Beast Notes

Need to take some notes about my upcoming Beast game. Players stay out.

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Character Creation: Geist: The Sin-Eaters

[Originally there was a very heartfelt post about taking my kids to the zoo preceding this character; obviously I'm not going to transfer that bit from my Dreamwidth. Greetings from the future. Woooo.]

The Game: Geist: The Sin-Eaters
The publisher: White Wolf
Degree of familiarity: As much as anyone could, at this point. I helped write and playtest the game.
Books Required: Geist: The Sin-Eaters (of which I have a handy pdf) and the World of Darkness Rulebook. 

 

OK. Now, what I'm not going to do is get philosophical about the character. Well, maybe a little. Let's just jump into this.

Step One: Choose Concept. I'm starting this with a specific idea: I want to make a character whose Threshold is the Prey. I only want to do that because no one played one of them in my playtest group, and so apart from the demo at Origins, I haven't really seen one played yet. I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to approach this character, but spending the day at the zoo helped.

My character is (was?) a herpetologist. More specifically, he was on the cusp of finishing his PhD, which involved various venomous snakes and how their venoms might be used to enhance certain drug cocktails. He spent a lot of his time "milking" the snakes; he was (is?) something of a perfectionist, and he wanted to make sure he got enough and didn't hurt the snakes. One night, he stayed too late at his lab and got a little too careless with a taipan. The snake struck, biting him several times before slithering off into a dark corner. The scientist tried to call for help, but collapsed, his blood already clotting, and he thought as he died that human beings truly were fragile, for all their intelligence.

He didn't die, however. Hovering nearby was a geist. It had been following him for some time, interested by the man's fascination with poison and using it to heal. The geist found this interesting because it was a creature of the natural world, itself. The Burnt Shaman, it appears as a luminous being smelling of ozone. Its gender is impossible to guess, and it doesn't care anyway. In life, it might have been a holy wo/man, but now, as a geist, it represents humility in the face of the elements. Since the scientist's last thoughts were an admission of humility before nature, the Burnt Shaman intervened.

Anton Crist fell to the floor, dying in terrible pain. What stood up again was Anton Crist and the Burnt Shaman, one of the Prey, the Chosen of the Pale Horseman.

That's Threshold, anyway. As for Archetype, I want Anton to be a helpful sort of Sin-Eater. He's not a Celebrant - he's too driven and task-oriented for that. But certainly not a Mourner or a Pilgrim, either. Making a scientist into a Necromancer is too obvious. I think that focusing on his final (?) lesson, humility in the face of nature, he's an Advocate. He seeks out the ghosts that are anchored far from humanity, be it in the jungle, in the woods, at the bottom of a river, or just in abandoned buildings, and tries to help them move on.

Step Two: Choose Attributes. Mental seems like it should be primary, but actually, I think Anton's a more Physical character, especially post mortem. I'll make Mental secondary, and that leaves Social last.

Physical: Three into Dexterity (he milked snakes, for crying out loud) and one each into Stamina and Strength.

Mental: Two into Intelligence, one each into Resolve and Wits.

Social: Even across the board. I'm not generally afraid of putting one dot into an Attribute, but I don't see Anton as that low in any of these.

Step Three: Choose Skills. Mental Skills are definitely primary, here; much of his training has been in scientific pursuits. Physical's secondary, Social is (again) last.

For Mental Skills, I obviously need a few dots in Science. I'll put two there, and two into Academics, Medicine and Computer. I'll put one into Occult, one into Investigation and the last one into Science.

For Physical Skills, I put four into Athletics. Anton has made himself into a climbing, swimming, running machine after the Bargain. For what he does, he'll need it. I'll put my other three dots into Survival, Firearms and Weaponry.

And, Social. Well, Animal Ken gets two, right off. I'll put one into Empathy and the last one into Streetwise (again, probably acquired post-Bargain).

Step Four: Choose Skill Specialties. I think I better put one into Medicine (Toxins) and one into Science (Zoology). The last one, I put into Survival (Animal Bites).

Step Five: Apply Sin-Eater Template. I've already covered Archetype and Threshold. I've one dot of Psyche, which I may or may not choose to raise. My Synergy starts at 7, and I know I'm not going to lower it; he and his geist and pretty much in synch, at least for now.

I haven't thought about the Burnt Shaman's keystone memento at all, though, so I'll do that, since it'll inform my choice of Keys. The Burnt Shaman smells of ozone, and if you guessed that's because he was hit by lightning, you'd be right. His memento is a long, snake-like coil of fulgurite. It formed around his hand as he died. As a useful keystone goes, it's not as cool as, say, a gun, but Anton could probably whomp someone on the head with it in a pinch. It gives me the Pyre-Flame and Primeval, the Threshold is Prey, and the associated Skill is Survival.

Well, then, let's do Manifestations. I get three dots. I want to consider concept, obviously, but it'd suck to have crappy dice pools, so I want to play to my strengths. Intelligence and Dexterity are my higher Attributes, so what might that give me? Well, none of the Manifestations run off of Dexterity, but the Oracle runs off Intelligence. Hmm. What I'd like is to be able to breathe water, actually. How do I make that happen? Tear-Stained Shroud, of course. Dammit. I'd have to refigure my Keys so I could take Tear-Stained.

No, you know what? I got this. I'll take one dot of the Oracle, one dot of the Marionette, and one dot of the Rage. For Keys, I'll take Primeval and Pyre-Flame. So check it out.

I can astrally project; yes, I've got to set myself on fire to do it, but big deal. I can up my Perception-type rolls, which is fine (I'm not interested in the second dot of the Primeval Oracle, at least not right now). With the Marionette, I can control animals; I don't reckon Anton's activated the Pyre-Flame Marionette yet, because it's an investment and it's better done in play anyway, IMO. And then for the Rage, I can throw freaking fire at people, or make them get attacked by snakes.

But by astrally projecting, I can fly up or down to the places where hard-to-reach ghosts lurk. Now, to do things like Plasmic Infusion, I'd still have to get there, but this was I can chart out my course ahead of time. This is a prudent thing to do, Anton feels (see Virtue, below).

Step Six: Choose Merits. Well, for an Advocate like Anton, I think the Pass On Ceremony is appropriate, so I'll spend a point there. I'll take a dot in Contacts (Academia). I'll take Good Time Management from Asylum; Anton's going to be doing research, and that'll help. Three left. How about Status (Science Center)? Anton can use their lab and even get his hands on poisonous snakes (which he can then control with Primeval Marionette). I'll throw one dot there, since he's not a PhD yet. I'll put the last two into Fast Reflexes; bite me once, shame on you. Bite me twice, shame on me.

Step Seven: Determine Advantages. Synergy's done. I have a max of 14 plasm, and I start with 7. Initiative is 8, Speed is 11, Defense is 2, Size is 5, Willpower is 4, Health is 7.

Anton's Virtue is Prudence. He thinks through problems and tries to plan out his approach. It's man's advantage over nature, after all, and we need that advantage. His Vice might seem to be Sloth, but it's not, for two reasons. One, Anton is actually very driven and likes to be busy. Two, I've played a character with Sloth as a Vice and it's a pain in the ass to play well. I make his Vice Pride - that's what makes that moment of humility more impressive for him. He's actually a little full of himself.

And that's it for Anton, in fact. Enjoy! 

Origins 2009 - A GM's Report Card, Part 3

Right, moving on. Friday!

Friday, we got up and grabbed some breakfast. Michelle and I had a 10AM game of 7th Sea to play.

Now, I'd never played 7th Sea before, and I don't own a copy. I know about the game in a vague sort of way; it's about swashbuckling and sailing and pirates and Musketeers and that sort of thing. Since several of my other games this year leaned toward pulp, I figured this wasn't too far off the mark.

Promising start! The GM was there before we were, had character sheets and drama dice spread out, had his screen and his books and whatnot set up. Michelle and I grabbed characters. I always grab a character at random for con games, if I can. That forces me away from playing to my usual standbys (whatever those are - jumpy/flippy characters, going by my chargen project) and makes me flex my improv muscles a bit. This time, I got Felix. We were all Musketeer-types, fighting on the side of the Emperor of Montaigne (which is "France" in the same way that "Rokugan" in Legend of the Five Rings is "Japan," I suppose). Felix was a gun-fighter, in a setting where guns aren't terribly accurate and have one usuable shot before you have to spend an hour reloading them. And that's fine; some gun-fu is never inappropriate.

The rest of the players showed up and picked characters, and we got our set-up: There's an assassin on a boat coming from "England," we need to intercept it and stop him. That means getting to the coast and getting a ship. Most of the scenario was the "getting to the coast" part, and that wasn't bad, though I do think that the GM could benefit from considering Chekov's Gun a bit. That is, if you see a gun on the mantle in Act One, it needs to go off in Act Three. Our "Act One" was taking horses to the river and then sailing up the river to the coast, and we got jumped by some highwaymen.

While I was happy to have a chance to try out the combat system, I had two problems with this set-up. First, they highwaymen fought like orcs.

OK, a slight digression here. One thing that annoys me in RPGs is when the bad guys fight until they're all dead, even after it becomes clear that they're going to lose. That reminds me of old school Dungeons and Dragons, where the enemies were "monsters," even when they were supposedly intelligent. I once threw a DM for a loop in a D&D game by pointing my bow at the last surviving kobold or goblin or orc or spee-lunker or whatever we were fighting and yelling "Surrender!" See, my character didn't see the monster as just a vehicle for XP, and this being, y'know, a role-playing game, I figured I'd play the role.

And yes, I know there's a place for beer-n-pretzels gaming. That's why we have Kobolds Ate My Baby and HoL. Anyway.

So, the highwaymen didn't exactly fight to the death, but pretty close. And then it turns out that they were just...highwaymen. They weren't in on the plot, they weren't trying to stop us from finding the assassin, they had no connection to the story at large. Just a random encounter. Bad form, GM.

Well, we made it to the coast, chartered a boat (and that scene went on way too long, which wasn't entirely the GM's fault; we were making it harder than it needed to be), got out to sea, boarded the assassin's boat, and killed him pretty handily. In most systems, I find, five dudes vs. one dude means a quick fight. Which is fine, incidentally; I have no problem with the final fight of a game being not much of a fight, provided that solving the mystery or otherwise getting to the fight is satisfying. This...was kind of a foregone conclusion.

My thoughts on the game: Now, for all that, the game was actually pretty fun. I didn't find myself looking at my watch (well, I did, but because I had a game to run at 2PM and I didn't want to be late), and I enjoyed the game and the system and even the story set-up. Some of the other players spent a little too much time boozing and whoring (all together now: "If there are girls there, I wanna do them!") and ignoring the fact that, hello, there was an actual woman sitting at the table, but not everyone in our little hobby has figured out that a little decorum is not a bad thing. I just wish the story had been a little tighter, and our choices would have influenced said story a little more. My grade: B-

And then, zoooom! Across the hall to run Geist: The Sin-Eaters. Now, Geist is the next World of Darkness game from good old White Wolf. They weren't actually at the convention, however, and my game was the only Geist game being run. They sent me some copies of the quickstart (which you can download here) to hand out, and I had a copy of the pdf of the book (which I'm not linking, obviously) so I could run the game.

I made up characters ahead of time, and did my usual blurb + six questions routine. The characters were all people who wound up on a bus in NYC for various reasons, and then "died" when the driver got distracted and drove them into the river. They bonded with geists, became Sin-Eaters and formed a krewe (which is not a misspelling of the word "crew," by the way). This particular story saw them investigating a warehouse in which ghosts dressed in fashions of the last 50 years were partying away, but there was no evidence that they'd actually died at that warehouse (if you know how the World of Darkness treats ghosts, that makes a little more sense).

The players got into it well, even considering the massive info-dump that's involved in playing a new World of Darkness game. I run investigation-heavy games, and the characters did well with splitting up (which allows me to cross-cut, which allows players to get food or do potty breaks without wasting too much game time) and using their powers in interesting ways. They tracked down the blood bather who was killing lots of people every decade and took her down; again, it's not about the final fight, it's about getting to that fight.

I'm not grading myself, but I'm happy with the way the game went. There are some tweaks I'd make if I run it again, but mostly just so the story flows a little better.

Following Geist, Michelle and I headed to the Big Bar on Two and sang karaoke a bit. I didn't do anything challenging; "Zoot Suit Riot" and "Fortunate Son," both of which I'm familiar with and I sound pretty good doing, I think. I did, however, come to a conclusion:

If you are putting in your slip for karaoke, and you think "Turn the Page" is a good song? You are already drunk, and should not be allowed to make decisions.

Last post coming soon.