Character Creation Message
Right, I have dropped the two people who said they aren't playing. With seven, we will generally do "if someone can't make it, we're at six, if not, the person who has the longest string of runs in a row without missing sits out the next one."
Jen, this is definitely aimed at the people who've played before, so you'll want to talk to me/Mike/someone about the rules & the world in more detail. The rules are *basically* Dragon, but not entirely. Ben, you're probably good on the rules, but might want some more world info, or might not.
Character Creation:
Stats are the same as before: Body, composed of Strength/Toughness/Move Reflexes, composed of Agility/Dexterity/Speed Mind, composed of Intelligence/Charisma/Perception Karma, composed of Magic/Divine Influence/Fortune
You start with 5 in each of the first three ("normal") stats, and 0 in Karma. You get to spend 7 creation points, which can either add one to a stat (and its substats) or buy a shtick. During this process, you should figure out your race/concept/color, which determines what shticks you can actually get. (Your race also gives you a bonus something, as described below.)
Once you've spent all your creation points, you can move your Karma substats around if you like. Note that if you do, your Karma stat drops to the minimum of your substats.
Once you've spent all your creation points, your highest normal stat (or one of them of your choice, if there's a tie) is declared your "Prime Stat" - spending eps to buy those substats up is at 3/4 cost (all fractions round up).
You then get 30 EPs to spend on buying up substats or more shticks. Buying a substat has a base cost of the value you are buying the substat to, but is reduced: 1) to 3/4 cost if it's in your Prime Stat; 2) to 1/2 cost if it's a normal stat and you already have a substat higher than that in that stat. These reductions stack, all fractions round up. Karma substats always cost full price. Your stat is the minimum of its substats.
Schtick costs: This is an areas I'm waffling about still, but at present I'm saying: schticks have a frequency (scale of 1 to five, 1 is "not used every run" to 5 is "nearly always on") and a power (also scale of 1 to five). All schticks must fit into your concept or your race, and how broad your concept is will also be scaled 1 to 5.
Schticks cost ((frequency * power) + concept breadth for concept schticks). I am not at this time applying the "+1 for each prior schtick you have" thing that I used the first time. Instead, I am just putting a flat ceiling of "you can't spend more than 100 EPs on schticks." That ceiling may (or may not) increase over time.
Color Schticks: Color Schticks cost a flat three points, and mostly-don't-do-anything, they're just something you think would be a nice character bit. They still have to fit in your concept or race.
Then you get a hundred skill points to spend on skills. By default, skills go from 1 broad to 5 broad.
You also need to define a "suckage" which is a personal plot point you can get hit with sometimes (DNPC, addiction, hatred of wolves...) to give you motivation to do things. Matching it to your concept is nice but not required.
Rules Mods from last time:
1) It's time to downgrade Agility some. Melee attack dice now come from Strength, not Agility. Ranged attack dice still come from Dex. Note that means if you want to attack and dodge in the same action you are limited to the lower of the two stats for your total dice pool, unless you have a schtick.
2) It's time to downgrade Speed some. When you run out of actions, you still refresh your dice at the start of each new action and can use them for defenses/reactive rolls, you just can't move/make active rolls.
3) Magic:
You probably noticed the world has colored zones now.
The Rainbow River is gone, and each of the colored zones is a perpetual field of that magic color in which random magic occasionally happens (less often than on one of the river sides, but periodically).
The zone you were born in (your "color") changes how you interact with magic. You may never learn any spells of the opposed color. You may learn not just the base-version of your color's magic, but also the two other varieties that were present in the surges. You may learn one of the other four colors' base-version with no negative interference effects. You may not be a Rainbow Mage.
In a zone, spells of the opposed color only work if they are the base-version of that color, and even those are one difficulty harder, and if they have a duration it will drop significantly. Spells of a non-base-version of a non-opposed color are one difficulty harder.
If you were born on the "Rainbow Isles" in the Inland Sea (or on the open ocean or somewhere else weird and not in the colored zones), you get the old magic rules - one base-color, the opposed base-color is learnable by giving up dispels, learning non-opposed colors either burns out your skill or requires having a Rainbow Mage shtick/skill. There's no school teaching Rainbow Magic, but there are rumored to be a couple of self-taught Rainbow Mages in the Rainbow Isles. All spells work at their normal difficulty in those areas.
Spells cost 1 skill point. Skill in a full base-version of a color is breadth five 5, more limited base-version skills are narrower. Skill in a full non-base version of a color costs 3 (if you can buy it at all). If you have access to broader skills, you can get full-base+1 non-base for breadth 6 and full-base+both non-base for 7.
Spells that buff dice will be higher difficulty than they used to be.
Note that color is based on what zone you are born in, not what your parents were or where you grew up. For Elves that's "where you returned the last time you heard your song." Half-elves don't *normally* change color when they hear their song, but you might be able to argue me into it as a special case. If you don't start as a Mage, you can choose not to know what your actual color is. I might let you choose it later, or I might choose it for you. :-)
4) Races:
There are more available PC races. Each race gets you a bonus at character creation and a set of schticks you can buy outside your concept. Relations between the races aren't always smooth, but no one actively hates anyone else.
Humans: By far the most prolific race, the majority in all the zones except Green and reasonably frequent there, humans are generalists. They start with either 1 six-broad skill, or 2 intrinsic skills (of a normal breadth). Human Schticks are about making skills easier somehow.
Elves: The second most common race overall, and the majority race in Green. Divided into sub-races (High Elf/Forest Elf/Dwarf/Halfling/Pooka/Slugha/Sylph/Troll). Effectively immortal unless killed, but occasionally "hear their song" and wander off to come back as a new elf with only vague memories of their past. Start with a shtick based on their sub-race, and can buy more based on that. Tend towards magic and away from religion.
Half-Elves: The children of humans and elves, half-elves are the least common race. They are half-(specific elven subtype), but the subtype only influences personality and flavors schticks, rather than giving them innate magics. Long lived, they "hear their song" much more frequently than elves, but mostly remember who they were before when they come back. Half-elves start with a shtick bought by me and an extra point of Luck. They will "hear their song" ~once/real-world year, causing a partial radiation accident in which they can rebuy a bunch of stuff, but I get to rebuy about as much of the rest of their stuff. (NB: 1/year is faster-in-game than usual, but it's a comet...) Half-elves don't get any special types of shticks for their race, just concept shticks, but they pay 1 less ep for breadth of concept, and buy color shticks for 2 instead of 3.
Centaurs: Half-human, half-horse. They are mostly concentrated in the north of the main continent (Red and Purple) and Jabar (Yellow). They generally live in Herds, and don't integrate with the other races much. The Herds in Purple all answer to a single Head Stallion, the Herds in Red and Yellow have individual leaders. The Herds in Red and Purple claim they are the True Centaurs, and that the Jabaran centaurs are "only" unBroken cataurs, although there's been enough mixing that it's unlikely anyone is purely True or Recovered at this point. Centaurs start with an extra point of Body, a shtick in Gallop (when you roll move to move further, you get 4 hexes per success instead of 2), and a bonus suckage in "not humanoid". Can get more schticks based on being half-horse. Tend towards religion and away from magic.
Sauriens: Vaguely reptilian humanoids, Sauriens are naturally resistant to magic and miracle, and as a result can develop a slightly higher tech level without it being interrupted by random magical effects. This is most obvious in their secret Black Powder, an explosive of considerable force. Other races speak of rumors of their Council of Elders that makes decisions for all Sauriens, and they definitely seem more organized as a race than the other races, although they certainly still have internal conflicts. They are mostly concentrated in Orange, with a significant military outpost on Melmaine (Blue) dedicated to fighting Slith. Sauriens start with a schtick in "the first three successes of all spells/miracles (friend or foe) bounce off me", and can increase or modify that resistance with more schticks. Can also get schticks in claws or scales.
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World Background (Religion):
None of the religions are currently illegal anywhere, although priests/followers of a religion taking up residence on someone else's holy ground are rare, and usually results in conversion if they stick around for terribly long (on the scale of years, not weeks).
Purple is holy to the Twins. Priests of the Twins are still all male. The Church of Tam and the Church of Tem are more separate from each other than they were in the first run, and more unified churches rather than squabbling monastic orders. Balance priests are part of the Bureaucracy, and tend to be less focused on religious duties. (Priests of the twins from elsewhere are closer to what you remember, with minor monastic orders to particular faces of a Twin or Balance.)
Red is holy to Rush, and Rush is clearly the pre-eminent god there. The rest of the Five are respected, but tend not to have their own churches, there are churches of Rush and churches of the Five (where Rush is usually still the clear focus, although individual priests may follow one of the other gods). In churches of the Five outside of Red, Navere's role as queen of the gods tends to be better remembered, but churches to individual gods of the Five are still rare, and Paladins of Rush are still the most common type of priest.
Yellow is holy to the Goddess, and Her Church is led by the three Ladies of Love, Life, and Lore, from their palaces at the mouths of the Three Great Rivers. (Whether the Maharani's River is Greatest or not-Great-at-all is a discussion to be avoided in polite company.) Male priests of the Goddess tend to find more welcome outside of Yellow, and the Church of Al'an is based in Rin'yan, in Orange. A man wishing to become a priest of the goddess must get the blessing of another male priest of the goddess before he can start learning divine shticks. (That doesn't cost any points, it's purely a plot thing.)
Nowhere is holy to Spirits, and there are no large public ones to be found, and few Shamans. To the extent they are present, spirits are most common in Green, where the Elves tend to ignore the gods, with minor presence in the other lands that are not holy to one of the main religions (Orange and Blue and the Rainbow Isles).
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World Background (Politics):
Historically, politics is mostly intra-zone, with a side of fighting with the rainbow isles for the four mainland zones that surround them (red/orange/green/purple). There's moderate trading between zones, and a little travel/immigration, but it turns out to be hard/impossible to rule territory in two colors at once, so there's not a lot of fighting between them. That has been less true in the last couple of decades and border skirmishes have become fairly common between the four mainland zones, but there haven't been any full fledged wars between zones in generations. When there is a need for inter-zone discussion or negotiations, it historically happens on the Rainbow Isles as "neutral territory." That's more commonly mainland zones, although Yellow and Blue have been known to discuss things there on occasion.
Red - Red is an area of continually rising and falling Kingdoms, in which you have to be constantly prepared to fight to hold/expand your territory. Most Classically European Fantasy Zone. At present there are four major Kingdoms, with border lands of petty nobility between them. In order of age, they are:
1) King Richard's Lands, currently ruled by King Richard III, about 200 years old and taking up a swath of the South of Red, abutting Orange - KRL has shrunk since it was founded by King Richard I, but Richard III has made some increases over what he was left by his father, King Albert.
2) Victoria, about 100 years old and ruled by Queen Ionia, granddaughter of the founder, Baroness Gabriella. In the Northwest, bordering Purple and the Broken Lands, Queen Ionia has spent most of her reign fighting outwards, rather than conquering more of Red.
3) Berana, along the eastern coast. Its ruler, King Olanson, has spent nearly 50 years expanding his territory. Although too old to seriously fight personally anymore, he still generals his kingdom's battles, and his large clan of children can handle the fighting. Has the strongest navy in the Mainland zones. Not clear how well it will hold together if Olanson dies.
4) Darstan, in the center. Founded about 20 years ago with the marriage of Baron Volstak and Duchess Zerbina, the two have formed a formidable team. Zerbina leads the army to conquer a new barony or duchy every year or so, and Volstak is a master of incorporating them into a united country once the conquest is complete. They still use Baron and Duchess as their titles, but their daughter is Princess Bella, and they are a kingdom in all but name.
Orange - The south-eastern mainland zone, Orange is a region dominated by trade and commerce. Orange is divided into 50 or more city states each of relatively limited territory. Each city has a representative in the Merchant's Guild, which makes most of the decisions for the zone in an ongoing squabble of infighting and politics. Each city is theoretically the equal of every other, but in practice, one the three cities of Kor, Rin'yan, and Vani is generally responsible for any new initiative. The zone with the most internal racial tension, as the three major cities are all led by humans, and the Sauriens tend to think they should have more say, being nearly half the population. Think Renaissance Italy, more or less.
Yellow - Far Jabar across the Merfolk's Ocean is the home of Yellow. More Indian than Arabian nowadays, with a Maharani instead of a Queen. Politics is mostly about who is important in the Maharani's court and who has her ear. Although on occasion in the past the Maharani has become effectively a puppet for other court officials, the present Maharani is well respected and the Lady of her own domain. The House system has been replaced by a caste system (Varna) dividing the populace into nobles/warriors, "priests", merchants/craftsmen, and farmers/laborers. Children of the first three varna can be moved fairly easily into another until they come of age, depending on what they show talent at, and adults in the last can be "promoted" into one of the three upper varna as a reward for significant service, but it is difficult to impossible to move between the three upper varna as an adult. While all priests of the goddess are expected to be of the Priest varna, not all members of the caste are actual priests, with many of them acting as teachers or artists or philosophers instead. The Three Ladies are the heads of the Priest Varna. There are no official leaders of the Merchant/craftsman Varna. Elves and half-elves are mostly incorporated into the Varna. Centaurs have an unclear relationship with the Varna - Herds generally divide along the same lines, but centaur warriors are not generally considered exactly the same class as the warrior Varna. They are more like a second, separate set of Varna, although they do all answer in theory to the Maharani or the Ladies. There are not really enough Sauriens around to have a clear interaction with the Varna as a race.
Green - The lands of the Elves, in the south-west of the mainland. It has been divided into three Kingdoms, the Forest, the Plains, and the Mountains, since the War of the Lord and the Lady (the last comet), and the grudges between its rulers are said to go back even farther. The three Kingdoms hardly ever actually go to war, but they are not friends. The King of the Forest is a High Elf, Their Majesty of the Plains is a sluagh, and The Queen Under the Mountains is a dwarf. The Queen is the nominal ruler of Kern, the only major human city in Green, although she does not pay so much attention to it as it sits above the mountains.
Blue - The Blue Zone has been ruled by Blue Mages from time immemorial, long before the Archipelago became a single island in the War of the Lord and the Lady. Although there was a significant upheaval with that change, as governance shifted from each Mage having their own island to a more communal rule-by-committee, it has long since settled down, and Challenge Duels between the Mages to settle points of ownership or control have been limited to one or two a year for centuries. Melmaine is the only one of the Surface Lands to have any regular interactions with the Merfolk Kingdoms, and assists them in their eternal war with the Slith. The Saurien military encampment on Melmaine that also assists in that war is basically its own city, with limited interaction with the rest of the island, and the Mages rarely intrude there, where the power of Magic is limited.
Purple - The last of the mainland zones, Purple has been run by the Bureaucracy since the death of the last Orcslayer, more than a thousand years ago. The servants of the Empty Throne still run the Empire in the name of the Orcslayer, and purport to be seeking the Sword that Was Lost to restore the line, but cynics both in Purple and outside of it think they may not be looking so hard as all that. Bureaucrats are frequently purple mages or balance priests or both, although it is not required. It is rare to be a purple mage or balance priest and *not* be a Bureaucrat, however. Advancement in the Bureaucracy is a matter of doing well on the periodic exams and impressing one's superiors. Without the Orcslayer to lead the Armies, the Empire's forces are not what they once were, and the majority of Purple's military might is in the hands of the Lead Stallion and his herds.
Rainbow - The "Rainbow Isles" in the middle of the inland sea are orders of magnitude smaller in both size and population than any of the major zones. They survive as a neutral ground and meeting place, and because none of the mainland powers is willing to see one of the others establish control over the Isles. No one is officially in charge of them, but few in the Isles would dare cross Cara Benefice, "the Pirate Queen". Her fleet is the largest in the Inland Sea, and any merchant who wants to cross it is wise to pay her first for safe passage. Actual piracy is relatively rare in the past 20 years since she came to power, but the fine line between "taxes" and "extortion" is non-existent in her "lands". About ten years ago she laid claim to Middlesea, the keep where inter-zone negotiations are traditionally held, as her "capital," and it is there that she has invited representatives to attend a Conclave to discuss the appearance of the Comet.
World Background (languages)
The lingua-franca is Human/Common, the language that is most common in Red/Purple/Orange, and that is the language that all PCs start with. Other common tongues are Elvish, Saurien, and Centaur, Melmani, and Jabaran. The Recovered Herds in Jabar are more likely to speak Jabaran than Centaur. Uncommon tongues include Mer, Slith, Orcish, and Goblin, as well as various ancient languages. Uncommon tongues don't cost more than common ones, but you should have some sort of explanation in world why you'd start with one.
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World Background (geography changes)
Red and Purple stretch all the way north to the mountains, and the land that far north is all unbroken. There is basically none of the mixed zone of orcs and humans that Weythran came from anymore, although there is a little contact between the civilized races and the broken ones across the mountains.
The Rainbow river no longer exists, and does not trap the Broken Lands on the east. The Broken Seas continue to Jabar in a more or less straight line, hitting Jabar just north of the northernmost river. They are well north of Melmaine, but there is ongoing fighting between slith and merfolk in the oceans along the line between Broken and Unbroken.
The gap between Kor and Kern has been closed, and the Inland Sea is now fully inland.
Melmaine is a single large island, rather than an archipelago. The ocean between the mainland and Melmaine/Jabar is full of merfolk.
Past the mountains of Jabar to the East, the desert is full of Cataurs and the Demon Oasis. They have historically resisted working directly for the Breaker, but they are still Broken, and not friends to Jabar.
I'll sketch a new map sometime soonish.