Recent Posts

Thank you! Most are written by Jonatan, btw.

Time is such a rich concept, I would like to write spells that are heavy in theme and make statements about what time is. It's hard though, would love suggestions.

Urd's Favour is strong I feel. It tells us that time is change - Sometimes we're weak, sometimes we're strong, sometimes we're right and sometimes we're wrong.

Hour's in a day could also be strong, in that it says that "time is money", I spend my time to create or achieve something in an instant.

---

I switched because of gameplay and balance issues. The GM felt that The Mage deviated from fiction first in that a wizard has a set of tools he has to figure out how to apply to the situation, while the mage can always use magic, he just describes how. The wizard interacts in a problem solving-way with concrete parameters, the mage makes it up as he goes along in a storytelling sort of way. Kind of hard to describe, I guess.

The other thing was the balance. My character did some pretty epic shit which changed the scope of things: Instead of acting within the scene I kept changing the very parameters of the scene. It was like having a Mage: The Awakening character in a D&D party.

We discussed raising the stakes and making magic much, much more dangerous, but I didn't feel like playing a walking bomb.

[☐ Power of Warding]

Thanks again. I really appreciate your feedback. Sorry for the delay.

This is the new ward power:

☐ Power of Warding
With this power is active on you, expend it to summon the person you fed upon, teleporting them immediately into your presence. If you give it to your prey, they can expend it to summon you.

The idea is a magical shield that will protect you against one physical or magical attack. So it is good against werewolves and witches, but not so much against the vampire. It imposes a penalty to an opposing PC's roll or a bonus to your defense roll against NPCs. In my games I often have PCs roll to keep their cool when trying to accomplish non-fighting tasks in high pressure situations, just like you mentioned. This power would grant a +2 bonus on rolls to avoid attacks and spells. This version also seems to make more sense with the rules for disadvantages.

One reviewer felt a real dislike for anything that penalizes a roll, but disadvantages are part of the game, and to me it is better to have a chance of success than to have the attack negated entirely or something like that.

He's also posted a revised version of the Selkie.

This backstory and the "Their Word" move have both been tweaked in ways that I think will make the pelt come into play more.  It certainly would have helped one of the issues with my selkie character:  that the player who started with the pelt never used it against me.

The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. YES.

Interesting stuff - I was just thinking the other day that we haven't seen nearly enough new spells and alternative spell lists. Out of curiosity, why did you decide to convert from the Mage to the Wizard?

Thanks! And it's worth mentioning that there's an art-free CC BY version here: http://fossilbank.wikidot.com/work:number-appearing

In a recent game we had a trainpocalypse and the players had to stop their train for some minor repairs but pressing on would mean one of the cars would break down. As usual I flip to two random pages in a dictionary to see what comes up. Obviously another train would show up behind them.

Unstoppable Emperor

The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.

Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.

Everything in this post is excellent. I'd steal it myself if it weren't for the fact that several of the places you describe are overrun by people who spit black stuff and may or may not be possessed by ghosts.

I feel like there are a lot of indie games out there these days that really facilitate Story Now play (AW, Shock:, Swords without Masters, etc.). I wondered if anyone could recommend a game that really facilitates Right to Dream in a coherent and low points-of-contact way. Ideally something indie, but not required.

My group's been playing GURPS and we will probably explore Story Now some more, but I kind of wonder what else is being done in a similar space. I guess it would help to know that we seem to like exploring System the least and Setting, Situation or Color the most.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. I felt like the people who'd read this forum would be most likely to know the jargon I'm using and know of indie games that I haven't seen (I don't have wide exposure).

We're playing in our own city (greater Boston area, mostly Somerville/Cambridge). So far place names have been based on actual locales, but reinterpreted by post-apocalyptic locals.

Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.