everyone go abruptly, just a few weeks before Christmas. As he enjoys the thrill of destroying families as well as careers, Luca prefers doing this to family-owned businesses. Nothing is quite as sweet to him as watching college funds and retirement accounts evaporate as the former owners try desperately to please Luca and fulfill their impossible obligations to him. quote:Interns are another favorite target of Luca’s. Every year, he brings in a new crop of bright young financial wizards: MBAs eager for a chance to prove themselves and secure a spot at Luca’s firm. The application process is grueling, and the winning interns walk in expecting to put in 14 hours a day, six days a week at minimum, for a full year. At the end of this year, the remaining interns are guaranteed a cushy job which secures their financial future. As a result, the interns are willing to put up with all manner of abuse for their chance at the brass ring. Also "Everything he does is legal" and heroes can't touch him cause he's the incarnate. Description <INSERT RICH rear end in a top hat STEREOTYPE HERE, CONTINUE FOR FOUR PARAGRAPHS> Also he hates werewolves and changelings, oh I'm sorry "Feral puppies and broken trauma-fairies", only occasionaly deigning to work with mages and vampires that help his corporate interests. He is the Apex of Zurich and the entire city is a miserable hellhole as a result. Rumors “Sure, he’s killed at least one or two people. That’s part of becoming the Beast Incarnate; someone has to die. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. The man’s a serial killer, even if he doesn’t hold the knife. The police are so far deep in his pocket though; they’ll never do anything about him.” He's a Ravager, not a Predator, the only people he's directly killed are Dennis and some of his servants while figuring out his powers as a teenager. Indirectly though he's got a death toll in the hundreds. But even if he was directly tied to a death he's so rich he'd never see trial not to mention a jail cell. “If you feel anything for Luca, feel pity. Don’t fear him, and don’t admire him. From the outside, yes, his life looks fantastic. He’s ridiculously wealthy and has the respect of his whole industry. Take a closer look, though. He doesn’t spend any significant time with anyone he’s not paying. No family, no friends. That’s a sad state of affairs for anyone, but if you know anything about what Luca really is, you know how his kind value friendship and family. And Luca doesn’t have any of that. Must make for a pretty lonely life. Maybe that’s why he’s so cruel all the time.” He might be an Incarnate but he's still a beast, so he feels the pangs of family. He just doesn't get friendship, so he surrounds himself with underlings that he's convinced himself are his friends. When they inevitably quit he just hires more. “I heard that there’s a team of Heroes that have banded together to hunt down Luca. It’s a bad business, he’s likely to bring heat on all of us with that kind of firepower all looking for just one Beast.” He is being hunted, but not by Heroes. Just some lawyers, police officers, financiers, and government agents who have realized that he's basically tunneling a hole through the business world. They have no idea what he is but they're definitely going to raise alarms in the supernatural world once they do. Story Hooks quote:• A close friend, ally, or family member (perhaps even a Retainer) of one of the characters has succeeded in becoming part of Luca’s new crop of interns. Initially, this appears to be good news — the character will eventually benefit from the intern’s success. However, the character’s apparent good fortune quickly becomes anything quote:• A member of the global business community wants to meet with the characters. Johann Strauberg is part of a small cabal of business and government leaders who, sick of the chaos Luca is wreaking across international markets, have decided to put an end to his corporate existence. However, Luca outmaneuvers them at every turn, able to retaliate in unexpected ways. Now the members of the cabal are under some kind of sustained attack — unable to sleep or function during the day. Johann, slowly realizing that Luca is somehow more than human, has put out clumsy feelers to members of the supernatural community. Johann isn’t quite sure what Luca is, but can promise access to a wide array of Merits (including high-level Professional Training in certain fields) in exchange for the characters’ assistance in dealing with Luca. Anyways, his stat line. He has no combat skills, at all, and physical attributes are tertiary. He has armor all the time because of his Atavism, and he has flight and uncanny speed, but he's infinitely killable. Just toss a werewolf in death rage at him. Problem solved, world made better. James Bernard: Cru Everyone's afraid of something. Let me remind you what that's like I'm holding off on the picture for now, trust me, you'll understand. James was a fairly normal kid, smart, athletic, excelled at the things boys were meant to excel at. Burned some ants, caught frogs, etc. Then high school started and his grades started to slip, he fell to second string on the football team, he dreaded turning in his report card to his father but his father simply shrugs, said he needed to try harder, and that he should cancel his plans for the weekend. That weekend his father took him out hunting "The best way for a boy to release stress" and everything clicked for James, his grades went up, his performance in football improved, and his father and him made their hunting trips into a common occurrence. Even in his dreams James still hunted, but eventually the dreams started to turn on him. Instead of fighting the animal the animal caught him, killed him. His life spiraled out of control as the dreams got worse until he lashed out in the real world, stalking one of his friends and beating him bloody. Then the dreams got better, but it never lasted, he was facing the threat of expulsion after one too many incidents. He tried to keep his rage in check until his pet rat bit him, then he ate the rat. And he felt better. That night he dreamt of stalking a panther through the undergrowth of a warm jungle. Except this time he too had claws. quote:The pursuit was always one of his favorite parts of the hunt, feeling the trees fly by as he pelted forward, his heart pounding a drum beat in his chest. With another vicious growl, he threw himself forward as the panther leaped to scale a tree, and was rewarded with a deep bite into its thigh. Dragging the cat down again, he dodged a swipe of its paw and returned it with one of his own, pressing his advantage as it went sprawling across the ground. Before giving it the opportunity to catch its footing again, he darted forward. This time his teeth sank into its throat, and with a triumphant growl, he tore it wide open, standing victorious over the bleeding creature. All was right in the world at that moment; he felt it somehow crystallize and become real. This was no dream; this was exactly what he was, and what he was always meant to be. The stalker in the dark, the ruthless predator. It was so much simpler than everything else. Reluctant Hunter When the feeling didn't fade after he woke up, he knew something was wrong. He tried to push it to the back of his mind but it wouldn't go away. It worked for a little while but then the nightmares came back, and people in the neighborhood started having them too. Hunting helped but it was too impersonal for his horror, eventually he came to the compromise of wounding the prey then stalking it down to finish it off with a knife. He made it through college like this, keeping his hunger barely at bay for fear of it lashing out. It still happened on occasion, and he saw how people reacted when it came out. His lair kept expanding, though he tried to avoid going there if he could, he still didn't trust the Horror. He graduated, got an entry level office job and a wife, as was expected of him, for years he just kept his nose to the grindstone and tried to ignore the monster living in his head. Until the hunting stopped working. The Horror wanted more, it was tired of scraps of game. It hated the formula. And the stress rose in his mortal life as well, a possible promotion, his father's failing health, his wife wanting to start a family. All James wanted was an escape. quote:It came one night after dinner, when his wife was doing dishes and she dropped some on the floor. The shattering sound resonated within him for a moment, and everything that was bothering him melted away. Footsteps silent as he paced into the kitchen, he watched for a moment as the woman that meant so little to him (now that he thought about it, anyway) swore quietly to herself and picked up the larger pieces of broken porcelain. He bent to pick one up himself, wickedly pointed, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and drove it into her neck. From deep within him, something growled its satisfaction and demanded more. Description  Literally a Gauru form werewolf. After his wife's death the police looked for him, but with no tracks and no body they quickly gave up the chase. Right now Cru is hungry, and he hunts his little patch of forest. He doesn't care about anything as long as it doesn't intrude on his forest, if it does it is prey. quote:Cru’s philosophy is simple: If he can’t kill it, it can kill him; if he hasn’t killed it yet, it might kill him. To this end, he is a brutal and relentless stalker, using all of the benefits of his Family to outsmart those who might want to find him. While he operates mostly on instinct, he does realize that getting caught means the end of him. The chase is of little importance to Cru, and he hunts opportunistically, preying on whomever or whatever happens to wander into what he claims as his territory. “After that guy went psycho and murdered his wife, they say he ran away into the woods there and killed himself, too, and he haunts them now. That’s why they don’t grow anymore, and they don’t feel right. He’s out there, waiting for other victims.” He's not a ghost, but he is h “You can hear it howling every night. It hates the light, tries to stick to the shadows, but anyone that’s seen it swears that werewolves are real. Can’t be, though, might be a coyote or a regular wolf...at least, that’s what people say before they see the claw marks on the second-story windows. Even then, some try to explain it away. As for me, the werewolf thing doesn’t seem too far off, except that it only seems to come to town on the new moon.” On a dark enough night Cru will return to the community to hunt anyone who's outdoors late at night. If he can't find a human he'll kill a pet, and hunt more voraciously on subsequent nights until he's satisfied. It’s the damnedest thing; I’d been waking up from this terrible nightmare all week, and when I mentioned it to my husband, he said the same thing. The same dream, over and over. Even our daughter started having it, and she’d wake up screaming. She’s 12, mind you — she hasn’t been that scared of a dream in years. I talked to some other mothers about it…same story. At least one person in their family was experiencing it, if not all of them.” Cru has basically unintentionally turned his little piece of suburbia into a Hero factory, he doesn't really care but he does like it when his prey comes to him. Story Hooks quote:• Teenagers have made it a game to go into the woods at the edge of the community, and all come back reporting something horribly wrong that they can’t put their fingers on. Recently, one of the intrepid teenagers has gone missing. Normally, Beasts wouldn’t get involved, but she is the daughter of a local mage who believes she was taken by one of the Children. He has asked the characters to help him investigate the woods and find his daughter. Stat wise he's not unkillable, but he's got 7 defense, lots of strength, and a ludicrous brawl pool. And his Atavisms are set to make him one hell of an ambush predator. So good for you game.  Martin O'Sullivan: The Empyrean Swimmer I’ve forgotten more than you could even imagine, of countless realms between the stars and the beings which exist there. Martin was born the son of a good Irish father, though this should not surprise you at all. He was raised to be a shepherd like his father and grandfather before him. But he always dreamt of wondrous lands where he would learn fantastic and hidden lore that he would almost immediately forget upon waking. The local priest told him that dreams were gifts from god and his angels, so Martin felt sure that these places existed somewhere and he only had to seek them out. At age 12 his father deemed him old enough to take him and his brothers to drive the sheep to Galway. There he discovered two things, the sea, and ships. At every opportunity Martin slipped away from his sheep tending duties to slip into a sailor's pub and listen wide-eyed to their tales of travel and adventure. Martin knew he was born to be a sailor, not a farmer. His father would hear nothing of it, however. Shepherding was honest safe work, and no son of his would be a Sailor. He spent the next year pining for the sea as his dreams grew more intense. Eventually he formed a plan. Again his family went to Galway, again he tended the sheep for thirteen days. On the fourteenth day he rose before dawn and crept from the inn and made his way to the Wharf. There he picked his favorite ship and plied his case to the Captain. The captain had need for ready hands but he was in no mood to hire a poor shepherd from a landlocked village. But the gleam in his eye and the boy's obvious passion for the sea got him hired on as a cabin boy. Martin never felt so at home, and it was at sea that he found his Horror, the Swimmer manifested as an amalgamation of every sea tale the young boy had ever heard, and some he hadn't. He gleefully accepted his horror's offer and became a Makara. The ship then became his lair, and the young collector gathered secrets. First meaningless secrets like who had stolen some extra ratoins or helped themselves to the captain's brandy, but he craved more. At harbor he would seek out academics or mystics and stalk their sleep repeatedly, stealing knowledge until they had nothing left. He created several Heroes in this way but by the time they were on the hunt his ship was long gone. The more he gained the more he wanted, we're talking "Sacrificing crew members in necromantic rituals" and "Capturing vampires to torture for information". His sanity started slipping more and more as the secrets consumed him until one night when he was on watch he dove off the bow of the ship and swam deep. So deep his lungs burned and his eyes bulged. So deep his lungs collapsed. Martin Died. The Empyrean Swimmer kept on going. Description The empyrean swimmer doesn't remember anything of his former life as a sheep herder. What it does remember is that boy's longing for freedom, adventure, and knowledge. Now it swims the primordeal dream and realms beyond hunting for lost and forgotten places. At times it has swum the springs of Arcadia and the streams of the Hisil. This desire for more knowledge is the Swimmer's Ban. It's Bane is the young boys lust for the sea, it cannot leave the water. Which means little in the primordial dream but does mean something if it's manifesting elsewhere. It can rest atop the deck of a ship at sea (not a river, or docked), but can't go below decks. It can move over land through canals and aqueducts but not pipes or plumbing. It must remain a body of water. While manifesting it appears as a giant octopus made of barnacles, coral, and seaweed. It's eyes hold no compassion, just an intelligent overwhelming hunger. Communicating with the swimmer is a strange experience. It's intelligent enough to have retained language, a voice, and the capacity to use it. But it is a spirit of the Primordial Dream and has no understanding or empathy for those with physical bodies. The only thing it understands is it's ban, the hunger for knowledge. And this inquisitiveness is the only topic capable of holding it's attention for any length of time. Rumors “What most people don’t know is that there are many planes of existence. Even among the people who do know about other realms, they generally only know about one or two. The Empyrean Swimmer has been to all of them, multiple times. You may encounter it in places you never thought even possible. It always comes home to the Primordial Dream, though.” The swimmer's favorite realm is the Hedge, for it is ever changing and therefore forever full of new things to learn. It also enjoys the underworld and gleaning the secrets of the dead. “If you want knowledge about things beyond your own front door, you need to seek out the Empyrean Swimmer. I hear tell it has been collecting a great amount of information about all the other supernatural creatures in the world, things they would never want you to know.” It knows things about almost every supernatural group that can touch one of the alternate realms of existence, meaning it has a dearth of knowledge about Vampires. Which can be helpful because the only way to get information out of the Swimmer is to provide information it doesn't have in return. “I hear the Empyrean Swimmer has a vast library filled with volumes upon volumes of lore and magical artifacts. They say it keeps these things in some kind of underwater lair; if you can find it, you are likely to find riches beyond your imagining.” It's a spirit, it doesn't own anything. It remembers more than a library can hold, and it probably knows where an artifact or two is. Meaning there's an Aegis Kai Doru cell trying to hunt down the Swimmer, naturally. Plot Hooks quote:• A legendary Beast (perhaps even one of the Incarnate) threatens the characters and they must track down their enemy’s personal history if they are to have any insight as to his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Predictably, however, the Beast has taken care to obscure all accurate information regarding such history. In the course of their efforts to track down this information, the characters discover the existence of the Empyrean Swimmer and realize this creature likely has the knowledge they seek. The spirit gives away nothing for free, though. If they wish to know how to defeat their enemy, the characters need to trade some secret the Empyrean Swimmer does not know. Unless the characters have already built up a store of occult secrets, or possess any particularly juicy personal secrets, odds are they’ll need to find something new. Since the only lore the Empyrean Swimmer reliably doesn’t possess is regarding Kindred, this means the player characters are going to have to visit the local vampire court in the pursuit of new secrets. Adam Cutler: The Silver Bay Serpent Don’t think about what’s happening those thousands of feet below you. You really don’t want to know. Only son of lighthouse keepers, lived in a small house down the hill from the bluffs, always swam in the treacherous waters despite the fact that his parents yelled at him about it every time he did. He didn't care. As he grew older he saw the summer people come and go, and he heard the giant malevolent creatures that lived below the wave. He knew they hated them, they brought garbage and poisons with them and cared little to what it did to the water. When the waves frothed and foamed they ran away while he walked into the undertow and was pulled under in a trance. Feeling their monstrous tentacles thrashing and grabbing at him and then, all at once, going still. The grip would return and drag him under until the air burst from his lungs and the sun turned into a small pinprick in the distance, as the jaws closed around him. His mother called the dreams "Common Sense" but they persisted and he continued to feel the call to the ocean. More ferocious on days when he attempted to dive deep in search of the answers to his nightmares. He had no idea what he would do if he actually found a cave full of monsters but he wanted to do it regardless. Near the end of the summer season he had a particularly vivid dream that woke him in the middle of the night, he strode to the top of the bluff and leapt down into the surf below, the trance from the dream persisted, drawing him to an unexplored part of the bay with rock formations that blocked the way, he found a piece of wood lodged in the mud bearing the faded letters "Carey Marie" (Which near as I can tell is only the name of a Suite Life of Zack and Cody character). He returned to his house, hid the wood away, and returned to his dream. This time when the jaws closed around him he opened his eyes and he was the serpent, he ruled the monsters that lived in the waves and he no longer had to fear the water, and above him sat the dark reflection of the lighthouse, creaking and foreboding. Life was easier after that as Adam formed a symbiosis with the serpent. His horror was never content away from the water but that was fine with Adam, but it also hungered for the names of those that dared to challenge the open sea and "Declare themselves it's master". College was the best, he traveled abroad, collecting foreign names, and several chambers that he could have claimed as his, but it was far more satisfying to make one that was unquestioningly his own. A degree in marine biology ensured a life near the water, and a "healthy supply of names when he needed them", but for all his travel he was always drawn back to his lighthouse and the little bay that he needed to make his. quote:The Horror was not content to simply be, it wanted to be known, to take back the comfort from those who so foolishly thought the water was always safe and could never hurt them. To that end, he found himself occasionally trawling areas of the ocean known to be treacherous, and spent a particularly satisfying summer in the Bermuda Triangle. The tropics were never home, though; the waters were too warm, too clear, and he longed for his murky Atlantic. Little by little, he stretched his influence, his patience wearing thinner with the years, and his list of names growing longer and longer, individuals drowned far out at sea or whole vessels swallowed by the hungry tide. Sean. Michael. Paul. Gina. Rosey. The Fair Freedom. The unique and contradictory Shoreman’s Home. Tales of his hometown began to spread, the waters were far more dangerous than they should have been, weather too unpredictable, skies turned black and tides turned deadly within moments. Kayakers who had pushed too hard, swimmers who overexerted themselves, boats certain that they could navagate the cove, all swallowed by the water. It drove some away but it also drew bolder individuals with more interesting names. The Legend Grows And here's where it gets stupid. When his parents passed they left the lighthouse to Adam. His sprawling lair was littered with names, both of people and of boats, but it wasn't enough, his serpent wanted more. It drove him to the North Atlantic, and told him to dive. quote:It sprawled across the ocean, half the ship here, the other half hundreds and hundreds of feet away with its own sea of debris between the sections. The serpent was delighted; it knew this place. It remembered. At once, as Adam’s eyes probed the dark and finally came upon the one enormous piece it was looking for, he understood. Underneath the rust and corrosion, only three letters were even partially legible — A N I — but the location and the serpent’s memories all fell into place. They had called it unsinkable, they had ventured into his territory, and he had taken their challenge. The Titanic had sunk, like everything else that challenged him. Description If he bothers to appear human he is solitary and unobtrusive to behold. He has the thin build of a swimmer, and is quiet and reserved though he remains alert of everyone around him. He carries himself with an aura of supreme confidence and natural superiority. Anyone who has a problem with this finds themselves faltering after just a few moments of intense scrutiny. The air around him is cold and smells of the ocean, his long hair is damp and his skin looks just a little too rough. While stationary his stillness is inhuman but he moves quickly when provoked. He's not prone to working with other beasts, as he made his name and legend completely on his own. Woe betide the Beast who asks for help in a task that Adam thinks they can handle on their own. He's undoubtedly the Apex of his region and the lairs near his are Decayed, stinking of salt and rust and ready to collapse at a moment's notice. If there is something worthy of his attention he never offers aid without promise of reward, a new name for his collection is good motivation, provided he's hungry. He's more likely to help with an offer of protection for his beloved ocean. Oh, also.  He has presence 8. You want to gently caress this snake. You are compelled to gently caress this snake. I like the repeating scale pattern that doesn't actually follow his body or curve and is obviously just a mirrored photoshop layer Rumors “It happens at least once a summer. A perfectly calm, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and then out of nowhere, the worst storm you’ve ever seen. I’m talking hurricane levels. The sky just turns black, and you’ve got maybe five minutes. No one in the water after the rain starts ever makes it to shore. Some people, ones with houses close to the water, say they can see something in the bay. Same story, year after year, different people every time. A huge serpent in the bay.” Adam's lesson is a simple one, respect the water fucknuts. The first storm is a warning, the second one is the teacher. In the winter the storms are lighter but more frequent, and are usually accompanied by long sunken boats torn in two. “That lighthouse, on the hill there? The owners died years ago. Left it all to their son. They were townies, never traveled much. But, the boy just vanished one day. The lighthouse, though — it’s never stopped working. It’s funny...doesn’t seem to spare many ships. Nights with a new moon, there’s always something dashed on the shore in the morning. No one around here will go inside. They say someone tried a few years ago, talked a big game about how they could take on anything inside, ghosts aren’t real, all that. Vanished, just like the boy.” The lighthouse has been a chamber of Adam's lair for so long it's become a thing unto itself. It doesn't have a speck of graffiti or a single broken window as the teenagers know full well to stay far, far, away. On some occasions the light goes out and the doorway leads not inside, but to the chamber. “The fog comes in sometimes, real thick. Too thick, some say. Can’t see your own hand in front of your face, but you can hear. Something’s moving. Something’s hunting. If you hold still, keep to yourself, it won’t bother you. When the fog comes in, some of them start screaming. I overheard someone talking about a dream they had once, walking and walking in a real thick fog, until the ground wasn’t there anymore. Woke up when they started to fall, but not before knowing something was watching them. Maybe that’s what makes ’em start to holler. When the dream starts coming true.” If Adam is hungry and the sea is too quiet, the fog rolls in and Adam goes a'hunting. Those that react to the fog become the target of more direct, specialized lessons. Story Hooks quote:• The tightly-knit local community has turned on the characters, the outsiders, and accused them of being responsible for the recent string of disappearances relating to the Silver Bay Lighthouse. The characters must investigate the problem and clear their names. Also: his stat line? Dumb as poo poo. He's got defense 11 and Armor 10 so he's drat near unkillable... but he has zero dots in brawl, and no dots in firearms. He's strong and dexterous of course (nowhere near as high as his presence though gently caress THE SNEK) but he's..just... there. Like the other incarnate. They're highly specialized plot devices rather than characters. Up Next: An even stupider strawman than the business rapist
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Feb 9, 2017 04:12
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Also: I hope you guys don't mind but something came in the mail today. And once I'm done with Conquering Heroes I'm going to take a vacation from this game that viscerally hates me on a primal level. After all, I deserve it. Because I'm a Good Dog.
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Feb 9, 2017 04:20
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The Empyrean Swimmer isn't a great name, but it is the greatest thing I've ever seen out of Beast. Weird.
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Feb 9, 2017 04:36
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Doesn't your Myth have to be some widespread urban legend kind of stuff to become an Incarnate? Being a corporate raider doesn't seem to qualify, nor does sinking the Titanic if nobody knows about it. I dun get it.
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Feb 9, 2017 04:45
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Their myths are "Heartless Corporate Leader" and "Storm-King Serpent", as far as Sneksy he's at least maintaining his legend as the monster in the mists that contains the storm. I'm not sure what's up with the walking critique of corporate culture though.
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Feb 9, 2017 04:57
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The Empyrean Swimmer is the kind of twisted but not necessarily directly hostile insanity you expect to be everywhere in a horror setting. It works fine.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:01
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Kurieg posted:After all, I deserve it. Because I'm a Good Dog. 
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Feb 9, 2017 05:03
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Technically that's a Rat. if you don't get the joke Night10194 posted:The Empyrean Swimmer is the kind of twisted but not necessarily directly hostile insanity you expect to be everywhere in a horror setting. It works fine. Excactly, and it's basically a gigantic "HEY MAGES OVER HERE" Beacon, though not in the utterly moronic "I'm gonna capture it and keep it in my space zoo next to superman" way. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 05:07
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So, in order. 1: probably ends up dead by the hands of the Barret Commission digging into weird corporate behavior and finding things that don't add up but can't be explained by vampires. 2: probably dies at the hands of werewolves who are confused as to what he is but know he can't be allowed to exist. 3: shoved in a glass jar by a bunch of mages. 4: probably killed by hunters but I couldn't really tell you what kind of hunters. Just most likely to be hunted to death.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:44
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 7: Sing a Song for the Pianoman  There’s one more artifact that I want to cover before covering magic item creation and then sealing this book in a trap-filled tomb to be forgotten. It’s Heward’s Mystical Organ, another artifact that can trace its origins to Mystical Energies. Like Lum’s Machine, the Organ is an immobile artifact that’s always housed in a cathedral-like building, “not necessarily the same one each time.” The cabinet of this pipe organ has three sets of keys-one of ivory and obsidian, one of jade and lapis, and the third of steel and brass. Each set of keys has nine ivory stops, or 27 in total. Nine rosewood petals complete the cabinet. The organ’s pipes are made of silver and gold, with the tallest reaching almost three stories in height. Heward was the Patron of Bards, who lived during the ascendancy of humans as the elves faded to the background. Early humans apparently weren’t interested in music, so Heward set out to change that by building a magic organ. The Organ was wildly successful and made everything wonderful, so of course a few deities decided to gently caress things up. These gods convinced the mice of Heward’s hall to gnaw on the Organ’s pipes. The next time Heward played the organ it gave harpies and sirens their special abilities. Heward was of course pissed, and so he played one last song to curse the mice into being lowly and meek. And then Heward and his Organ disappeared. The suggested campaign use for the Organ is very similar to the Machine of Lum the Mad-a party needs the Organ to produce a certain effect, they need to discover the musical sheet, then they have to find the Organ itself, and play the tune. The major difference is that by the artifact’s nature, this artifact works best with a Bard in the part, a class that a PC had a miniscule chance of rolling the requirements for in 2nd edition if they used method 1 of rolling attributes. Like the Machine, the description of the Organ’s powers is more focused on how to use it than what it can do. There are at least 23 powers of the Organ, each requiring a separate song. No, these powers aren’t actually detailed, but at least the suggested random power tables are provided. To use a power, not only must the song be played flawlessly (an unmodified proficiency check) but the stops must be set appropriately. There are 27 stops, labeled A to Z with the last one marked “!”. Stops can be set from 1 to 8, with 1 being the the default. The ! stop is especially important, as setting it incorrectly automatically triggers the curse. Otherwise, if any of the other stops are incorrect or the proficiency check is failed, the DM needs to roll a d10. On a 1-7, nothing happens, on an 8-9 the artifact curse is triggered, and on a 10 there is a random effect.  These are the suggested tables for a DM to select the Organ’s powers, but the DM can always come up with his or her own. In fact, a lot of the powers that can come from these result are pretty lackluster for the effort involved, so a DM is better off making his own.  Personal Enhancements: 16, 8, 12, 11, 16
 I guess you’re expected to make a song for every power, even if you never plan to use them If the curse is triggered from playing poorly, then all those within the hall containing the Organ must save vs death at -4. Those who fail go mad forever, unable to tolerate any sound but unable to bear silence either. They lose all class abilities “and are controlled by the referee”. This madness can only be cured with wish. There’s also a risk that a character play the Organ too well. If the organist rolls a 1 or less on the proficiency check, at the end of the song he or she is instantly struck by melancholia, knowing their performance will never likely be matched. Anyone listening must make a Wisdom check or come to the same conclusion. Stricken characters have no motivation to do anything and will waste away. No word on whether this effect can be reversed. As for the songs themselves, the DM is encouraged to make their own list of tunes based on their own tastes in musics, and it’s suggested to play the tune “on a stereo” at the climactic performance. That’s my favorite part of this artifact, and I could see myself including it not just in a D&D campaign, but any roleplaying game where a world-changing Organ is plausible. At the very least it would rank up there with the greatest effort taken to Rickroll a group of people.  Suggested Means of Destruction
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Feb 9, 2017 06:23
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8: (Arcane) Arts and Crafts I’ll be honest with this thread-I’m not having fun reviewing every artifact. It’s too much of a slog, and a lot of them are less interesting than the writers believe. Rather than just abandon this review, though, I’m going to skip ahead to the part I wanted to share the most, the section on how players can create magical items. And then I’ll abandon it. One thing to keep in mind as I review this portion of the book, these are rules for creating standard magical items, not for making artifacts like the book has been describing up to this point. We begin rather abruptly-like someone forgot to include an opening paragraph-on why a spellcaster would want to create a magical items. Fame, outfitting friends, paying off nobles, and riches are some example. The last reason gets a discouraging finger-wag, partly because 2nd edition was deathly afraid of players getting too much gold, and partly because even without the expanded rules, making magic items has a terrible ROI, especially if the effect is permanent. That’s because permanent magic items required the permanence spell to make, which in 2nd edition reduced the caster’s CON by 1. Before a wizard or priest can start making magic items, he or she needs to meet the minimum level requirements. Wizards can start making scrolls at level 9, and priests can write them beginning at level 7. Both class-groups can start making potions at level 9, and all other magic items at level 11. A specific magic item can have a much higher level requirement depending on the spells needed to create it. More on that later.  This will end well Once the minimum level has been achieved, a spellcaster needs a place to work. For wizard classes (mages and the various school specialists), this requires building a laboratory. Priest classes (cleric, druid, and whatever specialty priest class you had the supplement for) needed to sanctify an altar to make magic items. Laboratories are a combination of workshop, alchemist study and library, and making magic items requires the wizard to actually craft the object or be able to bring in the specialist. Fully outfitted wizard labs cost 5,000gp to equip and have an annual upkeep of 500gp. A priest, needs a specific site to make an altar depending on his or her deity’s profile. Preparing an altar for making items requires less gold (2000gp one time) but needs a greater time investment (weeks of prayer plus a service to the deity)  Of course, a player needs the DM’s okay before he or she can start making magic items. This rule is meant to be a case-by-case basis, but because of how this chapter is laid out, my first read was that a wizard or priest could go through all the trouble of setting up a place to make magic items and only now can see if the DM even wants this to be a part of his or her campaign. At least the book advises the DM try to accommodate the player’s goal. Part of the decision of whether an item can be crafted is if it is a standard item, semistandard item, or nonstandard item. This will affect the overall difficulty of making the item. A standard magical item is anything out of the Dungeon Master’s Guide or the Tome of Magic. This includes slight variations on listed item. The book’s example is a ring of magic missiles that otherwise functions as the same-said wand. I could see a way to exploit the change in item slot allocation, but that works on the assumption that magic item creation is worthwhile. Nonstandard items are anything a player makes up, or a major variation on an existing magic item (like a wand of frost that absorbs spell charges). It can also include ‘seldom-discovered’ magic items if the DM so chooses. Finally, semistandard magic items are ones that are significantly modified from a base item, but not enough to be a major modification. The distinction is vague, and if I had to house rule this, I’d just say all modifications of listed magic items are semistandard. Now the DM has to determine the difficulty rating for a magical item. The difficulty rating is used to derive the time it takes to create a magic item, how much it will cost to make it, and the chance of successfully completing the item. A higher difficulty means longer creation time, higher cost, and greater chance of messing up. Along with whether an item is standard or nonstandard, the difficulty rating is determined by the number of usages it’ll have, the number of spells needed to create it, and the exotic materials and processes that have to be included in the manufacturing of the item. In a remarkable display of page management, these three steps are first described, and then the steps are repeated with the actual rules for calculating them. Step one in calculating the difficulty is for the DM to determine what spells are needed to create the item. If the item is rechargeable, then it’s recommended to create the item with just one charge and then recharge it after creating it. The number of spells required is then added to the usage rating, which is provided in this table:  If an item is multiple use, then the two types are added together. Step three is to take the current sum and apply the non or semi modification. The difficulty is multiplied by 2 if the item is nonstandard. If it is semistandard, than it is either multiplied by 2 or has 10 added to the total, whichever is lower. Step four is to determine the special processes needed to make the item. The current value is divided by 10, rounding up. That gets you the number of processes needed, and this is also added to the difficulty rating. This addition can change the number of materials/processes required (say if the difficulty is bumped from 19 to 21), and this also has to be added to the difficulty (now 22). Everybody got that? Oh and even though the book hasn’t explained what a player needs to do to determine if he succeeds in creating an item yet, it now tells us that specialist wizards get a +5 to their checks if the spells used came from their school. In addition to special processes, a magic item needs to have special materials to create. The book suggests “as a guideline” requiring one special material for every five points of final difficulty, rounded up. The book recommends that the materials and processes should be thematically related to what the spellcaster is trying to create. The cost of these materials should be 100-1,000 gp times the final difficulty. The books suggests that getting the special materials should be an adventure in and of itself, and may even be inherently impossible without clever thinking on the player’s part. The book also recommends making some required materials perishable, because gently caress you I suppose. Basically there’s a page’s worth of writing dedicated to lecturing the DM on making magic item creation as inconvenient to the players as possible. I won’t rewrite this section or even summarize it, because it’s endemic of the attitude of early 2nd edition that if you let players do anything easily You’re Doing It Wrongtm. I’m just going to say that yes, it does draw on an understanding of medieval life that’s probably flawed at least. And yes, it completely ignores the implications of how a setting with magic and monsters and groups of dangerous murderhobos would be different.  At least the art is cool There’s one more problem with these instructions, and that is that there’s really no guidance on what actual spells are needed to create a magic item. We know that any magic item besides scrolls and potions requires at least enchant an item, and any with permanent functionality also requires the permanence spell, which in 2nd edition required the caster to permanently lose 1 CON. Those are the spells for a wizard class-I honestly don’t remember if priest classes get these spells too. As for what other spells are required, we only have the few examples from the book. While it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect a book to go over every item, there should have at least been an indication of what is required to give weapons and armor base magical bonuses. With the difficulty rating now set, the DM now rolls secretly whether the character succeeds or fails to create the item. Every type of magic item has a base chance of successfully creating, and this is adjusted by adding the character’s level and subtracting the difficulty value. There may be other adjustments that apply only to specific items. If the DM rolls under or equal to the percentage chance, then the item is successfully created. If the DM rolls over the percentage but below 96, then the character fails to create the item and is left only with a pile of useless scrap that cannot be salvaged into anything useful. If the DM rolls 96 or above, then the character has unwittingly created a cursed magic item. Whether this critical failure would override a success chance that goes above 95 is unclear. Item Particulars Scrolls: There are three types of scrolls in 2nd edition: single-spell scrolls, multi-spell scrolls, and protection scrolls. Rather than determining how many spells the scroll will have beforehand, the character has to roll 1d6 at the time of creation. Scrolls have three components: quill, sheet, and ink. How exotic these need to be depend on the difficulty, and this depends on the difficulty value. The sheet is the most ordinary component. A character needs to use a new quill for each spell being inscribed. The ink is brewed in a single batches, and each batch lasts for two weeks. It takes one day per spell level to inscribe a spell, or six days to make a protection scroll. The base chance of scribing a scroll is 80%. If the scroll doesn’t require a special sheet, there is a 5% bonus for using paper, and a 5% penalty for using papyrus. If the spell holds multiple spells, than a roll has to be made for each spell. If a roll fails, then no more spells can be inscribed. [pic: scroll table]  my face trying to parse these rules Potions: To start, both wizards and priests need 1d3+1 weeks to research the formula. This step only has to be done once for a particular potion, and the fact that I was half expecting this not to be spelled out speaks volumes of my opinion of 2nd edition. While you can’t just outright use someone else’s recipe for Reasons, having one does reduce the research time by one week. To brew a potion, a wizard or priest has to be able to cast the spell the potion would replicate. For potions at least a table is provided to give appropriate schools and spheres. The level of the spell the potion duplicates is added to the base difficulty, and if no spell exists that matches it then the modifier is equal to the combination of spells that approximates the effect. That’s... different from the rules for creating any other magic item. Somewhat balancing this is that the base creation percentage is 70% + 2% per level. Otherwise the rules are the same. Starting with potions the book provides suggestions as to what steps go into manufacturing an item that a DM can designate as needing to be special. For potions, these steps are distillation, infusion, evaporation, fermentation, extraction of vital oils, separation, leaching and purification. Due to the layout, it strongly implies that only wizards need to follow special processes, so does this mean priests can more easily make potions?   After potions are explained we move onto permanent and rechargeable items, plus about a page of information that hasn’t already been spelled out before. About the only new info is that the cost of the raw materials should be between 1,000 x 10,000 gp per difficulty point, which is ten times what was given earlier in the book. Here are some highlights from the different types of permanent items: Rings: Apparently the 2nd Ed Dungeon Master’s Guide stated that every magic ring looks like the One Ring, so that needed to be errated. Special processes could be applied to making a mold, melting the alloy, casting, welding, tempering, setting stones, and polishing. Wands and Rods: “Get past the notion that wands are made only of wood and rods of iron”. I am always amazed at how nerd-  pops up in the most inconsequential places. Special procedures can be applied to lathing, carving, steeping, polishing, tooling, enameling, sanding and mounting. Latinus Arcania! Staves: “These are almost always made of wood, if only because other materials tend to be too heavy.” If you say so, Book of Artifacts. Otherwise, the special processes are pretty much the same that could be used for wands and rods. Weapons: Because of weapon restrictions, most magical weapons are going to be daggers or maces-at least that’s what this book says, I’d have to see if the random magic item tables from the DMG actually supports this. “Fortunately weapons last a long time thus accounting for the preponderance of enchanted blades in most campaigns”. But wouldn’t that also apply to daggers and-oh forget it, anything non-rule related is dumb as gently caress in this chapter. The book says that most weapons’ manufacture includes forging, tempering, etching, casting, inlay, piercing, sharpening, and/or balancing. Certain weapons or weapon ammo can also require cutting, carving, riveting, planing, fletching and more. Armor: Armor creation involves most of the steps needed to make weapons. Other steps include fitting, welding, sewing, chasing, lacing, boiling, engraving, gilding, painting, riveting, chiseling, embossing, and lacquering. Miscellaneous Items: Thankfully we don’t get a full breakdown of making every magic item from the DMG. Creating a permanent magic item (once all the materials are gathered) is 2d6 months. The base chance of success is 60%. If the character doesn’t have the background or proficiencies to make an item, then a PC that does or an NPC can do it, but the character applying the spells must be present the entire time. Now, there is one thing that I have been leaving out, and that is the examples of special materials that might be needed to make a magic item. That’s because they are spread out over the chapter and I want to consolidate it in one place. The idea is that you can’t just use a normal chunk of metal or wood or whatever to contain the magical powers, so the character needs to seek out special components. In practice, this makes the creation of a magical item an adventure in itself, something the book is cognizant of. Here’s some of the special materials it suggests that are at least straightforward:
This is my big problem with this chapter, and the reason I wanted to review the book. These rules set up a cool adventure that would probably last several sessions, but the end result is maybe one standard magic item out of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Also there’s a 1-in-20 chance that the players set back their characters by making a cursed item. And these rules are in a book full of extraordinary artifacts with several stories about how they came into existence. It’s a problem with a lot of 90s RPGs, where there is a half-hearted attempt to extend narrative levers to players, but the end result is patronizing. “You can make a magic item, player, but it’ll never be as cool as the ones we came up with!” There’s one more part of this chapter, and that is creating intelligent magical items. The book makes the cost of making one prohibitively expensive, to the point that no player would ever do it. Why not just say players can’t make it? Well how else would you explain where intelligent weapons are from!?  Basically, a spellcaster has to transfer his conscious into the item. This kills the characters, and the PC loses all his abilities. We’re told that the weapon has an ego score, but given no indication how to calculate it. Huzzah, these rules are balls! And with that, I toss the Book of Artifact into the cracks of Mount Doom. It’s an interesting example of 2nd Edition D&D, but going over every entry is just not fun and will probably bind my will to Gary Gygax. I’ll be going back to reviewing Planescape stuff.
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Feb 9, 2017 06:24
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Forging a weapon in concentrated sunlight could be pretty easily accomplished, I reckon; there are certainly solar ovens and stoves, and it doesn't seem impossible that you could scale that up. At least enough to melt gold or lead or something.
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Feb 9, 2017 06:57
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The Sin of Onan posted:Part of the reason I split the fluff section in half - apart from it being too long - is that the two different parts of the section feel like they were written by two different people: a Beast writer who can't stand the thought of Hunter players killing his darlings, and who wrote his section to encourage players to join up with Beasts and go after mean old Heroes instead; and a Hunter writer who's not at all happy that she was put on to this garbage, and is very reluctantly writing within the premise and trying to roll with the notion that Heroes can be just as bad as Beasts, but plainly doesn't buy it. We'll call them David A Hill Jr. and Filamena Young, respectively, although I don't actually know which is which - I'm only assuming because the credits list both of those two as writers but only David Hill as the developer, and given this book's attitudes and the fact that it sprung from the Beast kickstarter, it makes sense that the developer was someone associated with Beast.* So if you think the book is being too cuddly with Beasts at the moment, you'll be pleased to know that's about to change with a vengeance. I'm a bit delayed here, but I kind of feel like an important detail missing here is that David Hill and Filamena Young are husband and wife.
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Feb 9, 2017 07:11
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Daeren posted:I'm a bit delayed here, but I kind of feel like an important detail missing here is that David Hill and Filamena Young are husband and wife. Hmm. I did not know that. I'm going to stop speculating about the writers, then.
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Feb 9, 2017 07:27
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Kurieg posted:Technically that's a Rat. Would it be too soon to request making a sample character based off of Mr. Peanutbutter from Bojack Horseman?
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Feb 9, 2017 08:14
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Evil Mastermind posted:Dumber. As above, so below. The Rose is the Tower. The RPG inside TORG is a reflection of the structure of TORG's multiverse, and playing it causes phase changes in the actual TORG multiverse, weakening one High Lord, strengthening another. Or at least it's enough of a reflection that it can be used for divination, the TORG RPG with TORG being consulted by the dice and cards (don't you use cards to play it?) of the players.
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Feb 9, 2017 08:16
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Hostile V posted:So, in order. 3. Could the Swimmer act as a patron for a group of Mages? Teaches them, tempts them with forbidden knowledge? 4. A Compact of Hunters who hunts sea monsters sounds awesome! If I was setting a Hunter game in Sydney they'd be something I'd need to create. Maybe they swore revenge against were-stingrays after the death of Steve Irwin (or they just fight mundane and real sharks). But anyway, sea monsters are cool, and any Lovecraftian New England setting needs a few.
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Feb 9, 2017 08:36
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Count Chocula posted:1. A perfect foe for The Union. There's a group of Hunter pearl divers in Dark Eras.
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Feb 9, 2017 09:32
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Count Chocula posted:As above, so below. You've now officially put way more thought into the dumb plot twist than the people who wrote the dumb plot twist.
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Feb 9, 2017 09:49
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LongDarkNight posted:Speaking of Demon and the God-Machine, didn't someone do a write up of God-Machine Chronicle? I wanted to go back and read but don't see it on Inklesspen's archive. Re: the God-Machine Chronicle, it's folded into unzealous's writeup of the Chronicles of Darkness Revised Storytelling Rulebook, because the latter half of that book reprints the majority of the GMC content. The writeup itself covers the stuff left out, too. Re: Demon and the Lucifuge, my impression of the Mortal Remains chapter has always been that it takes a firmly ambiguous position, as appropriate for Hunter. The weaker chapters of Mortal Remains are like Tooth and Nail in that they give a straightforward, point by point summary of the corresponding gameline, but the Demon chapter isn't like that. It has a version of greater demons which are definitely out of Descent, some lesser demons which are entirely unheard of from a Descent perspective, and a conflated merger of the Hunter core's elder demons and Demon's infrastructure and occult matrices. The Lucifuge section is sufficiently ambiguous that the God-Machines demons – or its angels, for that matter – could be relatives, a red herring, or part of a larger puzzle. I don't think I expect Hunter 2e to take the Lucifuge more firmly in the direction of Descent; they have their own associations. My personal interpretation of the Lucifuge sometimes runs toward the sidebar in the corebook identifying what their actual Castigations count as "demons." It turns out they treat the category as very, very broad, such that it wouldn't be out of place to suppose that the demonic heritage that runs through the hunters of the Lucifuge isn't of one kind at all, but monstrous birthrights from the many different ways human ancestries have been tainted from without. Re: Beast... Well, there's not really anything left to be said, is there.
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Feb 9, 2017 10:59
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MonsieurChoc posted:There's a group of Hunter pearl divers in Dark Eras. Oh cool! I'd model mine on the famous Surf Lifesaving Clubs that rescue people at the beaches. Just lower-case h heroes that everyone respects, even grudgingly, because they saved that werewolf cub from a rip or lept in to save a Mage that dove too deep...everyone knows the kind of scary poo poo that haunt our beaches in the real world, jellyfish and great white sharks and all that. What kind of things would you need to guard against in the World of Darkness? I guess they'd need some kind of moral ambiguity? Maybe they let a few people die to preserve some kind of balance, or they really do become Baywatch-style glory hounds? It's just a random idea.
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Feb 9, 2017 11:11
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Count Chocula posted:Oh cool! Once a year they drown a tourist as sacrifice to the Great White Shark Spiritfather as part of a bargain to keep him and most of his spawn away from the red and yellow flags that are symbolic of their truce.
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Feb 9, 2017 11:54
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you dont need to make shady poo poo up about the surf life savers: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-29/surf-life-saving-in-crisis-after-teenagers-death/3920126 they literally have child sacrifices to keep beaches safe
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Feb 9, 2017 12:07
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The Whispering Vault: Once More Unto The Breach So, it’s been a while. Life, time, ceaseless march to the grave, all that. Anyway, let’s try to futilely distract ourselves from our own decaying shells by griping about bad design in mid-90s RPGs! For those who have understandably forgotten all about Whispering Vault, previous Fatal and Friends entries are here.  Now, we’ve got the “Game-masters” section for the Whispering Vault, i.e. the boring speed bump on the way to the chapters about Shadows and the Unbidden. We are told here that Whispering Vault is apparently designed for non-continous “pick up” games, with new characters made for each session. Which makes a certain amount of sense given the formulaic nature of the Hunts...but it’s also something that should really have been mentioned already. However, for those weirdos who like to play more than one session at a time, there are rules for gaining XP and Karma. If you recall, Karma is the game’s meta-currency like bennies or fate points. Karma is not a “per session” or “per hunt” thing, it’s actually tracked persistently, meaning that bad luck or bad decisions could leave you completely dry for several sessions. Even worse, it’s actually possible to earn no Karma for a session if you violate the forbiddance, which means you’re probably completely dry for the next session. I mean, nothing wrong with having rules of behavior in the game, but at this point you’re really punishing the player rather than the character. Next we’ve got XP. Whispering Vault does the thing a lot of games did post-D&D where they get huffy over the idea of awarding XP based on opponents defeated and instead award XP based purely on “roleplaying”. This leads to the unfortunate situation where the GM has to stand in judgement of a player’s performance, based on how well they stay in character, how well they fit the themes of whispering vault and how much they contribute to the success of the adventure. XP can be spent to improve a skill (new bonus x2), learn a new Discpline (number of disciplines x3), master a discipline (15 xp), get a new servitor (# of servitors x4) or master a servitor (10 xp). Finally you can increase vitality (xp equal to the new vitality score, and almost certainly your first priority). You can also potentially improve your attributes...except they decline to actually give a ruling on how much this should cost, saying that it should probably be between 5 to 10 times the new cost. Might as well just not allow it at this point. Oh and finally there is an option for character “advancement”, becoming one of the Aesthetics. This is done by spending Karma to “purge” your Keys of Humanity, with each key costing 5+5 per Key already purged (so 5 for the first, 10 for the second, etc). Each key also grants a +1 to Awareness and Insight skills but causes you to lose a point from your physical attributes (which quickly becomes crippling). Your reward for doing this is having your Stalker ascend to the role of an Aesthetic and no longer being a character. It doesn’t really seem like something you should have to “earn”...why not just have that be an option available if you choose to retire your character?  Now, next we have a legitimately interesting option, Group Powers which allow the Circle to develop special communal abilities. Group Powers are a pain to get: first, everyone has to spend 5 Karma to buy one, and Karma isn’t so readily available that it’s easy to have 5 on hand for everyone without making the next Hunter much tougher. Circles can only buy one Group Power at a time and only after impressing the Primal Powers, completing a Hunt that earns 7+ Karma...for context, most Hunts are worth 5 or less Karma and players generally can’t do anything to influence the amount of Karma earned: Karma rewards are based purely on the amount of challenge the GM chooses to create (minus any penalties they might get for not following the rules).  So, let’s take a look at the group powers and see if they’re worth it. Blood Bond: Blood Bond allows you to “share” Vitality among one another. At first this would seem pretty useful, given the low amount of Vitality available to most Stalkers and the way their powers are often hungry for it. However, actually donating Vitality is a strenous action, meaning it costs a point of vitality on top of the vitality you’re already giving up. It compares poorly to Weaving...and Weaving already sucks. On top of that, if a stalker “dies” then the remaining members of the Circle not only lose a point of Vitality and lose their next action...making it quite easy for another character to die, inflicting more damage to the group and keeping them stun-locked for another round. Calling Circle: This lets you do a communal summoning ritual when summoning Servitors. Although the actual text is confusing what seems to happen is that everyone involved has to spend an action but only one has to spend Vitality, then everyone rolls and takes the highest result to determine success (and if one of the participants has Mastered the servitor they don’t have to spend vitality). One big problem...in order to do this everyone involved has to have the same Servitor...which is a terrible idea. There’s almost no reason why more than one member of the circle would have “overlapping” servitors. Closed Circuit: This power functions only with Rend (the ranged attack Discipline) and lets the Circle pull a Power Rangers team-up and combine their Rend power into a single uber-attack. All Stalkers involved must have Rend and must be able to see each other. The willpower attributes of everyone involved are added to determine damage but the participant with the highest Willpower is the one that has to make the Attack roll, even if they don’t have the highest Attack skill. This stands out as a powerful attack...Stalkers probably have a Willpower of about 6, meaning just three Stalkers teaming up inflict damage equivalent to a rocket launcher. A full circle of four or five starts doing damage equivalent to artillery weapons...way more than most enemies can deal with. So, third times the charm as far as useful team powers. Frightful Unity: This lets Stalkers combine their form into a single gestalt entity. This takes a while (1d6 rounds). The entity has the best Dex, the combination of the two best fortitude scores and the three highest strength scores. Vitality is the total of all stalkers. This makes for a hefty power-up, but the loss of extra actions doesn’t really make up for it and only one character can control the gestalt at a time, using their skills and disciplines. The biggest benefit is the ability to combine up to three character’s Strength scores for big unarmed attacks...except Strength is already the least desirable stat and it’ll generally be a character’s lowest physical stat. Helping Hand: This is something that really should just be available to anyone in a team-based game. It’s your basic teamwork rule...sacrifice your action to give another character a +1 bonus to their action, up to a maximum of +3. This is particularly useful out of combat (allowing teams to ensure that important skill challenges like Binding and Mending succeed). This is practically essential for that reason...so much so that it really needs to be the first Circle Power purchased. Karma Pool: This creates a “team Karma” pool which anyone can draw from, but must be filled by donated Karma from the team. The main benefit is that if everyone donates at least one point of Karma at the end of the hunt an extra Karma point gets added in by the Powers. Generally speaking there’s no reason not to just pour all your Karma right into the team pool so its rather odd that they didn’t just allow players to freely swap Karma...only the most PVP teams would have any problems with donating Karma to a teammate when needed. Shared Perceptions: Lets the team share their senses, seeing through each others eyes and so on. Doing so is distracting, inflicting a penalty if you’re trying to do things while sharing a teammate’s senses. Shared Vessel: This allows you to abandon your Vessel to move to another Stalker’s Vessel, sharing their body. This gives no benefit to the new Vessel, it’s merely a way to ensure that a badly wounded Stalker doesn’t get banished (probably as a way to ensure that a Stalker with essential skills like Binding or Mending doesn’t get lost). The two STalkers can “swap” back and forth to allow the dominant one to use their skills and disciplines. Vital Tribute: This basically lets you sacrifice Vitality for Karma...and is almost certainly a terrible idea given how low on Vitality all Stalkers are. The first time you do it you can sacrifice 1 Vitality for a point of Karma, but the cost increases by 1 Vitality the next time (2:1) then goes to 3:1 and so on. So yeah, not a great move. So, much like Disciplines and Servitors the group powers range from worthless to almost indispensable.  Watchers This is an interesting campaign alternative...the Watcher style campaign involves a Circle of Stalkers assigned to a “hot spot” in the Realm of Flesh where Enigmas or Shadow intrusions are more typical for whatever reason, requiring a full-time Circle of Stalkers keeping an eye on it. This is kind of ideal for a long-running campaign allowing Stalkers to deal with things like the consequences of their actions on an area or building relationships with Mortals. Unfortunately they fail to provide any rules for things like healing or re-making your Vessel, normally an essential process that is handled at the start of the Hunt, but is impossible during the game. What there are rules for are creating Sanctums, a shelter in the mortal world for a Stalker Circle, their cenobyte Hall of Justice. Sanctums also get Enhancements, which must be bought with Karma (1/Stalker for the first enhancement, increasing to 2/stalker for the second and so on). The enhancement list is actually bigger than the Circle Powers list: Cloaked: The sanctum is super-stealthy and any mortals who finds it or goes inside will forget about it after they leave. Conscious: Your Sanctum has a mind, called the Keeper, which can manifest within the Sanctum. The Keeper is drat impressive, with an Initiative, Perceive and Resolve attribute of 12 and these stats will supposedly improve. You can spend a second enhancement to give the Keeper the Rend discipline. Elusive: This enhancement makes it impossible for mortals to find their way to the Sanctum on their own. Infested: These sanctums are Hives (capitalized for some reason) which produce Drones (also capitalized) who are basically supernatural butlers. They have no effective stats or bonuses. Invasive This lets your Sanctum create portals to anywhere within your area of protection, making it easy for you to show up wherever you need to. These portals have to be established to fixed locations and you get a number of portals equal to the Willpower score of the Stalker with the highest Insight. Linked This gives the sanctum a gate directly to the Realm of Essence, for those too lazy to summon a navigator. Labyrinthine The third “confuse mortal” enhancement, which is largely pointless. Basically the interior of your Sanctum is so confusing mortals become trapped and cannot find their way anywhere. Nurturing Well here are those rules I was talking about This enhancement allows you to regenerate, every hour spent in the Sanctum will recover a point of Vitality and once you’re healed you can start recovering lost attribute points at the rate of 1/day. This enhancement is so essential that it should really be a default. Persistent This enhancement lets your Sanctum regenerate itself, restoring itself if damaged or destroyed. Transcendent The Tardis enhancement, its bigger on the inside. Thats really all. Transitory: You can shift the Sanctum to a new building...and it sucks because every time you move to a new building every Circle member has to spend 1 point of Karma for every Enhancement on the Sanctum...ie the same cost as a actually purchasing an Enhancement for the amazing power of moving down the street. Venomous This power renders Labyrinthine extra pointless by simply ensuring that anyone who invades the Sanctum without permission will be crippled and eventually killed by blinding pain. So Sanctum Enhancements are neat, but quickly become not worth the cost thanks to the increasingly escalating cost. Since every Circle member pays that means a four person Circle with two enhancements already has to spend a total of 12 Karma among themselves for a third Enhancement, Karma that could really be used for anything actually useful. There’s really just one or two Enhancements that are actually functional and the rest just fall under the category of “neat stuff”.
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Feb 9, 2017 12:12
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Count Chocula posted:The Self meter in Unknown Armies should cover all of that, including how different people react. Software engineer who's already got a pacemaker? You start with a Hardened notch in Self, so you're less likely to freak out with cybernetics. Plus since you roll for them, you create interesting storytelling possibilities. Huh, turns out being a cyborg isn't as cool as your hologames made it out to be, since you just failed your Self check. Self is more of a WoD-style Humanity meter, especially in the NEMESIS incarnation. My idea was basically to take the NEMESIS meters (which merge Isolation and Helplessness) and add back a fifth meter that covers losing one's sense of self.
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Feb 9, 2017 13:42
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