Outremer Playtesting

Feedback is coming in from the Outremer playtesting. As a result, I've started fine tuning the game based on feedback from the playtesters.

• I added a bunch of name lists/generators in an appendix for Frankish, Arabic, Armenian, Sephardic Jewish, Kurdish, Greek, Bohemian, and Turkish male and female period names. I figure it's easy enough to find English, French, Italian, and German names that I won't bother, but these others are different enough that they need something in the game. Kurdish surnames were the most difficult, as there just was nothing out there on how they formed patronyms back in the 16th century. Eventually I decided to use Arabic ibn, bin, and bint with Kurdish first names. The Kurds in Outremer would be outside their homelands anyway.
  


• I put in relationships between the various nations of Outremer in each nation at the end of the description - i.e Nation X has Friendly relations with Nation Y, and Good realtions with Nation Z, but relations with Nation A are Strained, and with Nation B are Tense. These are the terms I have always heard international relations described in on the news, so I figure most players shouls understand them intuitively. At the end of the Nations of Outremer section I put a listing of all the possible relations, from most to least friendly.
  
  


• 
  
  I put in a dual timeline with what happened in the real world and what happened in the alt-history of Outremer from the preaching of the first Crusade, through the split during the Second Crusade, to 1400. I figure few people who are going to play in this setting understand what actually did happen, and need at least an overview to comprehend the differences.
  
  
  More as it happens!
  
  -clash

Society of Night Update

Also being designed under the StarCluster 3 license is Society of Night by Michael Scott and Randolph Allen. SoN is a vampire society game, with Vamp Houses locked in a constant battle for dominance and territory. Unlike Blood Games, SoN has sexy vamps - they can do the dirty, and even have children. In SoN, vampirism is caused by a virus, and can be transmitted on purpose, allowing humans to be "turned".

SoN Vamp Society is highly structured. On top are True Born Vampyres - children born to two other True Born vamps. These are rare and precious. Only True Borns can breed, and they become heads of their Houses in time. They age extremely slowly once they hit puberty and their Vamp natures come to the surface, eventually stopping any aging.

Turned Vamps were once human, but have become infected by the virus. They cannot have children via sex, only by "turning" people. They do not age once they have been 'turned".

Dhamphyrs are the children of True Born vamps and humans. They age slowly, and can walk in the light, but are not immortal. They are usually female, and normally are "Turned" at some point.

Servitors are humans addicted to Vamp blood. This extends their lifespans and gives them some vampiric powers. They can also walk in the light, but have shorter lifespans than Dhamphyrs. Their role is to protect and care for the Vamps during the day. Faithful and useful Servitors are usually rewarded by being "Turned".

Gifteds are humans who have some PSI powers. These they are born with, not given by the virus. They live a normal human lifespan, and can pass on their Gifts.

SoN has a currently full Chargen and skill list, and uses the StarPerc resolution sub-system. it is set in the modern day or near future. Eventually, the designers want to extend their line by bringing in other races - Fay, Weres, Ghosts, etc. It's currently in alpha playtest in Baton Rouge, with online bluebooking, set in the near future. A previous version was played last year based on StarCluster 2, but this one is intended for publication.

-clash

Look! Up In The Sky! - Vulnerabilities, Retcons, and Reboots

Vulnerabilities are an important aspect of supers. The traditional "buy disadvantages to gain points to buy advantages" is a model neither Klaxon nor I like at all. For one thing, the disads are always too specific, and for another it tends to produce blind, deaf, socially crippled freaks. Klax went another way.

You and your GM discuss and mutually decide on a vulnerability - not a disadvantage - that ties in with the character concept, including whether or not the character even has a vulnerability. Then, whenever the vulnerability is used in play against the character, she gains a point, which can be accumulated to buy new powers, retcon the character's history, or reboot the character.

Retcon is short for "Retroactive Continuity". This is a device used commonly in comics where the writers selectively ignore something that has happened in the character's historybecause they prefer that it not have happened. By paying the Retcon cost, the player can say "Remember when feeble Aunt May was killed by the Flying Boogeyman? No, you don't, because it never happened. She's been away visiting her younger sister Aunt Elmira, who was sickly. Aunt May is as good as ever!"

Reboot is what happens when the character bites the dust. By paying points equal to the original amount of character points used in chargen, the Reboot cost, the player can create a new character with all the points spent after chargen on new powers, so long as it's a new version of the old character - when the Leaping Leopard dies tragically, saving the city, his offspring/sibling/buddy takes up the cape and cowl to become the new Black Leopard, sion of the glorious departed.

-clash

Mo' 'tivations - from Klax!

From Klax:

'So, I was thinking about some common motivations, and came up with a few, but it was harder to come up with an opposing motivation.

Glory <=> Rectify
Glory is the search for fame and fortune through good works
Rectification is the doing of good work solely for setting things right
Preservation <=> Selfishness
Preservation would be working towards maintaining the status quo
Selfishness would be working towards advancing your own wants and desires, and to hell with anyone else.
Love <=> Hate
Love would be fighting for love, protecting your family, finding your lost love, etc.
Hate would be fighting through hate, Racism, sexism, all the -isms, Years of slights, built up, etc.
Fear <=> Bloodlust
Fear is fighting from being frightened, I'm scared of clowns, so I will fight clowns (Could also call this bravery)
Bloodlust is fighting for the sheer fun or love of fighting
Honor <=> Pride
This is similar to Justice <=> Privilege, but I feel this is more personal
Reciprocation <=> Acceptance
Reciprocation is doing unto everyone, what others have done to you
Acceptance is fighting to be accepted by the populous
(These two are very x-men.)


Singular Goal <=> Indifference
This is an odd duck, as there are plenty of heroes who fight for oddly specific goals, this may not be suitable in the main game, as these kinds of characters don't often mesh well with others, but they'd be great for one-time characters, or NPC's to get a campaign going. Heroes or villains who have this motivation are those that fight to kill one specific person, or perhaps find a specific treasure/relic/place, etc.

Maybe motivations should change depending on how specific or broad they are?
The more specific, the more die bonus?"

I love these!

-clash

Super Motivations

Motivation is a core concept for supers. It's what makes them do the crazy stuff they do. I'm thinking about motivations in Look! Up In The Sky! - right now, in the admittedly unfinished state it's in, the characters are without Motivation. They have the HOW, but not the WHY.

When working in a way and for a cause aligned with their Motivation, characters should be *better*, They are motivated - propelled by their own convictions and innermost feelings. I'm going to suggest that whenever a character is motivated, the character should have a bonus - another die, for instance. Conversely, whenever they are working in a manner and for a cause opposed to their Motivation, they should have a penalty, maybe one less die.

So Motivations should come in opposed pairs. Some examples might be:

Justice <-> Privilege

Forgiveness <-> Vengeance

Order <-> Chaos

Liberation <-> Oppression

Protection <-> Exploitation

Duty <-> Power

It's obvious that the Motivations on the left would make great Motivations for heroes, and those on the right for villains, but I can see interesting ways these could all be switched.

-clash

Progress Report on Look! Up In The Sky!

Last night I went over the current status of Look! Up In The Sky! with Klaxon. Progress has been slow because of his workload - he's just completed his classwork and is now working with his project team and writing his thesis - but Association Creation, City Creation, Character Generation, and Skills Traits & Edges sections are essentially complete. This means the game is ready for internal play test!

I have the current pdf. Klax and James have separated Powers out into Paths of Power, as in the Blood Games games. When BG first came out in 2004, Almafeta told me that it was a good base for a supers game, and I guess Klax agreed. The Paths are Tank - defensive options, Skill - basically ways to get skills, Nuke - offensive powers, Healer - healing and curing of various types, Buffer - making others perform better in various ways, and Strange - a collection of leftovers from the other Paths. Characters choose a Primary Path, in which they spend at least 50% of their points, and may spend what they like in the others.

The game is using the StarPool variant of StarCluster, the TR subsystem used in Blood Games II, OHMAS, and Sweet Chariot 2, and will not have multiple resolution options - though it could be easily enough hacked to use one of the others. You can scale the game from normals - not it's forte, but doable - through Pulp to Cosmic. Internally, scaling is done by multipliers on effect rather than changing Attributes. Attributes are meaningless except as TNs. For example, A Super-Strong character may have a 9 STR, whicle a normal character may have an 11 STR. Thing is, for each success, the Super Strong guy may get 40 points vs 10 for the Normal.

As I mentioned before, Skills have been vastly reduced in number by increasing their scope. They remain center-defined, but all science, for example, is represented by Academics, Bioscience, and Wierdscience.

Like OHMAS and SC 3, Klax has an Association Creation section. It is assumed that the game revolves around Sentai - Superhero teams - rather than lone heroes. You choose what you want to do by creating the Association all PCs belong to before actually creating the characters. Thus the PCs are created to fit into the team, and are motivated to work with it rather than creating a team to work with a disparate group of existing PCs with widely varying motives.

You also have a section on creating your team's home city, analogous to the system/world design section in SC 3. You can do this randomly, or pick from the lists, whatever inspires you best. The city creation sub-system is designed to define the city abstractly, rather than giving specifics, allowing you to build up a picture in your mind as to how it all fits together. Cultural Traits are used to define the gestalt City culture, which is then varied by neighborhood.

It looks really good and flexible so far! Now to set up a game or two!

-clash

Running a Game with the iPad - and Outremer

I ran Sunday's game - a playtest for Outremer - using only my iPad Sunday. It worked very well! I will be able to carry my complete library of games with me wherever I go. now I tried running games with the Kindle, but the inability to access the bookmarks limited the functionality of the Kindle, so I was forced to leaf through the pdfs page by page, which was very slow and clumsy.

With the iPad, I could access the bookmarks, which allowed me to zip through the pdf, either to the section I wanted directly, or back to the TOC which is hyperlinked to the first page of each section. This was as fast or faster than hunting things up in printed book form, so I was very happy.

In other news, I finished the playtest version of Outremer Monday night, with the addition of the Dervish Path, the finalization of the Nations section with Homs, and finishing the bit on Islam in the Religions section. I'm going to look through the books with an eye to correcting any minor transgressions and maybe adding a paragraph here and there, but I'm ready to send it out for playtest very soon. Anyone interested should leave a comment or email me.

-clash