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Hello F&F thread pals! I'm not dead, just was sick last week so the already lengthy process of writing my Masquerade 1e review is taking longer than intended. But it's coming along nicely and I can't wait to be done with it lol. Not because it's bad, but because reviewing corebooks is exhausting and I want to get back into the sourcebook mines. After I wrap up the Masquerade core and Player's (storyteller's?) guide, I'm going to cap off this first batch of books (all 5 corebooks and their first published book post core) with a some kind of rambling mess of my thoughts and feelings on the 1e WoD so far.
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Apr 18, 2023 23:30
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 Back we are again, and back to a topic of grave import: ECONOMY. Any adventurer needs to buy and sell, and any adventurer has money burning a hole in their pocket. What are you to do with it all? Well... If you're thinking about buying items, not super much given the abstraction of the inventory. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. In Fabula Ultima, the basic unit of money is the Zenit, which is definitely a reference to Zenny/Zenni from Capcom-based games like Breath of Fire or Mega Man Legends. This is a game that likes to simplify, simplify, and it has that philosophy here too: While between nations or cities, the size and shape of a coin might vary, the Zenit is accepted anywhere at an equivalent rate of exchange no matter where you go. 5z pays for a decent meal, 10z can get a room at a basic inn, and 100z buys you a bronze shield. So how much are you supposed to get per adventure? Starting out at level 5, and going up to level 10, you're expected to get around 1000 Zenit per adventure for a party of four, so about 250 per PC. That said, if your encounters are properly challenging, expect Players to burn through their characters' IP, and at 10z per IP to replenish it, that's not exactly just pocket change. The average character, assuming no class choices that give more max IP, will have 6. That's 60 Zenit out of the 250 you get, and believe me, using all of it before you finish a dungeon or any other adventure is not at all uncommon. It should also be noted that later in the book, the GM's section says that this 1000z should be split up into useful items and gear, or IP replenishment, not just raw coin. It doesn't give guidelines on this except that from level 5-10, no item they get should be worth more than 500z. With IP expenditures and the fact that PCs will get items, they shouldn't really expect to take home much in the way of spending power unless they'd like to sell the items they get. This is... Fine. While a Zenit goes a long way, it feels like the PCs are usually broke, but swimming in valuable items to sell or equip. Speaking of equipment, let's talk item storage. Not everything can be just represented by IP. You keep things in a backpack, and the game doesn't care about tracking encumbrance or anything like that. It's assumed you have room for whatever a PC is stuffing in there, as long as it's not completely wild. The GM has final say and the ability to say that, no, you cannot stuff an entire live Chocobo in your backpack. That's mean. Don't do that to Chocobos. The backpack is also where stuff you make out of IP goes if they're not one-use. So what else can you carry? Well, you have four equipment slots: Armor, Main hand, Off-hand, and Accessory. Your main hand can hold a one-handed weapon, or a two-handed weapon, though the latter uses your off-hand as well. Your off-hand can hold a one handed item or a shield. Having something in both hands doesn't keep you from casting magic or using items, either. You might not be able to swing your greatsword with one hand, but you can HOLD it in one hand while pulling out an Elixir for your wounded buddy. If something is in your backpack, and you need it in conflict, you will need to spend an action getting it out. And, obviously, as so many JRPGs badger you about, any item, weapon, or armor that you do not have equipped do nothing. Okay? Don't forget to equip items, you dingus! Consumables using IP are always considered ready to use at a moment's notice, but if you make any other kind of item with IP, it's considered to be waiting in your backpack. Getting items is a matter of buying them in town, at least for basic equipment. However, there are special equipment and other items called Rare Items. Rare Items are the equivalent of magic items in other games, and while they can be bought in some of the biggest towns in shops that will ask for a good bit of money, they're usually found in dungeons, as rewards for quests, or beating up more powerful monsters. Rare Items run the gamut between "Just a knife but it does Dark damage instead of Physical" to "You will use this spear until the end of the campaign", and there are pretty well laid-out rules for creating them later in the book. The way I've seen it is that your PCs should eventually replace all their basic stuff with Rare Items, and get enough of the latter to have choices. Nurse Cleric has something to say about getting Rare Items:  I want to be clear, Nurse Cleric is not a title. Nurse is a title, and her name is Cleric. Yes, I just made this up, but I still want to be clear. We'll get to them later, but Fuel Knuckles kick rear end. They are easily, IMO, the best Brawling weapon in the game. Not because they're very powerful (though they are), but they're loving rad as hell. Anyway, provided you can find someone willing to buy an item, you'll sell it for about half its original price. Of course, if you're trying to sell lovely kobold weapons, no one is going to buy those unless they're desperate, and if they're desperate they probably don't have any money to give you for them. The GM is of course allowed to throw in a ruling that an item is worth as much as its listed value to someone, or less, and bartering is a good idea instead out just outright paying shop prices. Don't you wish you could do THAT in JRPGS? There's also a mention of Artifacts here, and Artifacts aren't really the equivalent of the items of the same name in D&D. Artifacts are some real poo poo. They're the kind of items that can completely change the course of a battlefield, win or lose a war, or even demolish entire nations. Obviously, PCs should never be allowed to buy or sell them, it would be like walking into a Wal-Mart and saying "hey I would like to return this nuke I totally bought from here". You won't get anything for it and it's more than likely the authorities will be coming by to ask some questions, probably after shooting you 13 times in the back.  This is not a nuke, nor is it likely to shoot you in the back, but it is cute. And relevant, because next we have services and transports! Generally, the prices listed for these will vary based on availability or the setting. Transports in particular can be hard to find in some places, easy in others. If you're playing in a FF7-esque magitech heavy world, you'd probably have a hard time finding a horse and cart, but a car would be pretty easy to come across. If you DO buy a cart, though, the horse is included in the cost, and you don't need to keep track of fodder, be it food or gasoline. Mounts also have no stats and will not do any fighting for you, but if you want an adorable Not!Carbuncle, you can gain one using a skill from the Wayfarer class.  I thought about explaining the difference between vehicle types like the book does, but I figured ya'll could... Probably figure it out. Now, back to equipment. Not everyone can use all equipment. While the Basic Equipment (in a moment) will be available to everyone to attain at character creation, and usually to buy in any town, it doesn't mean everyone can equip them. Items marked with a red, four-pointed star are Martial Items, and those are restricted to five different classes:
Accessories are always magical items and usually give some kind of unique benefit to the character that will be helpful, but not overwhelming. They're always Rare items. As an example, here's a pretty commonly received Accessory for martial characters:  Keep in mind that Rare items shouldn't be considered something you can't buy in a store. The GM should be careful as to what's available, and maybe the doomed hometown doesn't have anything other than basic swords, but surely the capital city of Fantasy Newfoundland has them. Here's how to read armor and shield entries in the equipment list:  Notably, a Defense or Magic Defense of 12 is very high at character creation, and basic enemies will have a hard time hitting someone so equipped. Notably, you almost never get a bonus to Initiative, but there are a lot of things that give penalties to initiative. If possible, you should always have the lightly armored characters with high DEX+INS be the group leader for Initiative Checks so you don't end up in situations where monsters are always going first. I'm sure the guy in heavy armor using a sword'n'board thinks they're the main character, but they're not winning any speed contests with their -4 Initiative.  Here's how weapons read on the tables. You do not need to keep track of ammunition for ranged weapons, mind, that's not how this game rolls. If you have a gun, you have bullets for it, no questions asked. Also, Unarmed Strike is on the Basic Equipment Table, but it's not something you buy. If you have nothing in one of your hands, they count as Unarmed Strike. Unarmed Strike kind of sucks; if you want to play a punchy martial-arts type character, invest in Brawling weapons. I won't post the entire weapons and armor tables, but I have some thoughts on them. First, some of the choices are just straight up superior. For example, DEX+INS is used for a good number of Checks. So much so that as a GM, I've more commonly just assigned some common actions that would fall under them to other Attributes. Tracking an enemy would be DEX+WLP, for example, rather than DEX+INS. But the commonality of such checks means that weapons that use DEX+INS are quite powerful merely because they allow a character to use those Attributes to their highest potential in and out of combat. That said, any weapon that lets you use a doubled-up Attribute, like bows (DEX+DEX) or Heavy Weapons (MIG+MIG) are generally going to be the real damage dealers in any given Party, simply because rolling 2d10 is going to usually have better results than 1d8+1d10. Also, ANY item which has an accuracy bonus is going to be really helpful, so... Basically just swords and daggers. And since you can dual-wield most swords and daggers, they're also great for that. Not being able to use your HR for off-hand weapon damage when dual-wielding doesn't seem as bad when you look at it as that you're basically just adding consistent +4 (for daggers) or +6 (for one-handed swords) to your damage. That's pretty drat substantial and a good argument for dual-wielding over using shields (though shields are in no way a bad choice. It's a pretty good trade-off). There are also 10 Categories of weapons, which doesn't really matter. As far as I know, no Skill or other Effect gives bonuses specifically to one category or another, though I might be wrong on that. Just in case, though, the 10 Categories are Arcane, Bow, Brawling, Dagger, Firearm, Flail, Heavy, Spear, Sword, and Thrown. Notably, Bows include Crossbows, which use DEX+INS, not DEX+DEX. The Arcane category includes Staves and Tomes, the former of which uses WLP+WLP and the latter uses INS+INS. As mentioned before, weapons that use the same Attribute twice are generally superior... Though this only really applies early game. If you build your character a certain way in character creation, you can get two Attributes at d10 right away (DEX and INS, right?) and at level 20, you get to improve an Attribute by one die size, so at that point you can handle a DEX+MIG weapon as proficiently as you can a MIG+MIG or DEX+DEX weapon. Assuming those are the attributes you improve, which they might not be if you're playing a character that's heavily magic-focused. As for armor, there's really not much to say about them, save that lighter armors tend to have better Magic Defense, and Heavier armors tend to have better Defense. But since your die size determines those as well, you could easily play an absolute tank starting with a Defense and Magic Defense of 12. The only real thing of note is that aside from cost (and the limitations of your starting funds), there's no reason for everyone to not tromp around in the heaviest armors they can possibly equip. Just have at least one PC be the designated Initiative roller in light or no armor, and you're golden. You can't actually afford the best armor and shield at character creation AND a weapon, either, so your 12/12 tank up there might just have to make due with punching until the Party gets some cash or the GM takes pity on them and just lets them have a weapon.  Have some pretty weapons before we move on to our next topic: Projects. Projects are the mundane/magitech version of Rituals. The Tinkerer class is necessary to start a project, but everyone can contribute to them when they're already underway. You can make a lot with projects, and with some magical backing, you can end up with some wild things indeed. Instead of posting the flow-chart, I'll explain how they work. First, you figure out what you want to do. Describe what the invention is, what you want it to do, what it might require, and the specific benefits (mechanical or narrative) you want it to provide. The GM tells you whether or not it's feasible to do what you want with what you have. If the project is complex enough, it might need to be split up into several smaller inventions that have to be developed on their own. Second, consult the Area, Potency, and Uses tables to figure out the invention's cost in materials. This must be paid upfront. No announcing a project, and then gathering what you need for it, you have to pay to play. If the potency is Medium or higher, the GM will also assign a special or unique ingredient for the process. This doesn't need to be delivered upfront, unlike the Zenit, you can go get it later. You just can't finish the Project without it. Players should not be able to walk their PCs' happy asses into the nearest town and buy this stuff, either. It should be interesting and rare, something they'll need to go on an adventure to acquire! Fourth, you can give the finished product a flaw. Talk it over with the GM, and if they find it's bad enough that it could actually have an effect on using the invention, it'll reduce the cost of the project by 25%. Players can also volunteer unique or special materials they might already possess, separate from the one that might be required, to drop the cost by an amount equal to the worth of the materials. This isn't considered part of the initial cost, but as something that can be thrown in later. Fifth, you must make a Clock with a number of slices equal to 100(x)/1, with 100 being 100z. For those of you not willing to do math right now (I don't blame you), that's 1 slice for every 100 Zenit the project costs overall, after discounts from flaws or special materials. Finally, at the end of each day spent working on a Project, you get 1 slice of the clock, called Progress, for PC who worked on it. You get an extra +1 from any PC with at least one level in Tinkerer, as well. When the clock is filled in entirely, the Project is over! Congratulations, you now have a magic broach/magitech motorcycle/loving airship. Yes. You read that right. A loving airship. Before we get too much into that, let's see the table for Area, Potency, and Uses.  As you can see, it's basically the same table as with Rituals, but with the added criteria of being either single-use or being infinite use. Notably, containing a demon permanently only costs 4000 Zenit. No wonder there's so many Sealed Evil In A Can in JRPGs, it's dirt cheap to seal away the ancient evil compared to the cost of life and resource from trying to kill them! Now, obviously, PCs are going to want to craft Rare Items, particularly ones that give them Resistances or Immunities. How do you quantify that? We got you, fam.  If an invention has different mixed types of effects, like giving resistance to an element, and doing damage on use, it should be split into multiple Projects as stated before. Oh, and...    Don't. loving. Do it. So if you want your invention to heal or deal damage, it uses basically the same rules as environmental damage explained in the last post. A Minor amount is 10 for every 20 or so levels, Heavy damage adds 20 to that, and Heavy deals 40 at level 5+, and 20 more every 20 levels after. I specifically mentioned, and the game specifically uses the language "you get +1 Progress for every PC that participates in the Project" but you can hire NPC helpers who give +1 Progress. You have to pay them half of the Project's total cost per person. This is a terrible idea. Do not do this. It's a lot of money for basically no real reward. And you will not need to do this. Believe me, it's not worth it compared to what you can do to this system. Nurse Cleric posted:If the character wants to create multiple copies of an invention, each is a separate Project. Turning inventions into easy-to-produce items will inevitably break the game. For Tinkerers who want to customize equipment, look at the Heroic Skill Upgrade (page 217). While this is very good advice, ma'am, I do not think you comprehend what is going on here. Let's take a step back for a moment. Just come over here, let's have a chat. Okay, so, I think we can all agree that crafting systems in TTRPGs come in two varieties: Terrible and Useless, or Terrible and Exploitable. The game does not make it very clear when multiple Projects are necessary, for one thing, so that's entirely GM fiat. But see, there's an issue with this crafting system, as there is in any TTRPG. And this one is actually immediately obvious if you give it any amount of thought. This is a "what were they thinking" magnitude of silly mechanics. It's simple! I like that! It's also busted as gently caress, and it will let you crack this game like a fresh egg into the frying pan of the Player's evil ingenuity. Don't believe me? I will demonstrate. From here, we will assume RAW, not RAI. We will ignore that a sane GM would never allow such chicanery without at LEAST some objections. Okay, let's start with a loving airship.  So, this is a huge project. This is the biggest, most expensive of all the sample projects in the game. It needs 60 Progress to complete. That is 60 days of work if it's just one person working on this... Well, no it's not, actually. And you probably already noticed why. Da Rules posted:Much like how spellcasters gain access to Ritual magic, characters with the Tinkerer Class may start Projects ... +1 Extra Progress for every Player Character with one or more levels in the Tinkerer Class who worked on the Project today. Uh... posted:+1 Extra Progress for every Player Character with one or more levels in the Tinkerer Class O-Okay, well, generally a party is 4 people, right? Assuming every single one of them has at least one level in Tinkerer, that's still 15 days, plenty of time to rehearse Toccata and Fugue in D Minor before the Villain realizes the PCs are up to something. We can just- Wait hold on what posted:
THERE IS NO MERCY HERE FOOL posted:If you happen to gather precious materials during your adventures, you may use them to pay for the costs of a Project. F... Five days... Tinkerer Class Skills posted:Visionary: When you work on a Project, up to 100 x the level of this Skill zenit of material costs are automatically paid; additionally, you generate an additional +1 of Progress for every level you have in this Skill. If multiple characters with this Skill work on the same Project, the effects will be cumulative.  The Villain posted:WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY BUILT A loving CRUISE LINER AIRSHIP IN ONE GOD drat DAY?! WITH WHAT?! ... IT ONLY COST THEM 1500 ZENIT?! WHAT THE gently caress THEY CAN MAKE THAT IN ONE AND A HALF ADVENTURES! ... Goodnight everybody! Join us next time as we go into Group Dynamics, and holy poo poo character creation thank god Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 00:51
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That honestly just feels in genre.
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Apr 19, 2023 01:46
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Down With People posted:
...you're missing the absurdly vital detail of what side of the civil war he's larping.
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Apr 19, 2023 02:53
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The Skeep posted:...you're missing the absurdly vital detail of what side of the civil war he's larping. So Kevin Johnson is black and he specifically likes larping as a surgeon and the book specifically cites Union officer Major Jonathan Letterman. You gotta admit, it would be funny if he liked dressing up as a Confederate for whatever reason in spite of all that. mellonbread posted:At this point I should know better than to ask, but did they write up Bibliomancy for 3e? Nope! : ) I assume it's undoing becoming an entropomancer in the first place, otherwise yeah, she could 'just' spend a major charge on it. I guess it's possible that she wanted to find a way to do it that wasn't entropomancy considering how badly her previous spell went, but if you're an entropomancer in the first place I think you'd be willing to give it another go. Down With People fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 03:32
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Maxwell Lord posted:That honestly just feels in genre.
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Apr 19, 2023 06:56
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Maxwell Lord posted:That honestly just feels in genre. The silly and broken crafting rules that let you destroy a game if you know what you're doing? That's about right, yea. Usually in JRPGs though, you have to do some real thunk to break the game. Figure out what enemy drops this extremely rare material that you need to craft the best weapon for the MC in disc one, or maybe you need to interact with a side quest that gives you stuff you're not supposed to have yet, etc. Fabula Ultima's crafting system breaks itself in the pages it's described in. It's almost uncanny how this happens. There's no splatbooks involved, no weird courses of logic, no munchkin behavior or saying "well the book doesn't say I CAN'T do this". Everything you need to break the game is right there, and totally RAW. Maybe it was intentional. Another thing I should point out is that a lot of what I'm putting in these posts are just my own personal commentary. The book actually doesn't have very much information on each page, and the language is fairly concise and very easy to digest. These rules on Projects are just 4 pages, not counting the examples! The only part of the equation that's not baked in to the main rules themselves is Visionary, and since Tinkerers are required to start Projects, obviously a player will look over the skills. I haven't really gotten to this point yet, and we'll get into how Classes work very soon, but I'll just say that by RAW, you could build an airship that carries 50 people in 1 day for dirt cheap within two sessions of starting the game. 3-4 if you're still short on cash. Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 10:28
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For me it’s just that a typical FF party managing to come up with an airship in a matter of days doesn’t feel off. Granted stuff like that is usually more given out according to the plot- FF3 drops one on you very early, FF1 has you getting a pirate ship in exchange for driving the pirates out of a town- but in general the players aren’t the typical hard-traveling adventuring party.
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Apr 19, 2023 17:20
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FF2 has an airship taxi that you have to walk halfway across the map to use anyway. I could never finish that game.
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Apr 19, 2023 17:44
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FF4 had you retrieving a military airship about a third of the way through the game (it's okay, at that point you're technically the king of said kingdom anyway), and then you steal another airship shortly after that.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:09
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Snorb posted:FF4 had you retrieving a military airship about a third of the way through the game (it's okay, at that point you're technically the king of said kingdom anyway) Does that make it... an heirship? 
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Apr 19, 2023 18:27
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Quackles posted:Does that make it... an heirship? Only when Cecil's idiot son gets his hands on it in The After Years, but we don't talk about that game.
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Apr 20, 2023 01:41
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Down With People posted:Karmic Ties and Fifth Wheels is great. It's probably the best campaign kit out of any of them. There's a lot of complex family dynamics poo poo and you're gonna want to set up a family tree for yourself and the players, but it does a good job of giving you all the information you need to set all this poo poo up. It also shows off one of the big strengths of the system, which is that you can have a game of mostly mundane investigations and family politics that is actually mechanically supported. Depending on your group, it's also going to be an easy sell; you don't have to gently caress around explaining what happens in Last Call and why they should give a poo poo, you can just say, 'Hey, you guys wanna play Succession? With wizard powers?' A lot of people will go for that right away. It's my favorite of the bunch as well. It meshes with the Unknown Armies as a Tim Powers novel/Coen Brothers comparisons that are often made, and sets the stakes at a level where it's easy to grasp intimidation, social hijinks, & skullduggery as your main assets (with a side of weird magic).
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Apr 20, 2023 06:16
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Halloween Jack posted:FF2 has an airship taxi that you have to walk halfway across the map to use anyway. I could never finish that game. I always felt like FF8's airship came a bit late in the game, but admittedly it is a very cool airship. (And technically a spaceship.)
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Apr 20, 2023 12:11
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imgur is banning all NSFW content in one month. Like tumblr, this rules change is going to be enforced by bots and brain dead moderators, meaning a lot of non-explicit images are going to get removed. I use imgur to host all the images in my FATAL and Friends reviews, and I know other people do too. So I need to find a new hosting platform, both for new posts and to rehost anything from old reviews that gets nuked because a robot thinks it's pornography.
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Apr 20, 2023 17:41
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mellonbread posted:imgur is banning all NSFW content in one month. Like tumblr, this rules change is going to be enforced by bots and brain dead moderators, meaning a lot of non-explicit images are going to get removed. https://postimages.org/
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Apr 20, 2023 18:44
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Breaking my bookmark reading spot to get spooked about the imgur TOS. Back up the pictures of books!
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Apr 20, 2023 19:10
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Planescape: The Eternal Boundary After considering it for a while, I think I'll just work my way through them in order of publishing, skipping The Great Modron March since it was already well-reviewed by someone else. For anyone who doesn't know, Planescape is in essence a cosmological expansion to 2e AD&D, to explain where elementals, demons, gods and the like come from, to explain what being Ethereal actually means or how Astral travel functions. Aside from this, it also comes with a hotly-debated setting(the debate generally being whether it's the best thing ever, hot garbage or a half and half mix of both) that largely centers on the politics and weird doings of the Factions of Planescape, essentially being philosophical guilds grouped around a number of strange(but largely valid) interpretations of the Multiverse. If you want to know more, it's already been reviewed and I'll happily talk your ear off about every bit of minor trivia you can think of. One of the biggest debates about Planescape, though, is, like, what do you actually do? There are a lot of answers over the years, and I feel like the modules at least represent what the developers intended. Except for Faction War. I'd say "we don't talk about Faction War," but I guess I'm going to have to review that one as well sooner or later. So let's get started with... The Eternal Boundary! Introduction  The adventure starts when the players are contracted by a faction(one they're a member of, if they're members of any), to find a madman in the Hive, an aptly-named part of Sigil consisting of twisting alleyways, spirally avenues and generally complete chaos and breakdown of any kind of civic law and order. It's generally where the dispossessed, angry and insane of Sigil gravitate to. The reason their employer wants to find this madman, Elaith, is that he was once a powerful wizard researching the location and access to a lost demiplane supposedly loaded with ancient, unlooted treasures, a place known as the Isle of Black Trees. Payment from their employer or the thought of stealing the secret for themselves should set the players off into the Hive quickly, where they have a number of ways to investigate things. The most obvious one would be to simply pay the locals and ask around, though that will attract attention. The alternative is to ask one of the two factions that have their headquarters in the Hive(they're the ones that show up to throw hands if the players are acting suspiciously, but they'll be helpful if the players are polite and come to them instead). The Xaositects don't know much, except that they haven't seen Elaith around for a while, which kind of tracks since a lot of madmen have been disappearing in the Hive recently. The Bleak Cabal, who run the Gatehouse, an asylum for the mentally ill, don't know much more than the Xaositects except that they state that the insane have been showing up dead. It's possible to get into fights with the Bleakers or Xaositects by being dickheads, but generally just being friendly and open will avoid most trouble in the Hive for now. If the players poke around a bit, they likely see one of these assassinations happening, when a mysterious wizard known as The Shadowknave(lmao) has mercenaries pin down a madman, walks up to him and strikes him "dead" with a touch. It's possible to pick a fight with the Shadowknave here, which might accelerate the adventure slightly, but it doesn't seem intended, more like he's supposed to get away so he can start trouble later. The next obvious thing is for the players to check up with the Dustmen in the mortuary, to see if they've recorded Eliath's death anywhere. A helpful Dustman, Toranna, will listen to the description, check the notes and confirm that yes, he showed up, and since he was just a nameless corpse, they slamdunked him into the portal to the Plane of Fire which they use for the paupers whose corpses they don't need for undead labour. So sorry, players can go home and tell their boss the sad news now. The Mystery Deepens  The PC's return to their employer, ready to sadly call the whole thing off and not get paid, but their employer has news for them. Someone's seen Eliath alive, now apparently completely sane and a member of the Doomguard. Apparently he was pulling some sort of wild long-con by pretending to be insane for years? Off the players, now possibly somewhat confused, go to investigate Eliath's reappearance. As reported, he's now a dues-paying member of the Doomguard. The players can try to separate him from his buddies by killing them, by stealth or by trickery, but they'll need to do so because Eliath won't tell the truth unless coerced with magic or by himself. His official story is that he's just a wizard from a Prime plane who showed up and thought the Doomguard were cool, so now he's a member. But once he's pressed, he tells something altogether more interesting... Eliath claims that he was, indeed, dead. Assassinated in a Hive alley for no clear reason to him... as darkness claimed him, he saw a vision of Lathander, the Morning Glory(a deity from the Forgotten Realms) informing him that he was not to pass beyond The Eternal Boundary just yet, but was instead being given a second chance. That he was, for reasons known only to Lathander, to join the Doomguard and await a holy sign. If the players look around a bit more, they'll see more stories like this, other madmen that they might have heard of as dead(or seen being killed!) during the first part turn up again with strikingly similar stories, perhaps even joining the party's own faction, and likewise reluctant to snitch on their god and tell the truth. There's a lot of words spent on explaining how the players can stalk Elaith, who will defend him, etc. but literally if the players just wait until he's alone and then confront him, he'll fess up without too much of a fight. It's during this part of the investigations that the Shadowknave is meant to strike, attempting to kill or abduct the players after spying on them in turn, which is one of the module's few unavoidable fights. Pretty much every other battle can be avoided by being polite and honest(or in one case very dishonest), but the Shadowknave will come gunning for the players if the party didn't stumble into and kill him earlier in the Hive. The module doesn't seem to account for the players managing to interrogate the Shadowknave, though, so for now they won't really know what's going on. Their remaining lead to Elaith is that the Dustmen claimed to have jettisoned him into the Elemental Plane of Fire, so either the records at the Mortuary are wrong or they were being lied to by Toranna. The Mortuary and Beyond Once again, the pro move is to just be honest, but if the players want to, the Mortuary is laid out as a 30-room dungeon full of undead, suspicious Dustmen, their leader(who's a lich) and all sorts of other exciting dangers(and even a few treasures!). But it turns out that, if they're captured and interrogated by Skall, the factol, he'll also glom on to something being rotten in the Mortuary and order the party to continue investigating rather than just killing them. Turns out that the Factol of the Dustmen is somewhat concerned about his faction being infiltrated. Either way, they either end up battling Toranna in front of the portal or interrogating her with Skall hovering in the background, and learning more about what's going on. If they just kill Toranna and dive right in, they won't know much, but she seems to be the first hostile NPC who knows some of the plan and which the module seems to actually plan for the questioning of. It turns out that she's a member of a group called The Illuminated. The Shadowknave was blasting the poor insane suckers in the Hive with a forced Feign Death spell and marking their "corpses" for Toranna's attention. They'd then get dumped into the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire used for corpse disposal... but which the Illuminated had positioned a magic island underneath on the Elemental Fire side, to catch the "dead," at which point they were reprogrammed with magic and lies to become sleeper agents inside a variety of Sigil's factions, to be unleashed at the Illuminated's command to bring down the entire power structure of Sigil. This is probably a bad thing, so the players will want to stop this from happening. Thankfully, the floating island on the far side of the portal is magically temperature controlled, so it doesn't instantly incinerate the party when they hop through.  Immediately on arriving on an exterior platform, the guards there, who normally just watch for "corpses" see some living people arriving and move to question them. The players can get free run of the island if they've gotten a bunch of information from Toranna, otherwise they're dumped into a tough slog through the place.  And I do mean tough. This module is intended for characters of "level 1 to 5," and holy poo poo level 1 characters would not survive this, and even level 5 characters would expect to have a tough fight on their hands. Firstly there are a dozen guards of various types, both humans and humanoids like hobgoblins, which are not a great issue, but then there's the fort's boss, Imogen, who's a level 5/5 Fighter/Mage with AC 1 making her remarkably hard to hit for a lot of characters, and a Stone Golem guarding the place. The Stone Golem starts out as non-hostile, but if Imogen gets to it, she can order it around and it will obliterate most level 5 parties. It needs +2 or better weapons to damage, has a fat chunk of HP, a Thac0 of 7(for context that means that even a PC with an AC of -3 gets hit 50% of the time, and does a staggering 3d8 damage per blow, it's also immune to all but a few, very specific, spells. If Imogen gets to the Stone Golem after being alerted, that's pretty much a game-over scenario unless the players are very clever. There are also a number of Clerics around who help reprogram the kidnapped mentally ill from the Hive into sleeper agents. So, do not start a fight, but if the players have not captured and interrogated Toranna, perhaps having snuck or fought their way through the Mortuary instead, and assassinated her at the portal without rousing the entire place, rather than clueing Skall in, that's going to be hard to do since they won't know a lot about what they're headed for. If the players get in quietly, then they have two difficult objectives ahead of them instead: There are four people in the process of reprogramming currently trapped in the fortress. One of them catatonic, the second eager to get going, and the last two convinced they're dead and stuck in some sort of purgatory awaiting judgment. Additionally, the entire place is kept habitable for normal people due to a single magic gem that the players can steal or destroy, causing the Elemental Fire to come slowly flooding in and incinerating the entire habitable bubble around the floating island. It would be a good idea to run if this is done, but will also definitely gently caress up the Illuminated's plans. But yes, you say, the players do this, Imogen goes up in smoke, the conspiracy of the Illuminated is defeated! ... ... ... no it's not. Because something the players will only learn through careful interrogation or reading the module is that the actual mastermind is Green Marvent, a guy never met in the entire module, who hangs out in Plague-Mort, one of the towns in the Outlands. Usually this means the module would end on a note of "Green Marvent will plan more evil things for the players! This could lead to something exciting!" or "The adventure continues in Green Marvent Discovers Cryptocurrency!" but no. It just ends with "give the players some extra XP if they get the captives out before the evil hideout explodes." Conclusion It's actually a pretty decent Planescape adventure in that it's low on combat, high on investigation, gets the players introduced to factions and crazy plots. The only place it somewhat breaks down is the potentially very combat-heavy ending and the way the module somewhat fizzles out without really finishing off the Illuminated after setting them up as a threat whose major, but probably not only, evil plan the players have defeated.
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Apr 20, 2023 20:41
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 7. UNKNOWN ARMIES CAMPAIGN KITS - THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM The final campaign kit is The Violence Inherent In The System by Rabbit Stoddard. In this campaign, the PCs are members of an LGBTQ+ youth group in Strawberry Hills, a poor inner city housing project. Their community has become hunting grounds for some of the worst people in the occult underground, with cosmic ramifications. Their objective is to discover and contain the Violence Inherent In The System. They are: DeMarcus Jones A teenage prophet. He's nineteen and in his fifth year of high school, not because he's dumb but because he's got a lot of other poo poo going on, like helping to take care of his cousins and the near-constant prophetic dreams which disrupt his daily life. He keeps having the same one lately, where his neighbour's parole officer turns into a horrible monster. His Prophetic Dreams identity is a vague information supernatural identity, which gives him hunches and hints about the future. Tyrell Ruiz-Jones King of the projects. Tyrell is a popular, beloved senior. He fits in everywhere and helps out everyone. He's sometimes called the king of Strawberry Hills, and that's because he is - he's an avatar of the True King. His is normally a peaceful realm, but in the last couple of weeks he's sensed the intrusion of something that poses a direct threat to his authority. Bettina Toma A butch gearhead. She dropped out of school to help in her dad's shop. He recently got a visit from the police after selling some car parts that he didn't know were stolen. She saw a dark shadow emerge from the cops who were arresting him, then the beating started. She's seen this happen multiple times now. She doesn't have an occult identity yet and the book suggests she'd be a good Firebrand avatar, but I feel like you could make a stronger case for Hacker. Tracy Rabaca A costumer and a survivor. Tracy's had a hard, weird life. As a trans teenager, she was forced to run away from home at 14, with all the problems that entailed. She was scouted and picked up by the Milk, who noticed that she'd be a fantastic avatar of the Survivor. The archetype came easily to her, but she fled the cult because she suspected they were all going to get killed at some point. Her Survivor identity is at 75%, but other Survivors don't see her as a serious contender for ascension because she has a passion for costuming and probably wouldn't be able to find her way back to civilisation if you dropped her into the Siberian wilderness. They might be wrong. She's also dating Tyrell. Rain Walgrave Classic movie fanatic. Rain recently graduated from high school and is thinking of studying film at community college. She's not 100% on that, because she doesn't know what they could teach her. She has Cinemancy at a whopping 90%, the legal maximum at character creation, and spends most of her free time watching vintage cinema at the local small theatre. Even she knows something screwy is going on in the neighbourhood. She's dating Bettina after the two of them bonded over Like Water For Chocolate. In addition, there are a dozen NPCs who form Tyrell's cast and crew and count as his subjects for magickal purposes. These are a combination of people he knows from high school and from the local community centre.  THE BIG PICTURE The Violence Inherent In The System is a mystical phenomenon that operates on a Statospheric level. It's not an archetype and it's not even sentient. It exists because the current state of reality allows it to exist; the status quo is violent and oppressive, so it produced the Violence. The Violence propagates itself through human institutions, favouring the authoritarian groups that embody its memetics. The Violence is the boot stomping on the human face forever. Worse still, there are people who know about the Violence and are seeking to exploit it. As long as it maintains its influence in the neighbourhood, confrontations with authority will always trend towards unreasonable use of force. Mr. Big Mr. Big is a member of the Ordo Corpulentis and an avatar of the True King. He is part of a movement of True King avatars who are seeking to usurp his throne in favour of the Man. The Man is an archetype that embodies autocratic tyranny. The Man owes nothing to no-one except himself. Every evil politician and CEO is a variation on the Man. Mr. Big is winning the race to become godwalker so far, sitting at a scary Avatar of the True King 97%. Because the True King still rules, he has to act like a True King and abide by those rules, but Mr. Big doesn't believe in them. He doesn't believe in the Ordo Corpulentis either. He doesn't believe in anything except himself. He's really the last person you want sitting in the Invisible Clergy. Him being a cannibal serial killer is the icing on the cake. One big missing detail on Mr. Big is that we don't know what his realm is. The book specifically cites the True King channel that lets them attack using the land itself, but the exact geography isn't mentioned. If it's anywhere near Strawberry Hills then that's the first conflict of the campaign right there. Ordo Corpulentis Oh god, I'm gonna have to explain these Book 2 groups or none of this will make sense. Okay, the Ordo Corpulentis are a heretical Christian cult of wealthy cannibals. They believe in white American hegemony, they believe in putting on as much weight as possible and they believe in eating poor people. They have a ritual called the Great Feast which lets them control the ghosts of the people they've eaten. They're rich and powerful and good at covering their tracks. They also have a very limited understanding of magick and their operations in the occult underground generally don't go beyond trying to acquire genuine 'Atlantean' artefacts to show off at dinner parties. This book puts a lot of emphasis on the Ordo as an antagonist group but it doesn't really gel with the info we get in Book 2. Mr. Big certainly wouldn't be considered a representative member of the Ordo and his ascension schemes are incompatible with their worldview. There's also only like, two dozen members and they spend most of their time funding Republican politicians. There's no mention of the Ordo's phasmata powers in Mr. Big's write-up and Mr. Big can't really eat more than a few people per year because of how the ritual works. I would just play Mr. Big as a heretic whose operations are disconnected from the broader cult. The Milk The Milk were formed when Loosh McVander met Jester Blue, former godwalker of the Suffering Man. Blue got unceremoniously dumped out of the Invisible Clergy and into a Viet Cong POW camp. When Loosh and Blue got back to the US, Blue persuaded Loosh to help him on his hair-brained scheme to take back the Statosphere. Their plan was to abduct a bunch of kids and raise them to become avatars, who would then grow up and ascend to the Clergy. It's a bad plan and it won't work, but there's still a cult of avatars who have grown up under Loosh and continue his work. Loosh is getting old and has left a lot of the operations to Ulrike Frink, avatar of the Demagogue. The role of the Milk here isn't as overtly antagonistic as Mr. Big, more like a complicating obstacle. Mr. Big is aware of the Milk and wants to start eating them because gently caress it, maybe something cool will happen. The Sleepers There are two Sleepers in the area. Gayle Graubard manages the Rainbow Library at the community centre. Mari Dilwali is a journalist and theatre director. Gayle is a faux-Sleeper, someone who does the Sleeper work but isn't connected to the conspiracy. Mari is a vrais-Sleeper, someone who is very definitely connected to the conspiracy. They might start poo poo with the cabal if they look like they're getting too close to waking the tiger. In my opinion, the Sleepers here jump to attempted murder of high school kids way too quickly.  FIRST SESSION The first session starts with a youth group meeting at the community centre. It's run by Mark 'Savannah Pryde' Sean, who is a drag queen when he's not running youth group meetings. He takes the group in a round robin chat to talk about how they're doing, what kind of problems they've been dealing with, that kind of thing. It eventually comes around to Sandrin Amjad-Ali, who has everyone else beat, because he got shot by the cops and possessed by a demon. He was minding his own business when a bunch of cops showed up and started beating him. As he was getting boots applied to his face, he heard a voice offering to help him for a price. He was possessed by the demon Abrixis, who mauled the cops and ran away. Abrixis is hanging out in Sandrin right now, but could try to leap into Mark, who will be taking Violence and Unnatural checks as the conversation goes on. Abrixis has a simple and refreshing Urge: he hates cops and wants to kill as many cops as possible. He will be willing to help anyone who wants to help him in his cop-killing mission. He also knows what's going on with things in general, because he's a demon, so just knows how magick works. He was able to get in because the presence of the Violence creates 'holes' that demons can slip through. He's also the only thing keeping Sandrin alive right now. I don't like this first session because the idea here is for the PCs to learn about what's going on through Abrixis. The book acknowledges that there's a lot of moving parts so Abrixis is there to just...explain the whole plot to the players. As a set-piece I think the meeting itself is fine, but it's just such a clumsy way to set up the stakes. If I wanted to force my players to listen to me explain Unknown Armies lore to them, I'd just tie them up in my basement and run a corkboarding session like Greg intended. CAMPAIGN PROGRESSION So the PCs know about the Violence Inherent In The System. As long as it's hanging around, it's going to cause more frequent incidences of police brutality and it's going to support Mr. Big on his quest for ascension. The book suggests several ways of dealing with it. The first is to find a way to make it incorporate in the material world and fight it directly. You probably wouldn't want to actually fight it, but you could try to trap it in an otherspace or a Room of Renunciation. I could see using an otherspace. I don't like the idea of using a Room, because the House of Renunciation has never been one of the strongest bits of UA lore and it's at its worse when there's like a kind of weird phenomenon that doesn't easily fit into one of the established cosmological categories, so you just create a Room about it. In addition, locating or creating an otherspace would be an objective in and of itself. The cabal could also try to take control of the Violence themselves. It respects power and Tyrell is a True King, so they could use the Violence for fun and profit. This is something that will actively be encouraged by Mr. Big in a Darth Sidious kind of way, because he's going to want Tyrell to help him in his quest for ascension and doing this is going to align him with the other would-be avatars of The Man. So it's not the best option. The most complicated option? Ascend some avatars. The Violence is a product of the current Statosphere, so if you change the Statosphere, the Violence goes away. You could even go whole hog and try to hit the 333 number to force a universe reset before any more jerks like Mr. Big can get in and start loving poo poo up. This would work but it's such a huge goal that it would have to be an objective, not a milestone, and I don't think the cabal can realistically achieve it without knocking out some smaller objectives first. It's like saying, 'Hey guys, I know global warming is a problem, but the solution is easy: we just have to end modern capitalism.' Yeah, it sounds nice, but it's kind of hard to fit that into a five-year-plan. The book suggests that they do in fact have a bunch of avatars who are ready to ascend: they just need to reconnect with the Milk and get them to focus on the game. Ulrike Frink has been mainly reaping the benefits of the cult of personality, but maybe she can be persuaded to embrace idealism and make a genuine play for the cosmos. I could see 'Make Ulrike give a poo poo' as a local objective, but the write-up for the Milk in Book 2 is pretty explicit in saying that the Milk's big plan is a dead-end; none of the Milk kids can ascend because they've been raised to be loyal to Loosh and Ulrike and they're mainly strengthening the hold of current archetypes instead of fostering future ascensions. Also, Frink's really eager to step into the role as the leader of a cult of child-abusing weirdos so you know, gently caress her. In addition, replacing sitting godwalkers alone doesn't actually bring the world any closer to resetting. You need 333 separate archetypes or nothing. Here's where things get messy, because the book spends most of the campaign outline is focused on how the cabals can interact with the big factions in play. This is a problem when it comes to describing the Ordo's involvement, because the way they act here is so distinctly at odds with what we already understand about the Ordo. They're presented as preying on teenagers in Strawberry Hills but the Great Feast ritual requires personally killing and cooking your victim and serving it up to at least three other Ordo members. The main utility of doing that to someone is that they become a phasmata who you can order around, so I don't think they'd want to spend that much time trying to eat a bunch of kids. It's suggested that the PCs can ally themselves with the Ordo, but again, that doesn't fit with their previous portrayal as an extremely insular group with limited involvement in the occult underground. The book says Bettina's cousin Luis Toma is being strung along by the Ordo with the possibility of becoming a member, but they're so profoundly WASP-y that if some random Latino mechanic found out about the Ordo they would probably eschew any manipulations and just have him killed. The idea is that while the PCs are trying to arrange a mass-ascension or otherspace trap for the Violence, they have to balance that with the interference of Mr. Big and the other occult organisations while also dealing with increasing violence affecting the community at large. But since the Violence is such a big weird issue, I would have preferred more advice on how the PCs can actually fight it rather than like, spending time talking to members of the Milk or whatever. Anyway, if the PCs can get rid of the Violence, then violent interactions with authority still transpire, but as a possibility rather than the default.  CONCLUSION I like the concept of the Violence. I like The Man and Mr. Big. The pregen characters are pretty good. Otherwise, The Violence Inherent In The System just doesn't have the page count to do its concept justice and spends too much time delineating interactions with big cabals that don't really make sense. You could probably do something better if you make Mr. Big a slumlord and then build the campaign around taking him out instead. WRAP-UP So that's the campaign kits! I think most of them have interesting ideas in them but the kits themselves are of questionable utility. I'm not sure if any of them have been playtested and all of them have issues with editing. Most of them are going to force you to spend a lot of time crunching numbers for NPCs. Most of them have structural issues that you need to work around. Most of them are not very good introductions to Unknown Armies. A lot them really suffer because they describe campaign set-ups that don't really make sense. There's a lot of focus placed on a session-by-session structure that assumes that PCs are going to pursue their goals in a very specific way, building up to a specific climax. Sometimes these sound like fun campaigns to go through, such as with Raiders of the Lost Mart. Others like The Violence Inherent In The System don't even seem functional on paper. Instead of giving me session-to-session breakdowns, I'd rather have a big list of milestones to go with the objective and a big list of NPCs with their stats and agendas. Maybe some suggestions for what to do when the PCs pursue obvious courses of action. That's all you really need to run a UA game. This would also help with the other problem, which is that every book is written differently. It definitely seems like every writer was given the okay to just go ahead and write a UA scenario without any kind of oversight. As a result, books like Sacred Pharma and Heroin Highway use most of their wordcount on things which aren't going to be directly useful to running the game. Lockport is a pretty good setting, but I need hard details on what Mama Cass is gonna do when the cabal starts investigating her. Khrusomancy is pretty cool, but 20 pages really isn't enough to have a whole adept school AND a campaign. Then you have the problem that a lot of these campaigns just don't feel like UA to me, like the drug lab shooutout that Heroin Highway seems to be nudging you towards. UA isn't Feng Shui so a big gunfight in the system it's not going to look like a cool action scene, it's going to look like one of the shootouts in The Wire - confusing, traumatising, people getting shot and falling down screaming, people freezing up cause they just saw a dead body for the first time, that kind of thing. And that's if the PCs even know how to use a gun in the first place! If you were going to pick any of these up, I can completely recommend Karmic Ties And Fifth Wheels. I like Raiders of the Lost Mart. If khrusomancy sounds cool to you at all, then pick up Sacred Pharma. The others, check them out if they sound cool to you, but I don't think you're missing anything. They present good jumping-off points, but whatever you do at your table with those elevator pitches is probably going to be better than what's in the book.
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Apr 21, 2023 05:45
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mellonbread posted:imgur is banning all NSFW content in one month. Like tumblr, this rules change is going to be enforced by bots and brain dead moderators, meaning a lot of non-explicit images are going to get removed. I’m pretty sure I’m safe, but I’m not 100% on that. I have an account, but it’s not a paid account. I assume a paid account is necessary to avoid being purged? There’s a project started here to archive EVERYTHING on SA that’s hosted on imgur, at least.
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Apr 21, 2023 14:12
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RIP my vampire titties.
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Apr 21, 2023 14:17
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Down With People posted:
Hah, in my opinion, a passion for costuming makes her more of a contender. Could she make her own fabric and leather? Maybe not! (Not yet, anyways.) But being able to put something wearable together out of raw materials is a skill, and it's one that anyone who wants to call themselves a survivor should have. More points if she can do good hand-sewing or if her costumes tend to focus on pre-industrial eras when she'd be expected to do it all by hand, or if she does "make it out of thrifted junk" challenges.
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Apr 21, 2023 14:59
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Down With People posted:In my opinion, the Sleepers here jump to attempted murder of high school kids way too quickly.
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Apr 21, 2023 18:04
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mellonbread posted:Murdering children because they some day might be powerful enough to oppose you is Sleeperism 101. There's a reason these people were basically wiped out during the 03 war, and it wasn't because they spread cheer and made friends wherever they went. Also the Sleepers weren't exactly paper tigers - the agents they had were effective, they had some adepts and an avatar of the Executioner - but they had built things way more on fear of force than force itself.
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Apr 21, 2023 18:20
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mellonbread posted:Murdering children because they some day might be powerful enough to oppose you is Sleeperism 101. There's a reason these people were basically wiped out during the 03 war, and it wasn't because they spread cheer and made friends wherever they went. The way the book lays it out, if the PCs act up Dilwali takes them aside and tells them to stop acting out. If they don't play ball with her, 'they have to deal with Sleepers trying to kill them for the rest of the campaign.' I've definitely had Sleepers, for example, break into a teenager's house and put a knife to his neck, but unless the PCs violently explode Dilwali with magick powers in a Maccas carpark I just don't think it's proportionate to have 1d6+3 Sleepers added to the Strawberry Hills random encounter table for the rest of the campaign. Like even if they did kill Dilwali like, oh no, not Dilwali, the journalist gutter magick person who lives in a housing project and whose main contribution to the conspiracy is to publish misinformation in the local newspaper. We better mobilise all our resources to protect her from a completely non-magickal high school dropout. tinytort posted:Hah, in my opinion, a passion for costuming makes her more of a contender. Could she make her own fabric and leather? Maybe not! (Not yet, anyways.) But being able to put something wearable together out of raw materials is a skill, and it's one that anyone who wants to call themselves a survivor should have. More points if she can do good hand-sewing or if her costumes tend to focus on pre-industrial eras when she'd be expected to do it all by hand, or if she does "make it out of thrifted junk" challenges. The big thing that makes her a contender for godwalker or even ascension isn't the costuming, it's the fact that the things she's survived have much more modern relevance than wilderness survival. She's a runaway trans kid who's dealt with homelessness and has to deal with the uh, everything else about society's approach to a homeless trans kid. That gives her a lot more symbolic resonance than some Bear Grylls wannabe. Down With People fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 21, 2023 21:37
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Down With People posted:
This jives with my reading of the Avatars/Godwalkers is the overall Archetypes haven't change, but their specific aspects adapt with changing society and for 90% of humanity, needing to know when to drink your piss and how to make deadfall traps to survive isn't... really relevant anymore.
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Apr 21, 2023 21:59
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Down With People posted:The big thing that makes her a contender for godwalker or even ascension isn't the costuming, it's the fact that the things she's survived have much more modern relevance than wilderness survival. She's a runaway trans kid who's dealt with homelessness and has to deal with the uh, everything else about society's approach to a homeless trans kid. That gives her a lot more symbolic resonance than some Bear Grylls wannabe. Does having what appears to be a stable relationship not hurt somebody on trying to avatar the Survivor?
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Apr 21, 2023 23:40
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Dawgstar posted:Does having what appears to be a stable relationship not hurt somebody on trying to avatar the Survivor?
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Apr 22, 2023 00:04
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Robindaybird posted:This jives with my reading of the Avatars/Godwalkers is the overall Archetypes haven't change, but their specific aspects adapt with changing society and for 90% of humanity, needing to know when to drink your piss and how to make deadfall traps to survive isn't... really relevant anymore. It's also explicitly that the godwalker trying to displace an archetype has to be a slightly different take on the idea, one that has become more entrenched in popular consciousness than the old one. If you're just living up to the current idea as hard as you can, well, you can't live up to it any harder than the literal embodiment of that take on it and are in fact just reinforcing their position. So being that wilderness survival type isn't productive if you're looking to ascend instead of just inhabit your well-worn groove. EDIT: Bear Grylls, Mike Rowe, Kid Rock, and many others in a competition to ascend as the Archetype of Poverty Tourism, each with their own take on it. disposablewords fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 00:23
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 Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness presents  Vampire: The Masquerade 1st editionWelcome back to another World of Dorkness deep dive. It feels strange to finally have reached this point, after starting this project nearly a year ago, and in retrospect maybe doing this book first would have resolved several questions I had from a couple of previous books (The Promised Lands and Mummy come to mind) but choices were made and here we are. Today we're going to be taking a dive back into the early 1990’s, specifically 1991. What a year 1991 was, the beginnings of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, America launching the first of what would be several Middle Eastern wars with Operation Desert Storm, the greatest sequel ever made Terminator 2 was released this year, and I was a wee child of five. But something else happened in 1991, and it’s why we’re here. I’m of course talking about the birth of the “Storyteller System” from White Wolf and specifically the release of the first game using this system, Vampire: The Masquerade. Let’s begin as we always do, with the cover.  What can I say about the Masquerade cover that others haven’t already said? It’s elegant in its simplicity, and if the fluff-piece “Documentary” about the World of Darkness that came out a couple of years ago is to be believed, the cover of this book was a major source of consternation for the team. There was another piece of art that almost made the cover of this book, although I have a feeling that if it had been used, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this review right now, we likely wouldn’t have a 5th edition of the WoD in production now, and this whole World of Darkness enterprise would have been just another cult RPG that failed to dent the armor of D&D. Hyperbolic? Maybe a bit, but if that original art piece had been used instead of the simple marble and rose that we got, I genuinely think the WoD might not have reached the peaks of popularity it did. Not to take away from the actual work contained between the covers, but a bad cover can certainly negatively affect a book, and I think White Wolf would have had a much more difficult time breaking through to the non-RPG market (IE: the Goths who bought this because it wasn’t D&D) that led them to such heights of success. The art piece in question was used on another 1e supplement and when I review that book, you’ll know because I’m going to dunk on it hard. Sadly, I can’t tell you how much the book cost at time of release and what the adjustment for inflation is because there is no price provided on the back barcode.   Credits
Written by: Mark Rein*Hagen, Graem Davis, Tom Dowd, Lisa Stevens, Stewart Wieck Development: MR*H, Andrew Greenberg, Stewart Wieck Editing: Stewart Wieck, Lisa Stevens, Stephan Wieck Design Contributors: Lisa Stevens, Chris McDonough, Josh Timbrook, Nicole Lindroos, John Brandt, Brenda Stiles, Tom Dowd, Graem Davis, Timothy Caroll, Stephan Wieck, Travis Lamar Williams, Ben Rhoades, Aaron Voss. Art: Tim Bradstreet, Chris McDonough, Ed McKeogh, Ron Spenser, Richard Thomas, Josh Timbrook Layout Design: Nicole Lindroos Production: Nicole Lindroos Cover Concept: Chris McDonough Cover Photograph: Mark Pace Calligrapher: Kurt Cagle Playtesters: The Succubus Club: Josh Timbrook, Chris McDonough, Brenda Stiles, John Brandt, Nicole Lindroos, MR*H, Stewart Wieck, Andrew Greenberg, Lisa Stevens, Anna Nappo, Seth Tepher, Stephan Weick, Kelly Golden The V-Team: Jeff Berry, Guy Wells, Gail Starr, Mark Matthews-Simmons, Christopher Lancaster, KC Lancaster The Book of Eibon Club: Stacia M Bannan, Timothy Caroll, Bryan A. Case, Michael Coyne, Shane D. Harsch, Steven Kaye, Edwin Neally, Laurel Schippers, John Schippers, Robert G. Schroder, Lowell Brandt Stouder Jr, Richard Wu, Kin Yee The Fun Connection: Andreas Mitterlechner, Stefan Kovalovsky, Ralph Schimpl Dedication: This game is dedicated to Vaclav Havel, Poet, Playwright and Statesman – who was its inspiration. quote:“We are still under the sway of the destructive and vain belief that man is the pinnacle of creation, and not just a part of it, and that, therefore, everything is permitted....We are incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions – if they are to be moral – is responsibility – responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged” Vaclav Havel to the US Congress. No “Special Thanks” to the crew in this book, as I assume it wasn’t in style just yet. I’m also amused at the “Book of Eibon” reference, as when I initially saw it, my mind immediately jumped to Fulci’s The Beyond, in which the Book of Eibon plays a role. A two second Google search reveals it to have come from Clark Ashton Smith’s writings and was also used by Lovecraft in his own works. The more you know! We get what has become a standard aspect of these corebooks, the warning: quote:Attention: Reader discretion is advised. The themes and issues described in this game may be disturbing to some and distasteful to others. Though our purpose is not to offend, our use of the Vampire as a metaphor and as a channel for storytelling may be misconstrued. To be clear, Vampires are not real. The extent to which they may be said to exist is revealed only in what they can teach us of the human condition and of the fragility of the splendor which we call life. The line “To be clear, Vampires are not real” feels like a holdover from the Satanic Panic of the 80’s and the moral outrage over the evils of D&D, and while in hindsight it’s a funny line that feels unnecessary, it’s 2023 and we’ve got people who are convinced that actual, factual devil worshipers are harvesting children for their adrenal gland secretions so maybe the authors staking (ha) that Vampires are fictional right up front in the disclaimer isn’t such a crazy idea. A Special Thanks: Anne Köhlofer and Andreas Wichter for the very first Vampire game session The City of Gary, Indiana Artists Models: Skot Lee Wilson, Dean Carlson, Tommy O’donnel, Clay Thompson, John Ganser, Denise Devorak, Denny DeBourbon, Joel Stinton. Artist Models Photographer: Keven Braasch. Thanking the city of Gary, Indiana is pretty funny considering how its described later in the book. Table of Contents:
Book One: The Becoming -Explaining the concepts, storytelling, the game rules and creating characters Chapter One: Introduction Chapter Two: Rules Chapter Three: Character Book Two: The Hunger -The use of characters: how to define them, and allow them to interact with the story Chapter Four: Traits Chapter Five: Development Chapter Six: Drama Book Three: The Riddle -Describing the role of the Storyteller, advice on how to create a setting and run a story. Chapter Seven: Setting Chapter Eight: Chronicle Chapter Nine: Storytelling Epilogue: The Release Index The eagle eyed among you will probably notice that this table of contents doesn’t line up with the usual WoD corebook ToC. We’ve got Rules and Character right up in the first three chapters with Setting and Storytelling relegated to the back of the book. While it was certainly an odd feeling to be reading this book and not have the setting chapter early on, I can’t deny that I actually liked the way this book lays out its information. It feels much more coherent than basically any of the other corebooks which went with the subsequent shuffling of chapters. I have no idea why they decided to go with the layout they eventually went with, because this layout works well. Just past the TOC we get our first Tim Bradstreet full page piece of a Nosferatu.  Before we even begin cracking into “The Damned” we’re given a one-page letter addressed to a “W.H” written by a “V.T.”. For those of you who have somehow either never read the novel or seen any adaptation of said novel, it’s a letter from Vlad Tepes Dracula to Wilhelmina Harker, the young lady who catches Dracula’s attention when he arrives in London. Dracula spends the letter apologizing for what he did to Mina and Jonathan in the novel and informs her that the work she now holds in her hands (the corebook) is the sum of his knowledge about his kind. I really enjoyed this introduction to things, it’s the first sign that this is going to be a bit of a “Everything and the kitchen sink” approach to vampires. And really, why not establish right out of the gate that Dracula is not only a historical figure but he’s also very much a vampire who (in theory at least) is running around in the WoD.  The Damned Vlad makes good on his promise to tell all he knows of his kind, and this is where we get our in-character, in-universe “History of the Setting”, much like the other corebooks. The readability of this section is excellent, with some minor exceptions. Once again, the art department went with a fancy background for these pages, and while a white marble background lends itself considerably better to reading than say the swirling souls look of Wraith, there are still a few spots where the seams of the marble obscure a bit of writing, which on top of the occasional typos and missing letters, can cause a bit of headache as you have to squint to make sure you’re reading the sentence or paragraph correctly. The Origins of the Kindred We kick off introducing the secret history of the Kindred by dropping the first reference to the Book of Nod, as well as the introduction of the Caine and Abel element of the Kindred mythology, that after Caine slew Abel, Caine was cast out and wandered the wilderness until returning to the world of men and establishing himself as the ruler of Enoch, or the First City. Caine created three progeny, the Second Generation, who then created the Third Generation, at which point Caine told everyone to knock that poo poo off. Then the great flood came and wiped out the First City. Caine took this as God punishing him for being a very bad boy and went off to wandering the Earth once more. On the way out to go get cigarettes and milk, Caine told his children to not make any more Kindred. This was promptly ignored and the second and third generations created more Kindred. This worked out great for everyone involved, as the Fourth generation rose and destroyed the Third, and eventually built a Second City, which may or may not have been Babylon. Not all of the third generation was wiped out of course, and those that remained claimed sole right to creation of new Kindred. For nearly two millennia the Fourth generation ruled the second city while the Third generation quietly controlled the Fourth generation. As history has borne out time and again, all empires eventually fall, and the Second City was no exception. With its destruction, the Kindred rulers of the city fled to the four corners of the Earth. Because they were so scattered and thus out of the grasp of their Antediluvian sires, they created the Fifth generation. The times of imperial wars between Persia, Greece and the Tatars were the machinations of the Fifth generation, meanwhile the Antediluvians were still scheming and plotting in secret as they do, and in time they rose again to devour their children like Saturn. This is known as the end of the Second Cycle, a legend that says that every 2300 years the Antediluvians will rise to devour all their children as the blood of mortals can no longer slake their thirst. This coming apocalypse is known as Gehenna. The elders of the Fifth and prior generations are, according to Vlad, in complete seclusion while the Sixth generation and its descendants are the vampiric face of the modern world. We’re also told about rumors regarding Thirteenth and Fourteenth generations, Kindred who “Must be very weak and close to mortality, for it is said that the Blood thins as it is passed from one generation to the next” The Masquerade 1435 saw the launch of the Inquisition, a bad time for just about everyone in Europe who wasn’t wealthy enough to protect themselves, and as it turns out, a really bad time for the Kindred as well. quote:“It was a terrifying time – as fearful as the great Holocaust which mortals visited on one another earlier this century” I get the point they’re trying to make in comparing the Inquisition and its effects on the Kindred to the Holocaust, but Jesus loving Christ. The Inquisition was a horrific period of human history in and of itself, we didn’t need to drop the Holocaust into this as a comparison. Out of the flames of the Inquisition arose the Camarilla, the major governing body of the Kindred society, with its first global convocation taking place in 1486. While this first gathering hammered out the new laws for Kindred society, only one of those laws remains to the present day, the tradition of the Masquerade. The Masquerade was a twofold approach, the first aspect was the simplest, secrecy. Kindred were to keep their feedings secret and not let the mortals know that they existed. Any who broke this law would be cast out and hunted down. The second aspect was to change the way mortals viewed the world. With great minds already making advancements in human understanding and artistry, this second aspect was considerably easier than expected. After all, superstition dies in the cold light of science and reason. Vlad informs us that while the Kindred certainly have had a hand in many historical events and movements, many were just plain old mortals being mortals. Karl Marx is specifically said to have been mortal, and once again the Holocaust is referenced quote:“Brief decades later, monstrous deeds were performed in Europe, but none of my kind were involved. Those monsters were entirely your own” I know I've said this in previous reviews, but I appreciate that the writers took the hard line, even here in the very first WoD book that the Nazi’s and their atrocities were just straight up human beings doing evil and not supernatural beings. It’s a minor thing to be sure, but it's a step in the right direction. As it turns out the hippies and the New Age movement have been a bit of a detriment to the Camarilla, as mortals have begun to swing back towards mysticism and the mystical, the Camarilla has countered by making the tropes of vampire fiction more prevalent to help cement the idea that vampires don’t exist.  Childer As there is a generational conflict amongst mortals, so too is there generational conflict amongst the Kindred, with the younger generations chafing at the laws and restrictions of the Elders. These younger Kindred are collectively known as Anarchs. The Anarchs are pissed at the Elders for being dusty old fogies, while the Elders are terrified of the Anarchs because they know those little shits want their sweet, sweet Elder blood. On the Nature of Vampires While folklore may tell us that staking, decapitation and burning of a Vampire is enough to destroy them, Vlad points out that yeah, no poo poo, you cut off anyone’s head and set them on fire they’re going to die, Kindred or not. Wooden stakes don’t kill a Kindred, neither do bullets, although neither is particularly fun for a Kindred to have to experience. The sun, however, is as deadly to the Kindred as the stories make it out to be, while holy water, crucifixes and other religious iconography have no effect on their own, and only in the hands of one who has a deep belief (some would call it a True Faith) can cause a Kindred to be repelled by a holy item. Likewise, garlic and running water have no effect. Shapeshifting into a wolf, bat or mist is a power held by some Kindred, specifically the Gangrel clan or very powerful elders. Vlad points out that the likely source of much of the confusion regarding vampire folklore vs reality stems from Ghouls, mortals who have been fed some Kindred blood and thus gain immortality (so long as they continue to drink of Kindred blood) and some powers of the Kindred from which they’ve fed. While Ghouls may have many of the upsides of being a Kindred without the downsides (such as being able to walk around in the daylight and eat food) they are not nearly as indestructible as the Kindred are, and ghouled animals are likely the source of many of the vampiric animal legends. The Embrace While legends often say that the bite of a vampire is enough to cause the victim to change, Vlad informs us that if this were so, wouldn’t the world be completely populated by Kindred? The process of creating a new Kindred is known as the Embrace and requires the Kindred to drain the mortal of all their blood, and before death claims the mortal, they must imbibe some of the Kindred’s blood. Vlad tells us that his own embrace was a bad loving time, of the comfort of the light at the end being ripped away as the vitae trickled down his throat, awakening the Beast. Vlad essentially trails off here, unwilling to remember or speak more about his first nights as a Kindred.  Anatomia Vampirica Kindred do indeed have sharpened canines, however they retract when not being used, so that probably helps the Masquerade quite a bit, and they are extremely pale, except after feeding. The body of a Kindred remains as it was upon death, the hair and fingernails no longer grow, and any changes to a vampire's appearance such as a new haircut must be handled each night as it will regenerate while they sleep. The lungs no longer function on their own, nor do their hearts, however the blood they consume somehow travels through the body, Vlad thinks it might be through osmosis, but as he points out, because a Kindred body rapidly decays upon final death, there’s no real way to know what’s actually going on in their bodies when they consume blood or to know how or if the organs simply rot away inside or are preserved by the same effect of the blood that causes reanimation. And yes, Vampires can gently caress, but it doesn’t do much for them, as the ecstasy of feeding (or the Kiss as it’s called) far surpasses any physical sensations that sex could provide. Which begs the question, if Kindred have nothing in their bodies but the blood of their victims that keeps them up and moving, if a Kindred does gently caress, are they coming blood? They cry blood, so I assume they’d come blood. Which aside from being a Cannibal Corpse song title, sounds like it would be really loving painful. The Hunger The core of being a Vampire is the never-ending hunger, the drive to attempt to satiate that which can never be satisfied. On top of the hunger is the Beast, the thing within the Kindred that drives them towards monstrousness. Hunger enrages the Beast, and so the riddle of the Kindred is laid bare, “Beast that I am, lest Beast I become”. Madness The constant struggle against the Beast and the horrors that a Kindred must inflict upon the world to survive, as well as the shame and horror at the things they have committed to survive is enough to drive anyone mad. Some Kindred turn their focus to an obsession like gambling or collecting art to distract from their guilty consciences, while others choose to live and hunt in sparsely populated areas as a way to convince themselves they’re doing the world a favor. Unfortunately for the Kindred however, as their Humanity begins to slip further and further away, the Beast gains greater and greater control, until finally the Kindred has lost all that tied them to what they once were, leaving only a ravening monster in its place. But there is some hope of course, there are those that speak of Golconda, a sort of state of ultimate balance between the man and monster within. Vlad claims that in his near five centuries of existence, he’s only met a few Kindred who have achieved this state of grace. Time Vampires are, much like folklore has taught us, immortal, although this immortality is conditional on not meeting the sunrise, or a pack of hunters with more firepower than a Kindred can effectively absorb. While mortals have long dreamed of conquering death, the Kindred by contrast have done so, but at the cost of their humanity and the eventual loss of all mortals they have ever known or loved. With time comes detachment, and with detachment comes the claws of the Beast. Vlad tells us that like mortal soldiers returning from war suffering PTSD, sooner or later the sins committed by a Kindred will eat away at them, driving them closer to madness and into the waiting jaws of the Beast inside them.  Vita Sub Tenebras Besides the whole sunlight killing them thing, Vampires are active at night because it grants them the advantage over their prey who are unable to see as well in the dark and are less rested than the predators stalking them. The general lower density of foot traffic at night is another advantage that allows the Kindred to feed in some amount of seclusion and safety from being interrupted. The World of the Vampire While some vampires shun the society of their brethren, there is indeed a Kindred society under the surface of mortal society, and it can be assumed that any city likely supports some form of Kindred society within its shadows. Princes are generally the leaders of cities, and it is expected that any new Kindred into a city will make themselves known to the Prince as a courtesy. Ignoring this tradition is both rude and a good way to get a bunch of Camarilla goons hunting you down. Kindred society has two primary factions, the Camarilla and the Sabbat, or “The Black Hand” who control most of the east coast of the United States. All Kindred are assumed to be members of the Camarilla unless embraced by the Sabbat or openly throwing in with the Anarch movement. The Camarilla upholds the Traditions and the Sabbat give no fucks about the traditions (and we’ll get into both the Sabbat and the Traditions later). As noted previously regarding the creation of Ghouls, Kindred blood is powerful and can also influence other Kindred, as a vampire who drinks another vampire’s blood on three occasions becomes Blood Bound to the one they drank from. Blood Bonds aren’t taken lightly, though some Sire’s will bind their Childer without informing them of what is being done. A willing Blood Bond is to give over one’s mind and heart to another Kindred. While this has the potential to be a beautiful expression of two Kindred’s connection to each other, it’s also a very dangerous potential method of control. Diablerie As a vampire grows older, they grow stronger, however their blood begins to weaken to a degree. While a young Kindred can survive on the blood of animals if needed, the Kindred of earlier generations (like the fourth or fifth generations) are so old that mortal blood can no longer sustain them, and they must subsist on the blood of other Kindred to survive. So, while the rumors fly of the Antediluvians devouring their Childer, an enterprising younger Kindred can gain power through the consumption of the blood of an Elder. This is known as Diablerie, and effectively bumps a Kindred up a generation, so that if a 12th Generation Kindred diablerized an 11th Gen, they would become an 11th Generation. Of course, this ignores that Diablerie is considered a grave sin and those who indulge in such a practice are hunted and killed when found out. Last Plea Vlad signs off, once again simply asking that Mina pray for him as his crimes against her are too great to beg forgiveness, noting that he has changed in the time since Mina saw him last as he has been on the path to Golconda, and while he assures Mina he will make no further attempts at contact beyond what he has presented to her in the book in hand, he does remind that his services are Mina’s to command and that “I can be reached through the personal columns of any major European newspaper” This section closes properly with a quote from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: quote:Now, reader, I have told my dream to thee: Broadly speaking I really enjoyed this opening segment of the book. There are several German and Latin terms thrown in throughout that feel more appropriate in this context than it did when reading the same segment of the Wraith corebook. Dracula being a pretentious dork who drops random phrases from other languages into his ramblings just makes more sense to me. As a super broad overview of the game, this segment does a good job of establishing things, and while my own commentary and summarizing has been humorous and a bit flippant, the actual writing in this section is some of the best writing I’ve come across in the WoD book so far, and it absolutely drips with atmosphere.  Book One: The Becoming Before we move into the first chapter, we have a bit of first-person narrative fiction from the perspective of a mortal undergoing their embrace. It’s good, short and sweet and ends with the wonderful lines “This be death, the unmaking” We also have some Indigo Girls lyrics that are very appropriate: quote:My blood is running dry, Hell yeah Tim Bradstreet full page art!   Chapter One: Introduction While I won’t be adding every quote used in the book, I will present the ones that personally strike me as being appropriate or interesting. And with that in mind: quote:“Therefore with the same necessity with which the stone falls to earth, the hungry wolf buries its fangs in the flesh of its prey, without the possibility of the knowledge that it itself is the destroyed as well as the destroyer” -Schopenhauer Our first page of introduction is the typical “This is a game of storytelling” spiel we’ve seen in every other corebook introduction; however, I really liked this bit of explanation about the game: quote:“The horror of Vampire is the curse of what it is like to be half-beast, half-angel, trapped in a world of no absolutes, where morality is chosen, not ordained...To play this game, you must bear witness to the madness within you, that which you strive to master and overcome, that which you cannot bear to face. Unless you are willing to face the reflection of your own imperfections, then this game is not for you” The rest of this page is a solid pitch about what you are as a Kindred, which ends with a paragraph that sums up the vibe of this edition of the game perfectly: quote:“Though you face great peril, there is no doubt that you are a creature of immense power. Your mystical powers are vast and potentially unparalleled. The only thing over which you do not have complete control is yourself. Your limitations lie not in what you can do, but in who and what you are. The Beast that lurks within you may rise up at any time, destroying all that you touch and dare to love. It is you yourself, not the perils and enemies you face, who makes your life a nightmare. Storytelling The same spiel about oral tradition and how we no longer tell stories to each other, instead consuming stories that have been presented to us via the media.  Roleplaying Once again, essentially the same as all the previous corebooks, explaining that Vampire is more than just a storytelling game, it is also a role-playing game, roleplaying was a childhood activity, cops and robbers, rules are there to mitigate arguments, etc. The Storyteller The storyteller is the person running the game, yada yada yada, I’ve read these paragraphs in four other books at this point, and it really hasn’t changed from book to book. The Players The folk playing the characters in the story, again the same information covered in the other books, however the suggested group size to run Vampire is one ST and three players. Characters Who the players control. Winners and Losers There are no real winners or losers in the traditional sense, instead the true measure of success is the survival of the characters. Playing Aids Pencils and paper are needed for play at a table along with dice, however the ST can bring additional props to enhance the experience. Live Action In this case the LARP aspects as described in this short segment as more of a periodic addition to the table play, with additional information for ST’s provided later in the book on how to integrate LARP elements into the chronicle, instead of treating LARP as a separate game entirely from the table top experience.  Vampires Players take on the roles of Vampires (obviously, that’s literally the name of the game) who are newly created “Fledglings” who have recently been released by their Sires into the complicated and dangerous world of the Kindred. A lucky few may succeed in regaining their mortality, while others may take on the quest for Golconda, though most will never know of either. It’s assumed the player characters will be friends in some capacity and operate as a group, though this does not assume that the PC’s will always get along. Groups of vampires who watch each other's backs and have a common ambition are known as Broods or alternatively, Coteries. Additional information is provided in the Settings chapter. Regaining your mortality? Holy poo poo, is that a thing you can do in Vampire? Honestly, that line and then the bits later in the book that deal with how to handle that kind of story as well as the stuff about Golconda were the biggest surprises as I read this. I’ll have more to say about each of these elements later in the review. The Becoming The Embrace is not something a Kindred forgets, as it is usually a painful and traumatic experience. Once embraced, the PC’s take on the heritage of their Sires, IE: the Clan which affects the Disciplines that the player can take. Clan can inform how two players react to each other, as sharing a Clan could provide the players an excuse to work together. Until a new vampire or Neonate is released by their Sire and presented to the Prince of the city, they are not accepted in formal Kindred society. The Hunger Vampires need blood to survive, and mortal or animal blood will suffice, however death of the vessel is not always required, though older Kindred can sometimes lose control of their bloodlust and drain a victim dry. Kindred generally need to feed at least once or twice a week, and in game terms, this is handled by “Blood Points”, and the more points (the normal max is 10) the character has, the more alive they seem and the further from starvation and frenzy they are.  Nature of the Beast Vampires may look human, but they are inhuman creatures that simply wear the mask of Humanity. Their basic needs differ from the average mortals, and while we can go to the grocery store when we need food, the Kindred must slake their thirst on mortal blood. Vampire Powers -Fangs Kindred (the majority at least) have retractable fangs that allow for the easy puncturing of flesh and arteries. Licking the wound will close it and leave no trace of the feeding on the victim. This applies to any wounds caused by the Vampire’s fangs or claws. -Blood Vampires can heal themselves by drawing on the blood they have consumed, even regenerating limbs or organs, given enough time. The blood also allows Vampires to perform inhuman feats such as lifting a car or leaping onto the roof of a house from the ground. -Disciplines The name for the supernatural powers possessed by the Kindred, there are ten disciplines that players can choose from. Clan Disciplines are the powers associated with a particular Clan, however as a Kindred grows in power, they can learn other Disciplines as well.  Vampire Weaknesses -Sunlight Vampires sleep during the day and are active at night because the sun can kill them. Mechanically speaking, every turn a Vampire character is in the sun, they receive the equivalent of a third-degree burn. They may even burst into flames. And speaking of fire, fire bad and can also kill a vampire. During daylight hours, the Kindred are sluggish and find it extremely difficult to take action. -Frenzy Vampires are predators with a predator's instincts, and this conflict between their Humanity and their new instincts creates much of the drama and chaos inherent to being a Kindred. When a Kindred enters a Frenzy, the Beast has broken free within them for a time, and they become uncontrollable destroyers. -Humanity Humanity is a vital aspect of every Kindred character. As they lose their connection to their Humanity, the Kindred becomes more monstrous until they have been completely overtaken by their Beast. -Pursued by Mortals You are a monster. And there are mortals that not only believe in monsters, but know they exist. These hunters are one of the most dangerous foes the Kindred will encounter. -Hunted by other Vampires Some Elders hunt their own, and the Antediluvians are so old that it is said they cannot survive on vitae other than that of other Kindred.  Misconceptions -Wooden Stake A wooden stake to the heart will not kill a vampire, instead it immobilizes them and makes it much easier to kill them. -Mirrors Vampires can see their own reflections, though some pretend not to in homage to the cinematic tradition. And speaking of cinema, yes Kindred appear on film, and some have even been in movies. -Holy Symbols While some can fend off a vampire with a brandished cross, 99% of the time it's not going to do anything. When it does work, however, it’s less the symbol itself and the more the essence of the person holding the object. Whether this is due to the person's inherent holiness or some supernatural power affecting the Kindred is not known. -Enter without invitation Vampires do not need to be invited in and can come and go as they please. -Running Water Vampires can cross running water no problem. -Garlic While some Kindred may not like the smell, broadly speaking it has no effect on vampires as far as being a ward against them.  The Book of Nod The earliest history of the Kindred is contained in the legendary tome, The Book of Nod, named for the lands east of Eden where Caine first traveled after his exile. The book is said to contain the records of Caine’s rise and fall from power as well as the birth of the Kindred bloodlines. With that said, no one is sure if the Book of Nod is real or just a fabrication. The Anarchs think it's bullshit and the only ones who would know the veracity of the book are the Antediluvians, and there are doubts about the validity of their existence as well. What follows is two pages of pseudo-biblical poetry relating to the Caine story. It begins: quote:“In the beginning there was only Caine. Cain spends a chunk of time alone, returns to the world of men, and crowns himself king of Enoch. In his loneliness, he embraced progeny who embraced further progeny. Then the flood came, and Caine hosed off for parts unknown. These third generation Kindred then rose up and slew the second generation. After this, the 13 clans were sired and everything was hunky-dory until Kindred do what Kindred do and started fighting with each other. The passage ends thus: quote:“Once this war was over, And that concludes chapter one. The bulk of this chapter is the same stuff that has been in every introductory chapter of the previous corebooks, with a bit of additional expansion on some of the ideas presented in The Damned section preceding it. Annoyingly, it doesn’t explain what a frenzy is under the weaknesses bit, most of that was stuff I added myself because for whatever reason they slapped “Frenzy” under weaknesses and then didn’t bother to say what the hell it is. Which is silly considering how heavily this game relies on frenzy checks. In spite of the bulk of this chapter being essentially the same as the other corebook introductions, I enjoyed the actual writing of this segment quite a bit, and the two pages from the Book of Nod is very cool and does a good job of adding atmosphere to things, without going too crazy deeply into the Caine myth. I also like that the book has, in both Vlad’s introduction as well as the blurb about the BoN, noted that no one is entirely sure if the drat book exists at all, or if it’s accurate, let alone if the Antediluvians exist or not. Personally, I like the Caine myth aspect of this game quite a bit, and while Caine and the Antediluvians are essentially God-tier NPC’s if you were to bring them to the table, they make for excellent world flavor. With that having been said, if the Caine myth is the truth of how the Kindred came into existence, then that means Jehovah is real, and that opens an entirely new can of worms regarding the rest of the cosmology of the World of Darkness. Is Jehovah stronger than the Triat? Are they of equal standing? Is the Caine myth just a load of horseshit made up by a bunch of lying fiends who will say anything to scare the younger generations into submission, so they don’t rise to eat them? Who knows! Tomorrow: Chapter Two
joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Apr 26, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 18:00
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The image springs forth of Vlad Tepes furiously trying to figure just how many Backgrounds there should be.
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Apr 23, 2023 19:26
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Dawgstar posted:The image springs forth of Vlad Tepes furiously trying to figure just how many Backgrounds there should be. You have no idea how hard I had to fight the urge to attribute every Dracula quote as "Dracula, loving Nerd"
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Apr 23, 2023 19:32
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oVampire seemed to kind of take the DC Comics tack of "Christian theological/teleogical thought is basically correct even if the details are not," which I personally don't care for but was internally consistent and mostly stands out because Vampire the Masquerade probably lasted a lot longer as a "thing" than anyone planned. Werewolf of course immediately and fundamentally reverses this. They can't both be right, but on the other hand, it ultimately doesn't matter that much. I remember the Black Furies had some sort of conception of "the Patriarch" as an Incarna spirit that represented ol' Hashem and his permutations, but the Black Furies, while very sympathetic in many ways, were not necessarily unbiased observers.
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Apr 23, 2023 20:53
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Nessus posted:Werewolf of course immediately and fundamentally reverses this. "Which cosmology is correct" in WoD has the same answer to a comic book "who would win in a fight" with it being "whose book is it." Wraith and Changeling don't really overlap with each other. Changelings come from Arcadia and Wraiths have the Shadowlands which the other lines acknowledge. (Of course if mages acknowledge it, they no doubt imply the others are Doing It Wrong.  )
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Apr 23, 2023 22:56
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joylessdivision posted:
I know you'll get into some of this later, but some of this comes off as a little disingenuous at first glance. In even the 1st edition NWoD a combat-focused baseline human (AKA what you built before you added the Vampire/Mage/etc template) vs a vampire who wasn't combat-focused could be a tense fight. In this version with the way Celerity/Potence and other Disciplines worked? Forget it. Which means the humans would have to "cheat" by going after Vampires in the daylight and using fire or Dragonbreath shotguns. Meanwhile the biggest threat from Elders wasn't getting eaten by them so much as getting pulled into their schemes with the idea that Elder A would gleefully sacrifice a younger Coterie against Elder B to avenge some pissant slight from two and a half centuries ago.
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Apr 23, 2023 23:02
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 I'm trying out postimages.org for this post, let's see how it works. Last we left off, we broke the game. Let's start this time with something a little more serious before we get into how to make a world and character for Fabula Ultima. Gorup Dynamics. Oh, I mean, Group Dynamics. Sorry, the bookmark for this page is misspelled in the original document. It's not a big deal, but it's something that makes me smile whenever I see it. In the off chance you're reading this, Emanuele, don't fix this. It's pretty great. So, what are group dynamics? It's basically a set of rules on how to behave as human beings. I wish we didn't have to have something like this in most TTRPG books, but sadly, we do. Fabula Ultima is a game about heroism, optimism, and fighting back against the tragic and dark nature of the world, not delving into such things and emphasizing them. But people are... People, so we're going to lay some ground rules here. First, mutual trust and respect. If you don't respect the people you play with, or vice versa, find a new group, full stop. This is where normally we'd say communicate, and that's good advice, but without the foundation of respect, no conversation will change anyone's mind. It's perfectly normal for people to get heated and emotional in dramatic moments. It's fine to get spooked by another Player's actions in-game, but be excellent to each other. There's no excuse not to. Second, this game and its fiction must not replace human interaction. This isn't talking about staying inside all day and doing nothing but playing Fabula Ultima with your friends. If that floats all your boats, do just that. No, this is about not letting IC actions dictate OoC ones, and vice versa. It's a game. We get into our games, we get invested in characters, and sometimes we might not like the people we're playing with right this moment. Maybe Dean pissed Rachel off when the former's character stabbed a guard that was just doing their job instead of knocking them out. But that doesn't mean Rachel should attempt to get even IRL. Never use the game as a tool for making a point or getting back at someone, and never use it as an excuse, either. If everyone is getting fired up about something, and it's not an issue of people respecting and caring about each other, take a breather. Take five. Relax, and come back to this with a more calm and open mind. Third, a familiar, common concept: Lines and Veils. While this concept may have been coined in Sex and Sorcery, that doesn't mean they can't apply to less sensual (or not, it'd be pretty weird for most of our tables I presume) things. They're good safety tools. Are there better? Arguably. But it's still a good setup, if nothing else. For those who don't know, when you're beginning a game (or after a session that made someone uncomfortable, or even in the middle, if it's that bad), everyone should be asked where their Lines are. When someone draws a line, they're saying they don't want a story element in the game at all. Period. Not even discussed. For example, if someone's line is slavery, there will be no slaves. On screen, off-screen, or even mentioning that a country you'll never go to practices slavery. If someone puts a veil over a topic, instead they're okay with the concept EXISTING, but not being explicitly described. In the last example, if someone puts a veil on slavery, they're fine with slavery being a thing in the world. It can influence character decisions, be something that is involved with backstories, but there won't be any explicit slavery on-screen. If you're playing with people you've never met before, Lines and Veils are a really useful way of defining what is and isn't okay (and what's sorta okay) before you ever start running a game with them. But it's also useful even with people you know very well. Being close to someone doesn't mean you should violate their boundaries, or vice versa. This is important: When using Lines and Veils, or any other safety system, it is no one's business why someone draws a line or puts a veil on a topic. It doesn't need to be explained and the person who doesn't want something in the game doesn't owe anyone an explanation. If it's a total deal-breaker for a group, well, that's why this is done before a game begins. Better to shake hands and find a new player than to try to force someone to do what they're not comfortable with for your own sake. There are plenty of players out there, trying to make a point about someone's boundaries is a lovely thing to do all around. This section is at the end of the rules, instead of the beginning of character creation. I didn't like that at first, but after thinking about it, it makes total sense. These aren't suggestions. These aren't just good ideas. These are part of the rules, and probably the most important ones saved for last. That all said, let's move on to- Wait hold on we're not done okay PvP: Don't. But if you do... Don't. Okay, though if you end up in a situation where two PCs are bumping heads and there's no sensical method in the story to make them put up and shut up, first let the Players try to resolve it. If they can't, the GM needs to moderate. Decide this with an Opposed Check. Do not roll ANYTHING until everyone understands the stakes and what will happen of someone wins this roll or loses this roll. There can be no argument about the results once it's done. The dice have spoken, and Dread Arrengee must be propitiated for the good of Secrets: Sometimes, it's dramatically appropriate for PCs to keep secrets from one another. Listen, that's cool. Having secrets is a good thing for the story. But while as cool as someone might think it'd be if they temporarily switched sides because they're in love with the Villain, that has a great track record of obliterating trust at the table, and that in turn kills the table. Be open and frank about your secrets. If someone can't keep OoC knowledge OoC, they don't need to be playing TTRPGs. This is a collaborative game, as any TTRPG, and while I don't agree with the book on this point 100%, being a lone wolf OoC is just as bad as being one IC. Lone wolves aren't cool. They're cringe. And I use that word completely unironically. Deal. Leaving the Group: Sometimes, a character's arc is finished, and you don't know what to do with them anymore. You can always retire the character! A new character with the same level and XP can be made for this, and though the book doesn't say, I'd say allow them an amount of Zenit to spend equal to what their other character had in item's worth, AND what's on their sheet. Fair is fair, and Rare Items are part of a character as much as their stats and skills! If you want to bring a character back because you changed your mind, or feel it'd be relevant, just build them up to match the rest of the group and come up with a reason why they're coming back IC too. No big deal! We're here to have fun. But if you have multiple PCs, you can only play one at a time! More than that is unfair for the GM, who should be having fun too. Absent Players: No one really likes dealing with this, but it happens. Jodie has an important event coming up. Ren is cramming for finals. Derik just isn't feeling it today. It sucks. It happens. The Player should decide what happens next, if everyone agrees that rescheduling isn't something they want to do. Either they'll Join You Later, in which case their character stays safelyt in town with all their items and does whatever behind the scenes, and they'll meet up with the group (hopefully to save the day!). They should describe what they were doing while away from everyone, and how they got back with them when the Player comes in again. The other option is I'll Be In Your Care, where the PC becomes a sort of NPC everyone in the party (EXCEPT the GM) can play as. They cannot spend Fabula Points and will automatically Surrender if they hit 0 HP, but the GM should think twice about applying Surrender penalties to someone who wasn't even around to make decisions. The Party needs to protect them, and the GM should understand this character is not a toy. Regardless, the character cannot gain Fabula Points from a session while the Player is absent, but they DO get EXP (and their own proper share of the loot!)  As an apology for the walls of text, have this lovely full-page art!  Chapter Three: Press StartHere we are! We did it! It's time to start this sucker! Let's get into this with Session 0! ... Let's not. We know what Session Zero is. Right? C'mon. Ugh, fine. Session Zero is when everyone gets together for a meeting, to discuss what they want to see in the setting, what they DON'T want to see in the setting, and what the campaign is going to be about. What the themes are! The GM needs to get to know characters, and the Players need to get to know each other if they don't already. There's also when you're going to meet up. The day and time. Best to have a schedule here, and get that pain out of the way first. If you can't all make it at one time, maybe one of you needs to find another group. Again, best to learn that now. It's also when you decide what optional rules you want! The GM does NOT have final say in this situation. If the GM wants to include an optional rule that makes things harder for the Players, and they don't want that rule, tough poo poo. You're outvoted. The basics aside, though, Session Zero in Fabula Ultima is a little special: The GM doesn't make the world alone, no, the Players are involved too! Here's how- Schmuck the Player, holding everyone up posted:Wait! I changed my mind! I want to change this! Anyway, you'll now need a World Sheet and a Map Sheet. Character sheets for the World and Map, you say?! What is this madness?! They have a world sheet here, and there are two map sheets inside it. There's also a couple fanmade ones over on updootland. The Players and GM all work together to make a world. How the Eight Pillars apply to it, what it looks like, where major cities or landmarks are, but special attention to these three things:  seriously that culture sounds rad as gently caress So we have a flowchart here, and I'm worried that I'm not stuffing enough images here, and it means I don't have to type as much, so, gently caress it.   This is the 50th image in this writeup, not counting the Header. I really should have thought about this milestone harder. Is your table an entire group of Flat-Earthers? Well, since you decided to escape your fantasy land to another fantasy land, this game has your back! You can totally make this world flat! Once you've decided whether your world is round, a torus, or specs of memory floating in an infinite void (does anyone else agree a game in the Loop Hero setting would be really cool), grab a map sheet that works for you... Or make your own! Of course, it should be a collaborative effort, and if you don't mind playing a game in order to play your game, The Quiet Year is a phenomenal way to set up a campaign. I've done it for a Pokerole game and an Exalted game, and the players loved it. So did I. Go buy The Quiet Year. Now. Ahem. You need to decide what a Travel Day is, too. If you're using a hex-grid on your map, how many miles/kilometers a hex contains is important. After that, decide the roles for magic and technology. They're almost always at odds, in JRPGs, and maybe you want that. Maybe you don't. But deciding the general tech level of the setting is important anyway. Now we got NATIONS. Where's the Empire? What's this over here with this giant tree? Hey, do we want a desert nation in here? Everyone needs to contribute at least one nation to this, and everyone should talk about how these nations feel about each other. There's no need to go whole hog, but some details about their culture and the people (and monsters) who live there can go a long way to making the world feel more alive. Are there some historical events? Hell yes, there are, and all of them involved a guy named Urist. Come up with some of these. They need to be important enough that they really changed the world. Everyone knows about them unless they're under a rock. Everyone could name them and shudder at the remembrance. But then we get some known unknowns. Every world, even ours, has mysteries. What do people in the world wonder about? What prophecies are there (that are always 100% true) and myths in the world (that were actually performed by super advanced and long dead cultures)? Finally... What in the world wants to destroy it? You're playing a JRPG in TTRPG form, there's gonna be a couple, and they probably have tragic backstories they'll be happy to monologue at you about. A common theme through all these steps is that every Player has a voice, and needs to use it. This is a game where you all make a story together, so everyone needs to... Do that. But if someone at the table can't decide, or has a hard time being put on the spot, this game has a bunch of tables to roll randomly on for them, or to pick and choose from. Hell, pick ALL of them, the book wants to say that all these things can coexist on the same world. Especially:   Now, you make a GROUP. The Group is an important concept but not really. It's what brings your characters together, and how the Players want to end up exploring the world, but some of them are just bad ideas. Being Brought Together By Fate is cool, it's pretty standard JRPG (hell RPGs period) stuff, but Guardians? It says one of the PCs is a Chosen One, and the other Players are their bodyguards. This is a dumb idea. I like FFX. I really do. But it is not really possible to make a TTRPG Campaign around unless you have some Players who can really handle this concept. Making a PC the Chosen One is a recipe for disaster. Heroes Of The Resistance and Revolutionaries seem to be the same thing: Underdogs of a desperate fight against a greater evil. It doesn't even try to make a distinction between Imperialism and sadistic demonic forces of hell, which is good because there isn't any anyway. Seekers is interesting, in that it presents a somewhat darker scenario: You're a group of people all looking for something that may be the world's last hope. All of these have clarifying questions to ask, to help flesh out the world yet more, and the situation the PCs are in. They're all fairly basic: Brought Together By Fate includes exactly the questions you'd think it does: What emotional or familial connections exist between your characters (Who is secretly who's sister), Have your characters met in the past and are there rivalries from those times, and What do you all have in common for beliefs, enemies, or past experiences? ... This sounds less like a JRPG and more like Stephen King's IT (specifically the one starring Tim Curry, didn't really like the newer one on account of not having Tim Curry). Once you've got your group set up, here we are. Character Creation. For all the build up to it, Character Creation is actually very simple. You can probably bang out a character in ten minutes if you know what you're looking for already. If you're new to the game, you can probably make one in half an hour to an hour. So how do you do this? We have another flowchart, but in the legendary words of The Closer, gently caress That. Let's do this the hard way. First, Identity! I talked about this before, but think of it as like the Core/High Aspect in Fate. This is a short sentence that describes your character, except none of the examples are sentences, they're sentence fragments. An Identity is specifically who they are as related to what they DO, their position in the world. Some examples:  don't halfass this be a no-eye samurai this game doesn't have penalties for being blind Identity is extremely important, because everything about your character builds off of it. If you're a Royal Knight, that will decide a lot of things. You're probably honorable, you probably have several levels in Guardian, your Bonds likely involve Loyalty somewhere, even if it's to someone who isn't alive anymore. It also can be Invoked to reroll dice in Checks, which is way better than Invoking Bonds. Identity might change over the course of a game, because... People change. They develop and transform (sometimes literally) into a new person, with a new outlook on life. Next is your Theme. The suggested themes I posted before are also here. These are a strong emotion or moral that guides them. Like Identity, it can be Invoked for rerolls, and like Identity, it can change over time. Finally, your character's Origin is literally where they're from. This is a big part of why Nations were already built: you probably have a good idea of where you want your character to be from. Just like the last two, this can be Invoked for rerolls. Next, you start with five levels. Time to put them places. You need to pick 2 or 3 classes, you can't put all your levels in one Class, or have them all spread over five different classes. There are fifteen classes, so there's something for everyone, and there's already been playtest materials for at least 6 more! Just check with your GM before you start putting levels in classes that aren't even ready for full-release yet! The 15 Classes are:
Next, your Attributes. DEX, INS, MIG, and WLP. There are three methods here: Jack of All Trades, which gives you d8s across the board, Average, which gives a d10, 2 d8s, and a d6, and Specialized, which gives 2 d10s, and 2d6s.  Looks like she's picked Average! Now, we calculate HP and MP. They both use the same formula, but for different stats: HP is equal to your total character level, plus MIG times 5, + any HP from Classes. MP is the same thing, but WLP instead of MIG. Your Crisis score is equal to half your HP, rounded down. Important for some effects and Skills. If for any reason MIG or WLP get their dice size reduced, this does not effect max or current HP or MP! Your IP is also in this step, and it's probably six. I think only two Classes increase this. Second to last are your other derived stats. Defense is your DEX die size, Magic Defense is your INS die size, but they both might be modified by armor. Initiative is 0, and is almost certainly modified by your armor. Very little increases Initiative, but a lot decreases it. So like I said, keep a party member around in light or no armor for Initiative Checks! Finally, spend money. You can buy anything from the basic equipment tables. You can buy anything you want from there, but keep in mind that your Class might actually not have access to some Martial Equipment. 500 Zenit doesn't go a long way, if you want to afford the best basic armor and shield, you will only have 50 Zenit left over... Which can't buy any of the weapons on the table. Splurging on a really good weapon will likewise mean you can't afford any good armor. Neither is a bad choice, mind you, they're just tradeoffs. If you want to buy any Rare Items or Transports, talk it over with the rest of the party so they can cover your useless rear end with a motorcycle but no armor or weapons. Whatever you have left over is added to a roll of 2d6*10 for your starting Zenit (which you can then immediately spend on the armor or weapons you didn't get). Everyone starts with 3 Fabula Points, and bam! You have a character! Well, don't forget to assign them a name, description, and pronouns! Next time, we'll go into classes. Expect me to have a lot to say about the first one, and none of it is good. The others are all great though!
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Apr 24, 2023 01:00
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The more I hear about Fabula Ultima the more I think I actually want to play it someday. Dammit.
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Apr 24, 2023 01:23
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Man, that paradox reminds me of the OG Dragon Warrior, where you could afford Clothes and a Club or Leather Armor and a Bamboo Pole with your starter gold.
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Apr 24, 2023 01:54
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My one problem with all these games where you create the setting as a group is I like when I pick up a game and can just spend time playing around with the tools and thinking about a setting or making sample characters, and here I can't do that until I've got a group together and we've all figured out a meeting time and whatever.
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Apr 24, 2023 02:39
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Leraika posted:The more I hear about Fabula Ultima the more I think I actually want to play it someday. Dammit.
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Apr 24, 2023 04:19
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