The Gaming Den

Dance meat-puppets. Dance.

Heh. Yeah, pentacostals (like say Sarah fucking Palin) seriously hold spazzing out and having invisible presences puppet you around to be a good thing. Sarah Palin's popularity such as it is is based almost entirely upon her being an invisible mind puppet.

Assemblies of God on wikipedia wrote:As classical Pentecostals, the Assemblies of God believes all Christians are entitled to and should seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The AG teaches that this experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of salvation. With the baptism in the Holy Spirit comes such experiences as an overflowing fullness of the Spirit, a deepened reverence for God, an intensified consecration to God and dedication to his work, and a more active love for Christ. It is also important for empowering the believer for Christian life and service. The initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues "as the Spirit of God gives them utterance."

So I doubt that making people under Dominate act really freaky would have much effect on things politically. A different tact needs to be taken into consideration.

The rise of nationalism must have hit the magic covenants really hard. Suddenly they weren't competing with pitchfork wielding mobs, but with armies that had cannons. Crazy shit. In the dawn of the 1600s, pretty much every god king everywhere got their ass royally kicked - by humans with explosives. That sort of thing probably got taken very hard by the magical powers that be. And we can guess that the Masquerade rules came into force around then.

So before the rule was that you didn't expose supernatural critters to undue scrutiny, give away the tricks of the trade, or send your human minions after other supernaturals. So if you wanted to be the vampire lord of Lower Carpathia, you could just do that, but you weren't allowed to march Lower Carpathian soldiers after other supernatural holdings, so god kings ended up mostly just terrorizing city states here and there. Afterward, the rules probably became pretty strict in the Sabbat and the Carthians, because when the Shattered Empire went all hardcore anti-nationalist they got their ass kicked (by humans).

So that's a question: is there a big game to see whether it's a New World Order or World Crime League pawn who gets to be president of the US? Is the president of the US off limits for mental manipulation lest there become too much exposure? One could really go either way.

But seriously, Kerry and Bush were both members of Skull and Bones, so honestly if that entire election was just between two NWO pawns that happened to work for different (or even the same) Baali magician princeps - that would be pretty in-flavor for the World of Darkness as a whole.

-Username17

In a world with a thousand actors moving behind the scenes, does it really matter if a few of them have fangs?

I still remember the Werewolf chronicle where we got our liason to the elders elected president. Our liason was a four foot something homid ilver fang grizzled war vet, who shot back when an assassination was attempted. It was quite a sight on it's own.

The point of that is, I personally, think that allowing supernaturals to run for president, if they so desire, is a good thing, as it opens stories both for rival npcs entering the race in their own interests, and for a member of the coterie to enter the race.

IB90 wrote:In a world with a thousand actors moving behind the scenes, does it really matter if a few of them have fangs?

Fangs no, serious magic, yes. If all the world governments aren't secretly run by supers then there has to be some reason for it. Since noone has come up with a good enough reason why magic can't secretly dominate the world there has to be a reason why it won't secretly dominate the world.

Draco_Argentum wrote:Since noone has come up with a good enough reason why magic can't secretly dominate the world there has to be a reason why it won't secretly dominate the world.

There is a real upper limit to how many people can reliably keep a secret, and most modern governments have too many people who'd need to be in on it. Leaks would happen, and the people in charge of the Masquerade know it and intervene before things get that far. Supernatural clubs who want to manipulate those kinds of politics have to do so indirectly.

Now, there are probably supernaturals in charge of North Korea, where the governmental structure will support their hiding; and in other fucked-up chunks of the world, like most of the sub-Saharan African nations, or anywhere else the government might be hard-pressed to distinguish itself from an armed gang in the first place.

Fundamentally, taking over the leader of a given nation is just a bad deal.

Why would you risk your candidate losing/being discovered/etc etc when you could simply give a few "donations" to each political party and have policy shifted in a direction you choose?

The law and supernaturals don't really mix in ways that are conducive to legislation. No government is going to get "Reports of murders where victims are drained of blood are to be summarily ignored" through parliament. There's a very limited subsection of the law and foreign policy that really has a noticeable effect on supernaturals, and that they can't influence/change themselves.

This isn't to say that people won't try, but they're generally rare enough to be interesting times.

Its' a lot easier to just take advantage of corruption in governments than to outright charm or dominate them, especially when your goals are as limited in scope as most supernaturals are.

Even if you do want to affect policy in almost all areas of government, directly controlling a candidate is still generally a bad idea. Too much effort for too little payoff, when bribery works so much better.

Vnonymous wrote:Fundamentally, taking over the leader of a given nation is just a bad deal.

This is, but supernaturals don't always act in a completely reasonable manner. Some really do crave the limelight. When they do get too close to being discovered, they tend to 'die' in things like fiery plane crashes so bad that even dental records are useless for identification...
...or they actually do die in fiery plane wrecks if they lack the wisdom to fake it.

Frankly most of the persons likely to ascend into positions of power on such a massive scale are either strong-willed... or actually a puppet for another entity, who may or may not be a monster, though if Cheney was a vampire it would certainly explain some things. But I'm willing to say that actually significantly tampering with an election is a gamble because everyone is going to fight over a pawn and a strong-willed individual may well be capable of ditching the mind control... maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but possibly at the most inconvenient time. So as a general rule, supernaturals would avoid that shit. There's no way to guarantee a prevention of massive fallout. And even if you do succeed for a while, it'll only because you managed to assert a stronger influence than the ones already existing, which might be reinforced, and so on, so the weapon may at any moment also turn on you.

However, vampires (and others) are always willing to do the much more efficient thing, and tamper with local individuals of power. It's much easier to run down and control the individuals in question, and then eliminate the competition for your control. Thus you see the mayor getting effectively Dominated far more often than you see blood-bound Presidents.

FrankTrollman wrote:Heh. Yeah, pentacostals (like say Sarah fucking Palin) seriously hold spazzing out and having invisible presences puppet you around to be a good thing. Sarah Palin's popularity such as it is is based almost entirely upon her being an invisible mind puppet.

Assemblies of God on wikipedia wrote:As classical Pentecostals, the Assemblies of God believes all Christians are entitled to and should seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The AG teaches that this experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of salvation. With the baptism in the Holy Spirit comes such experiences as an overflowing fullness of the Spirit, a deepened reverence for God, an intensified consecration to God and dedication to his work, and a more active love for Christ. It is also important for empowering the believer for Christian life and service. The initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues "as the Spirit of God gives them utterance."

So I doubt that making people under Dominate act really freaky would have much effect on things politically. A different tact needs to be taken into consideration.

The rise of nationalism must have hit the magic covenants really hard. Suddenly they weren't competing with pitchfork wielding mobs, but with armies that had cannons. Crazy shit. In the dawn of the 1600s, pretty much every god king everywhere got their ass royally kicked - by humans with explosives. That sort of thing probably got taken very hard by the magical powers that be. And we can guess that the Masquerade rules came into force around then.

So before the rule was that you didn't expose supernatural critters to undue scrutiny, give away the tricks of the trade, or send your human minions after other supernaturals. So if you wanted to be the vampire lord of Lower Carpathia, you could just do that, but you weren't allowed to march Lower Carpathian soldiers after other supernatural holdings, so god kings ended up mostly just terrorizing city states here and there. Afterward, the rules probably became pretty strict in the Sabbat and the Carthians, because when the Shattered Empire went all hardcore anti-nationalist they got their ass kicked (by humans).

So that's a question: is there a big game to see whether it's a New World Order or World Crime League pawn who gets to be president of the US? Is the president of the US off limits for mental manipulation lest there become too much exposure? One could really go either way.

But seriously, Kerry and Bush were both members of Skull and Bones, so honestly if that entire election was just between two NWO pawns that happened to work for different (or even the same) Baali magician princeps - that would be pretty in-flavor for the World of Darkness as a whole.

-Username17

This gives me an interesting idea.

The "reason" for the whole "divine right" and "specialness" that is associated with rulers is that at one point, they actually were special.

They could turn into giant monsters, or were immortals, or were mage-kings. Humans have mere clung to that all of this time, but we forget that we were once ruled by monsters that treated humans like pawns.

Then the pawns discovered how to get into groups, and use powerful ranged weapons.

TavishArtair wrote:though if Cheney was a vampire it would certainly explain some things.

I was thinking werewolf, myself, but yeah.

Perhaps a reason could be that none of the supernatural groups want the other groups getting too powerful. When one group becomes stronger than the others, the only responses are either to capitulate to whatever they want, which none of them want to do, or gain more power for themselves. The latter option starts an arms race, which makes breaking the Masquerade more likely. So there is a gentleman's agreement in the supernatural community that if any group really starts building up, everyone else will come down hard on them.

Vnonymous wrote: There's a very limited subsection of the law and foreign policy that really has a noticeable effect on supernaturals, and that they can't influence/change themselves.

In reality, there are no laws regarding supernaturals, because there are no supernaturals. Now, you must explain why there should be still no such laws where there are supernaturals - and they aren't hidden that well that they cannot be found. Government records are older than Masquerade.

Well, the Pied Piper is a historical event. That's quite a government record actually.

"Then the sorcerer came back and cursed our children, who all went off dancing and we never saw them again. Note to self: pay bills to sorcerers.

P.S.: have more kids."

History is weird.

-Username17

baduin wrote:

Vnonymous wrote: There's a very limited subsection of the law and foreign policy that really has a noticeable effect on supernaturals, and that they can't influence/change themselves.

In reality, there are no laws regarding supernaturals, because there are no supernaturals. Now, you must explain why there should be still no such laws where there are supernaturals - and they aren't hidden that well that they cannot be found. Government records are older than Masquerade.

This is stupid.

The whole point of the masquerade is that we don't actually know that they exist. Making them an established part of the law of the land ensures that the masquerade also has to include police officers and anyone who gets involved with the legal system.

That's beyond stupid, and essentially says "The Masquerade can never exist ever".

If you want the players to interact with the world, it must be reasonable. Things must happen for some reason. Now, we are considering why Masquerade did happen. It is not enough to say that it did happen.

You are right - the government, or at least the great majority of government workers, must not know that supernaturals exists. But we need to know WHY they do not know. We cannot merely assume this.

I proposed earlier one reason: Magic makes it impossible to have mass organizations; or at least effective mass organizations. For that reason it is useless either for governments, or as a weapon against governments. Supernaturals can exists and be personally powerful, but can never be the rulers, or play any important role in society.

There is a second reason: it is not in the interest of governments and churches that people - including the government officers - believe in magic. Belief in real magic would catastrophically diminish the power of governments. It would be incidentally equally damaging for churches, but it is now of lesser importance.

To understand this, we must consider why people obey governments. At present, this is so because the government promises to create a better, or even perfect world. That promise makes it worthwhile to support government or to work for it.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 22,00.html
Here is an article from Spiegel, which explains that quite well:

"We are not dealing here with poetry or philosophical pipe dreams, but rather an empirically demonstrable reality. The European Union in the year 2009 represents a world-historical optimum. Never before have 500 million people united under a single political order been better off. Never before have they been as free, as healthy, or as well educated; and never before have they been as peaceful. To be sure, it is the systemic improbability of this state of affairs that lends a certain credence to the current pessimism about the future.
...
Whichever way one looks at it, if Europe can maintain its federation of states (and if it can include Russia and gain Turkey as a comprehensive buffer), it will remain the continent of the relative optimum-the best of all possible future worlds. Indeed, the scenario outlined here recalls the end of the first truly critical story of globalization, Voltaire's Candide, ou l'Optimisme."

If the magic is true, however, you do not need a government. You can learn to be a spellcaster, and then you can have immortality, riches - whatever you want. (Most of would-be mages would end as cultists, of course - but this is a separate matter.) A real belief in magic would blow up the whole ideological structure of government.

At the same time, magic cults must be tiny and plot-ridden.

As Frank Trollman said it: "The Black Hand is the name of several historical assassin cults that have cropped up from time to time in many places. Many people credit them with starting world war I. In oWoD, they were also given as an alternate name of the Sabbat, and the special doctrinal enforcers of the Sabbat, and the soldiers of the Sabbat, and a secret masonic order of Sabbat members that manipulated stuff, and an even more secret order dedicated to fighting the Sabbat while apparently also controlling the Sabbat even more secretly. Seriously."

That is a good example of supernatural organization; clearly, it would be rather ineffective.

Why is it so? Simply. Magic promises no collective perfect future. For the relatively sane, it promises personal immortality and pleasure - at the cost of the society. For the insane it can mean various things - but all of them are insane, of course.

So, if the chief of your cult is sane and you are sane, you will obey him only in order to take over his villa and girls for yourself in the end. There is no reason to be faithful to him.

If he is insane, and you are sane - the same, but even quicker. Who knows when that madman will decide to blow you up?

And if you are insane, it is very probable that your madness will cause you to behave in a way not exactly in the interest of you chief.

This is the explanation why government CAN ignore supernaturals. Earlier, I explained why it WANTS to ignore them.

Of course, government could be forced to notice supernaturals. If people knew that there is a blood-drinking mass-murdering cult, they would demand that something is done about it. For that reason, it is of obvious importance that such knowledge does not spread. And it is important for every one single supernatural - it is in his direct interest.

So, Masquerade is not maintained by any super-efficient secret organization. It is maintained, because breaking it is contrary to the individual interests of supernaturals, churches, governments, universities, major newspapers etc.

baduin wrote:To understand this, we must consider why people obey governments. At present, this is so because the government promises to create a better, or even perfect world. That promise makes it worthwhile to support government or to work for it.

I can't agree with this premise. People obey the government because of Leviathan. Once they are committed to living in the world the government creates, they ask the government to improve the world because that's where they keep all their stuff.

Supernaturals have the genuine opportunity to pass beyond the reach of society, and as such they don't have to follow the expressed wishes of the government. They don't even necessarily care if the world improves because they have access to other worlds. But magic simply existing would not undermine the existence of government. It would just make it harder to govern.

Society exists because none of us is as strong as all of us. The inclusion of super men who might legitimately wonder whether their strength matches all of what civilization can bring to bare against them certainly brings up the question of why they would throw their lot in with mankind as a whole.

---

The WoD posits a separate rubric for magical creatures. They have their own society and their own leviathan. A vampire does not break the rules of magic society because he is not as strong as all the vampires and werewolves together. The magic societies do not rock the boat vis a vis human society because they are an association of nations, and that war would be really costly.

Vampires don't start really large amounts of shit in human society because the rules of their magic governments tell them not to. The rules of the magic government tell them not to because that would be a diplomatic incident that could cause an ugly war.

But no, wizards don't follow human laws habitually because they do not consider themselves to be part of human society and are not part of the human social contract. They are part of the magic beings social contract, and that includes following the law where you don't rile up humans.

-Username17

A big question is what is happening in Africa. A land where supernaturals can roam relatively freely and live the old life on a small scale? An entirely human tragedy that the supernaturals try to wash their hands of? It seems significantly less likely that the supernaturals in Africa follow the same rules as supernaturals in Europe.

It's a relevent question, we're handling how Supernatural and mundane society works in established civilisations - what happens when your host nation seriously might collapse next week?

In Africa there is Africa. Tokoloshe and witch-hunts. Also trade in body parts of albinos and children. Nobody is interested anyway.

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/witchcraft4.19681.html


"Posted to the web: 14/04/2009 14:54:21
A “PROPHET” fainted and had to be revived after he battled a tokoloshe which was terrorising female members of the same family in Hwange, Matabeleland North, a court heard last week.

The “dwarf gremlin-like creature with horns curving downwards; beads; legs and arms without palms” was paraded before a magistrate in the western town of Hwange after two members of the same family and the self-styled prophet were arrested for harassing their grandfather fingered as the owner of the tokoloshe.

A local vernacular weekly newspaper, Umthunywa, reports that the tokoloshe has been kept by police in Hwange.

The court heard how Solani Sibanda, a self-styled prophet from nearby Binga, was called in after female members of the same family reported that they always woke up “tired and wet in the nether regions”.

The court heard several testimonies from female members of the family who all suggested the creature brought to court was going to bed with them at night without their knowledge.

Tapiwa Mwembe, 27, told the court she “felt someone having sex with her”, even as her husband was away. This caused her to be “always weak, and unable to satisfy her husband”.

Mwembe is a granddaughter of White Nengwa Ngoma, the 74-year-old grandfather accused of practising witchcraft, leading to his complaint of harassment against his grandsons.

Another granddaughter, Lambiwe Ncube, gave “a moving testimony” revealing that she started sleeping “with this thing” after her husband died, Umthunywa reported.

“After my husband died, my grandfather promised to find me a man to take care of my sexual needs. Since then, I would feel someone I couldn’t see having sex with me,” she said.

A third woman, Maria Ndlovu, also reported having sex with an “invisible person”.

The women, the court heard, reported the strange happenings to their brothers Balani Nyathi and Potani Shoko who took the decision to seek Sibanda’s services.

Sibanda arrived in the Lukosi village and immediately went to work, leading the family to Ngoma’s homestead.

Taking the witness stand, Sibanda said he went into Ngoma’s bedroom and held the tokoloshe “by the throat”.

“Because it had so much power, I fainted while holding it but I never let go of it,” said Sibanda.

Family members attending the “cleansing” ceremony poured cold water on Sibanda to revive him.

“Shockingly, when Sibanda came back to life, the tokoloshe also regained consciousness,” Umthunywa reported, citing witness statements.

The paper added: “Seeing he was in danger, Sibanda lifted the tokoloshe and shoved it into fire ash and it finally died.”

Magistrate Aeline Munamati issued a restraining order against the nephews and warned them about their future conduct. They are also to desist from harassing Ngoma.

Zimbabwe repealed its witchcraft laws in 2006 and lifted a ban on the practises of many traditional healers and self-styled prophets. Those accusing an individual of witchcraft must show proof of their allegations.

The law however also says “any person who groundlessly or by the purported use of non-natural means accuses another person of witchcraft shall be guilty of indicating a witch or wizard and liable”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7733597.stm

"A six-year-old albino girl in Burundi has been found dead with her head and limbs removed, in the latest killing linked to ritual medicine.

Albinos in the region have been targeted because of a belief peddled by witchdoctors that their body parts can be used for magic potions.

The girl, who was attacked on Sunday, was the sixth person with albinism to be killed in Burundi since September.

There have also been a number of attacks in neighbouring Tanzania. "

*push* delurk

How is it going?
Hope this gets finished and over an week with no post...

Yeah, my sister got married and I had stuff to do. I've been working on a skill system. How is this for a start:

---

Skills

A key portion of the die roll for any test is the skill. It represents specific training that helps a character perform a task. And because of that, it can lead to a far amount of confusion among some people, because linguistically we refer both to people who are very good at something and also people who are good at a wide variety of things as being “skilled.” In aWoD, skills are basically confined to the former interpretation. Jacks of All Trades are represented game mechanically by people who have relatively high Attributes and low skills. People with high skills are specialists by definition.

Physical Skills

Physical skills involve doing stuff with your body. Since everyone has a body, the defaulting penalty for using physical skills untrained is zero. Without specialized training you can always still make a raw attribute test. A very strong person can grapple fairly effectively on that basis alone, an intuitive person can easily notice things, and so on and so forth.



Athletics

• Specializations:

Combat

• Specializations:

Drive

• Specializations:

Larceny

• Specializations:

Perception

• Specializations:

Stealth

• Specializations:

Survival

• Specializations:

Social Skills

Regular socialization is performed with Backgrounds, rather than social skills. If you want to ingratiate yourself with others, track down the word on the street, or otherwise perform social legwork, you probably want to use a background like High Society or Barrio.

Animal Ken
Dealing with inhuman beasts is a skill in and of itself. Neither lions nor sheep really have any backgrounds, and the Animal Ken skill is used in its place.

• Specializations: Domestic Animals, Training, Wild Animals.

Bureaucracy
Managing logistics and patiently untangling skeins of red tape is the focus of this skill.

• Specializations: Business, Government, Logistics

Empathy

• Specializations:

Expression

• Specializations:

Intimidation

• Specializations:

Persuasion

• Specializations:

Tactics

• Specializations:

Technical Skills

Technical skills apply the -1 penalty for defaulting if a character doesn't have an appropriate specialization. That is, a character may have Artisan (Painting), but they will still have to default when welding. A character who becomes trained in any Technical skill gains a specialization for free.

Artisan

• Specializations:

Electronics

• Specializations:

Rigging

• Specializations:

Medicine

• Specializations:

Operations

• Specializations:

Research

• Specializations:

Sabotage

• Specializations: Explosives,

---

That's going from 8 physical skills in nWoD down to 7. But nWoD actualy had 3 completely interchangeable physical skills that were just how you went about fighting (Firearms, Melee, Brawl), so in a lot of ways this is actually one more. Similarly, the Social skills went down in absolute number but since Streetwise, Subterfuge, and Socialize all went straight over to Backgrounds it's kind of like having several more skills.

Technical skills I'm less sure of. I might just want a bunch more.

-Username17

A couple of those skills aren't immediately clear to me, so:
Operations - is this operating devices, like say robotic arms (I mean like the ones used in car assembly or surgery, not cybernetics) and programs?
I presume that Rigging refers to building improvised mechanical (or electronic, or whatever) systems; is that right?

I do wonder what skills software development and modern-style hacking would fall under, if any.

Quantumboost wrote:A couple of those skills aren't immediately clear to me, so:
Operations - is this operating devices, like say robotic arms (I mean like the ones used in car assembly or surgery, not cybernetics) and programs?
I presume that Rigging refers to building improvised mechanical (or electronic, or whatever) systems; is that right?

I do wonder what skills software development and modern-style hacking would fall under, if any.

Currently, Operations includes piloting aircraft and operating a mechanical arm. Programming and hacking are under Electronics. And yeah, Rigging is all things Steam Punk - gears, springs, plumbing, levels, etc.

-Username17

Yes, yes, yes. I actually really want to run this when it's done.

I've got some friends that like the idea of WoD, but nearly all of them acknowledge that it's got a lot of "dumb" in it.

Also, congrats to your sister. The Skill stuff is looking good. I'm trying to write some ideas for the specializations.

Background Skills
A character's background skills can be literally anything. They represent areas of the game that a character can potentially do legwork in. That is to say that during a chronicle a character may find a clue (such as a strange shape on a video feed from outside a crime scene, a discarded heroin needle, or a tuft of fur), and background skills are methods a character could have to research that clue and gain more information. Background skills are ways for the players to transform story seeds into additional exposition.

Backgrounds are divided into how one interacts with them. Academic Backgrounds are ones in which the character can “go look something up.” They often dovetail nicely with the Research, Perception, or Bureaucracy skills. Sciences, ancient languages, classical art, and so forth make good Academic Backgrounds. Social Backgrounds are ones where the character “goes to talk to some people.” They often dovetail nicely with Social skills like Empathy or Persuasion. Any social group can and does represent a potential Social Background. Occult Backgrounds are ones that involve the character “going to do something secret.” What skills are helpful for this kind of legwork are highly variable, because Occult Backgrounds are a very variable category. Many Occult Backgrounds are literally magical in origin (such as Camarilla Histories or Tarot Readings), while others are simply secret for a variety of other reasons (legality, morality, or whatever). The defining point of Occult Backgrounds is that telling other people that you have them jeopardizes your ability to use them. The first rule about ghost cartels is the same as the first rule about fight club.

Using Skills

When you use a skill, describe what it is that you intend to do to the Storyteller, and then between the two of you determine an acceptable Skill and Attribute to use. Remember that the attribute being used in an action determines what kind of people are naturally talented at that kind of action, not on what kind of character is generally good at a skill. For example, in the general running of a power plant one might expect that a “smart” hero would be the man for the job, and thus a good standby check to make for actions from shunting power away from the financial district to increasing power yield might be Logic + Operations. But in the specific case of getting the emergency valves opened during an overheating event, Strength + Operations might be called for instead (those valves can be hard to turn).

The next thing you do is roll your dice, counting every 5 or 6 as a 'Hit'. The number of hits you get determines how awesome you did, with this representing overall success or not depending on how awesome the specific thing you were attempting to do was. Doing something incredibly awesome when the task at hand is something like “bake a cake” is potentially delicious, but often fairly inconsequential. On the flip side, if the goal is to do something of awesome difficulty such as leap into an open window on a moving train, the results will be unfortunate if the level of success attained is merely normal.

Buying Hits: When a character is not under any particular threat or pressure, they may elect to forgo the process of actually rolling dice and simply get one hit for every 4 full dice in their dice pool. This process of “phoning it in” gets a character less awesomeness than had they legitimately tried, but it has a strong tendency to work if that's all that is required.

	Hits:	Asomeness
	0:	Not Awesome. Trying shoes, climbing stairs.
	1:	Completely Pedestrian. Driving a car,
	2:	Professional
	3:	Hard.
	4:	Extreme.
	5:	Crazy Extreme.
	6:	Super Human.

It is important to note that normal humans often have dice pools of 4 dice or less on tasks they do frequently. So when a supernatural critter throws down on a task with 12 dice or more that really is an incredible thing to watch. Such characters can literally phone in a TV quality performance and the like. Storytellers should not become jaded and allow success inflation to cheapen the actions of characters with super human dice pools. Characters who can lift and throw motorcycles genuinely can expect to casually kick in locked doors. The fact that success is practically automatic for these tasks should not be resisted, but rather embraced as a fact that is itself impressive and magical.

Extended Tests: Some actions take an expected amount of time. If a character gets the requisite number of hits, they succeed in the expected amount of time. If they get more than the requisite number of hits, they may complete the task well ahead of schedule. For every hit made in excess of the minimum, move to the next lower amount of time on the time chart. If a character fails to succeed, they may retry, but only after having put in the normal time into the first shot. So for example: Mina is attempting to paint a house (Strength + Artisan, 1, 2 days) and gets 3 hits. Since she got 2 more hits than she needed, she can go to the next lower time period twice, bringing the time frame down to five hours.

• Time Chart
• Century
• Decade
• Year
• Season
• Month
• Week
• 3 Days
• 1 Day
• 5 Hours
• 1 Hour
• 20 minutes
• 5 Minutes
• 1 Minute
• 1 Round
• Simple Action
• Free Action