Not-Roundup #4 -- Also, Changeling-Stylez.

So, haven't played much of anything for the past couple of weeks apart from Spiral Knights and Portal 2. I have a couple of larger projects in the works for this blog, both of which I've mentioned here and there, so we'll see if any of those actually get done.

In the meantime, I will post instead: The Kingdoms and basic synopsis for the Theoretical Changeling: The Lost game I've been considering and considering:

Players are all Changeling-types who live in a place of a Thousand-Thousand Kingdoms, all embodying some sort of idea. Seven of the Kingdoms are available to players, as they tend to be clustered in groups of seven neighbors, even though they don't all get along. For purposes of meshing with Changeling, the Kingdoms are all located in what is more-or-less the Hedge, with Arcadia, or Avalon, as an adjunct realm, and The Kingdom Right Proper, or the mortal world, on the other side. Belonging to a Kingdom will be more-or-less analogous to belonging to a Court in the Changeling rules.

More or less Below the Kingdoms are the Shadowcities, which are reflections of things in the Many Kingdoms, and in the Kingdoms right Proper, though among its many other differences, Arcadia casts no shadow.

The Adjacent Kingdoms:

The Kingdom of Thieves -- inhabited by sneak-thieves, traps rogues, confidence men, gamblers, ragpickers, safe-crackers, card sharps, Marks who've been conned into living there, and assassins. They are exactly what you expect, for the most part, and when talking to Marks they call their Kingdom Innisfreigh. They are best aligned with the Kingdoms of Masks and Manikins, are neutral with the Kingdoms of Mendicants and Wrights, and don't get on at all with the Kingdoms of Knightly Vows and Locks and Eyes.

The Kingdom of Masks -- Also known as the kingdom of Artifice, the Masks are liars, actors, dramatists, dancers, puppeteers, stage-duellists, quick-change comedians, tightrope walkers and acrobats. They are best at seeing things that are hidden, and understand lies better than truths. They get on fairly well with the Kingdom of Thieves and the Kingdom of Mendicants, they do frequent business with the Kingdoms of Manikins, somewhat less with that of the Anvils, and are violently opposed to the Kingdom of Knightly Vows and to a slightly lesser degree, the Kingdom of Locks and Eyes.

The Kingdom of Knightly Vows-- also known as the Kingdom of True-Spoken words. The Knights are Chivalric lords, paladins, champions, honest courtiers, statesmen, judges, keepers of records, poets, and idealists. They represent the perfect ideal of a Kingdom of Paragons, and deal fairly with those about them. They mislike deceit, save in service to an oath. As one might imagine, this puts them at odds with the Masks and the Thieves, and aligns them just fine with the Watchmen and the Mendicants. They have a great deal more use for the craftsmen in service to the Anvil than the makers of Manikins, but don't seriously object to either.

The Kingdom of the Anvil-- Also known as the Wrights, these are largely craftsmen, smiths in metals and workers in wood and stone. They build things for use-- they are carpenters and tinsmiths and blacksmiths and architects, makers of tools and builders of castles, miners and lumberjacks, sculptors and shapers of clay. They are very workmanlike and dream on grand scales. They are kin with the Kingdom of Manikins, though they consider them less useful than they. They have no real alliances or enemies, though they frequently receive custom from the Watchmen, the Knights, and the Thieves. Though in the case of the latter, they always check their purses after. They have little use for the Mendicants.

The Kingdom of Manikins-- Inhabited by makers of little crafts and clockworks, they shape things into man-shapes. They are scientists and theoreticians, inventors of gadgets, locksmiths, clothiers, dollmakers and toymakers, builders of simulacra, alchemists, witches, scroungers and carvers in wood and stone, they make idols and fetishes of straw, feather, and clay, the latter medium they share with their siblings of the Anvil. Like the Anvils, they have no real alliances or enemies, though they have a particular friendship with the Ragpickers of the Thieves. They welcome the patronage of the Kingdom of Masks and betimes the Mendicants, welcome the protection of the Watchmen, and are generally ignored by the Knights.

The Kingdom of Locks and Eyes-- Those who dwell here are called the Watchmen, and they are the vigilant protectors of the Kingdoms at large. They are spies and police officers, private investigators, clerks, builders of traps, marching soldiers and honest guardsmen, vigilantes, seekers of security, builders of walls, commanders of fortresses, and other seekers of justice. They are very good at ferreting out wrongdoing and, as one might imagine, are fundamentally opposed to the Kingdom of Thieves. Their best allies are the Knights, and they tend to offer their services to the Mendicants, the Kingdom of Manikins, and the Wrights, though in the latter case it is largely in trade. They don't really get the Masks, and as such, do not trust them at all.

The Kingdom of Mendicants-- Also known as the Kingdom of Seven Tongues, it is a Kingdom of superstition, myth, and many, many temples. Here might be found supplicants, pilgrims, lay brothers and sisters of a number of Orders from every Kingdom, oracles, tellers of fortunes, mystics, readers of cards, casters of runes, bishops and cardinals, acetic monks, vestal virgins, sacred prostitutes, storytellers, lore-keepers, dervishes, Ecstatics, revivalists, and other worshippers of one god, faith, tradition, superstition, word, or another. They are also the keepers of what little Lore which belongs to the Kingdoms alone, the Rules of Other Worlds, of which there are Seven. Every Kingdom has something to serve here, and something that makes them a bit uncomfortable. They frequently operate on gifts and offerings, which is pretty much all right with everyone but the servants of the Anvil, who trend against superstition, and dislike parting with the work of their hands except to receive coin.

The Kingdom of Shadows-- Beneath all of the Realms except Arcadia, where the Faeries live, there lie Shadowcities. That said, the people of the Kingdoms do not themselves cast shadows, by and large, when light is shone upon them. Only mortals cast shadows. In the Kingdoms, Shadows dwell in their cities when their light-halves in the mortal world are asleep, or away from light. There are ways to sever a Shadow from its light-half as well, but this "freedom" for the Shadow often leads to other, more unfortunate vulnerabilities. In many kingdoms, severed Shadows are kept as indentured servants.

Arcadia, where the faeries live-- The term fey or Faerie in the Kingdoms refer only to what in the Changeling rules are called 'True Fae'. These beings dwell in Arcadia, by and large, although they frequently come into the Kingdoms for revels, or to conduct business, or whatever other reason takes their fancy. They are ruled by one queen with two faces, called Mab on the dark side and Titania on the light side. She has seven daughters, seven sons, and any number of consorts.

Session Roundup #6

This week was less intense-- character creation for Shieldhaven's upcoming Mage:The Awakening game, and a second round of Samhaine's Dresden Files game, which turned out to be a contextless combat run. So, onto the stuff:

Mage: I found World of Darkness style character creation kind of frustrating. They try very hard to make stuff available-- most of what you need to know is printed right on the character sheet-- but at the same time, WoD's got some entry barriers, which I've not fully sorted through. I think it's largely that they have this huge and shifting lexicon of terms you need to know, and it can sort-of short out your brain. Also, Virtues and Vices, unlike Aspects, seem to be created to simply screw you over, instead of ever being useful. That said, I really like the Orders of mages and am curious to see how it plays. I am re-upping an older character to be a Mastigos (Mind/Space) Mage. This will also be my first time actively playing a male character with this bunch, though for a very long time, I'd played nothing but. Now, to come up with a Shadow Name.

Dresden Files: Covered also here. Shieldhaven's Wizard and my Serial Killah at a GA state park, fighting Hounds and Goblins. I'm equipped with a broken soda bottle and my re-goddamn-diculous weapon score, plus 2 for using an improvised weapon. Samhaine pointed out that by taking this stunt and using the hell out of it, I was potentially scrapping the chance of getting better weapons that would do more consistent damage, but I pointed out that with my 8 Refresh remaining, I could probably buy a new stunt that gave me +2 to weapons when I got a specific Favored Weapon.

I picked up two new stunts, incidentally-- "On the Scent," which gives me +2 to investigation when stalking 'prey'; and "Grady Hospital Visitor's Room" which gives me +2 to Athletics when attempting to dodge gunfire. Niether of these were of any use in this fight, where I spent some ugly rounds trying to dodge arrow fire. Not awesome. I am going to have to cycle my Athletics up, probably dropping my Rapport to 2. But to the task at hand.

As Haven mentioned in the above-linked post, it's hard out there for a Wizard who wants to blow shit up in a sudden scrap. From what I understand, Wizards have the following big things they want to be awesome in combat: a) magic items, b) time to charge up with rituals before any fighting happens, or c) both. Otherwise, they're looking at about 4 rounds of functionality before they really start hurting. So I learned that it's important for the bruiser to keep bad guys off the Wizard, but not for the reasons I thought. The Wizard is bloody tough, and can take some damage-- if only he weren't damaging himself by casting his spells. He can't afford to also take hits from the bad guys.

Fortunately, I was very happy to spend fate points on my Aspect: The Marked Condition. The idea here is that I draw the bad guys into pummeling me, rather than trying to hit anyone else. This is a bad time for anyone whose attack is opposed by my Weapons roll (ie, anyone making a melee attack), and just fine for anyone whose attack is opposed by Athletics (ie, ranged fuckers. With arrows). As it stood, I was pretty much clocking a Hound a round with my busted up bottle, as they didn't have much in the way of armor.

The Goblins, however, were tough to tear up, as their armor prevented a lot of my damage. However, since they are fey, Cold Iron (in this universe, anything made of iron or steel) would ignore their armor entirely. Once this occurred to us, Sam (Shieldhaven's Wizard) used Alertness to declare that there was a fireplace poker hanging out by the, well, fireplace in the back of the building, what I could grab. Don't get me wrong, the -1 circumstance hit for having taken a supplemental action is a big deal, but being able to burn these dudes alive with Iron made up for it.

Now, about that circumstance stuff. You can only do one thing in a round of combat, whether it is move, attack, Declare something, or whatever. That is, unless you want to move into a zone right next to you, or say, pick up an iron poker in your zone and then swing it. If you want to do one of these, then you can take a -1 penalty to your next action, usually an attack roll.

Due to the nature of FATE dice, this is not insignificant. +/- 1 is a pretty big deal, +/- 2 is an even bigger deal. Fortunately, Consequences don't exactly hand out permanent penalties to rolls-- what they do is give the bad guys "tags" they can use against you on their next turn. Luckily, when I took consequences, Samhaine forgot to use the tags towards the end of the fight; otherwise we would have just been murdered, and it would have been very sad. And I took all 4 Consequences I had available (Reg Mild, Moderate, and Severe, plus an extra mild physical) without taking the Extreme conseqence. What this looked like in-game was a little hispanic girl with an arrow sticking out of her thigh, an arrow sticking through her left hand, glass abrasions all over her (from diving through a window to get next to the final goblin-- I spent a fate point on Buffy The Serial Killer to accomplish that trick), and numerous other small wounds. Festive!

We did win, but just barely, and Sam was a curled up little ball of gibbering wizard in the corner, having conceded the fight after taking both Fugue State and Hallucinations for moderate and severe consequences, not to mention a couple of mild consequences (one mental and one physical). Good times.

I'm very curious to see how social combat works, and also how combat with a) more than just 2 players and b) against enemies that are also taking consequences instead of dying once they run out of stress boxes.

On another note, I was surprised by the number of people interested in the Middle Earth game I mentioned yesterday (from the lj poll). I'll probably be exploring both that idea and the Changeling game in future posts here.

Run, Rabbit Run.

So, I am considering running something semi-regular in addition to my 4e game, in part because I've never run anything non-d&d, and because I want to run something that shieldhaven can play in. I haven't ever run a tabletop game that wasn't some edition of D&D though, and the sorts of things I might run... well, let's have a look, shall we?

In no particular order:

1) Nobilis-- B's had this book for some time, and lent it me back in the day because of the Pritty. And man, is it Pritty. Also, Samhaine's Opinions Matter.

2) Changeling: The Lost-- set in the universe of the novel I am writing about a lass named Timothina and many Thousands of Kingdoms. There are fey in the story, and it might map pretty nicely, and be deeply interesting to me.

3) A 4th Age Middle Earth Game-- I am not sure what system I'd use for this, but the idea is that the PCs are Orcs, Southron, or Halflings just after the end of the War of the Ring. Based on the premise that Orcs are twisted mutations of Elves, Ulmo or Illuvitar or someone has wakened the Elvish soul in some of them, those where that part lay sleeping only lightly. This turns them from brutish beasts incapable of order without the control of a tyrant into real, thinking creatures with consciences, interested in getting redemption from themselves, and gaining some form of acceptance in the lands of Middle Earth. There's a bunch of challenges in even setting this up that I'm likely to address more in depth here later.

4) Something else that I just haven't thought of, if there's anything that my peeps might wish to play.

Also, I still mean to run my Dawning Star short-run horror game, but Shieldhaven will be helping me write and run that, rather than playing in it, which defeats some little of the purpose.

If one has an opinion, they might comment about it here, or fill out yon LJ poll.