The Gaming Den

...bump?

Lokathor wrote:...bump?

Sorry, I've been drinking a lot the last couple of weeks and also doing a bunch of brainstorming sessions on KSF. I've almost got a testable mock-up of the iconic Berserker going, so that I can run him through the paces of taking down some hostile lizard folk.

I'll be able to do a set of fixes on the Monsters Chapter this weekend I think.

-Username17

So that is a set of errata to Chapter 8.

-Username17

Errata to your errata: You spelled "Android" wrong in the description of the Ritual power source. Twice. In a different way both times. Are you still drinking Frank?

Anyways, all the changes have been edited into my PDF and it's been re-uploaded to the mini site I setup (Direct Link To File). Once I get some art I can put it up there as well, I've asked around with all my artist friends, and some of them seemed interested, so maybe we'll get some stuff.

...KSF? According to google, you've mentioned it three times ever, but never explained what it stands for.

Lokathor wrote: ...KSF? According to google, you've mentioned it three times ever, but never explained what it stands for.

Kitchensink Fantasy Roleplay

Lokathor wrote:Errata to your errata: You spelled "Android" wrong in the description of the Ritual power source. Twice. In a different way both times. Are you still drinking Frank?

Fixed. Also... yes. Yes I am.

And yeah, I'd love to get some art, but I don't feel comfortable just stealing the stuff like I did for LA Horror. I wouldn't be making photo collage, I'd be putting art pieces into a book.

-Username17

I don't think it would be that difficult to find a few artists willing to donate some pieces to the cause. I'd go to conceptart.org or similar, mention you're putting together a freeware project, and see if you get any nibbles. You could even just do some searches for already complete relevant material, contact the artists, and get permission for use.

Here's a question for Frank: you mentioned in the section on Monstrous Society that the Camarilla has made headway into the American South. Given their background, the American South seems like it would be dominated by the Sabbat. What sections of the South do you believe would have come under control of the Camarilla, and why?

Which leads to another question: under what circumstances do Covenants gain and lose territory in the modern era? Are these transitions related to temporal events (i.e. New Orleans getting wiped out by Hurricane Katrina), or is their ability to govern based solely on their ability to maintain the Masquerade, no matter how crapsack a particular city/country might be?

Ganbare Gincun wrote:Here's a question for Frank: you mentioned in the section on Monstrous Society that the Camarilla has made headway into the American South. Given their background, the American South seems like it would be dominated by the Sabbat. What sections of the South do you believe would have come under control of the Camarilla, and why?

Remember that the Sabbat isn't just "Christian" in organization, it's Catholic in organization. Much of the American South was settled by people from areas that were very much divided amongst the various covenants of the time. West Africa, on he other hand, was fairly staunchly Camarilla. So while the Bumen Horde and the Glass Walkers were busy trying to be the big cheese in there, a group of Black dudes actually did. Once their system became self perpetuating, even White people who turned into Vampires and shit would join. The Camarilla pretty much runs most of the Confederacy. Despite being started by Blacks, they probably never really had that much of a problem with the Confederacy because they were secret and trying to keep humanity mostly suppressed anyway.

Which leads to another question: under what circumstances do Covenants gain and lose territory in the modern era? Are these transitions related to temporal events (i.e. New Orleans getting wiped out by Hurricane Katrina), or is their ability to govern based solely on their ability to maintain the Masquerade, no matter how crapsack a particular city/country might be?

Well now you very rarely have things like the Carthians invading Italy and laying siege to the tunnels under Rome while the Sabbat leadership calls in ancient favors from powerful demons to beat them back. These nights it's more of a popularity contest. Members of different covenants are allowed to travel for business or even just plain immigrate. So if you're in Ho Chi Minh city as a Camarilla member, that's pretty much OK. The covenant that is "in control" in an area is pretty much the covenant that offers the most compelling brochure to newly awakened creatures. If the next generation is going to join the World Crime League, it's a World Crime League city.

Which means that these nights there is a fair amount of inertia as far as territory goes. The Camarilla have moles in the police and the local news affiliates as well as a cool secret base in Houston. The city is big enough that you could make a pretty substantial parallel infrastructure before they necessarily noticed, but it would be pretty hard to match the recruitment brochure of The Camarilla there.

But yes, if a city gets a big boom of immigration and goes from a population of 50 supernaturals to a population of 500 supernaturals in a few years and most of the new blood comes from places where they are used to the Sabbat way of doing things, it pretty much becomes a Sabbat city unless the original holders of the city can convince most of the newcomers to join their faction.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Which leads to another question: under what circumstances do Covenants gain and lose territory in the modern era? Are these transitions related to temporal events (i.e. New Orleans getting wiped out by Hurricane Katrina), or is their ability to govern based solely on their ability to maintain the Masquerade, no matter how crapsack a particular city/country might be?

Well now you very rarely have things like the Carthians invading Italy and laying siege to the tunnels under Rome while the Sabbat leadership calls in ancient favors from powerful demons to beat them back. These nights it's more of a popularity contest. Members of different covenants are allowed to travel for business or even just plain immigrate. So if you're in Ho Chi Minh city as a Camarilla member, that's pretty much OK. The covenant that is "in control" in an area is pretty much the covenant that offers the most compelling brochure to newly awakened creatures. If the next generation is going to join the World Crime League, it's a World Crime League city.

Which means that these nights there is a fair amount of inertia as far as territory goes. The Camarilla have moles in the police and the local news affiliates as well as a cool secret base in Houston. The city is big enough that you could make a pretty substantial parallel infrastructure before they necessarily noticed, but it would be pretty hard to match the recruitment brochure of The Camarilla there.

Plus Werewolves in cowboy hats!

Not to mention all the supernaturals down there that are seen doing this.

I might be willing to do up some art, provided I get some guidelines on what's desired. Can't promise it'll be a masterpiece, but it should at least look decent.

What's the most recent version of the PDF?

I have also put together a PDF. It should be 100% up to date with the topic version, which is its main advantage over the google code version (which is quite out of date by now).

http://sites.google.com/site/awodpdf2/

Does the passive Potence benefit work for Ghosts?

If not, you might want to make a note of it, because it's easy enough to read it as if it does, and Empty Body has language that makes it stop working when your powers turn off. I don't think that Wraiths are supposed to be able to walk around in broad daylight, fully corporeal and possessing a Strength score of 1.

LR wrote:Does the passive Potence benefit work for Ghosts?

If not, you might want to make a note of it, because it's easy enough to read it as if it does, and Empty Body has language that makes it stop working when your powers turn off. I don't think that Wraiths are supposed to be able to walk around in broad daylight, fully corporeal and possessing a Strength score of 1.

Yeah, the order of operations would be that the Ghost ends with a Strength of Zero. But sure, I'll specify that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, the order of operations would be that the Ghost ends with a Strength of Zero. But sure, I'll specify that.

-Username17

When I read it, I saw the order of operations as Human Luminary->Wraith Template->Disciplines. Because of your insistence that Ghosts have a Strength of 0 without spending power points, I assumed that I was wrong, but I couldn't figure out how to get there using the text alone.

Ghosts should get a normal strength, for the purposes of using disciplines and for soaking. Currently, ghosts that aren't in the Deep Gloom just get Edge+Fortitude Bonus for their soak roll, which is really realy puny for a ghost. Instead, they get a cavet that any strength they have that's not from vigor doesn't count for carrying things.

Grek wrote:Ghosts should get a normal strength, for the purposes of using disciplines and for soaking. Currently, ghosts that aren't in the Deep Gloom just get Edge+Fortitude Bonus for their soak roll, which is really realy puny for a ghost. Instead, they get a cavet that any strength they have that's not from vigor doesn't count for carrying things.

That is a very good idea.

-Username17

This might be way too nitpicky but in the sample adventure for White Lotus did you really mean to talk about a Khmer tribe in Burma? From what I can tell thanks to wiki, there are no tribes in Burma that refer to themselves as being Khmer, though some tribal languages are linked to the Mon-Khmer language group. Where perhaps thinking of Karen's (the people from Rambo 4)?

ckafrica wrote:This might be way too nitpicky but in the sample adventure for White Lotus did you really mean to talk about a Khmer tribe in Burma? From what I can tell thanks to wiki, there are no tribes in Burma that refer to themselves as being Khmer, though some tribal languages are linked to the Mon-Khmer language group. Where perhaps thinking of Karen's (the people from Rambo 4)?

A number of people consider all the peoples who were part of the Angkor empire to be Khmer people, and a lot of people consider Mon-Khmer to be simply Khmer. There are people who identify themselves as Khmer as far west as Nagaland and even Nepal. Cambodia and Nepal pledged mutual aid to each other in their UN bids last month because of their shared cultural heritage.

So yeah, there are a lot of people who wouldn't consider any of the tribes in Myanmar to be Khmer, but there are a lot of tribal people in that area that do consider themselves to be Khmer. Thailand renamed itself to Thailand in 1939 in no small part to declare that the Thai people were not Khmer (something which the fascist government of the time apparently thought needed an entire renaming of the country to get across).

-Username17

Following are some of the question I want answered when I look at a cult writeup. Not all of them need to be answered every time, but if a writeup doesn't handle most of them, it doesn't do it for me.

Where do these guys live? (or more accurately, where did they come from and where are they strong?)

How did they learn their cultic sorcery? (what were they doing that exposed them to the phenomena the sorcery deals with?)

How does their cultic sorcery advance their goals? (I only need an answer to one of the two sorcery questions to be happy)

What monster types might be "typical" or "iconic" members?

What type of mortal life do cult members have? How does the cult recruit?

From what covenants are their membership generally drawn?

What historical movements or writers would they find sympathetic?

Let's look at how a good writeup handles this:

Glass Walkers

Where do these guys live? They started in France, went to Switzerland, and are now presumably big in any international business city.

How did they learn their cultic sorcery? It's a native discipline for fallen, and they probably escaped to limbo through mirrors and continued experimenting thereafter.

How does their cultic sorcery advance their goals? Mirror Pocket is perfect for materialists.

What monster types might be "typical" or "iconic" members? We know they were founded by Fallen, and that due to their years in limbo most surviving members probably have infernal power source.

What type of mortal life do cult members have? How does the cult recruit? We know they have lots of mortal wealth. How they recruit is unclear--and actually something I wish *every* writeup went into more detail on.

From what covenants are their membership generally drawn?
Ex-Sabbat and Carthians.

What historical movements or writers would they find sympathetic? Calvin.

Let's see how Black Spiral Dancers fare.

Where do these guys live? Unknown.

How did they learn their cultic sorcery? Unknown. There's no association with either cold or music in their backstory.

How does their cultic sorcery advance their goals? Okay, silence and ventriloquism could both spread chaos. The advanced disciplines are just combat effects. This discipline isn't a mismatch exactly but others would be more useful.

What monster types might be "typical" or "iconic" members? Unknown.

What type of mortal life do cult members have? How does the cult recruit? Unknown. Are they bohemians, manchurian candidates, or both?

From what covenants are their membership generally drawn? Carthians, I guess?

What historical movements or writers would they find sympathetic?Unknown. There are lots of anarchists, they don't agree with each other, and they aren't well known. I get that they aren't supposed to all agree, but you should seriously namedrop someone

I repeat my assertion that you should either re-write them or allow someone (like me) to replace them with a fraternity of technocratic apocalyptic platonists.

EDIT: "What does a base look like" is another good one, probably replacing the "mortal life" question. I know how the glass walkers decorate, I'm not sure about the BSD.

So the Strength: Maximum Lift/Carry Home table goes from 1 to 9 with no immediately discernible or intuitive formula for it's progression, but a character can start an In Medea Res game with a strength of [7 Base + 6 Giant Size + 3 War Form + 2 Beast Form + 2 Potence + 1 or more vigor] 21 or more. Would you please either expand the table or explain the progression?

Hicks wrote:So the Strength: Maximum Lift/Carry Home table goes from 1 to 9 with no immediately discernible or intuitive formula for it's progression, but a character can start an In Medea Res game with a strength of [7 Base + 6 Giant Size + 3 War Form + 2 Beast Form + 2 Potence + 1 or more vigor] 21 or more. Would you please either expand the table or explain the progression?

That is a good point. Sooner or later the chart has to give way to a forumla, because I'm damned if I'm going to waste space with a chart that goes up to Kaiju size. Speaking of which, how large of an object do you think that a Kaiju should be walking off with?

-Username17

Well, an Abrams tank is about 8m (9.767m including the gun overhang) and masses ~54 metric tons. A Kaiju just isn't a Kaiju if it can't abscond with a Main Battle Tank and casually throw it at people. So my thinking is that a 35 Strength should give a monster a "carry home" limit of ~60 tons, and a "maximum lift" of 100 to 120 tons.

A suggestion for a redone Strength Table:

Strength	Maximum Lift	Carry Home
1	10	5 kilos
2	20	10 kilos
3	30	15 kilos
4	50	25 kilos
5	70	35 kilos
6	100	50 kilos
7	200	100 kilos
8	300	150 kilos
9	500	250 kilos
10	1 ton	500 kilos
15	3.375 tons	1,687.5 kilos
20	16 tons	8 tons
25	31.250 tons	15.625 tons
30	81 tons	40.5 tons
35	120 tons	60 tons

Carry Home mass in 1/2 Maximum Lift Mass

For Maximum Lift above 9, kilos = (Strength^3)*the 10s digit of strength score.

e.g. A character has a Strength of 21; they can lift (21^3)*2 Kilos, or 18.522 tons.

EDIT: is there some way to push strength, like have a Strength + Athletics test and add the hits to the monster's Strength to determine their carrying capacity? Maybe have them be fatigued at the end of the lift.