Urban Arcana conversion

[LoneWolf23k]

I think recycling the "Mundane" Disadvantage from GURPS Illuminati University, which at lower levels makes you completely unable to recognize the Weird and Supernatural, would fit well here as a common Disadvantage for all Mundanes. Seeing as how ordinary people don't recognize Shadowkind for what they are.

[nerdvana]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

I think recycling the "Mundane" Disadvantage from GURPS Illuminati University, which at lower levels makes you completely unable to recognize the Weird and Supernatural, would fit well here as a common Disadvantage for all Mundanes. Seeing as how ordinary people don't recognize Shadowkind for what they are.

"Mundane Background" actually... but... I'm wondering if this could be made active... like the Mist from the "Percy Jackson" books (here, with spoilers... please when discussing keep it mechanical, just looking this up I got a bit of a spoiler as I am only part way though the second series of books).

(and perhaps this question should be a separate thread, if that is desired I'll make one)

[nerdvana]

Originally Posted by nerdvana

"Mundane Background" actually... but... I'm wondering if this could be made active... like the Mist from the "Percy Jackson" books (here, with spoilers... please when discussing keep it mechanical, just looking this up I got a bit of a spoiler as I am only part way though the second series of books).

(and perhaps this question should be a separate thread, if that is desired I'll make one)

My bad. I see the advantage you mean. Wow, exactly what I was asking about. I don't recall this ever being converted to 4e... or has it and I've missed that?

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by nerdvana

My bad. I see the advantage you mean. Wow, exactly what I was asking about. I don't recall this ever being converted to 4e... or has it and I've missed that?

It's right there in Basic, page 144.

[nerdvana]

Originally Posted by The Benj

It's right there in Basic, page 144.

You are making the same mistake I made. Mundane Background is a disadvantage. While LoneWolf23k referred to a disadvantage he described the Mundanity Advantage on p. 19 of GURPS IOU which does not exist in Characters or Powers. (I did find two threads (from 2009 and 2006 respectively) that partially discuss it: here and here)

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by nerdvana

You are making the same mistake I made. Mundane Background is a disadvantage. While LoneWolf23k referred to a disadvantage he described the Mundanity Advantage on p. 19 of GURPS IOU which does not exist in Characters or Powers. (I did find two threads (from 2009 and 2006 respectively) that partially discuss it: here and here)

Oh, that. Not worth bringing forward for a game that's anything but comedy.
I don't have Urban Arcana, but I don't recall regular people's inability to recognise shadowkind being silly like IOU's Mundanity. How does it work?

[nerdvana]

Best answer is the Weirdness Censor article on TV Tropes.

[The Benj]

Okay, that just sounds like Mundane Background and a Delusion then.

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

The Shadow Market (original creation):

Merchants from the shadow used to sell items to adventurers that were essential to their adventures, or pawning their loot... For a price of course. After all, they had to make a profit. When these merchants arrived in these new world, along with adventurers, they realized they could make a new business of selling equipment and pawning loot to adventurers. The Shadow Market only sells restricted items to shadowkinds or humans who show a knowledge of shadow and are not identifiable members of the Fraternal Order of Vigilance. They also pawn loot from adventurers, and resell consumer goods even to people who are not Aware of the Shadow. They also have an ear on the underworld and on rumors, buying, trading and selling secrets, and can also be paid to spread a secret on which they have evidence for free. They do a discount on their services if you can prove to be fighting the Fraternal Order of Vigilance or the Sisterhood of Lolth.

The Fraternal Order of Vigilance:

Masquerading as a benevolent neighborhood watch program, setting up seminars teaching about self-defense, and supporting measures helping to identify kidnapped kids, the FoV is in reality nothing more than a hate group. Lodges typically operate in independent cells, with potential new members showing at their seminars probed and quizzed to see if they are fit to be recruited. The FoV wants nothing else that the total eradication of the shadows, and will stop at nothing to get it. Their typical tactics include getting people arrested on false charges (planting marijuana on someone and making an anonymous tip to the police is really popular), and paying prisoners in smokes, or other luxuries for shanking the new inmate while they are awaiting trial, as well as making false rape accusations until the accused is lynched, or leaves town, at which point they ambush him. Fanatical and hate filled, most of them would rather commit suicide than allow themselves to be "taken alive and interrogated by monsters".

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

The Sisterhood of Lolth (original creation, and I know I'm gonna catch flak for this):

A secret conspiracy with a facade of benevolent organization, the Sisterhood of Lolth was formed when a High Priestess of Lolth was dropped in the new world and had the bright idea to recruit local human women into her inner circle, and serving them a modified variant of Lolth's teaching, preventing them from betraying her and keeping them fanatically loyal to her. Little did she knew that the only reason Lolth, a Narcissistic Paranoid Machiavellian personality disordered drow who somehow attained Goddesshood, did not remove her powers, was because she planned to use her as a sacrificial pawn: either she converts a sizable portion of humankind into her worshipers so that with enough (numbering in the dozens of millions) of her worshiper dying in short enough succession (two decades) the land would be consecrated enough to her that she could pass an avatar through the barrier, kill the high priestess and rule the Earth, or her high priestess dies after establishing a big enough cult, at which point she could exploit the tear in the boundary between the world linking directly to her to pass an avatar through it, and you get the idea... The Sisterhood of Lolth got a head start by killing feminist leaders and passing their deaths as accident, before replacing them with their members. Over time, the movement associated with women's liberation became a terrorist organization with massive amount of public support and funding, which helps them get away with many things. High placed drow members of the Sisterhood of Lolth have started a business of human trafficking, abducting and selling teenage girls into slavery for the sole purpose of staging a "rescue" and radicalize the newly freed women into soldiers (Hello "Brainwashing" skill!). They use a lot of spider imagery, as they see the spiders as representative of them, the strong female spiders representing the strength of all womankind to endure and survive anything.