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A nitpick I also personally have with the Harpy is that it just isn't evocative of a supernatural beastie. Yeah, harpies are a known mythological critter that have been slain by many a dungeons and dragons character, but I'm not getting any fluff to go with the crunch here. Nothing about the harpy screams "bully to the point of driving someone to suicide." A demon or a revenant, sure, but the harpy just feels... random. Doesn't help that the skin doesn't feel like it provides any pathos. You like to hurt people. You're really, really good at hurting people, physically and emotionally. The darkest self suggests a sort of abuse victim turns abuser mentality, but none of its moves play into the suggested mindset of "I'm never going to be happy, so no one else should be happy, either." I think the Harpy works fine as a villain skin, which depending on your game's needs may not require any motivation more complex than "wants to make your life hell," but I wouldn't allow it as a PC skin in my gaming group as presented.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:34
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Mors Rattus posted:Actually, this is exactly what harpies did in Greek myth. They were torturers and punishers of the wicked. Their most notable appearance is when they were set to torment the prophet-king Phineus of Thrace, who Zeus blinded and put on an island with an eternal banquet, which the harpies would defile and steal and keep him from ever getting to enjoy. They are similar in this way to the Furies, but aren't the same critters. The harpies never especially cared if they were right to punish someone, see, they just enjoyed it. I stand corrected.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:54
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I dunno, obviously I'd give my group a heads up of 'hey this skin basically involves me being a horribly emotionally abusive dickbag to the point of poo poo like self harm and all, that cool?' but I don't think I, the player, would feel too bad playing a character like that. I just think that the skin fits the supernatural creature well, and being on point should be a good thing for this stuff considering how much we've had to wade through that boiled down to 'the writer kinda didn't understand the concept they're going for here'. I hardly think it's my favorite skin ever or think it's really even top three or whatever, but I can dig the just unrepentant 'yea I'm going to make everyone around me hurt' in a game where emotional manipulation and abuse is already A Thing. I wouldn't permit that skin for precisely that reason: there's nothing to it but hurting people and getting away from pursuers. Even the Ghoul brings more to the table than that, mechanically. With a Harpy, the character is very likely going to always be an abusive rear end in a top hat because that's all that the Skin does. On the other hand, it's an excellent villain kit.
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Dec 3, 2014 05:25
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Halloween Jack posted:Speaking of "The Outsider" I've given thought to writing up a "Spirit" Skin to represent a sort of genius loci, as exemplified by the hometown kid whose family has been here for generations and feels connected to their home, but not their peers. But it's not something I feel the game is crying out for or anything. My tabletop gaming group will be playing a Christmas session of Monsterhearts tonight instead of our usual Rogue Trader campaign, and we'll be playtesting a homebrew Skin we've been working on: the Dragon. I think I've mentioned it before in this thread, but the Dragon is a teenage suddenly thrust into adult responsibilities - the example we're specifically using is a teenager who's the eldest sibling in a single-parent household with several younger siblings and so has to take care of their adult responsibility, their Hoard. The flip side is their innate drive to Rampage, to abandon their responsibility and be a teenager, enjoying themselves without a whit of concern for their Hoard. Of course, without the Dragon's protection, the Hoard is vulnerable. It's very much meant to be difficult paradox for the Dragon to struggle with and not do a good job of balancing. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 15:45
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FMguru posted:Sigil is the most valuable piece of real estate in the entire multiverse. It's the High Ground from which you can invade any and all other planes - inner, outer, elemental, prime material, whatever. Entire pantheons of gods have spent eternities wracking their brains to try and figure out how to overthrow the Lady and seize control of it, to no effect. None of them have ever come close to succeeding (and I'll bet that not a few of the Dead gods floating in the astral plane got that way because they tried to gently caress with Sigil). She's as far above Thor and Orcus and Asmodeus and Ra as those gods are above level 1 PCs. She's the last person in the entirety of D&D that should have a stat block. Well, aside from Ao. And his boss. 
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Jan 2, 2015 22:42
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Bieeardo posted:Given the starry tales of love and whimsy that were oWoD's stock in trade, I'm guessing Monster Hearts: the College Years. That or most of them start channeling Fall-From-Grace and specializing in slaking needs and lusts that aren't sexual.
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Jan 6, 2015 03:56
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Kurieg posted:So... Demon: The Fallen? That would be some delicious irony, R*H ripping off the one White Wolf line he had no part in. Not familiar with Demon: The Fallen. Fall-From-Grace is a succubus in Planescape: Torment who's entirely chaste and specializes in slaking intellectual lusts - she and her peers at their brothel provide stimulating intellectual conversation, play chess and other games of strategy, and the like.
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Jan 6, 2015 04:32
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Tatum Girlparts posted:A non zero amount of bad MH ideas are victims of 'I like this as a non interactive, solo, media concept, WHY WOULDN'T I WANT IT AS AN INTERACTIVE AND MUTLI PERSON GAME?!' It can be a little tricky to do even when you're aware that that's a need. My tabletop gaming group put together a homebrew MH skin I posted over in the apocalypse world thread that took a few revisions towards that end, starting off with a teenage metaphor, then matching a monster to it, then trying to figure out a way to get it interacting with other PCs and vice versa.
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Jan 9, 2015 06:04
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It's also the approach GW2 takes, where the tutorial gives you a position of importance among your race, then you're actively climbing the ranks to progressively greater responsibilities as the story goes on, first getting kicked upstairs from your race's problems and duties to one of the three major global organizations fighting the Elder Dragons, then when they unite you're one of the founding members of that group. For the last third of the game's story, you're the right hand [wo]man of the Generic Big Leader Guy, making strategic decisions for the Trinity Pact and a recurring theme is that you get handed the most critical assignments that are both risky and important while the Pact's troops are busy with more mundane tasks. A lot of previously important NPCs and side characters turn up as researchers, troopers, and other low-ranking members of the Pact while you give them orders.
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Jan 15, 2015 20:33
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Bieeardo posted:I remember encountering otherkin for the first time, when Livejournal was still a big deal, and being absolutely baffled that these people could be so creatively bankrupt that they'd take mascara-streaked gaming books for their bibles. Years later, I'd hear about otakukin, and meet a man who wants to become some kind of thingy from the Wheel of Time in real life. It never clicked that for some of them, it went beyond wish-fulfillment and a sense of personal emptiness, and landed square in mental illness. The worst stories I've ever read about that sort of thing were all about oChangeling. Supposedly someone committed suicide so they could go back to the faerie plane.
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Jan 28, 2015 22:19
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CommissarMega posted:How DID WoD get so many crazies? I don't recall anything like those stories coming from DnD, or even Exalted. By tapping far more effectively into the angsty, disaffected teenager/college student demographic as I understand it. Can't speak for Exalted, but DnD likes to stress that it's just a game and you need to discuss it with your gaming group if you're not having fun or are bothered by things going on in the game session. WoD, as I understand it, marketed towards "serious ROLE-players."
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Jan 29, 2015 05:53
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Doresh posted:Now I have to know: was Hitler in league with the Werewolves? And East Germany with vampires? It's very consistent, actually: some of the Nazis once they were in power colluded with supernatural powers, including a few advisors like Goring, but Hitler himself? Absolutely, 100% human no dealings of any kind with the supernatural. The Holocaust? Completely absolutely 100% human doing, absolutely no supernatural involvement or supernatural victims.
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Jan 29, 2015 18:18
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm certain there were supernatural victims. At least, plenty of Garou Kinfolk and Romany connected to the Gangrel and Ravnos. And of course, the Holocaust generated so many wraiths they devoted a book to it. In oWoD? Canonically nope, zero supernatural victims of or involvement with the Holocaust. The Shoah book was something very different, and the only time oWoD ever talked about it beyond to say "Nope, we aren't touching that with a ten-foot pole."
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Jan 29, 2015 18:39
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LatwPIAT posted:World of Darkness: Gypsies talks about how the Roma part of the holocaust was perpetrated because Hitler and the SS had learned about the secret of their magical blood, and wanted to experiment upon and exterminate them. I'm mistaken, then. Never read Gypsies, and I must have missed that bit of the Shoah book.
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Jan 29, 2015 19:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:Pretty much. Of course, it could be argued that the world would be better off without vampires feeding off everyone and mages poking holes in reality. This has always been my view of the oWoD: you are not playing as a good person. Even if there are other people who are worse, if your character seriously thinks they're a hero by any stretch of the imagination then they're deluded.
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Jan 29, 2015 22:58
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Doresh posted:Jovian Chronicles Second Edition RPG Player's Handbook I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that Earth and Venus are supposed to be the bad guys opposed by the plucky but outgunned Jovians and other out-system bodies, but maybe that's just me.
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Feb 6, 2015 22:15
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Can we go back to discussing obscure/bad tabletop games rather than anime?
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Feb 24, 2015 04:11
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Doresh posted:Going by the fluff, I would say "Hunting tools - or really any kind of tool - is the work of the eeevil human society! You're supposed to ward off predators with your poop!" This guy isn't familiar with the remarkable variety of animals that make and use tools, is he? Not just primates, either.
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Mar 28, 2015 14:50
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Kurieg posted:Would it surprise you that there is both an entire chapter of were-apes, as well as a merit that gives you a bonus on problem solving rolls because animals are such great tool users? That seems... hypocritical. The entire purpose of learned behavior, including tool use, is to make life easier. Given that this is WoD, I'm expecting my question of "So what was the magical point at which we suddenly went too far?" to be answered with "The literally magical point at which we went too far was this..."
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Mar 28, 2015 15:13
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Night10194 posted:I mean that sincerely. Brucatto has 'predators and charismatic fauna only, because that's all I find sexy' written all over him. Furries in general. What little I recall from the previous thread when it took a crack at this book also includes everything in this book being ridiculously overpowered.
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Mar 28, 2015 15:44
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theironjef posted:Eh, my taste in girls skews away from the kind wearing a wreathe of ranunculus that only want to sex it up after tricking me into a mushroom-dappled glen. Also, I for one am partial to modern hygiene. And modern birth control. And modern medicine.
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Mar 28, 2015 19:47
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Luminous Obscurity posted:*sigh* Nope, and I don't think I want to. I agree that modern civilization is doing horrible things to the environment and should probably be restrained and major efforts should be made to fix it, but turning into a were-elk with a giant dong and impaling a hillbilly hunter on my leg, a piece of artwork from this book that I recall from the last thread, sure isn't going to help repair the environment or curb the industrial practices that damage the environment.
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Mar 28, 2015 19:53
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Deerhoof Antlerdude is the hero this planet deserves. All the same, I don't think a society of furry serial killer ecoterrorists is going to help.
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Mar 28, 2015 20:17
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Doresh posted:I'm wondering how antlers and stuff will hold up to automatic firearms. Unfortunately, IIRC from the previous thread, which petered out halfway through the book, most Changing Breeds can look down the barrel of a tank's cannon and smile calmly.
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Mar 28, 2015 22:49
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Doresh posted:Don't worry, I am familiar. Vampires and werewolves however have the excuse of being mythical monsters that can shrug off most stuff that does not fall into their respective weakness. "My moose fursona gives me super-strength!" strikes me as requiring a whole lot more disbelief to suspend. Or maybe it's just way too silly for me. Eh, go sign up with Task Force: VALKYRIE. Their superpower is "Our R&D department has unlimited funding and collaborates with DARPA."
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Mar 29, 2015 00:46
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Simian_Prime posted:And is secretly funded by A sidebar every DM with sense ignores.  Valkyrie games should be half X-Files, half X-COM.
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Mar 29, 2015 01:50
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Kavak posted:Yeah, considering that other groups in the same book got multiple options, I'm inclined to believe the writer just didn't like them. "gently caress you, it's vampires, and they're not doing anything interesting." In my gaming group's ongoing Valkyrie game, which we've been playing on and off for a while, the truth about Valkyrie is more heartwarming: the Director is a former Promethean who completed her Pilgrimage. Promethean in general needs more love, and could probably be featured in this thread for how well-written but overlooked it is. Mainly because it can be incredibly difficult to play, admittedly.
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Mar 29, 2015 02:40
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Kavak posted:I've always seen TFV as more Delta Green than X-Files- they've fought fire with fire for a long time. If you were involved with the US government at all before you encountered or turned into whatever super, you either work for Valkyrie or you get terminated, even if you don't know you're supernatural. American supernaturals, especially werewolves, may get covert or even overt help if it's in the interests of national security. I lean a bit more on X-COM, myself. Whatever Valkyrie may have been at the beginning, by now it understands most supernaturals and what they can do better than the supers themselves. They're infinitely outmanned, but when they bring their teeth to bear they can use most supers' abilities and weaknesses better than the actual supers. My group runs it as a light-hearted beer and pizza game. Our first session had a simple premise: the President has been captured by vampires. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?
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Mar 29, 2015 04:01
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Kavak posted:My TFV My group tends to attract more... exotic situations. In our campaign, the IRS headquarters relocated to Los Angeles courtesy of the TFV PCs to serve as the seal on a True Fae that was draining the spark of creativity and imagination out of Hollywood. It just couldn't handle the sheer concentrated banality of the IRS and so is effectively imprisoned. Coincidentally Hollywood subsequently started to improve substantially in quality.quote:Either a super-repressive Christian upbringing or a waaay too permissive hippy upbringing, maybe one plopped in the middle of an area full of another? I'm guessing the latter, personally. I've known plenty of the former, many of whom fell away from that as adults, and this guy feels to me like the kind of man who would use the word "sheeple" unironically.
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Mar 29, 2015 05:13
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Flamberges and petticoats!
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Apr 6, 2015 02:44
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pkfan2004 posted:You don't understand. My Black Soul Flame allows me to master any weapon. I choose the humble board of card to humiliate foes who are not worthy of tasting my immortal, pure starmetal steel folded six hundred and sixty six times by the blind monk Sensei-sensei. I DEFY YOUR PUNISHMENT. Now just add lycanthropy and you're ready to roleplay Changing Breeds.
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Apr 6, 2015 03:30
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IIRC Genius also has "Five dots in this gives you nuclear weapons." From what I remember reading through it, Genius has some genuinely interesting ideas and I'd like to see someone more familiar with nWoD do a thorough review of it. And Promethean, for that matter.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:33
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I checked the Genius pdf. Here's the discipline dedicated to making weapons, for an idea of this game line. This is just the overview of X dots in the discipline. Katastrofi ●: Agonizers, voltaic stunners, and energy-draining rays A student of Katastrofi is limited to Bashing damage with his weaponry. His attacks can overwhelm a target’s nervous system, produce microwave-induced agony across the target’s skin, or drop an enemy with envenomed darts, but cannot kill outright. Katastrofi ●●: Ultra-sharp swords, ray guns, heat rays, and other instruments of death The second dot of Katastrofi allows the genius to get on with the business of killing her fellow human beings. She can create a rich selection of death rays and Lethal-damage weapons that can kill her targets through ballistic force, massive concussion, cold, electricity, or simply raw "killing energy." She can also significantly enhance the destructive power of her stunning weaponry. When designing the weapon, the genius must specify the type of damage done. This is important because some wonders and many creatures in the World of Darkness are vulnerable or resistant to different types of damage. Common damage types include electricity, cold, ballistic (like a bullet), acid, neural, bladed, crushing, and miscellaneous "destructive energy." Bashing attacks from a scholar of Katastrofi benefit from the 9-again rule. Lethal attacks do not benefit from the 9-again rule. If the genius desires, she can select the "explosive weapon" variable with a blast area of up to five yards for free. See that variable, below. Katastrofi ●●●: Annihilating force and concussive devastation The third dot of Katastrofi allows the genius to hone her destructive power, mastering the energies of annihilation. She can rend apart space and time or hurl globs of plasma or disintegrating force. These first attempts at annihilating weaponry are crude, but devastating. At the same time, her blades are sharper, projectiles move faster, and energy weapons pump out more killing energy. Stunning weaponry reaches its technological peak at this level of Katastrofi. Bashing attacks benefit from the 8-again rule. Lethal attacks benefit from the 9-again rule. At this level, attacks that cause Aggravated damage are possible, but they do not benefit from the 8-again or 9-again rules. A doctor of Katastrofi can employ the "disintegration" variable (see below). If the genius desires, he can select the "explosive weapon" variable with a blast area of up to 20 yards for free. See that variable, below. Katastrofi ●●●●: Atomic fire, neurotoxins, and space-warping Armageddon At this level of power, the genius can channel destructive cosmic forces, ripping apart the laws of the universe to obliterate her enemies. Her weapons reach their peak of Lethal damage. Her Aggravated weaponry is terrifying, and it shows: cryonic weaponry freezes the atmosphere itself, while lightning-projectors vomit plasma that fluoresces in the far ultraviolet and turns everything before it to smoking atomic ruin. Even a simple sword at this level of technological mastery dissolves flesh and titanium with equal efficiency. Bashing and Lethal attacks benefit from the 8-again rule. Aggravated attacks benefit from the 9-again rule. If the genius desires, he can select the "explosive weapon" variable with a blast area of up to 100 yards for free. See that variable, below. Katastrofi ●●●●●: Long-range city-devastators and monster-busters Mastery of Katastrofi offers near-complete command of the powers of devastation. The genius’ weapons can scorch whole cities, and he turn mortals to ash and cinder. This level of power is not for the subtle: rank-five Katastrofic devices veritably burn with malevolent technological energy, and usually channel powers far beyond anything available to mortal science. To unleash his devastating designs, the genius harnesses miniature suns and black holes, rends space and time, and makes a mockery of laws like thermodynamics and the conservation of matter. All attacks benefit from the 8-again rule. If the genius desires, she can select the "explosive weapon" variable with a blast area of up to 1,000 yards (¼ mile) for free. See that variable, below.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:40
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Kurieg posted:Yes. Really. It's super schlocky comic book SCIENCE! poo poo that you're supposed to think is super deep and meaningful because they say it is. If there's interest, I'd be happy to go through Genius for the thread. However, my experience with WoD is restricted to nHunter and reading Promethean, and passing knowledge of other lines, so someone else would have to offer commentary about the crunch and potentially the fluff as it relates to the rest of the setting.
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Apr 7, 2015 00:26
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Genius: The Transgression Introduction Have you ever wanted to play a mad scientist in the World of Darkness? Someone brilliant but fundamentally unstable, dreaming impossible dreams that seem to defy the laws of physics? Genius is not the game for you. Genius: The Transgression is a fan-made game line for the New World of Darkness, probably the largest and best-known of its kind. Genius proudly presents itself as a game about playing mad scientists, ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Dr. Frankenstein to Bruce Banner. However, when you get right down to it Genius is a game about playing unappreciated sperglords who struggle with unemployment while building nuclear weapons in their garage. Let's get down to it. Genius posted:He looked like a bad bitmap, sort of fuzzy and indistinct, with little blue eyes like smears on a round gray face. He said he was out of the game. As traditional for the World of Darkness, Genius opens with some introductory fiction. Our unnamed protagonist here is a psychologist, talking with a disillusioned scientist. He used to be a brilliant aeronautical engineering type working on the space program, but he grew disillusioned and cynical when the popular imagination turned away from that vision of the 50s and 60s. Despite coming across as just a crotchety old jerk who hates that his field has moved past his youthful dreams, we're assured that he's somehow incredibly smart and that the psychologist's notes on the guy are self-contradictory and nonsensical. Genius posted:I backtracked, suddenly lost. I looked down at my notes. They didn't make any sense. I had added to Mike's chicken-scratches, but what I had written was all nonsense, like a psychology primer run through a German-English translator a dozen times, or some other world's definitions for id and ego...I found myself pondering how other worlds would conceive of the mind, what coincidences would occur there, or not occur there that occurred here, from which they would try to build up a model of the mind. How much would they have missed, just by accident? What had we missed? Despite there being no evidence whatsoever of anything weird going on beyond the author's say-so, what's happening here is that the psychologist is beginning to awaken as a Genius. Genius posted:I remembered being seventeen, and imagining what other minds must be like. I remembered models leaping into my mind, unbidden, like someone had been sending mail to my brain in the middle of the night. It had been horrible, those half-glimpses of a greater truth, that sickly light bubbling up from my own mind, and I shuddered at the memory. I had pushed it away, disgusted. It had been outside me. It had wanted something. Thought without mind, idea without intellect. Genius, pure and beautiful. The fiction goes on for fifteen more pages where nothing really happens beyond a massive infodump about the setting and important terms. However, it does get across a decent idea of the fundamental premise behind the Geniuses, which the game interchangeably calls the Inspired: there is a force of intellect and creativity somewhere outside us that can press its way into the mind, making you dream and think impossible things, and make them all somehow make sense to you despite the obvious illogic and insanity of it. This alien light, called Inspiration, can make the impossible happen when someone afflicted by it puts that energy to work, provided the Genius has a proper mental framework for it. Yes, Inspiration is basically magic and Geniuses are wizards who simply need to channel their magic through a focus. To use their magic, Geniuses need a pseudo-scientific world view to use as a framework for their abilities - need a paradigm, you might say. Then we get a table of contents and another page of fiction where a random guy busts into a Genius's lab where he's plugged a few people into an ugly machine, so his bracelet turns into a shotgun and kills everyone, then he torches the place. Now on to the introduction proper! Genius posted:Ever since we bent our minds to technology - not with the computer or the automobile, but with fire and So yes, the Geniuses are wizards with a fresh coat of paint as mad scientists. Genius posted:A Game of Forbidden Science: And also disaffected sperglords. Genius posted:Theme: Transgression Still wizards, just less hippy and more steampunk. Genius posted:Mood: Bitter Disappointment Who wants to bet "bitter disappointment" accurately describes the mood of the author when it comes to his real life dreams? Next up is the standard list of suggested inspiration (hur hur), which I will present without commentary. Genius posted:Books: Next time, The Cosmos! (Yes, that's what the introduction to the world of the gameline is called). Next in the pdf after the introduction is a glossary filled with terms that haven't been explained yet. I'll note the important ones here, but I'll explain the rest as I reach the appropriate sections. Axiom: Genuises do everything through constructs called wonders, and building wonders goes through a variety of disciplines called axioms. The axioms are Apokalypsi, Automata, Epikrato, Exelixi, Katastrophi, Metaptropi, Prostasia, and Skafoi. Wonders: The Catalyst: A race/subtype style division, all Geniuses belong to one of five Catalysts that has a substantial impact on their motivations and what kind of mad scientist they are: Grimm (rage), Hoffnung (hope), Klagen (sorrow), Neid (rejection), or Staunen (curiosity). From a fluff perspective, your Catalyst is the emotion driving your descent into madness. The Peerage: The good guy mad scientists, and the PCs are probably members. Divided into Foundations that grant benefits while focusing on a particular type of mad science. Each PC probably belongs to one. Lemuria: The evil mad scientists, basically the Illuminati. The Peerage know they're all insane. Lemurians think they're right. Divided into Baramins based on how they approach the world through the lens of their [mad] science. Inspiration: In crunch, it's the power stat. In fluff, it's the alien force of creativity that makes Geniuses what they are. Mania: The energy of Inspiration. It's your blood points, mana, what-have-you. Havoc: Yeah, it's Paradox. Backlash from mortals interacting with Genius stuff or Genius stuff going wrong. Obligation: Morality stat. Illuminated: What happens when Obligation reaches 0. Complete monsters and whatnot. Beholden: Ghouls, now in lab assistant flavor. Collaborative: Group of Geniuses that work together (the PCs are probably this). Bardos/Manes: Supernatural entities, basically, spawned from ideas that have been scientifically proven not to exist. You can play as one. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 01:15
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Also, I am not joking when I describe Geniuses as sperglords. They have a mechanical penalty to interacting socially with non-Geniuses that increases in severity as their power stat goes up.
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Apr 7, 2015 01:36
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PantsOptional posted:So this is a game where everyone thinks they're playing Dexter's Lab but they're really just playing David Hahn? What forum did this spawn out of? i've only ever seen it referenced on RPGnet but I thought it came from somewhere else. It's an RPGnet creation. Here's the credits: Genius posted:Credits: I'll probably get The Cosmos up tomorrow.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:12
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Genius Addendum I'll edit this into the intro post, but next in the pdf after the introduction is a glossary filled with terms that haven't been explained yet. I'll note the important ones here, but I'll explain the rest as I reach the appropriate sections. Axiom: Genuises do everything through constructs called wonders, and building wonders goes through a variety of disciplines called axioms. The axioms are Apokalypsi, Automata, Epikrato, Exelixi, Katastrophi, Metaptropi, Prostasia, and Skafoi. Wonders: The Catalyst: A race/subtype style division, all Geniuses belong to one of five Catalysts that has a substantial impact on their motivations and what kind of mad scientist they are: Grimm (rage), Hoffnung (hope), Klagen (sorrow), Neid (rejection), or Staunen (curiosity). From a fluff perspective, your Catalyst is the emotion driving your descent into madness. The Peerage: The good guy mad scientists, and the PCs are probably members. Divided into Foundations that grant benefits while focusing on a particular type of mad science. Each PC probably belongs to one. Lemuria: The evil mad scientists, basically the Illuminati. The Peerage know they're all insane. Lemurians think they're right. Divided into Baramins based on how they approach the world through the lens of their [mad] science. Inspiration: In crunch, it's the power stat. In fluff, it's the alien force of creativity that makes Geniuses what they are. Mania: The energy of Inspiration. It's your blood points, mana, what-have-you. Havoc: Yeah, it's Paradox. Backlash from mortals interacting with Genius stuff or Genius stuff going wrong. Obligation: Morality stat. Illuminated: What happens when Obligation reaches 0. Complete monsters and whatnot. Beholden: Ghouls, now in lab assistant flavor. Collaborative: Group of Geniuses that work together (the PCs are probably this). Bardos/Manes: Supernatural entities, basically, spawned from ideas that have been scientifically proven not to exist. You can play as one.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:12
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Genius: The Transgression Part 2: The Cosmos You will notice I'm not posting any art or graphics. That's because there is none. The Genius online book is 488 pages of nothing but text and charts. Genius posted:A genius is a mortal man or woman gifted with extraordinary insight and technical brilliance. A genius is also I actually kinda like this premise for Geniuses: Inspiration is what makes them what they are, but it's dangerous, alien, and potentially horrifying. We then get some elaboration on the danger Inspiration poses to geniuses, that it's the force driving them away from humanity into the realm of mad science. It's the mundane parts of human existence that keep geniuses grounded for the most part, maintaining ties to mundane human existence rather than deciding they're above it all. It's appropriate for the mad scientist mythos, though there isn't a whole lot of crunch to back it up - Genius pretty much expects you to slide into insanity. Genius posted:The Breakthrough The Breakthrough is what turns a mortal into a genius. It's that moment where a sane scientist starts to go mad, obsessed with peculiar and brilliant ideas that often make sense to the genius but no one else. Of course, in Transgression's case you're going insane on two levels, with the latter being that the source of your sudden brilliance really is an outside force, and it's not really compatible with the human mind. Also, it's a recurring theme that mortals simply can't understand the mad super-science of the Inspired. Their stuff simply doesn't work by the rules of the normal world and shouldn't work at all. It's the power of Mania and Inspiration that makes these impossible wonders work - that tesla gun, that super-suit, that cybernetic rig... so yeah it's magic for all intents and purposes but dressed up as science. At this point in the mortal's descent into Inspiration, most go one of three ways: joining the Peerage (the organization of relatively sane good-guy mad scientists the PCs are assumed to be a part of), joining Lemuria (the organization of relatively insane bad-guy mad scientists the PCs are assumed to be enemies of), or becoming Illuminated. The Illuminated are what happens when something goes deeply wrong or a Genius' morality stat hits 0: the alien force of Inspiration completely consumes the human mind and what emerges is an alien force of intellect and creativity in a human suit. We'll get some more detail on the Illuminated later on, but for now the Illuminated are noted to be very explicitly no longer human in any real sense of the word, and there is no cure of any kind for Illumination. Most end up killed by the Peerage or Lemuria because of the danger they pose to everyone. On to demographics and the question of who tends to become Inspired. Genius posted:According to Genius: A Complete Psychological Breakdown, published by Ayako Von Schreber and Bob "Doc" Inspiration isn't always random - it can be cultivated in someone, though not reliably. It does take a certain mindset to become Inspired, mainly a mindset capable of thinking and planning, seeing a problem and working out a solution or being struck with some vast question. We're told now that about 60% of all Inspired come to it naturally, just regular people who suddenly start to see impossible answers to their questions and theories. The rest were deliberately guided as Beholden (read: ghouls) and either deliberately cultivated by geniuses to become Inspired themselves or were intended to be mere lab assistants and servants who suddenly became much more. Don't really want to play a mad scientist? Worry not! Genius posted:About 12% of geniuses become Inspired though they possess no particular scientific or technical background, There's a lot of room and suggestion in Genius that if you want to you can play the game as superheroes who build their own super-gadgets, and here's your out. Bruce Wayne and Viktor Frieze can both be reasonably approximated as Inspired. Next we're told that about one in three Inspired actually has a PhD, but that most are hobbyists. Genius does have a curious blind spot about professionals whose work gives them the opportunity to become Inspired but aren't interested in becoming doctors or professors themselves. Despite all this ground to play a Genius who isn't a mad scientist, the fluff assumes that you're just that. Genius posted:There are a lot of Inspired, a fact that startled the Peerage when it was first discovered. Estimates are as high Uh... I'm pretty sure this many mad scientists would be noticed, though we're also told that 30-50% of all Inspired don't know what they are. Which seems weird given that there's an alien power burning in their skulls and Inspired are pretty good about recognizing mad science in action. I can only assume that most Inspired don't actually bother with becoming mad scientists and instead post really weird conspiracy theories and fanfic on the internet. More demographics come up, telling us that despite the promise that Inspiration can happen to anyone mad science is actually pretty expensive and so Inspired tend to be highly educated and wealthy, with the exceptions being notable and peculiar. Genius posted:Obligation Obligation is the morality stat of Genius, and while it's flavorful and appropriate I don't see why Inspired have to abandon traditional morality. The best analogy I can think of for Obligation is looking at superheroes, actually. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark would be good examples of high obligation Inspired - they're volatile, egotistical, more than just a little removed from ordinary humanity, and definitely a bit crazy, but they view their powers as an obligation to protect mundane people from dangers they can't fight. Mister Freeze and any of the bad guys from the Iron Man movies would be examples of low obligation Inspired. Genius posted:Too much Maniacal activity, too fast, can result in the genius cracking as Inspiration overrides parts of her All Inspired are insane. Period. But some become special types of insane, altered by Inspiration. Unmada/Maniacs are the most common type: Inspiration has warped their senses and minds to the point that not only do they wholeheartedly believe that they are absolutely correct about what to anyone else is patent insanity, they can start warping reality around them to reflect their particular world view. This latter ability is part of what makes Unmada dangerous: if you run into one who's convinced that electricity doesn't work, there's a good chance that anything around them that runs on electricity will simply stop working. Part of the reason Lemuria are the bad guy mad scientists is because they're comprised exclusively of Unmada, though it's noted that a fair few Peers and independent Inspired are like this as well. Genius posted:The Consensus This is one of the beefs I have with Genius, to be honest. We're told, abstractly, that not only do mortals cause problems when they start handling stuff fueled by Inspiration (which there are rules for), Inspired mess up conventional work... somehow, despite Inspired being assumed to be holding down a regular job. Also, geniuses are explicitly not lonely - that is the entire point of the Peerage in fluff, providing a friendly network of mad scientists to keep you grounded, sane, and funded. There are plenty of real life scientists who hold all manner of bizarre beliefs and crazy ideas, but they still get good work done. In fact, the very next segment is about Collaboratives and the Peerage and how they exist precisely to provide cooperation, trust, and fellow people who don't think you're any more insane than they are. Genius posted:No One Is In Charge This? I genuinely like this part of the setting. Part of Genius' attempt at horror is the idea that for most of human history civilization was guided in secret by hidden masters that offered stability. A ruthless, tyrannical stability, but someone was in charge of humanity and had a plan. Not any more, though. The Inspired secret societies have no large-scale political power and the aggressive manes (we'll get to those later, in short they're theories literally spawned by their own disproof) like the Martians, Ophidians, and Moon Nazis literally can't exist or impact human civilization in any meaningful way. The godlike beings at the end of time have been wiped out, and the remaining time police are overworked and corrupt. It's down to just humanity now. This post is getting rather long, so I'm calling it short. Next time: More of the Cosmos
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Apr 7, 2015 17:15
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Zereth posted:Does it still work if the 'Genius' hands it to a non-wizard and leaves? No, that triggers Havoc. You want to keep mortals as far away from Inspiration as possible. Mortals who get access to Wonders will quite reasonably point out all the ways it simply cannot work according to the laws of science, which in turn tends to make the Wonder explode or fall apart.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:52
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