The Gaming Den

frank writes his work directly in bbcode, I expect you'd have to do the same.

Or open up the RTF file in Open Office and export it as a PDF, then put that on a site.

Oy, I could probably write a bb-code export module for open office, but now that I'm used to hand-typing the tags, it isn't worth the trouble.

Based on the original round of argument^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfeedback, here's a "release candidate" for the mini-writeup on each of the playable splats:

Splats
You choose several splats:
[*] An Origin. Within this setting, normal humans exist but are not capable of magic. Your Origin explains why it is that you are not a normal human, but are instead an initiate of the technocracy, and a magically capable defender of reality. The origins are:
[*] The redeemed: A former inhabitant of the spirit world, who has returned to reality and chosen to defend it. Many of these individuals are changelings - human children, kidnapped as infants by reality deviants and raised Otherwhere. This is, of course, a terrible crime to commit against a helpless child, and the redeemed are among the fiercest and most vocal proponents of hardline policy within the Technocratic union.
[*] The risen: These are genetically engineered humans (or, in a few cases, braindead humans or stillborn infants) who have been endowed with an artifically generated consciousness from Otherwhere, in order to serve as footsoldiers for the technocratic union. Such individuals have generally been heavily indoctrinated since birth, and may have no recollection of their prior existence Otherwhere. Player characters, however, are not expected to be so pliant. Failed experiments of this kind have also been known to escape, and enlist with the enemies of reality.
[*] The gifted: These are individuals with a natural capacity to interact with the warping phenomena of Otherwhere. Most such individuals are recruited as young adults to join one or another insane cult, collectively the so-called Traditions. The technocratic union successfully identifies and educates a sizable minority of these gifted children. Others, realizing that the Traditions or their inhuman, otherwordly patrons are deranged advocates of chaos, and a threat to the ongoing survival of humanity, seek out and enlist in the Technocratic Union. The gifted are not generally well-trusted within the Technocratic Union, since some are spies, agitators or infiltrators, and others may retain some of the deranged sensibilities of their abandoned mystical practices.
[*] The initiated: These are individuals who, although lacking an inborn capacity to interact with Otherwhere, were judged as adults to posess the mental fortitude and acumen needed to survive the process of initiation. Once exposed to the energies of Otherwhere, the initiated individual gains the ability to deal with them, hopefully in a sensible and productive way. A plurality of the initiated membership of the Technocratic Union holds this status. The process of initiation is not without its drawbacks, and the initiated sometimes have difficulties dealing with their dual nature that those born to the state do not have.
[*] The illuminated: These are normal humans who were the victims of posession by one of the dangerous inhabitants of Otherwhere, but who have managed through will and fortitude to conquer the posessing entity and regain control of their lives and their minds. The surest way to prove that you have conquered such a posessing entity is to turn your back on chaos and enlist as a defender of reality. The illuminated are even more distrusted than the gifted and even more uncomfortable with their nature than the initiated, but they have a ferocious nature which instills terror into the inhabitants of Otherwhere.

[*] A spiritual Nature. If you are forced to travel to Otherwhere, or if you violate policy and admit the warping energies of that place into Reality, this determines how you will appear. Your spiritual nature can be a guiding vision of your own aspirations, or it can be Jungian doppelganger that haunts your nightmares. This tends to be correlated with your Origin, so the Gifted and the Risen will generally be comfortable with their Nature, while the Redeemed, the Initiated and especially the Illuminated will regard their other self with some mixture of confusion, trepidation or even horror.
For most characters, a benevolent Nature is nonetheless assumed. Even if you were posessed by a malevolent class of entity, it is a reflection of yourself, so in conquering the malevolent entity you will attain an apparently purified state. This gives you a Guiding Passion chosen from the following list: Courage, Compassion, Justice, Generosity, Hope or Honor. When inspired by your Guiding Passion, your control over your powers, used in the defense of reality, is considerably increased.
You can, in consultation with the MC and in agreement with the other players, have an overtly horiffic or fightening Nature. This gives you a Master Passion chosen from the following list: Despair, Rage, Loneliness, Greed, Fear or Hunger. You can have a Master Passion instead of, or in addition to, a Guiding Passion. Be forewarned, a Master Passion makes you subject to frenzy, and there is minimal benefit to having one (it is very hard to use mind control to get you to act against your master passion, for what that is worth), and considerable downside. So only take a Master Passion if you relish the roleplaying challenge. Your adversaries, of course, are likely to have Master Passions.
The standard Natures available to player characters are:
[*] Knight. In Otherwhere, the Knight will tend to look mostly human, although she may have some overtly fae traits, such as pointed ears, or hair, skin or eye colors not found in nature. This decision is purely cosmetic, as even a Knight who looks perfectly human will still, in their Otherwordly identity, be somehow off such that observers will know what they are. The true hallmark of a Knight, however, is her arms and armour which she can conjure at will. Traditionally, this will be a sword, shield (with heraldric device) and gleaming silver armor, but variants abound. As a champion of the Technocratic Union, your knightly regalia is as likely to manifest as a truncheon and police officers riot gear, or even as a cowboy hat and a six-shooter. The Knight is seldom someone who despises their own dual nature, but a dark knight, clad in black plate mail, covered in spikes and other evil warlord chic, is certainly possible. A Knight is most typically guided by Courage, but may also be mastered by Despair.
[*] Celestials. In Otherwhere, the Celestial is winged and luminous. The wings can be eagle wings (like an angel), butterfly wings, dragonfly wings, or even metallic wings. The Celestial may also have the other overtly fae traits, but with the wings and the glow it doesn't much matter. Of course Celestials can fly, cube-square law be damned. Like the Knight, the Celestial will seldom despise her own nature, but there is little in the Otherworld more fearsome than a fallen angel. A Celestial is most typically guided by Hope but may also be mastered by Loneliness.
[*] Gnomes. In Otherwhere, the Gnome is a funny little person, often with oversized facial features and comically placed tufts of hair. The Gnome is small, but proportionally muscular (like the Svartalfar of legend) and their size does not have any game mechanical effect - although at the option of the MC you may be able to squeeze into tight spaces, and the like. Gnomes have a supernatural enhanced technological acumen and are common in the Technocratic Union; as champions of reality often cherish their dignity, they are surprisingly prone to despise their own nature. The Gnome is most typically guided by Justice but may also be mastered by Greed.
[*] Satyr or Nymph. In Otherwhere, the Nymph is an oversexed humanoid, typically scantily clad (if not scandalously naked), with small horns protruding from their forehead, and sometimes with cloven hoves. Other fae traits, such as candy-colored hair or pointed ears, are quite common. The Nymph is a spirit of joyous abandon and lack of restraint; at their best, they desire to share their joy with others, while at their worst they derive a savage glee from exploting and manipulating others for their own amusement. It is entirely common for members of the Technocratic Union to despise this nature, being individuals who tremendously value their self control. On the other hand, as a Jungian other the Nymph is at least relatively harmless. The Nymph is most typically guided by Joy but may also be mastered by Hunger, typically in the form of lust but actual cannibalism is not entirely unheard of.
[*] Troll. In Otherwhere, the Troll is about 10 feet tall and nearly as wide. They may also have claws, scaly skin, slitted eyes like a cat, and/or be hairless, but it's the size that counts. The Troll is a spirit of physical power, but even if frightening, need not by angry or malevolent. In fact, Trolls are often gentle giants, mellow and accomodating, especially with the weak or defenseless, belying their appearance. As their appearance is overtly monstrous, it is no surprise that a Troll will often despise her own nature. The Troll is most typically guided by Compassion but, if not, their seeming strength is a front for moral weakness and they can be mastered by Fear.
[*] Beast Men. In Otherwhere, the beast man has two options: either appear as a humanoid with some cute animal traits, typically cat or dog ears and a tail, or in their war form: an eight-foot tall bristling ball of muscle, fur, claws and homicide. They can alternate between these forms, although unlike the lycanothropes of horror tales, the Beast Men are blessed, at least ostensibly, with both the intellect of a human and the primal insight of beasts. Beast Men will, at the very least, pretend to despise their own nature; even in the Technocratic Union, everyone hates furries. The Beast Men or most often guided by Honor but, in some cases, their beastial nature is a curse, and they are instead mastered by Rage.

[*] Finally, you choose an Affiliation within the Technocratic Union. The default assumption is that, in addition to your extensive training as a secret agent, assassin, or whatever, you also hold the equivalent of a PhD or two in one or another academic field. The Technocratic Union actually contains more sociologists and engineers than it does natural scientists, and because the talent to interact with Otherwhere is valued, some individuals may function as agents with a relatively minimal academic background. Even so, they will have some nominal academic affiliation, for administrative purposes if for no other reason. In addition to your Affiliation, you will have an Auspice which will almost always be Skepticism. Skepticism is the guiding virtue of the entire Technocratic Union and they'd all get it as a tramp stamp if they were 100% convinced that the tattooing needles were sterile and that the ink wasn't carcinogenic. With the permission of the MC (who should in turn get tacit agreement from the other players), you can be an infiltrator of the Technocratic Union, and your Auspice can be Amibtion, Conviction or even Absurdism. Likewise, infiltrators can be members of one or another of the deranged Traditions mentioned earlier. These infiltrators generally lose the Mandate of Heaven, and will tend to have more overt magical powers and fewer covert reality-manipulation abilities, which is not a terrific trade. On the other hand, they do benefit somewhat from flexibility, so it's not entirely a loss. The technocratic Affiliations, and the corresponding academic specialties, are as follows:
[*] Directorate of Applied Social and Economic Sciences: DASE Sociology, Psychology, Economics, History, Political Science. DASE Agents are all about game theory, and about predicting the actions of their adversaries based on one or another theory of rational self-interest. They also tend to be rich, which is better than being poor, if you've tried both.
[*] Directorate of Communication, Media and Public Relations: CM&P Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, Computer Science, Media Relations, Communications, Public Relations. CM&P agents have a bit of a chip on their shoulder since no-one, least of all their colleagues in the Technocratic Union, have any respect for their Communications degrees. Nonetheless, public relations is an immensely well-developed field of applied social engineering, and CM&P agents take pride in their ability to convince anyone to convince themselves of anything. They also tend to know a lot of people, since their discipline is bollocks and they spent graduate school "networking" instead of doing actual work.
[*] Directorate of Agriculture and Environment: DA&E Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Ecology, Geology, Meteorology, Medicine, Genetics, Paleontology. DA&E agents care a lot about their work, and very little about procedural niceties, which is why they left their directorate named Agriculture when hardly any of them do that. DA&E agents have a tendency to be medical doctors, and with some duct tape, WD40 and gumption they will get you back on your feet in a jiffy. Biological warfare is seriously frowned upon by the Technocratic Union, but Chemical warfare is fine and other DA&E agents have a tendency to apply their superscience directly to the problem area, which is the area where reality deviants are still alive. Every member of DA&E gets their very own lab, which is better than food, shelter or clothing if you're the sort of person who joins DA&E.
[*] Directorate of Military Operations: DMil Military Theory, Military Etiquette, Law, Logistics, Political Science, History, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Navigation. DMil doesn't have operatives, they have officers who have superscience which is also Kung Fu and rides around in a tank. DMil officers are surprisingly unlikely to have gadgets: you can have a regular gun and do just fine, if you have the super-physics to play billiards with the ricochets. DMil operatives tend to be surprisingly scholarly given that they can break you in half, but have a fighteningly reductionist view of human affairs. They come in two basic varieties: either they view it as their job to win wars (the war against reality deviants), or they view it as their job to carry out orders, typically those involving the threat or use of violence. The "carry out orders" school will have a more diverse skill set, including topics such as counter-insurgency, information warfare and the like. Also, they get to be officers in a super-secret clandestine military, so if they can't beat you up themselves, they have a dozen grunts with assault rifles who will.
[*] Directorate of Industry, Engineering and Process Optimization: IEPO Physics, Engineering, Chemistry, Mathematics, Architecture, Computer Science. IEPO operatives are the ones who love their gadgets. They have a tendency to be cyborgs and seldom have a crippling World of Warcraft addiction, since they turn into Trolls when they go to sleep. IEPO operatives build more experimental flash gordon ray guns and supersonic planes than DMil is willing to use, so they get to play with them all they want. But, they love machines and they love making them work, so a lot of IEPO members really devote their time to optimizing canneries, the proper functioning of CNC, and so forth. Because many of the Technocratic Union's enemies do have a high technology agenda (especially the Marduk Society and the Network), IEPO is actually fairly heavily infiltrated by Tradition spies. This isn't widely known, however. IEPO operatives have access to more than the usual share of high-tech toys which are not precisely mundane in nature.

DRP wrote:Again, the Technocracy maintains that the laws of physics work because of superstrings or something, they do not believe in spirits, magic, etc. etc. There are reality deviants who are a threat to the basic laws of nature and need to be stopped. This position is intended to be incongruous to the player characters, who are on the front lines and may have to deal with all kinds of mysto-magical crap; but, I want it to be at least a plausible interpretation of what is going on in the world. If you can lead a column of tanks into Faerie Land, it isn't.

This is so wrong that it is difficult to know where to start. But I think the best place to start is Descartes.

Cogito Ergo Sum

The senses can be denied, but the self cannot be.

If someone else is running around claiming to be a fairy princess, you can provide any explanation for that you want. You can sit there and spin Velmaish stories of various levels of Scooby Doo explanations. If you are a fairy princess, then you can't. You know that you aren't simulating flight with magnet suits, guide wires, or gusts of air. You know that you are flying because of your actual bullshit tiny gossamer wings, because you are actually doing that.

Fairies are only deniable by members of the Technocracy if members of the Technocracy (specifically the ones doing the denying) don't hav fairy forms. As long as they go to fairy land and run around with laser pistols and shit they can hold to the idea that it's just an alien planet that has weird tech and sinister goals. That's their explanation for the Old Ones too, and again that explanation only holds as long as they aren't turning into Shoggoths and expriencing that shit personally.

-Username17

What if we take out the weirdo bit where the PCs have to hide their faerieness from their supervisors, but keep the rest of it? This is by far the simplest possible version:

There's Reality, and Hyperreality AKA the spirit world. The laws of reality, like faith healing not working and special relativity working, are set by events that happen in the Hyperreal. Every member of the Technocracy knows this. They are defined as an organization by being aware that modern physics was in fact voted into place and has to be defended. Anyone who leaves Earth for the Hyperreal gets a Hyperreal form. Some people can bleed Hyperreal forms and abilities into Earth.

So Praetor gets his "everyone has a spirit form" because that genuinely makes shit easier to follow. And Frank gets his "you know you're an elf, and your boss knows you're an elf" because that genuinely makes shit easier.

Orion wrote:

What if we take out the weirdo bit where the PCs have to hide their faerieness from their supervisors, but keep the rest of it? This is by far the simplest possible version:

There's Reality, and Hyperreality AKA the spirit world. The laws of reality, like faith healing not working and special relativity working, are set by events that happen in the Hyperreal. Every member of the Technocracy knows this. They are defined as an organization by being aware that modern physics was in fact voted into place and has to be defended. Anyone who leaves Earth for the Hyperreal gets a Hyperreal form. Some people can bleed Hyperreal forms and abilities into Earth.

So Praetor gets his "everyone has a spirit form" because that genuinely makes shit easier to follow. And Frank gets his "you know you're an elf, and your boss knows you're an elf" because that genuinely makes shit easier.

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but that does sound pretty reasonable. And a lot more interesting than the consentual reality I vaguely remember from reading through oWod Mage a few years ago.

Orion wrote:So Praetor gets his "everyone has a spirit form" because that genuinely makes shit easier to follow. And Frank gets his "you know you're an elf, and your boss knows you're an elf" because that genuinely makes shit easier.

That is 100% the opposite of what we are asking for. The idea is that can choose to not play an elf, and, if you do, then everyone knows you're not an elf and you can go ahead and claim that elves don't exist and that all reported cases of elves existing have some rational explaination, such as "elves are actual space aliens" or "elves are genetically modified humans" or even "elves are crazies in elf costumes", but definately isn't "elves are real and have real magical powers that are fundementally mysterious; science is now useless"

[quote="FrankTrollman]I am a pretty, pretty princess.
[/quote]

Grek wrote:.and you should to win stuff by watching.

I am entirely sympathetic with Grek's desire to play hard-boiled detectives vs the so-called elves. But that is not the game I am writing; in the game I am writing, only elves get reality manipulation. You also can't play uplifted Dogs who walk around like people, even though those are cool.

Ideologies

[*] Hard-liners are the ideological faction within the Technocracy which is empowered to make policy. They maintain that Reality is capable of continuing as a function of the laws of physics, without any interference from Otherwhere, and that Otherwhere is a source of dangerous, destructive phenomena from which humanity must be protected. They do not acknowledge that phenomena associated with Otherwhere are "real" in any meaningful sense, they do not acknowledge any kind of spiritual war for dominance of reality, they do not believe in "magic", and so forth. Most of them are normal humans, there is a good chance that they hold these opinions because of the Veil. A few initiated members do hold this position, however. Most of these are, in turn, insane. A few, however, are rational but highly contrarian: there is no actual evidence that the laws of physics would be suspended if the Technocracy lost the Mandate, and none of the phenomena associated with Otherwhere can be reproducibly replicated in the real world, so just because you repeatedly hallucinate that you are an elf, doesn't mean that you actually are.

[*] Pragmatists are the ideological faction within the Technocracy to which the player characters are assumed to belong. They probably espouse the beliefs of the Hard-liners most of the time, and they are generally happy to leave the Hard-liners in charge, because if there is a war for the nature of reality going on, it is useful to have magic as heavily suppressed as possible. Nonetheless, Pragmatists at least acknowledge the possibility that: the Mandate of Heaven exists, the laws of science arise from Technomancer control of the Mandate which must therefore be defended, and any loss of the Mandate may lead to fundamental damage to the integrity of Reality. The vast majority of initiated members of the Technocracy are pragmatists, and with their reality manipulation powers they can generally cover for one another, smoothing over any beurecratic problems that may arise. However, they don't want to make a stink about it, because that wouldn't be pratcical.

[*] Radicals are the smallest ideological faction within the Technocracy. This faction is composed of initiated scientists who despise all this lying and deception as an insult to the scientific method, to basic intelligence and to basic sanity. Magic obviously exists, because that guy just shot a fireball out of his hand. Him! Right there! In the hat! Also, Radicals tend to admit, at least privately, that their Otherwordly nature is somehow fundamental to who they are. Many Radicals are forced to at-least-pretend to be Pragmatists, lest they be branded traitors, but some don't care what people say about them. There is little consensus, within this group, about what to actually do, but revealing the true nature of reality to the masses is generally seen as necessary step towards a more stable, defensible state of affairs.

Well, if I recall correctly, Praetor's "everyone gets a spirit form" thing is because he wants the Otherspace to be entirely non-physical, in that you don't carry over your possessions and the like there. He does say that your spirit form can look like a human, and I imagine it can probably look like a human with a gun, but you just won't be any more dangerous with or without a gun in the spirit world. Like a Shadowrun spirit.

DrPraetor wrote:Pragmatists are the ideological faction within the Technocracy to which the player characters are assumed to belong. They probably espouse the beliefs of the Hard-liners most of the time, and they are generally happy to leave the Hard-liners in charge, because if there is a war for the nature of reality going on, it is useful to have magic as heavily suppressed as possible.

No, this part here is stupid. If you're in a war against anyone you don't want the crazy people in charge of anything, much less yourself. You want the sane and pragmatic people to be in charge of the war. The ones who actually rationally think about what the effect of a cause will be based on past evidence.

Lokathor wrote:

DrPraetor wrote:Pragmatists are the ideological faction within the Technocracy to which the player characters are assumed to belong. They probably espouse the beliefs of the Hard-liners most of the time, and they are generally happy to leave the Hard-liners in charge, because if there is a war for the nature of reality going on, it is useful to have magic as heavily suppressed as possible.

No, this part here is stupid. If you're in a war against anyone you don't want the crazy people in charge of anything, much less yourself. You want the sane and pragmatic people to be in charge of the war. The ones who actually rationally think about what the effect of a cause will be based on past evidence.

The conceit which drives this is that because the Pragmatists believe in Magic, if the pragmatists take charge of policy, Magic will become possible? Or, at least, this is a risk which they feel they cannot take. Since the war for the nature of reality is entirely made up, it can have whatever properties are needed to sustain the setting. The Technocracy does not believe in magic, therefore...

I'll allow that it looks a bit wacky, now that I've spelled it out.

DrPraetor wrote:But game mechanically, this only matters because they take Anachronism and have to be comic relief every other episode because they don't know how to pay for bus fare and they think the cute bartender is a Succubus who wants to drain their life force. Otherwise, the spirits-passing-as-humans are just wandering around in human form being human.

Please never write comic relief, because "comedy" like that is dumb.

I don't know how much it matters anymore, but for animism, one solution may be "natural forces" (unworked natural material and phenomena, though placement does not effect the presence of a spirit) always has a spirit, the power and intelligence of which is determined by the age and size of the object. Crafted items only have a spirit if they are unique, or are at least 100 years old, and preferably an item should be unique and at least 25 years old. So, that tree there has a spirit, even if it was planted (but not shaped) by a person. If it's been shaped into a unique form, and has lived 25 years, it has a unique spirit. The Empire State Building, likewise, has a unique "building" spirit. The chair you're sitting in does not. Unless your grandfather made it and something separates it from "just a chair."

Yeah, if you can't tell the story "Spirited Away" in a game with a spirit world, I don't want to play. Call me officially no longer interested in this project.

Come back to me when you decide to have a Disgaea-style Dark Assembly that the Technocracy intimidates into going along with their reality definitions by beating people up and objects in the spirit world have their own spirits attached to them in the Disgaea-esque nesting doll model.

If you're going to have a mortal world full of mortals and a spirit world full of spirits and I can't play a mortal exploring the spirit world or a spirit exploring the mortal world I don't want to play. That is a deal breaker. Deal broken, I'm not playing. End.

-Username17

Prak_Anima wrote: Please never write comic relief, because "comedy" like that is dumb.

It's like a force of nature. If you let people take Anachronism, they'll do this to you. Try to endure. I will remember not to actually suggest it.

That said, the idea is NOT to do a comedy, thank you for requesting that, which is important so see below.

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, if you can't tell the story "Spirited Away" in a game with a spirit world
...
Other game you want to make that's Disgaea or Yu Yu Hakusho or something

I say for the umpeenth time, if you are so very keen on Disgaea/Yu Yu Hakusho RPG, do it. I enjoyed Disgaea but I don't think it's a good backdrop for the Technocracy because it's stupid. It's funny, sure. It's entertaining. But it's stupid, and it doesn't have to hold together well or make a lot of sense, so Toon and Tales from the Floating Vagabond are both readily available.

The fact that you weren't interested in participating in this ceased to be news after the first time you said it, and yet you keep angrily arguing that the game I'm writing is some combination of stupid or purposefully constructed to prevent people from playing certain character types that you regard as critical, to some other setting which you think the game should instead occupy.

That said, Spirited away is important source material both because it is awesome and because it has a relatively serious tone.

You can absolutely do spirited away. If the little girl stays in Faerie Land she will acquire magic powers and go native. For the player characters, who are one notch short of superheroes - you really can't do spirited away because you are too powerful. The crucial element of that particular story is that the heroine is a little girl; it would work in any case if the players are normal people but it doesn't work if they are wizard robots.

If the other spirits in Spirited Away incongruously treated the little girl as if she were an adult spirit who lived there - OH WAIT THEY DID EXACTLY THAT (with certain exceptions that don't much matter for the plot) - that doesn't much matter. But if you give her magic powers of her own, not to mention a PhD in astrophysics? That matters a lot.

Anyway, the following short story contains only elements of the setting which I regard as fixed:

My tongue tastes terrible. The sheets, which are cheap, polyester and unfamiliar, are stuck to my skin with sweat, which only makes them more abrasive. The human pineal gland, located right between the eyes, retains both sensitivity to light and a close association with circadian rhythms. So, when my ex-boyfriend swung a machete at my forehead, interrupting the sunlight from the open window and casting my forehead in shadow, I woke instantly. Thanks to my training, I am now holding the machete, which is ringing like a tuning fork, pressed between the palms of my sweaty, shaking, cheap-polyester-sheet covered hands.

My tongue tastes terrible; I think I threw up a bit in my sleep. At the same time, my mouth is dry, I’m both slightly nauseous and completely parched, and Tearlach is standing over me, shirtless, barefoot, but wearing tight blue jeans, with a machete in one hand and a piece of leftover room-temperature pizza half-folded in the other. His hair, longer than mine, has turned a shade of blonde that could almost pass for natural, and is pulled back in a braid, which swings about his hips. The rest of him is all rippling muscles and blue tribal tattoos; the stupid bastard probably thinks he blends in. Without breaking eye contact, he takes a bite of the pizza, and sneers at me. He’s got this pouting pretty-boy thing he does, he probably thinks it’s affecting, really it just makes him look stupid. I have a horrible headache.

“This is disgusting,” he says, and since I’m still trying to figure out where the hell I am and how I got here, I let him talk, “when I first heard of pizza, I thought it must be this wonderful, delicious thing. I thought, if pizza is truly as great as I am told, perhaps this is why she left me. But this, this is,” he glances meaningfully at the box, half-open on a milk crate next to the bed, “real New York pizza?”

I swallow the bile in my mouth and manage, “That is NOT real New “, that’s right, we got pizza! Our grant was awarded, we were out celebrating, and around 3AM we got a whole pie and then we brought it back to oh, by Crom’s beard!, we brought it back to Ralph’s apartment. The place is squalid, in one sense: milk crates for furniture, institutional green wall to wall carpeting, and a queen-sized mattress on a metal frame. Ralph gets a point for it being spotlessly clean, other than the pizza we left out which will attract cockroaches. There are NASCAR posters on the walls, which isn’t high art but at least it’s not a bimbo in a hockey jersey. Was he any good in bed? That part was a bit hazy, “ York pizza. It’s stoner pizza. Tearlach, what are you doing here!?” Part of me wants to hurl, but with a little biofeedback, a little breath control and my surging adrenaline, I keep the shakes at bay and my wits sharp, although I still have a monstrous headache.

There’s dampness in the corner of his eye. Part of me wants to say, I left you for Chicago deep dish, that’s the real stuff. Also, I could say, I left you because you spend far too much time crying with no clothes on. I really want to stand up, shake him, and say, I left you for trains, I left you for children, I left you for mountains which are the bones of the earth and not just a painted backdrop, for fire that isn’t smokeless because it’s really fire, and I left you for pain, which tells you you’re really alive instead of just playing at it. At the moment it seems like a weak argument because Ralph’s shitty apartment is standing in for the depth and glory of the entire material universe. Tearlach is looking around with increasing disgust. I let go of the machete and he stuffs it into the waist of his jeans. He bends over and taps his finger on a stack of printed IEEE conference proceedings, Ralph’s only material possession, and I can tell he wants to say something. I swallow again, and I’m going to say, I left because I never loved you, I’m sorry and you deserved better but I just didn’t.

Ralph, who apparently moves like a Ninja even when he’s hung over, comes in the door with a box of bagels and two plastic cups full of fresh OJ, so instead I say, “Oh, shit.” Ralph is not as ugly as the name suggests. He used to complain about being named Ralph, until I told him the woman who raised me named me Ciorstag. I don’t know what name my mother gave me. Anyway, Ralph’s got movie star good looks, if Brian O’Halloran (the guy from Clerks) is a movie star. He always tells me that research shows that average-looking men are actually the most attractive to women, and I can’t really argue because right now I’m buck-naked in his cheap-ass apartment with itchy polyester sheets half-covering my cleavage. Tearlach, on the other hand, is the true lord of the dance. Even fully clothed, he looks like he can expect to have beautiful women show up in his bed without trying, and shirtless and painted in woad, he’s just stunning.

So, I say, “don’t hurt him!” which I immediately realize is the stupidest thing I can possibly say because they’ll both assume I’m talking to Tearlach. Tearlach wants to hurt my feelings without actually hurting me, and Ralph is just a little too proud to let the implied slight to his martial prowess slide. So Tearlach pirouettes across the room with his machete out. The blade is humming again, it almost seems to be trailing blue sparks as it sails through the air, but Ralph just settles into a square boxing stance and that somehow puts an end to the light show, which was never really there to begin with. Tearlach does a flip after his spin and comes down, machete-first for Ralph’s face. Ralph blocks the knife with his right forearm, and there are two distinctly different metallic noises; the magic blade rings like a bell, and Ralph’s arm clangs like some idiot just tried to stab a tank. Ralph has grabbed Tearlach’s pony tail with his left hand, and as the right hand goes up to block, the left hand jerks down with super-human strength. Tearlach manages to land on his feet somehow, but Ralph slams Tearlach’s head against the wall, leaving a face-shaped dent in the plaster. I admit it; I actually do like it when men fight over me. I’m not proud of it, and I really hate to see it end in real, serious, blood soaked violence.

There’s a reason that Ralph is the only techie who doesn’t bother to own a single piece of hardware. Ralph is the toy he always wanted growing up, he’s faster than any computer on the planet and he’s got a satellite uplink with more bandwidth than the Christian God. Ralph may be a walking radio shack but there are more than enough organic bits left for him to count as a man, so I stand up. If I stand here, the lighting will land like this, and my shameful bits will be in shadow just so, hands on my hips leaning back just slightly, and I say, “Ralph! Put him down!”

Ralph knows exactly what I’m doing but his eyes are still wired directly to his brain, and his higher functions are pretty busy keeping Tearlach from filleting him. He turns to look. Tearlach either doesn’t know, or the fact that he’s completely outclassed has at last penetrated his brain, so he figures he might as well get in a good, long ogle.
Those plastic cups of orange juice leak everywhere even if you hold them carefully; they spilled all over Ralph’s hideous carpeting when he dropped them, but the box of bagels is closed. “I got two each of egg, onion, poppy-seed, plain, raisin and everything. Buncha smears,” he looks back at Tearlach, who is leaning against the wall, breathing heavily, “You want one?”

[/spoiler]

Don't have Department the PC works at be a splat. It's stupid. The PCs are all going to work for the same Department because they are all coworkers.

Niles wrote:Don't have Department the PC works at be a splat. It's stupid. The PCs are all going to work for the same Department because they are all coworkers.

Well, I work at a University so this may not be widely known outside of Academia, but most of my coworkers aren't in my department. I'm in the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (nominally in Math), most of the people I work with are in Chemistry, Computer Science, Biomedical Informatics, or in one of the clinical departments at the Med School. Or they work for DARPA. I'm perhaps more interdisciplinary than average, but this isn't so unusual - and if the heroes are a scooby gang of "troubleshooters" you could have that conceit more for the players than for the vast majority of technocracy members.

That said, you have an interesting suggestion that might clean things up substantially. All the characters could just work for "special operations" or something, fine. Definitely worth considering. The player characters are still going to want to be like the party that would be made of:
The Face
The Driver
The Gunslinger
The Cyborg
The Medic
etc.

But this could be easily arranged without the division-specific splats.

The Veil, The Mandate and the Otherworld
Veil Mechanics
The Veil is triggered whenever one or more normal humans observe an overtly magical phenomenon. In general, this will be any spell effect which is not covert, but the observation must be direct and unambiguous, and the magical nature of the effect must be clear to the observer.
For example - confronted in a crowded intersection by a small Technomancer strike force (our heroes), Richard the Warlock determines to hurl a blast of bane fire at them. This is an overt, and furthermore blatantly magical effect. Unfortunately, our heroes are attempting the arrest in front of a crowd of innocent bystanders, all of whom are normal humans. So when the blast of bane fire explodes, everyone in the crowd has to make a Veil check. However, this only applies to people within direct line of sight of the blast. As far as people around the corner are concerned, there was just some chanting in a strange foreign language, followed by an explosion.
A Veil check is rolled as Willpower + Edge (most normal humans have an Edge of 0) for each observer. If no hits are scored, the observer completely ignores the magical phenomenon in question; this can (as in the example above) lead to an incongruous situation where people around the corner flee the noise of an unknown explosion, while people within line of sight don't react at all. If one hit is scored, the observer reacts appropriately, but to some non-supernatural analog of whatever has occurred (in the example above, observers would probably think Richard had thrown a grenade.) If two or more hits are scored, the observer sees exactly what is going on; however, such observers can generally be persuaded that they were hallucinating, or somehow tricked, with great ease, even if they are personally inclined to believe in magical phenomena. An observer with 3 hits is harder to convince of this, and an observer with 4 or more hits is certain of what they saw, possibly transforming into a Spirit (ceasing to be a normal human) or at least gaining some Auspice on the spot.
Spirits, including of course our heroes, are entirely immune to the Veil. Likewise, normal humans with any Auspice EXCEPT Skepticism are immune to the Veil.

The Mandate
Karma: is apportioned by the cosmos. What you post to slashdot has nothing to do with it.
The Mandate of Heaven comes in two flavors: destiny and credibility. Some normal humans are born with the Mandate, or acquire it through grace or something but in any case don't earn it. This is reflected in the Edge stat; all player characters (even if they are traitors from the Technocracy) are assumed to be in this elect group, and so start with an Edge stat of 1. Normal humans may have this kind of Mandate, it is assumed that those player characters of human origin did, prior to obtaining a supernatural nature. Obtaining the Auspice of Skepticism, has a positive impact on your destiny for success and greatness, giving you another point of Edge. Thus, since almost everyone in the Technocracy has Skepticism, almost everyone has an Edge of at least 1, and those who were also born to greatness get an Edge of 2.
Auspice also reflects the Mandate of Heaven, but in a different way. Those with Auspice scores are members, whether they know it or not and whatever they may do about it, of the invisible constituency which establishes policy for the Cosmos. For whatever reason, if anyone knows they're not telling, it is the Auspice of Skepticism which has the most pull, and anyone with Skepticism will have some unconscious impact on the nature of reality, whether they know it or not, and whether they interact with spirits or not. Those with Auspice ratings also gain social bonuses when interacting with any Spirit of lesser Auspice, since spirits unconsciously defer to this form of rank.
Again, Normal humans may have Auspice; in fact, at least in the material world, most people with one or another Auspice will be normal humans. However, Auspice does not enable a human being to work magic in any way; except for Sorcery, that is the invocation of spirits, which is more technically asking a spirit to do magic for you, although the distinction may seem highly academic. The only overtly mystsical effect of Auspice is that humans with an Auspice other-than-Skepticism seem to be immune to the Veil.
At least some measure of Auspice is absolutely required of anyone to obtain a dual nature, although minor spirits and recently-intiated apprentices may have an Auspice score of 0, they still have an Auspice.

The Otherworld
Note - this section is going to be filled out with text that has been Frankensteined from After Sundown.
Bleeds: A Bleed is an area of the physical world where the Otherworld has started to creep in. This means that spiritual beings are, as far as can be discerned, physically solid within a Bleed, although they may sometimes still be able to move through other objects (for example, a tree spirit can punch you in the face, and then walk into his tree.) A Bleed is an extremely dangerous place to be:
[*] Physical objects will spontaneously become enchanted (that is, acquire an awakened spirit), to possibly malignant effect. This is fortunately rare but seems to happen more often when people are watching.
[*] Capricious spirits may "steal" physical objects, causing them to vanish from Reality. It is unclear why spirits do this, since objects which vanish this way don't show up Otherwhere. Objects which are nailed down or otherwise well secured seem resistant to this phenomenon, and a more massive object (such as a car) requires a more powerful spirit to steal. This is fairly common but the capricious spirits don't seem to like to do it while observed.
[*] Physical objects previously stolen from another bleed may "wash up" in a bleed. Typically this will happen when no-one is watching but this is not always the case; sometimes, within a bleed, random junk will rain from the sky to no apparent purpose.
[*] As mentioned, spirit stuff is solid in a bleed. Also, magic is possible, there are no reality violations, and normal humans are not subject to the Veil while within the bleed. This means that enemies of the Technocracy will like to fight within Bleeds.
When leaving a bleed, normal humans do need to make a Willpower check to see if they remember the situation as having a supernatural origin, or if they rationalize it or fail to remember it entirely.
[*] The most dangerous aspect of a bleed is that it is possible to walk into Otherwhere. Characters with a spiritual nature will notice this immediately, unless they proactively adopted their spirit forms within the bleed. Normal humans will usually not notice; although their clothes and other posessions do not literally come with them into the spirit world, they get swapped out for spirit-world analogs at some point. The spirit analogs generally do not work, so it may be possible to precisely time entry into the spirit world if, for example, you take a step forward and your flashlight mysteriously goes out.

this can (as in the example above) lead to an incongruous situation where people around the corner flee the noise of an unknown explosion, while people within line of sight don't react at all.

Why would this be something that should happen?

Grek wrote:

this can (as in the example above) lead to an incongruous situation where people around the corner flee the noise of an unknown explosion, while people within line of sight don't react at all.

Why would this be something that should happen?

There are two reasons for this. One, I want direct exposure to overt magic to be actively harmful to innocent bystanders who witness it. This was in my design goals from the beginning, but the reason for this, in turn, is to motivate the player characters by helping to make them the good guys.

Two, I think it makes things simpler to adjudicate, although I'm open to discussion on this point.

Suppose, for example, that Richard instead turns into a giant bear, and he knocks a trolley car into traffic to distract our heroes. Is knocking over the trolley car magical? Do people have to make Veil checks to take evasive maneuvers in their cars? The villains presumably know that the heroes want to save innocent bystanders, so it's unrealistic to assume this won't happen.

I think the simplest adjudication is this:
[*] Seeing isn't believing. Anyone who sees him turn into a bear has to make a Veil check to react to the giant bear, even if the giant bear throws a car at them. This includes remote forms of viewing, but the Veil may also mess up electronic recording devices (I haven't decided).
[*] Anyone who only sees indirect effects of him being a bear - a trolley car in the middle of the street, the muzzle flashes associated with people shooting at him, and so forth, is not subject to the Veil and people can react more-or-less rationally without rolling. Thus, if the ground shakes as giant bear fights giant robot in the street, people can flee from that if they don't see the bear. If they see the bear, their minds may partially shut down and they have trouble reacting effectively to the whole situation, which doesn't make sense if you can't process the existence of the bear.

So to review, criteria are:
[*] Make use of overt magic in front of bystanders an overtly evil act, and
[*] Make the Veil as easy to adjudicate as is reasonably possible, both for the MC and more importantly for the players, who presumably need to understand how the Veil works before this stuff happens.

But I'm happy to take suggestions on how to achieve these two goals.

Okay, in the same sense that the Powers are very much the meat of After Sundown, the Occult Sciences are very much the meat of War vs. Otherwhere. Not a final title

The Occult Sciences are not quite as general (and better balanced) than the Spheres in Mage, but considerably more general in what they do, and considerably more flexible than the Powers in After Sundown. This means that the game won't be as well balanced. Such is life.

Each of the Occult Sciences is associated with a Skill, and acts as extra points of Edge for purposes of that skill. This is intended to reflect Generic use of subtle reality manipulation to make use of that skill easier, and can be a lot of dice depending on circumstances.

The list below is not meant to be final. It's going to need a lot of work - I anticipate that getting these right will be most of the work needed to have this game hang together, since these are the signature super powers that make the Technocracy cool.

In addition, each of the Occult Sciences is associated with generating covert magical effects, which are backed up with Star Trek grade technobabble. The different Occult Sciences and their effects (which will need to be fleshed out in a lot more detail, probably several pages each) are:
Athletics: Lets you do physically impossible stuff with the human body (yours, at higher levels someone else's), probably having to do with adrenaline. This lets you duplicate the passive benefits of a number of different disciplines, but has nasty side effects, unlike most other Occult Sciences. The higher your level, the more different physical powers you can simultaneously have without hurting yourself.

Combat: Let's you do physically improbable stuff with things you directly manipulate - for example, bullets, stuff you punch - and it lets you do so very reliably (so you hit) and with considerable verve (so you don't get hit yourself.) Of all the occult sciences, this is the one that's most similar to just having more levels in the corresponding skill.

Drive: Let's you do physically improbable stuff with objects in motion by making subtle adjustments to their trajectories. Cars are a popular target with this, but it also applies to long-range missiles (although you use operations to actually fire these). If you want to do clever stuff with a thrown car, you need Combat instead.

Larceny: Let's you retroplay. That is, you can change your mind about something after you did it. However, you can only do this if the changes this would make the continuity are covert, that is, you can't change the past if anyone else saw it clearly. At lower levels this lets you make small changes - pocketing small objects, flipping switches, etc. At higher levels you can make more extensive changes to the established timeline. This is one of the more dangerous Occult Sciences to use as if you try to change observed fact you can cause major Reality Violations.

Perception: This lets you respond to stimuli that you could not reasonably have perceived. It also lets you retroplay but only for observations, not for actions; to most people this will look rather like having an eidetic memory. Finally, it let's you infer highly detailed facts from very sparse observations with frightening accuracy.

Stealth: This lets you social-engineer people so that they don't notice you, things you're doing, or things you've done. At higher levels you can engage in more grandiose acts of non-observation. Again, this is rather like the skill, but it essentially lets you spout some science babble and then have everyone look the other way, which enables feats of sneakiness that no skill level would.

Survival: This lets you have convenient coincidences with relationship to plants, the natural world, and so forth. You spout the proper science babble, and you can get a fog bank, clear a fog bank, have someone who is chasing you trip over a root, and the like. Survival also covers the coincidental and intrinsic failure of the natural environment. This is one of the few Occult Sciences where your enemies probably have at least as much as you do, given that many of them place a high emphasis on living off the land with just chutzpah and teeth.

Animal Ken: See the other social skills below (except Bureaucracy); but those only work on sapient humanoids. Animal Ken does all the same stuff but it only works on animals of sub-human intellect.

Bureaucracy: This lets you organize the immediate society around you to your convenience, in a coincidental fashion. There will be a parking space when you need one, someone will just happen to be selling the required type of ammunition, and so forth. Also, you always have the right paperwork. This Occult Science is also used to boss around the Celestial Hierarchy, if you find yourself needing to do that.

Empathy: This lets you read minds, basically. At higher levels, this ability gives you more information and becomes passive, also better filtered so that only important thoughts and feelings are observable.

Expression: This lets you get people to do things without talking. You can influence people through "Dance" (that is, just by standing there), or you can create artwork of various kinds which will exist permanently and influence anyone who reads it. This is one of the most potent abilities of the Technocracy and their PR department is justly feared by their many, relatively helpless, enemies.

Intimidation: This lets you make people soil themselves. Unlike use of the actual skill, you can do this with body language somehow so the presence or threat of real force or danger isn't even relevant. Also, when you interact with people who already are scared, you can make them gibber uselessly, prevaricate, fall to their knees and beg for death, and so forth.

Persuasion: This lets you make people do things by talking to them. As with intimidation, this totally bypasses reason and you find yourself easily able to persuade people of things even given a total lack of supporting evidence. Unlike Expression, Persuasion requires you to talk to people directly, at least in small groups, and does not produce a persuasive recording; in fact, it's a reality breach if anyone manages to tape you doing this. On the other hand, it's extremely effective in a way that Expression is not: Expression can write a book that'll convince anyone that Jean val Jean was a great guy who shouldn't be punished for stealing bread, but Persuasion can convince someone who saw Jean val Jean steal the bread that they saw something else entirely.

Tactics: This lets you perform coincidental magic with other people who are on your side. So when the bad-guys knock down the door to your apartment to ambush you, you just happened to anticipate that and there's a team of AK-47 wielding normals chilling in your kitchen. Likewise, troops under your command will always be in the right place, and so forth. This Occult Science is overwhelming in a military setting, but you can do similar things with a team of investigators (happen to be at the scene of the next crime!), lawyers, etc.

Artisan: This lets you confer highly-improbably durability or other physical properties on physical objects. So a car bounces an improbable number of bullets, a stone wall happens to have a weak spot just there, and so forth.

Electronics: This lets you hack into computer systems with surprising ease, naturally enough. It also lets you listen in on radio communications and the like. In contrast to just having more skill, Electronics lets you "luck out" and do stuff that is basically impossible, like hacking into NORAD or happening upon the correct transmission band for hostile radio transmissions.

Medicine: In contrast to Athletics, which makes people stronger/faster/whatever, Medicine just makes people not-dead. Higher levels of Medicine let you recover yourself and others from "seemingly" (or "actually") lethal wounds with physically impossible alacrity, and it also lets you have people you don't like drop dead on the spot; that is, it governs coincidental and intrinsic failure of living things. Most living things fail by dying. Note that, used too often, this is a reality violation.

Operations: thinking...

Research: Probably this should just let you "know stuff".

Rigging: This obviously lets you play havoc with the laws of physics using only an orange peel and a staple. But this is going to need a lot of work so as not to be impossible to adjudicate.

Sabotage: This governs the coincidental and intrinsic failure of inanimate objects. That is, many things in modern life explode, more primitive objects break, bridges collapse, you can trigger landslides (also possible with Survival) and so forth. This ability is so ubiquitous in the Technocracy that reality deviants tend to assume that any gas main explosions or car accidents are targeted at them personally. Obviously, this is a very powerful ability in a modern, civilized setting, where physical objects with highly lethal intrinsic modes of failure abound. Overuse of this ability is a reality violation, however.

DrPraetor wrote:Operations: thinking...

Make giant robots.

I think the simplest adjudication is this:
-snip-

That sounds like adjudication hell to me. What qualifies something as indirect vs. direct? Is seeing the trashed trolley car after the fact direct or indirect? What about a giant bear-shaped footprint? A tuft of giant bear fur from a giant bear? What if the fur doesn't look notably different from normal bear fur? What if you use magic to set fire to something, and the fire then becomes a wildfire? Does the entire wildfire become a roving clusterfuck of Veil rolls? If not, then why is it that you can presumably set someone on fire using magic and have them react inappropriately to it due to magic?

Further, it is not exceptionally clear to me that using overt magic in front of muggles would actually be evil under those circumstances. While, certainly, using magic to transform into a bear and then using your newfound urisine strength to murder helpless bystanders is evil, the fact that some of the helpless bystanders are extra helpless by virtue of their inability to cope with the idea of a man turning into a bear, or the fact that some of the bystanders will gain magical powers from seeing this happen does not make the act of mualing random people especially more evil than it would be otherwise.

If you were using your overt magic powers to heal people, instead of bearmurder them, then Veil effects of doing that in no way outweigh the net good that you're doing by healing people. Even morally neutral actions, like using your magic to light a smoke, aren't really effected in a moral sense, as none of the veil effects you've listed have any significant moral component to them. You could even make a case (though not as a member of the Technocracy) that revealing the existance of magic would be a net moral good, as it would empower people with healing magic

I'd recomend making it so that seeing/hearing the actual magic itself is the trigger for Veil effects, eg. the man turning into a bear, the spell that makes the wounds close or starts the fire, etc. and not any subsequent effects like trolly cars going flying. And I would have it cause things like panic, catatonia, amnesia, obsessive behavior or other unpleasant mental disorders, rather than making people fail to react at all. Making people suddenly go nuts is definately a net wrong that people can get behind working to stomp out.

---

As an aside, do the Occult Science allow you to use expression tests to create godelian shock images which may or may not look like a certain parrot?

I think I could come up with a way to resolve veil questions:
If nobody at the table can come up with a good explanation for how it could exist in, "reality," within, say, thirty seconds, then it prompts veil checks.

EDIT: Where 'it' is 'whatever the bystander would observe if there was no veil'

Grek wrote:That sounds like adjudication hell to me. What qualifies something as indirect vs. direct?

I'm a bit confused about where you disagree, since you seem to me to be saying the same thing I said, but answers below. In the example above, did I not say giant bear? Like, big enough to knock over a trolley car (over 10 tons)? That's gonna be much bigger than a grizzly bear (about a ton, tops), that's clearly not a natural bear.

The veil is going to be difficult to adjudicate, I think we can agree that indirect consequences should not trigger the Veil, yes? The point is, that the Veil-ness of magical things wants to propogate as little as possible.

Seeing the actual bear, or any part of the bear including bits left behind in the street, is direct; unless you turn someone into a mundane bear permanently (but see below), in which case only seeing the actual transformation triggers the Veil, and from then on the person is just a bear.

Is seeing the trashed trolley car after the fact direct or indirect?

Indirect.

What about a giant bear-shaped footprint?

Indirect.

A tuft of giant bear fur from a giant bear?

The fur is overtly magical, so this is direct. Ordinary people will permanently have trouble handling the mere presence of the stuff.
If Richard turned into an ordinary bear, his fur wouldn't have this property, perhaps?
I agree that this is an odd one.

What if the fur doesn't look notably different from normal bear fur?

Doesn't matter, any more than a pillar of fire which looks like a normal bonfire.

What if you use magic to set fire to something, and the fire then becomes a wildfire?

The initial blast of fire is subject to the Veil, the fires-it-starts are not.

If not, then why is it that you can presumably set someone on fire using magic and have them react inappropriately to it due to magic?

Persons A,B and C all see you hurl a fireball.. at them. They get 0 hits on their Veil test and are simply no longer reacting rationally to the entire situation. This will last for a scene. They're in pain and don't know why, they're probably running around screaming, and so forth.
Person D comes into the room and sees that they're on fire, and acting crazy. Person D doesn't have to make a Veil check.

Further, it is not exceptionally clear to me that using overt magic in front of muggles would actually be evil under those circumstances.

I'm still fiddling with the mechanics. I have a dislike, which I'm sure everyone can understand, of most Insanity Systems.
Scoring hits on Veil rolls is likely to drive you (the person making the Veil check) insane, or turn you into a monster. Of course, it's just as likely that something good will happen; but taking a random crowd of people, and giving them a 50:50 chance of either winning something cool (magic powers, profound insight) or of having their lives destroyed (possessed by creeping supernatural evil, going insane) is an overall evil act.
I still haven't fleshed this bit out entirely.

If you were using your overt magic powers to heal people ... then Veil effects of doing that in no way outweigh the net good that you're doing by healing people.

Certainly the adversaries of the Technocracy make this argument quite forcefully; also, they may believe that the onlookers who benefit from having their mind-cherry popped justify the effects on the onlookers who may be harmed.
I want the villains to be evil enough that the heroes are the good guys, but not so cartoonishly evil that they cease to be credible.

I'd recomend making it so that seeing/hearing the actual magic itself is the trigger for Veil effects, eg. the man turning into a bear, the spell that makes the wounds close or starts the fire, etc. and not any subsequent effects like trolly cars going flying.

I'm not sold on hearing, is one thing. Or smelling. I think I want veil checks restricted to sight, or I suppose touch, so for example the fireball-ees above wouldn't be immune to the veil if the fireball hit them when their eyes were closed. You can still partially protect people from Veil effects by getting them to close their eyes.

Also, any spell with a duration, basically, other than permanent - it causes Veil checks as long as it is in effect. I suppose I could have spells which are overt when launched, and then covert while maintained. Like, turning into a natural animal, for example.

And I would have it cause things like panic, catatonia, amnesia, obsessive behavior or other unpleasant mental disorders, rather than making people fail to react at all. Making people suddenly go nuts is definately a net wrong that people can get behind working to stomp out.

My original concept was that failing to score hits caused you to ignore the situation.
scoring hits caused you to be aware of the situation so you react more or less rationally for now, but you will go insane later (or acquire an auspice), depending on how many hits you've accumulated on Veil checks.
On the other hand, having people with 0 hits go completely apeshit and/or doing random, senseless stuff also has some merit.

As an aside, do the Occult Science allow you to use expression tests to create godelian shock images which may or may not look like a certain parrot?

Ooh, I'd forgotten about basilisks! Good catch.

quote tag, praetor.

This has been very heavily modified and I'd like feedback on the new version.

Adjustments to In Media Res Character Generation
I will worry about other types of character generation later.
First, attributes and skills are scaled 1-4 rather than 1-6 (because the target number - to use ancient shadowrun parlance - is 4 instead of 5.) For attributes, a value of 1 is below average, a value of 2 is average, a value of 3 is exceptional, and a value of 4 is maximum-possible-human.
So your attributes begin at 1 each; you distribute 2 points to one pair, 2 points to another pair, and 4 points to the last pair. Then you get 2 additional points to place wherever you want. No attribute can be above 4. Note that, before you get bonuses from your various Splats, you get the equivalent of (6+10)*3/2 = 24 points, instead of 20 points, so your attributes here are quite a bit higher than in the grittier world of After Sundown.
For skills, you get 10 points in one category, 12 points in a second category, and 18 points in the third category, with 4 points to place wherever you want, and four specializations. You get 24 points of backgrounds.
Resources have not been re-scaled (since they aren't rolled, and values above 4 are super-human anyway).

Then you choose two splats - the type of spirit you secretly are (your Nature), and the Origin of your dual-nature. You may also choose to have been trained within the Technocratic Union, in which case you get a bonus resource and some bonuses to relevant academic backgrounds. Alternatively, you can be self-taught, or a recruit to the Technocratic Union from another organization. You need not have been trained by the same department that currently employs you.

If you wish (and you probably do), you may choose a Guiding Passion from the following list: Courage, Compassion, Justice, Generosity, Hope or Honor. You may also choose a


Auspice
Auspice replaces potency, and determines both your maximum power points and your attribute maximums. The effects of Auspice depend on the nature of your Auspice, as does the name of the corresponding special characteristic.

Player characters are assumed to be loyal members of the Technocracy, so they will have Skepticism. Skepticism is better than the other auspices in several respects, so .

Skepticism
I have a strongly held skepticism about any strongly held beliefs, especially my own. - Astronomer Margaret Geller
Members of the Technocracy should have this auspice. In many ways, the auspice of Skepticism is what defines the Technocracy. It is extremely rare outside of the technocracy, although spirits of high-tech or scientific things may also have it, even if they are not allied to the Technocracy. Generally speaking, Skepticism is deeply incompatible with membership in any magical organization other than the Technocracy: a follower of the Old Ones will generally not be driven by Skepticism or they would not trust the Old Ones motives, and deeply skeptical people seldom practice Kaballa, Hermetic Ritual Magic, etc. etc.
[*] Magic resistance: Skepticism automatically serves to counter any Overt magic which is used against you. Add you skepticism to the difficulty of any overt magic used against you.
[*] Mandate enforcement: When enforcing the mandate of heaven, add your Skepticism to any relevant dice pool.
[*] Mandate of Heaven: Increase your Edge by +1.
[*] Increased attribute maximums: Add half your Skepticism, rounded UP, to your maximum value for all of your attributes.
[*] Anti-magic powers: For each point of Skepticism, you may select a power from the anti-magic list (note: "power selections" are generally equivalent to advanced powers from After Sundown.) You can use these powers either in Faerieland or in the material world.
[*] Increase your power pool maximum by your Skepticism x 3 (it starts at 10).
[*] You may take initial training from a different Auspice if it is appropriate for your background. Initial Training in a Skepticism-Oriented Tradition: Choose one Occult Science at 4, two Occult Sciences at 3. Distribute 12 points among the other Occult Sciences or Magical Skills (not recommended), none of your magical skills or other occult sciences can be above 2 at character generation. Take 4 points in approved mandates from the following list: Cyberware, Eugenics, Gadgets, Conspiracy.

Ambition
Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence... - T.S. Eliot
This auspice is for those who posess the will to power, or at least a consuming drive towards self-improvement. This isn't necesarilly a bad thing, and in fact, it can be a good thing in the absence of malevolent intentions. Nonetheless, while not all ambitious wizards are evil, almost all evil wizards are ambitious. Reality deviants and spies who attempt to infiltrate the Technocracy will almost always have this auspice, it is common among those traditions which emphasize ritual practices or magic as an end-in-itself.
[*] The will to power: Add your Ambition to the dice pool of any overt magic you may use.
[*] The gift. Your gift of magic arouses envy and hostility in mundanes. You gain an additional disadvantage for each point of point of Ambition, including the first. Choose from the following list: Blatantly Magical, Distinctive Appearance, Prideful, Temperamental, Diplomatic Incident, Doomed Romance, Eerie Presence, Feared by Children, Infectious Mood, Offensive to Animals, Red Taped or Unattractive.
[*] Increased attribute maximums: Add half your Ambition, rounded DOWN, to your maximum value for all of your attributes.
[*] Spirit powers: For each point of Ambition, select another faerie power (note: "power selections" are generally equivalent to advanced powers from After Sundown.) These abilities cannot be used in human form, though.
[*] Increase your power pool maximum by your Ambition x 3 (it starts at 10).
[*] You may take initial training from a different Auspice if it is appropriate for your background. Initial Training in an Ambition-Oriented Tradition: Each of your magical skills begins at 1, choose one Occult Science at 3. Distribute 10 points among the other Occult Sciences or Magical Skills, none of your magical skills can be above 3 and none of your other other occult sciences can be above 2 at character generation. Take 6 points in additional mandates of your choice, with no single mandate above 3.

Conviction
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. - Friedrich Nietzche
The Auspice of Conviction is for those driven by some form of certitude. For whatever reason, this willingness to commit to a course of action whole-heartedly is very powerful in the spirit world, but wizards blessed with Conviction do not see the same benefits in the real world as those with other Auspices.
[*] Whoever stands against us, stands against the invisible pink unicorn: when you use magic on someone else, and they are a wizard of another tradition or a hostile spirit, add your Conviction to your dice pool. It is up to the MC what constitutes using magic on someone, but almost any resisted roll will count.
[*] The fool is a prince in the Other World, but not in This One: For each point of Conviction you gain, after the first, lose a point of resources. You can either give up a 1 pt resource, or lower the value of an existing resource by 1 point. Only mundane and worldly resources should be given up in this fashion - this is at the MC's discretion. If you have no worldly resource to lose, you do not suffer this penalty, and probably you are smug about it.
[*] Increased stats in fae form: Add half your Conviction, rounded DOWN, to your attributes (not your attribute maxima!) while in faerie form only.
[*] Spirit powers: For each point of Conviction, select another faerie power (note: "power selections" are generally equivalent to advanced powers from After Sundown.) These abilities cannot be used in human form, though.
[*] Increase your power pool maximum by your Conviction x 3 (it starts at 10).
[*] You may take initial training from a different Auspice if it is appropriate for your background. Initial Training in a Conviction-Oriented Tradition: All of your magical skills start at 2. Distribute 8 points among your magical skills and occult sciences, with no magical skill above 4 and no occult sciences above 2. Take 6 points in additional mandates of your choice, with no single mandate above 3.

Absurdism
Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dadas are against Dada. - Tristan Tzara
The rarest Auspice, Absurdism is grounded in the embrace of Chaos, or the Nameless, or the Indescribable, and the rejection of guiding norms, as a social phenomena extended into the structure of reality. Wild-haired maniacal performance artists and serene Zen practitioners may both have this Auspice; either may pretend to be the other. Possibly there isn't really a difference.
[*] Whoever has a baloney sandwich, press START to play: Add your Abusrdism plus Edge to all rolls to resist the effects of reality violations; also, add your Absurdism to any Transformation tests to adopt Spirit form while in Reality.
[*] Simply remove your tonsils to start dancing: Add half your Absurdism, rounded DOWN, to your maximum value for all of your attributes.
[*] The list will be complete when it is empty: For each point of Absurdism, select either another faerie power, or a power from the anti-magic list. The anti-magic powers are generally better, because they can be used any time; while faerie powers can only be used while in Spirit Form.
[*] Increase your power pool maximum by your Conviction x 3 (it starts at 10).
[*] You may take initial training from a different Auspice if it is appropriate for your background. Your future as dictated by a dystopic future government of Absurdism-Oriented neo-fascist Rutabagas: Chose three magical skills OR occult sciences (you can choose a mix of the two groups) at 3, and distribute 13 points among the remaining magical skills and occult sciences, with none greater than 2 or less than 0. Take 4 points in additional mandates of your choice, with no single mandate above 2.

Playable Splats - Spirit Type
Each wizard is also a spirit, and has a corresponding spirit form which they adopt in the Other World. Spirit form and faerie form will be used interchangeably throughout. Members of the technocracy deny that they are faeries, as a matter of policy, but the nature of their faerie form which they imagine that they may have (in a strictly literary sense, of course) still drives them. Player characters are generally assumed to be good faeries/spirits, and so they have a guiding passion, which helps them to do good. However, you may wish to be evil, in which case you have a master passion, instead, which goads you to acts of destruction. There is no game-mechanical advantage to doing this, but players may wish to do so as a roleplaying exercise.

Knight
In Fae Form you are humanoid, although with strange markings (pointed ears and candy-colored hair are typical), but you are a splendid warrior. By imagining yourself as a crusading knight, you perform superbly in combat or in feats of derring-do.
[*] Add +1 your Agility, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Knight, including: War, Passions, Air.
[*] Assuming you are good, select a driving passion. Courage is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion, Despair being most typical.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Combat, Tactics, Drive. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Quickness, Indomitability, Fae Armaments. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Troll
You imagine yourself to be a great, hulking beast. This does not mean that you are hostile or malevolent (though Trolls make fine villains in this role), but it means you are defined by your strength and physicality. Good trolls have a strong tendency to emphasize gentleness, which will be even more striking given their great physical power.
[*] Add +1 to your Strength, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Troll, including: War, Fire, Death.
[*] Assuming you are good, select a guiding passion. Compassion is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion, Loneliness being most typical.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Perception, Athletics, Intimidation. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Giant Size, Devastation, Regeneration. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Gnome
You imagine yourself to be a slight, clever creature, using cunning and subterfuge to foil the powerful. You may or may not be goofy looking, in Faerie Land. In the real world, you simply imagine yourself to be
[*] Add +1 to your Logic, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Gnome, including: Culture, Earth, Fire.
[*] Assuming you are good, select a guiding passion. Justice is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion, Fear being most typical.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Artisan, Operations, Research. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Cloak of Shadow, Burrowing, Psychometry. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Satyr or Nymph
You imagine yourself to be exceedingly beautiful, winsome, joyous and free. Many Faeries are actually very uptight, so your true nature can cause you much the same problems there as it does in the real world. Assuming you are good, you are deeply and sincerely motivated to share your joy with others. If you are evil, you view such freedom as an excuse to use others to gratify your own desires.
[*] Add +1 to your Charisma, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Nymph, including: Animals, Passions, Body
[*] Assuming you are good, select a guiding passion. Generosity is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion instead, Hunger (that is, lust) being most typical.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Empathy, Expression, Sabotage. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Desire Reflection, Contradiction, Phantasmagoria. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Celestial
You imagine yourself to be a winged, radiant being, a source of hope, inspiration and leadership to those around you.
[*] Add +1 to your Willpower, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Celestial, including: Culture, Air, Body
[*] Assuming you are good (almost all celestials are), select a guiding passion. Hope is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion, Greed being most typical of such fallen beings.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Medicine, Persuasion, Bureaucracy. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Flight, Dismissal, Bind the Name. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Beast Man
You imagine yourself to be human-animal hybrid of some kind.
[*] Add +1 to your Intuition, gain an Edge of 1 and an Auspice of 1.
[*] Choose one inherent mandate at ***, another inherent mandate at **, and choose a speciality for one of the two mandates. At least one of the two mandates must be typical mandates for a Stranger, including: Death, Animals or Earth.
[*] Assuming you are good, select a guiding passion. Honor is most typical. If you wish to be evil, select a master passion, Rage being most typical.
[*] Add +1 to your rating in the following skills (this can take them above 4): Stealth, Larceny, Survival. When persuing or defending your guiding passion, add your Edge to any dice pool including these skills, without spending Edge.
[*] Your fae form begins with the following powers: Invulnerability, War Form, The Beckoning. You may gain an additional fae powers from your point of Auspice (but player characters generally will not).

Spiritual Ranks

Edge + Skepticism	Rank
0-1	Commoner
2-3	Lord/Lady (starting rank for player members of the Technocracy)
4-5	Count/Countess
6-7	Duke/Duchess
8-9	Prince/Princess
10-11	King/Queen
12+	Emperor/Empress