Nobilis

... Well that was foolish.

I'd completely forgotten blessings and curses were in Persona. Still, that leaves a question open: how does one make a curse pass on through the generations? A curse to the seventh generation is sufficiently miffic for me to want it to be possible, and a curse to the n+1th (inductively) is therefore perfect...

It's a higher-level Persona Miracle. A Lesser Binding is a difficulty 6 Persona Miracle, which is basically the bless/curse on steroids, but still concentrated on one person. Difficulty 9, on the other hand, is a Greater Binding, which allows for more complex destinies. Easily, binding an entire bloodline is a 9.

Excellent.

I may throw up a character or two on this thread for you guys to have a look at- I want to see just how broad a range I can get...

Do the lifepaths! They may seem like useless fluff, but they're awesome for character creation!

That was the plan...

Right, here's one! I haven't written up a full background, but it's sitting around in my head, and you should be able to get an idea from the notes on various bits and pieces.

This is John White, the Power of Coincidence.

Key: I Lotus Flower (Transformative, give others what they need) Heart (My Power): Bringer of Fortune; brings hope to the hopeless; unexpected, reassuring voice; make things a little easier, while he's around. Do I make things better- or do I make people reliant? Shadow (My Nature): Glorious; Set Apart; brings bad fortune as well as good.

Key: XIII Mimulus (Restless, rootless wanderer) (Estate-linked) Heart (My Path): Serendipitous Wanderer; takes nothing with him. Shadow (Why It Feels Empty): self-doubt; the things I've left behind; is their hope fulfilled? ; can't help everyone Can I really help?

Foundations: Something Cool. The wandering stroke of luck that gives people what they need... or doesn't?

Estate: Coincidences (Beautiful Side of the World; Something You Can Describe)

Origin: Troubled Life (lost his home; blown on the winds of life, not achieving much); Trouble Inspired Me (It's a hard life, but a stroke of luck can make it better)

Contacts: Troubled Love (Childhood friend, the rock to his flowing water; reliable and solid, and so couldn't follow when he ran away from home.) Key XIII Organisation (The homeless of the cities he's visited know him, and will help him out- and their lives are that little better for it.) Key I

Affiliation: The Song of Hell

Passions: I help people who have nowhere else to turn (2) I want to see the world (1) I'm a friend to everyone (1)

Skills: Scrounging (2) Survival (2)

Coincidence is unexpected (1) doesn't care who you are (2) makes things better- or worse (2) connects things with no other link (2) Aspect 1 (3CP) Domain 4 (12CP) Persona 3 (9CP) Treasure 0 (0CP) (1CP left: Luck? Elusive? More MP?)

Bond: I keep moving (2) Bond: I listen to those who need it (2) Bond: I help the helpless (2) Affliction: I arrive just when I'm needed (4) Affliction: Luck is more pronounced around me (3)

Looks REALLY cool. Only thing I can suggest is making a Bond for the homeless people the PC has met. Even with a Treasure 0 Attribute you can get gossip from all the homeless around the world.

Elusive sounds like a great Gift for a serendipitous wanderer.

Ooh, good point on the Bond. I agree with Elusive, so I'll probably do that; and the Bond's easy enough to switch in, as helping the helpless and listening to them are pretty close anyway.

(This guy may well end up serving NPC duty, as I'm not aware of any games starting in the area other than the one I plan to run in October...)

Yowch. Looks like some of the art was traced, so they've got to pull the PDF and delay printing by a couple of weeks.

edited 19th Mar '11 9:48:35 PM by Civanfan

Yeah, the art is HORRID.

And I'm weeaboo as hell.

So to distract us from the art (which did nothing for me so I mostly didn't pay it much attention), something I was talking about last night. I'm planning this game, and was explaining it to someone who hasn't played (non-LA)RP Gs before but is interested. She suggested she might like to play the Power of Chocolate. My initial response was "Could work, perhaps a little closer to the silly end of the spectrum than my personal tastes but I'll see what she does with it."

We kept talking, got some interesting ideas (Chocolate is happiness at a price...). Then we got the really interesting idea.

See, there are South American cultures with a fair bit of mythology involving blood and chocolate.

We're going mythic.

I love this game.

Useful chocolate tips:

• Cocoa beans were used as currency.
• The scientific name for the cocoa plant is theobroma cacao. Theobroma means "food of the gods".

On a side note, I'm creating the Power of Salt.

Yeah, we'd thought of the food of the gods angle- didn't know that was in the scientific name, but we discussed ambrosia and stuff, essentially the idea that chocolate is the root of all those myths about the food of the gods.

(The other confirmed player is looking at Birds, Steam or Possibly Something More Awesome. I'd be interested to see where he'd go with Steam, because what comes to mind for me is... well, I'd give 'em a decent Treasure rating and a Bond: "I always dress and talk like I'm from the Victorian era.")

Nobilis: The Essentials is back up on Drive Thru RPG, with new art.

[miracles thread back to life]

Have paid, am downloading. It's taking a while because there were like seven versions just of the standard Essentials v1 on dtrpg and I foolishly decided to go for all of them at once. I'll probably be able to take a shot at Antithesis v1 sometime around Christmas, because yay Excrucians; I had to ask very nicely to access a card just to get at the corebook.

Also, I've been reading this, which is awesome.

edited 22nd Sep '12 12:34:58 AM by CountDorku

[miracles thread back to life again, using Greater Animation rather than Lesser, and adds Strike]

And I just got Antithesis 1i. It is looking very cool. Someday I'm going to do a Deceiver version of the Fourth Doctor with a pState of "Sepric Thetaion's Wondrous Adventures".

Best game ever.

NEW GIFT:
The Great Redhead Time Hunt: Domain 4 (Lesser Animation of Time) [4], normal miracle [-2], self-only [-3], large, flexible subset (limited only to times containing redheads) [-1], rare [+1], total 1pt.

If your Hollyhock God is less forgiving and maintains that a Lesser Animation doesn't get you this, a Domain 6 Lesser Motion or Persona 6 Lesser Binding should do the trick and cost about the same.

Edit: So I have been reading Antithesis 1i. It's incredibly good.

edited 11th Dec '12 10:45:47 AM by CountDorku

The Halloween Actual Play is epic and hilarious, I've been reading it, too.

Speaking of reading, has anyone here read Jenna Moran's stories, like Invasion or The Fable of the Swan?

Not yet.

I'd like to, but I don't have a Kindle or anything of that nature.

Also, it's not an Actual Play, there are very few Actuals in it at all! (You Are The World Ash Charlie Brown?)

And I can confirm that my first impressions were not wrong and Antithesis is really awesome.

Estate properties for the Marvellous Adventures of Sepric Thetaion: Get innocent people killed
Pose no danger to Sepric Thetaion
Are adventures Sepric Thetaion has had
Are unbelievable, yet compelling
Disrupt the normal way of things with chaos
Draw others in, both human and wondrous, to their inevitable peril
Lurk in the gaps in human understanding

I figure this would allow Lesser Sacrifices that haul cryptids out of their sanctuaries and dump them into the ordinary world, Greater Enchantments that render entire cities harmless, Emulations that allow you to hide between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and Greater Sacrifices that make someone so dull that they actively repel weirdness.

Also, I created another Deceiver who draws up shipping walls and uses them to rewrite the relationships of towns in order to prove some abstruse philosophical point about love.

edited 15th Dec '12 1:14:39 AM by CountDorku

Oh man, now I want to make a pState "Those whom Zaphoriah Redcord ships" and get into all kinds of wacky shipping hijinks.

That would be awesome. They should both be present in the same game, then get into fights when they start including each other in their respective schemes.

Incidentally, my shipping Deceiver's Estate properties...

(The Shipping Grids of Friath Jonile… …are strangely compelling (1)
…induce massive disruption to the status quo (2)
…are not reasonable (1)
…have no effect until they are seen (1)
…seem perfectly natural no matter how absurd they are (1)
…cause false revelations (1)
in case you were curious...)

...can actually be used to create a catgirl by finding a person who believes they exist and performing a Greater Sacrifice keyed to "not reasonable". As a result it becomes entirely reasonable to believe catgirls exist, and the easiest way for reality to do this is simply to make some catgirls and call it good, rather than the comparatively high-maintenance approach of consistently creating fake evidence.

(Although catgirls might actually be an entirely reasonable thing to believe in, especially if the Power of Cats follows rpgnet threads and has a weird sense of humour.)

It's a very scary pState, if you ask me.

One thing I learned from rpgnet is that there are always catgirls. Especially in Nobilis.

The Emulations alone offer fertile ground for ridiculousness. Become immune to fear by going crazy! Shatter the status quo just by walking down the street! Turn up at a black-tie event dressed as a banana and nobody notices!

Oh gods, the defensive use of a Greater Sacrifice keyed to the status quo one. See, in the status quo, Friath is alive and unharmed...

I can't wait for the book on Warmains to come out, whenever that is.