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14:07, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

OOC: twelfth night.

Posted by ShadowFor group 0
Shadow
GM, 6105 posts
Plotting turtle
GM
Mon 3 Jul 2017
at 22:55
  • msg #1

OOC: twelfth night


Ah, the last day of the christmas time period, referring to the specific rite of bringing gift; also, a comedy from William Shakespeare centered around misunderstandings, separation, fake identities and deception. I think this pretty much nails the theme of what we've got ahead of us in the game right now! ^_^

And on that note, to encourage some discussion, I want to point out a worldbuilding aspect of our game which has grown in relevance lately, despite always having been more influential on the way I planned this game than people might have realized. I'm talking about Lorecircles.

Everybody who has read the books would know, but Dusk Rat hasn't, so I'll remark that the original LW series Lorecircles weren't the same as the ones we have in this game - some were similars, but others were not. I'm sure most of you thought that I restructured them merely for balance, but while that played a factor for sure, it wasn't the whole story. In fact, restructuring the Lorecircles was the very first thing I did when planning this game, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the way I shaped the plot was an evolution of the setting assumptions that my restructuring of the Lorecircles (something I did mostly as a fun worldbuilding exercise) lead me to make. It was the spark from which Rebirth sprung.

So, to make it clear, it is my promise as GM that I did not assigned Lorecircles to characters randomly; there is a reason why some lorecircles (Spirit, Fire, and to a lesser extent Moon) are more diffused among the Magnakai NPC, while others are rare (White Mantis and Shining Peacock are currently the only two Light Loremasters). Only seven currently living Kai (Starfire, Moon Shadow, Black Beaver, Shining Peacock, White Mantis, Golden Sparrow, Sun Fox) have more than one Lorecircles; this is not by chance either, and nor is which ones of them they all have. There is a plan and a reason about how I went assigning them.

In fact, I think I managed to even get you PC to conform to my expectations on this point - of you all, the only two who are Loremasters are the two Second Batch members, Sun Snake and Sabre Fox. And it does says things about their characters that they are - I expected them both to get there given the way they ran their characters. It gives even more depth and relevance to the concepts I've tied to the Lorecircles themselves.

So, it's been a relevant plot point that the Lorecircle of Spirit is a necessary requirement for using the Seeing Stones. Shining Peacock himself offered you all his opinion of what that Lorecircle is about, and others NPC have discussed the matter with some of you at various points. In fact, I can safely state that, in setting, it is a commonly accepted point among Magnakai that mastering a Lorecircle means the user mastered a specific aspect of their own Kai powers, although even Loremasters of the same circle often disagree on what that precise aspect is about.

But they're NPC, and so they're only as smart as I allow them to be. You're all PC - you're way smarter than that, since each one of you is way smarter than me. And thus, I am curious: what do you think the Lorecircles stand for? What does each one represents, and why do they exist in the first place? What is the point behind them?

Please discuss it at lenght - I'm looking forward to seeing what you will make of it! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:37, Tue 04 July 2017.
Dusk Rat
player, 2031 posts
aka Ameena
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 14:58
  • msg #2

OOC: twelfth night

I dunno. I just figured it was a way of grouping related skills together and giving some extra bonuses to people who managed to take all the relevant skills. So, looking at the list in the skills post, Fire seems mostly physically combat-related, Spirit looks like it covers mental combat, Moon looks kind of generic with something of a mixture of utility and combat, Solaris is for us Nature-walkers (:D), and Light is like Solaris but with a bit more biologically-related crafty-type stuff.

I notice there is some crossover in that a couple of the skills are featured in more than one Lorecircle (eg Divination is in both Spirit and Light). I hadn't ever considered that there might be any specific GM-created reason why certain skills would be grouped together, but then I didn't know how much of this was made by the GM and how much was in these adventure books that I've never read ;).

I think I'm pretty close to achieving one of the Lorecircles (think I only need one more skill) but I don't imagine we've got any more level-ups left to go, since it's been said for a while now that we're apparently very close to the end of the campaign.
Swift Fox
player, 3975 posts
Primate, Darklord slayer
Ghost of Anskaven, Age 17
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 15:08
  • msg #3

Re: OOC: twelfth night

Dusk Rat:
I hadn't ever considered that there might be any specific GM-created reason why certain skills would be grouped together, but then I didn't know how much of this was made by the GM and how much was in these adventure books that I've never read ;).

The original Lore Circles were set up like:

Fire = Weaponmastery + Huntmastery. (+1 CS, +2 EP)

Light = Animal Control + Curing. (+3 EP)

Solaris = Invisibility + Huntmastery + Pathsmanship. (+1 CS, +3 EP)

Spirit = Psi-Surge + Psi-Screen + Nexus + Divination. (+3 CS, +3 EP)

Not too sure what significance the new setup has though.
Doubt it'll be too relevant to Swift, whose path has been forged more by her own development than consideration for the Lore Circles.  Kind of fits her in a way, since she's not necessarily one to stick to the rules ;)
Dusk Rat
player, 2033 posts
aka Ameena
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 15:09
  • msg #4

Re: OOC: twelfth night

Yeah, same - I didn't build Dusk Rat around trying to achieve these Circle things, I just picked skills that seemed like they suited her character and it's turned out that most of them have fit into Solaris. But I didn't plan that.
Swift Fox
player, 3976 posts
Primate, Darklord slayer
Ghost of Anskaven, Age 17
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 15:15
  • msg #5

Re: OOC: twelfth night

If I'd continued to play as "Rogue Swift", I'd probably have aimed for the Lore Circle of Fire.
But "Redemption Path Swift" was guided onto learning crafting from Silver Raven, so becoming more of a creator than a destroyer :)
Wasn't a convenient Lore Circle that fit all the skills I wanted though, so she forged her own path in a way.
If there had been time, I might have had her eventually aim for the Lore Circle of Moon.  Might be her future path beyond this game if she survives whatever awaits us at the end :)
Sun Snake
player, 5108 posts
Kai Lord
Grand Guardian
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 20:11
  • msg #6

Re: OOC: twelfth night


I think Sun Snake, and so I, already gave my analysis of the lore circles a while ago. The idea that if you think of the Kai Disciplines as one whole thing (a globe) then the circle is one slice. I suppose each understanding would be the same as studying a part of the world :) And so by focusing on one part, a person is biasing away form another part - which is no bad thing.

I think Sun Snake terms it like the gift being the sun (and the god Kai), and each lorecircle being an espect of that. Light being understanding, fire being the ability to act, the spirit being the ability to use more divine senses, and solaris being the balance of all those. I guess they are all about connections to the world.

I believe the moon then became the echo of the kai disciplines but throug hthe lense of Ishir and other champions.

It should be noted that I as a player pitched a new Lorecircle to our GM, so I would be more interested to see if that pitch fit in with both the idea of the lorecircles and their nature?


Anyway, that's interesting that the NPC lorecircles are very deliberate, rather than a result of just what disciplines they would be likely to have.


Oh, I thought I'd replied to the OOC thread regarding Water Hornet - I'll edit the post with the Shining Peacock farewell.
Shadow
GM, 6108 posts
Plotting turtle
GM
Tue 4 Jul 2017
at 20:41
  • msg #7

Re: OOC: twelfth night


That's good to hear. :)

As for this:

Sun Snake:
It should be noted that I as a player pitched a new Lorecircle to our GM, so I would be more interested to see if that pitch fit in with both the idea of the lorecircles and their nature?


That really depends on your presentation of it, and how you think it should fit in the greater design, and why. If you are capable of selling it to me well enough as a necessary expansion, I'm not against letting it go in.

And in a sense, the characters do have the Lorecircles that match the Disciplines which fit them - but it's not like "the disciplines which fit them" was ever random, either. All of you developed the characters the way you wanted to, and as a result, some of you moved towards some Lorecircles, and some reached it, and some went for a more diverse selection. It works in making things very organic, I think.

My expansion of the Lorecircles, and which disciplines were added, and which ones are shared by some, and which ones are exclusive, all has a reason - I'm just curious to hear what you all think the reasons are. This isn't a test or a guessing game: I'm not looking for "correct" answers, I just want to know what you think, to engage each of you with this aspect of the game's worldbuilding.

I mean, I did mentioned that Peacock offered his own interpretation of what possessing the Lorecircle of the Spirit means. Do you agree with it? If so, why? And otherwise, why not?

I just want to see what the brilliant minds of you all, a group of very creative people and players, can come up with regarding this matter. I'm very curious! ^_^
Dusk Rat
player, 2035 posts
aka Ameena
Wed 5 Jul 2017
at 14:37
  • msg #8

Re: OOC: twelfth night

I never really thought about it in much detail - I mean, like I said, I didn't know these were put together specifically by the GM, I just thought they were already like that as part of this particular system. And it would hardly be the first to have a skill system that groups things together and offers bonuses to those who manage to effectively "collect the whole set" ;).
Shadow
GM, 6110 posts
Plotting turtle
GM
Wed 5 Jul 2017
at 20:39
  • msg #9

Re: OOC: twelfth night


Well, as Swift Fox said, there were originally Lorecircles in the gamebooks, and they did indeed offer bonuses to those who did collect one of the whole sets. However, as you can see from Swift Fox's explanation, they were really unbalanced:

Fire and Light were very small, with two disciplines each; this made them "easy access" options. However, their bonuses are different - in the LW system, 1 point of CS is worth a lot more than 1 point of END (as I'm sure you can tell by now), and the original system didn't have WP, that was an addition.

Also, due to Huntmastery being in two Lorecircles, completing Fire and Solaris would take four disciplines, while Spirit would take four different ones on its own. However, to compensate for this, the Spirit bonus is much better - it is, in fact, superior to that of Fire and Solaris combined.

In practice, what this did in the gamebooks was make some choices much superior to others, and the Lorecircle of Light in particular was so inferior that a player choosing the disciplines within it was essentially handicapping themselves in their playthrought.

So, to avoid this, when I considered the idea of starting a game of my own, restructuring the Lorecircles so that they were balanced with each other was something that was necessary. It's one of the reason why your fellow players probably weren't much surprised I reworked them the way they did - moreso because I imported disciplines (Kai-Alchemy, Herbmastery, Battle Magic and Craftsmanship) which were introduced in later LW books, ones where the Lorecircles idea had been abandoned.

However, I already was interested in how the idea of the Lorecircles contributed to the worldbuilding, and had been thinkering with the in-setting reason for their existence for some time. This lead to me actually putting a lot of thought into how I wanted them structured for the game, and how they related to the NPCs; I used the themes I had decided gave the Lorecircles their meaning - what I choose as the in-setting justification for their existence - and used those as my guidelines on who'd have what when assigning it to characters.

Mechanically, I also tried to mirror the way the Lorecircles were normally selected by players, so Fire and Spirit are the ones which are picked up first by in-setting NPCs, and I specifically let them one Discipline shorter to make them easier to gain. The lorecircle of Moon follows a similar idea in that the disciplines that makes it up are those considered more useful in the later LW books. On the other hand, the Lorecircle of Light is now the largest one, with the disciplines making it up being handpicked so that one would be needing to go for it specifically to get them all - that suddenly justifies people not picking it up frequently. And it also works very well with the meaning I decided that Lorecircle to have.

So, everything has a reason, which I worked hard to intertwine with the NPCs' personalities and with the plot. And the questions I have now is, does that comes through? But I don't have the answer - the only way to get it is to ask you all what you think, and see if your ideas and thoughts on the matter match what I think.

Thus, the question: what do you think? Try to get into the setting for a moment, look things from the point of view of your characters, and ask yourself: why are the powers of the Kai suddivided in this manner? And what does mastering a Lorecircle means, why is it different from simply having four or five disciplines picked at random? I hope that some good conversation can come out of this (which hopefully would be fun for you players to have), and it's also the only way for me to get your ideas. I love analysis, so analyze, and tell me (and each other!) your results! ^_^
Sun Snake
player, 5109 posts
Kai Lord
Grand Guardian
Wed 5 Jul 2017
at 22:14
  • msg #10

Re: OOC: twelfth night


I hadn't really thought of the personalities of the NPCs to do with their lorecircles, I suppose I can retcon it now - thought in a way we've only encountered a couple each. I suppose once all the hidden threads are revealed, and we see how each NPC intereacted with their own students and friends behind the scenes, then these aspects will be more obvious.


I can only speak for Sun Snake really in that I think his 'lorecircle' and lorecircle progression eerily shows his character progression.


At first he had Divination because he is connected to things, using it passively but not intrusively. And he has Invisibility becauae he tended to just seek not being in the limelight, andjust being a silent part of the order.

While he was actively seeking to gain Psi-screen, because once on the mission he felt he needed to be able to defend himself and be strong for the order, it was actually a surprise Pathsmanship that Shadow offered up as an alternative. And it seemed logical that Sun Snake's connection to the world that was growing as the limits of Divination were being pushed, together with perhaps him looking for purpose internally, matched.

Also, his original character progression should have been to Solaris, and he was basically standing in his own way over that. So it was intersting to have his subconscious slip in to that as the mission put pressure on him, as it did all the characters.


Because Pathsmanship had been a logical extention of Divination in terms of Sun Snake actively trying to read the world and people's intentions that way (rather than just people, which is a more active Psi-surge like use), and because Pathsmanship and Invisibility are already nicely tied together through Solaris as a sort of 'navigate throgu hthe world and understand it / use it' sort of way, having the three disciplines work together as if they were an uber-disicpline isn't really a far stretch.

Add to it Sun Snake then gaining Psi-screen more because he's mind was sort of broken when he realised Lone Wolf was dead / people were big lying liars, then his mental defenses were more a case of him either being disconnected or simply finding a means to push onwards - but still defensively and passively.

And so that's why I pitched a 'Lorecircle of the Shadow' idea, because all the main lorecircles seemd very aspects of the sun, and I liked the idea of Sun Snake's disciplines and they way they all blended together showing how Sun Snake was acting from the shadow,s but rather than in a stealthy/evil way, more in a 'you have the spotlight/ you go be Kai's champion, I'll help back here' sort of way. So the idea that between the four disicplines working together, you can either know your place in the world so perfectly that you can hide yourself to see it clearly and not have an ego, or vice versa use that sense of place and ability to actually emphasis yourself in the world and be certain.

Which describes Sun Snake's two modes :)

So there you have it, my understanding of the lorecricles, and why I liked this new one that seemed to have unwittingly formed in Sun Snake's understanding.


However, I sort of liked the idea that despite being a very mental disiplines user, that Sun Snake probably would not complete the Lorecircle of the Spirit. That his understanding of the physical world and using it aggressively (Nexus) and using his mental energies aggressively (Psi-surge) weren't there, and he was more likely to keep going on a path probably towards Solaris after the game was finished (and that might still be something he has if he lives to be a much older Kai :D )

So I think in my mind if anything 'broke' Sun Snake, he might become a very avenging figure, with Psi-surge, but otherwise he wouldn't keep going towards a Lorecircle. However, instead with Shining Peacock's challenge, I think Sun Snake worked out how to use Psi-surge more in line with simply being more active in his dicipline use, and finally getting passed the mental barriers that he was hitting trying to use Divination actively. And funnily, by getting a sense of the world and seeking connections to everyone, and even seeing the Vashna's prison, and speaking with Sun Fox, I think he finally understood how the spirit disciplines were powered, and so actually gained Nexus. So he came back fromthe dark side, did become more reserved ut active, and connected spiritually to everyone, and so learned the Lorecircle of the Spirit. Rather than maybe being detached but learning to rely on his instincts and disciplines and going to Solaris.
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