Due to Uni holidays we're missing a week. Because of this, downtimes aren't due until July 4th.
At the game I said next game would be July 18th, but the 11th will be much nicer to my sanity.
I still need to send out XP totals, and a couple of downtimes to people who weren't there. I'll do this ASAP.
Tuesday 26 June 2012
Tuesday 12 June 2012
Downtime Deadline Extended to Friday 15th
Hey guys, there's a bunch of people that I still need to send DT results to. I'll get them out soon, but for fairness I'm extending the deadline this week to Friday - anyone who sends their DT in by midnight on Friday 15th will get the full 2xp. This applies to everyone, in case some DT actions need co-ordination between multiple people.
Monday 28 May 2012
Game delayed until 6th of June.
Hi guys, sorry to do this but I've got too much course work to do right now, so I'm going to delay the game a week. I'll make sure this message reaches as many people as possible.
Obviously this messes with the story slightly, so while the next game will be on the 6th of June, story-wise the game will still be in May, and will still represent the Spring Court's Homecoming. Then the game after that will be the first game of Summer.
See you all in a week.
Obviously this messes with the story slightly, so while the next game will be on the 6th of June, story-wise the game will still be in May, and will still represent the Spring Court's Homecoming. Then the game after that will be the first game of Summer.
See you all in a week.
Sunday 1 April 2012
Game Delayed until April 18th
I absolutely loathe to do this, especially only a couple of games in and at such short notice, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone the LARP until the 18th. I've been sick this past week and I was hoping to get better by Wednesday, but instead I've taken a turn for the worse. Even then this wouldn't be so bad, but I've got assignments backed up as a result and it's become quite clear that I won't be able to prepare this week's game. Sorry guys, but you're going to have to wait a fortnight.
Also, I use the term delaying rather than skipping the game on purpose. There won't be an extra downtime over the next fortnight. If you want to keep things lively until then, try to strike up some chats on the forums.
So, I'll see you all in another two weeks.
EDIT: I've corrected the date. It's APRIL 18th. Brain not work good right now.
EDIT: I've corrected the date. It's APRIL 18th. Brain not work good right now.
Thursday 29 March 2012
XP Clarifications
Just a short post this week, clarifying a few things that have come up in Downtimes.
Merits
Like anything else, Merit dots are bought one at a time. This means that even if you're buying a three-dot Merit, you have to pay for each dot individually - 2xp for the first dot, 4xp for the second and 6cp for the third, to a total of 12. This might seem like a pain, but it's the only way to keep the system consistent.
When you can spend XP
I add a summary of XP earned in each downtime reply, but you don't need to wait until then to spend it. As long as you know you've earned the XP, you can use it. So, you can use the XP you earned from Attendance and Costume at the last game, and if you get your downtime in on time you can even use the XP you earn for sending it in in that very same downtime.
Finally, a head's up...
I've decided to start confirming when I've received DTs. I just did this tonight, so if you haven't received a reply from me it means I haven't received your Downtime! I decided to do this because last time someone had thought they sent theirs in, but I didn't receive it. In the future, I'll be responding as soon as I see the email.
Merits
Like anything else, Merit dots are bought one at a time. This means that even if you're buying a three-dot Merit, you have to pay for each dot individually - 2xp for the first dot, 4xp for the second and 6cp for the third, to a total of 12. This might seem like a pain, but it's the only way to keep the system consistent.
When you can spend XP
I add a summary of XP earned in each downtime reply, but you don't need to wait until then to spend it. As long as you know you've earned the XP, you can use it. So, you can use the XP you earned from Attendance and Costume at the last game, and if you get your downtime in on time you can even use the XP you earn for sending it in in that very same downtime.
Finally, a head's up...
I've decided to start confirming when I've received DTs. I just did this tonight, so if you haven't received a reply from me it means I haven't received your Downtime! I decided to do this because last time someone had thought they sent theirs in, but I didn't receive it. In the future, I'll be responding as soon as I see the email.
Monday 19 March 2012
Pledges, Tokens and related miscellany
This really should have been put up earlier, but I've been pretty busy lately. Still, there's a few things I'd like to discuss before the next game.
Pledges
One of the things I decided on a while before the first game was that I wasn't 100% happy with the current Pledge system. I'm using the alternative pledge-crafting rules from Rites of Spring because they cut out the boons (which is a big powergaming minefield, as interesting as it is) and because it cuts out the need to perfectly balance pledges, making them easier to create. However, the consequence it comes with is it uses Glamour costs to balance out the Pledges instead, and this can make them quite expensive. For instance, a standard Pledge of Fealty would require 9 Glamour.
If you're observant, you'll notice that's not how much you spent when you took the Pledge. That's because I was already using the rules changes that I wanted to make, I just hadn't actually posted them up. However, here they are, so you can now go about crafting pledges of your very own!
For the most part, the rules are the same as the current rules document. I'll update it with the correct rules soon. The only change is to the Sanctions part, in particular the cost of adding a Sanction. Now it works like this: By default, all Pledges have Sanctions of a total weight to their Tasks at no additional cost. However, you can modify this in two ways. Firstly, you can take lighter Santions, but each point difference from the weight of the Tasks costs an additional Glamour. Secondly, you can instead take a heavier Sanction to decrease the costs spent on the Tasks at the same rate. The restrictions on this is that you can't reduce the costs from Duration, you can't reduce the the total cost of the Pledge to 0 Glamour, and all Pledges must have at least a lesser Sanction.
Now, with that in mind, let's look at how the Pledge of Fealty actually works.
The Task involved in the Pledge is a Fealty task. For the current liege (one Montgomery de Vries), this is a pledge to allow the vassals to stay in the domain, and to offer the security and shelter to the best of his ability. For the vassals (everyone else), this is a pledge to offer their services to the freehold where needed, to not betray their fellow Changelings to the Fae and their servants, and to obey the laws of the freehold. This costs 3 Glamour for each party.
The Sanction is a Banishment Sanction. Should anyone break this Pledge, they are "banished" from the freehold's lands. This doesn't automatically remove them from the area, but it does mean that any supernatural protections they invoke will fail while within the freehold's borders, and anyone who attacks them or slays them will be rewarded. Because this is a Greater Sanction, it is equal in weight to the Task, and therefore costs nothing under the new rules.
Finally, the Duration is for one Season. This is literally three months, so the pledge will end after the first week of June, at which point the Summer King (or possibly Queen by that point, who knows what might happen?) takes the throne. Fortunately (or perhaps through clever planning...) this means the seasons line up reasonably well, with the first three months of the game covering Spring. A Seasonal Duration costs 3 Glamour.
As you can see, the total cost of this Pledge is 6 Glamour.
As a quick note, the Wyrd (essentially being the force of Fate) has a certain amount of Agency, and so typically when the conditions of a Pledge are broken, the Sanctions are immediately levied against the Oathbreaker. However, Pledges of Fealty are unusual in that they require the other party to be aware of the Oathbreaking, and to actually invoke the Sanction themselves. This allows Changelings to break the laws of a Freehold as long as nobody else find out - however it also means a liege can pardon a vassal of a crime if they wish.
So, now you should have a rough idea as to how Pledges work. Nonetheless, you should always have me with you when you make a Pledge with someone. It means I can guide you through the rules and make judgements on how the Pledge should work, and it means I know about the Pledge so I can tell if it gets broken.
Tokens
I was in a rush preparing for last games, so some of you didn't get the rules your tokens worked out. However, they should all be ready by next game. I can't remember if I've explained this before, but due to the brief overview of how Tokens are described in the rules, here's the precise rules for activating a Token: Tokens all have the same cost to invoke. A character must either pay 1 Glamour or make a successful Wyrd test (not typically easy) or meet the Token's catch.
I've had a few questions about improving or acquiring tokens, so to clarify - It's possible to gain trifles (Tokens with a one-time use) through downtime actions, usually by hunting through the Hedge, but actual permanent Tokens will cost XP like other Merits. However, you'll also need to explain how you're going about getting/improving the Token in question. Mr. Wilde has already offered to several people to upgrade or make tokens in his Workshop - otherwise most characters will have to look deep in the hedge, experiment on their own or do some trading at a Goblin Market. Nonetheless, it will still cost XP. In these cases, it's the character receiving the Token that pays for it, not the person making it - the XP covers ownership of the token. However, if you wilfully give your Token away, those dots go to whoever you gave it to, free of charge.
Harvest Actions
I just wanted to mention something I forgot to say in my last post about this. You can't Harvest Glamour from emotions generated or strengthened through the use of Contracts. As far as faerie magic is concerned, those emotions are "fake." However, emotions inspired by the effects of Contracts can still work. For example, while creating fear through the use of Fleeting Autumn Contracts won't let you gain Glamour, covering yourself in Flame with Contracts of Elements might invoke fear in someone, and that fear will be genuine as far as creating Glamour is concerned.
Equipment
I was light on this for the first game because I hadn't brought it up beforehand, but I'd like to make it official that if you want to bring a weapon, token or otherwise important item to game, you'll need an appropriate prop to represent it. Some items can be safely not worried about, but Weapons will definitely require you to have a prop to represent them, and will also require you to mention it to me beforehand, either in your downtime or at the start of the night. If in doubt as to whether you need a prop for something, ask me.
Armour can be acquired through downtime actions, and should be represented if possible. If it's something that would be too annoying to incorporate into your costume that's fine, but you'll still need to mention it to me and any obvious armour will be announced to everyone at the start of the night. If you show up wearing Riot Gear, people will notice.
Because it's not long before the next game I'll probably go easy on these rules for this game, but I still encourage you to bring something if you can, and I will ask everyone to clear any equipment their character is carrying with me at the start of the night.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I'll see you all on Wednesday!
Pledges
One of the things I decided on a while before the first game was that I wasn't 100% happy with the current Pledge system. I'm using the alternative pledge-crafting rules from Rites of Spring because they cut out the boons (which is a big powergaming minefield, as interesting as it is) and because it cuts out the need to perfectly balance pledges, making them easier to create. However, the consequence it comes with is it uses Glamour costs to balance out the Pledges instead, and this can make them quite expensive. For instance, a standard Pledge of Fealty would require 9 Glamour.
If you're observant, you'll notice that's not how much you spent when you took the Pledge. That's because I was already using the rules changes that I wanted to make, I just hadn't actually posted them up. However, here they are, so you can now go about crafting pledges of your very own!
For the most part, the rules are the same as the current rules document. I'll update it with the correct rules soon. The only change is to the Sanctions part, in particular the cost of adding a Sanction. Now it works like this: By default, all Pledges have Sanctions of a total weight to their Tasks at no additional cost. However, you can modify this in two ways. Firstly, you can take lighter Santions, but each point difference from the weight of the Tasks costs an additional Glamour. Secondly, you can instead take a heavier Sanction to decrease the costs spent on the Tasks at the same rate. The restrictions on this is that you can't reduce the costs from Duration, you can't reduce the the total cost of the Pledge to 0 Glamour, and all Pledges must have at least a lesser Sanction.
Now, with that in mind, let's look at how the Pledge of Fealty actually works.
The Task involved in the Pledge is a Fealty task. For the current liege (one Montgomery de Vries), this is a pledge to allow the vassals to stay in the domain, and to offer the security and shelter to the best of his ability. For the vassals (everyone else), this is a pledge to offer their services to the freehold where needed, to not betray their fellow Changelings to the Fae and their servants, and to obey the laws of the freehold. This costs 3 Glamour for each party.
The Sanction is a Banishment Sanction. Should anyone break this Pledge, they are "banished" from the freehold's lands. This doesn't automatically remove them from the area, but it does mean that any supernatural protections they invoke will fail while within the freehold's borders, and anyone who attacks them or slays them will be rewarded. Because this is a Greater Sanction, it is equal in weight to the Task, and therefore costs nothing under the new rules.
Finally, the Duration is for one Season. This is literally three months, so the pledge will end after the first week of June, at which point the Summer King (or possibly Queen by that point, who knows what might happen?) takes the throne. Fortunately (or perhaps through clever planning...) this means the seasons line up reasonably well, with the first three months of the game covering Spring. A Seasonal Duration costs 3 Glamour.
As you can see, the total cost of this Pledge is 6 Glamour.
As a quick note, the Wyrd (essentially being the force of Fate) has a certain amount of Agency, and so typically when the conditions of a Pledge are broken, the Sanctions are immediately levied against the Oathbreaker. However, Pledges of Fealty are unusual in that they require the other party to be aware of the Oathbreaking, and to actually invoke the Sanction themselves. This allows Changelings to break the laws of a Freehold as long as nobody else find out - however it also means a liege can pardon a vassal of a crime if they wish.
So, now you should have a rough idea as to how Pledges work. Nonetheless, you should always have me with you when you make a Pledge with someone. It means I can guide you through the rules and make judgements on how the Pledge should work, and it means I know about the Pledge so I can tell if it gets broken.
Tokens
I was in a rush preparing for last games, so some of you didn't get the rules your tokens worked out. However, they should all be ready by next game. I can't remember if I've explained this before, but due to the brief overview of how Tokens are described in the rules, here's the precise rules for activating a Token: Tokens all have the same cost to invoke. A character must either pay 1 Glamour or make a successful Wyrd test (not typically easy) or meet the Token's catch.
I've had a few questions about improving or acquiring tokens, so to clarify - It's possible to gain trifles (Tokens with a one-time use) through downtime actions, usually by hunting through the Hedge, but actual permanent Tokens will cost XP like other Merits. However, you'll also need to explain how you're going about getting/improving the Token in question. Mr. Wilde has already offered to several people to upgrade or make tokens in his Workshop - otherwise most characters will have to look deep in the hedge, experiment on their own or do some trading at a Goblin Market. Nonetheless, it will still cost XP. In these cases, it's the character receiving the Token that pays for it, not the person making it - the XP covers ownership of the token. However, if you wilfully give your Token away, those dots go to whoever you gave it to, free of charge.
Harvest Actions
I just wanted to mention something I forgot to say in my last post about this. You can't Harvest Glamour from emotions generated or strengthened through the use of Contracts. As far as faerie magic is concerned, those emotions are "fake." However, emotions inspired by the effects of Contracts can still work. For example, while creating fear through the use of Fleeting Autumn Contracts won't let you gain Glamour, covering yourself in Flame with Contracts of Elements might invoke fear in someone, and that fear will be genuine as far as creating Glamour is concerned.
Equipment
I was light on this for the first game because I hadn't brought it up beforehand, but I'd like to make it official that if you want to bring a weapon, token or otherwise important item to game, you'll need an appropriate prop to represent it. Some items can be safely not worried about, but Weapons will definitely require you to have a prop to represent them, and will also require you to mention it to me beforehand, either in your downtime or at the start of the night. If in doubt as to whether you need a prop for something, ask me.
Armour can be acquired through downtime actions, and should be represented if possible. If it's something that would be too annoying to incorporate into your costume that's fine, but you'll still need to mention it to me and any obvious armour will be announced to everyone at the start of the night. If you show up wearing Riot Gear, people will notice.
Because it's not long before the next game I'll probably go easy on these rules for this game, but I still encourage you to bring something if you can, and I will ask everyone to clear any equipment their character is carrying with me at the start of the night.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I'll see you all on Wednesday!
Sunday 11 March 2012
A Sample Downtime
Here's a sample downtime to give you an idea on how to go about these things. It's pretty quick'n'dirty - some people put a lot more effort into theirs, but don't feel like you have to. In general I recommend just putting whatever details are important. If the downtime below actually contained the Heist that it seems to be leading up to then it'd have a lot more detail, with a few contingency plans in case things went wrong.
Player: Stuart
Character: Rocky SloanePlayer: Stuart
Actions: 6 (Willpower 4)
-Last game Brother Victor seemed to know a bit too much about my mob connections, so I'll watch him for a bit to see who he talks to and what he gets up to. I already know he works at a Pawn Shop on Forsyth Street, so I'll hide across the street and follow him as he leaves. I won't follow him inside buildings, as I'm less stealthy in public areas, but I'll stick around in case he comes out again.
-Javier wanted me to get some power tools for him, but as I'm broke I'll just look for a construction site and steal off with some when nobody's looking.
-Now that my mob allies have finally delivered the chemicals I was after, I'll start making some bombs with my Crafts (Explosives). I'll be doing this in my Hollow's Workshop, and store them in the Hollow until they're ready.
-In preparation for the upcoming heist, I'll also scout around in the sewers under the bank and look for any structural weaknesses.
-I've heard rumours of a strange pack of briarwolves roaming the Hedge, so I'll take a trip to investigate. I won't get too close, as I'm not equipped for a straight-up fight, but I'll see if there's any sign of what they're up to. Where are they gathering, and what for?
-I've been studying up on those books I got from Erika, so it's about time to raise my Occult from 1 to 2 (6xp).
Retainer Action: I'll send DeWolfe to meet with Alexandra, telling him to give her my apologies for not being able to meet in person, as I'm very busy. In reality I suspect it's a trap, and while DeWolfe isn't indespensible, he's better at handling himself in a fight and should be able to bust out of there if he has to.
Free Harvest Action: I'll stop by a Bread Line and harvest some sorrow from the unemployed standing in line.
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