Door in the Dark (Inactive)

Game Master Anon A Mouse

So, I feel like there's still a mismatch between what I think a gritty interpretation of "Do one thing that is beyond human limitations" and what y'all might interpret it as. The way I think of that option is to start with something humans can do, scale it up to peak human performance, and then push it a little further. If a random person were to see someone using this option, you should be able to talk them out of thinking it was magic/supernatural. Another way I think of this option is like a weaker but more broad (AKA not necessarily physical) version of the No Limits Weird move:

When you push your physical body past its limits, roll +Weird:

- On a 10 or more, your body obeys your will, to the limits of physical possibility (see below), for a moment.
- On a 7-9, you do it but choose one consequence: suffer 1-harm, take –1 forward, or you need to rest right now.
- On a miss, something goes horribly wrong.
For the purposes of this move, “physical possibility” means “conceivably possible for a human.” For example:
- Physically Possible: Lift an SUV, Jump over a truck, Punch through a wall.
- Not Physically Possible: Lift a building, Fly, Punch a blast of energy at a foe.

Does that kind of make sense to people? I can give more examples outside of what the books give, if that helps.

OK, so effectively, other than a small physical boost or the stuff on the list, everything else is Big Magic? Alright, noted.

Or could probably be a rote that you learn (for example)

I wouldn't say it necessarily has to be physical. For example, if there were a bomb and you wanted to speed read a bomb defusal manual, I'd say that would work. But I definitely think it should be more of an augmentation/buff option rather than developing a completely new ability. Otherwise it can easily become a catch-all option and finding a line between that and Big Magic becomes a lot trickier.

All of this is meant to be indicative of the tone. It's not a very magical world, and while you can accomplish just about anything with magic, for most things it's more of a process rather than something you can just do off the cuff. In this case, if you had wanted a Big Magic lockpicking spell, I probably would have told you to go buy some relatively mundane ingredients and spend some time mixing them a certain way. It would have been slower, but it still wouldn't have been especially hard since you're just unlocking a relatively simple, mundane door.

Or yes, as Taryn said, if you wanted magical lockpicking to be a thing you can do off-the-cuff, you could make that one of your rotes.

Once inside, he whispered. “Is it just me or there’s something creepy about this place? Do you think he could be here?” He walked slowly and silently towards the dark hallway, trying to see where it would lead.

The hallway is quite dark. How is Ahmad handling that? Is he just blindly stumbling around? Turning on a light? Something else?

my idea at the moment is:

1. "Read a bad situation" to find out "what's my best way out";
2. take that way out, putting Rani ahead.

Can I do both these things on the same post/turn?

Then, if #1 is successful and we get to #2, do I need to roll something? "Act under pressure" or would "let's get out of here"/"protect someone" be applicable?

Rani can try barring a place or portal to one creature (human) on the front door. It should make it seem like it's still locked, and buy us some time for Ahmad to decide if leap out the window or hide in the ducts or something.

Sound like a plan?

Yes, since the first is kind of an assess move, I would say you can do them both in the same post if you want, assuming you get at least a 7 on the Read a Bad Situation. If you fail the RaBS, you should pause there to let me respond to the miss.

Because you are under time pressure, even if you succeed the RaBS, both you and Rani would need to roll to get out quickly enough. You would both have a +1 for acting under the information for RaBS.

Normally I would say that's both an Act Under Pressure to get out. Protect is really more for preventing mechanical harm/damage. That being said, in this situation, I would let you roll it to get Rani out but the implication would be that you're staying behind to distract them/hold them off. So on a 7-9 on the Protect roll, you get captured. On a 10+ they see you, but you get a chance to roll Act Under Pressure to get away before they capture you.

You could also Use Magic to bar them and buy yourselves some time, yes (possibly negating requiring rolls to escape). It will prevent them from getting in. That does not mean it will appear as though the reason why is because the door is locked though.

*Does not necessarily mean it will appear locked

If you go the Use Magic route, make sure to describe what it looks like and how it manifests.

How big is the clearing? Is it closer to campsite-size or small-field-size?

"Whomever's trail we've been following got to this clearing at some point before heading towards the construction site. Let's look around and see if we can find out how or why."

[dice=Investigate a Mystery]2d6+2

Any question I want: Where did our target enter the clearing?

The above question is spending 1 hold. Do I still get a second for rolling above 10, or does the Advanced option for rolling 12+ replace the two questions I would get for rolling 10+?

Closer to campsite-size. And you actually do not get any question you want; if you look at your character sheet, under Advanced Improvements, you have to have picked the "Mark two of the basic moves as advanced" and picked Investigate a Mystery to get the advanced option. Same is true for all the other moves. Until you mark the move as advanced, you don't get the advanced option.

If Rani’s spell fails, Ahmad will grab her and force her through the exit (sorry!)

You should typically not condition something on someone failing a roll, as that means I get to make a hard move. That hard move might completely change the situation you're in/add new obstacles that would make your action/rolls make no sense. But I guess we'll see what Rani rolls before we find out the consequences. That's also why the action in a scene should typically pause if someone rolls a fail: to see if there are obvious repercussions.

Sorry. I was trying to avoid getting too much back-and-forth, but feel free to ignore whatever part of my post does not fit in with the narrative in case Rani fails her roll.

Yeah, I understand. Just a heads up for the future. :-)

And you actually do not get any question you want; if you look at your character sheet, under Advanced Improvements, you have to have picked the "Mark two of the basic moves as advanced" and picked Investigate a Mystery to get the advanced option. Same is true for all the other moves. Until you mark the move as advanced, you don't get the advanced option.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Will revise the relevant post.

Damn, I thought they were going to be criminals, not cops.

So... was there anything else Taryn found in there from the body? This feels not dissimilar from the information I had coming in... :-/

In what way exactly? You knew its motivation before, which I reiterated. Now you know about its weapons. Before it might have been using something like acid or guns to kill and might have chopped the body up. Now you have evidence it was using claws, teeth, and brute strength, and that it wasn't someone just trying to make it look like an animal attack to throw off the cops.

If you don't believe that's enough, give me an in-character description of what information you're looking for and what specifically Taryn is doing to find that information.

question: are we sort of already under the effects of CoM's mist? Like, if someone saw Rani healing Ahmad, would they see the healing taking place or would the effects of the mist make them believe e.g. the wound was just a scratch?

You are not under the effects of the mist. How people respond to the supernatural/magic will depend on what they see. A minotaur that runs down the street and impales someone on its horns is going to need a good explanation to even allow a Manipulate roll to convince an onlooker it wasn't supernatural. If the mist were in play, no roll would be needed and (assuming the onlooker was normal), they'd probably say that what happened was a large guy stabbed someone with a spear.

Oops, I realized I misspoke above. You cannot use Manipulate to change someone's opinions or beliefs, only to get them to take/not take some specific action. Whether or not you convinced them something wasn't really supernatural would depend entirely on if I think they would believe your justification.

Hopefully, Rani's precautions have removed that need. Otherwise we'll just have to make them seem crazy, which feels baaaaad. We're already making the cops seem insane.

If people are waiting for me to say they show up, you don't need to. Since I'm not currently doing anything in the library scene, it's not like you'd be interrupting anything.

Oh cool - I'll show up then :-)

Thanks for the notice -- I was also waiting for that =)

Now seems an appropriate time to ask, but Rani, what exactly does your location ritual hone in on when it searches for someone? Their body? Their soul? Something else entirely?

Honestly, I hadn't considered that. I don't really know. Thinking on it, I'm going to say 'soul' as it fits more with her Egyptian magic theme. Also, I can track ghosts!

Just a heads up that I'm likely going to be somewhat busy from Thursday through Tuesday. Most likely I'll still be able to post Thursday through Sunday of that, but probably not Monday/Tuesday.

Thanks for the heads up!

@Oscar: Oscar is free to do whatever he wants. Him deciding to go somewhere doesn't mean the entire party is deciding to go somewhere. The other characters will decide on where they go when they update. Even if he posted instructions, that's just him telling the other characters what to do; they won't actually do it unless their players then say that they're following Oscar's directions.

I don't disagree with the gist of what you've said, but I think that in a PbP, that sort of approach leads to people getting frustrated. In this particular case, Oscar won't try and create a distraction if Tayrn doesn't decide to go into the warehouse. If Ahmad or Alfie have a better idea (maybe an ambush), I don't want to run off on my own before they get a chance to introduce the idea.

That makes sense. However, allow me to rephrase things from a slightly meta/your characters would not necessarily know point of view: you are not in a situation right now where your characters can sit around discussing what they want to do and expect nothing to happen. As such, to make it clear to your characters that time is of the essence, I plan to advance things further tonight. I won't advance it far enough that you've lost your chance to act, but I will advance it enough that the situation has changed because your characters hesitated. I'm giving you warning as players before I do this because it's not something I've done before. However, because none of you are actually blocked by someone not posting and because it's been a few IRL days during the workweek, I do feel like advancing time despite a lack of character action is fair.

My team is pushing to make a big work deadline on Friday. As a result, I'm pretty wiped out. I'll update on Saturday when I have some room to breathe.

Thanks for letting us know. Good luck =)

Sadly, we did not get our project done enough to ship on Friday, so we had to push back the deadline to Wednesday. I'm hoping we at least got enough done that I won't need to pull as long of hours on Monday through Wednesday, but we'll see how it goes.

No worries. It happens.

resolving Oscar's miss.

results of Oscar's miss?

then I'll resolve Oscar's miss.

Just keep rubbing it in!

I assume 'bar a portal' would be impossible in the current area, even to stop them from going through the current escape route, right?

I'm not sure what exactly you'd be baring; he's already outside the warehouse. You could possibly try barring the outdoor fence, but you'd have to first get there before he jumped over it with his head start and then attempt to bar it, so it'd be at least 2 rolls.

Maybe you could bar the crate? I have suspicions about how well it will contain this thing...

I was under the impression it was at the window, not out, so I'll just follow for now.

Hey all, I have a couple of asks I'd like to make of you as players. They're things that I've already seen people doing off and on, and they make things easier, so now I'm specifically requesting them.

1) When you want to roll Investigate a Mystery or Read a Bad Situation, tell me what you're physically doing to figure out the answer to the questions you ask.

What I mean by this is are you looking for tracks to figure out "Where did it go?"? Are you looking for surveillance film to find out "What happened here?" Are you cross-referencing symbols with magic books? Busting out a chemistry kit?

This is something I've kind of been trying to fill in for you, but in retrospect, it's actually better if I let you do this instead. One big reason for this is that it can help direct my answer. There are typically a wide range of possible answers to questions like "What sort of creature is it?" and telling me that you're looking at wound patterns is going to give you different information than using a chemistry set, so it's a great way to clue me into what kind of information you might want and this is a good way to do it in character (something I've started doing is whenever I start to write an OOC note, I try to remember to ask myself 'Is there a way I can convey/ask this information without switching to an OOC comment?').

On a similar note, when you want to ask something like "What's my best way in?", keep in mind that "best" is typically very subjective. Do you want the easiest way in? The sneakiest? The fastest? The answer is probably going to change based on what you're prioritizing. Sometimes I can guess at what you're going for, but it's better if I don't have to. It's easier for me, and you hopefully get the information you want rather than what I think you want.

Another reason is because if you can't think of a way to get that information from what you're doing, you probably shouldn't be asking the question. For example, off the top of my head, I don't see a way for you to chemically analyze someone's blood to find out where they went. That being said, you should also feel free to crowdsource ideas from me and other players; if you want to know something but can't figure out how you would get that info, try posting in discussion. Maybe another player or myself can think of something for you.

2) When you Use Magic tell me both what you're specifically doing to trigger the magic (specifically with an eye to the list of Keeper requirements) and how the magic manifests in the world. What would someone see if they watched you doing this?

It's a lot easier for me to have the world respond in a consistent manner if I have a clear idea of what exactly is happening. For example, earlier in this game, Oscar wanted to Use Magic to be able to tell supernatural tracks from regular tracks. Here's are some details I made up that would help give a clear picture of what's going on.

Cells from supernatural creatures let off a form of electromagnetic radiation. It's not typically noticed because the frequencies don't fall in the IR, UV, or visible spectrum, which is typically what people look for. I'm going to augment the cones in my eyes so that I can see the frequencies emitted as different colors.

This tells me what the magic is doing. Answering how you're triggering the magic should then be your opportunity to create your own style of magic. For example, this is a great place for Rani to throw on some Egyptian references, like the hieroglyphics she added while trapping a monster.

Rani drew the Eye of Ra over each of her eyes, enhancing them with the power of the sun god who saw all in order to perceive these special frequencies.

Egyptian flavor, and the description lends itself well to saying that whenever Rani tries to "Do one thing that is beyond human limitations" she must "draw arcane symbols" probably on the body part that's being enhanced.

Putting requirements on Use Magic is something I haven't really been doing, largely because I didn't want to slow things down. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Really, your magic spells should generally have some kind of a requirement. That being said, I also don't want to arbitrarily pick requirements for everything. It's better if the requirements are born out of how you flavor things than me constantly forcing my idea of how magic "should" work upon you. This is also your chance to try to preemptively convince me you've sufficiently met some requirements before I decide to ask you about one that would be awkward to fulfill, like "So Rani, how are you casting spells with this sludge goo all over your mouth? Seems like you're giving it a perfect opportunity to slide down your throat." :-P

Here's another way to perform the "see supernatural tracks" with a very different flavor that lends itself to a different requirement.

Rogar reached into his small bag of spell components, pulling out a small vial of mantis shrimp eyes. He popped a few into his mouth, concentrating on enhancing his own eyes with their better ones.

If you're unaware, mantis shrimp have something like 12 cones to our 3 and can see more of the EM spectrum than we can.

It can also start to paint a picture of what kind of magic he uses. Maybe he wants to lean into the animal aspect and his "Inflict Harm" effect manifests as a spirit animal slashing at his foe. Or maybe he wants to lean into the idea of taking traits from one thing and putting it elsewhere and his Inflict Harm looks like him briefly giving his hands the hardness of iron and punching something (which could also be the effect of "Enchant a weapon" depending on his intentions).

*****

Hopefully, these two requests make sense to all of you. If you have questions or thoughts, feel free to post them, and we can talk about them.

That makes sense to me. I think it would also help me personally if I re-read the Use Magic section in the rulebook. I say this because it sounds like you often have a certain understanding of how powerful a spell should be or what limitations it should have, and I can only assume it's because you have a better grasp of those rules than I do. It's been a while since I read that section.

I also like the idea of coloring the magic to be more individual. I'll have to give that some thought.

Works for me. I've been trying to flavour Rani's magic with the more happy sides of ancient Egyptian Heka magic, sunlight especially, given her book is golden-plated.

The rare materials for it will probably be 1) interesting and 2) bordering on necromantic charms, though. It involved a lot of dead body parts for somethings. I can forsee needing a deadmans hand at some point. Thankfully, Rani has ziplocs aplenty.

The requirements for Rani's regular spellcasting is almost certainly touching her book, which I have mentioned but not every time, with gestures (such as drawing hieroglyphs on horrible sludge monsters) being second and vocal components being third, and then adding rare components, magical circles and time as needed. I've rather assumed I don't need all three of her normal ones to cast as standard, since Rote Spells makes an issue of having these requirements.

Perhaps it would be an idea for the circumstances to require more or less of these things? Standard spells can be done just by touching her book in day to day situations, with low stress. Combat would require two, and critical, life and death roles all three, or a penalty is incurred? I'd prefer not to powerless at critical moments if my hands are bound or my mouth sludge-monstered.

That makes sense to me. I think it would also help me personally if I re-read the Use Magic section in the rulebook. I say this because it sounds like you often have a certain understanding of how powerful a spell should be or what limitations it should have, and I can only assume it's because you have a better grasp of those rules than I do. It's been a while since I read that section.

I would not say that I necessarily have a better understanding of how Use Magic "should" work in terms of power (with the exception that yes, the rule book does lay out a few assumptions that I can post below*). I definitely have opinions specifically on how much scope "Do something beyond human limitations" I think should have in this world. But another way of thinking about Use Magic is that the limitations don't just apply to you; they apply to the monsters you face as well. It might be tempting to say that Inflict Harm doesn't require line of sight and has no range limit, but what happens if I create a smart, magic-using monster who wants to kill all of you? If there's not some weakness or limitation in how that works, you're kind of screwed. So while I expect the Keeper requirements for a given effect will change based on flavor, I expect the narrative power of a spell to be constant across all characters who use magic. Which I think is not something I've made explicit until now. If you want your spells to have more narrative power, let's talk about it. We can make it so magic has, for example, no range limitation so long as you realize this would apply to your enemies as well.

So I would say it's not that I necessarily think there there should be specific limitations, but I do want there to be limitations. If you really need to, you can get around limitations via Big Magic, but I think then it's more likely for there to be a pause for us to think about what makes sense instead of you assuming what's involved and just rolling for it.

@Rani: I'm fine for circumstances to dictate how much or how little of her requirements are needed, but yes, what I was missing was some kind of a system to dictate how much of something is required. I'm not sure how I feel about the system you've proposed though as it seems to make the requirements completely interchangeable and makes the difference between them less interesting. Say you're in "combat," taking away your book does nothing but then if I also take away your ability to talk, you're in a lot of trouble. In my perfect world, taking away your book would remove some options available to you while taking away your ability to talk would remove different options. For example, one idea I had was maybe your book isn't a requirement for Use Magic, but having it is how you access your playbook powers. So without it, you could still, for example, Heal, but it'd be the standard 1-harm instead of This Might String. And one of the reasons why I'm asking about this sort of thing is because if I take away your ability to do X, I want us to be on the same page about the impact of that. I don't want to retroactively take away your ability to do something after you've tried to do it but I also don't want it to have no effect. I'm also fine with making what it takes away a nebulous quantity until we see all the effects in action at least once, hence why I'm not asking everybody to give me a list of requirements per effect ahead of time.

While I understand what you were going for with the "critical life or death" requiring all 3 and low stress requiring 1, I'm also not sure that narratively makes sense. In a low stress situation, you have plenty of time to meet all the requirements. If you have a second to react before someone gets killed, are you really going to have time to do all three before it's too late? Even if you don't take the "It takes some time" requirement, talking, making gestures, and drawing things isn't instantaneous. If you're trying to do all that and it's really meant to be a high-pressure situation, I'm probably going to ask for an Act Under Pressure in addition to the Use Magic (whereas if there was the "Takes 10 seconds or more" requirement the answer is just that you couldn't do it in time).

Also, I just want to point out that not being able to Use Magic is not the same as being powerless; you still have access to all the other Basic Moves. But yes, I agree that having your hands bound shouldn't immediately remove all your magic options. That's why I like the idea of it taking away some but not all of your tools.

Anything will work, I suppose, so long as it's explained beforehand or explained when things happen what the penalty is. It's probably a good idea to keep it flexible, though.

I guess another way of thinking about it is what role do you think the words/gestures, runes, books, possible weird ingredients play in your magic? Why might you need a deadman's hand for a spell? Do you use one thing or another for designating your target? For example, the reason I suggested making your book be the key to using your playbook moves as opposed to a more general Use Magic is because your book is unique to you as your playbook moves are unique to you. If you have this incredibly unique item, it might be odd if it only gave you access to abilities that other spell casters could do but it would make sense if instead it super-charged magic beyond what was normally capable (since the moves you took were basically to make Inflict Harm and Heal more effective).

I envision Alfie's magic as being a sort of transcendence to another plane, or communing with the world soul. What this requires of him is simply concentration. The same is true for his communication with spirits. Alfie's mind is strong enough to resist annoying music, for instance, but it would be very difficult to use magic if his body is in pain, and he exposes himself if someone tries to harm him while he's performing the magic. I think that's mostly what's been established in the story. Is that enough detail?

I've envisioned Oscar's magic use as intentional dabbles in different traditions, focusing on particular spells that seem useful to address a specific need. Learning magic was a very conscious decision, but he's not interested in the traditions themselves, so he can't go very far in any one.

Oops, forgot to respond to this.

I envision Alfie's magic as being a sort of transcendence to another plane, or communing with the world soul. What this requires of him is simply concentration. The same is true for his communication with spirits. Alfie's mind is strong enough to resist annoying music, for instance, but it would be very difficult to use magic if his body is in pain, and he exposes himself if someone tries to harm him while he's performing the magic. I think that's mostly what's been established in the story. Is that enough detail?

That's enough detail to give me an idea of what you're going for. You're still going to have to make it clear when you Use Magic what kind of a requirement you're going for and how you see your magic manifesting in the world. Based on your description, "The spell will take 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 1 minute to cast" is a requirement that jumps out at me, but you're free to go with a different one or change up the requirement based on what effect you're picking.

I've envisioned Oscar's magic use as intentional dabbles in different traditions, focusing on particular spells that seem useful to address a specific need. Learning magic was a very conscious decision, but he's not interested in the traditions themselves, so he can't go very far in any one.

I look forward to seeing what traditions Oscar has tried out!

Me too!

Hey, I feel like we're close to officially stalling, so I'd like to suggest a course of action:

1. Get Rani's Mini Sludge Buddy™ to the crate where the larger sludge creature is.
2. Get the crate/sludge and a container of varnish outside behind the warehouse.
3. FIRE
4. Get out of here before the cops show up.

There's still potentially the other sludge creature that Oscar failed to kill/capture, and it may already be too late to leave before the police show up, but that's what Oscar is pushing for.

Other ideas welcome, but I wanted to make sure we were working towards the same goal, and not splitting up because we have different ideas of what to do.

Yup, feel free to discuss what you think your next steps should be and I can fast-forward as appropriate. Things aren't happening at the "you only have a few seconds to decide on a course of action"-type pace they were when you first entered the warehouse, so you can zoom out a bit timing-wise to decide what you want to do next.