Customizing the Revelations Cycle

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Reading this thread with much interest--will reread the cycle when my time frees up a little more. But I'm contemplating a retaking of L.A. plot for PbP, set in the variant of L.A. I used in Mile Higher Club. That is, The Final Trumpet didn't happen. So I have to decide where in that cycle my plot turned left.

L.A. is populated in theory by demons, but in practice by renegades and demons who pay lip-service to their Princes. It's ruled by a Lilim who claims to be free and probably believes it...but who probably isn't. She and Ryuki--the divine sorcerer--are in a seven-year Cold War situation. The PC's would tip this balance.

Soo...any first thoughts on where to turn left? I own Rev 1, 4, and 5 at the moment.

However the left turn happens, one key event of FT would still have to occur -- the reconciliation of Khalid with Heaven. Otherwise, there's no way he'd even care about events in Los Angeles, much less have supplied a member of the team.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

To better-plug the plot hole, I'd advise having the characters find Mad Max (or his Evil Twin, or Robot Double) somewhere outside the city limits. The characters and/or Superiors can assume that he finished nuking every celestial/demon he could find and went looking for more.

Perhaps they find him (or, rather, "him") chasing down someone, via Sticky Disturbance? E.g., "The Symphony is doing the Thrash Rock thing -- there's so much of it, don't even bother rolling -- and you can tell that it's loudest over there, and indeed, it's moving at about 75mph thataway. Going to try to intercept?"

Oh, good call. He may even be headed out to the Death Valley Tether, where the PCs will want to help out the Seneschal who had been so good to them...

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Reading this thread with much interest--will reread the cycle when my time frees up a little more. But I'm contemplating a retaking of L.A. plot for PbP, set in the variant of L.A. I used in Mile Higher Club. That is, The Final Trumpet didn't happen. So I have to decide where in that cycle my plot turned left.

L.A. is populated in theory by demons, but in practice by renegades and demons who pay lip-service to their Princes. It's ruled by a Lilim who claims to be free and probably believes it...but who probably isn't. She and Ryuki--the divine sorcerer--are in a seven-year Cold War situation. The PC's would tip this balance.

Soo...any first thoughts on where to turn left? I own Rev 1, 4, and 5 at the moment.

Which parts of the Revelation Cycle do you want to keep at all? That is, are you saying that the book The Final Trumpet never happens, or that the last of the seven trumpets never happens? And is the Maximilian situation still in your plan?

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Jason

Which parts of the Revelation Cycle do you want to keep at all? That is, are you saying that the book The Final Trumpet never happens, or that the last of the seven trumpets never happens? And is the Maximilian situation still in your plan?

Definitely the seventh trumpet never blows, but I'll have to reread FT to give much more detail than that. RocketMan is right (and he knows MHC)--Khalid is friendly, and something has to lead to that.

Maximilian is an urban legend as far as the PC's are concerned, but I haven't decided how much truth is behind it.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Definitely the seventh trumpet never blows, but I'll have to reread FT to give much more detail than that. RocketMan is right (and he knows MHC)--Khalid is friendly, and something has to lead to that.

Maximilian is an urban legend as far as the PC's are concerned, but I haven't decided how much truth is behind it.

Hmm, not sure how to advise "where to turn left" because everything before Fall of the Malakim is kind of disconnected, story-wise (though characters from Night Music and The Marches potentially show up in FotM and Final Trumpet as cameos or, in the case of Thor, potentially key NPCs).

Are you trying to figure out a way to GET Khalid friendly using the Final Trumpet plot points, or how to reconcile that he's already friendly? One plot twist you could introduce might be for him to completely blow off Malphas' overtures to reveal where Magog is imprisoned, but have someone else to frame Khalid. Then the PCs' job is to discover what's really going on and/or prove Khalid's innocence and/or entreat him for help when bad things go down despite that he's taking the blame at first.

[Archangel Beth]

Ooo, framing Khalid -- that'd be excellent if one could figure out how to do it. Especially if he's borderline-friendly at the moment, or has done the Elohite thing of, "I should be reaching out more, even though they're all being a bunch of jerks, ignoring me and ignoring what's really important" and is fragile right now, so the right amount of distrust/spurning could, in theory, send him spinning off like Gabriel into the wilderness -- and without the Ofanite resilience of "it's not logical, but I'm doing it anyway because I must do SOMETHING."

(There have got to be some angels wondering why they gave an Elohite the Word of Faith, when it's so clearly (or "clearly") a Cheruby Word. >_> Then again, the Angels of Knitting and Crochet (if they exist) would plausibly report to Faith, considering how, when you're just starting, those defined, even logical, patterns look like Garble till you get on a bit...)

[Andygal]

If I was doing an IN game and felt like changing things, I'd give Faith to a Cherub, personally. I swear the only reason Khalid is an Elohite is to justify the Rev. cycle plot.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Andygal

If I was doing an IN game and felt like changing things, I'd give Faith to a Cherub, personally. I swear the only reason Khalid is an Elohite is to justify the Rev. cycle plot.

Probably the idea was that giving it to an Elohite would avoid the temptation of favoring one particular faith over all others. Oops ...

[tHEhERETIC]

Here's what I wrote last time around (link--too much there to quote)

--edit-- crud, forgot the link and it's --edit-- here.
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/tHEhERETIC/losangeles.html

Since I've made Khalid and important part of MHC's plot I can hardly afford to gloss him over this time. Framing...I like it. Now I have to read (with what time??) to see the ramifications of Magog being out of the box at all.

I can hear Khalid now. "You believed I made a deal with a Demon Prince? Have you no Faith in me?"

[Jason]

A few months and a few unrelated one-shots later (introducing 9 new players to In Nomine!), I'm finally getting to the next adventure I plan to run in the Revelations Cycle: No Dinero. (I'm skipping the one from The Marches, as it doesn't really do much for me, and is tougher to connect back to later adventures.) Once again, I figured I'd return to this thread in case anybody has any feedback on how to customize this one. Some changes I know I'll be making in advance:

The Name. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my players kind of expect names for my adventures. "The Demon Prince of Rock 'n' Roll" had to be changed because of spoilers; "No Dinero" has to be changed to something else because I don't plan on using the location No Dinero. Which brings me to...

The Premise. I'm keeping a few central concepts: Loki is tricking angels and demons into attacking each other; Thor and a remnant angel of Purity are wandering around in a daze; and Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, is somewhere in the area. The gentrification plot feels a little less relevant to my group of players, though, so I'm trying to figure out a way to really foreground the role of the Norse deities. My working plan (though suggestions are VERY welcome) is this:

The PCs meet with their contact at the start of the adventure, who tells them they need to assassinate Loki before he gets his hands on Mjolnir, which has finally been located. The PCs don't realize that it's actually Loki giving them this mission, and the target he tells them to assassinate is actually a Soldier of Hell who's also a cop. They kill the guy, there's a huge disturbance, the local stalemate is thrown into a tizzy, and during all the confusion, Loki makes off with Mjolnir. The rest of the adventure is trying to piece together what happened, how to prevent an all out war in the streets, and how to get that hammer back from Loki.

The number/affiliations of NPCs. Clearly I'm keeping the Norse deities. I'm not sure which of the other NPCs from Heaven and Hell really need to appear, though, especially as I'm hoping to fit this into just one to two sessions.

I'm currently thinking I can get away with just a few, but the relevant Superiors will probably shift away from Greed/Protection/Flowers and toward those most relevant to errant ethereals and potential war in the streets. Probably this means keeping Malleus (War), Invictus (the Sword), Japhia (the War), and perhaps Asahel (Factions). I will need to add at least one Servitor of Dreams (Broderick, the guy who the PCs think is giving them the adventure, who they've dealt with before), and it might be wise to add someone from Nightmares.

One question this leaves me with, though, is how (or whether) to include a more human element to this. It's currently set up to be very much about angels dealing with other celestial and ethereal beings with minimal human casualty, but the humans themselves are just in the background (unlike in the original "No Dinero," in which the struggles of humans were front and center). It's possible that's just more doable for a one-shot, but if you have any suggested alternatives, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks in advance for any input!

[Archangel Beth]

Things to bring humans more to the fore... Hm. You might scale down some of the NPC celestials into Saints and Soldiers. They'll be having human concerns and may not be terribly sympathetic to "a trickster ethereal god is trying to get a mighty relic!" Yeah, yeah, and is this going to keep Lee in rehab? Is this going to help Jessie get off the streets?

Remember that a Hellsworn cop is, to humans, a cop. Even if he was a crooked cop, the local police are still going to be looking for the cop-killer(s) unless they can make it look like an accident of the "had a heart-attack in the bathroom" variety.

Remember that if the local Heavenly agents knew about the Hellsworn, they may've been feeding him false intel, or otherwise cultivating him. (So, for that matter, might've been the Hellish agents...)

If you wanted to bring in a carny -- though perhaps with a Saint/Soldier of Destiny in place, rather than the whole dissonancebomb problem from The Marches -- then you could have a crowd of strangers where Loki might go to hide. (Tone down the "Oddities" aspect, and go for one of those "set up in the parking lot with lots of rides and games and a few oddities" things that I've seen in Austin and Middle-of-Nowhere, New England.) Possibly add a "oddities" show that contains some relic that Loki wants? How about a trap for an ethereal -- then he can depose Odin and, with the power of the Hammer, subvert rule of the Norse Domain! Or Thor could have come in with the carny.

Mostly I suggest adding it because you can then get a whole pack of Innocent Bystanders for Loki to hide in... And maybe then jump to the Marches -- possibly into Domains where there are prophecies/situations that you can use to foreshadow subsequent stuff. (Or plonk them into a Domain where time runs oddly, and what Loki intends is to go back to the Purity Crusade with the Hammer and... give it to non-Remnant Thor? Use it himself? Confuse the Issue? Whatever he's up to, it's not the worst idea to let the PCs have to run around dodging screaming Malakim of Purity -- give them a taste of open battle and how scary a Final War might be.)


Aaaaaaanyway, if you don't like that idea, you can probable foreground humans by scaling back most or all of the NPCs (or the NPCs on Heaven's side!), with perhaps one under-staffed Seneschal to yell at the PCs for breaking the stalemate so annoyingly, and arbitrarily draft them to go smooth things over.

...that's a bit more choppy than I like. I have Distractions going on.