The Gaming Den

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 re...

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

Well, I'm one of the Ash Walkers, so the other characters have, in the past, hired me as a courier. That pays well; this is especially true if you need someone to drive you (or something else) back and forth which might be a vow of silence breech. Also, I like to talk shop with University types whil...

So have we started?

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: ...

Does anyone have a convenient way to convert formatted text (e.g. an rtf file) to bbscript text?

Changeling (the WW game) + Technocracy is the basic premise. Many people don't like that as a basic premise, which is fine, and if anything I come up with is useful for some other premise, great., repurpose it to your heart's content But that's the premise that I'm interested in, so I'm going with t...

No. People actually want to play human characters running around in fairy land shooting fairies with guns. People actually want to play magical beings running around New York acting as law enforcement against rogue spirits. They really want these things, and if you don't want to give them those thi...

As a brief followup, the story inspiration for what-technomancers-look-like-in-Faerie-Land is this:

http://dresdencodak.com/2006/12/03/dung ... discourse/
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/01/27/adva ... discourse/
http://dresdencodak.com/images/dnd_mucha_preview.jpg

I intend to finish the game anyway, but I also think your hissy fits are deeply misguided, and based, to paraphrase Frank, on what you think you want and not what you actually want. People always said they wanted to carry laser cannons when they astral projected in Shadowrun; they said this a lot. B...

the setting is based on belief (that's the whole point of the Technocracy), and so once they actually know and truly think that belief shapes reality then they can shape reality. They've passed beyond The Veil and aren't normal humans, but they were human, and that's not the same as being a Half-Sp...

I say again - the people who don't have secret bonus magic-souls, do they get magic/reality manipulation anyway? Within the setting, why? Certainly normal humans exist in the setting , and the distinction is very important from a game mechanical standpoint, because the normal humans do not have magi...

I've been to Chicago, I can run the first session realistically.

We spend five hours stuck in traffic, then we all get Hot Dogs - and anyone who attempts to get ketchup on theirs is unceremoniously killed.

The distinction between spirits that merely appear to be human and spirits that physically are human is not important. The fact that some spirits look inhuman, however, means that the spirits need to either be non-playable, or have some method which allows them to pass for human. Like an illusionar...

Also: I totally agree with Grek that people should be humans or spirits and have mixed parties like in Bleach. Because that's awesome. -Username17 Well, okay, but when the hero in bleach goes to Otherwhere, he shows up in a kimono with a magical sword because in addition to being a normal high scho...

Making it so that non-technocracy groups are shitier than normal splats a] breaks WSoD, since there's no fluff reason for the non-technocracy groups to actually be shittier and b] will not actually prevent people from playing them. If you don't want people to play them, just don't make a writeup th...

I'm sorry to ask, but why have such a change to the system? It seems like you could get a lot out of keeping the same basic system so that you can import a lot of the disciplines for the NPCs (or even PCs) to use and such. Well, I think it works better; you get higher variance and roll fewer dice. ...

The tension in general, and the specific issue with Scullies [/b] The basic tension in this game is that the characters are scientists (of one kind or another) investigating a world in which magic, trolls and demons do in fact exist . So empiricists who believe in the evidence of their own senses w...

The Compass could work like wayfinder in the swords novels. You tell it what you want - which can be an object, a type of an object, or an abstract goal like wealth, love, power, etc. The compass tells you the fastest, riskiest way to go in order to obtain that thing. So if you tell it you are looki...

Coming up with names for splats is a lot of work. Since I supplied a bunch of the names for Frank's splats, I'm just going to recycle the whole damn list. It saves time. Your four-way division of Traditionalist movements is useful, but I was going to divide them in the following way, which is game-m...

The Temporary Conditions are described on pp. 84. The Euphoric poison (for example) causes Amnesia and Overstimulation, beginning 2 rounds after administration (delay 2) and lasting for 1 hour - 2 rounds. Each hit on the resistance test doubles the time-to-onset, so with 6 hits, the poison wouldn't ...

Scully can not-have-overt-magic through the simple expedient of not buying any. It makes an interesting game to have some characters who are incapable of covert/reality alteration magic, but I think this is a false choice - magic is awesomely powerful, people are not generally going to forego having...

- The Technocracy is a historically successful revolutionary group founded by enlightenment thinkers intent on giving the humanity the tools needed to overcome superstition, conflict and disease through productive social dialogue and scientific understanding leading to mastery of the natural world. ...

This was a problem in the original Mage, as well. The technocracy doesn't believe in magic but they still have to get their power points back somehow. You have a number of different options to recover power points. The setting includes Sailor Moon villains, who recover power points on a feeding sche...

we don’t even notice it (much less condemn it with such a judgmental word as Greed) when people act upon their desires to acquire things that are necessary for their survival or lifestyle. I think CatharzGodfoot is arguing that any sensible person, wishing to maintain a spouse, a dog, 2.8 children ...