Roll20 is pretty cool (and my Scion campaign is a little creepy)

Of the four campaigns I'm currently GMing, only one of them is face-to-face. The other three all use Roll20 as an online host so I can game with friends in other states.

Roll20 is a pretty cool set of tools for running RPGs over the net. It's got audio, video and text chats, dice rollers and customizable tools (decks, charts, tokens, API scripts, etc) for automating your mechanics, and a virtual table top with live-updating for your maps and tokens. I'm pleased with it. It's still not quite as good as running a game in person, but the tools are good enough to almost consider using them instead of dice and minis at the tabletop. If you're going to be running a game online for some reason, I strongly recommend Roll20.

Here's a partial screen shot from yesterday's session.
The setting is Scion, but the rules are FATE. Tracking down a lead, the PCs broke into a Museum after hours. So I grabbed a map I found online of the Chicago Field Museum, and slapped it down on the virtual tabletop. The Curator of Antiquities had an eyepatch, so clearly that meant he was evil. :) They eventually caught him performing a creepy ritual with the bodies of mummified children, about which I had prepared a virtual handout with some disturbing images.

4 Campaigns at once

On top of my Continuum RPG that I run nearly every Wednesday night (and have been for 4+ years now),  I'm now adding 3 other campaigns.

On Mondays, I'll be running two games, that alternate roughly every other week, depending on which players are available.  These are with people who were in my Continuum game, but had to drop out for various reasons mainly having to do with inability to schedule everyone on the same night (and one player being unable to show up more than twice a month, regardless of day).

So, on Mondays when everyone's going to be around, we'll be doing short-shots and mini-series. The first one I'm going to run will be starting 2 or 3 weeks from now, and probably be a Scion game, but using either Fate or PDQ for the rules as those are much simpler systems than Scion's default White Wolf d10 system. Frankly, the setting and concept of Scion are great, but the mechanics were a pain in the butt past Hero level anyway. This miniseries will last 4 to 8 sessions, and then one or more of the players will take over GMing some other miniseries for a while, before I cycle in again. When I do, I'll probably try another stab at Night's Black Agents, which I like a lot but I got the impression one of my players wasn't thrilled with Gumshoe.

On the alternating Mondays (starting a week from today), when the one player just can't make it because of rotating work schedules, I'll be running 7th Sea. Again, the 7th Sea setting is better than the easily-broken system, so for this I'll be using a hybrid that is 80% PDQ, 15% 7th Sea, and 5% Fate (just character creation).  Light, mostly simple, and easy for me to improvise because I've got a lot experience with the setting.

Continuum continues on Wednesdays, though with a slightly smaller play group than it once had.

On Sundays, I'll be running a huge Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Ed campaign. We made characters yesterday, and it was awesome. More about that in a future post, I assure you.

4 games at once, using 3 and a half rules sets, 1 of which is mechanically crunchy (Warhammer), and 1 of which requires extensive multi-timeline micromanagement (Continuum). So, clearly,  I'll have zero free time in the next few weeks as I sort things out to get 3 games launched, and not many aimless days in the weeks thereafter.

It's possible I just might be crazy for trying to juggle all this at once.

A Tale Of Two Forums

"A couple years ago, White Wolf released this RPG called Scion. I started a campaign the first chance I got.

At first, I loved it, but I was really bummed how long it took them to release new material for it. Six months out, all they had was one rulebook, and a super-short demo adventure. Their release schedule kept falling apart, and it was frustrating, too, because that first book was at best 1/3rd of the setting and rules. PCs in Scion have a primary stat called that can be rated from 2 to 12, and the first book only covered characters with a rating of 2 to 4. It took them nearly a year to get the second and third books out, IIRC.

Anyhow, I was running the game for that whole time, and a good while later. There were things I loved about it, but the more I analyzed the game, the more it fell apart. I eventually came to the conclusion that the core mechanics were broken, and that later books just compounded those problems. Of course, I was emotionally invested in the game by then, so when I thought about these things, I got fired up.

I spent a lot of time at the Scion forums, posting various house-rules and what have you. What I noticed though, was that I spent less and less time coming up with cool new things to improve my gaming experience (and those of others I interacted with on the forums) and more and more time just venting about the rules and the company. There were things they were doing wrong with Scion, and I just had to let everyone know.

Every topic that came up on the forum, I figured out some way to bring it back around to the things that pissed me off about the game and the direction it was going. I got quite cynical. I knew that I was no longer being helpful to others, and that I was probably just coming off as troll. There they were, trying to post all their cool ideas about a game they loved, and I'd just come along and rain on everyone's parade.

Then, just over a year ago, White Wolf rebooted their forum software. Everyone that wanted to post on the new version of the forum had to build their account all over again. Knowing, as I did, that I had long before ceased to gain enjoyment or serve a useful function at that forum, I declined to make a new account. I just walked away.

Ever since that, I've felt better. Other facets of my life improved, because I was no longer voluntarily subjecting myself and others to my own negativity."

I typed that up at the FFG WFRP forums today, and have not yet decided whether or not to post it. The WFRP 3rd Edition forum has several rather obnoxious posters, who just troll the place, taking every opportunity they can to bitch about the new edition. Half the time they're screaming about how angry they are because the game has only had three releases in 6 months, whereas 2nd Ed has years of sourcebooks. The rest of the time they bitch about how "it's a board game, not an RPG" because it uses colorful cards. Edition wars are part and parcel of the gaming experience, but this is pretty extreme.

And I'm left wondering why the hell do these people think we care? I wish they would just move on, and not linger around a forum that is intended for the enjoyment of a product they don't like. I mean, it's not like there isn't already a really good forum for 2nd Ed WFRP, and for people who just want to rant about how much they hate 3rd Ed. It's called Strike To Stun. And yet, even when they're getting me all fired up by trolling at the only good 3rd Ed forum, I can understand where they're coming from, because my own Scion experience was so like what they are doing.

Eventually, you just need to break the cycle.

I'm glad I finally found the strength to move on and leave Scion behind. I hope they find the strength to do the same for Warhammer's forums. If you hang out at places where people like the same things as you, you'll enjoy your life a lot more, and feel much better about yourself. If you insist on trolling places where other people enjoy things you hate, you can only make everyone (yourself included) feel worse. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

More Crunchometer

Here's a quick link for anyone that found my Crunchometer useful or interesting. (The Crunchometer is a system for categorizing RPG mechanics by overall complexity level and burden on the players. Link to my original post)

Anyhow, the main point of today's post is to provide a link to a blog that used my idea. "Vampire", author of the blog Alea lacta Est, put up some crunchometer ratings for games he's run. Here's the link to his crunchometer ratings. Many of the games he rates overlap with ones I rated, but he adds Ninja Burger, and disagrees with me a tiny bit on a few White Wolf products.

A quick aside about that: Comparing our ratings, I see he marked Scion a little less complicated than I did, but Exalted more complicated. Hmm... Glad I never got past character-creation in Exalted. :) All joking aside, I will say that Scion starts out much simpler than it becomes. Hero-level Scion, especially if you're just using the Hero book, is probably a c12 in my opinion as well, it's just that as you push into Demigod and God the mechanics start coming apart at the seams and maintaining play balance becomes a continual chore.

Relearning How To Breathe

When I ran Continuum, I had to largely give up the notion of controlling the pacing of the game. Players were time-travellers, and could bop over to whatever moment caught their interest. There were things I could do to provide direction, but if they really wanted to focus in on a moment, or span over the slow bits, they could do that themselves, and as long as they didn't frag themselves in the process I couldn't stop them. This made for a game that was very player driven, and every moment was entertainly pregnant with opportunity. It was a great campaign.

That "I've got ADD, lets span" dynamic made me a little lazy, though, and thus when I ran the Amber campaign that started the week after my Continuum campaign dropped curtain, I did a poor job of pacing. Instead of grabbing the reigns and cutting scenes, I spent too much time waiting for players to do things in the first 6 sessions. I sort of blame Continuum, because it required I take such concise notes, and left me really wanting to prep and record absolutely nothing. One campaigns success contributed to another campaigns failure.

When I ran Scion, I definitely got the pacing back under control - at least outside of combat. The combat system was pretty volatile, however, and the game rules had ugly tattered seams. I started house-ruling to mend them, bit by bit. As the campaign progressed, and the basic math of the system fell apart, I had to compensate by getting much more aggressive in my house-ruling. When the second chapter of the Scion companion released in PDF, I tore into it, leveling harsh criticism and pre-emptively houseruling like a man possessed. I don't regret that, in and of itself. White Wolf composes beautiful settings, but their "too many cooks" approach to authorship results in sloppy, even contradictory, rules with holes you could drive a mac truck through. Scion is, hands down, the worst perpetrator of White Wolf's signature flaw that I've read. The game is desperately in need of a revised edition, but they'll probably never make one and I'll probably be too jaded to buy it if they did. End result was a game my players are still talking lovingly about the setting and plot, but which I hated to run. Too much hard work and frustration.

So now I'm running Deadlands Reloaded. It's "rules medium-light", meaning a little lighter than D&D 4th, but a step heavier than vanilla Savage Worlds. It's got some extra complexity (beyond Savage Worlds) in the Magic system, Dueling rules, a few other card draws, and the way Bennies work. The first printing had some rough edges. They weren't nearly as tattered as Scion's rules, and Pinnacle released a nice little FAQ that mended 95% of the fraying. It's still not perfect, but it's more than playable.

Problem is, the campaign that went before is casting a shadow on the various games that follow. Just as Continuum allowed me to focus on flavor and PC freedom at the cost of pacing, Scion has inclined me to focus on niggling rules flaws at the cost of... well, I'm not sure at the cost of what (beyond perhaps my peace of mind), since we've only done character creation. I am noticing, however, that my gut instinct has become to bitch here and then house-rule. It's kinda sad how quickly I jump to fix what ain't necessarily broke.

For example, in Deadlands Reloaded, I find that the Poker Hands chart isn't perfectly to my liking:

• it isn't terribly clear whether "Jacks of Better" counts as a whole hand rank above a mundane pair when you're dueling, or if that's just for spellcasting. (Same vagueness with Ace High - is it just a tie breaker in a duel or does it count as a hand rank above slop?)
• the system ranks Straight Flush above 5 of a Kind - despite 5 of a kind requiring a Joker. Jokers burn the PC a little, so I'd think you'd wanna make the best possible hand require them.
• they didn't make the Dead Man's Hand special. The hand is both black aces, both black eights, and whatever you believe the 5th card Wild Bill Hickock drew - I lean towards Jack of Diamonds myself - seconds before he died.

For those incredibly minor "flaws", I nearly house-ruled it to duplicate the hand ranks of Doomtown, the old Deadlands CCG. That would have been silly and pointless, since I'm the only person in the group who played Doomtown, and the vagueness about a pair of jacks in a duel will hardly ever come up. If and when it does, I can rule on it. The other two complaints are just flavorful things, and functional (playtested!) mechanics is probably more important than cramming just a little bit more flavor into an already zesty rule set.

As I look through the Deadlands Reloaded book, lots of little things like that keep popping up. What can I say? Scion made me gun shy. I need to learn to just "go with the flow" again, instead of riding hard to head off potential rules-flaws at the pass. I need to relearn how to relax and breathe.

(If I'm smart) this will be my last post about Scion...

...but I'm a glutton for punishment, so I'll probably think about it more again sometime, and when I do, I may feel compelled to blog about it.

I love the concepts behind Scion. The idea of an overly cinematic game about playing the modern child of a classical god and the ascension to divine/mythic proportions is awesome. There's some great stories to be told within that setting/theme. I was absolutely gonzo about the game for a long while. In my last few months at the game store I used to manage, I hand-sold Hero to several dozen people. It was our top non-d20 RPG by a wide margin.

I remained happy with the game for most of Hero. The flaws were noteworthy, but didn't appear insurmountable. Vampire had a lot of flaws, but I'd still had great fun running it (both tabletop and LARP) for years. The longer we played Scion though, the more pronounced the flaws became. Creating a balanced action scene was nearing impossible by late Demigod, as a variation in just one dot of Epic can mean a task goes from guaranteed to impossible, or a fight from stalemate to murder.

I have a certain amount of time I'm willing to spend on GM-prep between sessions. Normally, I spend that time working on not just plot, but character motivations, scenery, artsy descriptions and other fun surprises to work into the game. With a wide-open setting like Scion, there was a lot of freedom to push the envelope. You'd think I'd have been spending my time happily crafting a campaign that was full of artistry. Instead, as things progressed, it took more and more of my time trying to create action scenes that wouldn't fizzle out anticlimactically, nor wipe out the whole party in 5 ticks. You can't balance that game, at least not without a lot more work than I was willing to put in each week, and I'm a kept man!

In the early stages, I would apply little band-aid fixes as problems cropped up. By mid-demigod, I was proactively searching out problems, since we'd had such headaches from the ones that had blindsided us. At God, I rewrote large sections because I could see the default interactions (and math) at Legends 9-11 were just plain broken. Problem was, the more house-rules we threw at it to fix the problems, the more unstable the whole thing became. Yet I kept trying, because I loved the setting and concepts so much, I was dedicated to making the darned mechanics work somehow.

Two computer crashes, NaNoWriMo, and holiday scheduling conflicts made it hard for us to get together for our weekly sessions. Once I got away from the game for a little while, I was able to see:

• how much energy and fun that mountain of prep-work was sucking away,
• how the campaign wasn't living up to it's potential because of my having to focus on mechanics instead of theme, setting or character,
• and how happy I was to not work on it for a week.

Once I'd done that analysis, it was clear it wasn't worth my running Scion anymore. I needed to get away from it.

I could still see myself running a game in the Scion setting some time, but I'd no doubt use mechanics from Wushu (or some other really light-weight narrative game) instead, so that we could focus on the story rather than the mechanical imbalance.

Bitching about Scion

I'm in a mood. Where to start?

• Turns out the system "they stole from me" wasn't nearly as stolen as I thought. :) I missed one really important thing they changed from my old Improvised Weapon System: the Damage calculation.
  Damage went downhill, pretty seriously. Big skyscrapers are now (at best) +13 dice. Smacking someone with an entire Armored Personel Carrier now does less damage than a mundane axe. A 3,500 lb dumpster full of garbage dropped from +4 autosuccesses (and a bonus die) to being merely +3 dice. Across the board, the damage bonus on everything dropped by at least half, and in some cases down to a 1/3 what I'd had it at.
  This is worth mentioning, since by far the most common complaint my system ever got was "things don't do enough damage" - the new official version of the system actually amplifies that flaw. At the risk of sounding a bit pompous, my system is better.
  
  
  
• Scion: Ragnarok released today. Turns out the fixed version of Jotunblut they'd promised us isn't better. The problems with Jotunblut were that it was narrow, underpowered, and had no real basis in any of the norse myths. I'm told they only addressed the underpowered part, and made it stronger only if you also have corresponding boons in the Animal Purview. Perhaps I'm being hasty, since I haven't read it myself yet, but it sounds like a big failure. Sidhe16's alternate version is much better. Unless I hear something wonderful about some other portion of the Ragnarok book, I'll be passing.
  
  
  
• White Wolf just announced they're getting replacing their forums, and all the old threads will be going away. If there's anything there you'd like to keep, copy it to your computer before March 1st. Man, if only I'd heard about this during National Threaten To Stop Posting Week, then I could have threatened my little heart out. The fact that my threads, posts, and username will all be deleted from their site might just be enough to stop me from compulsively checking their forums every couple of days. I mean, my campaign wrapped up months ago, why do I keep putting myself through this..?
  Answer: 'Cause there's some cool people there, and I love gaming, and the core concepts of Scion are pretty nifty even if half the mechanics blow.
  

Pleasantly Surprised

The fourth section of the Scion Companion released yesterday. (I think. I noticed and downloaded it at like 2 am.)

Flipping through it, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see my own words in it. My Improvised Weapon System is in there. It's not likely to be a matter of independent parallel invention, like Terrible As The Dawn / Visage Great And Terrible was. I can say that because the system presented there uses the exact same categories, names, and nearly exactly the same stats as my system.

I put that system on the Scion Wiki, and the Scion Forums, because I intend it for other's use. I'm quite pleased and thrilled and honored that they chose to use it. It's work based on their game, and they absolutely have every right to use it.

How neat. I'm on cloud nine.

Scion +/-2

Thinking about my latest post, I find I admire Mark Rein-Hagen just a bit more, and the work of the 15 or so authors of White Wolf's more recent Scion line that much less.

• Mark designed Vampire: The Masquerade. In that first edition, he said there were 13 tribes of vampires, but only let PCs choose from between 7 of them. It was relatively easy to store the archetypes of 7 vampiric tribes in your mind. Easier than 13, anyway.
• In the game he had 9 attributes, and seemed to know that might be pushing the envelope of some people's memory. So, rather than giving you points to split 9 ways, he instead had you first rank Physical vs Social vs Mental. You'd make that 3-way decision, then move on to subsets of 3-way decisions to make it all easier to handle. Smart move, that.
• Likewise, instead of 30 skills, you had Skills, Abilities, and Talents, IIRC. You'd prioritize those 3 groups based on your concept of the characters professional or educational background. Then, within each group you'd get some number of points. This wasn't quite as fluid as the Attributes, but it was worthy effort, at least.

But then compare that to Scion:

• 6 pantheons to choose from in the main book. That's not too bad.
• But each pantheon has a dozen Gods statted out, and you have to choose one to be your parent. Luckily, you've got mythology to draw upon, it's not clans or characters you've never heard of. You probably already have one or two favorites from mythology.
• For attributes, they kept the Phy/Soc/Men distinction, and it's subchoices. Good for them. But for skills, they just made one big list of 25 or 30 skills, many of which are further subdivided into specialties. Luckily, skill dice become irrelevant fairly quickly, so poor choices at this stage won't hurt you much.
  
• Then you get 10 dots to split between Epics and Boons, combined. Here's where the problems set in.... There's 9 Epics (available at 1-3 dots each, and 15 knacks to choose from for each Epic), and 50+ boons (3 boons each in 16 standard purviews, +3 special purviews that use levels, one of which also has spells which adds another half-dozen choices at least) to choose from if you're making a Hero-level PC. Your divine parent gives you an xp break on half a dozen of those, but it's not such a break that it makes you stay purely "within type" - you can take any boon you want, and most PCs will dip outside the parently purviews.
  
• By mid-campaign, you've 200 to 400 things you could be spending your XP on, and it's downright overwhelming.

That last point pisses me off. Faced with a landslide of possible expenditures, the players who are playing for fun, or to portray a character or tell a story just don't work at figuring out the puzzle. They grab whatever strikes their fancy, 'cause they don't want to spend time trying to balance out everything. Meanwhile, the munchkins who are playing to stroke their own egos find it worth their time to analyze and dissect between games. So the very people you don't trust with the most powerful characters end up with characters that are more powerful than everyone else. If you simplify things, and are up-front about the best choices in character design, you end up with minimal power gap between the players you trust and the players you want to throttle.

Munchkin Slutty

From the Scion forums, advice for a new GM...

Grumpert wrote:

My only other advice is this system is not munchkin proof. It's not even muchnkin [sic] resistant. It's more munchkin slutty. Now if you have good players, this is a non issue. They will make who they want to make and play accordingly. If you have bad players, kill them, then run it.

That should be emblazoned on the cover of the first book. I may lay-out a little warning label to that effect, and print it out on a sticker sheet for my copy of Scion: Hero.

Ultimate Mass

I was about to provide someone on the forum with a link to James McMurray's big ol' Scion mass chart, when I realized it had an error.

Epic Strength 1 gives +500 lbs lifting capacity. The 2nd and 3rd dots double that. The 4th to 7th dots Quintuple the bonus at each level. The 8th to 10th dots multiply the total of the previous dot by 10.

It would appear the chart at James's site (which I and formorach69 helped create) didn't take that last transition into account. The chart was made before any of us were playing God-level PCs, and may have been made before the God book was published (I don't remember). Whatever the timing, the chart seems to progress levels 8 through 10 at the same x5 multiplier of levels 4 to 7. As a result, it lists the Empire State Building as Mass 11, when it's actually Mass 10. Military Tugboats should be adjusted to Mass 8. The entries for Loaded Freighter, Cruiser, and Large Bridge should all be downgraded to Mass 9.

I'm gonna try to contact James McMurray and get it fixed. He's not currently active on the Scion forum, so I might not be able to get it changed. Update: I got in touch with him, and he updated/fixed the page linked above.

Cult Birthright

Here's a link to a new Birthright proposed by Gnomish_American at the Scion forums. I think this birthright has a lot of potential, and I wish I'd remembered it when advancing our Scion PCs to Godhood.

It's intended to be a Gods-only birthright, like Avatar and Sanctum. It refreshes the legend pools of the character, based on the worship services of their mortal followers. As such, Gnomish_American's version had it granting Legend points at certain times of day and certain days of the week. I play kinda fast and loose with time (at least when not running Continuum), so that wouldn't work for me.

Instead, I'd have each dot of Cult:

• restore one point of temporary Legend at the start of each session.
• restore one point of temporary Legend any time the GM advanced time by 1 or more days. (If months or years pass, we're probably starting a new story, so everyone's whole pool refreshes regardless of cult level.)
  
• restore 5 points of temporary Legend once per story, to represent major holy days. The PC can invoke this at any time, but they don't get the restored points till the scene ends. That way, you can use it to "freshen-up" before going and doing something important, but you can't strain believability by timing religious festivals to occur in the middle of your battles.

While I didn't think to offer this birthright as an option while "leveling up" the PCs, I may just grant them all 2 dots for free. There was a point in the story where they saved a lost island and converted the natives to polytheism. This would be a fun way to reward those efforts.

Signature Power (Scion Knack) (Edited)

Here's a new knack I've approved for my campaign. This is the revised/edited version. The original was clunkier and wordier than it needed to be, and granted a secondary power that was not needed. Simply getting the speed break is good enough for 5 xp.

Signature Power
Wits Knack

The Scion has mastered one of their powers, such as a Boon or Knack. They know it inside and out, it's completely intuitive to them. This may be the result of constant practice, or just instinctual talent. You choose what pre-existing power becomes your "Signature Power" at the time you purchase this knack. You cannot chose reflexive powers (such as Damage Conversion) or those that already have a speed rating below 4 (such as Animal Aspect or the divine ability to become immaterial). The chosen power has it's activation speed reduced by one. Most commonly, this means it goes from being a Speed:5 miscellaneous action to being a Speed: 4 action.

The decision of which power to augment is permanent. Under normal circumstances, you can never change which power you chose, nor can you take this knack a second time to affect a different power - so choose wisely. However, the GM has the ability to waive this restriction under some circumstances. An example would be if the PC chose Water Control (Water 2) as their signature power, and later purchased Water Mastery (Water 6). The 6-dot boon specifically mentions that it duplicates the powers of the 2-dot boon, so the GM may let you revise which is your Signature Power. Shifting your Signature Power to the upgraded form requires permission from your story-teller, and an expenditure of 3 additional experience points. Once shifted, the lesser form is no longer their signature power, and only the advanced version benefits from this Knack.

Changes to Godhood

The PCs in my Scion group ascended to godhood recently. We didn't want this level of play to feel like superheroes, we wanted it to feel like gods. So we figured out how to do as much.

First off, we moved everyone up to Legend 11. Rather than charging 14 bonus points off the template to do so, I just charged 10, and the whole group advanced.

We made sure that everyone had some method to world-hop, so no PC would be stranded if they split up. Sanctums with gates, various movement powers, etc. To facilitate this, I gave them 1 free dot of sanctum, to represent "real estate mom or dad gave you".

I'm making stunt dice into stunt successes at this level. I'll be deciding this week whether to work in something like the Cult birthright that Gnomish American came up with (man I wish I'd remembered that last week), or to just double the legend point rewards of stunts. I want Legend going back and forth dynamically, not just spiking at story start and then dropping steadily off.

I did work up and implement an alternate system for Bavatar - similar to Darkening Of The Light's bavatar system, modified by ideas stolen from BlaineTog's Title and Godhood Title questing boons.

various sources of inspiration wrote:

Darkening of the Light's Bavatar system: http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?t=79551&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15 BlaineTog's questing purview (see Title and Godhood Title) http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?t=79691&highlight=avalon+purview Gnomish_American's Cult birthright http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?p=1348535#1348535

Basically, each PC got 3 avatars they could build. Each avatar could have a different appearance, and a different Legend Rating.
For each avatar, they could choose a few parts of their persona, reputation or fate that didn't apply to that avatar. The players worked together to develop avatars that work together.
Everyone's got a low level avatar that is designed to be used for spying, walking amongst the people unnoticed, and doing their laundry.
Then they've all got a bad-ass war avatar that's their most nastiest form, Legend 11 and decked out with all kinds of sick powers.
Then there's a mid-range negotiation and problem-solving avatar.

These avatars are set in stone - and must always manifest the same way. However, I told them that if and when they get to Legend 12, they'll each get a new Avatar.

I encouraged symbolism amongst the avatars: one has Judge, Jury, and Executioner incarnations, for example.

They can manifest in only one bavatar at a time. If they die in bavatar form, that bavatar is lost forever, and there may be other not-yet-completely-defined penalties. If the "true you" is killed, instead, death is permanent (accept for a few power capable of saving you - Health or Death 11, Ultimate Stamina, etc). The "true you" is just their inner self, an idealized version of their old mortal coil, without any automatic powers - just like if we were going by the books and nobody bought Bavatar at all.

For each incarnation, I allowed them to pick a small number of powers that were constantly active. These had to be powers that are either free or have a per-scene activation cost. In the case of the later, the per-scene cost was added (once) to the cost to assume that avatar. For doing so, they got a break on it, in that they wouldn't have to repay to reactivate it scene after scene - it'd be constantly "on" whenever in that form. For example, the egyptian character chose a form with "Animal Features" constantly on, so he could have a bird head. The combat forms have UO (and other things) activated constantly, and one has Colossus Armor as her body.

This is all VERY experimental, and I'm aware it rather significantly boosted the power of bavatar and the PCs in general. It certainly wouldn't have been for any game, and it's not the sort of thing I imagined myself ever allowing in a game. This is WAY over the top, and it may come crashing down unexpectedly. That's okay. We've been playing for over a year, and were all getting kinda antsy to move on to something new. We love our characters, but have grown increasingly frustrated with the existing rules, so we thought we'd try something completely different. Hopefully, this will inject some excitement into the game, and reinvigorate us. If not, it'll at least be memorable.

The players understand that we are now moving into the endgame, and that the pace will be breakneck from here on out. We're not looking towards the long-term health of the campaign at this point, we're looking to have the story go out with a bang sometime in the next couple months. There will be no punches pulled from here on out, hence the need for 3 avatars as a way to escape death.

Those of you who've read my various posts here before know that I spend a lot of time worrying about play-balance. I've decided to just throw that by the wayside. While I've tweaked a lot of knacks and low-level powers in the past trying to keep things from "getting out of hand" at Hero and Demigod, I've declared an intent to not reign in any power that you'd need Legend 9+ to access. If it's broke, I ain't fixing it any more.

This is a significant departure from the "comfort zone" of my usual GMing style.

*fingers crossed*

But we aren't stopping there. Since I'm on a truncated timeline, trying to wrap the game in a couple months, I'm not gonna let things be bogged down by saving up to by powers that cost 30-50 xp.
I implemented a new XP chart, that looks like this:

Quote:

Experience Cost Chart Attribute 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 4 4 to 5 5 to 6 6 to 7 7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 10 to 11 11 to 12 4 xp 8 xp 12 xp 16 xp 17 xp 18 xp 19 xp 20 xp 21 xp 22 xp 23 xp Epic Attribute NEW 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 4 4 to 5 5 to 6 6 to 7 7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 Ultimate Favored by Parent 8 xp 4 xp 8 xp 12 xp 16 xp 17 xp 18 xp 19 xp 20 xp 21 xp 22 xp Knack NEW 5 xp Willpower 7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 14 xp 15 xp 16 xp Ability NEW 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 4 4 to 5 5 to 6 6 to 7 7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 10 to 11 11 to 12 Favored 2 xp 1 xp 3 xp 5 xp 7 xp 9 xp 11 xp 13 xp 15 xp 17 xp 19 xp 21 xp Non-Favored 3 xp 2 xp 4 xp 6 xp 8 xp 10 xp 12 xp 14 xp 16 xp 18 xp 20 xp 22 xp Virtue NEW 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 4 4 to 5 In-Pantheon 3 xp 3 xp 6 xp 9 xp 12 xp Out-Pantheon 6 xp 3 xp 7 xp 11 xp 15 xp Pantheon Purview NEW 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 4 4 to 5 5 to 6 6 to 7 7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 Your Pantheon 3 xp 4 xp 8 xp 12 xp 16 xp 17 xp 18 xp 19 xp 20 xp 21 xp Boons 1-dot 2-dot 3-dot 4-dot 5-dot 6-dot 7-dot 8-dot 9-dot 10-dot Ultimate Favored 4 xp 8 xp 12 xp 16 xp 17 xp 18 xp 19 xp 20 xp 21 xp 22 xp 23 xp Not Favored 5 xp 10 xp 15 xp 16 xp 17 xp 18 xp 19 xp 20 xp 21 xp 22 xp 23 xp

No doubt the blogging software will screw up the formatting and make that hard to read. So here's what matters on that chart: There's a cost cap in place. Basically, whatever level of something costs 15 or 16 xp still does, and all the levels below that cost their normal amounts. The levels above it, however, cost only +1 point more for every level higher you go. So, taking Epic 8 to Epic 10 would cost a total of 42 xp, (not 68 xp - so you'll get it at least 3 sessions faster), but getting your first several dots in an Epic will cost just the same as it always has. The point of this is to let the players improve something meaningful every couple of sessions. (The average award over the course of the campaign has been around 8 xp per session.)

Anyhow, as you can see, it's hardly the same game. Hopefully this will result in me bitching less about flaws in the system, and having more fun just letting it all fly.

In fact, next time you hear me whining, you have my permission to remind me that:
a) I'm not really playing Scion anymore,
and
b) I brought it on myself.

Wish me luck ...or, just mumble "good riddance" under your breath as you click on to the next post.

Lava Burns in Scion

There's a touch of debate on lava stats at the Scion forums, which lead me to google "lava burns". I found this:

>>If you put your hand in activly flowing lava, will your hand just
>>burn, burn off completely, or will you die from severe burning?

>> Jennifer

> The serious injury might kill by causing shock.

>>Dear Jennifer,

>>I'm not exactly sure why anyone would WANT to put his or her hand into
>>lava, are you? If it happened by accident you would get badly burned
>>but your hand wouldn't just melt off. A geologist at the Hawaiian
>>Volcano Observatory fell into some lava up to his knees about 11 years
>>ago. He was wearing boots and long pants, and luckily there was
>>someone to pull him out immediately. He had mostly second-degree burns
>>- which were very painful of course and he spent the whole summer in
>>the hospital - but he was back at work in 5 months. It is a very scary
>>thing to think about, even after all these years.
>>-- Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii

> He had only 2nd-degree burns?

>>From liquid thats red-hot, I'd expect instant fourth-degree burns [all
> the way to the bone].

(quote from Honolulu paper at
http://starbulletin.com/2002/12/29/news/story2.html, about halfway down
the article):

On June 12, 1985, geologist George Ulrich had just taken a temperature
reading of fresh lava, 2,079 degrees. Suddenly a lava crust broke, and
Ulrich stepped into the lava over his boots but was protected by NOMEX
burn-resistant clothing.
Another geologist pulled him out in about five seconds. Ulrich was flown
to Straub Clinic & Hospital on Oahu for treatment of first-, second- and
third-degree burns. He recovered fully.

In my opinion, that suggests lava, in Scion terms, should be 10+X dice of Lethal, where X is the bonus to soak granted by NOMEX burn-resistant clothing. The GM would have to set the level of X. In the absence of further research, I'd be inclined to set X=2.

If a mortal takes 5 damage he's still looking at a month and a half of bed-rest before the pain subsides enough that his actions are no longer penalized. Each point of damage beyond that adds a month to recovery time.

As far as humans are concerned, Agg and Lethal are basically the same thing. I can't think of any mechanical difference between A and L for a mortal with no supernatural abilities. The differences between Agg and Lethal all involve supernatural healing and soak for characters that have Epic Stamina. As such, I'd make lava lethal, and save aggravated damage for supernatural sources.

compliance with stupid laws

White Wolf has posted new rules for fan sites.

As such, in order to keep posting content here about my Scion campaign, I'll need to provide a link to White Wolf, and some basic legal text...

Copyright White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

© [year] CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf and Scion are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Scion, Exalted, Vampire: The Masquerade and World of Darkness are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf.

Overall, I'm none to happy about this development. Since I blog about a lot of RPGs, not ALL characters "herein" are copyrighted by CCP hf. Obviously, any vampires, demigods, or the like probably are. But trying to clarify what is and isn't is going to be a big pain in the ass. Even when I'm talking about Scion, it's not like White Wolf has an exclusive copyright on Thor, Zeus, and Tlazteotl, since all 3 are drawn from mythology and tradition that's at least several hundred years old. Certainly, white wolf has it's own unique flavorful take on those three characters, and some portion of it has and will influence my own thinking about them. So, yes, within the confines of Scion any reference to them is within the domain of white wolf's copyright. But if I were to blog about how I used Thor in my heavily mythological alien-grey film noir detective game "The Case Of The Stolen Thunder" that I ran more than a year before Scion released, his depiction would therein would have had nothing to do with White Wolf and owed rather more credit to Douglas Adams than to White Wolf. There's some grey areas (pardon the pun) there that the required legal text isn't flexible enough to parse.

I think this policy is a bad mistake on White Wolf's part, and a dangerous route for game companies to travel down. It's just going to generate ill-will amongst the players and fans, and reduce the number of fan sites out there, which in turn reduces the quality of gaming. Unlike the OGL, this legal notice doesn't let someone sell unofficial books of their own design. Instead, it just requires that if you want to blog "Man, I had so much fun playing in my Scion campaign last night" you have to include a copyright statement.

Personally, that seems unreasonable, yet White Wolf's site implies heavily that their lawyers will be contacting you if you make even passing mention of their products and fail to comply with this legal directive. Why spend the money on getting a lawyer to draft you a fan site policy if you weren't planning on suing someone. Man, this sucks.

By their very nature, RPGs are intended to be creative inspiration. They are not like a novel that you can be expected to "just" read - the rule book is intended to provoke you to tell your own stories. Overall, the regulation of fan sites flies in the face of that. Chances are, Larry Lessig or the ACLU could win a case against this, if either felt so inclined. Such a lawsuit, however, would probably be largely detrimental to the roleplaying hobby, so I hope it never happens.

I wish to maintain a friendly relationship with the industry which provides my primary means of entertainment, so I will comply with White Wolf's request, even though it strikes me as ridiculous that they requested it in the first place.

In an ideal world, White Wolf would drop this nonsense, and no other game companies would try anything like this again. But this is not a reasonable world, and as such we should expect the internet to become even more tightly constrained in future years. It, like so many other elements of our society, is rushing to a bottleneck that will result in Fascism, Revolution, or one proceeding the other.

Nukes in Scion

...should do about 50 dice of damage.

Arthur3535 at the forums eyeballed it at 50 levels, and then I did some math to confirm that he was in the right ball park.

Here's some math and notes that lead to that conclusion:

4184 terajoules in 1 megaton explosion

W = F x D

W is foot-pounds. F is force (in pounds). D is distance (in feet).

1 horsepower = 550 foot pounds

1 joule = 0.737562149277 ft·lb

1,000,000,000,000 joules = 1 terajoule

1 terajoule = 737,562,149,277 ft lbs

Epic Strength 11 can lift 1,250,000,000 pounds
and throw 125,000,000 pounds a distance equal to (Str+Ath) in yards
that distance is probably 11+5+46 = 62 yds = 186 feet

125,000,000 x 186 = 23250000000 foot-pounds of energy



0.737562149277 x 23250000000 = 17,148,319,970.69 joules
which is 0.017148319971 terajoules

that's without knacks, but obviously anyone with Epic Strength 10 is going to have a few knacks. Hurl to the moon allows you to throw that same mass as far as you can throw a dart before penalties set in. that's 30 feet times 5,000,000 from epic strength. 150,000,000 feet!

125,000,000 x 150,000,000 = 1.875e+16 foot pounds
1.875e+16 mean 18,750,000,000,000,000

0.737562149277 x 1.875e+16 = 1.38292903e+16 joules
1.38292903e+16 means 13829290300000000
which is 13,829.290298944 terajoules

13,829.290298944 divided by 4,184 is the energy equivalent of 3.3 megatons

The most powerful nuclear weapon in US service is 1.2 megatons.

The God of Strength would do around 13 dice + 46 successes with his bare hands, or as high as 26 dice + 46 successes with a by-the-books relic labrys. (And my improvised weapon system would rate the hurl-to-the-moon attack above at 11 dice + 56 successes). He does more damage than the nuke to a single target, which makes sense since his attacks could have 3.3 megatons of energy. But he doesn't have the multi-mile undodgable blast radius the nuke would presumably have.

Cool.

Here's some other things I wrote on the forums in the process of convincing myself that 50 dice is the way to go.

I'd suggest starting with Nukes. Figure out how much damage you want a nuke to do in the system, then reverse engineer everything less by plotting where it falls on the rifle to nuke scale.

In another thread, Arthur suggested 50 levels for nukes, which sounds pretty good. According to the list on page 201 of Scion, only stone walls and blast doors would survive that, and the former would have holes blown in it big enough for humans to walk through.

Epic Stamina 7 would guarantee survival... from the first blast. And as a fun bonus, anyone with Epic Strength 9+ would be able to claim they punch with the force of a nuclear device. That'd be flavorful.

Since damage dice become levels against inanimate objects, you could probably just make the nuke be an undodgable 50 dice of lethal with the penetrating tag. That'd be more than enough to fry humans - it'd be pretty rare that 50 dice doesn't turn up the 10 successes needed to kill a non-extra in riot gear. At the same time, it'd allow PCs a chance to survive as far down the power-scale as Legend 6 or so. Making it dice would seriously downgrade the killing power in regards to Gods and Titans, but it'd still be an effective weapon against the titanspawn army depicted in the wicked illustration on page 156 of Demigod.

By Legend 5 or 6, the PCs have the Epic Manipulation to get themselves an A-bomb, or the Epic Intelligence to build their own, or the Epic Physicals to rob a bank to pay off some terrorists...etc. You can't keep the PCs away from it if they want it. Sure, they probably won't want to start nuking the earth, but, they might not think twice about dirty-bombing Helheim or dropping some Atomic Depth Charges into the Drowned Road.

That's why I vote to keep Nukes in the range where a stamina-heavy god (or god-level antagonist) is almost certain to survive it.

Otherwise, the aforementioned deadman's switch starts looking like the optimal in-game tactic, and that's not the game i want to run.

and here's the explanation of the deadman's switch comment:

Or imagine a God carrying a briefcase nuke with a deadman's switch on a 1-second delay. You take a guard action till your target takes any 3 to 5 tick action, then interrupt yourself to spend 1 tick dissolving your physical form. When the bomb goes off, you're safely immaterial, but the target's still waiting a tick or two before they can react. Ugly.

Scion Update

Realized I haven't done an update on the Scion campaign in quite a while. The PCs defeated the evil fallen Scion of Poseidon, and saved America from Fascism on live national TV. This culminated in thermonuclear apotheosis.

The next session will be largely spent upgrading the PCs via the God Template - they will be Legend 11 (lesser) Gods. I imagine (hope) the campaign will feel drastically different with the PCs swinging that kind of power. Some house-rules I'll be implementing at that level:

• Changing Bavatar (the form of "Avatar" that is a Birthright) to make each level give you another body you can manifest as. The legend of each is set upon purchasing them, as is their physical appearance. Each Avatar will have it's own fatebindings, reputation, etc. The overall number of dots of Avatar determines how low a Legend any of them can have. You can only manifest as one Avatar at a time (unless you have Army of One or CoLocation). I'm giving each PC one free dot of the Avatar birthright.
• Altering the Fatebinding rules. I never got in the habit of rolling for them, since it's almost impossible to become fatebound prior to Demigod Upgrade, and virtually guaranteed to happen every time you spend a Legend point post-upgrade. As a result, I don't have hard-and-fast lists of fatebound mortals. So, I'm making a list for each Avatar of the things that are believed about (and/or expected from) them. Bonus from reverence will be +/-1 (success, not die) per mortal witness, up to maximum of Legend.
• Making sure all the PCs have some way to travel from World to Under/Over-World. May add a couple of new alternate boons to fulfill that.
• XP cap on high-level things. I want the PCs to keep advancing as the game grows, but 5xp per session and costs of 30-40 xp per power won't allow that. So, once the cost of something hits 15 or more xp, it will only go up by one point more per level thereafter. If your 4th dot of Epic Wits cost you 15xp, the 5th dot will cost only 16xp (not 20) and the Ultimate will cost 22xp, not 50. Likewise with Boons - they'll cost 4, 8, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, or 23 xp, not up to 40. Some may feel this encourages players to buy the highest boons only - but honestly, levels 6-10 of many boons are interchangable anyway with pretty arbitrary decisions as to why which occurs later.
  

Legendary Surge vs. Itztli 9

When asked about the similarities between the "Legendary Surge" spell and the "Communal Divinity" level of Itztli (two powers which do the same thing, but have been assigned to power levels 2 and 9), Jesse (of White Wolf) said this:

Legendary Surge vs. Itztli 9: Not only does Legendary Surge have a surcharge, but it creates a Fatebinding automatically (because it's a Magic spell). Being heavily Fatebound to the rest of your group can be liability, especially if it's accentuating a role that pushes you into conflict with the other Scions.

I can't decide whether or not to reply to that on the Official Scion Companion Thread. On one hand, I'm really thankful that he took the time to answer, and I think it's awesome that he's trying to get his explanations and unwritten rules put into the revised version of the Scion Companion pdf. ...But on the other hand, that explanation is bunk.

In regards to the surcharge: The surcharge is just 1 measly point of temporary legend. A character capable of using a 2nd level spell will have a legend pool ranging anywhere between 9 and 144. At the lower end, that's meaningful - the surcharge could be 11% of your total legend pool. But at that low end, you can't even have the 9th dot of a purview - even with the surcharge, having a power is better than not being able to have the power. In order to buy Itzli 9, your Legend pool has to be at least 100 points - so the surcharge is at most 1% of your pool, and is pretty much just trivial. At Legend 10, the surcharge is practically irrelevant in determining which power you'd rather have. Not having a surcharge would explain away a variance of one, maybe two, dots in power level - but not a 7 level gap.

In regards to the fatebonding: Yes, magic does have the drawback of fatebinding, but it will never happen as he described it. The rules specify that Scions don't end up in fatebound roles to other characters. To quote page 223 of Hero: "Unlike mortals, however, supernatural beings don't succumb to Fatebound Roles; the retain their free will. ... At the storyteller's discretion, certain supernatural creatures or beings might come under the effect of a Fatebound Role, but Scions and Gods never do." Even if that paragraph didn't exist, I think it would be very rare that a ST would assign a negative fatebinding role to a PC. Making a PC suddenly become the Nemesis, Traitor, or Weak Link just seems like a recipe for campaign-wrecking disaster. Most players would hate being straight-jacketed into such a role: permanently switching from good guy to bad guy "overnight" because a different PC cast a low-level spell? Yes, there's individual players (and perhaps whole groups) who'd have a blast with that (but if so, then it's not being a limitation or deterrent, is it?). For the rest of us, it'd be a nightmare.

• Thus, of the two limitations he mentions, neither one would make you choose Itzli 9 over the level 2 spell.

One major reason to by the spell: because it's so much cheaper. The level 2 spell costs 8 to 10 xp (actually, for 7-9 xp you can buy the first 2 dots of the Magic purview, which come with a free 1st level spell and a free 2nd level spell). The 9th dot of a Pantheon Specific Purview (like Itzli) costs 32 xp - on top of the 115 xp you had to spend getting the 8 levels that stand as prerequisites to Itzli 9. To be fair, the Magic purview requires a 1 dot Birthright as well, but I should mention that by the time you reach the requisite legend to buy Itzli 9, you have at least 15 dots of Birthrights, could potentially have as many as 60 Birthright Dots if you went crazy on them, and may even have the stats to be able to make your own Birthrights in-character.

As mentioned above, you only need Legend Rating 3 to use the Spell. To buy Itzli 9 you need to be an Aztec God of Legend Rating 10, 11, or 12. That's yet another way Legendary Surge is better than Communal Divinity.

The spell is also better than Itzli 9 in that the spell requires a miscellaneous action (Speed: 5, DV -1) from just the caster, and can be done at range. Itzli 9 takes a (Speed: 5, DV -2) action from both the caster and the recipient - they have to exchange ichor via close physical contact ranging from a sloppy kiss to becoming blood brothers. So, if you plan on using the power in combat, you're better off with the spell.

The final way that the 2-dot spell is better than Itzli 9 is availability. Literally any Scion character can buy the Magic Purview. Only Scions of Aztec gods can buy Itzli. If the levels were reversed, perhaps my objection would fade away. I might accept that a single pantheon has the advantage of getting an effect cheaper than most PCs. But the inverse, where everyone can get the effect cheaper than the Aztec-exclusive method doesn't make much sense to me.

That said, Jesse didn't mention the 2 ways that Itzli 9 is actually better than the 2-dot Spell:

1. Itzli doesn't require a die roll. For the 2nd level spell, you can only transfer an amount of legend less than or equal to the successes you roll. At the lower levels of play, this isn't a big deal, as you'll never be transferring more than a couple points of Legend anyway. At the higher end it does matter, as you'd be able to give 30 legend to a fellow God to power their next Avatar. If you're making an Aztec PC, and plan on having no (or low) Epic Wits for in-character reasons, and the campaign is likely to last unto Godhood, and you expect to need to transfer 20 or more points of legend per use, Itzli 9 is better than the spell. I should qualify that, though: Itzli 9 is only significantly better if you need the Legend transferred quickly. If there's no ticking deadline, nothing stops you from using the spell multiple times in a scene.
   
2. Itzli 9 is the prerequisite for Itzli 10. If the ability to give temp Legend points to other PCs is of minor concern to you, but you're playing an Aztec PC and plan to advance to Itzli 10, then why waste points on a redundant spell? Of course, I don't really agree that this logic will apply to many characters. Itzli 10 is very powerful, but it's also very grizzly. The activation cost includes sacrificing a close blood relative. In a game with strong heroic leanings, like Scion, the majority of PCs won't want to buy Itzli 10. If, however, Itzli 10 is something you plan to buy, you'll have to get Itzli 9.
   

*Sigh* I'm probably going to have to go point some of this out to Jesse. His point about Fatebindings indicates a significant divide between the rules as written and how he's using them. Since he's authoring books for the game line, that probably needs to be addressed. But other than the Fatebinding issue, I'll probably not bring up all these other points to him, at least not in the Official Scion Companion Thread. Random grognard bitching on the internet about a rule he doesn't like is pretty much accepted and expected these days, but getting into author's face in his own 'parlor' is probably something I should try to avoid doing when possible.

Experience and Training Times

I posted the following to the Scion Forums today. It was in response to someone saying that the "Speed Reader" knack should have an extra benefit of allowing people to raise knowledge-based skills faster. It's pretty coarse as-is, but I may refine it into a more useful essay sometime...

In most RPGs, I neither require people to spend time training in order to raise their stats or skills, nor do I reward those who spent time doing so with bonus xp or free dice or the like. It's a little unrealistic, to be sure, but that extra level of realism doesn't really benefit the game more.

Generally speaking, I just accept that XP is an abstract medium that exists purely for purposes of game balance. It doesn't really model character development - instead it's a way to reward player participation and enable them to tune their PC after character-creation. I don't figure it is meant to approximate the way people actually progress in the real world.

For example, in the real world, if you chose to specialize in a particular field, you tend to lose some of your skill in other areas. While we're in school (college, training programs, etc) we have all sorts of knowledge that we forget later. I, in the real world, am not as good at math or oil painting as I was 10 years ago, though I've honed other skills in the meantime. You may be a great cardiovascular surgeon, but you're not as good a General Practitioner as a result. That's just a reality of life - if you don't practice your skills, they get rusty. I can't say that I've seen that modeled in gaming - the closest I've seen is aging rules, but even those most often just penalize physical attributes.

I wouldn't reduce a PCs skill by GM Fiat because he hasn't rolled it in several sessions, or because we skipped 6 months of downtime between scenes. Increasing his skills 'cause he spent those 6 months studying something (but didn't spend XP to back it up) is just the opposite side of that coin.


While I'm okay with the "skills are cheaper" school of knacks, I feel no compulsion to extend such benefits to other knacks just cause it might seem more realistic.

Honestly, there's just not much realism in most XP systems, and I have no problem with that.

In White Wolf games (and many other point-based, not level-based, RPGs) you can go from rank amateur to an award-winning pro (in the skill of your choice) in just a few sessions that might represent as little as a few days in-character, but in the real world that typically takes years of dedication and practice.

The closer you model character advancement on reality, the less fun the game becomes.

(There are exceptions to that statement, of course, and a game using the "winter season" concept from Pendragon can get away with things other RPGs can't.)