Super Sexy Sugoi Shining Princess Prism

Yep, don't mind me, just more doodles...

This time, its of the Maid of Wynn's Changeling character.

Or at least, what she looks like inside of someone's dreams.

Yes, she is totally a magical girl when inside a dream. She has her own themetune and everything.

Just a quickie... (Ooh Err?)

Thought I might share today's project, a Military Badge for a fictional military group, the Constantinus Military College. I'm currently waiting for a quote from an badge embroidering group about how much it'll cost me to have a limited run produced.

I'm honestly fairly chuffed about the design, its a solid, distinct and borderline professional looking piece!

The Maid of Wynn tells it how it is...

"Christ..." I say to the Maid of Wynn as we sit in bed and she works out what plants she needs to grow in World of Warcraft on a piece of paper with the guild bank open whilst I read a new webcomic I bumped into this afternoon on the loo at work.
"... Did you know its been two years since my last blog post?" I ask her, baffled at how long its actually been.
"Well, that's because you're rubbish" She points out.

Love is kinda like that, I guess. Harsh and delivered whilst the other person is distracted.

On the plus side, she DOES have the right amount of Soy Sauce. Apparantly this is actually a thing.

Now she's spitefully licking an awful lolly she managed to nick from work, because she's reading over my shoulder now she's noticed i'm actually writing...

-----

This is me, once again attempting to get this pile of oddly shaped dice up off of the floor and back into the box.

So, heres a list of what I have (And havn't!) been doing since I last made a post...

Lords of Gossamer and Shadow failed as a campaign. Which was super disappointing. I still hope to one day have a game of it on the go, but I think people have been a little burned on it and are doing other things with their nights now.

Dungeon World was discovered as an RPG which I instantly fell in love with. I seriously adore this game greatly. I'll do another post about that in the future though.

XCOM hasn't really advanced at all as a project. Remember how my previous post to this one two years ago said 'I have a new job now! and opportunity to wargame!'? Yeah, I still have the job but the wargaming is still sparse. I really should get painting again, though...

Victory by Any Means is an interesting little 4x game that I discovered looking for similar titles. I've been looking at the rulebook for ages but have only recently been able to actually give it a go. Its pretty maths intensive, but once you know what you're actually doing it almost opens up...

The Isles of Darkness is still about and i'm still playing the games! A lot of them have had me thinking recently what players can do to improve their own games as well as the games of others, so I might do a few posts about that...

RPG Design. I'm sure every roleplayer thinks about making their own game - I bet some of them even managed it. I've come up with either hacks for other people's games or entirely new ideas without any sort of mechanics behind them or actual effort behind designing them. Maybe i'll have a go at that for real...

At any rate, that's the current state of the Fort.

Better bust out the mortar and repair some of these walls...

Hey Guys!

This is just a post to let everyone know I havn't died, my update schedual just went out of the window in light of the holidays.

My projects for this year:

A 1000pt Necron Army painted and based. (And thus, Killteam)
Paint ALL THE 15mm
Go to Salute 2014 (THE ALL FATHER EDITION... where I take my dad)
Build an Inquisimunda Gang.
Weekly Lords of Gossamer & Shadow updates
Get to a point with Joust! where the mechanics are dealt with
Get some of my 'Made it at work' RPG stuff out of my head onto paper.
Create a Chronicle Start Addendum for the IOD/Forsaken
Finish making kit for Ars Magica (And play it)
More gaming with The Responsible One

... It might happen.
Maybe.

Vampire: The Requiem Blood and Feeding Essay

"Why Vampires should resort to violence only as a last recourse."
or
"Can I afford to pay for this fight?"

Vampires don't really need to pay for food. This much is a simple fact. If needs be, a vampire can go out there and grab someone of a street and chow down. Its dangerous, but its a thing. Blood is fairly important to a vampire. Lets look at the basics of what a vampire needs blood to do.

1: Wake Up.
Thats right. Every day that a vampire survives costs a point of blood. Thats 7 points of blood a week just to wake up. Thats one whole human death a week if you don't feel bad for draining a person dry, Three 'Risky' feedings of 3 vitae per week (9 vitae), four 'safe' feedings of 2 vitae  per week (8 vitae) or seven insignificant feedings of 1 vitae per week (7 vitae).

2: Are you a Nomad?
Haven of soil costs 1 blood a night, if you cant find somewhere safe to have a day sleep or are on the run. Thats another point of Vitae.

So, on average, your worst case scenario decrees 14 points of blood per week to survive. or 56 a month. 56 points of blood! Eight average human deaths. One safe feeding a night. This means you are balanced out and not gaining or losing blood. Lets say you're a reasonable person and you arn't snatching people off the street to put them in your face. Thats maybe what, 2 hours of flirting or co-ercion or domination or however you feed?

But lets look back a second there. Flirting/seduction requires certain... bodily aspects to be needed to work sometimes. Maybe you get your blood during sex, or something like that? So lets add...

3: Blush of Life
Blush of life is required to do things like - not feel like a corpse, pretend to have a pulse, be warmer but hardly average human temperature and to get the physical side effects of sexual arousal - getting hard, or moist, or whatever. Thats a point of blood for a scene.

So if your average way of feeding is via sex and you are a nomad, that puts you up to 3 points of blood a night. or 21 blood a week. 84 blood a month. One Risky feeding per night. 12 Humans a month.

But the likelyhood of being a nomadic sexual predator is unlikely. So 2 blood a night is more reasonable. And in those situations, you might even be able to get away with having a safe place to stay for a night or meeting someone who doesnt need sexual stimulation in order to get to a position where you can feed from them. So whats more likely is that you're going to need only about 4 additional blood a week on top of your basic 7.

4: Corvee
Its likely that if you life in a city with a lot of vampires, theres not going to be much in the way of spare territory to claim as your own. So its likely that you're also going to need to pay Blood Tithe to an older vampire. Maybe thats human blood, maybe thats YOUR blood. either way, thats around maybe 3 blood a month if you have a landlord and he's not giving you a good discount or making you pay through the roof.

So lets make it a nice round 10 blood a week, yeah? Its a nice solid number and is also co-incidentally the blood pool of a BP 1 vampire.

Jimmy is a Neonate, a daeva who was an up-and-coming actor before his embrace. He's good looking, personable and his way of feeding is via seduction.

Jimmy gets mugged.

Now. Lets stab Jimmy with a knife. We'll ignore the astonishingly appaling dicepools that some characters in the IOD have and assume that its someone who knows how to use a knife (rather then being stabmaster prime), using a knife. An average slash is going to do 2 damage to Jimmy.

A normal mugger is just going to stab someone once if they have to, but when Jimmy fights back (he's had a bad night) the guy gets two stabs in before Jimmy stops him/fends him off. Thats 4 Lethal. Thats four blood... or two nights of safe feeding on TOP of the two nights of safe feeding he normally would have to do a week. Or maybe Jimmy takes a couple of points from his mugger. The point being, thats another 4 points.

5: Healing
Bashing heals at 2 points per point of blood. Lethal heals one-for-one and Aggravated damage takes 5 blood and a night of sleep each.
Except, well... if you look like you'd been seriously hacked to peices or burnt to cinders, you wouldn't have your normal ability to feed socially as i suspect most vampires do. So if you cant heal up most of it, you're going to be on significant penalties to dicepools to do with feeding/ get less blood per night then you normally would.

So injury not only straight away saps from your blood reserves, but punishes you later down the line too.

Though, there was a way for Jimmy to minimise the amount of damage he took, using his celerity.

6: Power Use
Celerity costs 1 blood per turn but makes him very hard to hit. If he doesnt get hit, those two rounds of combat are still going to cost him 2 blood (better then the four of damage) or maybe more if the mugger still got a lucky shot in. or potentially, Jimmy is shooting himself in the foot if his mugger gets seriously lucky and still stabs him twice, potentialy putting the blood cost of that fight up to 6 blood. And we've allready established that as a BP 1 vampire, Jimmy has a pool of 10.

Assuming that Celerity helped on one hit, but didnt on the other means that fight cost Jimmy 4 blood. Meaning that if jimmy continues his normal feeding style, he'll stay on a pool of 6 blood. Which is fine if Jimmy doesnt expect to be attacked anytime soon again.

And lets be fair, on average he wont.

but averages go out of the window when you're fighting another vampire. Vampires can deal Aggravated damage, which is very, very expensive to heal and often very obvious. Vampires rarely stop because they've taken a gut-shot. Vampires can lose control of themselves and become unable to withdraw from a combat.

... Combat against a vampire becomes seriously prohibitive on your 'ability to feed' and 'days left before torpor' counts. Vampires live day-to-day on their ability to hunt/provide for themselves, and they cant 'go without' for a few days, because every day costs at least one blood if you're lucky or well prepared.

Herd helps. Haven Location helps. A bunch of merits help. Be really, really glad that most ST's wont say 'i've you've used these dots once this month, you cant use them again' though if you travel a lot.

The point being, a fight doesnt just course resources.

A fight costs your ability to continue living.

Even if you win.

People get terrified of the concept of having to live on very little money in real life. Why wouldn't a vampire be terrified of the concept of falling into a coma only someone else can wake you up from? the answer is they probably should be terrified of how likely that is.

And thats why vampires shouldn't engage in violent agression until all other options have run out.

Forsaken Larp Project

This won't mean a lot to a good chunk of people looking at this blog, I imagine.

I'm working on a thing which wont come to fruition for at least a year, but I want to be ready to roll out a proposal document for people to make a desicion about when the time comes. For the most part, its going to end up being a whole bunch of notes and reasons why I think its a good idea until we get closer to me putting my hat in to try and run it.

I'm a member of a Live Roleplay Society in the UK and one of the games we play is Werewolf: The Forsaken. We have... well, as of right now I think i'm confident enough to say at least 10 games with over 50 characters that play in them. Probably more. So for the Forsaken fans reading this going 'Jesus how many players is he planning for?'... well, a god-damn lot is the answer.

The Role of the ANST

As a start, i'd like to overhaul the job description of the ANST. As it stands, the ANST is a Direct storyteller as well as a team leader and an administrative organiser and rules-decider. While i understand that Teams do help with this serious spreading thin issue I think having the ANST write national level plots does take away from the personal, visceral nature of werewolf. Its not a story about how the Forsaken Nation won, its a story about a bunch of werewolves carving a place for themselves under the eye of an insane godess whilst trying to live up to the job they inhereted from their father.

 

As such, i'd like to put more power into the hands of the local ST's when it comes to plot and the freedom to write plot for their game and turn the ANST into a supervisory/advisory role. As such, my plan is to make the ANST responsible for the following:

 

• Creating and Modifying rules addenda
• Adjudicating Fetish Creation and Approval
• Adjudicating Renown at the Heroic and Legendary levels (4 and 5 respectively)
• Mediating the use of Venue Antagonists (Balehounds, Pure Society, Shifting Breeds, Hunter Organisation) at a national level to ensure the game does not suffer an oversaturation of various antagonist groups.
• Administrating for each of the local games in their purview to ensure that information is shared between games (such as when a non-local character acheives a renown-worthy deed or steals a fetish) and for ST handovers to be completed and passed along.
• Mediating ST/ST disputes and ST/Player disputes when they cannot be solved personally or locally.
• Helping local ST's organise games for Nationals and acting as a co-st during them.
• Translating local ST plot drops into Luna-Given Cahalith dreams and passing them down to players as the local ST requests them. (This is to give cahalith dreams more of a 'handed down by god'  feel)

Noticably, at this point there is no plans for the ANST to write plot at a national level.

 

Forsaken Character Creation Guidelines

• No Membership Class XP (This may change depending on society-wide desicions about how we use MC in the future, and I am using 'No MC' to represent my personal opinions and preferences until i'm told otherwise)
• Limited Fetish Ownership at character creation for the first 3 months of the new Chronicle. No fetishes at Character Creation after this point. (This is to give fetishes more of a feel of items of significance rather then useful tools and to ensure no oversaturation of fetishes occurs with the 'Fetishes don't cost XP' point in 'venue guidelines' section)
• No Renowns at 3 at Character Creation.
• Fighting Styles function according to the books except where stated. (... My plan is for a low powered game which actually makes fighting styles more applicable then a simple bonus or penalty applied to characters. This point is seriously subject to change and the fighting styles might be heavily addenda'd depending on the XP system we settle with)
• No Skills or Merits higher then 3 dots before XP is applied.
• No Attributes above 4 before XP is applied.
• No Pure, No Balehounds, No Shifting Breeds (The first two I am negotiable about, the last one no way in hell)

Forsaken Venue Guidelines

These will be a series of notes rather then a well organised thing for the moment as my brain meanders.

• Everything is owned. There should be no territory where a werewolf or a pack of werewolves can just walk in and claim it unchallenged. Packs new to the area should have to work towards gaining territory. Wether its held by Azlu, Pure, Forsaken, Claimed, Powerful Spirits, Vampires or Mages doesn't matter.
• There should be no gaps between player territories unless it is a serious plot point. Werewolf packs should be in close proximity to each other and causing problems on each others territories should be common. Werewolves should feel like everyone else is constantly on the border of invading their territory.
• There should be at least one neutral territory on a VSS to allow live games to occur.
• When a pack is created, they should have less then 5 points of Loci between all members. How this is distributed across the territory should be discussed with the pack and the ST.
• The entirety of a pack's membership should be on a single Vss, not split between multiple.
• The entirety of a pack's territory should be on a single Vss, not split between multiple.
• If the VSS has 5 or fewer local players, they should be a single pack.
• Totem Benefits only apply to your local VSS - Totem spirits won't venture far from a pack's territory and are NPC'd by your ST only. Yes, this means that travelling to other domains robs you of your totem benefits. Yes, this means that travelling to National Games robs you of your totem benefits. I am considering some sort of 'Temporary Lodge' for these national games which grant benefits that apply to the nature of the national game so that everyone has a way to get involved.
• Each Pack should make a short list of territories they would like. The ST should make sure that at least one of these territories is owned by another PC pack (if a Clutch or Tur game) or an NPC Pack (if a Pack game). One of these territories should be within the bounds of the pack's territory but as so far unclaimed/neutral by the pack or contested.
 
• Each VSS should decide wether it is a 'Pack' game, a 'Clutch' game or a 'Tur' game.
• Pack: All local players are members of the same pack and plot revolves around that pack's territory and local area.
• Clutch: Two or more packs who are often at odds if not downright agressive to each other. Pack on Pack conflict is common, co-operation should be begrudging. Plot should focus on causing conflict between the packs either requiring them to battle it out or come to a temporary truce to resolve the problem.
• Tur: Two or more packs who have created a Tur. Packs may be at odds with each other but a truce stopping them from downright attacking each other exists. Packs can also be genial to each other. Co-operation is common and Pack on Pack conflict is rare. Plots should focus on the Tur coming together to resolve issues.
• National Games should be Warbands, Moots or Revels. Each National Game should be based on a VSS's location with the local ST acting as the Lead Storyteller or as the decision making part of a National ST Team if they don't feel comfortable running a national game as the lead ST.
• Warband: The Game focuses on Forsaken Society in the UK having been called to a location by the local pack/s in order to battle or otherwise defeat a foe that cannot be beaten alone.
• Moot: The game focuses on a large gathering of the UK forsaken having been called together to discuss 'Political Matters'. Im not sure how this one would work but ideally there would be locally run plots that several games in close proximity to each other share that require deep thought from multiple werewolf packs.
• Revel: The game focuses on a social get together hosted by packs local to the area for the Forsaken of the UK. Cahalith Storytelling and Branding, Individuals and Packs bragging about their acheivements, Hunts (Competative or for Ritualistic Purposes) and perhaps music and a buffet.

• Combat should be quick, viscious and savage
• Fetishes should not cost Experience to purchase but require either a Ritualist to create them or for them to be stolen/looted from foes.
• Talens should be common
• Low level fetishes should be uncommon but present.
• High level fetishes should be plots unto themselves or inhereted from dead family/packmates.
• Renown should not cost Experience to purchase but after the first two levels they should require serious effort. A characters level 2 renowns should be able to be detailed by their Packmates, level 3 renowns should be able to be detailed by non-packmates on the VSS, Level 4 renowns should be able to be detailed by Cahalith from other domains and Level 5 renowns should be able to be detailed by every character living within the UK for any length of time.
 

And thats what I have had bouncing around my brain for a few months now. Finally written somewhere I can't easily lose it like my notebook...