Crazy sexy sax man.

[mordicai]

Freyja's day I couldn't do anything besides whimper & pass out. Saturn's day the most I could accomplish was a few blog posts & some movie watching. Today I was a lot better, but I still canceled my game on account of, well, if I had some bad situation go down, I'd rather it was here & not elsewhere. I'd been sleeping on the air mattress (so my

Comments

[primroseport]

I think those spells are really just very basic and broad spells that cover virtually anything anyone would ever want to do, and give workable mechanics the ST can choose to use. I think having those spells to work with results in the ST/player having a pretty clear understand what is possible at what level, such that even with the book closed, s/he can work out what would be needed for whatever random spell is called out. But we've had this conversation before!

I'm going to have the mage player decide what he'd most like to be able to do in very general terms (he seems to want Force powers mostly--traditional wizard stuff), and translate that to Mage, and guide him in the dot-choosing process so that if he wants to cause spontaneous combustion, he'll know that requires Force, but also some Life, and if he wants to turn someone to stone, that will probably need some Matter thrown in, and if he plans to do many things at a distance, he'd better invest in Space.

What I know for sure is that the mage book won't be at the table when we play. And I'm pretty sure there will be no rote spells. Everything is chancy and plucked haphazardly out of the cosmos and may not work. You don't get those extra dice for rote, cause please don't break our game :\

Anyway.

Dread Powers. I'll look at them more closely. But aren't they basically generalized, generic disciplines/gifts? I haven't noticed them being any more powerful than things other creatures can do. Maybe it's because they're so generic that they're more powerful--fewer written restrictions about how to use them. It'll depend on how they explain their power. Hmm.

Created Endowments are great because you can make artifacts and relics as well as powers with them. They work for Hardening Mercury Armor as much as with Inspiration from God.

[mordicai]

I sometimes think about doing this: Just giving magic guys ANY Sphere they want-- "Birds." "Earth." "Shadows." & then just...I dunno, rating them by cost? Small, medium, large? & then letting them take dots in that to do...fuck, whatever.

Anyhow, you can make items out of vampire powers too! I think our point is the same though: gutting out the fluff (unless, you know, the fluff is evocative, in which case, right on) to use the crunch for similar purposes. I don't care if you have Vigor because you are a vampire or from krypton or have a cyborg arm. SAME DIFF.

[primroseport]

For sure. Last night I had a breakthrough: I know the setting and some of the characters and events of the first one or two sessions, and I have the gist of the overarching mystery that has brought them together, though I'm intentionally keeping it vague for myself, to preserve that "Lost" or "Twin Peaks" sort of weirdness and enigmatic quality.

I'll blab about it later!

[mordicai]

Blab away; I have things to blab about myself!

[primroseport]

So here's a question. Does tying "powers" to willpower make willpower run out too fast? How do you keep the players having a reserve of anything left the next day so they can still blast something that needs blasting or try extra hard to do something?

I was thinking of employing a modified Hunter Willpower Risking. Regular Willpower Risking is when you declare youre risking WP, and you can then decide to take the +3, or 9 Again, or 3 Successes = Exceptional. If you succeed, you gain 2 WP back, one on top of the one you just spent (but not over your maximum). If you fail, it's a dramatic failure, every time.

This is good for Hunters cause its what truly puts them a head above regular people; it's the essence of the Vigil, as far as I'm concerned (forget those Endowments!)--it's their nearly inexhaustible lust to slay!

But... WW restricts the use of Risking to only those actions that directly advance the Vigil itself. Things like shadowing a monster, breaking into its lair, researching it, fighting it, etc. Other shit doesn't count. This keeps people from having the merest little irrelevant action reinforce their Vigil so they never run out of WP.

But in my game... there is no Vigil? So to restrict Risking's use, I think I have to make the reward be only 1 WP returned to you if you succeed, not 2. You break even if you succeed. But there's always the risk of screwing up dramatically if you go that route. People may be forced to use this repeatedly when they're down to 1 WP? Which could be fun. And Another change may be to let people Risk for their special powers, since in Hunter you mostly can't.

I hope that this way their pool of say, 4 or 5 WP can be stretched out more, and they don't have to wait five days in-game to recharge fully.

I dunno. What's your experience?

[mordicai]

In my experience, people always have Willpower left; also, being low on Willpower is a GREAT way to prod your players into screwing themselves over by playing to their Vices.

What if you let the PCs use Risk to advance their Virtue or Vice? I've toyed with that idea-- I usually just discard it because I like less rules versus more rules.

[primroseport]

Hmm. Yeah, I've been on a less rules kick, which is partly why I want to let PCs determine what happens with no rolls. Oh, did I talk about that? I'm inspired by Conan RPGs "Fate Points" and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen's story negotiation to give PCs more direct input into what happens. I experimented with this in the Requiem game I ran, where, since I was winging most of it (only one step ahead of the players, and sometimes not even that), I started letting their blurted out ideas about what they next discover or encounter be reality.

I was thinking of having a pool of points, perhaps a collective one, from which they can suggest what happens. It could be refilled by session, or using the Conan Foreshadowings trick: people write down things they expect or what to have happen to their characters. If their destiny comes to pass (i.e., I use their idea), they get another point to use to influence the story, be Left For Dead, do a critical, whatever.

Technically this would be a "rule", but I don't think it will feel like a rule. I think it will feel like an agreement to share a little of the storytelling.

Virtues and Vices, yes. Here's my thought. The world I have in mind is not really a corrupt one. It's weird and getting weirder, but it's not soiled and selfish in any pronounced way. I dunno how I feel about characters being driven to act bad more than good. I do like the idea of them being driven to act /somehow/, but WoD makes vices the path of least resistance.

Why not make both Virtues and Vices give 1 WP back when fulfilled?

Using Risk for Virtue/Vice is interesting. But the reason I was worried about WP at all was because of tying two separate actions (Heroic Effort and any Powers they have) to the same very limited pool, which is only recharged very slowly, or by urging them to be evil, which seemed off-color for this world.

[mordicai]

Explain how this works with the Negotiation. I am inclined to be like "How many dots do you have in that? Okay good enough."

I have thought of this, but some old school gamers are...reluctant to do this.

Well, they can get points out of Virtue, too; I'm not down on that. I'm saying Vice puts forward short term game, since you get it right away. & it doesn't have to be like, KILLING NUNS! for Wrath or anything. I am really into Vice, since many players are inclined to make flawless characters. Reward flaws!

Vice isn't equal to evil. Sloth doesn't have to be over the top-- just enough to impact the story.

[primroseport]

My two more regular gaming groups are very much into the idea of negotiated gaming. One group is familiar with Baron Munchausen, having played it before. In that game someone prompts you to tell a story of your daring whimsical exploits (Lord Mordicai, tell us of the time you defeated an entire Prussian division with three plucked chickens) and you have to start telling it with no preparation. Meanwhile, the others "wager" from their purse of coins, interrupting to challenge something you said or ask a question (But isn't the Moon Empress allergic to cheese? I could have sworn...) and you can incorporate that into your story or avoid it by matching the wager, etc.

Now its true that the wagering has an adversarial element, because you're trying to trip up the storyteller, but everyone knows that there is no winner to this game, and that telling awesome stories is the point. I hope to transplant some of that into my game. How? Not sure. I know both groups really love the Conan Fate Point system, which is just a pool of points to do heroic or story-altering things. I think I'll just mash up the Baron's wagering purse and the Fate Point system into one Negotiation sort of pool.

If all goes well, it wont even matter how many points anyone has. The best, most interesting ideas take place, always. Utopian, maybe, but these two groups are capable, I think. They're also not old-school. One group I introduced to gaming only last year, and the other group is older school but they are bored with regular games and when I suggested this idea they got really excited.

Since I want to cut down on rolls, I'm doing the "How many dots you got? Ok, it works." But there are no dots for "Hey, I recognize that guard. She's my cousin's ex-lover! She may recognize me..." or "--and around the bend there's a kid standing next to a scooter, right? That's my getaway." But I'm also not just talking about stuff that makes life easier for the PCs. A good 40% of my newer group's Requiem game scenes were random shit that wasn't related to any mission but that they took it upon themselves to do because it was fun, and they got carried away in the /doing/ of it. Like getting involved in NPCs lives, seducing people, seeing if they can break into a random closed-down former hardware store just to see what's in it, etc. I hope some of that story negotiation is just for the fun of the story and not always to escape or WIN. We'll see. If they start abusing the spirit of it, then the points will limit them. If not, fuck the points. As for vice... [next comment]

[mordicai]

Do these storytelling ventures effect the PLOT? They sound more like fun parlor games-- not to say that it isn't like, the point of gaming in part, but I'm just saying like-- or is the adventure told through this frame story?

I had a confab with some players about that degree of PC control-- of having "points" (we dubbed the "Effervescence" for the thought experiment) that would be total shot in the dark rolls-- basically a Chance die for...ANYTHING. "Don't I recognize that guard?" becomes-- "spend an Effervescence...." on a roll of a 10 yes! That is the guy from the bar who bet you "anything you want!" in pool but then you beat him-- you still have his marker! but on a 1 it becomes "Uh...oh, yeah. That is Darth Vader, slumming it."

The PCs I spoke to about it weren't psyched. !

[primroseport]

Hahaha--those examples are lol.

But yes, plot is negotiable. One of the prime motivations for this game was to have the plot be very sketchy so that I respond to what the players want to do, and don't feel like I have to scrap a neat-o idea I had planned for the endgame. Being of a writerly nature, I have tended to overwrite the future of the game and then feel blindsided when things changed. I broke out of that habit with a couple of pick-up games and games set in cities with far too many characters for me to have planned it all--so I made shit up in response to player input.

If it feels a little bit like Lost, where shit is happening and nobody clearly knows why, so be it. Chaos and transience is built into the world actually--things not making a whole lot of sense is a fact of life there. To give the chars some initial direction, they begin with a "quest", which they can use as a trajectory for the rest of the game, or ignore once the trail goes cold, which it will.

I'm basically talking this out by talking to you! Thanks

[mordicai]

I think part of what turned off my players was the notion that it would be something on their character sheet-- like a point they could spend or something.

Also I should confess that I'm a high maintenance worldbuilder with a hard time sharing. I'm like "no, I put in the anthropological detail, ignore it at your peril!"

[primroseport]

I don't see why it should turn anyone off. I mean, willpower use (or an action point, or whatever) is a point on your character sheet that influences the story. Merits and background stuff like retainers, contacts, allies, mentors, (and equivalent things in other systems) all have the power to make large changes in what happens. I don't see why Effervescence is fundamentally different

[mordicai]

Yeah, but (as they argued) Willpower is also internal to the character-- it was the internal/external nature.

I'm with you though; at least, I was when arguing. I've sort of reconsidered only because: less rules. I should try a test run with it though.

[primroseport]

Yeah, vice is the path of least resistance, but why should it be? For Players who make flawless characters, I can understand it. So far, my groups think flawed characters are fun... /too/ fun sometimes, such that they do shady, selfish, questionable things just because there are no real life consequences, and they enjoy watching their characters go wrong and lose their grip. They have no real pronounced "Noble" streak to balance it out, so its much more likely that they cheat, steal, lie, or seduce, than the opposite.

I think I'll start with a balance of 1 WP for virtue and vice, such that neither path is more rewarding than the other. If they keep harping on one but not the other, things may change. All of this is up in the air and I'll change it as I get a feel for the game, taking your suggestions into consideration, too.

I'm really tempted to add Nature and Demeanor into the mix, because it's one thing from owod that I really enjoyed, something Virtue/Vice doesn't capture. What do you think about Virtue/Vice/Nature/Demeanor as a 4-Part personality matrix thingy. It's a lot to consider while roleplaying, but perhaps it's a good challenge. Maybe each aspect can offer a WP and/or Negotiation reward if played well...

[mordicai]

Weird-- I feel like I like the Virtue/Vice because it rewards the players for both facets. Heck, I sometimes think that getting Willpower back for sleeping is too easy.

I also like the "delayed, but max" reward for Virtue compared to the immediate pay off of Vice. Not just because Yoda said the Dark Side was quick & easy, but because it allows different strategies-- a PC who think's he's filled his Virtue can go on & be brave, blow the rest of his WP that session.

I do like Nature/Demeanor, too-- I also miss Conscience & Self Control to be fair.