Saturday Vlog: go!
Today, we're going to talk about how characters change over time, how that's reflected in their stats, and how much we miss Tom and Jennie as players. Also, John will punch me in the face, so be ready for that.
Question: Can you run us through character creation and promotions of one of your signature characters, so we have a clearer vision of how stuff transpires in your groups?
In case it's helpful to you, question-asker or anyone else, we're also working on a side project to add character sheets from different levels to our characters already on the website. It's slow going because we have a lot of other things to do, but you can see some examples already up for Sora Sato (Hero and Demigod), Ian Jupiter (Hero and Demigod) and Hachiro Taro Koga (Demigod and God). We'll be adding more as we have time, so you'll be able to take a look at how stats have changed over the life of different characters.
Excellent vlog. Slightly disappointed that there were no mentions of Goze's Comprenion misadventures. I assume those fall under the Ragnarok hush-hush umbrella at the moment?
ReplyDeleteSome of them do, especially at the end of his god career, but you're right, we totally forgot to even mention those. Thanks to his self-imposed role of "Guy Who Fights Fate (And Usually Loses)", Goze actually went into Comprenion a few times to directly fight the Fates there. It usually didn't end well; the last time he did it pre-Ragnarok, he managed to give himself three new cults in the world (with predictably insane Fatebonds attached), take huge amounts of damage, accidentally temporarily suck the city of Delphi into the Faterealm, and get Circe to come out, Vengeance extremity and try to kill him. It all worked out in the end, but it was harrowing.
DeleteBut hey, he totally managed to conquer the prophecy he was in there trying to destroy, thanks to help from Tezcatlipoca and his own moxy. Score one for Team Fate Fighters.
...and also turned his brother into a Titan Avatar. I forgot that happened at the same time, too.
Delete...Goze.
Sounds like quite the story. I'll look forward to the fiction and finding out which brother that happened to!
DeleteOh Belltrap... you have no idea....
DeleteHow have y'all nerfed Legendary Surge and Aztecs? Cause, yeah, tis an issue.
ReplyDeleteMostly just by limiting the spell. It now gives a finite amount of Legend based on your roll, and costs Willpower instead of just more Legend, making it a little bit more of a consideration for repeated use. It can still be abused, but not as much as it could before.
DeleteWe also buffed Communal Divinity to grant a shared Legend pool in order to help it be more differentiated and awesome.
This sounds like of terrifying. One character got totally screwed over? Another had to spend their XP for a year just trying to fight fatebonds? Someone else ended up as an idiot?
ReplyDeleteHow do you deal with players who want their characters to have moderate amounts of things? It seems like your system really really promotes extremes and not much in between.
Not at all. Our system promotes characters doing the things they want to be good at. If they seldom or never use a skill, or fail badly at it, they're likely to lose it. If they use it a lot, or use it particularly well, they're likely to gain it. It's also possible for skills that don't tend strongly one way or the other to stay neutral; most characters have one or two attributes that end up that way, and a handful of purviews. You just don't hear us talk about those things much because they're not cool or important; if you have one of those middling stats, it's not impressive enough for anyone to care when compared to the people who are good at it, and not enough of a problem for anyone to really notice.
DeletePlayers always make those choices. Kettila's player decided that having Stamina was really, really important to her - so important that she was willing to do that instead of anything else. Most players probably wouldn't make that choice; they'd let Stamina go, or maybe just buy it once in a while to keep it at a general level, but she decided to fight her very Fate and won. It became an awesome part of her character's mythic struggle, and we all really enjoyed it. She could have bought the equivalent of a couple of purviews from the ground up with the XP she spent, but she decided that Stamina was what her character was about, and Stamina was what she'd get. It was awesomely dedicated.
Goze we have no sympathy for; he screwed himself over, and once he realized he was doing it, he kept right on doing it. Again, he made a character choice that he was going to be Fate's bitch, and he rode that horse to the end. It turned into one of the most awesome stories we've had - Goze decided to be He Who Fights Fate, and boy did he go to town, no matter how horrible the consequences got.
The important thing is that these are not things that happened to unsuspecting, defenseless characters out of the blue. They're the consequences of actions they undertook, choices they made and stories they wrote. Some characters fight Fate, others accept it, and still others try to make friends with it. It's always up to the player.
It's possible to be middle-of-the-road and have general skill in a lot of areas, but you're right, it isn't likely. That's intentional, because Scions aren't middle-of-the-road; they're awesome. It's they job to be awesome. You don't hear about children of the gods who were really great at being kind of so-so at a bunch of stuff; you hear about the things they were incredible at, because that's what makes a good story. Myths are about your incredible feats of awesomeness and terrible tragical failures, not the stuff you were, you know, not bad at. Fate doesn't care about Johnny, god of mediocrity. It's not exactly a character type to aspire to.
lol. Stealthy triskster... that panned out...
ReplyDeleteThe drawings were of his home on olympus.
Also! John remembers more accurately. Anne, there's your bus.
DeleteThose fatebonds changed on a weekly basis... There was a point at which I couldn't stop it anymore... so yeah.
If only I were immune to buses!
Deletewinning
Delete