So the trouble I'm having is that Taryn's goal is to find the killer, not to investigate the murder. As it stands she's at their house, has no reason to think they're anything but a disturbed human, and has no problem with the plan of waiting til they return.
There's information she's missing, but she doesn't know that it's information she should care about since her goal is stopping future killings rather than understanding this one.
@Rani: so, before I unadvertently post something that messes up everything you've been building up for the past few weeks, what do you mean when you say you need "acceptance"?
Is it more of an acknowledgement("I hear what you're saying," "wow, that's unexpected," etc) or is it reciprocation ("omg, I feel the same way, let's get married")? Or something else entirely?
First off, I would say worry less about magical requirements and do what Ahmad would do. Mostly what I want is interesting character moments that tell a good story. I said "acceptance" but I can work with Rani getting hurt just as easily as Rani having a cute bonding moment with Ahmad.
Second, "acceptance" certainly never meant that Ahmad has to reciprocate a love confession. I actually had the NPC explicitly state that the love did not even need to be romantic.
With this threaded needle, you must then approach someone with whom you have a bond. Tell them you love them; it doesn't have to be romantic love but your feelings for them must be genuine. Open your heart to them by telling them a secret you have never shared with another soul. If they do not reject you for sharing your truth, their love will infuse you with the strength to reach the sun magic you sensed.
But again, mainly what I'm looking for in an interesting character moment. Something that gives me insight to who these characters are as people.
There's information she's missing, but she doesn't know that it's information she should care about since her goal is stopping future killings rather than understanding this one.
Ok then, if Taryn doesn't believe figuring out what's going on will help her predict what will happen next, do you have any suggestions? I can tell you right now there's a pattern in, for example, the victims.
Thanks for the clarification, Rani and GM. Apologies for the delay in posting, busy weekend/start of the week. Will have something up tomorrow.
I guess... Is there something I missed that would let Taryn know that tracking this thing/person back to their home wouldn't work? Or should I roll for a hunch to intuit this?
It's not that she doesn't think that figuring things out wouldn't help predict future things, it's that her plan is to forestall those things by striking first.
Her toolset is animal senses and gut instinct. And it's fine if those aren't the tools needed, but Taryn will be faster to try other things if she has any sense that that's the case.
You mean waiting around in the house you're currently in? Oscar could tell you that the door to this place was broken in and your wolf could tell you this place doesn't really make a good lair with it compromised that way.
Another way of striking first is to know what your enemy wants and use that to set a trap. Or if you can't find the predator, find the prey.
So, now seems like a good time to check in. I mentioned previously that I intended to run two different systems. Well, on the other side of the portal Rani just unlocked is the City of Mist system. So now seems like a good time to ask: do people still want to try out City of Mist? Because if for whatever reason people don't want to, changing what's on the other side of the portal to bring you closer to a conclusion vs basically being like, "Ok, time to start part 2 of the mystery" will be the easiest/best way to accomplish that.
The super-short description of how City of Mist mechanics works is that instead of stats like MotW, you come up with 12 "tags" for your character that are short phrases that describe their abilities (ie "strength of Hercules", "honest face", "defender of the weak"). When you try to make a Move, you describe your actions in a way that uses those tags and the number of relevant tags tells you what modifier you're rolling with. So with the example tags I gave, if you're punching someone, "strength of Hercules" would probably apply, "honest face" isn't really relevant, and "defender of the weak" only helps if you're defending a normal person, so you'd be rolling with either +1 or +2 depending on that last tag.
If you have further questions let me know. I can write up my planned post explaining the CoM mechanics/character creation in more detail if that would help people make a more informed decision. But yeah, what are people's thoughts?
I'm still up to swing over. I can already think of two or three tags for Rani even in my exhausted state.
I should mention that you don't just come up with a list of tags; you pick themes and each theme has a list of questions you can choose from. The answers to the questions become your tags. For example, the Bastion theme focuses around defensive traits and has questions like "What quality or ability granted by your Mythos most often protects you?" or "Against what type of attack or influence is your defense especially effective?"
I'll also mention that you don't get XP by failing rolls in the system. You answer a weakness question for each theme. You or anybody else can invoke a weakness, which will give you -1 to whatever you're rolling with, but then you get an XP.
I've got some thoughts :-) Though figuring out how to theme her kryptonite being bird spittle, fish breath, mountain roots, stomping cats and bearded women might take a bit of doing.
I was going to step out of the game to focus on other things (not related to the change in system). If the portal is coming up soon, I'll wait until then to leave if it's a good point to stop at.
I'm usually pretty good about going with the flow on campaigns, rule systems, etc., but I've been having a hard time with this campaign. But that's not an excuse for my extended silence. I apologize.
I've been having Oscar focus almost entirely on trying to rescue the girl and solve the mystery of who took her, but I'm beginning to wonder if the story being told is focused more on transitioning to the next system because the story's end is there rather than here in Sioux Falls. So maybe focusing on solving the mystery was at odds with naturally advancing the story.
I also recognize that mysteries have never been my strong point. I'm not terrible at them, but I do feel a little lost right now. The house does feel like a dead end. You mentioned earlier that we have found relevant things -- and that's a fair point -- but I'm having trouble fitting those things together. Plus, for an investigation that's been going on for 11 months in real time, I forget stuff.
To answer your question, yes, I'm up for transitioning to City of Mists. I'm still not entirely clear how much of Oscar is supposed to be in the new character, though. It sounds like it's feasible to pick one or more themes about him and then to create an entirely new character within that system that also has that theme reflected as a Mythos.
I'm down with continuing, if my currently abysmal post rate is not a problem. Can definitely think of some tags for Ahmad, mostly around divination and protection themes.
Ok, sounds like the general consensus is to continue along with the original plan and look for a good place for Alfie to bow out. To that end, I've gone ahead and written up a more detailed CoM primer. Feel free to start looking over it though it won't come into effect until you've gone through the portal. I would also suggest that you either go through the portal as a group or in pairs as I am of the opinion things work better when characters have other PCs to bounce off of.
I'll also note that I'm glossing over some details/dropping a few things in order to try to make things simpler / to avoid bringing up things that may or may not ever come up.
First, there are a couple of important terms you should know:
Basically, these are things you invoke to get bonuses too rolls. Most often these will be the Tags associated with your character's abilities/skills but there can be scene tags as well and you can add temporary tags as part of some moves.
Power
As mentioned, rather than having stats, in CoM you invoke Tags to determine what you're rolling with. If you invoke 2 tags, you roll with a +2, which is to say the Power of your move is 2. Your Power can be modified by Statuses you have.
Status
Rather than HP or wounds, CoM measures damage in Statuses. If you punch someone with 2 Power, you might choose to inflict a Tier 2 Status such as "Bloodied 2" or "Broken nose 2". The text of the Status describes what kind of "damage" it is and the number after it is how severe it is. Statuses stack with one another if they're of similar types, so "Bloodied 2" and "A little shot 2" would stack to become something like "Hurting 3" (I can keep track of how they stack because I don't think it's worthwhile for me to explain the mechanics of that). However, a status of "Embarrassed 2" and "Bloodied 2" wouldn't stack because they're not really "similar" statuses; one is a social condition which the other is a physical one.
The other important thing to know about statuses is that they modify your rolls where appropriate. For example, if you're "Bloodied 2", that's probably going to give you a -2 to any physical stunts you might want to pull. On the other hand, if you're trying to convince a nice nurse to patch you up, you could play up the "I'm so wounded" angle to have your status give you a +2. It all depends on what you're doing and if your status would help, hinder, or not be related to what you were trying to roll for. Status affect the Power of your roll, so if you have 2 positive tags and 1 negative status, your overall Power is 1.
A Tier 5 Status means you're incapacitated. A Tear 7 Status means you're dead.
Attention: XP
Fade/Crack: This may or may not come up. I'll explain it if it does.
Identity/Mystery: Probably won't be using in this.
Now that you know those terms, let's go over some of the basic moves. Move cheat sheet
Convince: This is basically your Manipulate move. Once again, it's used to get an NPC to take some specific action.
Change the Game: Use this to try to create a temporary bonus for someone (including yourself). The closest analog to this in MotW is Help Out except that you roll Help Out after someone else attempts something and Change the Game needs to be rolled before something else is attempted. The other important thing to note is if you're creating an advantage for yourself, you cannot use the same tag in both the Change the Game roll and whatever you're trying to set up an advantage for.
For example, let's say you wanted to Convince someone to let you somewhere you're not supposed to go but first you want to use Change the Game to try to take a look around the area to try to establish a rapport first. If you use "People Watcher" as a tag to help you find out how to establish a connection, then you can't use it on the Convince roll. Assuming you succeeded on your CtG roll, you could say you see a picture of a cat on the NPC's desk (creating the temporary story tag "Cat person"). Then as part of trying to talk the NPC into doing what you want, you first start talking about how you need to get in to complete a job and get money to treat your sick cat (or something like that), giving you a +1 on your Convince roll. Once you've used that tag, it no longer conveys a benefit; the person is still a cat person and still has a picture of a cat on their desk, but talking about cats won't help you get any further.
One other important use of Change the Game is the "Reduce a status" option. Sometimes there will be some obstacle in the scene that will reduce certain rolls, and Change the Game is the way to deal with that. Like if there's a panicking crowd, they might have a status of Terrified 4 and give -4 to attempts to chase the villain. You can reduce their status via Change the Game to reduce that penalty.
Face Danger: The main thing to note about this move if that the players never trigger it. I tell the players to roll it if they have a hit incoming to try to reduce a status something is trying to inflict upon them.
Go Toe to Toe: Typically rolled when you're competing with someone, like a race, who can give the best speech, or a fist fight. One important thing to note is that it gives the option to pick "You manage to achieve your goal." Especially in fist fights, that option won't always be available; often times you'll have to lay on some statuses first.
Hit with All You've Got: Confusingly another move that comes up in fighting. The main difference between Go Toe to Toe and this is the other person's ability to defend/fight back. A lot of the time you're fighting someone you're probably going to be rolling Go Toe to Toe but you could, for example, opt to take their punch, roll Face Danger versus their attack, and then use an opening after they hit you to roll Hit with All You've Got instead of Go Toe to Toe.
Investigate: Similar to Investigate a Mystery. The main difference is that you pick any question you want rather that picking from a list, but don't be surprised if you get a lead rather than a straight answer.
Sneak Around: Should be obvious from the name
Take the Risk: The catch-all move for if you do something that should require a roll but nothing else fits.
Cinematic Moves
These moves come up a bit less often, but you should know about them.
Montage/Downtime: The "I have free time to spend/lets fast forward over something" move. This can be used for resting/healing but there are some other options here as well. When it says "Attention," it means XP.
Flashback: Can be used once per mystery. Basically, flashback to something you did in the past that could help you with what you're currently doing. You make a roll relevant to what you did in the past and that affects the current situation. For example, you're ambushed by a gang and flashback to reveal you had called the police earlier, which would be a Convince roll. On a 10+, the police might have the gang surrounded. On a 7-9, maybe they send a few police. On a miss, maybe the police show up an arrest you. Regardless of the roll, your action in the past still happens -- you still called the police -- but the result of the roll determines how useful it is in the present.
Stop. Holding. Back.: Unleash your powers in a never-before-seen way or scale. The good news is you can use this to accomplish almost anything. The bad news is the bigger the effect, the bigger the possible cost. The cost can range from "you can't use the tags on this theme until you've recovered" to basically getting killed.
- XP is tracked on a per-theme basis rather than at the character level. If you get 3 XP on your Bastion theme, then your Bastion theme levels up. Not some other theme.
- At any point instead of rolling, you can choose to "Burn a tag". This means that you can't use that tag again until you've recovered it via the Downtime move and you treat your result as if you had rolled a 7 with a +3 + whatever statuses are relevant. If you have a tier 2 status that helps you with it, you get a 10+ result with 5 Power. If you have a tier 2 status that hurts you with it, you get an 8 result with 1 Power. You can not add in any other tags to this.
- You can't use the same tag multiple times for the same move in the same scene. This means if you have 4 tags that help you punch well, if you get in a fight, you can't just stand there doing the exact same punching thing over and over and keep rolling Go Toe to Toe with a +4. You could do one large Go Toe to Toe with a +4 and then figure out something else to do in the fight or you could try doing, say, two smaller Go Toe to Toe using 2 tags for each roll.
- The way I want to run rolls in this is that I want to get an OOC comment about what move you're trying to invoke as well as what tags you're trying to apply. The reason for this largely has to do with Change the Game/Go Toe to Toe/Hit with Everything You've Got. Specifically, depending on how I build a threat/obstacle changes whether it makes sense to do Go Toe to Toe/Hit with Everything You've Got vs Change the Game. Or NPCs might already have statuses that will affect your rolls that you don't know about. For now, letting me roll for you seems like the best way for me to handle that. I also want to see how that works in regards to when it makes sense for me to have you roll vs when I should just tell you what you find.
Even though we're not there yet, I'm going to give you some details so you can start thinking about how you want to build your character.
For each theme
1) Answer one set question (always labeled A) and then pick any two other questions to answer (but make note of which label the question has). Your answers are your 3 Power Tags for this theme.
2) Pick one Weakness question and answer it. This is your Weakness Tag for this theme; invoking this tag is how this theme gets XP. 3 XP and you can pick an Advancement
A note about picking tags: you want something that you think you can apply to about 2-3 of the core moves. If it can apply to more things than that, it's probably a "General Tag". You can have at most 1 general tag and if you want to use it, you have to roll Change the Game with it before your main roll. So the pro is that it's very flexible, the con is that you have to make 2 rolls instead of 1.
Before you decide on your Logos theme, you'll probably want to read the below, however, be aware it does contain a bit of a spoiler.
Requested access to the google doc. I've picked up the PDF for City of Mist too, so I'll start rummaging through that.
Ok, the google doc permissions should be updated.
I'm not gonna lie; the pdf is...verbose. And imo, poorly organized. If you give them your email address they have a quickstart guide you can download. Last I checked, the player section of it is about 29 pages. Though imo, it also includes a lot of completely unnecessary details for a "quick start" guide.
I admit, I'm still very tired, but it's not the best written book I've run into. It took me way too long to realize the answers listed below each tag weren't the only choices, and you can actually choose anything so long as it makes sense as an answer.
Still, it does seem interesting.
So these hunters have dark ooze spreading from them when they've been defeated. Can our characters tell that this ooze-spread is different than the ooze's movement when they encountered them in the warehouse the previous night? If it's the same, can they tell that?
I ask because I'm getting the impression that we (collectively; not Oscar, though he's doing his best) are killing some of the hunters, and the ooze is leaving their bodies, but just sort of spreading out in a puddle because it's dead or inert. This seems different than the ooze that we trapped in a barrel in the warehouse and eventually set on fire, which seemed to move with more purpose.
You can, yes. That is what I've been trying to get at with the descriptions. Before the ooze was actually moving with intent. Now it's more like "the jello is melting". Or alternatively, the ooze is less "moving" now and more "becoming more liquid-y and responding to gravity".
Apologies for the lack of posting! I was moving to another country last week and the chaos surrounding it made it very hard to find a moment to read everything and write an appropriate reply.
That said, I expect my posting rate to slowly increase as things settle down here. Thanks for the patience!
Moving is no fun.
Realizing his time here was limited, Alfie tries to force as much information as he can into a few words. "I figure I should let you fellows know before I get arrested again that Bryce made a deal with the ooze thing, to help it feed in order to get his daughter back. Then he became a wolf and escaped the jail and then apparently the building."
As the sirens approach, Alfie backs away. "I should be going." He looks around for a safe place to stow his gun away in. Then he returns to his cell.
To be clear, is this your planned exit? Because the authorities definitely have more pressing issues to deal with than holding you long enough to finish questioning you.
In character: Alfie doesn't want to overtly break the law unless absolutely necessary. He trusts he can get himself out by magic if he needs to.
But yes, now is probably a good time to bow out, so I'll leave it to you to choose how to use or ignore my character. Thank you for running the game.
Ok, have fun with your future gaming endeavors!
I'll be going on vacation from Wednesday until the end of the month. I don't expect to be without internet access for an extended period, but I probably won't be posting as frequently. This is just an FYI, but you guys have permission to assume my PC's actions if I'm slowing things down.
Once your character decides to step through the portal, please answer the end of session questions:
1) Did you conclude the current mystery (the current mystery being around the wolf man, not around the missing little girl)?
2) Did you save someone from certain death (or worse)?
3) Did you learn something new and important about the world?
4) Did you learn something new and important about one of the hunters?
If you want to do something other than step through the portal, you still can. Though I would recommend at least sticking to pairs.
1) Did you conclude the current mystery - Unfortunately not. Rani kinda assumed they have something to do with the portal, but doesn't know for sure, and certainly doesn't now if they've gone through.
2) Did you save someone from certain death (or worse)? - Nope.
3) Did you learn something new and important about the world? - I don't think so. She was already aware that Magic was a harsh mistress, the world is cruel, etc. And that horrible monsters do horrible things, other than humans/
4) Did you learn something new and important about one of the hunters? - I don't think so.
1) Did you conclude the current mystery (the current mystery being around the wolf man, not around the missing little girl)? - I understand the mystery around the wolf man being "where did it come from and how do we stop it," and I don't feel like we know very much about either of those questions. (We did learn that Bryce let himself be turned into a wolf man, but he's only one of many, so I don't think that's what you mean.) I've been playing Oscar so that rescuing the girl is a higher priority than solving the mystery, however. But short answer: no.
2) Did you save someone from certain death (or worse)? - I'm 99% sure that's a yes. Oscar tried his very best to save the deputy that he accidentally shot from dying at the fight at the police station. We potentially saved a number of civilians by defeating the hunters there, also.
3) Did you learn something new and important about the world? - I feel like we've encountered and fought/defeated a new type of creature (disguised as wolf men). If that counts, then yes.
4) Did you learn something new and important about one of the hunters? - No. Possibly a by-product of Oscar's standoffishness.
1) Did you conclude the current mystery (the current mystery being around the wolf man, not around the missing little girl)?
No, not at all. I mean, we learnt that Bryce is a wolfman (out of many wolf people), but we have no idea what they actually are, who sent them here and what is that black sludge thing.
2) Did you save someone from certain death (or worse)?
No. Ahmad feels like he mostly flailed helplessly and made everything worse.
3) Did you learn something new and important about the world?
Ahmad feels increasingly out-of-depth. He has learned that the world is even more scary and monstrous than he thought.
4) Did you learn something new and important about one of the hunters?
Yes. Alfie was connected to the death of Ahmad's father, something which he clearly has not truly metabolised. Rani is potentially evil.
Once you've answered the above questions and the question posed to you once you entered the portal in Gameplay (thus far, this is only Rani), I'll PM you some details about CoM character creation. If you want to get a head start, you can pick out one Mythos and one Logos theme from here. I'd like to have everyone's CoM character finalized before moving on.
The themes you pick don't need to exactly match your current character; you are, in fact, creating the past of an alternate universe version of yourself. You have the skills of your alternate universe/CoM version of your character but the memories of you MotW universe version of your character.
Done. I'm back from my trip, but sorry for the delay.
The themes you pick don't need to exactly match your current character; you are, in fact, creating the past of an alternate universe version of yourself. You have the skills of your alternate universe/CoM version of your character but the memories of you MotW universe version of your character.
Just looking for clarification: Will we also have any of the memories of the past CoM version of our PCs?
Just looking for clarification: Will we also have any of the memories of the past CoM version of our PCs?
You as players might have some ideas about things that have happened in the CoM version's past (you kind of have to for the Logos themes). Your characters will not beyond a semi-intrinsic idea of how to use your powers.
A CoM PC is taking me a bit longer than I expected to get to. I'm catching up at work from being on vacation, where my coworkers resolved minor emergencies by stop-gapping them until I got back.
I read the Starter Set pdf a while back, and I agree with what was said above about how it is not the best organized and it contains a lot of discussion not helpful to "start" anything, but one thing I picked up on is that there's some sort of balancing act between our PCs' mythos and logos? Is that something that's going to come heavily into play, or are they really just there to define powers and backgrounds, only changing if a player deviates too far from them?
So how are the characters coming? Are there any questions? I know I've seen a CoM version of Rani and both Ahmad and Oscar have the details they need to create their characters. Still waiting on Taryn to answer the end of session questions and respond to her portal vision.
Edit: Ninja'd by Oscar's update.
A lot of the built-in tension in CoM is meant to be between the Mythos and Logos. If you've played Masks, it's similar to the Janus playbook's central theme about balancing their mundane life and superheroing life. It's less likely to come up in this particular adventure since it's meant to be stand-alone while those are more long-term conflicts. Because of that, I haven't emphasized defining Mysteries or Identities for each of your themes (ignoring a Mythos' Mystery or a Logos' Identity effectively weakens your character's relationship with that theme and can result in it being replaced with a different theme).
Presumably, all your characters want to find and rescue Alice, so the main focus will be on doing that/overcoming the obstacles to that. As such, the themes largely serve to give you tags that will help you with the various moves in the game. Picking your power tags with the different moves in mind will define if you want to be kind of good at all the moves or perhaps try to specialize in doing a few moves really well while not being very good at the others.
Just posting to say I am still here and should have a first version of CoM Ahmad this weekend.
From what the DM says, the tags are more important than the themes themselves, but for reference I will probably take Divination, Bastion, Relic and Defining Event as Ahmad's themes.
On the plus side, my character creation went so well that Rani was killed during it. Oops?
Ok, so this is what I have so far. My overall idea: Ahmad/Tiresias is blind, but sees the future so he can move about fairly well; when seeing the future is not all that useful, he has a direct line with the dead via his caduceus-phone; Tiresias can only die when he drinks from a tainted spring and/or is hit by an arrow from apollo's bow. (I'm taking some liberties with the legend of Tiresias.)
Not sure I nailed creating the tags: some seem very overpowered (e.g. can't die), but I'm assuming that their usefulness is tempered by the fact they can only be used together with a move?
The idea here is that Ahmad basically just throws himself in front of stuff because he knows most of it won't kill him. Instead of dying when he is really badly wounded, Ahmad's body changes: he might become a woman, an old man, etc.
Power tags
A. What quality or ability granted by your Mythos most often protects you?
Can’t die
B. What means do you have of extending protection to others?
Meat shield
H. Who or what were your powers meant to protect?
No one gets hurt on my watch
Weakness
A. What are the unwanted implications of your defense?
My body changes when I’m wounded
More or less self-explanatory, I guess. He's blind, but he sees the future. He can loose track of what is a vision, what is real and whether something he foresees is a certainty or just one amongst many possibilities.
Power tags
A. What Allows you to uncannily know things you wouldn’t normally know?
I can see the future
G. In what ways have your normal senses been enhanced by your Mythos?
I am blind, but I see everything just before it happens
I. How can you affect others with your power?
My prophecies are always true
Weakness
A. What happens when your divination overwhelms you?
Too many futures at the same time
One of the preferred divination methods of the Greek Tiresias was to consult the dead. He is also associated with the caduceus, which is a symbol of hermes, the greek god of commerce and communication. I joined those two things and thought of a phone-shaped caduceus that lets him talk to the dead to ask questions about…stuff. He can't phone his parents, he tried it.
Power tags
A. What is the main useful feature or part of your relic?
Speak to the dead
C. What essential useful quality lies at the core of your relic?
Communication is at the heart of everything
I. What happens when your relic goes into overdrive?
Bring the spirits of the dead into the realm of the living
Weakness
A. What is the most troublesome short-coming of your relic?
The dead are not always cooperative
In this world, both Ahmad's parents died under mysterious circumstances. He is pushier in his desire to protect people and with all the power he has now he won't be afraid to force people to do "what's best for them".
Power tags
A. What lies at the core of your personality?
Desire to protect
C. What interpersonal skills do you have thanks to your personality?
People just trust me
I. What typically interests you?
Psychology
Weakness
A. What happens when you let yourself go too far?
“You can’t do that, it’s too dangerous”
H. Who or what were your powers meant to protect?
No one gets hurt on my watch
I think the question is asking if there's a specific group or or thing you're trying to protect. For example, your loved ones or innocent bystanders.
A. What Allows you to uncannily know things you wouldn’t normally know?
I can see the futureG. In what ways have your normal senses been enhanced by your Mythos?
I am blind, but I see everything just before it happens
It seems like you would probably use both these tags in the exact same way. That's fine, I just want to point out that you're essentially doubling down on that use.
I. How can you affect others with your power?
My prophecies are always true
This seems like your broad tag. I just want to remind you that that means you would essentially need to roll twice to use it (once for Change the Game to create new tag(s) and then again to actually accomplish whatever you were trying to accomplish)
C. What essential useful quality lies at the core of your relic?
Communication is at the heart of everything
How do you foresee this helping with your Moves?
Ok, at this point I've seen at least some details for everybody's characters, so hopefully we'll be able to get things going with the CoM portion of things soon. A few things I want to remind people of now that we're getting closer to starting:
XP is tracked on a per-theme basis and you need 3XP on a given theme to get an advancement on it.
You gain XP by invoking your weakness tag on that theme for a -1 to your roll not by failing the roll (so if you can't think of how your weakness tags would apply to some of the basic Moves, you might want to re-think them).
You can only use a given tag once per scene per move. So for example, if you have a sword and you swing it at someone, you'd get +1 to Go Toe to Toe. If you swing your sword at someone again in the same scene, you'll still be using your sword, but you'll no longer have that +1 to the roll
At any time before rolling, you can choose to burn a relevant tag. You treat your roll as a 10 +/- any relevant statuses, but you can't use that tag anymore until you do one of the moves to recover it.
Because of some of the (imo) flaws in the design of the game around what move is appropriate to roll and NPCs having hidden statuses already that you might not know about, when you try to make a move, add an OOC comment about what you're trying to achieve and what tags you think you've invoked with your action and then I'll roll it for you.
So...are we actually close to being ready to start? I think Rani's about done with her character but were there any tweaks anybody else wanted to do? Or should I just go ahead and post the first scene in CoM world?
I am almost there and should have all tags done by tomorrow or wednesday. It's mostly a question of addressing your feedback and using XP, so if everyone else is ready, I should be good to go.
I'll probably post the opening scene tomorrow. From there y'all will have until Sunday to finalize your characters as you get a chance to do some initial role play about the new situation you find yourselves in.
I have addressed your feedback (thanks for that, btw!) and chosen the 3 advancements. Let me know if there’s anything that looks weird. In any case, I think Ahmad Tiresias should be ready.
Power tags
A. What quality or ability granted by your Mythos most often protects you?
Can’t die
B. What means do you have of extending protection to others?
Meat shield
H. Who or what were your powers meant to protect?
Innocent bystanders
Weakness
A. What are the unwanted implications of your defense?
My body changes when I’m wounded
Advancements
Sacrifice
When you get a hit on Face Danger, you can always choose to extend the outcome to one person or object around you that you can protect, at the cost of exposing yourself.
On a 10+, they take no status and you take the status with -1 tier.
On 7-9, they take the status with -1 tier and you take the full status.
On a 12+, you can choose to fully protect both of you.
Power tags
A. What Allows you to uncannily know things you wouldn’t normally know?
I can see the future
G. In what ways have your normal senses been enhanced by your Mythos?
I am blind, but I see everything just before it happens
I. How can you affect others with your power?
I see something terrible in your future
Weakness
A. What happens when your divination overwhelms you?
Too many futures at the same time
Advancements
Open Book
When you Investigate with power tags from this theme, it’s Dynamite!
Ahead of the Game
Once per scene, you get one free Clue.
Power tags
A. What is the main useful feature or part of your relic?
Make phone calls to the dead
D. What cosmetic attributes does your relic possess?
I’m just some random person with a cellphone
I. What happens when your relic goes into overdrive?
Bring the spirits of the dead into the realm of the living
Weakness
A. What is the most troublesome short-coming of your relic?
The dead are not always cooperative
Power tags
A. What lies at the core of your personality?
Desire to protect
C. What interpersonal skills do you have thanks to your personality?
People just trust me
I. What typically interests you?
Trained psychologist
Weakness
A. What happens when you let yourself go too far?
“You can’t do that, it’s too dangerous”
The only person who might have advancements is Oscar because he's the only one with enough XP from MotW to have gotten a MotW advancement. Ahmad has 3 XP which he can spread across his themes for a max of 2 XP on any one theme. It takes 3 XP on a single theme to gain an advancement. So either 3 themes have 1XP each or one theme has 2 XP and another theme has 1 XP.
I. How can you affect others with your power?
I see something terrible in your future
Used to be ”My prophecies always come true”. I tried narrowing it down a bit more, do you think that works better? Sample uses: say that an attacker twists their ankle when going toe to toe, convincing someone to do something by scaring them.
Perhaps a better way for me to phrase "broad" is "I can think of a way to make this apply to pretty much every single move". And changing it to just "I see something terrible in your future" makes it a little less broad, but still pretty broad. In addition to what you pointed out, the enemy twists their ankle giving you an advantage (Change the Game), the person gets hit by a bus and drops vital information (Investigate), the guard gets a phone call that his mother is in the hospital and is distracted by that (Sneak Around). Which again, you are allowed one broad tag if you want one, so if you really like that idea, I'd say just use it as your broad tag and use it via Change the Game before your regular move. Otherwise you still need to narrow it down more.
D. What cosmetic attributes does your relic possess?
I’m just some random person with a cellphone
Intention: help with Sneak and possibly convince to feign innocence. What do you think?
Yeah, I think that makes sense. Though perhaps a better way of phrasing might be something like "Just a face in the crowd". But totally up to you; the exact phrasing doesn't really matter.
Ah, sorry! I completely misunderstood the XP bit. I thought it was one advancement per XP. I'll remove it from the sheet.
Regarding the broad tag: got it. I will try to narrow it down some more. Thanks for the patience ;)
What kinda info would be useful to have in our status bars?
That is a good question. The tags are going to be too much to fit there, so it's probably going to be more temporary things. Any statuses you wind up getting will be useful. If you create any temporary tags via Change the Game and don't immediately use them (or if you roll a 10+ and choose to prolong them). Similarly any Juice or Clues you get and don't immediately use.
Sorry for the silence. Things were very busy this weekend, and I'm still catching up. I know what I need to do based on our PMs, but I need to make the time to do that, still. I expect to have him finished by Friday or Saturday, but feel free to start.
Sorry for the silence. Things were very busy this weekend, and I'm still catching up. I know what I need to do based on our PMs, but I need to make the time to do that, still. I expect to have him finished by Friday or Saturday, but feel free to start.
Sorry that I'm still not caught up. I've been busy and exhausted and I haven't gotten around to finalizing my character. My kids just started school for the year, the latest COVID surge is affecting both my job and especially my wife's, and work has been really busy the past week, which has slowed down my posting.
I'll try and re-focus and get back on course by Wednesday or Thursday.
Do people still have time/interest for this game? Given the general silence, the vibe I'm getting is "not really". Which is fine, but that's something I'd rather know now rather than later as this is a more natural ending point.