This can best be thought of as a medieval/high fantasy version of the
Persona games, with its own twists.
I decided to go ahead post this, rather than spend any more time thinking of how to do some kind of more complex system of mechanics... because quite frankly I don't give a damn. ^^ I caught a spark of inspiration and I'm gonna ride it to the end. Anyone who wants on board, post and roll up a character!
You are a citizen/visitor in Harker's Ford, a quaint but rapidly-growing town that lies astride the river Tearsfall and the new land trade route connecting... actually, you can't remember the name of the nation. You can't remember much of anything, really. And from what it looks like, you aren't the only one. A strange pall of amnesia seems to be affecting the town, causing many who live there to forget about the outside world, and those who visit to lose memory of why they stopped there in the first place, or where they were going afterwards.
Life at the Ford is relatively good so far, but you can... sense... that something is wrong. Disappearances of various people are getting more frequent. Stranger and stranger folk have been entering town, and once you swear that you saw...
something... unnatural beneath one of their hoods. A thick, almost palpable blue fog is beginning to cover the town and the land surrounding it, strangely seeming to avoid some buildings or locations where people frequent. Everyone else in the town seems blissfully unaware of what is going on, but you are one of the few who has managed to hold on to enough of their sanity to act, and get to the bottom of this mystery before it is too late.
The time has come to pull back the veil.
- The beginning of the game starts with you, as one of the 6 people who have not only "Awakened" enough to consciously realize that the Veil exists and the effects it has on the mind, but also learned how they can turn the reality-warping and memory-leeching effects of the Veil to their advantage in order to gain powerful supernatural abilities. Thus, from the start, each player may pick precisely 1 primary power they wish: e.g, at will-creation of flames, hardening water to ice, intuiting the contents of a container or what lies behind a door based on residual memories of its previous users, imbuing books to fly and giving them vampire fangs, or even directly manipulating the Veil to induce suggestions in others. I will make a d6 roll to decide how well you have grasped this power; for example, a 6 (Overshot) on the ability to Heal will give you a solid understanding of how to use your energies to help your allies, but could give you pacifistic tendencies that make you a liability in combat. I'll accept most ideas for powers, so be imaginative!
- Each turn, you may attempt to glean new memories from the Veil and add them to your repertoire of abilities or knowledge about the world. Doing this requires active concentration, however, and attempting it while heavily distracted can inflict penalties on your rolls. Failing your Veil rolls can result in many different things, ranging from you briefly losing control of your powers and starting a wildfire, to being faced with the crippling fears of a dozen people at once and shaking your character's willpower.
- As the Veil is wholly responsible for these supernatural effects, for good or ill, being in areas with high amounts of it can 'supercharge' some of your abilities -- or make them dangerously unpredictable. Read more about the effects of the Veil below.
- The blue fog known as the Veil has almost completely covered the outskirts of Harker's Ford at the time this game starts, but mysteriously, it doesn't seem to have progressed very far -- if at all -- into the town itself as of yet. This doesn't stop Awakened individuals from using it for their supernatural powers, but this does mean that you have to telepathically 'reach' into the Veil from afar if you want to glean any new abilities or information from it, or use it to create one of your own. This is reflected as 2 rolls -- 1 roll to 'reach out', and another roll to properly process and add the knowledge to your repertoire without screwing it up in transit. Failing the first roll has no negative consequences, but failing the second... well, you get the idea. Also, having to reach out like this is taxing, to the point where you will lose any bonuses you would normally receive from familiarity with the subject you're looking for, or from other sources.
- If, however, you are actually standing in the midst of an area of high Veil exposure (anywhere you can see the blue fog), you do not need to make this additional 'reach out' roll, as you are immersed amongst a lake of swirling thoughts and ideas and emotions and can cherry-pick from it as you wish. This might also carry additional bonuses if you already have clues about whatever it is you're trying to learn. This carries serious risks, however -- the concentration involved in sorting out so many ideas at once in the middle of the Veil means that some precious short-term memories of yours, like your sense of direction to get back to town, can be temporarily locked away or outright lost in the process. Try to balance risk vs. reward.
- The Veil around the town is particularly thick with mental energy and the echoes of memories both recent and distant. Being one of the few lucid enough to consciously interact with it, you can sometimes sense fluctuations in the pattern, such as when certain beings are closeby, and usually detect whether something or someone is real or merely a manifestation. You must make a roll to disbelieve such an illusion if it relates to you, however, unless someone else is there to snap you out of it.
- The more your character 'Awakens' -- i.e, the more they remember themselves, gain new abilities and uncover the story -- the greater their power will grow, as well as their ability to consciously manipulate the Veil.
- However, the greater your power, the more attention you will attract. The Veil has affected more than just the Awakened, and not all of those under its spell are content to sit in their homes in bliss, living out good memories in a recursive loop. You must beware of others like you. You will face not only those who possess powers of the same nature that you do, but also potentially deal with runaway manifestations that cause chaos in the town, or panicked civilians or wild beasts lashing out in anger and fear.
- Your primary goal in this game is to gain enough power and knowledge to figure out what is truly happening with the Veil. How you go about that is your business -- I will allow it if you choose to take a darker path, or prefer to work alone instead of with allies. I will treat such choices accordingly.
Simply post an action and I will roll for it, based on a scale of 1-6 in terms of success.
[1]: Critical failure. Your efforts only worsened your situation. Attempting to shoot at a target only to have the shot ricochet and strike an ally falls under this category.
[2]: Failure. You failed to achieve whatever action you attempted, though you may not have made things worse in the process.
[3]: Meager success. You may have progressed a little or saw something new, but usually nothing close to what you were hoping.
[4]: Success. You achieved your goal more or less in line with average expectations.
[5]: Epic success. You went above and beyond achieving your goal, and usually got very lucky, as well.
[6]: Overshot. You achieved your goal, but your efforts were so much that collateral damage or the creation of additional problems is likely; i.e, "You leap to attack the creature on the cliff ... sending you both flying off the edge!"
If at any time something threatens a player (i.e. being attacked), that player may make a roll to avoid the threat. Damage incurred or inflicted is also calculated by dice, though the rolls are reversed (lower rolls = higher damage). Certain abilities, items, and effects can influence the roll positively or negatively.
When you attack an enemy, you make an Attack roll to determine accuracy; the higher this roll, the better. If your attack lands, then the enemy makes a roll to determine how much damage it takes; the lower this roll, the more damage is taken. So having + bonuses to your damage rolls means that the enemy takes a penalty when they roll for damage; i.e, a +1 to damage from a weapon results in a -1 penalty on damage rolls for your target. Having + bonuses or - penalties to damage resistance affects a creature or object's rolls accordingly.
For each action, any number of rolls may be made, as determined by the GM.
Primary causes for multiple rolls include, but are not limited to:
- Actions explicitly composed of multiple actions
- Actions that imply other actions that are not declared free
For every dodge roll, any number of additional rolls may be made, as determined by the circumstances, and any skills or special effects applied to the player.
If you post two turns worth of actions, they will be done in order: The first happens on that given turn, and the second action will be carried out the following turn (assuming it still can be, or nothing changes to make it impossible). Players can use this to post directives for their character to follow automatically if they cannot be present to post an action for their next turn.
Each successive dodge roll during a turn, unless it is a dodge against the same object or character, will get a cumulative -1 penalty.
If you are Stunned, Dazed, or otherwise receive a temporary penalty to overall or individual rolls, this penalty lasts until your next action is resolved, and not through the whole turn (unless otherwise noted).
If you receive a long-term effect that has the potential to alter itself, you get an Effect Resistance roll immediately after your action is resolved to determine the spread and consequences of the effect.
If you are Unconscious, whatever penalty you receive will be under Failguard -- it cannot reduce your roll score below 2, unless stated otherwise.
If you receive a mortal wound but are not killed outright, you need to pass a roll to dodge Death at the end of every turn. Only bad rolls here will provide penalties to survival rolls.
You can spend your turn to help another player achieve his goal. If your roll is higher, it is taken as the success roll for the action.
You can also spend your turn to botch another player's action. If your roll is higher, its opposite is taken as the success roll for the action.
In both cases, individual player rolls determine what happens to the players in the course of the action.
As this is a loosely medieval-era High Fantasy universe, races like Elves, Dwarves and even Gnomes are permitted, though Harker's Ford is populated mostly by Humans. I will not accept races that are too wild, like Warforged or sentient golems and will generally look down on nastier choices like Goblins or Orcs, but I will happily consider demi-humans like Kitsune and the like.
Harker's Ford was founded some years ago by a hunter named Jiles Harker, who came to the area with a band of friends to trap beaver and deer that were rich around the river. Over time, what was simply a hunting and fur trading post ballooned out into a thriving logging town with easy access to running water and rich lumber resources nearby, and even came to sit squarely on a minor trade route heading east to west. Jiles Harker himself indeed still lives and sits on the town council with a small committee of aldermen, supervising local hunters, the logging work, and helping to train the volunteer militia to guard the town.
The settlement is not quite alone. A small brick-and-log keep was erected about half a day's march downriver some time ago to stand guard over the region, as the strategic position of Harker's Ford is of quite high value. News regarding it is in short supply, however, particularly with the Veil's memory-altering effects foiling many otherwise sure-footed scouts and runners who can't keep track of landmarks.
The river running through town is called Tearsfall, owing to a local legend surrounding three men who became lost amidst the caves and rocks of the mountains lying far to the north of what is today Harker's Ford. When they finally managed to find their way through and emerge into the sun, they wept so openly at the sight that their tears created the river Tearsfall, ever flowing with joy down from the mountains.
Please keep in mind that none of this is to scale, or anything. This is just a crude drawing I did in MS Paint to try and illustrate the general position of things in the town and surrounding region.
Players that die will generally be immediately replaced by a player in the waitlist who has prepared a character sheet in this thread; there are no ghosts, here, and permadeath is most certainly in effect. However, I will consider granting certain bonuses to players who join at a point when the other players are already quite ahead so that they don't have to spend too much time playing catch-up. These bonuses may include Fate Points, which are expendable tokens you can invoke on almost any given action or roll to grant you an automatic 5 (Epic Success).
If a player does not respond with an action for a given turn, their character will be placed under AI control for that turn. If they have not posted a second action to be taken/given priority in this event, then I will choose an action for them, and will roll a d6 die to determine how bold or how subtle their action will be, with 1 being the most cautious and 6 being all-out. This action will largely be based on their behavior up until that point, as well as their current abilities and the situation they're facing. If that character's player is still absent and still has not posted an action for the following turn, then I will remove that character from the game in an appropriate manner, and replace them with someone new from the waitlist.
If a player voluntarily chooses to leave the game entirely, then I will do the same in the very next turn.
Parameters for making a character:
(try holding your cursor over underlined text to view more notes)
Name:
Race:
Gender:
Appearance: (because it's kinda boring for me if I don't have particular character traits to include in my posts, leading me to assume a lot.)
Status: (Resident of/Visitor to Harker's Ford)
Occupation: (Are you a traveling trader, or scholar? Fisherman? Local militiaman? Tavern waitress? Or simply unemployed? Take your pick.)
Primary power/ability: (Pick 1 (I will roll for this))
Playerlist (0/5)
These slots are not first-come-first-serve. I will choose 5 characters that I like from those who post here to start the game with, any others will be waitlisted. This does mean you aren't necessarily out of luck if you weren't one of the first people to post, though!
Author
Topic: The Veil of Memories (0/5) [OPEN!] (Read 1003 times)