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Thirsty Sword Lesbians: Alright, we start with the standard PBtA setup, pass the playbooks around, everyone chooses one, Highlander rules. Take your playbook, record your name and pronouns, choose a column of stats (each provides two sets of options) and then add +1 to two stats of your choice. Circle an option from each of the Aesthetics categories provided, then read over any special rules and make all the decisions prompted including choosing additional Moves from your playbook options. Go around the table once everyone’s done and introduce yourselves, sharing as much as you want the other players to know about your character. You then fill out the Relationships Worksheet, which has three questions for each playbook. Take turns proposing relationships between PCs based on these questions or others if you don’t really like those much. You then decide to give zero, one, or two Strings to each other PC based on what makes sense to you. This is a bit more freeform than usual, in that it doesn’t really hard specify what your relationships should be and a mechanical value for them. Now for the Playbooks, which are if you want to play along at home available for free at SwordLesbians.com. The Beast: The Beast is someone who doesn’t fit in with civilized society. Their conflict is trying to live their truth in spite of this. The Beast always has +1 Daring, and then has either +1 Heart but -1 Wit or +1 Grace and -1 Heart. You’re always good in a Fight, but you’re either a bit dense or a bit cold. Your special mechanic is that you are Feral. You have a Feral stat that varies from 0-4 and starts at 1. If it should ever hit 4, you Transform. If it drops to 0, you lose access to your Beast playbook moves until it’s at least 1. Increase Feral when you express yourself in a shocking way through your appearance or display intense emotion society would rather you concealed. Decrease it when you feel you’ve hurt someone with your bestial nature, or you go along with an uncomfortable interaction to fit in. Moves: Start with Transform, then pick two more. Transform: You can turn into a beast of some kind. This happens automatically if you hit Feral 4, but can be done at will (at which point you increase your Feral to 4). Roll +Daring. On a 10+ you choose two options from the below list, on a 7-9 you choose one. + You are in harmony with your beast and may clear a Condition. + Little escapes your notice and you gain leverage or an opportunity with a monster. + Pain is nothing to you, and you ignore the next time you would Stagger while transformed. + You can move in ways no ordinary person would. Revert to normal when Feral drops below 4. You can mark a Condition rather than reduce Feral while Transformed. This is a nice and flavorful move that makes you super durable since you can self-clear a Condition and avoid Staggering. Self-clearing is quite rare and would be worth a move on its own. It’s also got a lot of fun alternative upside. Do note that it doesn’t impact your actual stats. Big Dyke Energy: When you make it clear to foes that you’re the biggest threat, activate this for the rest of the scene. Whenever you roll a 10+ while active, you may choose someone to be impressed or intrigued by you. Once during the scene, when you gain a String on someone, gain an additional String on someone else who considers you an enemy. Pretty fun, free Strings on enemies is nice and lots of fun roleplaying implications. Getting attention to yourself is pretty solid, since you can relatively easily get rid of Conditions. Also the name is great. Ferocious: When you Fight, you may mark a Condition to choose an additional option. This works even if you rolled a 6-. Very powerful in principle, this can for example let you pick the whole set of options on a 10+. It’s double-edged of course and can potentially leave you Defeated very quickly if you don’t have Support. It pointedly does not let you inflict two Conditions, we’ll see in a later playbook that it would specify if this was the case. Shameless: When you say aloud what you want from an NPC, you may give them a String on you to ask a question about them from the Figure Out a Person move. This is again super fun and flavorful, and pretty nice. NPCs having Strings on you is pretty normal in this and not a huge deal compared to the information this can give you. Tenacious Purpose: When you commit yourself to a goal, you may ask the GM once per scene how you could advance it in a way that violates civilized norms. Take +1 forward to act on that answer. If you refrain, you reduce your Feral by 1 and must mark a Condition. Very powerful but risky, taking one forward is pretty strong but you’re definitely putting yourself at some risk. This Move would super not work in any game with weaker safety tools, there’s way too much room for GM abuse here. Tracker: When you investigate someone’s living space, camp, trail, or an object important to them, roll +Heart instead of +Wit to Figure Them Out (even if they’re not present). You can ask the question “Where did they go?” as an additional option. On a 7-9 they take a String on you instead of asking a question back. Say why. Love this one, it’s a very nice and niche Move that fits well with the Beast’s, well, Beastlyness. Figure Them Out is a really important Move in practical terms, because it’s one of your primary ways to deal with enemies that you’re not wanting to Fight. In addition, the following applies to the Beast: Smitten Kitten: When you become Smitten with someone, say why, give them a String, and answer this question: What have you done that you are sure they view as inappropriate? The Bloody Truth: When you Figure Out a Person in physical conflict, you may additionally ask one of these questions (even on a 6-): + What awakens the beast inside you? + How could I get you to kiss me? We close each section with a discussion of what the playbook is about. The Beast is meant to celebrate those who are treated as less than human by society because they don’t fall within the confines of acceptability, and the conflict is the pressure to assimilate and abandon your truth. You’ll want to make sure you’re working with the GM when establishing the setting at the start of the game to square your visions of the society you don’t fit in with. The Chosen: The Chosen has special status, but crushing expectations to match it. Their conflict is that between their inner truth and the destiny society expects from them. The Chosen always has +1 Grace, and then either has +1 Heart and +1 Daring or +1 Wit and -1 Spirit. You’re always elegant but not necessarily that strong or able to stand up to toxic authority. Your special mechanic is your Destiny. You keep getting told you have one, but it’s not what you really want. They give some examples, like marrying a lovely prince, being sacrificed, etc. You choose two Heroic Aspects and two Tragic Aspects from a pair of lists. For example, you might have many Prominent Suitors and be the Helper of the Masses, but you Lose Those You Love and have a Bitter Rival. When you act in accordance with one of these Aspects, you check it off and take +1 forward. If it was a Tragic Aspect you also mark XP. When all four have been checked off you describe how your Destiny draws ever closer and then erase the marks and start anew. It’s possible you’ll either fulfill or fully reject your destiny in-play, which deserves a suitably climactic scene and potentially the wrath of those who want your destiny fulfilled if you reject it. Afterwards you either choose a new Destiny, adopt a new playbook, or live happily ever after. Moves: Start with The Fated Day Approaches and two others. The Fated Day Approaches: Whenever you miss an opportunity to make progress towards your destiny, choose 1: +Someone with power over you makes an uncomfortable demand in furtherance of your Detiny, backed by a threat +The PC you care about the most receives bad news or has an accident serious enough to make them Stagger The GM will detail it, inspired by your destiny, and it might take some time for the actual consequences to fire. This is pretty interesting because it’s entirely ‘negative’ in a gameplay sense, but a positive in storytelling. Bad poo poo is going to constantly be happening around you if you try to thwart your destiny, which you likely are going to try to do at times because that’s the core conflict of your playbook. Importantly, often that bad poo poo is going to fall not on you but on your comrades. Extremely the Good poo poo. Don’t You Know Who I Am? When you meet someone who knows you by reputation (which is your decision), roll +Heart. On a 10+, say two things they’ve heard about you. On a 7-9, you say one and the GM says one. This is one of those things that is incredibly powerful if you think about ways to use it, it gives you lots of room for anyone you run into to have reason to help you by default and just in general for getting your group out of some of the jams that you’ll be getting them into as The Fated Day Approaches. Entourage: You have a group of attendants. Name three of them who accompany you and choose one of the following traits: Dangerous, Fanatical, Resourceful, Charming. Then choose a basic move. The entourage grants you a +1 to rolls for this move if they’re present. If you’d Stagger, you’re allowed to choose one of your named Entourage to die instead. If you do, your Entourage gains a String on you. The Thirsty Sword Lesbians equivalent of having a Gang, this is pretty fun and quite strong. The bonus is good and the ability to avoid Staggering is strong but at massive drama cost. It also fits super well with The Fated Day Approaches, with the Chosen either sacrificing themselves or harming those around them. Gossip: When you seek insight about a person by spending some time gossiping with those who know them, roll +Wit. On a 10+, you learn a dangerous secret and gain a String on the target. You also get to ask one question from the Figure Out a Person move. On a 7-9, you just as one question. If you’re speaking to someone who is dangerous to you, they also get to ask one question back. This is another very interesting one, because the last bit suggests for example being in a situation where you’re among enemies who aren’t able to directly harm you because of your status. Indirect information gathering is great in this, especially since it lets you set the stage for future events in interesting ways. Guidance From Above: When you petition a superior for guidance, they give you instructions and useful information. Mark XP or clear a Condition if you do as commanded. They gain a String on you if you do otherwise. This is sort of its own special Call Upon a Toxic Power to me. There’s a lot of carrot to acting on the guidance but it’s fair to assume the advice is going to be a bit more focused on your destiny than what you really want. Help Me~~!: You’re a magnet for trouble and hunted by nefarious forces. Others mark XP when they Defy Disaster that would otherwise befall you. In addition, whenever you’re captured, your captor reveals something they hope to achieve; gain a String on them and mark XP. Continuing on the trend of causing trouble for your companions, this actually gives them some mechanical benefit for the drama you’re causing. The second half is funny as hell too, essentially enforced Bond villain monologues if you’re captured (and let’s be real if you take this Move you’re saying you expect to get captured by the enemy on a regular basis). Know Your Place!: When someone dares insult you and you deliver a scathing retort, roll +Wit. On a 10+, word spreads of your sharp wit and you take +1 forward. Then on any success they choose one: +Back down +Make a fool of themselves +Attack you With this move your verbal sparring is pretty potent, any of those choices is pretty much a win in a social situation in some regard. And there’s a decent chance you’re going to generate a reason for one of your friends to Defy Disaster for you when the Space Pope tries to throw down on you or something. You also get the following: Love Is Not My Destiny: When you become Smitten with someone, say why, give them a String, then answer this question: How do our respective stations make it impossible to be together? Inescapable Conclusions: When you Figure Out a Person during a physical conflict, your bonus question list is: +What do you hope for your future? +What do you fear is your destiny? People constantly want things from the Chosen, and rarely care what they want for themselves. You’re a powerful and influential character in the world and as a player often have quite a bit of say in worldbuilding as you lay out who all is invested in your Destiny, though obviously the GM has final say. Next time two more playbooks: The Devoted and The Infamous
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Apr 14, 2021 02:19
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Gatto Grigio posted:I’m not sure how different Supers & Sorcery is from stock 5e D&D?
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Apr 14, 2021 02:40
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Feinne posted:Your special mechanic is that you are Feral. You have a Feral stat that varies from 0-4 and starts at 1. If it should ever hit 4, you Transform. If it drops to 0, you lose access to your Beast playbook moves until it’s at least 1. Increase Feral when you express yourself in a shocking way through your appearance or display intense emotion society would rather you concealed. Decrease it when you feel you’ve hurt someone with your bestial nature, or you go along with an uncomfortable interaction to fit in. This seems straight-up backwards to me. The point of the playbook is the struggle between expressing your feral nature vs. surviving in society, but choking back your anger and playing nice... makes you less likely to lash out? Not to mention that Transforming is a buff, which means the player is going to want to do it a lot, and if you want to Transform, you... just do whatever you feel like, gently caress "struggling with my feral nature." Conversely, if you're in a social situation where you shouldn't Transform, you... sit down and have tea like a good dog. Zero tension. Just look at how much more teeth this mechanic has if you flip it around: acting out lowers Feral, playing nice raises it. If your Feral stat hits the max, then you immediately roll +stat or Transform, and as long as it stays at 4 you roll every time something angers you. Society says you have to bow down before the arrogant king - do you do it, and risk losing control completely and going ape? Or do you spit in his face and smile as they haul you off to the dungeon? And now, if you want to Transform, you're encouraged to play into the theme of the playbook by suppressing your anger until it breaks forth, while if you need to resist Transforming you have to act out in smaller ways that cause trouble. megane fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 05:01
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The Beast gets their power from being true to their nature and not giving a gently caress about society. When they deny themselves to fit in, they become weaker. Their starting conflict is that they feel who they are means their friends and lovers don't accept them, and they have to learn to stop feeling that way, or change who they are.
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Apr 14, 2021 05:25
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megane posted:
The conflict here is that being a catgirl who tells the king to gently caress off rules and biting your tongue to go with convention might be useful but also loving sucks. The transformation isn't something to be resisted, it's your true and authentic self, the conflict comes from the external world punishing you for expressing it. Saguaro PI fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 06:28
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 This is the last part of the Wizard's basement. Last time our party had cleared up to room 15 (though they couldn't get into 13 and 14, and haven't gone back after finding the keys)  Join us now for Karvoquian's basement continued... The characters have to walk single file down the corridor out of the decoy coal hole, which they do and then get annoyed when it ends in a dead end. Reasoning that the secret door wouldn't have been hidden and trapped if it didn't lead somewhere important they start searching. They have to find one of the doors or the adventure ends; the question is how long does it take them; in the case of my test game, 20 minutes before Adventurine found the easternmost secret door. The party head up in single file again, with Magda in the lead, followed by Adventurine. Hearing nothing from the door, the party enters Room 16 - Zombie Guards There's one zombie in front of each of the two doors, and another two in the middle of the room. The Zombies are surprised. Magda is the only person in a position to attack, and does so, downing the zombie in front of her. Everyone else shoves past into the room and into position to attack next round. Magda moves to attack the centre zombies next round, Adventurine almost, but not quite manages to take out one of the centre zombies, Alex and Mikhail take down the one at the other door, preventing it from going around and attacking the party from behind, and Colin fails to turn anything. The two remaining zombies fail to hit Magda or Adventurine. Next round the remaining zombies are quickly felled, and the party exit the room into the corridors beyond. Room 17 - Meditation Chamber The door is locked, but the party have the keys from the Kitchen This small chamber is decorated in azure and sky blue, and has chairs, footstools, and a large brass bowl on the east wall. The carpets here are thick and quite luxurious; the whole room smells slightly spicy and sweet. This room is harmless! If the characters check the incense burner they'll find a small box containing 6 blocks of incense, worth 25gp each. Room 18 - Connecting chamber Nothing of value here, just some old slippers and two valueless grey robes on pegs. Mikhail notices some long dried stains on the floor, they don't appear to be blood. Room 19 - Laboratory Both doors into the lab are locked, again, a problem easily solved by the keys. Glassware, brass and bronze vessels, and similar things clutter this room. There are flickering flames from several iron burners, and the atmosphere is heavy and warm. There are many tables and cupboards, and the glint of strange and rare substances—sulphur, mercury, gems, and crystals. But there is also a guardian in the room, and it immediately attacks you! The guardian is a Crystal Living Statue, basically budget golem. Importantly it can be harmed by normal weapons. The party aren't surprised. In round 1 the melee crew wait for it to come to them, whilst the missile guys fail to do anything useful. Magda and Alex take it out between them before it can attack. It had a Thac0 of 17, a relatively low AC of 4, and two attacks doing 1d6 each. The party can loot the room of alchemical gubbins, and Mikhail and Alex start to do so. When looting the room there's a 1 in 6 chance per turn of searching that you manage to do something stupid and set of an alchemical reaction that'll do damage to one of the searching characters. On the second turn, Alex manages to get himself dowsed in something burny and takes 3 points of damage. The others tell them to stop being stupid and leave it for later. We also check for a random encounter, but nothing happens. Heading back to the corridors and going south the party prepare to enter Room 20 - Monster Pens Hope no-one was fond of their equipment, because the only surviving monster is one of these little blighters.  Yes, the rust monster. A gently caress You and the Armour you walked in with monster. Good thing there's a storage room full of replacement non-magical gear earlier in the dungeon. The module states that the characters can distract it for 1 round with at least 6 iron spikes, and that if they're smart and make a trail to lure it into another room and lock it in, they should get full XP for defeating it. The other monsters that were in here died of starvation. You'd think Karvoquian might have put some zombies on zookeeping duties, but apparently not. The party open the door, spot the rust monster and slam the door in its face before it can get to them. They soon realise that they have to go past it as there's nowhere else to explore in the dungeon. As this is a starter module there's a reasonable chance that the players won't know what a Rust Monster is, or why it's so bad. I'd maybe have had some notes about the monsters he was studying in the study or the laboratory to give the characters a fair warning. As it is, we default to intelligence rolls and Alex has heard of these things and knows what they can do. At 5 HD it's too powerful for Sleep to take it down, so the party will have to actively deal with it. They've got 12 iron spikes between them, and the Rust monster is faster than all of them. It's just enough spikes to lay a trail to room 17, which would allow the lurer to get back out through the lab. Their other option is to use rope to open the door from a distance and hope they take it out with missile fire before it closes in on them. They decide to try the trapping option first - the metal armoured folks go hide in Room 16 so that they're not looking tastier than the spikes, whilst Alex sets the trail, and Mikhail prepares to open the door. I decide that Alex needs a Dex check to sort out his doors before the monster finishes the spikes and goes snuffling around for more metal, which he succeeds at. There is much rejoicing as the Rust Monster is locked into the Meditation Room, the party get 300xp, and head south to Room 21 - Karvoquian's Chamber This is the final encounter of this dungeon, and once again, the module is nice enough to warn you that there may be trouble ahead by having a bit of warning text to be read out as the group approaches the door. A thick, heavy oak door bars your way, but even through the thickness of the wood you can hear the clang of metal and shouting. There's a fight in progress on the other side of the door. By the time the group find the right key, the fight will be over and the other party will be patching themselves up, giving our group a 50% chance of surprising them. If the PCs go away and come back later, there's only the standard chance of gaining surprise. There's no guidance about what to do if the party go away for longer - e.g. to rest up; the logical thing is that the group are there just for Karvoquian's treasure room, will loot it, and go, meaning that the PCs can't properly complete the adventure, nor get the clue leading to the next part. A way around this might be to move the location of the treasure room so that the NPCs would have to traverse the dungeon in reverse to find it, or to have Kaerin and some of the other NPCs who're now at the manor accost them on the way out. Option one for me would be the more satisfying, and I'd probably move the treasure room to being off the Study back near the start; unless the characters have a level 3 Magic user who knows and has the Knock spell memorised they won't be able to get in until after the encounter in room 21, and they still have to go through the entire dungeon to escape anyway. Anyway, the PCs aren't expecting to find anyone else down here, and decide that kicking in the door is the best way forwards; they do so and surprise the NPCs. This huge chamber must have been luxurious once, for the carpets, furnishings, books, and paintings look of high quality. But this isn't your concern now. There is a pile of shattered iron on the ground and four people in the room. A dwarf in plate mail is inspecting his hand axe, while a tough-looking fighter in chain mail is dragging his blade out of the mass of iron. A dark-haired man with chain mail and a mace is touching the shoulder of a robed, blond man who has a dagger in a scabbard and a bone tube at his belt, from which a scroll has been half-extracted. If the party try to talk first, they lose surprise and take a -1 to their initiative. Fortunately for our party, despite the two melee folks being lawful they decide to prepare for an attack, whilst the missile and magic guys do their thing. Alex fires his crossbow at the mage, almost but not quite killing him, Colin casts Protection from Evil on himself, and Mikhail casts sleep at them, affecting 9 HD worth of enemies, which rather neatly is the total levels of our NPC party. (Dwarf 1, Fighter 2, MU and Cleric 3) as there's no save for sleep these potential rivals drop to the floor snoozing away. They're tied up so that they can explain themselves later. If that hadn't happened, the module gives their basic tactics - the Dwarf will attack an Elf first if possible, the Fighter will go for the toughest looking warrior, whilst the cleric will try to brain a thief or mage. The mage will cast levitate to get out of reach, cast his magic missile, and then use throwing knives. Whilst they have high morale scores, the text does note that they'll surrender and offer their magic items to stay alive if it looks like they're going to be defeated. Talking of magic items, the mage has a Ring of Protection +1, his spell book, and a couple of scrolls of Knock. The Cleric has a Mace +1, and the fighter a Shield +1 The room also has a trapdoor in the ceiling, which leads back to the manor above. Mikhail doesn't have Read Magic memorized, nor does he have a scroll of it. There's a discussion about what to do - they can't just rest with four prisoners. The party eventually decide to go up the trapdoor, hand over the other party, explain that they haven't yet found the tiara, but just need to rest and they'll go back in. They've still got plenty of time, so get to spend the night recovering and having a nice meal. In the morning Mikhail memorized Read Magic and discovers that the scrolls are of the spell knock, which will let them get past the locked door to Room 22, which is both magically and mundanely secured. Room 21 is why the two NPC thieves make no sense - before this adventuring party went in there was a Iron living statue protecting it. The thieves also hadn't used the same entrance that the PCs had because that would mean that the dungeon resets, also I can't imagine those blocks are silent when they slam together, so Kaerin would have known that someone else was down there. Room 22 - Treasure Room You see a small, barren, chamber. Virtually nothing worth mentioning in here, except for two chests standing on the floor by the opposite wall. The door has been secured by Wizard Lock as well as its mundane lock, which is why the knock scrolls are required. One of them could also be used to open one of the chests, but Mikhail wants to keep it for himself to add it to his spell book when he hits level 3. Alex spots that the chests are trapped, and manages to remove the trap from the first chest. The lock however defeats him, as does the gas trap on the second chest, despite it being identical to the first. He also fails his save and is paralysed for the next four hours. "Here we go again" mutters Mikhail as he resigns himself to using the knock spell to open the first chest. The first chest turns out to be full of fun loot - magic items, spellbooks, and plot! Chest #1 contains several magic items—a pair of blue elven boots, a wand of magic detection with 10 charges, a sling + 1, a sword, and three leather-bound books. The sword is magical: it is a long sword + 1, +2 versus spellcasters. Two books are spellbooks! (exclamation mark is the module's) The first contains the spells floating disc, light, continual light and invisibility. The second contains the spells magic missile, protection from evil, knock, and mirror image. The third book is a notebook. Most of the entries are of no importance—jottings about alchemy and astronomy—but the last page is of interest to the PCs. Give the players the handout on page 18  It's quite a nice little haul of items once identified, and the spellbooks are a good starter selection of level two spells for when Mikhail hits level 3. This still leaves the issue about what to do about chest #2; In the end they decide to get Alex hauled up and take a chance with smashing the chest. Adventuring lays into it with her axe. I decide that the chest has 10hp, and after it's been broken open, there's a percent chance equal to the damage done that the contents will have been damaged. Fortunately nothing is damaged. The chest contains the tiara (worth 10k, but the PCs need to hand it over), and enough platinum to give the characters 200pp (aka 1000xp) each. In total the characters get 1748 XP between the monsters and treasure (Monster XP is doubled after the adventure according to the Rules Cyclopedia - actual monster XP was 1042), this brings Praying Colin and Alex up to third level. I really don't know why Clerics have such fast advancement - maybe it was to encourage people to play them? Next the adventure wrap up, an overview of the parts of the wandering monster table that aren't Phase Stingers, and the introduction to second part of the module - Harvest of Death Angrymog fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 07:43
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Saguaro PI posted:The conflict here is that being a catgirl who tells the king to gently caress off rules and biting your tongue to go with convention might be useful but also loving sucks. The transformation isn't something to be resisted, it's your true and authentic self, the conflict comes from the external world punishing you for expressing it. Just compare it with the Chosen right below it. It has actual tension built into it! You have a Destiny that you don't like, and you're rewarded both for going along with it and for fighting it! When you do stuff your character might not like, but which makes up a key part of the story, you get XP! And if you decide to kick over the table and immediately tell Destiny to go gently caress itself, fine, but then you switch playbooks because the tension was the whole point!
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Apr 14, 2021 08:50
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megane posted:I get that that's the intent, but "I get power by doing whatever I want, but NPCs might disapprove" just feels like an uninteresting angle to me. I'm not saying the catgirl should never tell the king to gently caress off, I'm saying that when she refrains because it makes sense for the story, she shouldn't be punished. For the Beast's character arc to have any sort of weight to it, we need to occasionally have scenes where the Beast grits her teeth and plays by society's rules for a while. Otherwise the Beast is just a superhero that NPCs don't like, and who doesn't give the slightest poo poo that they don't like her unless they can force her to, the end, no moral. So we reward the player for making those scenes happen occasionally. If every mechanic tells her to slam the gently caress Society button and hold it down... she'll probably just do it, scene 1, session 1, and never look back? And/or be pissed because she's not allowed to. Rewarding her for letting up on the button by letting her hit it even harder later is good for the story and more fun for everyone. Or you could have her be fully actualised from the start and just continually dunking on monarchs? And it has a moral, being true to yourself is a cool thing to do, right from the off. Sometimes having someone go "maybe it's okay to bite your tongue on occasion" can be an interesting bit of in character tension, but it isn't required.
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Apr 14, 2021 09:32
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Karvoquian, huh? Good thing he was a wizard, not a doctor! 
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Apr 14, 2021 09:34
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Josef bugman posted:Or you could have her be fully actualised from the start and just continually dunking on monarchs? I mean, yes, you can? My point was that starting your character off having gleefully skipped past all that messy character development, achieved perfect self-confidence, and transcended all need to care about society is... not what the playbook claims itself to be. Nor does it strike me as all that interesting. But if it’s what you want, then you’re set.
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Apr 14, 2021 09:51
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megane posted:I mean, yes, you can? My point was that starting your character off having gleefully skipped past all that messy character development, achieved perfect self-confidence, and transcended all need to care about society is... not what the playbook claims itself to be. Nor does it strike me as all that interesting. But if it’s what you want, then you’re set. The alternative where there is mechanical heft to sucking it up for a bit could be interpreted as sending the message "sometimes not being authentic and lying about ones true self in order to get ahead in society can be a good thing" which would be a difficult model to truly justify in a game like this. I take your point, but I can also see how badly it could go.
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Apr 14, 2021 09:54
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JcDent posted:Karvoquian, huh? Good thing he was a wizard, not a doctor! Indeed.
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Apr 14, 2021 10:02
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Tsilkani posted:The Beast gets their power from being true to their nature and not giving a gently caress about society. When they deny themselves to fit in, they become weaker. Their starting conflict is that they feel who they are means their friends and lovers don't accept them, and they have to learn to stop feeling that way, or change who they are.
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Apr 14, 2021 10:25
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Nessus posted:I suspect I don't fully get the fictional exemplars for this class, however it would seem that an interesting choice fork at some point will be what to do when you are no longer shocking. However, this may be something the character would deal with when they are 27 or something, and the game does not seem to focus on such periods in one's life. The one class where Epic Level Play means turning into a TERF
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Apr 14, 2021 10:40
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 Part Twelve: Odd Couple Nessus posted:Gou Zhentan, a lummox-like Scholar who practices Subtle Force as part of his discipline to aid all and cultivate a better and juster world, as well as to set off the terror of being a six foot tall dog in robes. Okay, let's start building these characters. We've already got their Concept, and as starting characters we'll be making them at Rank 4, so we'll start, properly speaking, at Step 3: Archetype. Gou Zhentan is a Scholar, obviously, since Nessus specified that. Looking at his concept, I'm going to say Kongbu Tuzi is probably a Priest, since carrying evil fates sounds like messing around with curses to me. I think he's going to go full Exorcist, so he'll pick "Story of Fortune" (for directly Discovering Priest Conditions) and Crafting Curses (the Manipulation Lore for Curse Conditions). Next up is Skills. Gou Zhentan strikes me as a calm, placid, unprepossessing sort of person, sort of a Columbo type if Columbo was a six-foot-tall dog-man who knew kung fu. With 20 points to spend and each +5 costing 2 points, I think we'll go with Awareness +10, Confidence +10, Hardiness +10, Inspire +5, Learning +5, Wu Wei +10. He's extremely perceptive, unflappable, and tough, but he's only modestly educated for a Scholar--he certainly won't be focusing his Predictions on using the I Ching. With his high Wu Wei Skill he's good at making Predictions about individuals, but not exactly a tactician or an astute political mind. Nevertheless, his Inspire and Wu Wei Skill ratings also give him free access to the basic informational and Extraordinary Techniques Loresheets for the Courtier's and the Priest's Arts, so he has a working knowledge of Passions, Influences, Curses, and Inspirations, even if he can't actually do anything with them mechanically. I'm making a note now to consider spending some of his bonus Destiny on a Wu Wei Specialty in Predictionism and, with that +10 Awareness, maybe picking up the Courtier's Discovery Art as well. Kongbu Tuzi is going to go broader rather than deeper, I think. We'll go Confidence +5, Finesse +5 (Cheating), Inspire +5 (Taunts and Insults) Politics +5, Stealth +5, Survival +5, Wu Wei +10 (Manipulating Curses). Those parentheticals are Specialties, meaning he gets an additional +5 in those Skills when he's acting on those Specialties. He also gets free access to the basic info and Extraordinary Techniques of the Courtier's Arts, in addition to his Priestly Arts. Virtues come next--each starts at 1, and we have 15 points to spend up to a maximum of +5 in any Virtue. Gou Zhentan is obviously going to go all-in on both Benevolence and Righteousness, bringing both up to 5. Honor and Loyalty will go up to 3 and 4 points, respectively, because Gou Zhentan is a Good Dog. Finally, standing up for the little guy means we'll put a point each into Force and Individualism, bringing them both up to 2. Kongbu Tuzi will again go broad vs. deep--he puts 1 point into each Virtue, bringing all 10 up to 2, the bumps Ferocity and Revenge each up by 2 more, for a total of 4. With his last point, he'll bump Ruthlessness. Do not gently caress with Kongbu Tuzi. Each character can also pick up to 2 Weaknesses: For Gou Zhentan, we'll go with Lummox: He's clever, but slow and plodding: any time things get worse for him because he has to sit and think for a long time, he gets extra Destiny. Kongbu Tuzi will hold off for now and maybe pick up some Loresheet-specific weaknesses later. We already know each of these characters' External Kung Fu: Gou Zhentan picks up Subtle Force, while Kongbu Tuzi goes for Storm God's Fury. I think Boundless Prosperity Manual makes sense for Gou Zhentan, and Storm God's Fury pairs nicely with Heaven's Lightning for Kongbu Tuzi, making him a literal storm on the battlefield. And now for finishing touches: Gou Zhentan doesn't take any weapons, preferring to fight Unarmed, while Kongbu Tuzi is going to go for a Paired weapon. These could be knives or sticks or just about anything, but I kind of like the idea that he has a pair of iron-hafted ink-brushes that he uses both to wallop people and to write out his curse talismans. He can even describe his Disrupt and Disorient Marvels as things like flicking ink in people's eyes or Zorro-style drawing characters on them. Neither chooses to upgrade their Armor, so both start with Light. We'll hold off on calculating Chi Pools and Thresholds until we've spent all of our Bonus Destiny in the last step. And now comes the 20 bonus Destiny, plus 15 Entanglement. I'm actually going to spend the Entanglement first, because there are options in several of the Loresheets that can affect Destiny costs. I picture Gou Zhentan as an itinerant wanderer with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back--that, to me, makes him ideally suited to joining the Beggar Fraternity, a sect of kung fu mendicants, panhandlers, and the generally ignored of society. A Beggar's Sect is a very common group in a lot of Wuxia novels, so of course we have one here. As you might expect, being socially invisible and omnipresent, they are a premiere intelligence network, but are also fundamentally devoted to pursuits of justice and righteousness, especially for the downtrodden of Shen Zhou. They have two Divisions: the Dirty Clothes Division who are the actual beggars, street urchins, and so on, and the Plain Clothes Division, who blend in with mainstream, "acceptable" society to further the Fraternity's goals. Even if they appear to live in opulent splendor, though, that's purely to maintain their cover--all their resources are expected to be put towards the Fraternity's goals. It costs 3 Entanglement to unlock the Loresheet, and 3 more in a Status purchase to be an actual member. This gives Zhentan a free Specialty: either Roughing It for Survival or Another Face in the Crowd for Stealth--Roughing It seems more logical to me. It's also free to choose which Division he belongs to, naturally we'll be going for the Dirty Clothes Division. Despite being a penniless beggar, Zhentan never lacks for food in his bowl or a place to lay his head, humble though they may be. We'll spend 3 more Destiny on the ability to, once per session, call on other members of the Fraternity for help. At 3 Destiny this will mostly be information or minor aid--think the Baker Street Irregulars more than a gang of kung fu backup. We also get a free one-time discount to buying either Subtle Force, Divine Pattern Long-Strokes, or Eight Legends as a secondary style, but I don't think that will come up. (RAW, this only applies to buying the basic style itself, but I'd probably let it apply to a single technique purchase as well, for characters who started with one of these styles). We could buy some Beggar Style Kung Fu, but I'd rather use our Entanglement elsewhere: to start, the Mohism Loresheet. Mohism is a philosophy that preaches universal care towards everyone, meritocracy, and the wickedness of offensive warfare, none of which makes them very popular with the elites or the Wulin in general, but seems just right for Zhentan. That costs 3 Entanglement, and I mostly want it to unlock the ability to spend 2 Destiny after winning a fight to, instead of making a Rippling Roll at the end of a fight, automatically give your opponent a Major Inspiration toward benevolence and Universal Care--Gou Zhentan can literally thwack people into being better human beings. I can't really think of anything else I want to spend those last 3 Entanglement on, so we'll save them for use in play. Now, for our 20 general Destiny: I definitely want to spend 5 points on Beggar Style Kung Fu, specifically Lessons in Humility, their combination of Subtle Force and Boundless Prosperity Manual. That's going to require us to buy some specific techniques for those two styles: From Subtle Force, we'll spend 4 Destiny on Correct Approach, which gives Zhentan a +5 Damage bonus when inflicting superficial wounds. From Boundless Prosperity Manual, we buy Act Without Resistance, a level 2 technique that gives +10 Damage--when we use this with Correct Approach, we also ignore the target's armor thanks to Lessons in Humility. Lessons in Humility also lets us use the 1st-level technique of BPM to get +5 to resist or recover from any Marvel, rather than only those that come from pain, injuries, blocked pressure points, etc. We'll also spend 2 Destiny on Disorder-Dissolving Presence, a Subtle Force technique that gives +5 to any roll to Break a Wave. With 7 points left to spend, we'll turn from kung fu to Secret Arts. I said earlier that I wanted to pick up Story of Self, the Courtier's Discovery Lore, which costs 3 Destiny and lets Zhentan discover Passions and Inspirations. From our own Scholar's Arts, we'll pick up the special technique that lets you use Internal-External Technique to take an individual's Passion or Inspiration and extrapolate it into a Prediction about an entire group. That's another 3 Destiny, and with our final point we'll buy that Predictionism specialty for Wu Wei I mentioned a while back. With all that Destiny spent, we can now calculate his Chi values. Zhentan starts with 10 normal Chi--learning Boundless Prosperity Manual gives him 2 Wood Chi (his Deviation is, naturally, that he has a loving dog head). He's only spent 2 Destiny on BPM, though, so while we can mark down 2 Wood Cultivation, he doesn't gain any more. We've spent a grand total of 12 points on non-elemental kung fu and Secret Arts (remember, buying the Courtier's Art does not count for Cultivation, since it's cross-archetype). That's enough for an extra point of Normal Chi, for a total of 11, with 2 Cultivation left over. That makes Zhentan's Chi Threshold 13. Now, onto Kongbu Tuzi. Same deal, Entanglement first, Destiny second. So, my initial inclination would be to not tie Tuzi to a particular Faction, but part of the point of doing the review this way is to show off the factions, so let's give him a mysterious, haunted past and put him in the Hundred Ghost Faction. This is an "unorthodox" faction, meaning they aren't quite as focused on the chivalrous virtues, but also aren't slavering psychopaths. The Hundred Ghost Faction, in particular, are a faction of fallen heroes who become as living specters and wrathful demons to avenge the wrongs of the world--some even say that they literally are revenants and demons! Their leaders are the mysterious White-Haired Ghost King, a cold, merciless specter of vengeance who fights with his own coffin  and Crimson-Haired Demoness, who embodies the "wrathful demon" side of the faction. It costs 3 points to unlock the Loresheet and another 2 (or more) to be a member--I don't see Tuzi being much of a joiner, so we'll keep it at 2. We also get a free Hardiness Specialty in Resist Pain or Inspire Specialty in Fear--I think we'll go with Fear. Honestly, there's not much else I want out of this sheet for now, so we'll move on.As a cynical bastard, I think Legalism fits as a philosophy for Tuzi--the idea that law, rather than individual virtuous people, is the basis of an ordered society, because humans are inherently weak and sinful. It's 3 points to unlock, and we'll spend another 4 on Virtuous Cruelty Technique: the realization that "ruthlessness is honesty and cruelty is power; there is no separation as long as they flow from the same sense of duty." This effectively merges Tuzi's Loyalty and Ruthlessness Virtues into a single Virtue: Virtuous Cruelty, at a value of 5. Once again we'll save our last 3 Entanglement to spend during the game. As for Destiny, I'm going to start with Secret Arts this time, because I think that will eat up most of Tuzi's points. I want Internal-External Technique and both Stealthy and Quick Work, which cost a total of 7. I also want Geomantic Formation, which lets him trap people in an area, and Six-Devil Curse Spell, which lets him spend Chi for a Damage bonus on Secret Art attacks. That's another 8, leaving us only 5 more to spend on kung fu. That's enough to get Howling Gale Force for Storm God's Fury (Area Attacks are automatically selective and if he makes a Secondary Attack his Strike Bonus increases to +15 for both attacks), and a single level 2 Heaven's Lightning technique: I think I like Traveling the Instant Path for a +10 to Speed. Tuzi has spent 2 Destiny on Earth styles, so just like Zhentan he only has 2 Special Chi (in this case Earth) with 2 Cultivation. He has spent 18 points on Secret Arts and normal kung fu--that gives him 11 normal Chi, but with 8 Cultivation he only needs to spend 3 more Destiny to go up to 12. His Chi threshold is also 13. And that's our pair. I really like the vibe they have, with the peaceful advocate for universal benevolence and the (un?)living avatar of bloody retribution traveling together, bickering over the best way to address injustice. But then, I'm a sucker for odd couple fantasy heroes like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Next Time: MORE KUNG FU CHARACTERS!
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Apr 14, 2021 12:25
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Blue Rose 2e The Begun of Deermocracy Something interesting in the history: I've already gone into it in the initial post, but the Sorcerer Kings kinda shot themselves in the foot. They believed only a Sorcerer King threatened another Sorcerer King, so all their contingencies, plans, and armies were designed to fight one another. Moreover, because things had been centuries of chaotic, battling fiefdoms for so long, their armies had only grown more and more power and more difficult to control. Even their great sorcery couldn't keep track of all the demons and horrors they'd created; the Great Rebellion didn't start with some cunning plan of the rebels, but rather with the sorcerous wars getting so out of control that several Kings were killed and plenty of others were ravaged because they lost control of their monsters. Their loyal minions were busy holding back the unloyal ones, and their reserves were directed to keeping an eye on one another. They just weren't ready for a large rebellion. A large rebellion that was much more successful because a ton of their Night People orcs were sick of being treated as slaves and canon fodder and had been created partly to serve as officers! It's not good when your military officers decide they hate you and the rebellion has a shot and thus join the rebellion. Very bad for dictators. Another very important bit: The Deer first showed up during the Great Rebellion, but the Deer couldn't be everywhere. The Deer's protection from sorcery was personal; it had to be there with someone to protect them. The Golden Hart first appeared in the old capital at Aldis, and was critical in liberating modern day Aldis. Notably, the Deer didn't do much for Jarzon in the southeast; they mostly freed themselves, following a prophet of one of the Gods and their new church of Pure Light to victory against the dark lords. In the north, the rich mines and mountains and wastelands of Kern were never liberated. The mountains were too daunting, and too infested with mighty yetis (Seriously, Kern has an iron grip on those mountains). Even the Hart gave up; the rebel armies had tried four times to breach the Icebinder Mountains and fight into Kern, and they'd been thrown back at the passes every time. They weren't losing to sorcery, so the Hart's presence couldn't save them; they were losing to the fact that Jarek the Lich King was a decent commander and he had extremely favorable terrain for defending his country from incursion. The Hart eventually vanished, and with that the rebels stopped trying to invade Kern, taking it as a sign they weren't going to win. To this day, Kern remains the Land Under Shadow. After defeating the Sorcerer Kings (Except the guy hiding behind the mountains) the people of the world rejoiced. And then realized whole portions of the world were blasted to hell with dark magic, 'the dead outnumbered the living', and that centuries of demonic hell-war had been pretty apocalyptic. You'd expect them to found a grand kingdom immediately and rejoice, but there was a full century of rebuilding before modern Aldis was officially founded. The Kingdom of Aldis was founded for the same reason Aldis had been the capital. It was a great city surrounded by the Rose River system, a huge inland lake, and a bunch of fertile lowlands. More importantly, as the capital had been destroyed early in the wars and mostly abandoned, the fighting had been less intense in this region; it wasn't tainted by dark magic and the land was still rich and fertile, able to serve as a breadbasket for the refugees and other communities of traumatized survivors and former rebels. This quickly made it a major hub and center of power; they had food and fresh water, and the Aldin valley was welcoming to refugees and had the capacity to defend itself from bandits and deserters and left behind devils. A woman named Seltha, a prophetess and leader among the people of the Aldin valleys, reached out to the magic forest animals who had come to settle in the region and promised them full citizenship if they would help take this collection of refugees and communities as their home; she wanted to build a real state. Not only did she succeed, but in thanks, the Rhydan prayed and called to the Golden Hart, and Seltha was chosen as the first Queen of Aldis. They gave her their great treasure, the Blue Rose Scepter, which could determine if a soul served the Light or not. By which I mean if someone would see their obligations to others as duty and generally behave in a compassionate and prosocial manner; what 'Light' means is actually pretty well defined in Blue Rose! It means being open-minded, compassionate, empathic, dutiful, and just. The problem: The scepter only works on any person once and only tells you if they're good in that moment. An important caveat for allowing for human agency and conflict (and one I find pretty clever!). One thing I think it's important to note: When the Hart chose Seltha, it was formalizing an arrangement that already existed. The first Sovereign was already a leader among the people of the Aldin Valley. She was already well-respected, known as a powerful adept and a just woman who had done good work helping to organize the survivor communities. She and her people were already rebuilding the old capital, restoring the old libraries and records and welcoming refugees and building new towns. This is a critical part of Deermocracy: Yes, the Golden Hart descended and blessed Lady Seltha and created her as Queen Seltha, First Sovereign of Aldis, but people were already following her because her leadership was getting them relative material security, she was agreed upon as a decent and just woman, and she'd done a lot of groundwork in gaining the respect of other communities. The holy magic Deer provided legitimacy and confirmation, but people followed Seltha because they wanted to. Nothing forces people to agree with the Deer. Seltha was also the one who set down the idea that nobility would not be hereditary in this new Kingdom. Nor would it be based on personal power; while Aldis has a bad habit of looking back on the Old Kingdom as a golden age since they wish they had magic airships (I get it, really) their first Sovereign understood the whole 'Council of the Wise' thing had set everything on fire. She declared no-one would become a Noble without passing the test of the scepter. That ethics would be one of the critical components of becoming a high official in the New Kingdom of Aldis. Within a decade, people called her realm just that. She also declared that diversity was a strength and that acceptance would be a critical part of the New Kingdom, and we see this in one of her best generals, Revak the Nightwalker, the first Night Person to pass the test of the Scepter in those early days. He was a former commander for the dark lord of Kern who had turned on his masters and joined this Aldin kingdom. A skilled commander, he helped to mediate between the defecting Night People and the people of the Kingdom, helping people overcome their suspicion of defecting creations of the dark lords. He also led the armies of Aldis (such as they were, they weren't exactly huge back then. Or today. Aldis isn't especially militaristic) against Kernish incursions and eventually being captured by his former master. The Lich King had Revak tortured, and eventually sent out emissaries to declare the Aldin general had recanted his allegiance and turned on the Kingdom, giving Kern everything it wanted before he was executed. No, you can't see the body! We uh, annihilated him. With magic. Ignore the fact that a cloaked night-person is running around the capital of Kern, Sarn, killing slavemasters! And pay no mind to the fact that eight of Jarek's most prized torturers were assassinated, almost as if some pissed off hero-orc was getting revenge. Definitely went exactly as Jarek said! To this day, rebel Night People in Kern will sometimes take on the role of Revak and dress in the style he did after his escape. They say sometimes, the cloaked figure that saves you in a back alley in Kern isn't a rebel pretending to be Revak at all, but the spirit of the man, still fighting until the day Kern is liberated. I mostly wanted to tell that side story because hey, he was important to the acceptance of Night People as full citizens, and the side stories about specific characters are often where some of the more interesting writing lives. And a shadowy orc ghost showing up as a masked vigilante to save your PCs on a secret mission in Kern because he won't rest until his people are no longer enslaved is real good, I like that. I like the Night People a lot. Not just because my name is Night, either. I also like the touch that it took a long time to rebuild from centuries of hellwar. It's a neat little touch and helps make Aldis's prosperity feel earned. They had to go through a long period of rebuilding, and sure, they were aided by being in a great location, but they still made plenty of good choices to get to where they are. Letting the Night People in as friends, befriending the cute magic animals, drawing in new people so they could get the population up by accepting refugees and trying to help people fleeing the devastation, these are all good. And again, it's critical that the beginning of Deermocracy happened because the Deer picked someone people were already willing to follow. They set about incorporating other small fiefdoms and kingdoms, negotiating to bring them under the new Kingdom and fighting brigands and warlords for the next fifty years and for several Sovereigns, with the Deer picking each new King or Queen. People accepted the Deer's choices because it hadn't steered them wrong yet. The people it picked were usually just and decent, and reasonably capable. The Deermocracy functions because people are willing to accept it as legitimate, and they're willing to accept it as legitimate both due to tradition and because it's behaved in a way that makes it legitimate. People in Aldis felt they could trust their government and generally felt it was responsive to their needs and capable of providing security, both material and physical. Things were going pretty good for Aldis. And then Kern invaded. But that only ended up helping, in a way. Yes, it was a huge crisis, but this is the bit where the Aldins managed to slip behind enemy lines and free the hostages Jarek was using to ensure his generals and soldiers wouldn't think of defecting, causing many to defect. This helped give Aldis the core of a real military and spurred building more fortifications along the border, cognizant that Kern might try again and might not get fools-mated as easily next time. Jarek wasn't stupid, he learned from mistakes. It also proved the government could defend the country, which was certainly welcomed by the people. The next challenge was running into Jarzon in the Southeast, across a giant hell-marsh created by a Sorcerer King who lowered and sunk his lands to ruin them because he was losing. Jerk. Jarzon hated magic, blaming uncontrolled study of magic and wizard bullshit for the Old Empire. They were also deeply heteronormative, worshiping the Hearth-God (who was himself patron of opposite sex pairings and monogamy, but in Aldis that's more 'hey this is a way some people choose to be and are happy with' rather than being held up as an ideal itself) and generally patriarchal, believing that magic could only safely be wielded by male priests. Aldis didn't like this! And they thought Aldis was a fallen land on its way to Sorcery. War was prevented by the marsh being an utter bastard to move an army through, giving diplomats time to prevent a full-scale deployment, but Jarzon and Aldis were going to be unhappy neighbors for the rest of history. No, the real disaster was yet to come. The real disaster was King Valin, the first bad choice by the Deer... Next Time: Surviving A Crisis of Legitimacy, Cervid Style
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Apr 14, 2021 14:54
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Night10194 posted:Blue Rose 2e More settings with a Dark Lord and accompanying army of monsters would benefit from having an Antifa Orc Batman running around somewhere behind the scenes
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Apr 14, 2021 15:08
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And Orctifa would probably have fewer weird fans upset by shorts or something.
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Apr 14, 2021 15:21
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Asterite34 posted:More settings with a Dark Lord and accompanying army of monsters would benefit from having an Antifa Orc Batman running around somewhere behind the scenes Something I dearly appreciate is you don't see anything on 'the Night Person defied his brutal nature to serve Aldis!' or whatever. Their nature is being people. The Sorcerer Kings hosed up and made them people, and now they get to choose what they do. Some fight for evil, some fight for themselves, some don't fight at all; the species picture for them is an orcish couple in nice clothes having the new dad hold his baby for the first time. I think it's why, while I'm not usually a huge fan of Random Fantasy Names, calling them Night People works for me. It emphasizes they're just people. People made to be supersoldiers by shithead dark lords, but still people.
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Apr 14, 2021 15:25
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It's a cute set up. I like a lot of Blue Rose thus far. But part of me wants to add in more bits and pieces inside it. Which, tbf, is also interesting!
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Apr 14, 2021 15:34
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the only problem with calling it a deerocracy is that I keep mentally swapping 'deer' with 'cheer'
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Apr 14, 2021 15:39
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Black Atlantic, Chapter 3 Here we are folks. The beginning of the chapter is mostly upkeep stuff and the like. We’re told that players should have first played through In Thy Blood and The Killing Game, so they can better grasp the secrets within this adventure (lol). We’re also told that the PCs need both the Disc and the Star in their possession, so I hope your Scrapper didn’t sell either of those for a bitchin’ assault rifle and some good armour when they thought it was just a fancy gold plate. I’m starting to think that all of the railroading accusations are starting to get to them ya’ll. ”SIXMOREVODKA” posted:As a game master, you have to decide which direction to steer the players making sure the campaign unfolds in a way that does not seem contrived. The scenario outlined here serves solely as a guide and its development should be adapted to the players at your table. We offer you a framework of essential scenes, but it is up to you to decide how to use them and what significance they carry. Customize the campaign to the motivations and predilections of your players. Skip or change the parts you cannot use and insert them elsewhere at your whim. Stay flexible and mind your players’ actions so you are able to give priority to specific scenes in order to make the story more dynamic. On the one hand, duh. You’re goona have to modify pre-written poo poo to fit with your players. However on the other hand, the line about this being simply a guide is a bold-faced lie. This is an account of the canonical state of the world. In all future works, Toulon is a smoking crater (likely being gradually rebuilt, but still), Decoy 5 continues to survive, etc. This is not the way things could happen, it is the way things DID happen, with many plot threads depending on the PCs to act as the adventure says they did. I can go off rails at any time, but any changes that I do make can have reverberating effects that result in future books being of less and less use. Anyways, our main plot is Mission Concorde, the Spitalian effort to find and secure the Starfire for study. Right alongside that in importance is the blooming of the sixth Chakra and the rise of the Leviathanics. Helios and his mission, as well as the conflicts of Aries and Argyre, play second fiddle to these main plots or so we’re told. Cult-wise basically everyone can find a reason to be here, aside from the Jehmmadans. The book all but admits you better be in deep cover or you sir, are hosed. In fact, at the end of this Adventure you’re basically KOS for your Cult and further advancement is probably not ever going to happen. Enjoy! As always, we’ll start chapter 3 with the list of rumors placed at the end of chapter 1. Roll Int+Legends before the game begins, characters from Briton get +1D. Spitalians, Chroniclers, Anabaptists, Clanners, and Palers can add either Secrets or Network to their roll.  We’ll assume that the PCs came here to loot Factor’s cache, since the chance of getting rich is a far better hook than any of the others that they provide. (One is you heard about the secret oil rigs and wanted to come check them out, for some reason.) Our characters have just finished clearing out their find, and have returned to Brest to let's say book passage back south to trade all of their cool poo poo for Drafts. It's the first week of October, the day before the Day of Garaness (the big we killed a Pheromancer King festival) and right after a bunch of pilgrims and poo poo have arrived. They’re in the city of Brest (heh) drinking and enjoying the apparently famous caramel sauce. Scene 1 The characters are in the fish market for whatever reason, maybe buying pickled herrings because those are a thing that people eat. Maybe they wash down caramel sauce or something, I dunno. Anyways, they see a woman in rags with long red hair walk out into the middle of the market. She puts on a spooky wooden mask and begins to chant is a voice several octaves lower than her own.  Malinesse is a Ganarid, a former drone of Garaness that has since been severed from the hivemind. She was a mother to his swarms, and hasn’t really gotten over the hurt of being separated from what was essentially pure bliss. She is an idol bearer, and as such is more attuned to the Ether (psionic hive-mind basically) than other drones. She has begun to hear the call of the Leviathanics. The reason she’s out here now is because Doctor Vega of the Spitalians has a theory, that through Garaness’ death she may be attuned to the Starfire, and thus led her and the Red Pack to it.  They’ve stuck her with a transponder and set her loose to find it. Unfortunately for them, Doctor Vega is a poo poo scientist, and that’s not what’s going to happen here. As she puts on her mask and begins to chant, a freshly caught Orca whale begins to ripple, and a fuckin’ undead sea lion bursts out of its stomach!   There’s a few options here, fight it and save the fisherman getting nommed on, take cover, or run. The differences are mostly superficial, the sea lion dies, Malinesse escapes, and as she does so he knocks away Doctor Vega’s injector gun. It breaks, but you can roll to find the bit that shows it’s tracking a transponder in that woman. The fight is not too bad and you do have 3 badass Spitalians back you up, so you might as well fight it. Curiously, it says that one of the Red Pack recognizes the PCs, a Preservist named Vatenguerre. However, that’s only true if you did the small adventure Rising Ravens. The book seems to assume you have, despite it not being a part of the main trilogy. Anyways, the sea lion is dead. Bascule ( leader of the red pack, the dude with the pneumatic arm and iron jaw/teeth) asks Doctor Vega for an analysis, she doesn’t know what the gently caress. They notice one fisherman with a black lump growing on his arm, so they lop it off, wrap it up in some cloth, throw a smoke bomb (literally) and vanish. You find out why seconds later, as the Anabaptist guard shows up. A bunch of foreigners with a dead primer creature right nearby, not a good look. It's like you vs 15 dudes with flamethrowers, so just accept the fact that you’re getting super arrested. However, if you followed the red-haired woman instead of sticking around to watch the Red Pack perform emergency surgery, you get another scene. Basically, you corner her atop a cliff overlooking the sea. If you make a CHA+Conduct (3) roll, you can calm her down a bit. She’ll start rambling about how cool King Garaness was and how humans are poo poo, look what the Spitalians did to her!  They cut off her boobs, yep. You can make some rolls to realize that its weird that a Drone has no chakra, or that it’s really odd that a drone can form complete sentences. After she says her piece some walrus hunters roll up on jet skis, and basically accuse you of assault/attempted rape. It takes a CHA+Expression (3) and a CHA+Conduct 2 roll to calm them down. Malinesse uses the distraction to jump into the sea, you cannot follow her, and the transponder stops working once she goes under. Back to the Walrus hunters, the book assumes that you succeed on the rolls, since the next paragraph is basically them apologizing and offering to buy you a meal back in Brest (heh). No mention of what might happen if your rolls fail. Do they hop back on their jet skis and report the PCs to the church cops? Do they fight you to the death, and if so, what would be the consequences?  That’s another thing that bugs me about these adventures, it’s a minor thing but they love requiring multiple skill rolls to perform one action for some reason. It bugs me that I need five successes on two different skills on something that would a single roll in any other system. Ugh. Once you get back to town, a couple fishermen recognize the PCs from the fish market and you get arrested in much the same way you would have had you stuck around. Scene 2 The PCs are stuck waiting in a lovely shack, until a man with a literal wooden peg leg comes in (his name is Tronte, master of the chapel) and begins questioning the PCs. He’ll ask you questions like “who were those Spitalians” and “why didn’t you arrest them?” The latter of which would get at least 3 smart-rear end answers out of any PC that I’ve ever played.  King Oppolus shows up and gets Tronte to let you go, he’s got his mind on the upcoming ceremony and doesn’t want his people going around and arresting folks and spoiling the celebration. The king loves his adopted son, and all of this is meant to honor him. Thus, he gets a little dumb and naive. Tronte can’t reightly refuse his King, but will tell the PCs where to find him should they have more info on these Spitalians. Scene 3 The characters find themselves at The Tusk, one of Brest’s (heh x 2) better Taverns. Ghilivern, one of the walrus hunters from before, wants to buy you all that drink. Before You can really do that, there’s a bang from the back of the bar. Two large Britoni have a small Scrapper pinned to a table via his arms, while a third Britoni is ready to beat the poo poo out of him.  Parel is one of the premier Salt Wolves. He’s got his own little island and workshop right off the coast of Brest, and has several orphans he’s adopted living there with him that he calls his Mice. He’s also quite the ladies man, which is why he’s in trouble here. His lover tries to defend him from her husband, who calls her a whore and knocks her aside with a fist.  We’re told that if the characters fire a single shot or strike a single deadly blow, the entire tavern instantly turns against them and beats them to a pulp. They are then all executed the next morning in the Blood Pit. Meanwhile, some of Parel’s attackers have drawn knives.  Said sidebar also takes the time to admonish trigger-happy characters. I’m not being funny either, these fuckers are literally trying to kill you with knives if you help Parel (after they toss him out a window), but heaven-fuckin’ forbid you shoot a guy trying to stab you, or it’s TPK time.The guards eventually show up and stop the fight though. If you chose not to get involved, they manage to cut off an ear first, otherwise the result is the same. The guards imply that this kind of poo poo happens to Parel often, and that he has a knack for getting himself into trouble. Parel is pretty grateful that you can to his aid, and invites the PCs back to his island. A roll will tell you that he’s still shook and doesn’t want to make the trip alone. Parel takes you back to his island, which actually has a pretty impressive amount of good scrap. He’ll introduce you to his adopted kids (the Mice), and treat you to a nice dinner. Then this wonderful lady shows up.  Garlene is the one lady Parel cannot seduce, she just wants Parel to shut up and pay her while he keeps bringing her to the island and trying to seduce her. Gotta love them workplace harassment dynamics, eh? Garlene gets in Parel’s face, screaming about how she doesn’t want his friends here, etc. She also looks kinda hosed up, she’s showing symptoms of Malaria and is favouring what looks like a broken arm. Anyone who’s guessed that these two things are related doesn’t win a prize, because it’s obvious as poo poo and will be to the PCs as well. Garlene was working on the Atlas platform, which you can get out of the Mice after Parel fucks off looking for her once she disappears. As such, she’s been infected with the black water. She can’t move her arm because painful lesions have been growing underneath the skin, and she’s already hearing the sixth chakra. She refuses to go to the Spitalians or Anabaptists for understandable, but still selfish reasons. Garlene is one of those people who hides their zombie bites and gets everyone else killed. She came to Parel’s island because it’s the only place she thinks might be safe, and that with Parel’s money and expertise he might be able to help. For some reason she hasn’t just directly asked him for help, and has just expected him to pick up on it??? The only other thing of note that night is a weird EMP which causes a brief power fluctuation. With a good roll the PC’s can determine that whatever caused it was some serious hardware. It’s Helios fyi. Scene 4 This is the Brotherhood scrap auction that gets mentioned off-handedly at some point in the adventure, I can’t be bothered to look for the exact moment. It’s sorta mentioned that you might want to go here because sometime the Chronicles down in Aquitaine miss good stuff, which then gets sold here. Anyways the only thing of note is that a Neolibyian is loudly asking around if any Scrappers have found a golden plate and a black disk. I think SMV tends to underestimate their players a lot, especially when something is pretty sus. There’s a Neolibyain with no Scourger guards who is asking around for the incredibly unique and rare artifacts they acquired after cities came crashing down around them. If that doesn’t set off your alarm bells, nothing will. Helios, sorry, I mean Shamansh of Constantine, won’t really answer your questions if you try to talk to him. He just answers with more questions, and tries to set up a private meeting space later this evening if you admit you have the two items. However, guess what? You’re only allowed to think this is pretty suspect if you’re an African, and even then you have to succeed at a INT+Legends (4) and a PSY+Cunning (3) roll in order to poke holes in his story. You can also roll a INS+Perception (4) check to see that you’re being followed, but even then you still can’t tell that it’s Arnika the Paler. Yasen shows up next in a procession of grim-faced Anabaptists  Who is Yasen you might ask? He’s the grumpy, racist, evil, burn’em all and let God sort’em out type of religious leader. While Vicarent both outranks him and is more popular, Yasen still commands a lot of influence and would be in line to seize power should something happen to Vicarent. A lady next to the characters mumbles something about 6 or 7, when asked she says that’s how many people she figures Yasen will have killed over the holidays. He gathers everyone for a quick speech.  drat near every woman mentioned in these adventures gets called a whore at some point. Luckily, news of Vicarent’s arrival into Brest scatters the crowd as folks go looking for him, leaving this racist piece of poo poo with no crowd to preach to.The last thing to happen in this section is the PCs will get a chance meeting with Vatenguerre, a member of the Red Pack and someone the PCs might have allied with had they run an optional adventure separate from the Trilogy. This narrative assumes that the PCs have, and runs with it, providing no alternatives if they have not. He likes the PCs, so he’ll spill the beans trying to recruit them. They’re here on a super secret mission for the Starfire, nobody really knows they’re even doing this. They don’t know much about the creature, save for the obvious. He’ll admit to experimenting on and using the drone as well. He wants the PCs to find the starfire, and says he’ll find the PCs again when the time comes. Next time, part 3!
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Apr 14, 2021 15:56
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megane posted:I get that that's the intent, but "I get power by doing whatever I want, but NPCs might disapprove" just feels like an uninteresting angle to me. I'm not saying the catgirl should never tell the king to gently caress off, I'm saying that when she refrains because it makes sense for the story, she shouldn't be punished. For the Beast's character arc to have any sort of weight to it, we need to occasionally have scenes where the Beast grits her teeth and plays by society's rules for a while. Otherwise the Beast is just a superhero that NPCs don't like, and who doesn't give the slightest poo poo that they don't like her unless they can force her to, the end, no moral. So we reward the player for making those scenes happen occasionally. If every mechanic tells her to slam the gently caress Society button and hold it down... she'll probably just do it, scene 1, session 1, and never look back? And/or be pissed because she's not allowed to. Rewarding her for letting up on the button by letting her hit it even harder later is good for the story and more fun for everyone. You're reading the source of conflict wrong here. The Beast is about starting in a place where they think that being a Beast means people don't like them and feeling they have to hide themselves, and learning over time that they are awesome just as they are. That's why the Feral weakening triggers are 'you feel that your nature has hurt someone' and 'you go along to fit in', and your Smitten question is 'what have you done that you're sure they think is inappropriate'. Note that it's about the Beast thinking they're undesirable, not actually being undesirable. The Beast is an unsubtle metaphor about the alienation of being a closeted trans or gay or other queer identity, and learning to accept yourself as loveable and desirable for who you are and not what society wants you to be. Having them become more powerful by denying their nature is the exact opposite of what they want. EDIT: The book even says once the Beast has solved their internal dilemma one way or the other, they should think about switching playbooks. This isn't for the person who wants to hold down the gently caress Society button session 1, scene 1, this is for the person who wants to play out the struggle of unlearning what society has told them about themselves. The resistance is all in their head. Tsilkani fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 16:35
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Blue Rose 2e The crime is Shadow, the sentence is death! King Valin was the 6th monarch. This is important, because I'm pretty sure if he'd been the 2nd he'd have ended Aldis. He comes 16 years after the Kernish mess, after the much less eventful and shorter reign of Queen Allia. King Valin had formed a group known as the Sovereign's Finest, the intelligence agency of Aldis, to help him deal with repeated incursions of 'bandits' (probably Kernish troopers) and monsters from the mountains. Looking back to the near-invasion sixteen years ago, he was also one of the most militaristic rulers in Aldin history, forever looking for ways to secure the borders and build the Aldin Guard into a force that could protect the country confidently. He himself was a powerful warrior-Adept and when the attacks continued, he decided to go out and handle this poo poo personally. He found a nightmare Shadowgate that wasn't just active, it was on full blast and pulling through new demons every few minutes. Not only that, it was protected by a well-organized force of devils, not simply marauders and monsters. Despite being there with only a small entourage of PC types, the King decided that letting this wait would only make it worse and personally fought his way through a small army of Darkfiends to blast the gate to ash with his powers. He was hailed as a hero for his incredible bravery. The problem is that using so much power to blow that thing to hell had let a particularly intelligent and subtle Darkfiend get a line into the King's head. And the King was more receptive than you'd think; he was already a militarist and warrior. When it began to whisper to him that he had the tools at his disposal to sweep away and cleanse all evil, he was all too willing to listen. At first he thought it was just his own thoughts, but that's because it was: Valin had always had the seed of tyranny in his heart and the Shadow merely played on that. The whispers helped him to hunt down and destroy the last lawbreakers and bandits responsible for the incident, helping him crush the cultists and secure the border. And so he came to trust them; they must just be his burning sense of justice, right? A king should bring justice. For two years, he did just that, aided by the thing that encouraged him and called him a hero. He slaughtered Shadowspawn and bandits, he crushed crime syndicates, and he encouraged his Nobles to begin to use Psychic techniques for more than simple truth-saying or emotional reading. He encouraged them to reach deep on psychic interrogation without consent, an act of Sorcery, and to execute those who were read as guilty. Valin is very directly why Aldis outlawed the death penalty after his reign. Since the magic could see a person's heart, he began to order his enforcers to psychically test everyone and to imprison or kill the guilty. At this point some people started to think he'd gone insane. Fighting armed outlaws and stuff had been one thing, but this expanded criteria for testing and destruction troubled the Nobles of Aldis and many began to alter his orders or ignore them. The Noble Council didn't want to rebel because they feared that overthrowing the King would destabilize everything; they'd misread the story of how the Old Kingdom became the Empire of Thorns and felt that killing the rightful sovereign might lead to that. That, and they understood the value of the safe, secure succession Aldis had enjoyed. But he was clearly going insane. Since so many of his experiments in 'justice' were happening in the borderlands and carried out by younger Traveling Nobles, the central Nobles started altering the King's orders when delivering them, deleting all the execution and interrogation orders. The King was furious, but also recognized deposing the entire Noble Council would destroy their reticence in trying to overthrow him and cause a civil war immediately, so instead he recruited loyalists to try to discredit them. The one magic cat on the council was suspicious, but the sorcerous fiend that was helping the King was too powerful and managed to hide its presence, laughing at the cat and even beginning to appear in person as a 'loyal advisor'. Annoyed with the feeling that he was being mocked, the Rhy-Cat instructed all cats to oppose the King. Cats know when someone is loving with them. On the Borders, where the 'experiments of justice' were proceeding at the hands of loyalist Nobles and soldiers, other Nobles and troops had begun to oppose them directly. A Noble of Aldis should not stand by while another claiming to be a Noble practices what they see as Sorcery and executes the innocent, after all. The just rebels didn't share the hesitance and decorum of the central Noble Council. Swords were crossed and battles broke out in the borders as heroes stepped in against the King's tyrannical lapdogs. There was no stopping that this was going to turn into civil war, despite the wishes of the central Nobles. As they began to accept the inevitability and Aldis braced for the terrible violence that would see a King deposed, the Deer stepped in. Note it took the Deer a long time to do this; two years of madness, and it only showed up when the die was cast. It kicked Valin in the face and removed its blessing. Then it scampered out of the palace and came back with a young fisherman in tow. He would be king. Valin's 'advisor' happily revealed his true nature to the court, laughing at them, telling them how easily it had fooled them and their vaunted justice, mocking them for their inaction and for how much evil it had managed to carry out before action was taken. Then it vanished. Valin saw the creature and, still reeling from a hoof to the face, realized what he'd done. He wept for his crimes and exiled himself, never seen in court again. The new king was a Sea Person, marking Rikin as one of the only times the book remembers they existed. Rikin the Mediator greatly weakened the office of the Sovereign in order to save it. He gave more force and power to the Noble's Council, to be able to stop future monarchs who were doing as Valin did. He appointed the Guild Council to represent the merchants and tradespeople of Aldis. He purged the state of Valin loyalists and reformed the recently created Sovereign's Finest, adding clearer limits on their use. When people objected to his giving the Guilds and non-nobles more of a voice in government, a general strike struck Aldis and forced the Nobles to back off, mediated by the King. Rikin lost power, but in losing power he probably saved the office of the Sovereign; it was necessary after what happened with Valin. Besides, Valin had shown the actual danger of overly concentrated power and had struck a blow to the psyche of the country and the legitimacy of Deermocracy: He had shown that the Sovereign, like other Nobles, could fall after their choosing. The Deer's choice wasn't infallible and the government still needed to watch them some, even if they could usually be reasonably assured they'd be fine. This is critically important, both because it's interesting (the Kings and Queens being imperfect is a much better story even when you buy them usually being pretty good) but also because it sets the stage for future crises of legitimacy. People now had proof the Sovereign could go wrong, not just on single issues but more generally. Valin had to be deposed, after all. And you also see another wrinkle in Deermocracy here: They were hesitant to remove him because they didn't know if this was the case. Maybe this is all necessary to fight the Shadow, after all! Or maybe removing him will destroy their succession. Who knows? Regardless, they made the right choice in the end, and the Deer confirmed it. It's also important because Valin is one of the best models for how the Shadow acts on people. The Shadow does not rewrite you, itself. The Shadow plays on your Fate; it has entire classes of demons designed to watch mortals and see what they want so badly, or where the fault-lines in their senses of justice or propriety lay. It is a reflection of your darker side, and it gleefully treats you like a person to personalize its attempts to snare you. It doesn't pretend to be above and aloof, it doesn't really pretend to cosmic truth (unless that would tempt you). It creeps in among your own thoughts and amplifies the worst impulses you have. "You are the champion of Justice. Did this spell not say this person was wicked? If we choose the Nobles by the good, why should we not scourge the wicked?" "You are one of the Wise; clearly your work matters more than a few pig-farms and complaining peasants..." "Yes, Anwaren. You created the *foundations of the Earth*, you deserve the praise of every soul in the Dance..." I also think he's an outright shot at 'Detect Evil, Stab' style D&D bullshit and I'm there for that. As someone else said, a lotta folks complaining about the Deer played games where Pelor told them to stab those orcish civilians and didn't bat an eye. The Deer ain't havin' that poo poo. The Deer is down for positive assessments of character used as a qualification for government, not for pre-emptive capital punishment. Note Aldis outlaws the death penalty after this and their justice system shifts more towards mercy and reform after this experience. The Deer is here to tell you to do better, not to tell you to slaughter 'the wicked'. It will straight kick you in the face if you go Judge Dredd, damnit. Next Time: Finishing Up History
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Apr 14, 2021 16:48
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 Part 5: More Archetypes!  Wanderers are defined by what they left behind, either by choice or because they were forced to do so, which is at the base of their choice between the Enigma and the Rage moods. They are aloof figures with a mysterious, difficult past and the skills to show for it.  Their core abilities work on this theme, with Steps Made Heavy defining what exactly is their loss, and Can’t Be Contained letting them always try to escape confinement and, once a session, get themselves somewhere they shouldn’t be able to be, which is as open and purposefully abusable as it sounds. The Wanderer’s advances build on the various skills they've acquired during their journey and their aloofness, letting them act alone or support the party from the sidelines.  They get two mutually exclusive quest Highs, A New Sunrise and The Last Sunset. The first is about finding a place they can once again call home, the other is about utterly destroying something linked to their past so that they can become immortal. Different strokes for different folks.  Wanderers can fulfill a variety of narrative roles, from the disgraced ronin out for revenge on those who disgraced them to Aragorn when he’s still just a ranger with a mysterious past, and a major strenght of the archetype lies in the letting the player choose when it’s time to grab the spotlight and when it’s time to just look cool on the sidelines.  The Heir is someone who would benefit from the presence of the Empire but is fighting it for whatever reason, be it love, political disagreements, or having actually grown a conscience somehow. They get no Styles at character creation, since practical skills are for commoners, and instead gain a third Mood in addition to the mandatory Charm (they’re groomed to rule, after all) and the choice between Desire and Burdens, to differentiate those wanting more from those wanting to give back.  Their core abilities mostly relate to their former status and power, with the addition of Money Fixes Everything letting them turn any stress they suffer to Coin stress.  The advances follow a dual theme of making the Empire’s power structures work against itself and partying hard, sometimes in the same ability. Their Quest High, Breaking the Throne, has them deposing their family and making their former domains a safe harbor for the resistance.  In general, the Heir’s personal ties to the Empire make the archetype feel viscerally connected to the story, with the more foppish and carefree side letting the player choose just how heavily they want to play into that.  The Scholar knows stuff. Lots of it.They’re experts in something esoterical and abstract, and have to find a way to give it a practical application in toppling the Empire. The choice between Cheek and Enigma for their Mood marks the difference between a more whimsical approach and a more secretive, forbidden knowledge vibe.  Mechanically, Scholars being a well of knowledge is handled by letting their player have final say on a number of details about the world, with the importance and scope of said details growing as you go up the upgrade hierarchy, starting from their Core I’ve Heard of This Place, defining a positive and negative detail about every location the party find themselves into. Their Advances that don’t build on this theme instead have them finding creative ways to apply their knowledge, making them into gadgeteer artificers.  The Scholar gets two Quest Highs, with Beyond The Fragile Flesh having them build a suit of power armor and Magnum Opus letting them prove themselves right about their theories, by conducting a final, massive experiment.  Scholars are a walking challenge to the GM, letting the player chase the rush of Being Right while applying off-the-wall problem solving, or trying to, at least. Speaking from experience, being at the table with a creative Scholar was an incredibly fun ride, but I can see them being daunting to more rigidly set GMs. Next time: The last two Archetypes.
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Apr 14, 2021 17:45
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"What does power mean to this person?" is a really good thing to have an accurate read on.
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Apr 14, 2021 17:51
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Nessus posted:I suspect I don't fully get the fictional exemplars for this class, however it would seem that an interesting choice fork at some point will be what to do when you are no longer shocking. However, this may be something the character would deal with when they are 27 or something, and the game does not seem to focus on such periods in one's life. Well remember, you pointedly either switch to a different playbook with a different conflict or retire your character when you've gotten past the conflict of your playbook. megane posted:I get that that's the intent, but "I get power by doing whatever I want, but NPCs might disapprove" just feels like an uninteresting angle to me. I'm not saying the catgirl should never tell the king to gently caress off, I'm saying that when she refrains because it makes sense for the story, she shouldn't be punished. For the Beast's character arc to have any sort of weight to it, we need to occasionally have scenes where the Beast grits her teeth and plays by society's rules for a while. Otherwise the Beast is just a superhero that NPCs don't like, and who doesn't give the slightest poo poo that they don't like her unless they can force her to, the end, no moral. So we reward the player for making those scenes happen occasionally. If every mechanic tells her to slam the gently caress Society button and hold it down... she'll probably just do it, scene 1, session 1, and never look back? And/or be pissed because she's not allowed to. Rewarding her for letting up on the button by letting her hit it even harder later is good for the story and more fun for everyone. The thing about the Beast's conflict and the mechanism to stop her slamming the gently caress Society button at all times is that while she doesn't care about what society thinks she absolutely cares about how her actions impact her friends. The Beast wants to go downtown dressed as a powerful sorceress but is worried if she gets poo poo for it it'll spill over onto her friends.
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Apr 14, 2021 20:30
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Feinne posted:The thing about the Beast's conflict and the mechanism to stop her slamming the gently caress Society button at all times is that while she doesn't care about what society thinks she absolutely cares about how her actions impact her friends. The Beast wants to go downtown dressed as a powerful sorceress but is worried if she gets poo poo for it it'll spill over onto her friends. Yes, again, I understand the intent. I'm saying this is a poor implementation of that intent, because all of the conflict is in the description, not the mechanics. The fluff tells the player "you worry that society won't approve of your bestial nature!" and then zero of the mechanics reflect that; it's entirely rewards for breaking taboo and punishment for not. So if the player is, in fact, on-board with what the description suggests - willing to play out the arc where she slowly learns to open up and be herself, willing to explore both sides of the argument we told her her playbook was about, willing to bite her tongue sometimes because it benefits the other PCs - then the playbook punishes her for being interesting and nuanced and a team player by taking away all her moves and not letting her transform. These things should leave the character feeling frustrated, but the player should feel rewarded.
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Apr 14, 2021 21:13
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megane posted:Yes, again, I understand the intent. I'm saying this is a poor implementation of that intent, because all of the conflict is in the description, not the mechanics. The fluff tells the player "you worry that society won't approve of your bestial nature!" and then zero of the mechanics reflect that; it's entirely rewards for breaking taboo and punishment for not. So if the player is, in fact, on-board with what the description suggests - willing to play out the arc where she slowly learns to open up and be herself, willing to explore both sides of the argument we told her her playbook was about, willing to bite her tongue sometimes because it benefits the other PCs - then the playbook punishes her for being interesting and nuanced and a team player by taking away all her moves and not letting her transform. These things should leave the character feeling frustrated, but the player should feel rewarded. I mean it's very pointed that what makes you special is also what makes you not fit in with society and you pointedly are fitting in with society when you're at 0 Feral. It's not like it's difficult to get back up to 1 if you need to do your stuff. You finally get sick of putting up with whatever bullshit is going on and shout gently caress THIS poo poo on the crowded street, there you go you've expressed your emotions in a way society doesn't approve of and you're ready to go. So I think you're not seeing the ideal way to be using Transform. You don't actually want to stay at 4 Feral, because when you're there you're just Transformed and are unable to get the primary benefit of the move which is clearing a Condition as you do it. What you want to do is hang around at 1-3 (remember that you can just Transform whenever you want when you're in that range) and Transform when you either have a Condition to heal, feel like you might need the Stagger immune or narratively need the movement abilities then let yourself go back down to 3 unless there's an extremely good reason to take that Condition to stay at 4. Feinne fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 21:45
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It's a game by queer authors about queer themes, they are never, ever, ever going to make denying who you are a source of power. Denying yourself to fit in being a punishment is the point. If they're at Feral 0 and they need to transform, they just need to embrace who they are again and display that in front of people and they have everything back. It is not about exploring both sides of the argument. One of the sides of the argument is wrong, and destroys what it means to be yourself. There is no power in conformity beyond not sticking out. The Beast is about the journey to learn that, and when they finally do, and embrace themselves, they have fulfilled their conflict and should switch to another playbook like the rules suggest.  Conforming to society is the Bad End
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Apr 14, 2021 22:02
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Tsilkani posted:It's a game by queer authors about queer themes, they are never, ever, ever going to make denying who you are a source of power. Denying yourself to fit in being a punishment is the point. If they're at Feral 0 and they need to transform, they just need to embrace who they are again and display that in front of people and they have everything back. Thank you absolutely this.
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Apr 14, 2021 22:35
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Age of Sigmar: Lumineth Realm-Lords Yiff Yiff, Motherfucker The Hurakan are the servants of the wind, equally at home in the roaring gale, the destructive tornado or the cooling breeze. Their temples are built where the winds are strong, ringing out with the music of the breezes against stone and metal. They are built into the floating metaliths that litter some of the Mortal Realms, particularly the parts of Hysh around Helon. The wind spirits adore these places, especially when they cluster up and form archipelagos to race through. Those that seek to join the Hurakan make their way to these places by pursuing a trance state called hurathre, in which they are able to slowly levitate. Once these would-be disciples get atop a metalith, they build shrines on it and endure anything the wind throws at them - sandstorms, whirlwinds, anything the spirits decide to test them with. Eventually, a Hurakan shrine will be covered in chimes and drilled through with holes to allow the winds to produce beautiful chords and rings whenever they like. If a wind enjoys the music, it will visit the site more often and begin to form a bond with the aspiring Hurakan disciples that praise it. Once these aelves believe they have made an accord with the wind, they will leap off the metalith. The test to see if they are accepted as Hurakan or not is very simple: if the wind catches them and flies them through the air, they receive a spiritual breakthrough and join the ranks of the Hurakan. If not, they smash into the ground and die. It's a risk, to be sure, but for those that seek to take on some of the supernatural power of the sky itself, it's worth it. The leaders of the Hurakan are the Hurakan Windmages, the strongest and wisest of the Hurakan monks. They have formed a symbiotic tie to their aelementor wind to such a degree that they are seen as family to the air rather than aelves. Many of them are more at home in the sky than on the ground, finding walking to be a strange feeling, much as a normal person finds it strange to crawl like a baby. They are generally borne on a cushion formed by their aelementor wind, which can be seen as a blur of dust and energy around them. Their bond is very strong, and each side benefits from it. The aelf gains a nearly immortal and quite powerful friend that will help them with whatever they do, and the wind aelementor gains a companion to travel with and a chance to explore places it might never have known. The wind spirits are inveterately curious, and by having a spiritual link to a physical being, they ensure they will not lose their minds and discorporate when they leave their home area, keeping them focused and whole essentially as long as their windmage lives. Their link is specifically to the aspargillium wand that the Windmage carries. As long as it spins, the aelementor will retain its strength and sense of purpose. If the artifact ever stops moving, however, the wind loses focus and may well dissipate. It is the magic of the Windmage that keeps it spinning, and so when a Windmage dies, their disciples will do anything they can to recover the sacred wand and bring it home, where it can be powered by the temple's magic. The most famous windmage is Harantio the Galerider, who is a legendary figure in Helon. Many are unsure he truly exists, because he's become a folk hero and few have seen him personally. He and his trickster companion, the wind spirit Parashei, are beloved by Helon's children. They tale stories about how he stole rubies from the gargant Groggo the Shark-Eater and tricked him into falling to his death in his own lair, how he stole a storm of Sigmar and was punished with lightning, but somehow fell and was directed to the sanctum of his true love, Scuala the Myrmai, lost daughter of Prince Motlai, who saved his laugh. Harantio carries a calligraphied fan which he uses to dance in battle, trusting Parashei to deflect arrows sent his way. Every story ends the same way - Harantio wins the day, but is driven to leave by his endless love of adventure, travel and discovery. He never stays in one place, always seeking a new horizon. While many adult aelves doubt he's real, certainly a mysterious windmage that ansqwers to his name has appeared several times to save Lumineth forces on the brink of defeat.  Hurakan Windchargers are the main forces of the Hurakan temple. They are some of the deadliest hunters in Hysh, for the wind carries their arrows to their targets, and so they cannot be evaded. Where the Auralan Sentinels practice massed volley fire, the Windchargers are snipers, firing single arrows at a time and trusting them to kill with one blow - a feat they manage more often than not. The wind spirits guide the arrows they fire to give them supernatural accuracy, allowing them to shoot around obstacles and corners that merely mortal archers could never do, tracing the needle of shield walls, arrow slits and gaps in armor. The arrow accelerates during this process to the speed of a gun's bullet, and it is not rare for a Windcharger shot to tear off the body part it hits. In battle, the Hurakan ride treerunners, a sort of kangaroo-like beast that lives to run and jump with the wind. They are named because they are able to leap and run even in the treetops and branches, and they can naturally judge the movements of the air to make sure they get the most out of their leaps. They can't fly, but those who don't understand them often think their jumps are actually flight as they scale sheer cliffs and towers. Hurakan riders use music to tame the treerunners, working in concert with the wind spirits to produce beautiful melodies that soothe the normally fearful beasts and befriend them. The riders are nearly as graceful as their mounts, and hitting a Windcharger in combat is no easy feat. Their mounts have powerful kicks to keep the enemy at bay, though they aren't particularly vicious fighters, and the Windchargers themselves only carry knives and short blades - more ceremonial than practical, in most cases. Their true weapon is the bow, and many favor it even at point-blank range, as their bow-based martial arts teach them how to fire at foes even with little room to maneuver and without much range to play with.  The Spirits of the Wind, in their natural state, are mercurial beings that race across Hysh at great speed and gain power from the rising sun. The strongest of them are ferocious and untamable things, given names by the aelves to try and predict their often highly destructive movements. Many are violent, cruel existences that have been known to tear apart entire towns or smash buildings apart after lifting them into the sky. They may once have been kind and warm things, friendly and gentle, but since the Age of Chaos they have mostly come to resent mortals. The spirits claim territory for themselves, and their winds blow the same path each year or tear as cyclones along coastlines and seas. Perhaps the most infamous of these is Sevireth, Lord of the Seventh Wind. The seven regal winds of Hysh are the strongest wind spirits in the realm, and they will bow to no one's will, ever. They go where they please and do as they will. Sevireth is the most destructive of them, also called the Scourer, the Red Gale and the Killing Sandstorm. He once ran wild and free across Haixiah's deserts, teaching the mysteries of light and power to those brave pilgrims that sought out the crystal spires of the desert. He even taught the most worthy how to fly. However, when Slaanesh sought to take control of Hysh, the desert pilgrims became infiltrated by Slaaneshi cultists. These cultists trapped Sevireth in hopes of turning him into their slave against their foes. They lured him into a network of volcanic caves, where the Infernal Enrapturess that aided them ensured the movement of wind creating beautiful and perfect music. Once this music enthralled Sevireth, they sealed the cave's exits with boulders so snug that they formed air-tight seals. There, Sevireth remained trapped until the Reinvention, when Teclis personally freed him. He emerged from the cave imbued with the terrible fury of a vengeful king, all joy and playfulness burned from his soul. He sought now only to sear and destroy the tyrants and slavers who attempted to bind a wind of his majesty, and those who are struck by his arrows now have their flesh torn from their bones in whirlwinds of flame. Even the other winds fear Sevireth's anger, and he helps the Lumineth not out of love or pity for them, nor even because they made the mask that lets him take physical form. He does so only because fighting by their side gives him ever more chances to destroy the forces of Chaos. Most wind spirits remain ephemeral and invisible beings, but some have taken on physical form since the Reinvention. The Windmages of the Hurakan create sacred masks for them that can be used as focuses to form physical bodies. When the Spirits of the Wind head to war, they coalesce as tornados, which they then bind to the masks as core for their essence. Their bodies mirror the form of the semi-mythical Horned Fox, a legendary Hyshian creature that is sly, fast and impossible to catch. They then race across the battlefield in a dusty cloud of Hyshian magic, smashing apart the obstacles in their way. Some are tricksters, prone to flipping helmets around or wrapping cloaks around the heads of the prideful, but when they become angry, they use the same skills to choke and kill. Some even draw the very breath of their victims out of their lungs or force air down throats to make those lungs burst. The most forthright just smash people into rocks over and over until they die, though even they prefer to fight at a distance when possible. No Spirit of the Wind remains in one place for very long, as being locked into a single location is a sure way for a wind spirit to go mad. They even avoid contact with the ground whenever possible, flying high above the field and firing spear-length arrows at their foes from massive greatbows. They guide these arrows with their own windy nature, aiming for the eyes, throats and hearts of the enemy. Their speed is amazing, and each one is able to fire several shots in the span a mortal archer could fire only one. They reserve their pinpoint accuracy for enemy leaders, preferring to toss lesser foes around in a show of vicious power. The End! Options: Chaos: Beasts of Chaos, Blades of Khorne, Disciples of Tzeentch, Hedonites of Slaanesh (Mortals Update), Maggotkin of Nurgle, Slaves to Darkness Death: Nighthaunt Destruction: Orruk Warclans Order: Daughters of Khaine, Fyreslayers, Sylvaneth
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Apr 14, 2021 22:46
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Mors Rattus posted:Chaos: Hedonites of Slaanesh (Mortals Update) Lets get the other update out of the way.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:03
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MonsterEnvy posted:Lets get the other update out of the way.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:16
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Maggotkin of Nurgle. We know they're going to be gross, nasty and disgusting, so let's get them out of the way. Then, after we've taken a mental shower to wash all the pus and poo poo off ourselves, we can do the Slaanesh update.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:30
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The poo vs the poon
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Apr 14, 2021 23:49
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Hipster Occultist posted:They’re in the city of Brest (heh) Finally, a person who understands how I feel about the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. E: the only downside to Our Stormy Present is that you can't play WFRP with it as anything other than the Empire is not really worth the name, and I don't want to fight the Empire. The airship can just be a one-off invention of an annoying dwarf
JcDent fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Apr 15, 2021 |
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Apr 15, 2021 05:57
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The Wizard's Basement - wrap up Once the party emerges from the basement for good they are greeted by Kaerin, some armed guards, and a tall, imposing, man in his 60's with greying hair and pale blue eyes. The man is introduced as Baron Sherlane. Kaerin now has two arms, which is handy as the sword the party recovered for him is a two-handed sword. The party will be informed that the prisoners they sent up earlier had been let in by the Butler, who has now vanished, and whilst they still don't know why they broke in, they did kill three of the servants on their way through. It's expected that the party will hand Kaerin or Sherlane the notebook that the handout was in; if not Sherlane will question them about any books they found until they cough up the notebook. The NPCs read the last page, get concerned, and ask the party to stay a bit longer as they ought to know what's going on. Party gets an extra 100xp each for getting the sword and tiara back in time, and are given a chance to rest and so on. In the evening they get a lore dump from Sherlane. "I think I should first explain the importance of this household. Kaerin is the son—adopted, to be sure—of Kavorquian the wizard. That old man was the brother of Lord Arturus Penhaligon, who died some four years ago. It is his daughter, Lady Arteris, who is the ruler of the Estates of Penhaligon and directly responsible to Duke Stefan Karameikos himself. I am, shall we say, an old family friend. The note you brought from Aralic is fairly cryptic, but it makes sense now that we have Kavorquian's notebook." This is referring to the letter that Aralic wanted the characters to deliver here, talking about a self-styled queen in the wilderness who has sworn to bring a harvest of death to the land. He continues, "The queen referred to in the note you brought is known to me. Her name is Ilyana, and she is a fighter of some merit. She is intensely Chaotic, and a vicious and evil person. She is also the illegitimate daughter of the old Lord Arturus. "It is clear that Ilyana is raising a force to attack Penhaligon itself. Although she is illegitimate, only Arteris stands between her and the rightful claim to the rulership of the estates. Kaerin, being adopted, would not have a claim. "If she should take the estates, Duke Stefan might have to accept her claim. If he did, the place would be ruled by chaos and evil. If he did not and took the estates back by force, many other local rulers would say that the duke feels free to overthrow anyone whose rulership he does not care for. Either way, the result would be bad for the land. And the duke has much else to worry about. "Further, I do not think you will be safe here. The killers you overcame must have friends; they had an agent in this very house. You must leave and go to the last place on earth these people would expect you to go—to the keep of this self-styled "queen," Ilyana, to strike a crippling blow at her there. She cannot yet have raised a large force—but it will grow with each passing week. "You can accomplish much if you have the bravery and strength. A larger force would be seen too early; surprise would be lost. A capable, small group could use hit-and-run tactics, striking a blow and retreating, returning and striking again, finally overcoming this evil woman and bringing peace to the land. If you do not, there will be war and you will not be safe wherever you go. The enemy knows you now." Assuming the characters agree with the Baron (he rules the town of Threshold, and you could segue into some of the adventures from the B 1-9 compilation after the successful completion of this one) they have a new mission - raid Ilyana's stronghold and defeat her before her army is at full strength. But before we go on to the exciting castle assault let's do a once over of the Random Encounter table as it didn't come up much during the run through. Entries 1-7 are single Phase Stingers. These basically just exist to slow the party down and possibly force them to miss their deadline for a full payout. 8 - Wood golem; a new monster introduced for this module. A 3' high golem with 2+2 HD. Usual golem immunities, but takes more damage from fire and can be hit by normal weapons. 9 - 2d6 Giant rats. Don't have disease. Nothing much to say about these guys. Only have morale 8, so would probably run quite quickly. 10 - 1d4 Shadows. A nice little gently caress you to the Fighter types. Temporarily drain Strength, only hit by magical weapons, immune to the usual suspects, Surprise the party on a 1-5 (out of 6) and have a Morale of 12, so no running. 11 - Fire Beetles. They're big beetles. They'll probably flee quite easily as they have morale 7. 12. Illusory Monster! A phantom bit of furniture attacks the party. Does no damage and vanishes after 4 rounds. Mainly a table of annoyances, the only real problem here are the shadows. I don't particularly like them because of the immunities, their potential effect, and they don't feel in theme with the rest of the dungeon. Shadows are the sort of monster you should plan to use, or at least foreshadow if they're going to be on a wandering table. To me a wandering monster table should reinforce the theme of a dungeon, and act as a prod to keep the party moving, not to potentially cause a wipe. Another issue with this table is that there's nothing that can be negotiated with, it's all combat encounters. Overall the basement part of the adventure is a competent if not particularly exciting IMO dungeon crawl. The idea of the potentially friendly thief NPCs just doesn't work out - there needed to be more thought put in about how they were there, and their effects on the dungeon itself. As it was I just couldn't see a proper place to put them in. Next, we travel to The Queen's Keep for the second half of the module This last adventure includes a bit of overland travel, and is quite complex - not so much in terms of map layouts, but for the GM to run the fortress as a living rather than static dungeon. There is guidance such as how the inhabitants will fill in for losses, how they react to continued assaults and and how a direct attack on the gate house might work out - who would mobilise, how long before they get there and so on. I think I'd like audience participation for this one as it's very open ended - I'll post a map with observations that could be made after a day of watching, you guys propose a rough plan, and I'll game it out to see what happens, then repeat until the keep is cleared or our party retreat. Angrymog fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Apr 15, 2021 |
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Apr 15, 2021 07:07
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JcDent posted:The airship can just be a one-off invention of an annoying dwarf Thunderbarges.
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Apr 15, 2021 10:04
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Black Atlantic, Part 3 The PCs end up back in L’Arc, which is the district their Inn is located in I guess? There’s a scene with a dog breeder burying some puppies, if you ask how they died he’ll tell you the dogs went nuts around midnight and these ones just died. A combo roll of Int+Artifact Lore (4) and INT+Medicine (3) will tell you some noncommittal stuff how about maybe the emp affected them, the breeders won’t let you examine the dogs though so its a moot point. Then, they hear this man trying to buy a dog.  The breeder wants 10k drafts (a trailblazer is 18k) and clearly doesn’t not like the African, while Soufiane himself is playful and mocking but ultimately realizes he’s not going to get anywhere. He’ll introduce himself to the PCs, and take them for a free lunch at a local tavern. Once the food arrives he’ll make small talk and introduce himself. Soufiane is a Leopard, they’re basically African smugglers and independent traders opposed to the Neolibyians for a variety of reasons. He’s got nothing but bad things to say about’em. At first he’s trying to butter the PCs up, the text does not say so outright but he’s essentially trying to convince them to be his latest Scrapper crew for an expedition to Britain. A lot of the locals don’t want to work with him anymore, mostly because he’s stiffed most of them. If the pcs mention As the characters leave the tavern, they see a disheveled looking chronicler (no mask or hood even!) using some sort of gauge, taking measurements and stuff. As Soufiane is saying his goodbyes, the Chronicler turns towards you and shouts “get away from that door!” Then a bomb goes off in the tavern, and we get this interesting little sidebar.  So, get 7 successes on two different skill rolls, or die/take half damage? Who dies and who takes the damage? That’s a pretty big fuckin’ difference Degenesis!  Then Helio’s pet Paler attacks! Apparently they’ve “located” the artifacts the PCs have on them, and have been tracking them for a while now. Incidentally, there’s a sidebar that informs us that it's a major mistake if they do not keep said artifacts on their person. No, nothing to them has suggested to them in any of these books that this might be necessary over something like hiding them, why do you ask? Since Arnika and Helios can track them, that means this entire plot thread is locked off to them because Helios just steals it from wherever they tried to hide/store it. The fight is meant to go one way. It’s dark and smoke fills the air, visibility for anyone but Arnika is poo poo, all actions are at -6D. The book says that the PCs have to grab the Chronicler and escape through a busted door, said door will take them through another building and thus they’re able to escape the Paler somehow??? There’s another, better way this can go down though. Bob the Hellvetic is going to kill this crucial npc that has ambushed them in two shots, because Degenesis does not understand how easy it is to master their system. So, for this exercise we’re going to assume that our PCs took the sweet tech-lenses off of the sniper Hexell in The Killing Game. Not only do they helpfully amplify your targets via thermal vision, but they filter out all environmental factors like smoke. We’ll assume they went to our Hellvetic, who is rightly pissed at these very recent events. A bomb has just nearly killed his friends, and some Albino motherfucker is lighting them up with a Bygone submachine. It’s time to bring out the big guns. No -6D penalty for him! Bob the Hellvetic had his scrapper buddy modded one of his Trailblazer’s 3 barrels to fire the strongest rifle ammo in the game, 14mm. This stuff is designed to be fired from anti-material rifles and heavy machine guns. We’ll say they looted a box of this from Factor’s cache. Bob has a max dicepool of 12 with his AGI+Projectiles roll. It could be potentially pushed higher, but we’ll leave it at this for now. He also has 3 ranks of the Luminary potential, a must for any combat character. He’ll also be Salvo-ing 3 times for +3D and +3 damage, any extra dice over twelve are converted to auto-successes but not triggers, which actually kind of sucks for Bob. Anyways, Bob rolls 3,4,1,1,4,5,3,5,1,6,6,1. 14mm has a base damage of 15, +3 for Salvo (3), +3 for Luminary triggers, and Bob has rolled two additional triggers for a total of 23 damage. Ouch. Even though Arnika’s passive defense of 5 (that includes his full cover) has already been overcome, the GM decides that Arnika isn’t going to bother with actively defending. Arnika needs nine 9 successes to even dodge Bob’s attack, and that’s impossible with his 8D active defense pool. Arnika does have pretty good armour, an RG Composite Armor suit that’s bulletproof (9) so Bob subtracts nine damage, and still does 14 damage. That’s literally all of his flesh wounds, he’s down to 8 trauma now. However, he’s still got another attack coming his way. Smooth running kicks in, but even with the -2D penalty our Hellvetic is so busted he’s still got a max dicepool, and fires again. 3,2,5,5,3,1,3,1,4,6,1,4. 5+1 successes and one additional trigger for 22 damage. Arnika could beat this with active defense, so he rolls and gets a 3,2,2,6,6,5,4,3. Pretty dang good, but not enough. He crumples under the hail of Bygone bullets. To be fair, in this example Bob is minmaxed to shoot things real good, and is using rare ammo. If he stuck to his Hellvetic ammo, the best he could use would be hollow points, which do 1 less damage heh. If he had to use his standard ammo, subtract 4 damage per shot, Arnika still dies in two hits. You could even push these numbers higher with buffing potentials from other party members, more weapon mods, and so on. The game doesn’t seem to acknowledge that their lethal combat can result in NPCs they want to use later getting gunned down in a single round of combat. Smooth running can proc off it itself (with stacking -2D penalties) and rolling high enough on initiative can get you more actions as well. This is just one guy with two combat actions, it could be worse or hell involve other party members! Arnika dying here throws an entire section of this narrative into a massive lurch, so much so that the book says that if the characters attack back with heavy hardware he just takes off and gets away via GM Fiat, you can’t catch or follow him sorry. In order to preserve the sanctity of this narrative, we’ll assume Bob rolls poo poo and Arnika goes right after Bob in initiative. He makes the wise choice to flee, immediately. Soufiane distracts the church cops while the Chronicler leads the PCs to his shack  This is Ampere. He’s kind of a sheltered, wet-behind the ears type guy, this is his first time leaving the Central Cluster in Justinian. He talks like a conspiracy theorist, except well, he’s actually right about a lot of stuff. A while back he was responsible for removing the memetic brainwashing from a group of captured Pictons, and what they learned led them towards the Will and Briton, and also Helios. He’s worried because Aquitiane hasn’t sent the special unit he requested, nor have they answered his communications at all. He needs allies, and soon. Dude is scared and frantic as all hell. He’s also worried that Argyre is involved, as being between a Marauder and their goals is a terrible place to be. If the PCs choose to trust him and tell Apmere that they have the disc and star, he gets real excited and wants to examine them. Technically you have a choice, but the adventure assumes that you do so. That next scene only happens if one of the PCs makes a INS+Perception (3) roll while looking out the window. Like literally anytime the game calls for a skill roll, the narrative continues as if they had made it. Anyways they see Garlene down the road a little ways arguing with a furrier, trying to get some work. She looks real sick, and the guy is really not feeling the whole situation. He’s got a 16 year son behind the counter, who’s looking at her real weird. Suddenly, he jumps on her and starts trying to bite into her infected arm! To make matters worse, two other Garanids show up and are making their way towards her. To make matters even more worse, Malinesse is back. She’s chanting about the black water and poo poo, which is driving the drones to bite into Garlene’s arm. They want to infect themselves with the Leviathanic strain. The book assumes you take care of the drones without killing the kid, Malinesse escapes via GM Fiat again, and the PCs bring Garelene to Ampere’s place. There’s some rolls you can make which give you some clues, but they’re not really important. Garlene tells you the truth once you get her back and cut away her sleeve, revealing an almost entirely oily black arm. She was a worker on the Atlas platform, there was some sort of incident that killed everyone else, only she escaped. She had hid out on Parel’s island hoping this would pass, but that’s looking unlikely now. She begs you not to take her to the Anabaptists or the Spitalians, both would mean certain death. Her only hope is an Anubian that has taken up residence in the Basalm House (localing primitive healing place, the Britoni don’t trust modern medicine). Ampere is getting ever more wigged out and paranoid after all of this. We’re told that the next four scenes can be run in any order, the PCs can split up, etc. I’ll be covering them in the order in which they’re written, but I’d imagine that players would likely be seeking out healing for Garlene first. She’s looking really close to death at this point, if the infection spreads to her brainstem that’s it, game over. In our first scene, the characters head over to the Flask tavern. Vatenguerre (which if you remember, the PCs only meet in an optional adventure not a part of this trilogy) has asked the PCs to look into the location of Starfire and suggested they might find information at this tavern. It’s been reserved for a private function, so you either have to bribe your way in, sneak in, or get Tronte the chapel master to help you. Once inside, the PCs meet their walrus hunter friend, and not long after that the guards from the Isle of Ushant come in. You get a few rolls to notice the obvious, these folks obviously have not been around in a while. One of them comes to join the hunter, who happens to be his brother. If you get him drunk (via a drinking contest) he’ll basically let slip that Barringer guards the Starfire on the island of Ushant. After they get into a fight, the PCs can make an easy roll and sneak out. However, all of this is meaningless. We’re told in a sidebar that if the character’s investigation fails, the Red Pack discovers the information they need on their own.  The second scene has no reason to exist, and is pretty disgusting besides. This is where we meet Eris, a Jehmmaden Delilah (women who’ve been banished from the cult) who exists so the writers have someone female to strip, humailiate, abuse, and rape, because goddamn they are mature storyellers. Hardcore RPers only past his point. (anything especially trigger I’ll put behind spoiler tags) A quick side note, gently caress the entire Jehmmaden cult. They’re an incestuous, patriarchial, sucidie bombing cult of goat herders. This was the best SMV could come up with when creating their muslim anolague. If anyone needs a refresher, https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/jcdent/degenesis-rebirth/#76. The evil Anabasptist Yasen is at the empty jug giving a sermon about the people being unfaithful and poo poo, the only thing he loves more than that is having heretics executed. Suddenly, there’s a bunch of commotion from the exit. Two Anabaptists are dragging a woman who’s been stripped half-naked towards Yasen. They’ve found the Goat they say, she tried to proposition one of the Anabaptists for money.   gently caress these people, seriously. Anyways, Yasen has her drug off after announcing that she will be executed tomorrow morning. Her prison is not far, and with a couple rolls you can approach her tower and speak with her. In exchange for helping her, (You can’t get her out now, but you can help later) she promises to show you the common teachings that bind the Apocalyptics and the Jehmmadans. Spoilers, it’s memes. The Apocalyptic tarot is just 22 personality profiles which can apparently be applied to any person. She’ll also say that Aries is on her trail, so now the PCs know that two Marauders are in the mix. Scene 3 is pretty pointless. You meet with Soufiane and then agree to see what Scene 4 is probably the first scene that you’ll see after bringing Garlene to Ampere’s house. It’s also kinda dumb. It’s late at night, so the characters apparently have to sneak into the Basalm House. That, or they can claim to be relatives of the fisherman who lost an arm to the Psychonaut seal, that gets them let in. Spoiler for mild nudity  Imbali is a rank 4 Anbuian, one step below the mysterious Hogans who have been to Cario. Currently, she’s milking that snake for venom. When the characters describe why they’ve come here, she agrees that they cannot bring Garlene back here, and follows you to Ampere’s shack. She examines Garlene’s spore infestation, but has never seen anything quite like it. For some reason, she can’t treat her here. We’re told that the only safe place is Parel’s island, but why they have to move her beyond that isn’t really explained. It’s not like Parel has a sterile surgery room on his island or anything. Imbali does have to go back to get her tools though. So, the PC’s do what they’re told and carry Garlene to Parel’s island, and wait for the Anubian to arrive. Next time, part 4!
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Apr 15, 2021 10:49
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