[TSOTA] Character Sheet
Here’s a sheet I drug up from a while back. Comments welcome.
Here are some changes I made since I posted the original:
In a Crystal Age
I’ve recently discovered a document I’d forgotten about wherein I laid out half an oracle for Final Fantasy done my way (since I really feel that Final Fantasy appeals to too many desires to be perfectly emulated or pigeon-holed). I still need to do more but I feel I’ve either got half an Old School one (FF4 and FF6) or all of that and waiting on New School (FF7, 9, 10). Since the settings are so vastly different, I think an inspection of FF9, along with some editing, might finish the oracle off. Here’s what I have:
1. A knight with dark arts and darker urges confronts her tyrannical king.
2. Delivered under false pretenses, an artifact dooms a heretofore hidden village.
3. A weak-willed dragoon, disgraced, acts as an honor guard and companion.
4. Pilgrims, weak from a long journey, hiding a mysterious young girl.
5. A once great subterranean web of passages, connecting the world lays abandoned except for its sleeping creators.
6. A young summoner overreaches her power out of despair.
7. A kingdom, lost in the desert for generations, reappears on the horizon.
8. A tribe of itinerant moogles return from the wilderness with stories and wares.
9. A respected sorceress, mysteriously ill, seeks desperately for a cure that her white arts are incapable of.
10. A fleet of airships, ready for war, manned by the nameless damned.
11. A martial artist, once powerful, blindly seeks vengeance.
12. A dark lord, megalomaniacal, served by fiends of elemental power.
13. A library, the largest on the continent, serving as rebel headquarters.
14. A caravan, thick with many races, famous for its myriad chocobos.
15. A lost ship of legend returns via the prayers of the downtrodden.
16. A brash prince seeks his kidnapped parents at the expense of his people.
17. A forest, dark and old, concealing a pure lake and skittish spirits.
18. A massive train, no longer bound to tracks, takes the willing and the dead.
19. A coliseum, rich with history and gambling, home to gladiators and loners.
20. Thieves, crouching on the rooftops in the eternal rain, watching for the unaware.
21. Imperial troops, girded with technological might, search the arctic north.
22. An insular city, defended by powerful samurai, falls prey to a poisoned water supply.
23. A famous gambling dilettante, private and reclusive, in love with an opera star.
24. The moon, bleak but inhabited, witness to eons of pain, cries out.
25. Crystals, elemental and twinned, scattered due to their overwhelming power.
26. A reformed general, seeking penance, shunned and outcast by a war-struck village.
Mythos Hunters Zero
I ran a very successful version of Tenra Bansho this weekend at Gameday and was unprepared for the awesome response I got from the players. It was a true delight.
I had originally set it up as League of Nations: The Delta Green Initiative. However, I never used the alternate America I had created and it didn’t have a government vibe as I’d thought, so I’ve renamed it Mythos Hunters (or Mythos Hunters Zero, I’m still debating). I had a great character sheet from Jonathan Walton that helped focus me and the players towards the system. He’s offered to help retool it now that I have my pregens ready and the focus has changed.
I’ll keep this blog updated with notes and such.
Here are the pages:
Walton’s final (original)
Walton’s final (edited to allow handwritten notes for a procrastinating fellow like me)
[IAWA] New Character Sheets
I have made some new character sheets for In a Wicked Age because I want to be able to use them to explain the game on the fly. See attached, let me know if you use them and how they work for you.
[TSOY] Dungeon Crawl Notes
Apparently I have some dead linkage over at Story Games for my old TSOY Dungeon Crawl game that I stole from Jason Morningstar and turned into a little beast of my own. Thanks for the heads up, Paul T!
(Download the pictuRe And conveRt it.)
[L4J] Tenjou Tenge Inspiration
So, I was flipping through (clicking/fast-fowarding, reminiscent of flipping through a manga) the Tenjou Tenge OAVs. I lucked upon some vital parts. I’d tell you more, but I’ve only ever flipped through Tenjou Tenge, so I don’t even know the character’s names :)
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is this: TT came out and stated a design goal for Live 4 Justice! The characters keep coming back to the idea that they fight for someone. Not themselves, but someone. When the main character thinks to himself, “I want to be more powerful. I want to win this fight,” he then immediately asks himself, “Who am I fighting for?”.
And that’s it, in a nutshell. To make a story game high school beat-em-up game, it has to be about the people you fight for.
I imagine a cyclical economy in the game (an infinity symbol in my head) of fights beating the relationships out of you, or beating changes into your relationships. It makes sense right now, especially if you imagine that those you have relationships are Go pieces. If a fight goes badly, change that white piece to a black piece. Does that affect the further relationship map? Can you eventually realize that you’re a hero or a villain, or that it’s just time for you to leave the story?
Battlestar Belmont, or How I stopped Whipping and started loving Dracula
Okay, the title doesn’t make any sense. That’s a given.
I’m just posting to write down some ideas I had for a mashup this morning between Castlevania and Battlestar Galactica.
The Early Cylons would be ‘Nosferatu’, ugly vampires created to help mankind colonize. Now, they have evolved and walk among us. Even as we fight them in a new war, where our battlecastles and theirs meet in the twinkling moonlight of space. The Adamas would be the Belmonts, leader of mankind’s opposition to those who would see us dead, or, worse, see us be like them.
I don’t know where I’d go with this or what system I’d use.
[DitV] Vampires in the Ælysium?
I used to play in a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP, but never as a vampire. I never found a chance to play Vampire as I imagined I would have liked, a social political game/feeding frenzy on the surface of inhuman monsters.
So, anyway, I was driving to school last night and I thought of Vampires in the Ælysium. Why Æ instead of E? Well, only because it spells out Vitae, which I remember being the V:tM word for blood.
VitÆ
You are the Children of Cain, and enforce his laws and edicts to keep his Blood safe in the dark world – safe from themselves and the human sheep they feed on. You aren’t the Masquerade – you’re what keeps the Masquerade working. Is the Prince of Seattle failing to keep her city in line? Has the Toreador made slaves of the Brujah in Toronto? Do humans know too much in Silicon Valley? Bring them in line, bring judgement. You are Lilith’s Brood, and you bring Cain’s vision of the world into reality. And, no one can question your interpretation of that vision.
[TSOTA] Character Creation and Pool Refreshment
Here are some ideas I’d like to try out.
Character Creation
The player will begin by deciding to be one of three kinds of characters:
- Field Witness: The character was a Zero (a normal person with no known supernatural connections) who witnessed an Instance (a supernatural event or situation) and showed promise.
- Field Agent: The character was a Negative (an agent of the supernatural or something unknown) who demonstrated a willingness to cooperate.
- Internal Hire: The character was a Positive (a person who worked for the Sub-Agency [below awareness of the purpose of the Agency] or a related agency) who performed well on a field test.
Character creation begins with everyone at the table acting as your interviewers. Your interview depends on your character type. The answers to your questions will fill in spots on your character sheet. When the interview is done, there will one spot left on your sheet wherein you fill in a connection to one of the other characters. This will be resolved by the group as a whole before gameplay begins, but you will have at least one connection to someone in the group.
Did you notice the Zero, Positive and Negative terminology? It reflects a few things. First, it mirrors the faces of the FUDGE dice. This will become useful inside the game mechanics further on (read: it’s damn cool and I want to use it somehow). Second, since the operative teams are called Sigmas, your sum will mean something as well. Three Field Agents would mean Negative 3. This should have an influence on what kind of mission the GM brings to the table. You can also refer to other teams by this and have everyone at the table both in and out of character know something of what to expect. For instance, a Sigma Zero team would be either a team of all three types of operative or three Field Witnesses.
Pool Refreshment
I’ve thought of two kinds of Pool Refreshment for the game. One would be an interactive flashback (recruit people at the table to be NPCs in your flashback) wherein you show some part of your life that relates to the Pool you’re refreshing. The other is an Inspectres-style confessional where you are being debriefed about the mission you’re on and you’re being asked to rat out on one of the other team members betraying the Agency in some way. The key thing is this: you could be lying, sure, but if you’re not, the player that acts out those confessions of yours gets an Advance.
[TSOTA] Discussion of Mechanics
So, I’ve started a basic discussion on Story Games and the Forge about the mechanics for making The Shadow of the Abyss a game playable outside of my head. I’ve bounced around some ideas and gotten some good feedback and more ideas.
Pools:
Danger – Abilities based on getting into and out of danger
Refreshes by: Sharing a moment of peace with someone
Conspire – Abilities based on conspiring and maintaining conspiracies
Refreshes by: Enjoying a spontaneous act with someone
Abyss – Abilities based on learning the truth and anything supernatural or alien in origin
Refreshes by: Stepping back from the Abyss and becoming intimate with someone
So, here’s something new:
Secret – Shadow of the Abyss
You stared into the Abyss, and it stared back. You now have a contra-Pool for Abyss called Shadow. It will act as a cap for Abyss in that your total Abyss Pool points + your total Shadow Pool points can never exceed 10. You start with 1 Pool Point. Shadow Pool points act as bonus dice for Abyss (or Shadow) Abilities and can be used in conjunction with Abyss Pool points (only for Abyss Abilities).
Shadow – Abilities based on the maddening power of the Abyss
Refreshes by: Inducting someone into the world of the supernatural
Key of the Shadow’s Grip
Pre-requisite: Secret of the Shadow of the Abyss
The Shadow drives you and distracts you from others around you. Gain 1 XP whenever you use a Shadow Ability in front of someone you weren’t supposed to. Gain 2 XP if doing so brings about undesirable consequences. Gain 5 XP if doing so brings about grave consequences. Buyoff: Remove your Shadow Pool by taking as much Harm as the Pool has (total) points. If you have more points than Harm, you’ll have to do it stages.
Ability – Revelation
You can cause yourself or others to see the real universe, if but for a moment. This can be used to gain insight into a mystery, distract someone from their immediate goal, or lead a crowd to a cultish frenzy.
Links:
Forge: 1
