[OOC] Worlds of Fire

[Talosian]

Seann should be able to fit it in the bag (as long as it doesn't weigh more than eleven pounds*), then.

* Ten or eleven seems to be pretty common of Bulk -6 weapons in High-Tech. I also found a non-firing replica of the thing, which is 5.5 lbs. I think we can safely assume that a functional version with an enormous scope would be substantially heavier. If people still think it'd be heavier, remember that Totem allowed more or less whatever we wanted in materials (so just say the metal is titanium :P).

[Lamech]

And the character sheet is finally revised

Spoiler:  

ATTRIBUTES [94]

ST 8 [-20]
IQ 15 [100]
DX 10 [0]
HT 10 [0]

HP 10 [4]
Will 14 [-5]
Per 12 [-15]
FP 10 +10 FP that is only accessible for magic (like ER)
Basic Speed 5
Basic Move 5
Basic Lift 13

Damage 1d-3/1d-2
Height 5'6" Weight 110 lbs

ADVANTAGES [49]
Magery 4 (Dance Limited) [29]
Luck [15]
Wild Talent (spells only-20%, requires prep time (8 hours)-60%, only under moonlight -20% (effectively “at night” retention+25%) [5]


DISADVANTAGES [-5]
Reputation (small group, always recognized: law enforcement
For being "eccentric", a few too many coincidences, and knowing far too much about brainwashing.


SKILLS [95]: All skills are TL8, unless noted otherwise
Various spells, see Grimoire [55]
Psychology IQ/H IQ-2 13 [1]
Brainwashing IQ/H IQ+1 16 [8]
Diplomacy IQ/H IQ IQ-2 13 [1]
Hidden Lore (monsters) IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Computer Op IQ/E IQ+0 15 [1]
First Aid IQ/E IQ+0 15 [1]
Cooking IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Armoury IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Thaumatology IQ/VH IQ-3 12 [1]
Interrogation IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Detect Lies Per/H Per-1 11 [2]
Fast Talk IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Research IQ/A IQ-1 14 [1]
Hypnotism IQ/H IQ-2 13 [1]
Holdout IQ/A IQ-1 [1]
Guns DX/E DX+4 14 [12]
Stealth DX/A DX+1 11 [4]
Explosives(demolition) IQ/A IQ-1 [1]

*+3 from magery

QUIRKS [-5]
Attentive
Incompetence: Drive
Callous: thinks that usually there are things more important than people's feelings.
Like: Prefers to use a revolver over other guns.
Broad-Minded

PERKS [2]
Standard Operating Procedure: When John wakes up casts missile shield, and maintains it throughout the day. Under normal circumstances maintaining it costs no fatigue. (If it does cost fatigue, due to low mana, lost skill/IQ whatever obviously I can’t do this.)
Gun Permit

EQUIPMENT
16,000$ tied up in various normal things, clothing, furniture, food ect.

Revolver, .38 Damage: 2d-1 pi Acc 2 Range 120/1,500 Weight 2/0.2 RoF 3 Shots 6(3i) Bulk 8 Rcl-2 $400 (I assume I can update this to a TL8 version with all the stats the same except the TL.)
10 extra clips of ammo (weight 2)

Concealable Vest (from High-Tech p.66)
Location DR Cost Weight
Torso 12/5 1000$ 2
First Aid Kit weight 2 50$
Holster, Shoulder 1lb 50$

Backpack, Small 60$ 3lbs (normally not carried)
Crow Bar 20$ 3lb (normally kept in backpack)
GPS Receiver 200$ 3lbs (normally kept in backpack)

2000$ spare change (in a bank/debit card)

Grimoire: 55 points worth of spells in total, I don’t think any of them have a TL, but if they do its TL 8.

Spoiler:  

Body Control Spells [3]
Itch 17 [1] Spasm 17 [1] Tickle 17 [1]
College of Healing [16]
Lend Energy 17 [1] Lend Vitality 17 [1] Recover Energy 20 [8] Minor Healing 17 [1] Major Healing 16 [1] Great Healing 16 [1] Relieve Sickness 17 [1] Cure Disease 17 [1] Neutralize Poison 17 [1]
Mind Control [10]
Foolishness 17 [1] Daze 17 [1] Mental Stun 17 [1] Sleep 17 [1] Fear 17 [1] Bravery 17 [1] Charm 17 [1] Emotion Control 17 [1] Ecstasy 16 [1] Loyalty 17 [1]
Movement Spells [10]
Haste 17 [1] Great Haste 17 [1] Apportation 17 [1] Levitation 17 [1] Slow Fall 17 [1] Flight 16 [1] Hawk Flight 16 [1] Teleportation 16 [1] Ethereal Body 16 [1] Glue 17 [1] Stop Bleeding 17 [1]
Protection and Warning [9]
Missile Shield 20 [8] Reverse Missiles 17 [1]
Gate Spells [1]
Phase 17 [1]
Communication and Empathy [5]
Sense Foes 1 [17] Sense Emotion 17 [1] Truthsayer 17 [1] Lend Language 17 [1] Borrow Language 17 [1]

Background

Spoiler:  

John Lazarus is a warlock living in Longhampton. His "mundane" job is consulting with the government on developing techniques to help interrogate and reform suspects. Also known as brainwashing them into being good people. But really that's not overly important. He is also acquainted with a few other people who know about the supernatural. Eventually, they figured out that he could deal reasonably well with magic some things causing trouble, and that he would. So now they dump these kind of things on him when they come up.
So now John deals with the occasional werewolf, or person who just discovered a mind control spell, and thinks no one can stop them. The police can't do much of anything because even if they were able to bring the culprit to trial and they understood what was going on, they will never get a jury or judge to believe it was a spooky magic powers.
Not that John is particularly happy about any of this. In truth he only deals with the ones that really go overboard, and even then prefers to convince them to tone it down some.
And now John has gotten this cult situation dumped on him. Which really is the worst situation yet. He can't ignore it because they are freaking bio-terrorists. And then they coerce people into signing on with a demon. Oh and its led by a demon! Normally, if all else fails he can solve the issue with explosives, or bullets or mind control. But this is some non-physical demon jerk.

The changes include revamping the spell casting, altering the thaumatology skill, changing ER to FP, adding a level of magery, altering the standard operating procedure perk. Also removed a point from diplomacy. One final thing to notice is the wild talent which got added. As I was running through making the spell list there were several healing spells that would be super-important if they ever came up (like fixing eyes), but very rare in actually appearing, only one use needed and non-urgent when they appeared. Hence it seemed like a good fit. It also works for any other spells that meet a similar "rare, important, non-urgent, and one time" description.
One final note: As I was doing the new spells I didn't check for the (VH) until a little ways in. I think I fixed all the mistakes.

[Totem]

Originally Posted by Hannes665

OCC: About magic, what does my PC know about it? Does it exist as a force or is it some kind of technology disguised as magic? Has he run into it before?

The reactions of each character to the stuff that they encounter (magic, psi, high-tech, weird-tech, etc) are the perogatives of the players. If such things were not common in the world that your character comes from then even if they have encountered such things since then, they may still be suspicious or looking for the people running around backstage making things happen. Or such things might be more common, and your character gets taken in easily by charletans because they don't look for the people backstage.

It is your choice as to how your character reacts to the idea of things like magic, etc. Charles has a minor advantage with Area Knowledge (Multiverse) because that would allow him to recognise that there are universes where such things are different. Beyond that though, I don't think that anyone currently has points in anything relating to magic, psi, weird-tech, etc, so any knowledge that any current character has is backstory based rather than applicable to skills.

To summarise: if you think that your character is used to seeing magic in action, then that's fine, as long as you're consistent about it and remember that what they saw as magic might not be the same in every universe.

[Talosian]

Inventor! covers "the technological applications" of the Weird Science skill.

Which, as far as I can tell, equates to all of it's applications :P

(Just thought I'd mention.)

[Totem]

Originally Posted by Talosian

Inventor! covers "the technological applications" of the Weird Science skill.

Which, as far as I can tell, equates to all of it's applications :P

(Just thought I'd mention.)

I'll point this out now: even with encounter driven scenes, I'm still running this somewhat loosely. If you think it's appropriate to roll a specific skill for something, then let me know or simply roll it. The worst that will happen is that your character will end up a bit confused because they've tried to roll Electronics Operation to make something magical work (if they make a convincing enough roll of course it might work anyway, just to keep things interesting). I promise not to kill anyone because of such a misunderstanding. That being said...

Originally Posted by Totem

I will give this assurance: I will not deliberately set up a situation where a player's character is completely powerless.

Based on some of my plot notes, I'm modifying this statement:

I will not deliberately set up a situation where a player's character is completely powerless and definitely going to be killed as a result. There will be times when characters may be seriously outclassed, but these are plot-based points and in these situations only deliberately challenging something that is obviously massively more powerful than themselves will get the characters killed. Even then they'll need to really hack them off (though in a couple of cases that might not be too hard...).

[Talosian]

Just popping in to say that I'll be gone over part of Friday and all of Saturday. Don't go shooting people in the face without Seann. Or with Seann, actually.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Talosian

Just popping in to say that I'll be gone over part of Friday and all of Saturday. Don't go shooting people in the face without Seann. Or with Seann, actually.

One shootout and you never live it down.

I still don't see what you could object to that he did.

Taking the phone? Imagine if we could have got that phone. Too big an opportunity to pass up.

Continuing to walk until he found somewhere he could Jump out of? That was the plan. It didn't work. Not Douglas's fault.

Shooting the demon-possessed? Again, no choice. Sure, Douglas made some minor tactical errors (he should have started out by tossing a grenade when they were all grouped together). But he doesn't have Tactics skill.

After he decided to take the phone, it was all over. And Douglas doesn't see anything wrong with stealing from someone who is spreading a horrible disease around. He'd be willing to argue that with you all day. I think he'll probably get the chance.


Have fun on your trip. :)

[Talosian]

Taking the phone? Imagine if we could have got that phone. Too big an opportunity to pass up.

I don't see much potential benefit from grabbing his phone... We'd have gotten his contacts, but we wouldn't have known which ones were in the cult.

Continuing to walk until he found somewhere he could Jump out of? That was the plan. It didn't work. Not Douglas's fault.

He could've jumped away in front of people if he had to. Not subtle, but better than making the news across the whole city. I think there was a point where he could've managed it without being seen by Guy & friends. Would've just left one store owner thinking that he was insane.

Shooting the demon-possessed? Again, no choice. Sure, Douglas made some minor tactical errors (he should have started out by tossing a grenade when they were all grouped together). But he doesn't have Tactics skill.

I agree that at that point he didn't have much choice. Jumping might have still been a better option.

After he decided to take the phone, it was all over. And Douglas doesn't see anything wrong with stealing from someone who is spreading a horrible disease around. He'd be willing to argue that with you all day. I think he'll probably get the chance.

Seann's not upset that he shot them. He doesn't like killing things, but he isn't a pacifist. What bothered him was that Douglas made their mission much more complicated by alerting not just the cult, but the whole city.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Talosian

I don't see much potential benefit from grabbing his phone... We'd have gotten his contacts, but we wouldn't have known which ones were in the cult.

Sure we would have. Douglas had just seen him talking to one. And it seemed like Guy was deferring to that person's authority. We'd have found a higher up. At least, that's how Douglas had interpreted it.

He could've jumped away in front of people if he had to. Not subtle, but better than making the news across the whole city. I think there was a point where he could've managed it without being seen by Guy & friends. Would've just left one store owner thinking that he was insane.

Not quite. If I remember correctly, it takes ten seconds. And Douglas only has a 62.5% chance of successfully Jumping. Also, it costs Douglas 5 FP to Jump. He couldn't have tried it too many times. And if he'd failed after two attempts, he'd have been dead.

I agree that at that point he didn't have much choice. Jumping might have still been a better option.

Wasn't ever much of a chance. The goons were too close. They were right there in the shop with him. He tried to get into the restroom, but it wasn't possible. Also, he had to keep Gabrielle safe too, due to his Sense of Duty. She complicated things quite a bit. Douglas could have just run away if he hadn't had to watch her.

Seann's not upset that he shot them. He doesn't like killing things, but he isn't a pacifist. What bothered him was that Douglas made their mission much more complicated by alerting not just the cult, but the whole city.

Well, that wasn't Douglas's intention. He certainly wouldn't have done so had he known how it would play it. He had no idea Guy had a pack of friends secretly protecting him.

[Totem]

Quick thought before we start jumping around too much between worlds...

I need an answer from each player regarding the following: are you a 'local' Human?

Okay, that needs explaining.

The reason that we're chasing around looking up local information about how to take out Chu'dam is that the necessary means of trapping/ killing/ dispatching demons changes between universes. Humans, being flesh and blood rather than fallen angels, don't change quite that much in how to be killed and so forth, and in game terms it's safe to use the same racial template or apply a cultural one if necessary. In some universes this isn't true.

I need to know whether the characters, on arrival in such a universe, conform to the local racial template or retain their normal one. In some cases the local template will still be 0 points, but in others it will be either an advantage or disadvantage. This won't apply to all universes, but it will come into effect at some point and I'd like to know now which way each character will go.