A Window, A Light...

I've been trying to work out a post about competency in role-playing games, but when I've sat down, I realized I had a few different issues come up, and by the time I felt like I was getting somewhere, I had to go somewhere else and do a thing. This pattern's repeated itself three or four times now in the last week. 

On one hand, I've been running WoD. I mean, not as much as I want, but still fairly often as things go. I'm planning on using the plot for NaNoWriMo, even. For what it's worth. Ahem. But I've had fairly good success managing my own expectations for competency in game using the Core and Second Sight. Those expectations are managed by the implications in the writing for what fluff there is (usually not related to mechanics players are going to be interacting with) and the mechanics in the text. 

One excellent example if how, when it was released, it was generally lauded but the stats for the beat cop were immediately torn to shreds. The reason why was obvious - the beat cop was built using an incredible amount of experience points off the starting character template. This kind of transparency is, for me, extremely important. The newer line of WoD books has been very consistent from what I've seen in this kind of regard. Part of this is how the characters are all built off exp right from the beginning, and none of these games with Bonus Points. The character creation game can still be rigged, but the discrepancy is smaller and can typically be managed using a few simple rules of thumb. 

Exalted 2.5 is much, much messier. I don't really think anyone's surprised to hear that, but character creation is all over the place. Backgrounds are very messy, with some being clear winners and others varying by campaign from absolutely wasted to absolutely game-breaking. Bonus Points muddy the issue by allowing players to buy rank 4 and 5 skills for a single point, in some instances, making extreme specialization a much better deal then diversification early on. Experience point expenditures are different for the same thing cross-splat. The reality of combat is pervasive, but which powers you should buy aren't always clear. Certain areas of expertise are oddly structured, so that being able to survive combat (which is fun, so tends to be prioritized) is extremely expensive, which leaves other interesting and fun powers largely off the table until much later, or at risk of accidentally being dissolved by the first attack they're unable to defend against. 

So, there are issues. That's part of the problem you run into with a system originally designed to partially mimic the deck building feel of collectible card games, and also runs into the problems about the concern of verisimilitude in setting and different expectations from different writers. I struggled with some of these concerns when writing and editing my own game, which I guess I've decided to leave titled Dream, until I figure out otherwise. 

It's a system that's incredibly stripped down, but the potential problem exists despite that, because as long as you put character creation options into the hands of players, the possibility of making a character 'wrong' is present. Getting into the details about all three of those things is obviously going to make a post really long by LJ standards, but that's what I've been wrestling with. I've certainly got notepad pages full of inane scribbles. I'd really like to get into even one of those tonight, but it's late and I'm probably busy again most of tomorrow. I guess I'm making a promise to myself to try to do it tomorrow, though, at least in part so that I can fully realize some of these design issues. 

That's not even to mention, really, that I feel that languages, crafts, and to a wider degree, styles of martial arts would be better served being merits like in newer versions of WoD and that the structure presented - in part - for Changeling is worth looking into for Exalted. Possibly, anyhow. A mash-up of inherent abilities based on splat, a flatter power curve between Exalt types, Charms, applicable Merits, Merits instead of Backgrounds, free Excellencies (if that structure is maintained) as inherent powers, ect, et al. Prioritization has been extremely difficult for me. I want to do everything all at once. I've been working incredibly hard to focus and actually accomplish one thing at a time, but sometimes I just have to check in and talk about what else I want. 

Final Changeling today. We're going to do the endgame in the Hedge then the epilogue, which was initially just going to be its own game. The Arachnid is equally fine with destroying the interlopers or being destroyed. He's a stereotype villain who's fueled by spite. And I mean 'stereotype', in that as time had gone on for him, his existence became more and more centered around being a bad guy, of ruining and destroying for no reason but to do so, and to sell out fellow Changelings to inspire fear and to sustain himself with the beneficence of the Fae who tolerate him. 
( Game into's here. )

That's the intro to the game. That's as creepy as I was able to make it. It pulls from a few nightmares I've had in the past.

I'm going to cop to being kind of tired. My hours switched and I'm working even earlier, which isn't a tragedy, or anything. Still have 10 hour Mondays where the primary woe is just that my day seems so short after I get back from work. It's a total of maybe 12 hours when you get right down to it, maybe as much as 12.5. I know others work a lot harder then me. Maybe I'm just lazy. I like to think of it as having different priorities.

Busy weekend. Productive. I got hit on, which is nice. I mean, that's good for the ego. It doesn't seem to be an unrelated incident, which continues to make me feel good about myself.

Changeling happened. It was a trip to the rumor monger in the Goblin Market and then the Hedge. I'm a mechanically lazy ST, but I went out of my way to detail the floor plan of the posh home of a side antagonist, when I should have worked on the main one. Still, I was told my portrayal of the atmosphere was creepy and, at one point 'kind of terrifying'. That really made me feel pretty good. It turns out that all of the players and some of the NPCs have 'assault suits'', where they actually change outfits. The players were backed up by two NPCs, and headed into the lair of the Arachnid, which seriously sounds like a D&D module.

There's been some stuff that I seriously haven't expected these last few days, and I guess I'll go meditate under a waterfall about them. Until then, I want to continue my song-related character naming conventions with my Sidereal's prospective name, Age of Innocence. Previous characters include my Abyssal Son of a Silent Age and my Solar, Killroy. Other group characters include the Solar Eight Line Poem, the potential Abyssal, The Man Who Sold the World, the Abyssal Blood From Heaven (from Pennies from Heaven), and the Abyssal Frozen King of Pain (from King of Pain).

No Exalted today. One of our players is going to see a Springsteen concert, so there's going to be a distinct lack of necrotic essence-fueled personal drama tonight. Frank, our ST, has come to insist that the game is going to end in a tower of destruction instead of peter out in a series of inter-group scuffles though, so maybe I trust that. I'm saying it's possible. We're good friends but his running style and ideas of games have never matched mine, exactly. This game is going pretty roughly, but it does persist, so anything could happen. The ST tends to set up a McGuffin we're supposed to interact with in the proscribed way, and gives us two choices. Generally, we don't have much choice; the situations we're faced with are beyond anything our characters have the power to work with. 

It can be chalked up to being kind of powered-down in fights, being pit against characters far more potent then us, and given few resources or time to work with. There are other small issues that crop up that interest me. For example, Lookshy has been in a few conflicts with the Deathlords and destroys their forces without any trouble every time. This sits oddly with me, but it's the tone the game has. Even small towns have historically been able to hand us our asses.

I really don't know. We were given a choice early on; redemption or loyalist. Most of us went redemption, so now I just follow the redemption plot hooks until the game's over. The end.

Changeling is being run this week. The motley consists of 3 Spring Courtiers and one unaffiliated. Sunday was the night I got really hammered and went sideways, but the game was lucid. For me, anyhow. The characters had been following a path strongly, picking up a plot thread and running with it relentlessly, making my game planning easy as far as that went. I set up the beginning, which was a gun drop from the Summer Court to assist in equipping the motley with tools needed to go against whoever was directing the moles. As of the game before last, they were planning on knocking down the other radio towers and rooting out the remaining corruption, inquisitor style.

This is not something that happened.

I had laid out a few sidequests. Just, you know, stuff based of what the characters had did and said offhand. The PI got a call from a card he handed out. The musician got calls back on his band fliers. Ect, et al. The characters took the night to follow up on those leads, while a PC and NPC took the oppertunity to hang out and ended up doing tequila shots before drunk dailing available (and unavailable) PCs and NPCs. One thing lead to another, and before long, seduction checks were being rolled on the table and everyone woke up with a tequila headache the next day.

I mean, this is the Spring Court for you, I guess. Everything's right on track then it falls off the rails with a rediculous party. I pretty much wrapped the game up after that. I'm running on Sunday, but it's probably the least likely opening for a game that I've run in quite a while.

Week's been crummy so far. Mandatory overtime Monday, tire blow-out Tuesday, and now I hope to god it's not something like windstorm Wednesday or some other kind awful, alliterative afternoon. Meeting's tomorrow. I don't know what kind of thing is expected from me at a meeting like this, except that I have specific prospects for studies that need to be narrowed and I want to know the professor's opinions on the programs available at the university.

Actually, that sounds really reasonable. So instead of being nervous, I guess I'm just excited, and I'll leave nervous for later.

The first Changeling game went well but went short, too. Frank's playing a Bluecap - a miner or kobold who wants to distance himself from his kith by going into law. He's enthusiastic and hopeful, and if it weren't for the Thunderbird, it probably wouldn't be a game at all, in the way you normally experience WoD. And geeze, now that I think about that, I think that'd be a fantastic game too. The other player's the Thunderbird, actually. They couldn't be more different, and are definietly atypical examples of the Spring Court.

The interesting thing for me is noticing how different thing could have gone if they had just had different outlooks. Now the story is really coming along, so I'll run the next session on Sunday again, hopefully with new additions to the group. We've been looking for brand new players, as well. If we get the second group up and running, then the first and second session will likely be merged depending on the time and energy level of us all. I don't know how interested people are in the actual game, so I'll hold off on actual plays for now. 

I came back from work in a wicked bad mood due to a combination of back/head aches and the news of mandatory overtime, which at least indicates that I'll get a boost to my paycheck. Overtime's been available for the last several weeks and if I wanted it, I would have taken it. Presumably, I am not the only one that feels this way, because now it isn't voluntary anymore or, at least, the number of people I've overheard talking about working 50 hour weeks is either non-representative or not enough to swing are heavy call volume. In the light of day, when I'm feeling moderately less like I've been stuffed in a sack and beaten, I don't feel so cross about it.

Just a little cross.

Frank and The J-Man wanted to go out of Monday margaritas at Los Tres Amigos, so that's what we did. Normally two pitchers should be enough, but they had us stop by a gas station on the way back to pick up additional beers and I woke up to a mountain of bottles covering every visible surface. Actually, I woke up several times due to our downstairs neighbors deciding to fight at terrible hours for the second night in a row. On Sunday, they fought from 10 PM until 3 AM, and yesterday they decided to switch it up and fight from 5:30 AM until 9  AM, waking me up every half an hour or so when the pitch changed in what I am chairitably referring to as a debate.

Consequently, I do not feel great this Tuesday.

I agreed to run my first Changeling session this Sunday for Group Wormtongue, and after that the session should be available for everyone. Running games makes me nervous, but I'm going to try to keep this one tight, with an easily identifiable arc that we can cap off. As I've mentioned before, I've had ok luck with my WoD games and less with the more sprawling and high-powered Exalted, so I'll just cross my fingers and hope it's not too bad.

I've been trying to set up appointments with professors, but it's not going well. I'll try to contact by phone again, but if this trend keeps up, I'll have to take a day off to stop by and hope I can bug them during office hours. That's life. I think that some of my time off has cycled back over because the process is actually different in the St Louis location from the Seattle one, which means I might even get paid for it.

Sunday isn't even really begun, and I've really only been up for a few hours but I've still managed to go grocery shopping and put a bit of laundry in. Saturday was kind of cool because I got my banking stuff back, got to hang out with Vi a touch, watched Ringu 2 for the first time, as well as getting a small amount of frisbee in late in the day. It's all terribly miscellaneous, I know.

I started writing the Abyssal fic, and I was only a little happy with my first attempt. It's a little overwrought, which might fit Abyssals in kind of a baroque, overwrought way, but my character's very minimalist and so should the fiction be. I should be able to finish it up tonight and probably benefit from the bonus experience points it brings me, as well. As a bit of departure from the standard MO, I will not be awarding any bonus points for stories in the Changling game, which the players seem to be ok with. I'm going to be statting some of the NPCs up tonight, especially the old spook PC mentor.

All Playstation gaming is on indefinite hiatus until I can fix it. It won't read disks. I hope you weren't really interested in my analysis of Dead Space, or anything. I've not been getting way too in-depth here on the journal, but I'm a little bummed that I can't continue. We'll see how things come along. I might plug in the PS2 for a while and give those games a chance.

Turns out I was missing pieces of my futon all along and my dad just found 'em. I have a bed in my future, and I'm pleased out of proportion to the reward, to be sure.

I've been taking a little time to pen down my last few years in summary. It's actually ending up being pretty extensive on paper, leading me to realize that my life has been substantially more complicated then I had at first really assumed.

Frank asked me what the odds of me running Changeling where. I assumed they were 100%, given enough time.
baronsamedi introduced me to numbers stations in a roundabout way, first through rpg.net, then through LJ itself. He may be disappointed to realize that, more then any other game, it provided me with inspiration for Mage: the Awakening, but it doesn't have to be that way. Instead, I'm readjusting my focus.

www.youtube.com/watch I can easily map to a Changeling headspace.
www.youtube.com/watch makes me think of nothing except the sweet, sweet Abyss, ala Mage. Clicking those is up to you. They pressed several of my creepy buttons at once, so it's up to you. There's no shock or surprise. Nothing terrible happens. If you don't like it, you can close the browser, and they probably won't follow you out.

My apartment is coming together well. Futon is still broke. As soon as the dumpster is emptied, I can get rid of a lot of childhood stuff that I was never really a big fan of, but were gifts. I was hard to shop for as a kid, too.

It's still winter, but I feel a little spoiled with weather between 30 and 45 lately. It spent over a week being so cold, it froze any available moisture on my body between my apartment and my car, so at this point it practically feels like spring. I'm no fan of the winter months but I'll
 take what I can get, thanks.

Over here, there's a lot I keep saying I'll do, and I'm running a little behind. Saturday was supposed to be a big day for that, and I ended up going out a little last-moment to meet friends I hadn't seen regularly and together since high school. I ended up getting home around 2 AM, and going to bed at about 3 after a bit of a conversation with a friend who's been having a hard time.

Today, the plan looks to be swinging by my dads pretty quickly to drop off some of his stuff and try to fill my car with crap I should have brought over some time ago. I still have shelves and a futon over there that I'm derelict in re-acquiring, and it's frustrating because I just haven't had the opportunity yet. Once I get the futon, at least, I feel like my apartment room is going to really come together. Maybe I'll even take some pictures.

Also, I mentioned that I might want to run a Changeling game in passing, leading to an almost immediate purchase of the core book from Frank. The group became major enthusiasts almost as soon as the game was out, and the new favorite of at least one Wormtongue player. So I need to plan a story and finish up my Abyssal fic; those are my two activities for my spare time that I'm a bit obligated to perform. After that, there are a few logistical issues that really need to be hammered out. When you put all those things together, you get a busy week.

I ran an idea by Vi re: the intro to the Changeling game I wanted to work with, but everyone's seemed a little meh on it, so it's back to the drawing board. 

Edit : And Frank's already writing stories for his character.

.... I want to like you, but if you keep this up, we'll never be friends. I want you to know that. I keep trying, it's just...these Contracts. They're destroying this relationship.

Ok, first of all, it's cold up here. I kind of want that to sink in, because I'm pretty sure it's roasting in the midwest right now. I don't really have much trouble with heat, but I don't miss temperatures so hot it just makes you want to sit around until evening. Brent and Val have this mini-AC unit which they hardly ever have to turn on, but even when they do, they turn it on for temperatures that we'd of just opened up the windows and turned the fan on for my Dad's house. So that's something.

Over here, besides looking for gainful employment and maybe combing Craigslist for roomies or something*, I've been combining my notes and working on gaming stuff. I spent about an hour looking into ghost rules for NWoD and finding them pretty good. I doubt we'll ever see a Wraith expansion for NWoD, but I'll try to deal.** I also spent, like, four fucking hours with the Changeling books again trying to puzzle out the mechanics to embody my character concepts for the Cam with Brent.

My disinterest for Contracts has found itself transformed into outright ire. What's up with that? One - I don't like their format. They're a bunch of individual paths, none of which simply scale up in scope, but offer a multitude of different abilities at scaling xp costs. So, if the only power I want is ***, then I have to buy * and ** before I can get it, nevermind that those are likely to actually be useless to me if I don't have the relevant Skill. The answer is to buy that skill up, but if it doesn't make a lot of sense to the concept, something's got to give. And either way, it kind of creates a cascading xp requirement that I like on one hand but the inefficiency of it I dislike on the other.

In addition, many contracts are a two-dicepool where one of those pools is Wyrd. Wyrd is just one pool because it goes up to ten, but it's the power stat, so it's hands down the most expensive ability on the list. Because you're not rolling dice, you're really forced to buy it up high if you want certain abilities to get past one success, which I feel is a real issue. OTOH, once it's up there, someone with a high Wyrd is really versitile in terms on Contracts, but it really favors high XP characters more then usual. At least in Mage, a focused younger Mage who picks his Rotes well is still going to be able to compete (or aid) the big boys with high Gnosis. So, that's thematic, it can go either way, I guess. You can either be mostly mundane and rely more on your skills and low-impact Contracts (Hearth is great for this) or just up your Wyrd and go batshit.

Still, if you don't have the XP to buy Contracts and Wyrd, you're looking at a prolonged period of time where you don't really actually do anything. Have fun being scenery again.

In addition, I was considering that I might not have the XP chops to pull off my first, favored character concept, so I decided to go with something low-key. Kind of an agrophobe who came out fairly rarely (which would explain if I didn't come to game often) who didn't need to be that powerful, but was a bit of an information broker and blackmarketeer who assisted his private eye partner. Autumn Court gets a neat Mantle that adds dice to Occult pulls/rolls revolving around Contracts. I don't like many of the Contracts, actually (I chalk this up to being a gaming curmudgeon a bit and decided to just roll with it), and figured I'd just take what I was given and look through the book to find out what Contracts had a fair number of Occult in the die pools.

Good God. Almost friggin' none. I need Summer 4 to get some, or 5's in the other seasonal courts. The only one that's going to apply to me, at least at first, is Autumn, which means I can summon a hailstorm. Which is neither in character nor of any goddamn interest to me at all. I had to have Brent look into the Summer Court book to find alternate Seasonal court Contracts before I found something thematic and Occult related in their Autumn alt.

Summer isn't vetted for play yet. OK. Great. So, I'm basically just going Fleeting Autumn 3, Hearth 2, Mantle 4, and just buying skills and merits, it looks like, on this one guys. What are the rules for mortal thaumaturgy in Changeling, because that's what I want.

Actually, here's what I'd of wanted over their power setup. Exalted style charmlists where the powers are tied to a concept and have pre-requisites but are paid for modularly because they're often unrelated. Problem - high XP characters are just going to buy record numbers of modular charms because they don't scale in XP. Not a problem in Exalted. Might be a problem in Cam Changeling because XP totals are so amazingly high.

Suggestion 2: Use Vampire magics as a template. Buy the Contract stat up from 1-5, but have powers purchased seperate, rated from 1-5, giving one power of the appropriate level to the character every time they increase the rank of their contract, but allow additional thematic powers to be purchased for a modular cost. This is my favorite suggestion because every time you want to come up with a new goddamn power, you don't have to make up four more just to justify creating a new contract, and you wouldn't feel obligated to add a whole new Contract list in every published splat. OTOH, it's a limited run that's already way, way past production, so it's not like these suggestions are useful now. They're just where I would have taken it. I just think this is, by far, the more elegant way to go. It also stops characters from having a bunch of grab-bag Contracts. You've just got the Corebook, plus a few others, so you can give the nod or stop seperate powers from being allowed into the Cam as they're released instead of having to ok or axe a whole Contract list.

Also, there arn't a lot of ass-beating Contracts. I guess this is on purpose, but I'd of liked a few more obviously helpful contracts for combat. I keep seeing all these, "Let's beat the Gentry's ass if they show back up again." in the books, but shit. They're better off just paying Mages or Vampires to do their ass-beating for them. Changeling gonna get his ass kicked.

*If you want to move up, now's a good time. I'm housetrained and I like doing laundry and dishes.
** Probably no Kindred of the East expansion either. That was a cultural artifact of when it appeared, no doubt.