Amber related, life related, you name it, we've got it. Welcome to the Lost and Found.

 

WISH 36: Supplements

What do you think about supplements to game systems? Do you like the additional material, or are you just annoyed about spending the money for the additional rules? Name up to three supplements you’ve really enjoyed, and describe why you liked them.

I'm going to go at this by using Changeling as a starting point, because that's the easiest way I know to explain my feelings on the subject of supplements.

First of all - yes, it's a White Wolf game. I've noticed some rumblings of discontent at the number of books "required" to create a character, and I'm completely confused by this. Required? Maybe my experience is an exception, or maybe it's because I've only played Vampire and Changeling, but I've never truly needed anything beyond the core rulebook as a player - and I happen to know that our Changeling chronicle is run using nothing more than the core rulebook and possibly some things the GM found on the internet. The only ways I can think of that you would have to have more than one book as a player is if you were playing a game as one of the Changing Breeds in Werewolf, in which case you'd need the supplement for that breed and the core book; or if you're playing as a group the GM is unfamiliar with - say, a Sabbat vampire or something. As a GM, yeah, you might need the GM screen, and the Storyteller's Handbook, and the core rules, and the Player's Guide... but you really can run just with the core rulebook and survive. Half the stuff in the supplements is on the internet anyway. And if you do need an entire book for some reason, there's no reason for you to make your players bring their own copies if you own it - what on earth are you supposed to do during a session with five copies of London By Night, build a house of cards? Reading material for your players when they're supposed to be playing?

And as for dragging all those books to every session--! Ugh. If you only need a few pages, use a friggin' copy machine. Hell, if you only need one or two things out of a book as a GM, go ahead and try to memorize them or something (as a player, I'd make a copy so that there's no question as to what the rule is). I guess if you need extra seating, it makes sense to bring fifteen books apiece...

Here's another one I'm puzzling over - people who insist on creating basic characters using the Clan/Kith/Tribe/Tradition book. Hello? I own a couple of these. You get a bunch of stories - good, I suppose, if you want to actually have extensive knowledge of the backstory of your character's group - some (often obscure) expansions of the basic traits of that group, a handful of template characters, maybe some artifacts and some important people, and some merits and/or flaws specific to that group. And a lot of pictures. Oh, and a four-page character sheet instead of a one- or two-page one, with a couple of things appropriate to the group (with Changeling, for instance, the boons and banes) already filled in. Oh goody. Non-standard character sheets (I always wonder why they didn't just make the core sheets four pages to start with). Obscure rules that confuse more than add to the game. Stuff that you will probably never encounter. Important people that would be better served by perhaps putting all of them from all the groups into one book for each system. More merits and flaws for some people to misuse. More pictures. Joy.

Sounds like I'm against supplements altogether... But I'm not. They do have worthwhile information. It's just not information that's essential in every game and every situation. Yes, the supplements can help... but they are also perfectly capable of hindering. I don't mind supplements, as I said, But I'd really rather not use them most of the time. It's more crap to carry around to sessions (in addition to my usual set of the core book, dice, and drawing materials to keep my hands busy and my character sheet readable). It is also accumulating more things on your character sheet that will tie you down to a particular personality and mindset - probably more of a problem for me than for most, since my characters tend to change personality somewhere between creation and the first time I open my mouth in-session.

I, personally, only buy supplements if it looks like good reading or has some specific thing I'm interested in - and once or twice because I was mildly interested and it was at Half Price Books and cheap (this is how I acquired the 3rd Edition D&D Dungeon Master's Guide). I have never had to use - much less own or bring to every session - any of these. If I ever have to, I'm going to seriously reconsider the game I'm in.

That's not just for White Wolf - I'd do it for D&D, too. We played Forgotten Realms the last time I played - I'd consider buying the Forgotten Realms book for background so I understand the world better, but that's about it. I created my character using the core book and looked at probably eight pages of the Forgotten Realms book to adapt her to the world. If someone told me tomorrow that I need to go out and buy the fighters' supplement, the rogues' supplement, and the Forgotten Realms book to continue to play that game, I'd hand in my character sheet and walk out the door with very few regrets.

I suppose I do have a tendancy to look at the group-specific books as crutches - interesting, no doubt, and they might have a few good ideas to use, but if someone feels they have to use three or four supplements to create their character, maybe they're working a bit too hard... The city- or realm-specific books are more the province of the GM, and even then they're often optional; personally, I'd rather my GM make it up than always rely on the system's interpretation of how things would be, unless there's some big huge major thing needed for the setting (like the realm books for D&D, which have things like realm-specific races and big shiny maps).

Okay, rant off... Moving on to supplements I like before I get accused of an attack I really am neither trying to nor intending to make. Because of my limited experience, I'm going to have to rely on White Wolf supplements - other than the DMG and Shadow Knight, all the supplements I own are White Wolf.

First one up is Noblesse Oblige: The Book of Houses, for Changeling. Why? First of all, it's got the shortest introduction chapter (a page and a half), the fewest merits and flaws (3) and a reasonable number of templates (one for each house - five total). It thoroughly covers something only lightly touched on in the core book: the five primary Houses of the fae on Earth. It doesn't offer confusing extensions to the rules. It can be used for any member of any kith that has joined a House, not just the Sidhe. It offers fairly equal time to each House. And it's well-written, which is always a plus, and truly gives character to the Houses.

Umbra, the Velvet Shadow is my second choice. It's a book that you can actually use in more than one White Wolf system - Changeling, Mage, and Werewolf (the system under which it was written), and others, for all I know. It spends at least two pages on a series of 13 or so Umbral realms, and, aside from a 13-page set of rule extensions, is a clean presentation of aspects of the Umbra and an offering of suggestions as to what a GM might do with them.

Thirdly, I'm going to drop one of the Changing Breeds Werewolf books I mentioned earlier: Bastet. Firstly, I'm partial to cats. Yeah, I know, it's kind of a silly reason, but there it is. Secondly, unlike several of the Changing Breeds books, the Bastet don't horribly unbalance the game. Thirdly, the tribes aren't identical to every other White Wolf group division (my bf occasionally speculates on how crowded the sewers in the World of Darkness must be... after all, there's the Nosferatu, the Sluagh...) - it's much harder to say, "This group is just like ____, in _______ group." Fourth (fourthly?), there is a nice outline-format, two-page section in the middle that tells you exactly what you need to figure out for character creation and tells you what page the explanations are on, something that White Wolf books seem to lack sometimes. It's a cool little book.
posted by sandrayln at 9:54:00 PM ( )

 
There's a curious thought... suppose the number of possible Amberites were regulated by the number of Greater Trumps?
posted by sandrayln at 6:43:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 35: Music

How does music influence your campaigns? As a GM, do you feel there are ‘soundtracks’ for scenes, and as a player, do you perhaps have ‘songs’ for characters? Name three songs that relate to favourite characters or
situations.

Actually, I only have a few characters with associated songs. The first one that springs to mind is Cecilia Angelina, a Redcap I made for a one-shot Changeling game. The song is "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel - about the third time that became lodged in my head when I thought of the character, I gave up and named her Cecilia.

The second one is Mercury, son of Random - his song is "Take It Easy" by the Eagles. Since Merc is arguably less responsible than Random ever was, and not always that successful with women, it was an obvious choice to me.

That's basically the characters with songs - there are a few others that I could sit here and pick out songs to suit them, but that's likely to change the next time I sit down.

In terms of songs as a GM... well, not really. I tend to drop in a CD to suit my mood (if I don't have the TV on), and since we do most of our Amber gaming online, it's not an issue of music setting the mood. I've listened, at various times, to the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Aerosmith, the Who, Tom Petty, exerpts from Tristan und Isolde by Wagner, James Galway, the Chieftains, Metallica, and Fleetwood Mac.

Only one scene I can think of has a song associated with it - another Eagles one, in fact: "Life in the Fast Lane." It's actually two scenes that happened at once (because I can do that on AIM): Chetwin and Sand off in Shadow trying to kill a person they believed was Delwin, and Dylana and Arwen on the moon of Amber having tea (and a lesson in question avoidance) with Shae, daughter of Dworkin. The whole situation was surreal and fast-paced, flipping back and forth between serene and deadly, and if I didn't have the song playing at the time, I should have.

posted by sandrayln at 1:00:00 PM ( )

 
I've been messing around with my Tarot cards again. Now, I'm not a believer in these things - I mean, the only reason I own a deck is because it was on sale for about $5 and I was on a kick where I was buying anything remotely interesting that had a unicorn on it - but occasionally it just gets weird.

I'm doing readings to try and see if I can get a handle on the character I'm creating. Just to see what I get, mostly. A couple of things keep coming up:

1. Temperance, reversed. Impatience, impulsiveness, and over-reaction.

2. The Hanged Man, reversed. Readiness to take charge of the situation after a down-time due to outward forces.

3. The Lovers, reversed. Separation, divorce, destructive relationship, jealousy, possessiveness, a lustful relationship doomed to failure.

4. The Chariot. Strength and ability win over situation, a decision will alter course of life, difficulties resolved, victory.

I think I'm being told that she's impulsive and pushy... and successful at it. Or something. *chuckle* Every time I do something like this, I find myself wishing I was better at it...
posted by sandrayln at 2:46:00 PM ( )

 
Okay... I feel like sharing a few more exerpts from the journal of Delwin that I'm working on. All ancient history, of course, and not complete entries...

Sometime in Summer, 4270

I have chased down the others, to be certain that it is not one of them I see. It is not, not even Deirdre. But I see my brothers engage in antics that put us all to shame. Corwin and Eric are at it again – now Eric is in Amber and Corwin is unconscious in a Shadow some distance from here. I find I cannot care. Let them kill each other. The throne does not matter.

Autumn, 4280

Perhaps watching my family is more sport that I had thought. Benedict has left Amber, for a place nearer to me than the others have come. I did not know I was so near to Avalon. I spent some time watching them scurry for position as Amber’s Defender walked away.

First day of Winter, 4394

I have spent a week in the Courts of Chaos, beside the Abyss where Father will endlessly fall. My siblings shall return to Amber soon. The Courts are defeated, Amber remains; we have won.

The victory is hollow. Amber stands, my sister is missing still, the crown goes to Random, who I did not know before I was forced to leave. I shall have to trust to the Unicorn – we shall all have to trust Her.

I fear that all is not yet finished. Troubled dreams of wheels of red dance behind my eyes – my long custodianship weights heavily on my mind. But my little corner of Shadow is unchanged, except for a few books missing.

Books can be replaced.

Okay, that was fun. *chuckle*

(And if anyone's wondering about my players reading this - two things: 1. I know one of them isn't, and I'm pretty sure the other two aren't unless I direct them to something specific; and 2. I'm very carefully editing here - there is quite a bit more to these entries than I'm lettting on, so the surprise is still going to be there, and that's all I want out of this.)
posted by sandrayln at 11:47:00 AM ( )

 

An Evil Evil Idea

I am working on a journal for Delwin, for in the Chronicle. A few excerpts (not necessarily complete entries):

First week of Autumn, 4304

How strange. I had thought myself undiscovered in this pocket of Shadow.

Brand called me early this week, asking my aid in overthrowing Father. I turned him down, of course. I do not know that I would care if it had been one of the others – but I do not think Brand is fit. He asked me to speak to my sister on his behalf. I said I would consider it.

Early this morning, Bleys called. The redheads, again. At least Bleys assumes I keep tabs on Sand – and that I will welcome little to do with Fiona because of it. He promises to be a buffer between us.

I will not join this. With three, someone must choose a side when all is said and done – with four, no one can win.

Third month of Autumn, 4387

It is cold in Amber today. Bleys called me as he fell from Kolvir.

Late Spring, 4394

Portents I thought unreal have come to pass. Tomorrow Father walks the Pattern to repair it. Much has happened since last I looked towards those in Amber. Corwin will be custodian of the Jewel. The others have their own jobs. I begin to think Father has forgotten me.

Not evil. Noooo... not at all....

*grins like a particularly evil imp*

posted by sandrayln at 11:43:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 13: Character Backgrounds

How do you like to build character backgrounds? Do you think they are important or not? Do you prefer to write an elaborate background, or fill in later? Do you find character quizzes like the one in the ADRPG or related exercises like the round of questions in Everway character development to be useful?

First off, I don't like the questions in the ADRPG. I'm not quite sure why; maybe it's my way of character creation, which tends to be far more organic than I usually admit.

I don't write a lot on most characters. In fact, what background I put on a character might be a few sentance fragments, and nothing else until I play. My fox pooka in our Changeling game had the fragment "works in art store" as her background/character concept/method of employment. Her personal characteristics weren't even mentioned. Now, after probably twenty sessions, I know that she hates to talk about her mortal family, that she just kind of moved into the art store and that the guy who runs it (and who she's very protective of) is named George, that she hates to make promises, that her method of speaking is to just blabber on until she's said what she needed to say somewhere in there, that she can't make long-term plans, that she's good at unintentionally defusing situations, and that she has absolutely no fear of anyone unless they're actively trying to hurt her - and even then, she's more bewildered than anything else.

Honestly, I'll do whatever suits the character best. My other Changeling character (who I'm dying to play) came into the world via the following two sentances: "I can pretty much ignore Redcaps, as long as they keep their fingers off my keyboard and their teeth off my floppies. Though if one of them ever eats my hard drive again, I’m going to find out just what kind of digestion their Kith has." That became Josephine of House Dougal, Sidhe knight, game programmer, and hacker extraordinaire.

A lot of my Amber NPCs have come from book covers. Aurana, for instance, came from a black-and-white, recolored copy of this book. Caitlin came from the cover of an old copy of The Crystal Gryphon, by Andre Norton. Fenneca came from the cover of this book, with some elements of the book itself (tiny bits), and a name from an Andre Norton Witch World story. Jessica came from the cover of Mary H. Herbert's Dark Horse. The list goes on.

Unfortunately, most of my NPCs don't survive the transition from my brain to the world of the game itself. Sometimes this is for the best: Kaylana's original concept was basically a Daddy's Girl; she's turned out to be not just the heart, but also the backbone of Random's family. She's such a strong character that I really enjoy when there's a chance for the PCs to interact with her. Then there's her brother Kurt. It's a good thing I intended to remove him from the game from the start... he was supposed to actually be noble. He came out as a cowardly, arrogant bastard - so bad that his own siblings killed him off when he tried to convince them to help him with a coup. So I pretty much gave up writing any sort of backgrounds for them unless I intended to include it in-game (where I can cover nonsensical parts of a background as coming from an untrustworthy source).

I do think that character backgrounds are important, though. I enjoy creating them when I do, and when I get a concrete, set background for someone, I hate to change it. But there's a big, fat "when" in there. "...There's the rub," eh, Hamlet?
posted by sandrayln at 12:55:00 AM ( )

 
I'm really bad about coming up with obsessive projects. Specifically, they're usually gaming projects. Not that I've done much with them. For instance:

• The Werewolf campaign I was planning to run, set in South Louisiana. Gave up on it; it's all zipped up inside my rp directory, sitting there.
  
• Idea I had for a vampire game set in London. The legacy of this idea is a Changeling Sidhe named Josephine, a Malkavian called the Jellybean Man, and a word document in my rp directory.
  
• A scenario for primarily non-Amberite characters in the city/country of Monaco. The idea was that someone was messing around in Shadow Earth, and three of the younger generation of Amberites are sent to fix it... using the assistance of the locals (the PCs). This idea was in conjunction with Chetwin's player, Dustin, so Chet would be in it as a Mr. Chester Rayne, the erstwhile employer of the PCs. The other two Amberites would also be from my chronicle: Kaylana, as an exotic dancer called Princess Kate (working at the Globe Casino), and Mercury as a guy called Herm (short for Hermes), a gentleman of uncertain origin and profession (other than gambler). That is, quite frankly, about as far as things got before I got sidetracked to something else.
  
• A very hazy idea for a Chaos throne war... I seem to remember something about it being after the unfortunate demise of Merlin... and something about having to collect certain of his possessions in order to successfully take the throne... but the files I can find on it are a bit more nonspecific than usual.
  
• The whole first-floor-of-the-palace-of-Amber Vampire: Redemption map I made. There's an uncompleted second floor map and a mostly complete library map too.
  
• Not to mention the program for the character sheets, which started off being me feeling lazy and has turned into some sort of mutant project with over 5000 lines of C++ code in it.
  
• All the artwork on the chronicle page, not to mention the chronicle page itself...
  

The list goes on, of course. And on.

Anyway, my current as-it-stands-now project is about threefold. Fold 1 is to drop Amber into the d20 system so I can inflict it on some friends that probably wouldn't touch diceless unless I paid them; d20 because it looks easiest to figure out difficulties of things. Fold 2 is to create a map of Amber, because I'm going to have to give them some sort of map to get them from Amber herself to Rebma... and Fold 3 is, at the moment, trying to figure out spheres of influence for the Unicorn.

I've got an actual plot... I think... so that part's okay. The idea of the setting is that, shortly after Patternfall, the elder Amberites were overthrown by the people of Amber, with the assistance of Fiona. Fiona magically locked the royals inside the palace, sealing off the way to the Pattern and allowing only those without a drop of royal blood to freely traverse the shimmering barriers. Fiona was then betrayed and thrown inside with the rest of the family: Flora, Random, Vialle, and Martin (who are all fine); and Benedict, Bleys, Corwin, Gerard, and Julian (who were all seriously maimed and injured in the battles for the city). Llewella was in Rebma and remained there under asylum from Moire. Caine was later trapped inside the palace when he tried to free his siblings.

The PCs were small children (0-10 years) when all this happened, and it was the kidnapping of these grandchildren of Oberon that led to the final downfall of the Amber royals. - the children were held as hostages. These children were eventually parcelled out to various families in the city and raised as Loyal Citizens of the Republic of Amber, ignorant of their true blood and never leaving the city.

Twenty years have passed since that time. Rebman patrols guard the beaches around Faiella-Bionin, eyeing across the dunes their Amber counterparts, and force the ships of Amber's merchant fleet to steer wide of the shore. Loyalist forces stir within the city, incited from both beneath the sea and within the wall of force that still endures and traps the sons and daughters of Oberon within their own walls.

Wow. That was almost poetic. Anyway, back to "work".
posted by sandrayln at 2:49:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 23: Companion Creatures

What have pets and companions belonging to PCs and NPCs in campaigns you’ve GMed or played in added? What have their bad points been? How do they compare to sentient magic items in terms of their effect on play (good or bad)?

Okay, so I found all the Amber blogs and the WISH stuff... and I so can't pass this one up.

If you've frequented my page any at all, you've probably noticed the Hellmares Loutra and Carnegie, and our panther Tabby - most likely in the quotes.

The Hellmares were something I'd generated well before the game, so at character creation I offered the option to my players. I have to admit that they don't always add to the game - except as wacky comic relief (yeah, like we need more comic relief).

At the same time, I don't think Chetwin would be the same without Carnegie; he treats "Carnie" like an old pal (which he is) and a confidante (yeah, he is) and a sharer-of-secrets (oh yes). He takes attacks (or seeming attacks) to his Hellmare very personally. And Carnie watches his back. Carnie also eats potted plants (real and artificial), is constantly finding female horses to hit on (and getting kicked for his trouble), and sometimes goes out in Shadow to crash birthday parties - in addition to Hellmare issues (posted on the page I linked above).

Dylana - well, it's hard to tell with Dy. She's got her own little entourage at the moment. Let's just take it in order:

• Loutra, her Hellmare, is a traditionalist, solid, and somewhat prissy character all around. He can't cope with things like the prank war with Carnie, but he'll plod through anything Dylana and Tabby can put him through with a minimum of complaint - to the extent of ignoring Tabby's hints that he'd make a good dinner. Which is good, because the only other staid-and-solid character Dy seems to have had around was her father Gerard (and one gets the idea that he was more than a little overwhelmed). On the other hand, he's got all the issues that Hellmares might have going - including a tendancy to decide to scratch an itchy back right now, regardless of whether there's someone on his back.
  
• Tabby, on the other hand, has turned out quite quite weird. The player had 18 points to spend (I dislike the whole secret experience points thing), so she bought a large purple panther that can talk mind-to-mind and keep up with Loutra. Smart-ass is probably the other best description of Tabby (the first being "odd"). Has she been useful? Weeeelllllllllll.... she's not half bad in a fight... if you can convince her to participate... and she seems to be making a habit of killing and munching on the large Hellhound-dire wolf hybrids that keep showing up in and around Amber. In retrospect, she doesn't really do much, except follow Dylana around and eat things. And sleep.
  
• Then there's Digit. Digit himself deserves his own entry around here, but the short form is a hybrid of Jimmy the Hand (from the Riftwar books, R. E. Feist), your generic street urchin, and Oliver Twist. It's pretty much established that he's family, but no one can figure out who he belongs to. So Dylana totes him around Shadow, Amber, and everywhere else she goes; I think she decided to drag him around simply because she's curious and hoping he's going to tell her how he's related. But through him she's met two relatives the Palace Amberites didn't know existed. He's one of my favorite NPCs, I have to admit, so it's hard to think of bad points to him...
  

We don't really have much in the way of sentient artifacts floating around (let's see... we're playing with both series... and Chet doesn't believe the Pattern is sentient, much less a lesser artifact...), so that bit's not an issue.

The Hellmares are still something I'm working on balancing in the game; any comments anyone might have would be welcome.

In terms of characters I've played... well, I've never had one with a familiar. Unless you count my Pooka in Changeling... she is kinda her own familiar...

Okie, I think that answers the question as well as I'm going to be able to...
posted by sandrayln at 10:03:00 PM ( )