Omnis Mundi: Big Times in the City

Last Saturday I got together with +Timothy Shiflet and +Paul Carroll  to make characters. +Loyd Digg Johnson was sick and unable to make it, and +Ron Frazier still couldn't make it. I was going to do character creation and then do a bit of a starting scenario. As we were missing a few players we did what we could. We worked through character creation and did a bit of joint world building. Over all we had a lot of fun, and I think we set up a pretty good basis for adventuring.

So here are the character that my players made:

Player: +Timothy Shiflet
Character Name: Talathriel
High Concept: Conflicted Agent for the Unseelie Court
Trouble: Cannot Tell a direct lie
Aspect: Damn The Man
Aspect: I know the Perfect Place
Aspect: ?

Skills
+4 Deceive
+3 Athletics, Stealth
+2 Fight, Burglary, Notice
+1 Investigate, Physique, Shoot, Will

Stunts & Extras
Elf Extra: To play an elf you must have elf in your high concept and you must reduce your refresh by one. The elf aspect means that you are immune to age. You do not get sick. Provided you do not die from your wound immediately you will eventually heal from any damage. You can see perfectly in even the dimmest of light. You can invoke your elf aspect to be better than others at any skill the requires fine motor skills. You can be compelled to be viewed as aloof. People feel like elves look down at them.
Mind Games
Dazing Counter
Glamour: Lets you cast visual and auditory illusions with deceive. Increase difficulty by one per zone.
Hack and Slash: Lets you use burglary in place of technology for hacking computer systems.

Gear
Computer with hacking programs, Massive Damage Fae Crafted Blade(black blade), Gossamir armor(massive damage)

Personal item of great importance: Manacle(represents his ties to his overlord)
Refresh: 1

Player: +Paul Carroll
Character Name: Aaron “Razor” Dobbs
High Concept: Psychic Street Warrior
Trouble: Hunted By the Shadow Suns
Aspect: I can be more
Aspect: Ebb and Flow of the streets
Aspect: ?

Skills

+4 Burglary

+3 Fighting, Stealth

+2 Athletics, Physique, Will

+1 Contacts, Technology, Pilot, Rapport

Stunts & Extras
Mind Knives Extra: You need to have psychic in your high concept. It can be invoked to make you a mystic warrior par excellence. You now have access to energy knives made from your mental energy. It appears to be made from a glowing energy. You can use fighting as though you had a weapon even if you have no weapon. You can gain access to a bunch of stunts to improve your mind knives or mystically enhance your fighting ability.

Massive Damage Knives: Your Mind Knives is far more dangerous than normal. Your knives now counts as  Massive Damage Weapons.
Aggressive Defense: When you are defending in hand to hand combat and succeed with style. Rather than gaining a boost you can immediately do two stress to the attacker(three if you have a Massive Damage Weapon and your opponent does not have massive damage armor you deal an extra stress).
Mystic Will: You gain a +2 bonus to will defense actions when dealing with supernatural mind effects.

Gear
Street bike, Electronic lock picks, Tricorder

Personal item of importance: Gang Clothes
Refresh: 2

So there are the characters. We left the last aspect blank so as to link up with the other players. We also did some world building and added in some more depth the the City.

The Shadow Suns
A gang of psychic youths who have trained their minds as weapons. Led by Aaron's brother Drask "The Blood Axe." They are thugs, though small in number, they do a lot of mischief. They are hunting Aaron for leaving the gang. Drask is a blunt instrument of a man, a self aggrandizing bully

The Unsellie Court in the City
The court is always in flux, Fae vying for prestige and rank. Each gain in power leads to an even more dangerous game. The Unseelie do not deal in material possessions, but in Oaths and debts. The more debt one collects, the more power one has.

Sade, Spirit of Slaughter, is Talathriel's contact in the City. It was once a major Unseelie Lord, but a recent failure has led to a lessening of its influence. Sade now seeks to gain back what it lost, but it cares little for what Talathriel does, so long as the reports keep coming in.

And that is what we came up with for our game. Here is the recording of the session, should you wish to watch it all:


Here is the rest of the setting documents should you be interested.
1. Introduction to the Setting
2. Character Creation
3. Solutuhz, The Unbound City
4. Tasmania by +Tom Tyson
5. City of Book
6. City of Book, addendum7. Lord Gene and the Animal Men
8: The City

Let me know what you think.

Omnis Mundi: The City

Last Saturday I got together with +Timothy Shiflet +Loyd Digg Johnson and +Paul Carroll to discuss our upcoming game of Omnis Mundi. +Ron Frazier was unable to make it, but we have hopes that he will be able to join the campaign proper. The session was mostly devoted to getting to know my new players and building the setting. I know what you are thinking, after all the work already done on the setting, what more needs to be done? Well that is what is so lovely about setting creation, you can always add more in. And let me tell you, we added some really awesome stuff, and built a really cool set piece in which to play our game.
The session started out with some basic ideas. I asked what the players were looking to to experience in the setting. After this initial idea mining, we came up with a solid basic idea. A city that spans the dimensions through the tears. This city is ruled by an evil entity that only cares for its own power and wealth. The players wanted something like Game of Thrones, with politics and big issues being just as important as anything else. A science fantasy mega-city with links to all other times and places. There was even mention of a Realm of the Bagel Lords, so that might become a thing. We then moved on to some basic character idea generation. The characters my players came up with is pretty fantastic, not gonna' lie. So here is The City and the setting for our game as it opens.

Upon the ruins of the ruins of Old Detroit lies The City. Once a shining example of mankind's potential and glory, now it is a blight hidden within the shining facade of culture and prosperity. Ruled over by the Demon Lord, The City spreads its influence throughout all the possible universes. The Demon Lord keeps control over the city by encouraging infighting and treachery among the powerful factions within The City. Each vies for power within the city, the ends differ but they all need power to achieve them.

The City stands tall, shining towers of impossible delicacy scrape the atmosphere, connected together by gossamer webs of bridges. This glorious center is surrounded by the squat dark factories belching smoke and the rookeries oozing with desperation and sorrow. The Wall stands circumference about the city, hugging it close to the great freshwater sea. Day and night the people are out in the streets, boulevards, and arcades selling and buying. In The City everything is for sale, if you know where to look or who to ask. Beneath all the noise, sorrow, and glamour lies the deep city, catacombs and tunnels containing true ruins from the Golden Lands. Only the most desperate or foolhardy dare enter the deep city, though it is said anything can be found their for those found worthy.

The Current Major Factions: 
The Sons of the Dawn: Freedom is the right of every sapient being. This is the credo of the Sons of the Dawn. They believe in freedom and justice, at least on paper. For many years they were nothing but a small movement of like minded individuals. They never had the economic or political clout to do more than spread pamphlets and talk of freedom in barrooms. IN recent years certain criminal families have begun backing the faction in the hopes of gaining more influence in The City. This had led to some of the members speaking out, for the crime families see the faction as a way to gain and exert control. While the leadership is still the core members who believe what they always have, many feel that the faction has lost its way and become blinded by power and money.

A Better Tomorrow
Indulgence Now

The Military: The strong right arm of the Demon Lord, the obvious sign of his rule. Brainwashed from birth to be warriors, they are given battle drugs to enhance reflexes, dull pain, and remove empathy. The side effect of these drugs is a dark mind magic, they radiate an aura of despair and terror. Upon seeing them, many enemies just flee in terror. These paladins of darkness are completely dependant upon the drug. Should they fail to receive it the withdrawal symptoms are dangerous and terrifying. The begin to have violent hallucinations, intense rages, and a complete lack of control. Without the drug they fly into a berserk fury and attack all around them until exhaustion or damage cause them to stop.

Storm troopers of the abyss

Need the drugs

Little Fott Consortium: When the Demon Lord came to The City he found a group of trans dimensional beings had already taken up residence there. They were the Little Fott clan from a dimension where dinosaurs developed sapience. They worshiped The Devourer, a dark god that demanded ritual sacrifice through the devouring of other species. The Demon Lord made a deal with this clan, they would be given access to the many dimensions to trade and raid, and they would not stand in his way. Their currency, the silver leaf, is the main currency of The City. On the nights of the new moon, the poor and disenfranchised know to lock up their doors tight, for it is on that night that the Little Fott consortium hunt and eat other sapient life in sacrifice to the Devourer. They are heavily invested in the status quo, and seek to ensure things continue on as they have been going.

The Money Must Flow
Food For The Old God

Children of the Demon: These are the aristocrats, overseers, and administrators of the city. They are the priests of the Cult of the Demon Lord. Their are many rumors as to the origin of the Children. It is said that they summoned the Demon Lord to this plane, that they are in fact his spawn in some way, or even that they caused the fall of the Golden Land. All that is known is that they have a link to the Demon Lord in some way and that they are dangerous. Very Dangerous.

Servants of the Demon lord

Chained by Bureaucracy


The Character Concepts
Loyd: A drug addicted combat mentat who is one of the rebel leaders. He is always in the right spot at the right time.

Paul: A guttersnipe with brain knives made of energy.

Tim: An Elven spy of the Unseelie Court sent to scout this dimension for conquest. He does not wish to see this world destroyed and secretly works against his dark masters.

And that is what we did on Saturday. Next Saturday, the games begin!

FATEsy Heartbreaker: Underpinnings of Creation

While working on Jadepunk I keep coming up with loads of ideas, for my other projects and for brand new projects. Primarily I have been working on Heartbreaker in my spare moments, trying to drill down to the interesting substrates of the game, reworking what needs polish. I recently started a couple of discussions about what makes a Paladin, and what makes a Druid(feel free to jump in on either discussion). I will probably continue along those lines for a while, opening discussions on the what the core of various fantasy ideas entail. However, in even just these two days of discussion I discovered some areas that require some work. I need to work out the structure of the universe and the nature of magic and the deities.

Here is my thinking on the deities of Heartbreaker.

The world was designed by rational beings and thus behaves according to rational logic. However, as multiple beings were involved in the creation of the world what is rational and logical shifts depending on which gods have authority at that time and place. The world is currently dragging its way out of a major shift in godly authority. This is due to the god war which brought down the last great empire on the world.

Basically when you support your god it allows you to "break" the current laws of physics as you now operate, to some extent, within your gods preferred paradigm. There would need to be some touch points though, things like time and space would need to still work and the rest of the laws of physics would exist, but on a sliding scale of godly preference. There would need to be some sort of groundwork, that is agreed upon by all the creator gods.

When you are in an area where your god/pantheon does not control supplication difficulty is increased...or you take mental stress to reduce it(max you can take brings it down to baseline). Supplication has no direct skill. You must create advantages to have a bonus on the roll. Supplication advantages are ritual, cleansing, sacrifice...and need to think on this. Miracles are basically when physics goes sideways to your advantage for a scene...maybe, perhaps there are certain stunts you can only get through supplication to your deity, or deities.

The rules of gods that I have worked out.

Gods control a raw, primal, creative magic.

Gods can be born or/and made.

Gods can die(this was a surprise when they discovered this, some interaction of gods and their creation allows for this outcome).

Gods cannot unmake something gods have made.

Gods do not(or cannot) take thier gifts back.

That is what I have, so far. Now the questions I must ask. Is morality external to the gods, or created by the gods? If external, what enforces it? If the gods created it, what makes one morality better or less relative than any morality created by man? What are the ramifications of gods that work the way I ave outlined them working? I am going to keep working on this, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the answers to these or any other questions you might raise.