The Manor Is Not Enough - Maid RPG DISCUSSION

The setting is more or less modern era, and there have been multiple masters - but few of them can be found at the moment, which has made gaining or spending favor a little hard. The original master was Dan Jobsem, International Man of Mystery. The second Master to show up was His Supreme Darkness, head of a sinister criminal organization bent on world domination... or something to that effect. Both Dan and His Supreme Darkness (also known as Wally) live in the same swanky gated community somewhere in England. The third Master to show up was Rumiel; she is the head of the local community organization, nominally disgraced angel and generally cantankerous employer. Another Master candidate might be Doctor En Passant, Wally's head of R&D with delusions of grandeur. Both Dan and Wally are currently indisposed. Dan is leading most of the mooks of Wally's organization on a wild goose chase from France to Morocco and Wally was arrested for inciting a public disturbance; of the two, it is hard to say which might pop up again first.

Oh heavens. Do we have any idea who our current boss is? And will characters show up as newly-hired maids, or some way more exotic? I've got a character rolled up via generator, and I think I know how to play her, but I need confirmation on whether or not I'll have to change what I have in mind...

Dan has a habit of seducing women into his service (sort of; sometimes he just ruins their livelihood to the point that they must come to him begging for a job) so it is somewhat possible that a new Spyhold Maid might emerge from the woodwork. Otherwise... well, Wally has a sister who runs a cult on the continent; she might sent him maids to annoy him. She's done it before. If you tell me what your idea is we can probably work something out.

Story this the chargen gave me.

Now, "bridal training" is really not a suitable background for someone with a personality like that, but it'd work nicely as a cover story if she were (probably unwittingly) working for someone else—I'm thinking she's run by Her Majesty's Occult Service or the Nishinomiya organization or some other group. ("We've got a job all lined up for you, but you'll have to do an audition/training run first. Pays pretty well, too. And your mother would probably be happy about it—she's been complaining about you needing to be more 'ladylike'...")

Setting her up as a cat's paw for yet another alphabet soup organization works (assuming that this organization is less careful about using unbound and untrained mages than the Laundry is.) OFFE (Wally's organization) has a resident devil summoner and she has been causing a ruckus lately, summoning unspeakable things with too many tongues from other dimensions, so they might want to send someone expen- ahem, someone on a probationary contract to investigate. can you post up her full information over in the signup thread?

Done and accepted, whee! Should I head straight on over to the game thread? If so, I'd like some way to be eased into things.

I've posted something up; Elizabeth arrives just as Berenice enters the mansion.

I've really gotta remember to check the thread more often. And come up with a bit more to say in it, I'm not really up on me chess. I see Junko as more of a poker player really.

Those were ice-cream cultist. Not as if that would matter. Also, nice to see a few new maids, and Berenice back.

Also, rolls: 6*4(athletics)=24, 2*2(cunning)=4

edited 15th Jun '14 1:24:07 AM by dragonfi

With one returning and one new player, business is picking up here.

Let's see, so I just need to avoid rolling a 1 on the die. (Sees the spoiler tag on the RP post.) I had to type that!

Hey, I forget but can I buy additional skill points for favour? Berenice is currently sitting on 19 favour and 3 stress, and I was wondering if I could boost her cunning to 4 from her current 3.

It's possible to raise attributes, but expensive: the cost to raise an attribute by 1 point is the new level x 10 - so to raise an attribute from 0 to 1 is 10, but to raise one from 3 to 4 is 40, and to raise one from 0 to 4 would be 100.

edited 16th Jun '14 7:28:59 AM by alhazred23

Quick question. Where are you lot getting those avatar images—whom I presume are the Maid characters?

They were made using this: http://gen8.deviantart.com/art/Anime-Face-Maker-2-182829244

... on second thought, Berenice is very happy with her current level of cunning.

Because Elizabeth doesn't have anything magic-related as one of her maid qualities she will probably have to use Cunning for noticing/understanding magical stuff. Generally, if she had a magical/spiritual profession as a Maid quality i'd let her use various alternate stats for magic stuff instead, such as Skill. I'll let her use Will as a combat stat, since she has Magic as a Maid Weapon. For reference, Gemma uses Cunning for most magic stuff, as her brand of magic is summoning and contracting with demons.

At any rate, it will only take a roll of 4 (1D6 x Stat) for Elizabeth to notice that the mechanical chessboard built into a heavy wooden desk with the bust of an arab mounted on it is clearly a very old magical computation device of some sort. If she beats 8 (or 6, if she manages to steal the manual) she can tell that it's used for divination, and that it is currently portending some sort of impending DOOM.

Edit: I suppose this is as good a time as any to go over some of the ways Maid rules and stats are interpreted for this game. In general, maid qualities can be used to argue for chances to do things that wouldn't normally be possible, or chances to use different stats for rolls. For instance, since Skill is generally meant to mean 'trained professional (Maid) skills,' when you have a profession or something similar as a maid quality you usually have the option to use Skill for doing stuff related to that profession too. As another example, Jessie is a ghost, so she can sometimes do ghost-like things such as passing through objects with a successful Will roll; a maid with wings might be allowed to make Athletics rolls to fly; etc. This sort of tends to work in favor of maids with really bizarre maid qualities - though the more normal ones strangely tend to get more respect from the NPCs ^_^;...

edited 16th Jun '14 8:10:11 PM by alhazred23

That makes sense, since it's a magic system that Elizabeth would be entirely untrained with. If she starts leveraging her own background in geometric magic, though, those might be Skill (for setting things up and the like) and Will (for sustaining magic). With other systems, Cunning it is.

Also, have a picture of Elizabeth Neo Agent E Lennon Alvis. The face-making tool didn't have sunglasses, so I improvised with Paint.NET. Sadly, they didn't have beige as a uniform color either, nor did they have the side-tails I was looking for.^note You can go about your business. Move along.

Fookin' 'ell, Sabre. Can you not join every one of my games?

Did someone leave cookies out on the table overnight or something? 'Got folks crawling out of the woodwork all over the place here. O_o;

edited 17th Jun '14 9:21:16 AM by alhazred23

Sabre, there's also chibi maker, although it includes bodies too.

Alhazred, one minor observation. I held games where I allowed magic to use Will.

The main problem is that Will is also the basis for Stress. It's not an issue for generalist Maids, but if one relies on magic for most of her problems, the other stats will become pretty useless in comparison.

Clearly Elizabeth and Jessie uses other stats just as much, so it's not a problem. Just something to keep in mind.

Aside:

Then again, to be fair, the player's character in question is more-or-less a Lina Inverse Expy. So, that's expected.

Appropriately, we also destroyed everything in the 40km radius of the mansion, had fights, tea, chat, romance, etc. with deities from various pantheons. And currently in the middle of a trans dimensional space war. The TSAB is not amused.

I guess this just happens when Maids are involved.

edited 17th Jun '14 11:04:55 AM by dragonfi

Hmm... well, as i said, because just Elizabeth's weapon is magic i would only extend the default use of Will as a combat stat. That said, most maids here have... lots of maid qualities O_o;. If Sabre is set on having magic allow Elizabeth to do things other than blow stuff up, i might be willing to allow the selection of a magic profession quality, which would then allow some other mildly impossible effects effects via the use of Skill the same way Junko uses Skill to come up with Mad Science devices. In general, these little allowances should be weaker than what is commonly allowed by maid powers or tools.

Edit: This stuff is part of why i sort of wanted to try a different system, like FATE ^_^;...

edited 17th Jun '14 11:43:28 AM by alhazred23

Yep, I see what you did there. Even now, we are using Maid Qualities in a similar way to Aspects. And that's fine by me. The two systems do map pretty well.

Just for the record, I'm still open to trying FATE. But, does that mean that future players doesn't necessarily have to play a maid?

edited 17th Jun '14 2:11:49 PM by dragonfi

Woodwork? I'll have you know, I- <Whirrrr>

...oh shit. There they go again.

edited 17th Jun '14 9:20:22 PM by RenaTheArchmage

If we actually managed to make a switch... i'm not really sure. It might make sense to require that one aspect of every character incorporate 'Maid' into it, somehow. Hmm...

Heh, so are you just here to be a creepy voyeur <looks around for Gemma; nope, still not back>, or did you want to join the game again?

edited 18th Jun '14 7:29:34 AM by alhazred23