I have a mostly-weekly Pathfinder campaign that's been going on for a couple of years now; the players have made it to level 14, with a mythic tier of 7, plus some things that aren't entirely in the rules of the game. They've gone from a group that was a pair of orphans, a runaway kobold slave, and an exiled tengu to a trio of demigods who've set themselves in opposition to the Last Mother, a goddess who was supposed to birth the next world when the current one dies, only to be corrupted by the Outer Darkness when she tried to go back and see how the current world was made by walking in the timeless void. The player of the tengu left the party, and the group voted to finish the campaign before we try to add a new player.
In the Game Lessons set of posts, I'll mostly talk about the weekly sessions and how things went, although without spoiling anything. I can usually keep ahead of my players, but sometimes they throw me for a loop. There's usually something that can help other GMs - and other players - in their own game prep and design, I think, so that's what we'll focus on; some of the questions may be prompted by one of my players, who is aiming to start his own campaign soon.
This time, I'm just going to illustrate the importance of getting someone to do a campaign log, something that can be highlighted simply by including the campaign log done by one of my players for the current game. Logs done by players are pure gold for GMs - they tell you what players have figured out, what they're getting wrong, and what hints you've dropped that they've either picked up on or missed entirely.
More importantly, they serve to remind you about things you're going to forget. It doesn't matter how good your memory is, unless you're one of the unfortunate people who suffer from eidetic memory, you will forget things - names, plot hooks you threw out that people seemed to ignore until they decide to pursue them a year of real time later, when you've let the hint drop off your radar, all sorts of things that you'll want to look back at and refresh your memory about later.
Best of all, if you have someone who gets into it and provides the log in an in-character fashion, you get a window into how the game is being seen through the eyes of at least one player. If they're expressing boredom or confusion, you can take steps to fix the problem. If another player is being a problem, the stresses will show up in the journal and give you a warning that you might need to quietly take steps to mitigate it. It'll also give you a feel for whether or not you seem to be neglecting any players, which can lead to boredom and people falling out of a group.
When you're GMing, even if you take notes (I am notoriously guilty for only rarely logging things that happen in the game), it can be easy to forget to write something down if you're busy with an intense scene or while running a combat. Getting a player to log things will do wonders for your own ability to recover and recall things; even if they're completely off-target, their recounting will help trigger your memory.
So, Game Lesson #1: Logs are your friend. Players who do logs are your friend. Bribing a player to keep a log is worth the trouble. You won't regret having it available, and the odds are you can find a would-be author in your group willing to take the task on.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Campaign Mode: Supers!
There are several games on the market that can emulate the genre of superheroes and supervillains; they range from the crunch-heavy HERO System where building a character may potentially involved advanced mathematics (but you can build a character to do exactly what you want) to the relative freeform of Mutants and Masterminds or the looseness of a superhero-modified Cypher System. Why would you want to play such a game?
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Emulating comic books can be fun
Let's face it, most of us at some point wanted to be Batman, Spiderman, Black Widow, Wonder Woman, or the like when we were growing up. People in the modern world with powers well beyond the normal are just cool - and these games give us the chance to emulate that and build our own stories that can match the drama and glory of the comic books - only without the certainty that everything will work out in the end, because the story gets written as we play it.
For some, the thrill will come from rebuilding the heroes they love from comics - building Hulk or Supergirl in the system's format and enacting their adventures with familiar foes and friends. Others will want to make it completely their own, building characters that let them do what they always wished they could growing up.
The power dial has a much finer value
In most fantasy games, the power dials starts low and gets cranked up hard as a game progresses; you go from essentially a farm boy to a demigod if you follow the full progression. It can be drawn out, amped up, or adjusted, but the baseline value always goes the same way. Sci-fi tends to either be over-the-top all the way through (space opera) or solidly realistic and low-power, without too much flux between the two. Either way, the dial tends to stay put in that genre most of the time.
Superhero games can be set anywhere from street-level, where you're essentially a skilled normal person out fighting (or causing) crimes with your wits and maybe one or two low-grade special tricks, all the way up to cosmic-level superpowers where the the fate of entire star systems hinges on the outcome of phenomenal struggles between near-gods - and it has settings at every point between the two, from wise-cracking experts with a limited power set to Superman and his equally outrageously powerful foes.
It comes in a wide range of flavors, all with ample source material
Want to play a bunch of over-the-top heroes having wacky misadventures? You can pick up any Silver Age comic book and see adventure and character seeds strewn through the pages. Grim vigilantes fighting crime because the cops are corrupt and the nights are blacker than black? Iron Age comics with plenty of black leather and chains to inspire you. Mature themes rich in nuance but still able to face the world with a grin? Most modern-day comics will give you a good source to work from.
You can go from being as silly and outrageous as you like to the darkest and most grim of plots, all within the same system and sometimes even with the same characters, just tweaked by the progress of time. Compare the Adam West Batman and the Nolan Batman to see just how far apart the exact same character can be without ever changing the functional concept of the character.
From beer and pretzels to deep intrigue on a dime
Just like you can dial the power level and the flavor of the game much more handily in this genre than in most others, it also lends itself to everything from light-hearted beer-and-pretzels gameplay (I don't recommend HERO for this) to the most intrigue-laden roleplay-heavy campaign you can cook up. Superhero stories thrive on mixing up the intense action that most people think of when they hear about comics with light-hearted comedy and well-built emotional scenes, often within a single monthly issue.
Built to be modular
Most game systems make it tricky to tell stories that are either episodic, since most characters require a lot of forethought and work to build and don't really change quickly, or truly long-term, since really long-term plots require a commitment from players and GM alike that they might not be able to sustain. The superhero genre works well for either of these extremes, though, with episodic games matching up well with the frantic pacing of a comic, and the long-term able to be handled even as players drop out due to life or new people join. The original heroes retire, new ones join the team, and if someone comes back then the retired hero makes a comeback or has a protege who steps in to fill their place.
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This post was originally slated to come out on Friday.
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Emulating comic books can be fun
Let's face it, most of us at some point wanted to be Batman, Spiderman, Black Widow, Wonder Woman, or the like when we were growing up. People in the modern world with powers well beyond the normal are just cool - and these games give us the chance to emulate that and build our own stories that can match the drama and glory of the comic books - only without the certainty that everything will work out in the end, because the story gets written as we play it.
For some, the thrill will come from rebuilding the heroes they love from comics - building Hulk or Supergirl in the system's format and enacting their adventures with familiar foes and friends. Others will want to make it completely their own, building characters that let them do what they always wished they could growing up.
The power dial has a much finer value
In most fantasy games, the power dials starts low and gets cranked up hard as a game progresses; you go from essentially a farm boy to a demigod if you follow the full progression. It can be drawn out, amped up, or adjusted, but the baseline value always goes the same way. Sci-fi tends to either be over-the-top all the way through (space opera) or solidly realistic and low-power, without too much flux between the two. Either way, the dial tends to stay put in that genre most of the time.
Superhero games can be set anywhere from street-level, where you're essentially a skilled normal person out fighting (or causing) crimes with your wits and maybe one or two low-grade special tricks, all the way up to cosmic-level superpowers where the the fate of entire star systems hinges on the outcome of phenomenal struggles between near-gods - and it has settings at every point between the two, from wise-cracking experts with a limited power set to Superman and his equally outrageously powerful foes.
It comes in a wide range of flavors, all with ample source material
Want to play a bunch of over-the-top heroes having wacky misadventures? You can pick up any Silver Age comic book and see adventure and character seeds strewn through the pages. Grim vigilantes fighting crime because the cops are corrupt and the nights are blacker than black? Iron Age comics with plenty of black leather and chains to inspire you. Mature themes rich in nuance but still able to face the world with a grin? Most modern-day comics will give you a good source to work from.
You can go from being as silly and outrageous as you like to the darkest and most grim of plots, all within the same system and sometimes even with the same characters, just tweaked by the progress of time. Compare the Adam West Batman and the Nolan Batman to see just how far apart the exact same character can be without ever changing the functional concept of the character.
From beer and pretzels to deep intrigue on a dime
Just like you can dial the power level and the flavor of the game much more handily in this genre than in most others, it also lends itself to everything from light-hearted beer-and-pretzels gameplay (I don't recommend HERO for this) to the most intrigue-laden roleplay-heavy campaign you can cook up. Superhero stories thrive on mixing up the intense action that most people think of when they hear about comics with light-hearted comedy and well-built emotional scenes, often within a single monthly issue.
Built to be modular
Most game systems make it tricky to tell stories that are either episodic, since most characters require a lot of forethought and work to build and don't really change quickly, or truly long-term, since really long-term plots require a commitment from players and GM alike that they might not be able to sustain. The superhero genre works well for either of these extremes, though, with episodic games matching up well with the frantic pacing of a comic, and the long-term able to be handled even as players drop out due to life or new people join. The original heroes retire, new ones join the team, and if someone comes back then the retired hero makes a comeback or has a protege who steps in to fill their place.
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This post was originally slated to come out on Friday.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Campaign Mode: Colonization
The recent release of a Colonization update to the game Starbound, plus having been playing some of the Civilization games, prompted me to think about reasons why you might want to play a game about founding a colony. This was followed up by someone complaining that Starbound had dared to use the word 'colonization' for the update, and the rest followed from my bafflement.
So here's my take on why you might want to try playing a colonization or nation-building campaign.
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It's a new kind of challenge
Even stepping away from the standard adventure model where a group of would-be heroes undertake quests and looking at the wider spectrum of game types, this kind of game is unusual. You're not dealing with a villain or villain group. You're not interacting with an existing civilization (well, you might be, but more about that later) or relying on the support of a pre-existing industrial base. The player group is going into a wilderness area - possibly just untamed wilderness, in a fantasy game, but with a sci-fi game we might be talking the colonization of an entire new world. They won't have anything more than limited and infrequent support from 'back home' in the best of circumstances.
The GM should allow a larger-than-usual starting budget for players in this kind of game, with the exception of exile-style games (more on that below). This allows everyone to feel satisfied that they've prepared for things as best they can, and can let the GM see what kind of challenges they're expecting to face. For most games, groups should have at least a rough idea of what's in wait for them - climate and terrain, possibly a map of some level of detail. A fantasy game is more likely to just have a rough lay of the land than a sci-fi game, since with sci-fi the settlers can dispatch probes that travel just a little faster across the interstellar distances and get to collect years of information on climate, large-scale maps, and so on.
Everyone should get to have a hand in creating the colonists; players get to have a tie to at least some of the NPCs, linking them together with the PCs and other NPCs and giving themselves a sense of investment in the game from the get-go. At the same time, this is where the biggest challenges are going to come from. There will be unforeseen personality conflicts, challenges to authority, illnesses, and more. What will the PCs do when the settlement's only blacksmith or medic cracks under the stress and runs off into the wilderness? What about when two of the most charismatic members of the colony break off their relationship and try to rally everyone against the other, threatening to tear the settlement apart?
The land is unknown and dangerous
Even in a far-future setting, there's a limit to how much information can be gathered and how detailed it can be. Short of seeding the world with nanotechnology that effectively builds a civilization before the colonists arrive, there are going to be threats and risks from the environment of the new land. Everything from unfamiliar terrain to aggressive wildlife that doesn't fear humans can threaten people. Even if the PCs enact curfews and defensive perimeters, people will get drunk or bored and decide to go sneaking out, leaving the characters with a choice of risking the wilderness to save the missing or being accused of abandoning them to the wilds.
Even just attempting to explore and settle the area right around the initial base camp has the risk of numerous dangers - discovering that the woods that were going to be a source of raw materials for building have a cave entrance that's home to some big, hungry predator demands a quick response. The discovery that the base camp is right in the middle of a migration route for a species of large herd animals that think 'walls' are just things to be pushed through can make it necessary to quickly pack up and move, or else make an effort to drive the creatures to the side of the settlement.
Native plants can wreak havoc among attempts at farming crops. A rash of weeds with a foul odor and oil that causes an itching rash at the slightest touch can make life hell for everyone, requiring characters to think creatively to come up with solutions, and the insects that feed on those weeds may carry some unknown and nasty illness that healing magic or modern medicine doesn't have the ability to treat without spending a lot of time and effort on research - time and effort that has to be diverted away from other tasks.
Every player can find something to do
People on the Method Actor end of the scale can indulge in the interactions and politics of the settlement, from simply settling disputes and arguments to running campaigns about issues to handling setting up a government and running an election campaign. Those on the Tactician end of things can enjoy planning the layout of the settlement, arranging the defenses, organizing scouting parties, and handling the more violent disputes that crop up. Explorers have everything from an isolated wilderness to an entire planet or star system to dig into the mysteries of.
Combat hounds can find themselves in the role of law enforcement, dealing with everything from belligerent drunks to hostile wildlife - or possibly even hostile locals or later colonization efforts. The roguish types can put their inclinations to use scouting, hunting wild animals to feed everyone, and keeping tabs on malcontents around the settlement. Those who prefer to delve into lore can dig into their surroundings, either via magic or science, assembling information to help the colony out - and giving the player a chance to help build some of the lore of the area, if the GM asks them beforehand what they're looking to find, and building the answer on what their skill checks produce.
Potential conflicts on a new level
There's the chance that the colony might not be the first into an area - or not the last to arrive. If there are others there ahead of them, there's a question of whether they're natives to the area, or perhaps an earlier colony that might be better developed. There's a chance that peaceful contact might be established, arranging trade and aid between the groups, but also the distinct chance - particularly if the cultures differ - for hostilities to commence.
If the group is indigenous, there's the question of how they measure up technologically and resource-wise against the new arrivals - and which side has the deadlier diseases in their systems against the others. A sudden illness seizing the PC settlement after first contact, threatening the death of many unless the players can either devise a treatment or make peaceful contact with the natives and get a treatment from them to help minimize the impact and damage.
If they're earlier arrivals, there's a chance that they might be wildcat colonists - people who went to settle their own land illicitly, without any support or writ from the original civilization. They might even be settlers from a nation hostile to the one that the PC colony comes from - so what do the players do when disaster strikes in the form of a massive earthquake, torrential downpour that causes flooding, or even something like a meteor impact or volcanic eruption, leaving both colonies in shambles and likely to die unless they work together?
And what do they do when a later colony effort shows up, outraged to discover someone here ahead of them and more than willing to initiate hostilities with the PC colony over what they see as 'their' rightful land? Do they try to make peace and relocate, fight to the last to defend their new homes, or resort to more nefarious means to secure their safety?
A reason to be central without being heroes
If the PCs are the organizers or the chosen authority of the colony, they have a reason to be at the center of the action without the story needing to revolve directly around them. The individual stories of the other colonists can be woven around the PCs, making them central to everything that happens without any of it actually being about them.
Two families come to them to ask them to settle who has a claim to a particularly fertile stretch of land. A child goes missing, run off into the woods, and someone has to organize the search effort and go looking for them. A pack of hungry predators show up and menace outlying farms, and someone needs to go drive them off or kill them. The list goes on - once things are settled, those who relied on the PCs early on start to agitate to displace them, or talk a portion of the other colonists into abandoning the settlement and going into the wilds to make their own encampment where they can enact rules that the PCs have been denying.
Mysterious mysteries
Perhaps there are secrets hidden beneath the pristine wilderness. Someone exploring finds a crevice in a hill that leads to a building buried completely underground, the interior suggesting a whole new civilization that no one has ever heard of before. A scout finds an ancient machine of unknown purpose, which has been laying still for so long a tree has grown up through it. A lake turns out to have unnaturally regular lines, and one side turns out to be an artificially crafted dam.
Or perhaps the PCs decide to create things themselves that will one day be the mysteries of the past - a temple to the gods they left civilization to be free to worship, hidden in the deep forest, or a statue in their own honor raised in the middle of their town. The colonists who split off to do their own thing are found - or the ruins of their attempted settlement is, with no trace of the colonists who founded it.
Building a new campaign world
Finally, after a colonization campaign comes to a close, the group has created a new place to play in during later games, seeing how things play out in the future. The small town they painstakingly built becomes a metropolis, the quarry they set up becomes a lake when it runs out, or the temple they built becomes the center of a kingdom's faith. The wilderness falls back, and they can come back to the other, more familiar game types, but now they find streets named after their old characters, monuments they built still standing - or standing in neglect, in need of a new generation to revitalize them.
All of the familiar pieces of gameplay, but now every bit has had their hands involved shaping it, making the world that much more real for them as they build their next character to fit into it.
---
So consider giving a colonization game a try; it might just be worth the effort!
So here's my take on why you might want to try playing a colonization or nation-building campaign.
---
It's a new kind of challenge
Even stepping away from the standard adventure model where a group of would-be heroes undertake quests and looking at the wider spectrum of game types, this kind of game is unusual. You're not dealing with a villain or villain group. You're not interacting with an existing civilization (well, you might be, but more about that later) or relying on the support of a pre-existing industrial base. The player group is going into a wilderness area - possibly just untamed wilderness, in a fantasy game, but with a sci-fi game we might be talking the colonization of an entire new world. They won't have anything more than limited and infrequent support from 'back home' in the best of circumstances.
The GM should allow a larger-than-usual starting budget for players in this kind of game, with the exception of exile-style games (more on that below). This allows everyone to feel satisfied that they've prepared for things as best they can, and can let the GM see what kind of challenges they're expecting to face. For most games, groups should have at least a rough idea of what's in wait for them - climate and terrain, possibly a map of some level of detail. A fantasy game is more likely to just have a rough lay of the land than a sci-fi game, since with sci-fi the settlers can dispatch probes that travel just a little faster across the interstellar distances and get to collect years of information on climate, large-scale maps, and so on.
Everyone should get to have a hand in creating the colonists; players get to have a tie to at least some of the NPCs, linking them together with the PCs and other NPCs and giving themselves a sense of investment in the game from the get-go. At the same time, this is where the biggest challenges are going to come from. There will be unforeseen personality conflicts, challenges to authority, illnesses, and more. What will the PCs do when the settlement's only blacksmith or medic cracks under the stress and runs off into the wilderness? What about when two of the most charismatic members of the colony break off their relationship and try to rally everyone against the other, threatening to tear the settlement apart?
The land is unknown and dangerous
Even in a far-future setting, there's a limit to how much information can be gathered and how detailed it can be. Short of seeding the world with nanotechnology that effectively builds a civilization before the colonists arrive, there are going to be threats and risks from the environment of the new land. Everything from unfamiliar terrain to aggressive wildlife that doesn't fear humans can threaten people. Even if the PCs enact curfews and defensive perimeters, people will get drunk or bored and decide to go sneaking out, leaving the characters with a choice of risking the wilderness to save the missing or being accused of abandoning them to the wilds.
Even just attempting to explore and settle the area right around the initial base camp has the risk of numerous dangers - discovering that the woods that were going to be a source of raw materials for building have a cave entrance that's home to some big, hungry predator demands a quick response. The discovery that the base camp is right in the middle of a migration route for a species of large herd animals that think 'walls' are just things to be pushed through can make it necessary to quickly pack up and move, or else make an effort to drive the creatures to the side of the settlement.
Native plants can wreak havoc among attempts at farming crops. A rash of weeds with a foul odor and oil that causes an itching rash at the slightest touch can make life hell for everyone, requiring characters to think creatively to come up with solutions, and the insects that feed on those weeds may carry some unknown and nasty illness that healing magic or modern medicine doesn't have the ability to treat without spending a lot of time and effort on research - time and effort that has to be diverted away from other tasks.
Every player can find something to do
People on the Method Actor end of the scale can indulge in the interactions and politics of the settlement, from simply settling disputes and arguments to running campaigns about issues to handling setting up a government and running an election campaign. Those on the Tactician end of things can enjoy planning the layout of the settlement, arranging the defenses, organizing scouting parties, and handling the more violent disputes that crop up. Explorers have everything from an isolated wilderness to an entire planet or star system to dig into the mysteries of.
Combat hounds can find themselves in the role of law enforcement, dealing with everything from belligerent drunks to hostile wildlife - or possibly even hostile locals or later colonization efforts. The roguish types can put their inclinations to use scouting, hunting wild animals to feed everyone, and keeping tabs on malcontents around the settlement. Those who prefer to delve into lore can dig into their surroundings, either via magic or science, assembling information to help the colony out - and giving the player a chance to help build some of the lore of the area, if the GM asks them beforehand what they're looking to find, and building the answer on what their skill checks produce.
Potential conflicts on a new level
There's the chance that the colony might not be the first into an area - or not the last to arrive. If there are others there ahead of them, there's a question of whether they're natives to the area, or perhaps an earlier colony that might be better developed. There's a chance that peaceful contact might be established, arranging trade and aid between the groups, but also the distinct chance - particularly if the cultures differ - for hostilities to commence.
If the group is indigenous, there's the question of how they measure up technologically and resource-wise against the new arrivals - and which side has the deadlier diseases in their systems against the others. A sudden illness seizing the PC settlement after first contact, threatening the death of many unless the players can either devise a treatment or make peaceful contact with the natives and get a treatment from them to help minimize the impact and damage.
If they're earlier arrivals, there's a chance that they might be wildcat colonists - people who went to settle their own land illicitly, without any support or writ from the original civilization. They might even be settlers from a nation hostile to the one that the PC colony comes from - so what do the players do when disaster strikes in the form of a massive earthquake, torrential downpour that causes flooding, or even something like a meteor impact or volcanic eruption, leaving both colonies in shambles and likely to die unless they work together?
And what do they do when a later colony effort shows up, outraged to discover someone here ahead of them and more than willing to initiate hostilities with the PC colony over what they see as 'their' rightful land? Do they try to make peace and relocate, fight to the last to defend their new homes, or resort to more nefarious means to secure their safety?
A reason to be central without being heroes
If the PCs are the organizers or the chosen authority of the colony, they have a reason to be at the center of the action without the story needing to revolve directly around them. The individual stories of the other colonists can be woven around the PCs, making them central to everything that happens without any of it actually being about them.
Two families come to them to ask them to settle who has a claim to a particularly fertile stretch of land. A child goes missing, run off into the woods, and someone has to organize the search effort and go looking for them. A pack of hungry predators show up and menace outlying farms, and someone needs to go drive them off or kill them. The list goes on - once things are settled, those who relied on the PCs early on start to agitate to displace them, or talk a portion of the other colonists into abandoning the settlement and going into the wilds to make their own encampment where they can enact rules that the PCs have been denying.
Mysterious mysteries
Perhaps there are secrets hidden beneath the pristine wilderness. Someone exploring finds a crevice in a hill that leads to a building buried completely underground, the interior suggesting a whole new civilization that no one has ever heard of before. A scout finds an ancient machine of unknown purpose, which has been laying still for so long a tree has grown up through it. A lake turns out to have unnaturally regular lines, and one side turns out to be an artificially crafted dam.
Or perhaps the PCs decide to create things themselves that will one day be the mysteries of the past - a temple to the gods they left civilization to be free to worship, hidden in the deep forest, or a statue in their own honor raised in the middle of their town. The colonists who split off to do their own thing are found - or the ruins of their attempted settlement is, with no trace of the colonists who founded it.
Building a new campaign world
Finally, after a colonization campaign comes to a close, the group has created a new place to play in during later games, seeing how things play out in the future. The small town they painstakingly built becomes a metropolis, the quarry they set up becomes a lake when it runs out, or the temple they built becomes the center of a kingdom's faith. The wilderness falls back, and they can come back to the other, more familiar game types, but now they find streets named after their old characters, monuments they built still standing - or standing in neglect, in need of a new generation to revitalize them.
All of the familiar pieces of gameplay, but now every bit has had their hands involved shaping it, making the world that much more real for them as they build their next character to fit into it.
---
So consider giving a colonization game a try; it might just be worth the effort!
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Exile's Cypher: Born of the Vaal
The last couple posts in this vein have been on already-existing Foci and how to fit them to the themes of Wraeclast. Today we'll look at new Foci for the campaign - specifically, ones that relate character to the nightmare ancestral power whose fall condemned the land to be cursed, the Vaal Empire. The creators of the Virtue Gems, masters of forbidden sciences and dark arts, the Vaal today haunt the rest of the world as the darkest of boogeymen.
Touched By the Vaal
You have been touched since you were young with a connection to the mysteries left behind by the Vaal when they once ruled over everything. It manifests as whispering voices that offer insights and advice, not always pertinent to the situation you're in, and a natural instinct for the things the cursed empire left behind. You tend to be drawn to ornate clothing with strange symmetries hidden in the design, in lurid colors that draw the eye to you, and you likely delight in the attention.
While any Type can benefit from this Focus, those who focus on Intellect will find it more valuable than others.
Additional Equipment: You have a compass of sorts; fashioned of faintly luminous metals and crystals of unknown composition, it points to the largest Vaal-crafted relic within a month's walk of you.
Minor Effect: Corrupt energy courses over the area around you out to a short distance, stunning enemies and leaving all rolls against them modified one level in your favor.
Major Effect: An unnoticed Vaal construct surges to life for a moment and lunges at a foe, immbolizing them for a round before it crumbles into fragments.
Tier 1 Whispering Darkness (Intellect 2): You reach out with your psyche to listen carefully, gaining an asset on all initiative rolls and Perception tasks to detect creatures or Vaal relics for the next hour.
Lore of the Vaal: You are trained in all skills related to information about the Vaal Empire and the relics it left behind.
Tier 2 Corrupt Aura (Intellect 3): You channel the corrupt energy of the cursed land, creating a bubble of darkness that grants you +1 Armor and adds 1 point of corrupt damage to your melee attacks.
Tier 3 Army of the Vaal (Intellect 2+): For every two points of Intellect you spend, you animate a level 2 skeleton warrior that claws out of the ground and fights for you for the next three rounds. Alternately, you may spend 4 Intellect from your pool to summon a level 4 skeleton archer or sorcerer who can make attacks out to long range for the same duration.
Tier 4 Malachai's Touch: Your form corrupts and twists as you become closer to the source of your power, gaining an inherent +2 Armor bonus; this results in a visible and disturbing transformation of some kind - scales or chitin covers your skin and your body becomes emaciated and subtly deformed.
Will of the Vaal: You gain +4 Intellect.
Tier 5 Name of the Corrupt: You are considered an Abomination for all effects that enhance or heal such creatures, and they regard you as one of their own, leaving you in peace unless you attack them.
Howl of the Damned (Intellect 1+): You unleash a shattering scream from your augmented lungs and throat, dealing 2 damage to everything out to a short distance from you; every 2 Intellect you spend past this increases this damage by 2 points.
Tier 6 Blasphemous Apotheosis: You are considered a Vaal Construct for purposes of effects that enhance or heal such, and such things will regard you as one of their own unless you attack them. You gain an additional +2 Armor, and your Recovery rolls have a +1 bonus. You no longer even vaguely resemble your birth form.
Malachai's Blessing: You gain a melee attack that functions as a medium weapon of slashing, piercing, or bashing type (your choice), and it deals an additional 2 poison damage on the round following a successful blow.
Blessed With Virtue
You were born with an attunement to the Virtue Gems the Vaal first created; you can wield them adeptly, and have little to fear from the corrupting aspects of their fragmentary forms. You likely favor crystalline appearances, sewing reflective things to your clothing and delighting in gemstone jewelry.
Any Type can benefit from this Focus easily.
Minor Effect: A pulse of energy among your belongings conducts along your touch, augmenting whatever you were doing to be slightly more effective.
Major Effect: One of your Virtue Gems spontaneously activates without a need for a depletion roll, directing its power to best benefit you in the situation.
Tier One Capacity: You may carry an extra cypher safely.
Infused with Virtue: You gain an additional five points to distribute among your stat pools.
Tier Two Gembond: You are considered trained in all tasks relating to cyphers and artifacts.
Virtuous Power: Any Virtue Gems that deal damage deal one additional point when you invoke them.
Tier Three Gemseed: You may pick a single cypher you carry and embed it in your flesh, gaining the effects of it as a personal power. GM discretion on whether or not a cypher can be utilized in this fashion.
Crystalline: You gain +1 Armor.
Tier Four Virtuous: You gain +2 to each Pool, and a +1 on Recovery rolls.
Tier Five Fueled by Virtue: Whenever a Virtue Gem would be depleted, you may opt to instead move one step down the damage track instead; you cannot recovery from this state until your next ten hour rest. You may use this as many times as you like, but dead is still dead.
Tier Six Gemling: You may choose a single Virtue Gem; it becomes a permanent part of you, never suffering depletion rolls, and you additionally gain +2 to each Pool and+2 Armor.
Touched By the Vaal
You have been touched since you were young with a connection to the mysteries left behind by the Vaal when they once ruled over everything. It manifests as whispering voices that offer insights and advice, not always pertinent to the situation you're in, and a natural instinct for the things the cursed empire left behind. You tend to be drawn to ornate clothing with strange symmetries hidden in the design, in lurid colors that draw the eye to you, and you likely delight in the attention.
While any Type can benefit from this Focus, those who focus on Intellect will find it more valuable than others.
Additional Equipment: You have a compass of sorts; fashioned of faintly luminous metals and crystals of unknown composition, it points to the largest Vaal-crafted relic within a month's walk of you.
Minor Effect: Corrupt energy courses over the area around you out to a short distance, stunning enemies and leaving all rolls against them modified one level in your favor.
Major Effect: An unnoticed Vaal construct surges to life for a moment and lunges at a foe, immbolizing them for a round before it crumbles into fragments.
Tier 1 Whispering Darkness (Intellect 2): You reach out with your psyche to listen carefully, gaining an asset on all initiative rolls and Perception tasks to detect creatures or Vaal relics for the next hour.
Lore of the Vaal: You are trained in all skills related to information about the Vaal Empire and the relics it left behind.
Tier 2 Corrupt Aura (Intellect 3): You channel the corrupt energy of the cursed land, creating a bubble of darkness that grants you +1 Armor and adds 1 point of corrupt damage to your melee attacks.
Tier 3 Army of the Vaal (Intellect 2+): For every two points of Intellect you spend, you animate a level 2 skeleton warrior that claws out of the ground and fights for you for the next three rounds. Alternately, you may spend 4 Intellect from your pool to summon a level 4 skeleton archer or sorcerer who can make attacks out to long range for the same duration.
Tier 4 Malachai's Touch: Your form corrupts and twists as you become closer to the source of your power, gaining an inherent +2 Armor bonus; this results in a visible and disturbing transformation of some kind - scales or chitin covers your skin and your body becomes emaciated and subtly deformed.
Will of the Vaal: You gain +4 Intellect.
Tier 5 Name of the Corrupt: You are considered an Abomination for all effects that enhance or heal such creatures, and they regard you as one of their own, leaving you in peace unless you attack them.
Howl of the Damned (Intellect 1+): You unleash a shattering scream from your augmented lungs and throat, dealing 2 damage to everything out to a short distance from you; every 2 Intellect you spend past this increases this damage by 2 points.
Tier 6 Blasphemous Apotheosis: You are considered a Vaal Construct for purposes of effects that enhance or heal such, and such things will regard you as one of their own unless you attack them. You gain an additional +2 Armor, and your Recovery rolls have a +1 bonus. You no longer even vaguely resemble your birth form.
Malachai's Blessing: You gain a melee attack that functions as a medium weapon of slashing, piercing, or bashing type (your choice), and it deals an additional 2 poison damage on the round following a successful blow.
Blessed With Virtue
You were born with an attunement to the Virtue Gems the Vaal first created; you can wield them adeptly, and have little to fear from the corrupting aspects of their fragmentary forms. You likely favor crystalline appearances, sewing reflective things to your clothing and delighting in gemstone jewelry.
Any Type can benefit from this Focus easily.
Minor Effect: A pulse of energy among your belongings conducts along your touch, augmenting whatever you were doing to be slightly more effective.
Major Effect: One of your Virtue Gems spontaneously activates without a need for a depletion roll, directing its power to best benefit you in the situation.
Tier One Capacity: You may carry an extra cypher safely.
Infused with Virtue: You gain an additional five points to distribute among your stat pools.
Tier Two Gembond: You are considered trained in all tasks relating to cyphers and artifacts.
Virtuous Power: Any Virtue Gems that deal damage deal one additional point when you invoke them.
Tier Three Gemseed: You may pick a single cypher you carry and embed it in your flesh, gaining the effects of it as a personal power. GM discretion on whether or not a cypher can be utilized in this fashion.
Crystalline: You gain +1 Armor.
Tier Four Virtuous: You gain +2 to each Pool, and a +1 on Recovery rolls.
Tier Five Fueled by Virtue: Whenever a Virtue Gem would be depleted, you may opt to instead move one step down the damage track instead; you cannot recovery from this state until your next ten hour rest. You may use this as many times as you like, but dead is still dead.
Tier Six Gemling: You may choose a single Virtue Gem; it becomes a permanent part of you, never suffering depletion rolls, and you additionally gain +2 to each Pool and
Monday, August 24, 2015
Eclipse Phase: Before the Fall Setup, Part 3 - The Klayman Family
This post details the rough information available to the UN Peacekeeper Task Force when the Before the Fall game commences.
---
The compound is owned by the Klayman family, a family line that got their start cheerily collecting ourageous fees for representing conservative group from the beginning of the 21st century; the founder of the family fortune got his start with die-hard conservative groups in that time, setting a tone of exploitation and extortion that has kept the family well-funded into the present time. Careful investments conducted through obfuscated means have given them a share in most megacorps, as well as a sizable interest in forward-thinking hypercorps already setting up habitats with intent to lease portions to the extremely wealthy. The family's influence keeps pushing to do things cheaper, even if it means skimping a bit on safety measures.
Lawrence Klayman is the current patriarch of the family, inhabiting his second morph and enjoy the revitalized youth and energy it gives him. Although openly a bioconservative, he's not the least bit against benefiting from the fruits of modern science as long as he's able to avoid being called out on it. As such, he has a full complement of cutting edge technology built into his new body. He pretends to be his own grandson when out in public, keeping his original body around on ice to be controlled via puppet sock on occasions when the world needs to see him. His children are less than thrilled at his new lease on life, and he suspects all of them of being involved with a plot to kill him and take over the family business.
Marcus Klayman is the first son of Lawrence, and up until his father got copied into a younger, fitter morph he was expecting the old man to eventually retire and pass it along to him. Well into his eighties by this point, he indulges in various biotechnology to keep himself looking and feeling like a man in his 40s. Involved with several extermist groups in his youth, he appears to have mellowed out and cut his ties once he reached middle age and started studying to inherit his father's position. He's divorced, his wife having taken both of his children and moved to live on Luna, well out of the family's influence.
Maria Klayman is Lawrence's daughter, and the second in line after Marcus. Married to a megachurch pastor who goes by John Blessed, she refused to change her name and risk losing direct access to the inheritance when she got married. She rules her household with a steel fist, despite appearing to be demure and obliging to her husband in public to help ensure his grip over the ultraconservative congregation of his church - nearly a million people disenchanted with their place in the world and certain that John's teachings are the way to glory. Several small terrorist groups in the area claim to be founded on the tenets of what John teaches, although both Maria and John publicly disavow all knowledge of the groups. Their two children, James and Mark, have been groomed to take over the megachurch when John decides to retire; both have spent time extensively learning how to be leaders - something that Lawrence is paranoid about, as either could easily lead a terror group in a raid on the family compound if Maria has decided she wants to take the legacy over.
Jeremiah Klayman is the third in line and appears to be a dilettante, but while he doesn't seem interested in running any of the family business, he's extensively invested in several cutting-edge hypercorps with his allowance, and stands to be fully independent of the family legacy if he so chooses. His children are the result of cloning experiments courtesy of his investments, resulting in two daughters and a son - Brenda, Kathy, and Walter - who have a wide variance in personality despite being gene-tweaked clones. All of them are heavily augmented and more than capable of defending themselves in a fight, but none seem to have any known connection to any groups that might be willing to attack the Klayman family. At this time, all three children are off-world attending lunar universities in pursuit of degrees in advanced genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Jeremiah still resides on the family compound, but has a personal spaceplane that can make LEO stationed at the nearby airport.
Last in line is Matilda Gruzman, who decided to take her hsuband's name on the understanding that she was unlikely to ever need to consider trying to run the family. She and her husband Harold are childless by choice, but more than willing to pretend to be the parents of her father in his new body. Both are hedonists, experimenting with the latest in recreational chemistry and augmented reality whenever they don't need to be in the public eye. They're also the only family members to openly be outfitted with cortical stacks, making them the apparent black sheep of the family; that their 'son' gives the appearance of going to more pure and conservative route (despite the contrary being true) reassures the supporters of the family that the family is still properly under Lawrence's control.
John Blessed is the very image of a total hypocrite, and everyone outside the control zone of his megachurch knows it. Augmented with numerous pieces of cutting-edge technology, he's in an early-model Sylph morph with numerous tweaks to max out his ability to be charming, suave, and persuasive. Anyone not coming to a meeting with countermeasures will find it hard to dislike the man, and might find themselves considering his rather dubious rhetoric. His history has been carefully obfuscated with numerous plausible rumors and confusing paper trails, with alternate trails that suggest he may have been an assassin, a con artist who took world leaders for billions, a serial killer, the only child of climate refugees who simply made it good, and the only survivor of an airplane crash.
James Blessed is a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, second in command to his father and direct heir in line to take the church over. Genetic modifications before birth assured that he was effectively born in a sylph morph, enabling his easy rise to dominance over the other children around him. This group, the Guardian Angels, serve today as his personal bodyguards whenever he needs to go out in public. No data suggests that he's anything other than he seems.
Mark Blessed serves as a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, but less frequently than his older brother. Although he also effectively lives in a Sylph morph, his personal aptitudes make him much less inclined to charisma and manipulation by force of personality, instead having an aptitude for figures and logistics that has seen him come to be in charge of the business side of the megachurch, and more recently picking up the Blessed-Klayman portion of the Klayman family fortune to manage for his parents. He has known investments in numerous hypercorps, including several private security firms and armament manufacturers; the equipment carried by the Guardian Angels has been acquired through his contacts with these groups.
Numerous other individuals reside on the family compound - security forces, attendants, more distant lineages of the family, and the like - but this covers the family members presently in the area at the time of the game start.
---
The compound is owned by the Klayman family, a family line that got their start cheerily collecting ourageous fees for representing conservative group from the beginning of the 21st century; the founder of the family fortune got his start with die-hard conservative groups in that time, setting a tone of exploitation and extortion that has kept the family well-funded into the present time. Careful investments conducted through obfuscated means have given them a share in most megacorps, as well as a sizable interest in forward-thinking hypercorps already setting up habitats with intent to lease portions to the extremely wealthy. The family's influence keeps pushing to do things cheaper, even if it means skimping a bit on safety measures.
Lawrence Klayman is the current patriarch of the family, inhabiting his second morph and enjoy the revitalized youth and energy it gives him. Although openly a bioconservative, he's not the least bit against benefiting from the fruits of modern science as long as he's able to avoid being called out on it. As such, he has a full complement of cutting edge technology built into his new body. He pretends to be his own grandson when out in public, keeping his original body around on ice to be controlled via puppet sock on occasions when the world needs to see him. His children are less than thrilled at his new lease on life, and he suspects all of them of being involved with a plot to kill him and take over the family business.
Marcus Klayman is the first son of Lawrence, and up until his father got copied into a younger, fitter morph he was expecting the old man to eventually retire and pass it along to him. Well into his eighties by this point, he indulges in various biotechnology to keep himself looking and feeling like a man in his 40s. Involved with several extermist groups in his youth, he appears to have mellowed out and cut his ties once he reached middle age and started studying to inherit his father's position. He's divorced, his wife having taken both of his children and moved to live on Luna, well out of the family's influence.
Maria Klayman is Lawrence's daughter, and the second in line after Marcus. Married to a megachurch pastor who goes by John Blessed, she refused to change her name and risk losing direct access to the inheritance when she got married. She rules her household with a steel fist, despite appearing to be demure and obliging to her husband in public to help ensure his grip over the ultraconservative congregation of his church - nearly a million people disenchanted with their place in the world and certain that John's teachings are the way to glory. Several small terrorist groups in the area claim to be founded on the tenets of what John teaches, although both Maria and John publicly disavow all knowledge of the groups. Their two children, James and Mark, have been groomed to take over the megachurch when John decides to retire; both have spent time extensively learning how to be leaders - something that Lawrence is paranoid about, as either could easily lead a terror group in a raid on the family compound if Maria has decided she wants to take the legacy over.
Jeremiah Klayman is the third in line and appears to be a dilettante, but while he doesn't seem interested in running any of the family business, he's extensively invested in several cutting-edge hypercorps with his allowance, and stands to be fully independent of the family legacy if he so chooses. His children are the result of cloning experiments courtesy of his investments, resulting in two daughters and a son - Brenda, Kathy, and Walter - who have a wide variance in personality despite being gene-tweaked clones. All of them are heavily augmented and more than capable of defending themselves in a fight, but none seem to have any known connection to any groups that might be willing to attack the Klayman family. At this time, all three children are off-world attending lunar universities in pursuit of degrees in advanced genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Jeremiah still resides on the family compound, but has a personal spaceplane that can make LEO stationed at the nearby airport.
Last in line is Matilda Gruzman, who decided to take her hsuband's name on the understanding that she was unlikely to ever need to consider trying to run the family. She and her husband Harold are childless by choice, but more than willing to pretend to be the parents of her father in his new body. Both are hedonists, experimenting with the latest in recreational chemistry and augmented reality whenever they don't need to be in the public eye. They're also the only family members to openly be outfitted with cortical stacks, making them the apparent black sheep of the family; that their 'son' gives the appearance of going to more pure and conservative route (despite the contrary being true) reassures the supporters of the family that the family is still properly under Lawrence's control.
John Blessed is the very image of a total hypocrite, and everyone outside the control zone of his megachurch knows it. Augmented with numerous pieces of cutting-edge technology, he's in an early-model Sylph morph with numerous tweaks to max out his ability to be charming, suave, and persuasive. Anyone not coming to a meeting with countermeasures will find it hard to dislike the man, and might find themselves considering his rather dubious rhetoric. His history has been carefully obfuscated with numerous plausible rumors and confusing paper trails, with alternate trails that suggest he may have been an assassin, a con artist who took world leaders for billions, a serial killer, the only child of climate refugees who simply made it good, and the only survivor of an airplane crash.
James Blessed is a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, second in command to his father and direct heir in line to take the church over. Genetic modifications before birth assured that he was effectively born in a sylph morph, enabling his easy rise to dominance over the other children around him. This group, the Guardian Angels, serve today as his personal bodyguards whenever he needs to go out in public. No data suggests that he's anything other than he seems.
Mark Blessed serves as a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, but less frequently than his older brother. Although he also effectively lives in a Sylph morph, his personal aptitudes make him much less inclined to charisma and manipulation by force of personality, instead having an aptitude for figures and logistics that has seen him come to be in charge of the business side of the megachurch, and more recently picking up the Blessed-Klayman portion of the Klayman family fortune to manage for his parents. He has known investments in numerous hypercorps, including several private security firms and armament manufacturers; the equipment carried by the Guardian Angels has been acquired through his contacts with these groups.
Numerous other individuals reside on the family compound - security forces, attendants, more distant lineages of the family, and the like - but this covers the family members presently in the area at the time of the game start.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Deus ex Machina, TPKs, and what to do when Things Go Bad
There's a certain school of GM thought that says you're not doing it 'right' if you've never had a Total Party Kill; at one point this was a dead serious and far-ranging school of thought in the hobby, and there was a certain feel that the GM and the PCs were adversarial. The GM, of course, has to self-limit, because GMs have absolute power over the game world. There's nothing stopping one from pulling the eternal joke of 'rocks fall, everyone dies' save that such a GM will quickly have no players left.
On the other extreme, there's the Monty Haul style of GMing, where players are rarely challenged by anything, treasure and experience and other rewards flow like water, and if anything really threatens the players they've probably got a god waiting in the wings to save them from doom. While it might be fun once in a while, this pretty quickly gets as boring as most of the adversarial games where the GM seriously thinks he's the foe of the players.
Neither TPKs nor Monty Haul games are much fun for extended periods; the GM generally walks a fairly narrow line balanced between mild forms of the two extremes. What's fairly easy at low levels - if a challenge is too easy, the enemies get some unexpected backup, if it's too hard the creature turns out to already have been wounded - becomes harder as characters gain in power and groups develop and refine their tactics. What was a case of a front-line fighter charging back and forth to keep opponents focused on them while the wizard lobs plinking spells from the back gives way to combats opening with earth-shattering explosions of magic and the charging warrior plowing through entire squads of enemies as they try to pile onto the character.
The GM's job becomes increasingly tricky, as most groups become finely tuned to the point that anything they're expecting will get torn apart, but things coming at them from the side will take them down like a cat pushing glass jars off a shelf. With luck, the players can recognize a situation gone bad and retreat when they need to do so, retooling their approach as needed, but sometimes that won't be the case and the GM is faced with the choice between a ridiculous Deus ex Machina event or a TPK.
I tend to lean toward permitting the TPK, on the grounds that a party being wiped out doesn't mean the story - or even the party - is actually done for. Many methods exist for letting players keep going with a few tweaks even when it seems like they've been wiped out. Enemies might stabilize them and drag them back to be tried according to the laws of their people. They might arise as the living dead, a hunger for revenge burning in their otherwise still hearts. Less cautious foes might loot them and leave, assuming that they'll bleed out, only to have the characters awaken, stripped of their gear and miles from any kind of safety, their only hope being to hunt down those who nearly killed them and reclaim their belongings.
Or you might give the players themselves an option; if there's some great conflict between good and evil, light and dark, law and chaos, or whatever, the godlike beings involved might be championing the characters and turn up after they've died to offer them a choice - remain dead and continue on to their reward, or go back to all the strife and pain of life to keep fighting. What you shouldn't do is force the choice one way or the other, in this case - and not to make a habit of it. Gods only intervene for the greatest heroes and villains, and anything less than that cheapens dramatic moments that can make stories that get told for years.
As always, GMs should err on the side of the best story; sometimes that means finding a way to save the characters, sometimes that means rolling up new characters to go get revenge for the lost, and sometimes it means recognizing that a game is done and moving on to the next campaign.
On the other extreme, there's the Monty Haul style of GMing, where players are rarely challenged by anything, treasure and experience and other rewards flow like water, and if anything really threatens the players they've probably got a god waiting in the wings to save them from doom. While it might be fun once in a while, this pretty quickly gets as boring as most of the adversarial games where the GM seriously thinks he's the foe of the players.
Neither TPKs nor Monty Haul games are much fun for extended periods; the GM generally walks a fairly narrow line balanced between mild forms of the two extremes. What's fairly easy at low levels - if a challenge is too easy, the enemies get some unexpected backup, if it's too hard the creature turns out to already have been wounded - becomes harder as characters gain in power and groups develop and refine their tactics. What was a case of a front-line fighter charging back and forth to keep opponents focused on them while the wizard lobs plinking spells from the back gives way to combats opening with earth-shattering explosions of magic and the charging warrior plowing through entire squads of enemies as they try to pile onto the character.
The GM's job becomes increasingly tricky, as most groups become finely tuned to the point that anything they're expecting will get torn apart, but things coming at them from the side will take them down like a cat pushing glass jars off a shelf. With luck, the players can recognize a situation gone bad and retreat when they need to do so, retooling their approach as needed, but sometimes that won't be the case and the GM is faced with the choice between a ridiculous Deus ex Machina event or a TPK.
I tend to lean toward permitting the TPK, on the grounds that a party being wiped out doesn't mean the story - or even the party - is actually done for. Many methods exist for letting players keep going with a few tweaks even when it seems like they've been wiped out. Enemies might stabilize them and drag them back to be tried according to the laws of their people. They might arise as the living dead, a hunger for revenge burning in their otherwise still hearts. Less cautious foes might loot them and leave, assuming that they'll bleed out, only to have the characters awaken, stripped of their gear and miles from any kind of safety, their only hope being to hunt down those who nearly killed them and reclaim their belongings.
Or you might give the players themselves an option; if there's some great conflict between good and evil, light and dark, law and chaos, or whatever, the godlike beings involved might be championing the characters and turn up after they've died to offer them a choice - remain dead and continue on to their reward, or go back to all the strife and pain of life to keep fighting. What you shouldn't do is force the choice one way or the other, in this case - and not to make a habit of it. Gods only intervene for the greatest heroes and villains, and anything less than that cheapens dramatic moments that can make stories that get told for years.
As always, GMs should err on the side of the best story; sometimes that means finding a way to save the characters, sometimes that means rolling up new characters to go get revenge for the lost, and sometimes it means recognizing that a game is done and moving on to the next campaign.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Fate of Exiles: The Shadow
The Shadow is a class that sits between the agility of the Ranger and the intellect of the Witch; a cunning and graceful murderer for hire, this class more than any other has little odds of being able to claim a noble background, although there are always those who find their way into horrible situations despite the best of natures and intentions. The Shadow is, essentially, an assassin who, in the wake of performing a job they were hired for, found themselves sacked and tossed onto the next ship to Wraeclast's shores. They can be forgiven for being more than a little miffed about the situation.
As example Shadows, we have the Merciless Killer, the Repentant, and the Hapless Slayer. The first is a person who might be willing to take a life for the price of a beer; the second has, in the process of being exiled, found regret that their life has led to this and now they seek to atone; and the last is the poor strange fool who found their natural talents to be aimed at the death of others, yet the rest of their life is at odds with such a profession.
For High Aspects to define these individuals, we have The Hand of Death or Remorseless Murderer as simple, matter-of-fact descriptors for the Killer; The Penitent One or Sorrowful Sinner have a flavor to match the Repentant; and Jack of Blades or The One They Never Suspect hint at the happy-go-lucky nature of the Hapless.
For Troubles, we have Nobody Pays For Things Around Here as a perpetual complaint that troubles the Killer, The Dead Haunt Me for the Repentant plagued by the ghostly voices of Wraeclast's damned souls, and Touched By Dark Whimsy for a Hapless who simply doesn't connect the fact of killing a person with them being dead.
I Always Make My Target, I'm A Professional, and There's Always Another Knife are additional Aspects for a Killer, both improving their ability to deal with things in their chosen trade and marking out how bad they are at things like small talk or putting people at ease. Violence Is The Last Thing On My Mind, Onward Until My Debts Are Paid, and Desperate Times Call For Desperate Heroes call up the desperate determination of the Repentant to redeem themself and atone for the deaths they've caused. I Dance With The Dead, Memento Mori Knick-knacks, and Laughing With The Damned evoke the macabre, twisted, and sometimes almost childlike nature of the Hapless.
Fight and Sneak are key skills for any Shadow, although a Repentant might prioritize Empathy and a Hapless Rapport to play up the nature of their particular inclinations. Notice, Will, and Athletics are all also key. A Shadow who specialized in ranged assassination might have Craft (for creating poisons and antidotes alike) and Shoot as high skills, as well. A Hapless might have a decent skill in Lore, representing the strange facts and tidbits they've gleaned while skipping and dancing through the bloody aftermath of their jobs.
Stunts will likewise tend to follow the particular nature of a given Shadow; a Killer might have Knife In The Dark, granting them a +2 bonus on a Fight or Shoot roll (depending on the relevant skill) made while concealed by Sneak. Apothecary might be something a Repentant has, allowing them to spend a Fate Point to get an automatic success with no shifts on a Craft skill to create an antidote to a poison they've used in the past. Fool's Grace for the Hapless gives them a +2 bonus to Athletics checks to Defend against surprise attacks made on them, representing their twisted fate and monstrous luck.
All in all, a Shadow is a class that can fit numerous character concepts, from unrepentant murderers turned hero by necessity to those who seek redemption for their sins; even the kind of person who plays D&D's Chaotic Neutral alignment as Chaotic Insane can find something on offer here, without needing to twist anything out of true.
Next week we'll look at the last class of Path of Exile, the Scion - a noble child condemned to the cursed shores for the crime of refusing to belonging to the civilized cruelty of Oriath's upper echelons.
As example Shadows, we have the Merciless Killer, the Repentant, and the Hapless Slayer. The first is a person who might be willing to take a life for the price of a beer; the second has, in the process of being exiled, found regret that their life has led to this and now they seek to atone; and the last is the poor strange fool who found their natural talents to be aimed at the death of others, yet the rest of their life is at odds with such a profession.
For High Aspects to define these individuals, we have The Hand of Death or Remorseless Murderer as simple, matter-of-fact descriptors for the Killer; The Penitent One or Sorrowful Sinner have a flavor to match the Repentant; and Jack of Blades or The One They Never Suspect hint at the happy-go-lucky nature of the Hapless.
For Troubles, we have Nobody Pays For Things Around Here as a perpetual complaint that troubles the Killer, The Dead Haunt Me for the Repentant plagued by the ghostly voices of Wraeclast's damned souls, and Touched By Dark Whimsy for a Hapless who simply doesn't connect the fact of killing a person with them being dead.
I Always Make My Target, I'm A Professional, and There's Always Another Knife are additional Aspects for a Killer, both improving their ability to deal with things in their chosen trade and marking out how bad they are at things like small talk or putting people at ease. Violence Is The Last Thing On My Mind, Onward Until My Debts Are Paid, and Desperate Times Call For Desperate Heroes call up the desperate determination of the Repentant to redeem themself and atone for the deaths they've caused. I Dance With The Dead, Memento Mori Knick-knacks, and Laughing With The Damned evoke the macabre, twisted, and sometimes almost childlike nature of the Hapless.
Fight and Sneak are key skills for any Shadow, although a Repentant might prioritize Empathy and a Hapless Rapport to play up the nature of their particular inclinations. Notice, Will, and Athletics are all also key. A Shadow who specialized in ranged assassination might have Craft (for creating poisons and antidotes alike) and Shoot as high skills, as well. A Hapless might have a decent skill in Lore, representing the strange facts and tidbits they've gleaned while skipping and dancing through the bloody aftermath of their jobs.
Stunts will likewise tend to follow the particular nature of a given Shadow; a Killer might have Knife In The Dark, granting them a +2 bonus on a Fight or Shoot roll (depending on the relevant skill) made while concealed by Sneak. Apothecary might be something a Repentant has, allowing them to spend a Fate Point to get an automatic success with no shifts on a Craft skill to create an antidote to a poison they've used in the past. Fool's Grace for the Hapless gives them a +2 bonus to Athletics checks to Defend against surprise attacks made on them, representing their twisted fate and monstrous luck.
All in all, a Shadow is a class that can fit numerous character concepts, from unrepentant murderers turned hero by necessity to those who seek redemption for their sins; even the kind of person who plays D&D's Chaotic Neutral alignment as Chaotic Insane can find something on offer here, without needing to twist anything out of true.
Next week we'll look at the last class of Path of Exile, the Scion - a noble child condemned to the cursed shores for the crime of refusing to belonging to the civilized cruelty of Oriath's upper echelons.
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