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Old 01-23-2018, 07:47 AM   #21
mhd
 
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Default Re: TL 0 campaigns?

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Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Sounds useful ... and, as per Iceage, some detail on how to do shamanism well wouldn't go amiss given the prevalence of animism in many human starter cultures. I know thaumatology touched on it, but there was more elsewhere in previous editions IIRC...
Pyramid #56 has a pretty extensive treatment on using RPM for ice age shamanism.
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Old 01-23-2018, 08:16 AM   #22
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Path/Book Ritual Magic is quite fun for a TL0 society, as you only need to avoid the Path of Gadgets and its proprietary rituals to keep the tone (mana-based magic tends to devolve into an almost Flintstones society). Books end up being transmitted through Literature (Oral), so I make Literature (Oral) into a substitute for Symbol Drawing (the quality of the telling improving the effectiveness of the ritual) for Book Ritual Magic.
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Old 01-23-2018, 10:31 PM   #23
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Maybe the movie "Quest for Fire" might give some ideas. This story takes place in prehistoric time when three tribesmen search for a new fire source. The main characters are at TL 0.
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Old 01-24-2018, 01:29 AM   #24
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Default Re: TL 0 campaigns?

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Maybe the movie "Quest for Fire" might give some ideas. This story takes place in prehistoric time when three tribesmen search for a new fire source. The main characters are at TL 0.
And that movie definitely proves that early TL0 ain't no fun. (And booh to Iron Maiden, who made me believe that said movie included dinosaurs)

I kinda-sorta liked "10000 BC", the Emmerich-helmed "I ruined physics and meteorology, let's try my hand at history" stone age movie. Not a bad inspiration for a cinematic TL0 game that doesn't feature interlopers from another time.

Not to be confused with "1 Million Years BC", which only has two interesting features.
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Old 01-24-2018, 07:59 AM   #25
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Default Re: TL 0 campaigns?

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Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Sounds useful ... and, as per Iceage, some detail on how to do shamanism well wouldn't go amiss given the prevalence of animism in many human starter cultures. I know thaumatology touched on it, but there was more elsewhere in previous editions IIRC...
I'm running a campaign in which one character is a shaman. My system is really simple: she has the advantages Medium, Spirit Empathy, and Resistant (Spirit abilities) +3. She negotiates with spirits. She can use Autohypnosis and Religious Ritual as complementary skills with her Influence skills. The spirits are NPCs with individual abilities, needs, goals, and attitudes. And that's it! So, if a spirit were causing someone to be sick, she could talk to it, ask if they can come into some kind of agreement. Maybe the spirit would like a sacrifice of something particular? She can do that with Religious Ritual. Maybe it's a ******-off ghost and just needs somebody to listen to and acknowledge its grievances. She can do that. Maybe she gets a bad result on the initial reaction roll, and the spirit attacks her. Well, her HT and Will are pretty high and she has the +3 Resistant bonus, so she has a fighting chance of keeping it off. But she's a shaman, not a spellcaster.
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Old 01-24-2018, 10:25 AM   #26
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Default Re: TL 0 campaigns?

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Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti View Post
I'm running a campaign in which one character is a shaman. My system is really simple: she has the advantages Medium, Spirit Empathy, and Resistant (Spirit abilities) +3. She negotiates with spirits. She can use Autohypnosis and Religious Ritual as complementary skills with her Influence skills. The spirits are NPCs with individual abilities, needs, goals, and attitudes. And that's it! So, if a spirit were causing someone to be sick, she could talk to it, ask if they can come into some kind of agreement. Maybe the spirit would like a sacrifice of something particular? She can do that with Religious Ritual. Maybe it's a ******-off ghost and just needs somebody to listen to and acknowledge its grievances. She can do that. Maybe she gets a bad result on the initial reaction roll, and the spirit attacks her. Well, her HT and Will are pretty high and she has the +3 Resistant bonus, so she has a fighting chance of keeping it off. But she's a shaman, not a spellcaster.
That sounds pretty good to me - frankly I suspect you could do just about anything as shamanism with a "granted by ally" modifier on your ability as well (I'm reminded of Greg Keyes' Fool Wolf stories where the titular character is a shaman who massively overreached when taking a totem spirit and ended up as a host to a demon that he has only limited power over - she can grant him a great deal of power, but tends to borrow his body afterwards and commit atrocities).
I suppose you could also add some path/book, say using energy gathering to model the process of finding a specific spirit to carry out a job for you...
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Old 01-24-2018, 10:50 AM   #27
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I suppose you could also add some path/book, say using energy gathering to model the process of finding a specific spirit to carry out a job for you...
I use path/book a lot in my current TL1 campaign, though with effect shaping rather than energy gathering. My players do a lot of sacrificial offerings, most often tobacco (smoked and blown out into the wind) or silver (thrown into the sea).
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