I'm not at all familiar with WoD mechanics, so I really can't help you with any of that.

I do know a concept artist. She does backgrounds and settings mostly. She's got something coming out with Rimward (an upcoming EP book) and two images for Technoir. However, she works solely ad-spec, and generally charges around $200-$400 :P

Although that seems somewhat outside my current budget, I'd still love to see some examples of her work.

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In the meantime, I've set a game up. Anyone interested in Theopunk, feel free to drop me an RTJ at link below:

Stellar Infantry Chronicles (WoD/Scion)
link to another game

I don't know that she's been posting her illustrations anywhere (since so far they've all been sold). Once Technoir comes out though, I should be able to point some out.

Are you familiar with Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu?

Shadowrun uses the Essence mechanic, which basically represents how much tampering a human body can take before dying.  You start out with 6 Essence, it can never be increased, and implants permanently reduce that.  Even if the implant is taken out, you're stuck with an "Essence Hole".  Low Essence can mean a variety of things: it makes you harder to heal magically, it can impose a negative social modifier, and it harms your ability to use magic.

Call of Cthulhu uses Sanity Points: a number that represents how sane you are.  As you delve into the deeper mysteries of the Elder gods and experience eldrich horrors beyond imagining, you slowly start to lose Sanity points.  When you slip below a certain level, you become forever insane.

Additionally, there's Rippers, a Victorian horror setting for Savage Worlds.  It uses the Reason mechanic.  Basically, whenever you face something truly horrifying, you need to make a Spirit check, modified by your Reason.  The steampunk and horror implants in that setting reduce your Reason, although there's ways of getting it back up.  If you fail on that roll, you then get to roll randomly for an effect.

I personally like the last one best for your setting.  I think it could be adapted the most readily.  Call it whatever you like, and have the penalty for failure be whatever you think is appropriate.

Another option is something similar to FATE.  Just offer them XP to do whatever it is their character would be "tempted" to do, and/or make them pay XP to resist the temptation.  If there's one thing that gamers can't resist, it's XP (followed closely by loot).

Only slightly. I knew they had sanity mechanic, but not how it works.



I was looking for something like that. However, I'd leave a space for (1) a roll to decide how severe the effect of each individual tampering (Cyberpunk 2020 uses this approach) and (2) the result of too much tampering would be damnation rather than death. Keeping an religious overtone is paramount for this game.



I'd be curious to know how one regains Reason.



NWoD has the derangement mechanic and I'm thinking about adjusting it for the needs of my game. I was thinking something along the line of rolling the temptation rating and should it turns up more than one success, than one needs that many successes on humanity (or whatever) roll to resist humanity loss and/or gaining derangement.



I personally detest GM favoritism and as a point of principle award with experience attending only. Good roleplaying and anything else that requires my judgement is awarded only by doobies (Willpower/Fate/Inspiration whatever) and they cannot be converted to experience.

But using Willpower to resist the sin and sinning to recharge Willpower are both supported in nWoD and I'll be importing it to my game.

The CoC mechanic is pretty straightforward. CoC uses d100, and one attribute is Sanity, so it ranges from 0 to 100. When you encounter stuff, you roll a Willpower test; if you fail, you take the full Sanity damage (usually 1d10). If you succeed you take less (if any) damage. If you lose a certain amount of sanity in one go (around 3-8, depending on the character) you take a temporary dementia. If you lose it all, you're crazy and lost forever.

The easiest way is to buy it up as an Edge, but you can only take it so many times.  You also get a bonus as you advance.  However, implants take you back down real quick, as does Fright.

If you combine that with Essence, then each implant has a set value that subtracts from your Reason.  You also have an absolute limit on how many implants you can have.

In reply to katisara (msg #195):

The mechanic is a bit simplistic for WoD, but it gives me a picture.



An Edge???


A whole lot of what you wrote makes very little sense. I can try to guess what it means, but it's better if you'd just explain, considering I don't know the mechanics.

FATE Forum, little something I know Tyco will love and hopefully the rest of you will as well.

link to another game

Cheers, I'll check it out.  Unfortunately don't have as much time for rpol these days as I used to, so may not be able to to contribute much, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Just restarted medieval version of Stellar Infantry Chronicles. It uses a version of FATE and features Echran Empire before it fell. The link is below.

link to another game

So, as anyone who has been observing over in Community chat will know I once did a thought experiment which posted the question: What happens if upon Jesus ascension to heaven his surviving disciples become D&D style clerics?

The following points were debated and decided upon for these purposes:

1: There have been no clerics prior to this except perhaps a few isolated examples in previous chapters of the bible, but they were unable or unwilling to teach new clerics the way the decipels can.

2: God is Neutral/Good: the god spoken of by Jesus is the god who grants them their spells, not the 'wrath and vengeance' god of the old testament.

3: When/if the issue comes up some half a milenium later it is proved that God and Allah are not separate entities.

Understanding these three precepts, what do you think changes?

No more Christianity. It is replaced by Catholicism. A non-Biblical kind at that.

In reply to Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk (msg # 201):

A couple of questions first:

1) Are these clerics granted magic by God, or taught it by other clerics?

2) Will God revoke their magic powers while they are in a state of sin? (Once could go further into this "state of sin" business, but I'm trying to keep it simple for the moment)

Perhaps: or perhaps not: Catholicism as we would recognize it might never come into existence: the early Christians recognized no Pope, and had no formalized structure of command as far as we can tell.

Things might have stayed that way, and what is more certain is that the riots between the Peeterites and Paulites in Rome would not have come to pass, because the clerics among their numbers would have settled the point's of dogma leading to the riots with divination spells, meaning that the Roman Catholic Church, if it existed, would be much less rabid in it's outlook. You can't have fights over dogma when the higher levels of the church can simply call up Mettatron or Gabriel or Michael and ask for answers to the really thorny religious philosophy questions.



In reply to hakootoko (msg # 203):

Answer 1: Granted their power by God, but taught how to use it by more senior clerics.

Answer 2: Yes, he will, as per D&D style clerics. If you stray too far from God's path your spell casting power is Revoked and you must seek 'atonement' to get it back.

Heya, let's start a game on this premise. lol
D^D in Medieval Europe. :)

Your point about divination to determine correct doctrine is an interesting one. Well-meaning but mistaken heretical groups wouldn't have gotten started, if people could check their doctrine with an angel before teaching it to others.

Priests and bishops would have been regularly tested for being honest by the inclusion of a miracle as part of the mass, and if they failed at it, could face suspension. This wouldn't have had much effect on the worst times in the papacy (such as the Borgias), but perhaps it never would have gotten to that point if clerics were regularly tested.

Magic only being castable by clerics becomes proof of the existence of a higher power, because those who learn it and do not believe can never successfully cast it. It unclear to me offhand if this can be considered proof of God's existence, but there would be a large body of philosophical work on this proposition.

This was one of the conclusions we came to, that this would be done, would inevitably weed out the corrupt and the apostate, and that in turn would result in a truely infalible papacy, assuming one existed at all. We posited that it would though or something similar due to humans being by nature gregarious creatures that look to the 'best' in some sense or other among their number to be their leaders, and people who can heal the sick and raise the dead would definitely be seen by many as 'the best' among their number. (IE high level clerics.)

I suspect the hierarchy would still have formed. It was a necessary function of the church's expanding size, and its interaction with the political system.

I don't play D&D, but I see a few things coming up here.

1) This is objective proof (of a couple of things). It's proof that Christianity is right, so the Roman empire would have to either eliminate them with extreme prejudice, or embrace them as being the dominant religion. Given that historically they took this choice anyway, I don't know that would have a huge impact, but I imagine it would hurry things along.

2) It also contributes proof of dogma, and other facts. For instance, if Mary Magdalene was capable as a cleric, that would clearly have fallout. I'm wondering if a cleric decided to expel or off Mary, or send her on a distant mission, if that would eliminate his ability to be a cleric.

3) Divination would prevent a lot of the early schisms. There would be no question about whether Jesus was flesh or spirit. But it would also make the religion more rigid. There would be no question about whether Easter was in spring and involved rabbits and eggs.

4) I'm not clear about the other clerics coming up. Would we still have branches like Lutherism?

5) I'm also not clear on how sin controls things. For instance, would clerics be able to assume political positions, and make and enforce political decisions?

Good questions all: Let me answer them:

1: I would think that things would most likely go the same way as in history more or less, the Christians would be viewed as witches and sorcerers, and sent to the arena and so on, but in the end, what with being able to heal the sick and injured they would either rise in revolt and overthrow the empire or Constantine or somebody would convert and make it the state religion nd that would be that.

2: We posited based on what was seen in the dead sea scrolls that Mary Magdalena would be a cleric. As for what happens as a result, if one of the other disciples were to kill her he would be striped of his powers, most likely forever, but we could have an IRL Davinci Code situation where she ends up somewhere far from rome with a separate sect of the Church. Then again, she could, if some variants are believed, be Jesus successor as the head of the faith, as it seems now that it is posible that she was his wife, though that is a whole different discussion.

3: Correct, on all points.

4: I believe that this depends, Lutheranism and most other branches of the church were the result of corruption within the church: if this is prevented by access to divination and the revocation of priestly powers than I cant see them arising in the first place. However some schismatic type things might occur, such as a division between the Pentecostal types and the sects espousing silent worship. If God considers both forms of prayer valid ways to reach out and touch the divine within then both groups might exist, but there would be no animosity, since both sides have clerics and both side's clerics serve the same God.

5: This is very simple: are these decisions they make in line with the teaching of God as delivered by his only son Jesus Christ?
Yes? How is it an issue?
No? Why would a preist of the Almighty make such a decision knowing that it is against his Faith an Principles?

So... I have a question related to gaming and religion.

I'm considering buying this White Wolf book:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/...-Inferno?cPath=1_134

It looks awesome, but I'm afraid. I have this irrational (?) fear of demons... which may be weird, as I'm an atheist. Still, I keep wondering: what if what the religious people say is real and there are evil spirits around who want to do us harm? Wouldn't buying this kind of book be a little risky, then..?

Sorry if I have voiced similar questions in the past. I may have... which means I'm still working through this particular issue.

(Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not illogical)

If there was anything in the book that could accidentally summon demons, the game designers wouldn't have survived to publish it. Surely it can't contain any real, dangerous information.

That said, I wouldn't buy it. I don't enjoy playing evil characters.

If I were to make any argument against an RPG book, a fear of summoning demons wouldn't be it.

I guess you're right... I hope so.

I try to be rational about these things, but I keep running into various warnings voiced by religious people... Recently, I've read an article published in a Catholic newspaper that basically said that you can become a target for demons, if you take - for example - part in Eastern relaxation sessions in a spa or visit some places (i.e. historical sites related to Nazism). It made me wonder: what if this stuff is real? If so, then buying a book about demons could make one a target for them, too...