Good question, also what effects are you looking to generate?
For example, divine the future, slow time, etc.
Because....
Enough with the driving range, time to work out the kinks on the course. I will be posting the prelude session this weekend. This will be a short mini chapter where you guys can test drive your characters and make any changes before we start Chapter 1.
Cool! I'll touch up Yellow's character sheet today.
What does Ceridwyn think she's doing?
I'm still working on that...
I'll have an answer soon; that is what I'm still struggling with. But, I don't expect her backstory to change at all.
Good question, also what effects are you looking to generate?
For example, divine the future, slow time, etc.Because....
Enough with the driving range, time to work out the kinks on the course. I will be posting the prelude session this weekend. This will be a short mini chapter where you guys can test drive your characters and make any changes before we start Chapter 1.
Like Ed asked, I'll work out her ... [idiom, sir?] before we get started. I am definitely interested in what she thinks and am working on it.
Also, before we start, if you've read my story does it add up in terms of my point buys? I've switched my Spheres to four Entropy and two Time on the Profile. Mark: I'm waiting on a ruling for whether I need Life or Mind or anything instead.
What does Ceridwyn think she's doing?
Alright, here's what I'm thinking.
Ceridwyn thinks that her "disability" of ongoing degeneration is a consequence of her magic―of her sinking the entropy that she sources from the objects of her Effects. As she considers (and then manifests) the changes in entropy that are necessary to bring about her effects, she presumes that the balance of the ordering must come from some personal reserve of hers.
Although I haven't really worked out the salient part of the backstory in my mind yet, Ceridwyn's "mother" likely did not tell her enough of her background to be able to have come up with any better picture for her magic. Indeed, no one on this timeline really has enough evidence to give enough of an account of Ceridwyn's origin to allow for an understanding of her degeneracy. (And, really, those on the future timeline from which she came would not know of the "mother's" involvement and so would not understand the entirety of the situation, either.)
Why doesn't Ceridwyn simply stop doing magic so that she can stop degenerating? Because Ceridwyn doesn't think that she can take a break from magic. She believes that if she doesn't explicitly tap her powers, that they will build up and stochastically tap themselves in random (no pun intended) ways. (This idea is kind of like the time-travel abilities in Ruby Red.) Indeed, her belief in an uncontrollable aspect to her powers is the reason that she ran away from home―she believes that her presence around her "mother" would affect the mother. It is not meant to be ironic that Ceridwyn was, in fact, affecting her mother; however, I intend the mother/Ceridwyn effect to be more of an aura residual on Ceridwyn's part and a Pattern entanglement on the mother's part. Ceridwyn's various levels of misunderstanding of her effect on her mother certainly contribute to her view of her own magic. If we run this campaign long enough for Ceridwyn to become aware that her Effects are purely her own will, that realization will only come after addressing and understanding the situation with her mother. I don't expect that confrontation to be of the hero's journey sort―but I'd love to dramatize it on the page someday.
I dig how Ed is going to abstract his prose as a way to communicate Yellow's world view. I don't plan to get fancy in that sense, but the inner monologue of PbP seems to admit of me describing Ceridwyn's subjective calculus of her effects, which should be fun. If we want to make the campaign a little slip-streamy, I could imagine writing disordered prose as Ceridwyn works her magic and/or degenerates. That is, a lot could be done with switching around the order of words or the order of letters (double meanings, ambiguous meanings, decent into gibberish, increasingly chaotic prose which lacks the potential to do much useful work, metaphorically running a spell as an engine between high- and low-entropy agents in a scene, etc.). I'm open to discussing that.
Does this make sense? Does this work?
***
Also, I see Yellow and the GM listed among the characters for this campaign, but not Ceridwyn. Do I need to change anything in my settings in order to appear there?
And, is what I have described (here and in the profile) consistent with a 6-point Degeneracy? Do I need to take more (or less) and/or shuffle around anything else? I appreciate the leeway to explore more points of Flaws, but I think that 7 will work for me.
The first post should be up today or tomorrow. I am going to have it be in spoiler format so it is easy to read it from either person's perspective.
Nanker, I believe ed went to the gameplay section and attempted to post. It denied him but registered his character for campaign. If that doesn't work you can "dot" in after I post.
I am excited to get things rolling.
I know that Ceridwyn will get automatically listed when the posting begins. I can wait until then---I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't configured something wrong in the character.
Real life has gotten in the way. Hope to jave post up in next couple days.
Hey Mark, go here (link) and "add new thread" with the topic: Unable to post in gameplay after deleting initial post. In the body of your post request that they assist and include a link to the gameplay thread so they know which one to fix. It might take a couple days for them to get to it.
We fixed the gameplay thread so you can dot in Nanker. The first set of posts will focus on Yellow. I won't be long though until you are involved.
Please feel free to post as much as you want, as frequently as you like. I will try and post everyday, even multiple times a day to keep a rhythm going, whether it be in discussion or gameplay. I will us PM's too.
Nanker's character will be introduced shortly.
When you two meet please post a description of yourselves.
I just tried posting a "dot" in gameplay as Yellow did at the top, but it wouldn't let me. Is there more to it?
hmmm....I'll check
How did it deny you?
I can type in the form and can "Preview" my post, but when I click "Sumbit Post" it just spins and then keeps me on the editing page. I can only get out with "Cancel".
If you're literally trying to post a period "." try posting something else - text which hasn't been posted to gameplay yet. There's an anti-spam element to the site that often denies exact duplicate posts.
If you still can't let me know.
I'm in! It must not have liked the dot. I think that I'm all set.
Ah screw it. Jumped right in with Nanker.
I will try harder to post as GM Mark.
Ceridwyn go ahead and give a description of your morning routine and a Intelligence+Academics roll. This is for the search for the best location to search for a suitable production location. You can make up the name of the company and what they produce if you want. I can run with it from there.
Striving for a very organic game here. So I will give you guys a lot of opportunity to contribute to the world.
Yellow your post is up, let me know if there is any action(s) you would like to take.
Ceridwyn the idea is you will make a check on discussion post, and describe your morning, will you leave directly from your dwelling? You will be travelling through out the city so also give me a Intelligence+Law so you know what you will need to travel due restrictions that have been instated due to plague.
OK. I'll catch up and get a post up. I'll start working on it right away, but it probably won't be up until tomorrow. I'm fired up to get this going.
Thanks for asking for the specific rolls until I figure out how to manufacture my own situations.
I will ask for the rolls or make them as they come.
If you want to generate a magic effect post in discussion and we will figure it out ooc.
Looking forward to posts!
Putting a post together now, should be up sometime this evening.
Already running up against a possible change in Sphere allotment. I would love for Yellow to be able to make the rats think he is one of them. Not a physical disguise, but a psychic one; they would still see him as he is, but believe him to be one of them despite his appearance. Like "Oh! I've never met a rat that so looked like a man before - how odd! Oh well, he must be from out of town."
This is pretty obviously a Mind 3 effect. I originally didn't see myself wanting to telepathically communicate with others (and I still don't) so I pretty much discounted the use of Mind 3, but didn't consider the ability to make others think he "fit in", which seems very much what Yellow is about.
I shall have to take a look and possibly shift some points around to make Mind 3 happen. I should have it figured out sometime tomorrow.
Let me know. I am going to wait for Cerldwyn to catch up before I post for Yellow again...I think.
I'm working on my post. I've got to get to sleep (and re-read this when I'm sober). I'll have it posted by Sunday evening your time.
Alright. Thanks for your patience.
I realize that I am treating my Ally, Samantha, as my own personal NPC. This is kind of what I had in mind, but let me know how that should work.
I went with the old first-two-pages-of-a-novel exposition here. Hopefully this post ticks all of the boxes that you needed. Let me know.
Also, while you are assessing Yellow's Spheres, look over my stuff, as well.
Shoot. I forgot to switch my dots from Law to Commerce. I just fixed my Profile, but you'll need to re-roll me as you see fit.
No need to re-roll. We are just doing a shake down test of rules/characters in prelude.
I removed my dot of Life and added it to Mind, so now have Life 0 and Mind 3.
Looking it over, it seems unlikely that I'd be able to effect a psychic disguise with all the rats. My reading is that for every target after the first I'd need an extra success, which obviously isn't going to happen with a million rats. This is an instance where using a different sphere would be much easier to achieve the desired result (namely Life 4 to physically transform into a rat, or even Forces to become invisible and create the image of a rat in his place.)
It's still a useful trick for one to two targets though. Mind 3 also specifically deals with understanding symbols, such as translating any written language, so it seems like Yellow should have it.
Sounds good.
I found some of this stuff on the map of Dunwall. That map is laid out in grid squares---for ongoing reference, where is Ceridwyn's office? (the Legal District?)
Cost-wise, culturally, etc., would she be getting around on the elevated train? A cab? (probably horse-drawn? whaleoil combustion motors don't seem to be on the streets, aside from the tallboys).
Horse and carriage, or by foot. Sadly your district does not appear o the map. It is on the south side of the river and further west than the map encompasses. I have an alternate map that is a bit fuzzy that I will post tonight. This map has the Legal District on it.
HIC SVNT LEONES
Wham bam anagram!
I screwed up and left some RL names of toys in my post---I meant to edit them out before posting. Plus, I wanted to give you gives some visuals, so I dropped in another gameplay post.
I'll post again about the ride over soon. Or, simply fast-forward me through a cab ride if it's not important. I'd probably learn more about the setting from your description of the ride than I would playing it myself. Do you need anything from me before you can narrate the ride?
Looking ahead, I'm trying to figure out my Effect for the job at the Old Waterfront. I'm thinking a Time 2, Entropy 1 Effect because I want to know about the fate and fortune of the lots/neighborhood (Entropy 1), which already has a time element to it ("a sequence of events", p. 162), and I want to know about them with a fair bit of time sight (Time 2). However, I don't really want to divine or scry anything. It's more like I want to obtain the Entropy Effect for the present and future of the site. Since time is already implicitly a part of that Effect, perhaps I only need Entropy, but I'd rather roll in some Time to really stretch the vibe.
I'm not trying to travel in time and obtain the Entropy Effect at different points in time. Rather, I want a temporally extended Entropy sense. I don't think that this is a scry because I don't want facts about the future in the sense of witnessing anything. Instead, I'd like to be able to tell my clients something like "not only is this the best lot, but you should subdivide it soon and you should keep this end of it for yourself with room for a high bay" or whatever vibe I get from the fate and fortune of the commerce that will evolve there. Does that make sense?
Also, I don't remember what you told me about how the dice rolls work for magic and I'm having a hell of a time figuring it out from the book. Also, we spoke in person about how me living on a Node will supply so much Quintessence for me to spend---let's get the parameters of that down now (while you are explaining how Quintessence affect my rolls!).
I'll keep reading in the meantime.
I think you've got the right of it.
...and Time could let the mage isolate exactly when a manifestation of destiny will appear.
And per the "Time Lines" chart, the distance into the future you can see per success used would be: 1 success = 1 year, 2 successes = 5 years, 3 successes = 20 years. You can't allocate more than 3 successes to the Time aspect without spending quintessence, as you need to allocate your first success to the basic (Entropy) effect.
I believe the Entropy 1 effect would allow you to detect whether a location will have positive or negative fortunes while the Time successes would allow you to extend the analysis to the fluctuations of its fortunes over an extended period. So if you only scored 1 success (and hence couldn't extend your predictions via Time) you would sense a location's immediate outlook, while with the full 4 successes (3 put towards Time) you could look forward the full 20 years and see that a location might have rising fortunes over the next decade with sharply declining fortunes over the decade after.
I don't know how Mark wants to play the subjectivity of "positive" and "negative" fortunes. It could be that you read them from your viewpoint; it might be interesting to couch in terms of resonance if we're thinking of making that an important element of the game. Maybe you could read the currents of dynamic (constructive/creative), entropic (destructive/decaying), and static (stability/...static) resonances.
Nice. Thanks for working on it with me.
And, I'm glad to have you corroborate that I decide the details of the Effect after I have rolled and know how many successes I have to go around. Does that extend to Botches, too? That is, would she be aware of a Botch and could take measures to isolate the damage in Time or Entropy? or does the GM roll something behind the screen and I simply take my lumps?
Like you, I'm interested in how Mark wants to play the type of information that I am receiving. Since she does this for a living, I would expect that she would have been asked at least once before for an outlook at, say, the Old Waterfront. Thus, if the whole place gets destroyed by a meteorite in five years, she would probably already "know" that its future is bleak before embarking on the current job. If the timeline(s) were more fluid that than, then her reputation as a consultant would be awful. So, I'm assuming that her ability is specific enough that she can tell lots from one another, that she may not know how/why but she'd know that one portion of the neighborhood becomes successful in a new industry (and that the industry is, say, heavy and based on imports because of the nature of the traffic/Resonance of the types of Patterns), etc. Perhaps more fickle aspects of the timeline would be which exact lot get eminent domained by which corrupt politician, etc. I don't expect that she would have (or even want) access to facts of that sort (whether they were firm parts of the timeline or not), but I could see her Sense being uncertain at that level because of the excessive Entropic contributions of the many human decisions that might alter something like a political lobby as compared with the inevitable arrival of a new industry (or of a meteorite).
Do the tallboys have one or more humans inside? or are they machines?
Botches and resulting paradox are GM fiat.
Tallboys have a single human pilot.
The effect you are looking for will be entropy 1, time 2. You get 4 dice from your arete. You can roll the dice in discussion and we can work out the result before you post. Today is my worst day of the week for posting, so I might get something up about your trip, but unlikely.
Feel free to roll though.
Thanks for writing the cab ride for me---at this point, you know way more about the setting and it will probably help everybody for you to write it. No hurry. Let me know if you need any more info from me for your post.
I'll get a discussion post with the Effect rolls up this evening, I think.
It just occurred to me that if I can catch up to/keep up with them, I may be able to join the rat swarm under the auspices of Arcane 5.
Tallboys (link) - really just mechanized stilt armor.
Tallboys (link) - really just mechanized stilt armor.
Nice. Thanks. I thought that they were way more mech.
So, I still don't get the magic rules. I'm reading on p 207 that I "roll Arete versus the appropriate difficulty." Since I have 4 dots in Arete, I'll be rolling 4d10.
1) If I spend 1 Quintessence, would I roll 5d10?
2) I remember discussing in person that because I live on a Node, that Quintessence is easy for me to come by. How easy? How much have I got right now? If I spend 1 now, when/how will it refill?
Difficulty:
3) I think that the GM sets the difficulty (or that we arrive at it in discussion, p 215). What then is meant by "Highest Sphere + 3" for the difficulty of Coincidental magic? Since my highest Sphere is my 4 dots in Entropy, there is something 4+3=7 about me, but I don't know what. Furthermore, if I have a lot of dots in a Sphere, I would think that my magic would be easier, but p 207 reads as though difficulty increases with number of dots...
4) Does my character know if I fail a roll? In some cases, the answer is obvious; if had Matter and was trying to create a rock, and the rock doesn't appear, then the Effect clearly failed. However, for something like Ceridwyn is about to attempt, if she failed would she get no sense at all and know that she failed, or would she get a false sense and not know that anything went wrong? I'm guessing that the former is a Fail and that the latter is a possible GM choice for a Botch. Thoughts?
5) For this particular Effect of Ceridwyn's, I'm wondering what I'd get without invoking Time at all. That is, if I had no dots in Time and I successfully sensed the fate and fortune of the real estate opportunity, what would I learn and over what timescale would it be valid? I cling to the same passage of text on p 161 that Ed points out---that I perhaps don't need Time at all if there is no specific event or instant about which I care. In the present situation, I'll hopefully also include some successes in Time. As per the chart on p 209, with two successes then perhaps I'd learn that four years from now something really positive/good happens (useful for advising my clients on contract duration or investment term, perhaps), but since I'm not scrying, I don't know what happens. Does that make sense? Furthermore, in the event of a Fail, not scoring Time successes does not mean that I misplace the event in time but rather that I simply don't sense any event at all.
I hope that I'm asking constructive questions. I'm not trying to delay anything. I like this Prelude that we are running because I suspect this is the only time that I'll really need to ask these basic questions about my character. I'm really enjoying thinking about this, but if you all are not enjoying schooling me, just tell me to shut up and I'll roll 4d10.
1) Each point of quintessence you spend lowers the difficulty by 1. You have to spend it before you roll.
1a) You can spend a point of Willpower to gain an automatic success, but again, must spend it before you roll. This means you could possibly score 1 success over your total Arete if you spend the Willpower then roll your entire Arete score and gain all successes.
2) You can draw 1 point of quintessence per week from your node for each dot you have in the Node background.
3) Base difficulty of a magic effect is equal to the highest sphere USED + 3. So your Entropy 1 Time 2 effect would have a base difficulty of 5 (Time 2 + 3).
4) You generally know when you fail - the "magic" doesn't happen. Botching generates paradox, the consequences of which may or may not occur immediately per GM fiat. You have some control over this; if paradox "backlash" is going to immediately occur you can spend a point of Willpower to delay it until the end of the scene.
5) Without Time you would only get a sense of the location's current fortune, with no guarantee as to how long it'll last. Maybe it's caused by a temporary stellar alignment, or the date is lucky, or a unicorn is sleeping in the basement, or it's haunted by the ghost of its former tenant, or whatever.
It's possible that with more successes spent on the actual Entropy 1 effect Mark might give you a more precise sense of the nature of the good/bad fortune (lucky in love, unlucky for gambling, stable for employment) though you might need additional spheres to pinpoint the source (Forces or Matter for stellar alignment, Time for date, Life for unicorn, Spirit for ghost, etc.)
I've got no problem with questions! I think the more we discuss this sort of thing the more all three of us can get a better sense of what aspects of the game we want to bring into play / focus on.
For instance, we're not using the Avatar background, or even the concept; usually Avatar interacts with quintessence. I believe that Mark said that generally if something is normally governed by Avatar, it'll be governed by Arete instead. For instance, the maximum quintessence you can spend on a single magic roll would be equal to your Arete instead of your Avatar.