Bay 12 Games Forum

Not necessarily trash

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Sam, are your 'illusions' strictly visual, or can they make sound? If they touch someone, do they feel anything?

The dream world is entirely silent, and so are things made from it. At least at game start, it's also totally ethereal and the illusions don't have any effect. I suppose being in direct contact with them could cause a vague feeling of unease, but I don't know that it would be enough to bestow a condition or anything. It could make sense for them to do so when unleashed but that also runs the risk of stepping on Vestige's toes.

And you know what, we've waited long enough, and I think your characters are fairly fleshed out.
You first came together fighting Cauldron, the sorcerers from Nahullad's backstory.
Sepiatone, We totally broke some major rules to win the fight. What rules did we break? Whose rules were they?

Oh no, being first is hard! I'm not confident in it, in part because I don't want to godmod other people's characters into the story, but I also want to tie people together. So... Please provide feedback and consider this final only inasmuch as we can move forward, but still subject to refinement.

Anyway.

IC: Six months ago, the city was attacked by the evil cabal of sorcerers and witches called The Cauldron. They unleashed a great horde of monsters in the city, rampaging creatures that attack indiscriminately. Sam Walters invoked his pallid mask, and got involved from the shadows, leeching power from monsters, but his powers weren't suited to it. There was little he could do. And then he saw one of the cauldron sorcerers do something - it wasn't clear what - to a monster, causing it to roar and grow. And then the sorcerer fled, escaping the AEGIS soldier that was busy engaging the monster. When Sepiatone followed him, the AEGIS soldier shouted to try to take him captive, that he was claiming the captive for AEGIS business and he would need to be turned over. Sam didn't even answer him. The sorcerer rushed down an alleyway, apparently lacking any supernatural method of transport. But Sam knew the area. A great waxen tyrannosaur appeared in front of the fleeing sorcerer, and he saw Sepiatone behind him, which caused the sorcerer to flee down an alley. That was why Sam manifested the illusion. He sent his own ephemeral monstrosity behind the fleeing mage, and took the time to leech the color from the alley. Sam Walters knew that area, had spent nights there, and he had sent the villain into a dead end. Unhurriedly, Sam strode into the field that he had prepared. The sorcerer, cornered, turned to fight, and summoned his powers. But it had taken too long, and his powers didn't come. Sepiatone confidently approached him as he, now panicking, backed against a wall. Sam socked him in the gut, set him on the ground, and informed the sorcerer that he would continue to waste away and eventually die, unless Sepiatone let him go. Then it was time for questions. Sam wanted to know who Cauldron were, why they attacked, but most importantly where he could find their base. The sorcerer wasn't interested in sharing any of those things, but Sam put on the pressure. At one point, a knife came out. He didn't get everything, but he got a location.

OOC again: I'm thinking this is the start of the mission, and we'll run into each other over the course of the event, and converge on the location where we fight sorcerers while the more experienced and famous heroes were fighting the monsters. If someone else wants to alter that though, suggest your alternate narrative or (if it doesn't conflict with what I wrote anyway) just go with it. As for the breaking of rules, I'm taking a captive, not turning them over to AEGIS, and engaging in enhanced interrogation. I'm not sure exactly where the sweet spot is between a cop-out breaking of rules and getting into stuff too dark (and too consequence-laden) to open a game with, so please feel free to say anything on that topic as well.

I like the gearhead idea, actually. In addition to gears being a thing in DF, it conveys the fact that the dwarf's mind has been overtaken by mechanistic concerns, beyond just the idea that he's thinking. That's consistent with putting normal life on hold.

Well, it seems to me we've got things mostly ready. In order to ensure things get wrapped up and good to go, y'all reckon it's about time to set a date? Monday makes sense to me, in case people want the weekend to wrap bits up. Or we could aim to commence with the IC on the weekend. And it would also be a good idea to set expectations for pace. I think each person posting each week seems like a reasonable minimum but it would be good if we could move along more snappily than that, and I think since this game isn't really turn based, we should be able to avoid the situation where people have to wait a lot for someone else to post.

Nahullad isn't a brilliant name, but can you blame Amy? Poor lass doesn't even have a brain anymore.

I think it's an alright name. Not super catchy necessarily, but it has that supernatural feel to it. It's consistent with the other aspects of the character.

Maybe Xs for eyes on the unconscious icon?

x_x

Since your here Cruxador, could you tell me your opinion on my new description of my psychic powers? I changed it because I wanted to weaken it, but you say that isn't necessary. I might change it back.

Oh, I hadn't noticed that change. As writing, it definitely comes across as something you went and added after the fact, but as for the concept, I think it's pretty solid. I'm seeing your new version as a kind of transpositioning or astral projection type power, which is more unique than straight telekinesis, and I think there's room to build on that concept and integrate it with the other aspects of the character more than you've done so far. In this regard, I think that it's more interesting when you're considering it as a standalone power. However, the telekinesis synthesizes with the armor to make a kind of a "mage knight" aesthetic, indicating transcendence over the normal unpowered human level in both physical and mental aspects. That's a cool (and versatile) area to explore as well, even if it's a bit more well traveled. Because it's a bit broader, I reckon it gives you a bit more to work with as a player character, while the version you've got in there now is more of an extension of what you can already do (be strong and hit hard) but I don't think you're particularly hurting for thematic area as-is, because your backstory gives you so much to work with.

I think both have the potential to work well, depending on where you want to take the character.

EDIT: As far as being too powerful goes, "kill stuff" power isn't super relevant here since it's narrativist and that's not how fighting works anyway. As far as narrative space goes, the only overlap I'm seeing is that Vestige's memory things can also do things far away. And that's a pretty limited overlap since I can hardly see the functional things you would want to do with those powers as being similar at all. Summoning the horrors of someone's worst memories to open a door from the other side seems like it would trivialize the drama, for example. Actually, there's more overlap with Nahullad since she's also strong and tough, but that's such a basic thing that a little doubling up is unavoidable.

Are there any house rules any of you want? I am for the moment just going with base stuff, an Infinite Powers buff, and allowing the extra playbooks.

I think everything should be conditionally allowed on the principle that fun things are fun, but I don't know the system well enough to say anything specific. Since I don't know it well, I'd be inclined to stick close to RAW until/unless we find problems with it - though I don't necessarily think such a problem would need to be a big one, rules are easily mutable even after we get going.

What kind of campaign do you want this to be? With the backstories already and the Doomed its probably going to be some level of dark, but what kind?

I didn't think about it that much, but it seems like the darkness is almost entirely personal or interpersonal, which means that I would think personal plots are most important and others are more like backdrops. But then, that's often the goal anyway. And it might make sense to have something not too personal just to introduce the characters and the system before we get really heavy. I think the biggest concern is going to be level. Thematically, Sepiatone is pretty street level, and if I'm reading it right, Vestige leans that way too, but while Nahullad and Sir Samuel seem reasonably level agnostic, Toba is much higher level, nearly cosmic. So that's something that's gonna need consideration and probably should have been thought about before conceptualizing our characters.

Do you particularly want anything in the setting, other than things already in your backstory?

I think a common narrative structure for cape stories is to not block all the setting details out too thoroughly but just bring up new things as they become relevant, with the insinuation that they've always been true but just haven't come up before now. It works well with a modern type setting because there's so many huge areas of life that are only dealt with by specialized professions, so it's believable that there can be something that's a very big deal that was just never really relevant until it was.

Sirus, why did you think Toba might not be viable?

I mean... Besides the power level, it's also very upbeat and cheerful of a story, where once everyone mutually realized that nobody meant each other harm, everything was resolved more or less just because of that. I'm not sure how that kind of optimistic narrative gels with the tone in the others. This applies as well to how the agender thing will work - Sirus showed no indication of wanting to deal with discrimination or misgendering issues (and I feel that), but that paints a much rosier picture of the world than the other characters' stories. And that detail is a lot easier to set aside than xer very different relationship with AEGIS and scientists than the one Vestige has, and xer implicitly positive relationship with authority in general. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it's definitely gonna be a lot harder to GM for than something like adding another (tonally consistent) character, especially in light of how the system and format both do a lot to mitigate the added difficulty of increased party size.

I'm thinking of having my 'You'd love to kiss ______ before your doom comes' be Sepiatone, since his power nullification no doubt appeals and provides an interesting dynamic.

Yeah, our characters definitely have some things in common that could make for interesting interplay. Would you want to have done some badass crime together? I don't have anything specific in mind but that's one of my relationships.

As for romance, it's really no more different than stories about AIs or monogendered species falling in love with humans.

That's pretty challenging to write though.

(Sorry for ripping you off Cruxador)

All good, I ripped it off (in subsequently rearranged bits) from Giglamesh anyway.

Essentially I have two concerns about giving Sancho Psychic powers. The first one is that I'm afraid it might make him too strong and overshadow the others. The suit of armour is already pretty impressive. The second one is that I feel like psychic Sancho is thematically different from detective Sancho. Detective Sancho is someone who could plausibly learn to embrace his heritage and learn to follow in his father's footsteps. Psychic Sancho is definitely only going to be pushed further and further away from him. If things do turn out well for him, he's going to be a completely different person.

There are definitely upsides to psychic Sancho though. The inevitable discover-the-identity-of-his-mother arc is definitely going to be more interesting for obvious reasons, and he has more tools to work with as far as fighting is concerned. It also gives him something in common with Vestige.

What do you guys think?

I like the psychic thing. Going psychic works well since we already have mind oriented powers going on – Vestige is all on memories, Sepiatone has dream issues, and even Nahullad has weird ways of getting by without a head. It's not a power ranger level of overlap, but it's thematically cohesive. More importantly, I think forming his own identity is a fun narrative line to go down. Being strong isn't necessarily a problem, Superboy and Robin/Nightwing were both concurrently members of the team in Young Justice after all. Besides, the suit is kinda cool but power wise it's just "tough+strong". Telekinesis actually makes you something a bit more interesting than a bruiser, which helps avoid overlap with Nahullad. But honestly, being strong doesn't matter much in a narrative game; just don't use it to try and be the only one doing stuff in combat and it should be fine. I don't think you need to limit this in particular, although since it's supposed to be a new ability, it makes sense for it to be weak at the start.

EDIT: And it seems like you decided while I was writing my giant weekend's hot take roundup post.

EDIT: As for the session zero stuff, run the game that makes the most sense for your vision of these characters. I'm sure we'll go along with whatever you choose to do. Session zero is more important in a game like DnD where the world, setting and conflict, can be vastly different depending on what the GM chooses. It also meant to prevent people from creating characters who are completely incompatible with each other. Here the setting is always Halcyon city, and it's always superheros vs supervillains. Characters haven't been a problem so far.

I'm not sure I can agree with this notion. True, you don't have to worry if there's such a thing as an elf in this particular case, but I've already (in this post) mentioned concerns I have for setting and character compatibility, which are a less familiar than the more thoroughly discussed ones of D&D. D&D is both older and more widespread, but that only makes the problems harder to navigate since there's less resources accumulated on them. I'm not trying to be a downer, but the thing about problems is that the worst ones are the ones you don't know about and therefore can't anticipate, and that's especially difficult for a new GM.

That said, PbP tends to have a forgiving pace, and I imagine everyone will be happy to provide thoughts on making things work here in the OOC thread. And in any case, the thing that ultimately kills games isn't details like this, but simply GM abandonment, which is a lot more easy to identify and just not do. Even player abandonment can be addressed by replacing people.

However that might not work well in PbP. What do you guya think?

I can't say that I know, but I think it's not going to be difficult to do no matter what method we use. At least with this method, we have a thing that saves us from infinite dickering.

Probably unintentional headless horsewoman ... GiglimeshDespair, are you sure that you want Nahullad to be your hero name?

I mean, her name is just Dullahan backwards with some vowels swapped. Seems like a clean enough reference to me. That's not the first thing I would be concerned about with that character.

Cape: A superperson.

That's very much not specific to Worm, it's general comic nerd lingo.

...

Also I can see y'all don't work weekends.