Reprising self-imagined greatness

Last thursday, I played Hollows & Hobgoblins at the Emerald City Gamefeast. H&H is a Wushu-derivative. I'd played it before for Manu's first playtest. I got to reprise my character from that Gellur, the overly flamboyant warrior/metalmage, who liked to remind people that he was a hero. It's the most annoyingly pompous I've ever played, and remember - I've GM'd Amber.

The character's a bit like Zap Branigan, except with some magical talents so he's not completely useless. I'd share more, but one of my cats just decided he and his claws need my attention. The game was fun. Manu improved greatly on the first session, which itself was a very enjoyable game to begin with.

The Zap Branigan comparison isn't entirely accurate. Gellur was/is more flamboyant, and less lecherous. He's also a lot more heroic. I spent much of the session assuring the other PCs that I'd protect them (not that they wanted protection, or my assurances thereof, but I didn't let a little thing like that stop my character's ego), especially the "little ones" (half the party was hobbits). As a result, I took a lot of damage (but surprisingly little of it was inflicted by the rest of the party).

I named Gellur after the famous spoon-bender / charlatan. Hollows & Hobgoblins has a cheaply available magic, much of it with an elemental theme. So, I made him a Metal Mage. His Signature Move is making inanimate objects that people are holding grow mouths and bite them.

My wife starts teleworking in half an hour, and needs the computer, so she's clawing and biting me just like the cat was. Gotta go again.

de Blob

I'm really digging this odd Wii game we rented. It's called de Blob.

In the game, you're battling against a Fascist government that has illegally seized power. So, it fits my politics.

I was nearly an hour into the game before the first fight scene happened, and it lasted maybe 2 seconds and three swings of the wiimote. You see, it's not yet another first person shooter. Instead, in this game you're playing a blob of paint, and the enemy includes inkwells and little robots that suck pigment out of people. The Fascists have stolen all the color from the world, and your job is to paint the buildings. Doing so will liberate the people, and return funk music to the land. When you paint a block, the inhabitants come outside, and celebrate. Then you paint them, and they celebrate more. You bounce around trying to find more surfaces to paint, mixing colors as you go, and spreading joyful populist graffiti to the masses.

It's pretty kooky.

I wish they'd done a little more with the controls, though. I think the challenges could be harder, and the controls more responsive. Seems like the same swinging motion does just about everything, and that's my only complaint with the game. Despite it, I'm finding the game ravenously addictive.

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.

My Neighbor's A Gamer

A piece of my mail ended up in my neighbor's mailbox by accident, and he dropped it off.

This is the first time we'd ever talked. Turns out he's a gamer, who used to play a lot of D&D, but lately hasn't had any luck finding a group since moving to Seattle. He seems like a good guy, and I'll probably do some measure of gaming with him in the future.

My Computer's In Dry-Dock

Yar. On Friday last, I got up at the booty of dawn ('tis less southerly, and more pleasantly desirous than the dirty ol' buttcrack of dawn), hauled my piratical dictionary up'n from below-decks, and prepared to set match ta a volley of swarthy countenances that would clarly belabour both'n the cut of me jib an' the temper o' me steel. But'n, fer land's sakes, me ship just lingered there in port - the sails were mutinously refusing to unfurl. Eventually, wit' great personal effort and displeasure, I was able to make them unfurl, but even then they weren't but catchin' nary a wind. Instead of blowing out to sea, they just sat there making a gawd awful racket, like a three pence whore grindin' her holey teeth agin' the basket hilt of me cutlass.

In less flavorful terms, my computer died. I've spent nearly14 hours across the past 3 days trying every trick, system disk, and repair program I know. It won't even recognize that it has a hard-drive now. Crap.

I've got my wife's laptop to fall back on, but since she teleworks two days a week, my internet time will be a bit restricted in the near future. And since she just got her holey teeth filled (so as to not resemble a 3-pence whore), we lack the dubloons to get my 'puter's hull shored up this paycheck. It sits in drydock till some unforseen horizon, and I'm left to wrestle with a windows machine running a variety of microsoft products. Somebody'll be walkin' the plank fer that, I assurn ye.

In short, if'n yer expectin' this scurvy dog to entertain ya, or respond to any parchments stuffed in emailical bottles, yer outta luck.

Werse yet: Since that scuttled ship had all me notes, an' the newly updated but not yet printed character sheets fer the godlier part of Scion, it done keelhauled my prospects of gaming this weekend past. The cap'n get a mite bit ornery when he ain't 'ad is fix!

Spasmodic Dysphonia

I'd never heard of it before today, but I think I may have a relatively mild (and undiagnosed) case of Spasmodic Dysphonia.

I first noticed it while working at Active Imagination. Whenever I was calling a customer, my voice would crack, and I would get short of breath. The first calls I did there were practically cold calls - I was calling Magic players to remind them about upcoming tournaments. Despite supposedly doing them a service, I always felt bad about it, so the fact that I'd be hoarse before the end of the first call didn't strike me as terribly odd. But it did make me very self-conscious, and I tried to hide it from those jerks I worked for. I'm fairly certain they interpreted my reluctance to make the marketing calls in their presence to mean that I wasn't making the calls at all, or was badmouthing them to their customers, or something. Over time, they insisted more and more on being present in the offices when I was making the calls, and they'd "listen in" frequently.

Later, I ended up working more retail shifts for them. These went fine, I rarely had trouble interacting with people face to face. But on days when shipments would come in, I'd have to call everyone who'd placed special orders and preorders. I knew that I was calling them with good news. I was calling to say "your game is here, and waiting for you!" It wasn't a cold call, it was at their request. Yet, my voice would shatter like I was terrified. I could never explain it. I'd have to take the phone calls slowly, and take deep breaths between each call. At first, I was calm but a little puzzled. Eventually, it made me fear making those calls, especially if co-workers or customers were in earshot, and it got worse after that. The fear made it more pronounced.

Often, I was calling someone that I gamed with casually and personally, but calling to say the book they asked me to order for them was in would make me breathless. Seriously, I could call James or Jeremy and gab all friendly from home, but if I called the same friends from work because the new expansion was in, it hurt to talk. Every word was like fighting for oxygen.

I'd been raised largely without a phone, so I assumed it was psychological, and phone-related. *

But then, I started judging Magic tournaments. All went well for the first few months, until one day, in the midst of giving my opening announcements at a Pro Tour Qualifier, my voice cracked and went up nearly an octave. Everybody laughed at me, Cameron made a snide joke and I felt like I was back in junior high. It happened again during opening announcements at my next couple tournaments, and then sporadically at tourneys thereafter.

I have no stage fright. I'm happy to be in the spotlight. I ran a 40-player LARP for several years without anything like this happening. But for whatever reason, the opening ceremonies of Magic tournaments made my throat constrict and wheeze. Sometimes I could control it, but generally, once started it would last the rest of the event. My boss somehow hadn't noticed until one time when I was in the process of giving out a unsporting conduct penalty to a guy who well deserved it. She dressed me down in front of the whole tournament, and said I was too emotionally invested to give out that penalty. She could tell, so she said, because of the way I sounded. I was calm (but yes, sounding hoarse as I often did at tourneys) until she said that.

That's the point where I started hating her. (There were lots of reasons to do so, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Her behavior that day will never be forgotten, and probably never forgiven.)

I resolved at that point to overcome my problem, since I assumed it was all in my head, and somehow anxiety-related. I taught myself to breathe through my nose before talking, and take long pauses, to control the tone of my voice. This worked for a while, till one day Level 4 Judge John Shannon mentioned that the pauses made me come off as uncertain or stupid, instead of thoughtful. That kinda hurt. Unfortunately, by this point, the pauses were part of how I talk. I only manage to totally avoid them when in-character RPGing. When in-character, nothing like this affects me at all. By the end of my time at Active Imagination, I was a basket case. I still pause, and my voice now cracks nearly any time I call anyone for any reason. Just typing about it has made my nose clog up and my neck constrict for the last 20 minutes.

---

*: An aside about my "it's psychological, and us not having a phone from 1987 to 1995" notion. I've always had a distaste for telephone conversations, because they were not part of my life at all for those years, and minimal before that. I once made a really cool video poem called "I Hate Telephones". So it seemed 'obvious' to me that all my trouble (prior to Magic tournaments) was somehow related to fear and unfamiliarity.

At the same time I was blaming it on that, I had doubts about it, too. I'd done all the movie times on the recording at the theatre for a few years because I had such a good phone voice. I also did the recorded message at Page One, Too for a while for the same reason.

Come to think of it, the only hint before Active Imagination that I might have actual problems with phones was the nightly call from my office at the movie theatre to the 3rd party theatre-polling company that we reported box office grosses to. I always got "choked up" calling in things like "Brave Heart: $7,235; A Very Brady Sequel: $3,128;" to the answering machine of some corporate suit I'd never interact with. My voice would crack, and my breath shallow. I couldn't explain that, but I was always very glad to be making those calls alone in the office late at night.

---

I've done a lot of soul-searching and healing in the year+ out here in Seattle. Despite that healing, I've been terrified to get back into the job market, because what guarantees did I have that these problems wouldn't just remanifest as soon as I was in a workplace? I was also worried my voice would crack while interviewing. Or that I'd pause a little too much, and they'd write me off as dumb. Even scarier was the notion that I'd get through the interview process, get a job I loved, and then have my problem manifest again.

This wasn't entirely unjustified. During this year i got back in touch with some old friends, and when that finally resulted in a phone conversation with Daved, my voice sounded like I was calling customers about special orders again. Getting away from work reduced the frequency of my triggers, but did not cure it the underlying problem.

I left Magic / quit judging tournaments, despite moving to the city that Magic: The Gathering is designed in, largely because of the things judging did to my voice, and the insecurities that the Godards instilled in me over that voice issue.

That's context. That's what went before. I thought it was psychological, and that I was probably unique in my troubles.

---

Today I read an article about Economists and the Election on CNN. The article was by Scott Adams, and that reminded me that I really like The Dilbert Blog back before Jeremy and I had that weird little argument that resulted in months of silence between us. (Why that would result in even more months of me not reading Dilbert is hard to explain. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.) So I clicked on Dilbert's blog today, and started reading back posts.

Turns out, Scott Adams has Spasmodic Dysphonia. It's symptoms sound very close to my problem. People with SD have acute hoarseness while speaking, but the situations that trigger it vary widely. Frequently, it involves talking on the phone. One example that's given is people who's voice cracks or falls apart on the phone, but have no problem talking to their cats. Adams claims his has progressed to the point where the only time his voice sounds normal is when he's talking about Spasmodic Dysphonia. Any other topic of conversation makes his voice go falsetto or scratchy.

From what I've read, there's no cure. There's a form of speech therapy that might help, but it's also possible that to overcome it I might need quarterly botox injections to my throat or surgery every couple of years. Neither of those last two options are appealing unless my condition gets a lot worse. It's also quite possible that I might not have Spasmodic Dysphonia, but Dilbert's descriptions sound very much like what I experience. I'll need to see a doctor to know for certain.

Knowing that it might be this actual physical disorder is actually very comforting. When I thought it was just me being a phone-fearing wuss, I scared me. But I pwn diseases and disorders. I beat DermatoFibroSarcoma Protuberans (aka cancer), I can sure as hell beat a little thing like Dysphonia. I'm even seriously considering getting back on the judging horse.

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.

Wearable Motorcycle

When I saw the name of Brad's post on this, I didn't think much of it, and certainly didn't rush over to click on it. I figured it was one of those monowheel thingees that they had at the beijing olympics, and the puyallup fair. But no, it's a prototype vertical-parking wearable three-wheeled "motorcycle". It looks cool. But I'm not sure what benefits, if any, it would have over any other motorcycle. Slightly less parking space is all I can figure. If I have to choose between safety and parking space, it's easy...

Wearable Motorcycle

Thankfully, I'm a gamer, and I've played Cyberpunk 2020. CP2020 is all about style over substance, cool over safety. It's a setting where a 3-wheeled wearable motorcycle that has your body dangling just inches above the onrushing pavement sounds just great. After all, you've probably got skinweave and an armored t-shirt between you and the road.

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.