On a rare flight of fancy (OK, my flights of such fancy go flying all the time), I decided to create a Biomek on the Apocalypse server. Further, having enjoyed the advantages of run-and-gun Archon, Champion, and even Shaman glory, I figured I ought to give the stealth-in-and-backstab sneakiness of the Agent a try.

Oi. Talk about a change of pace.

For one thing, my character has butt-floss.

For another, Biomeks don't have any inherent regeneration, not even the little trickle Mutants do. So, no just running off to a quiet corner to regenerate and pull myself together, I either have to burn a nano-repair jug, or head to the nearest repair pad. Luckily, unlike the Mutant areas, it seems pads are separated by roughly two stone's throws, and I can, in extremity, hit the "hey, go stealthy!" and limp away under cover of crawl if I catch it in time.

I'm not sure I enjoy this style of play, given I'm kind of stuck with a small chassis (and, thus, small turret/front weapons), lousy acceleration on the starter vehicle, and an extremely densely packed opening highway area.

Of course, speaking of being densely packed, there we at least ten other folks running around in the area, which made the dense spawning and packing of the zone a blessing in disguise when it came to actually trying to hunt down the things I needed for missions. Always something rezzing in and begging to be sprayed down with acidic goo.

But, hey, if you run into Palindrome in your travels in Auto Assault, feel free to throw a gentle buff.

Unsurprisingly, I played another chunk of Auto Assault with my Mutant Shaman tonight.

The whole "paladin" or "combat priest" idea is actually working out well, especially so given that both my front weapon and turret are rare weapons, only one of which was a mission reward. (INC, we love you!) I tear through infantry with careless abandon, holding down the fire button and simply hosing / plowing through anything around me. Villages go up in horrific explosions, men run screaming and sometimes blow themselves up in a blaze of nightmarish glory, buildings crumble as I drive through them, casually leaning out the window and with a smile so wide it threatens to break the sky in half ...

Ahem.

And then I get to blow up vehicles, which take a bit more punching holes in but which its hard to deny the fun of. I hunted dirtbikes in the dust outside the INC repair base west off Highway 667 for a whole level, throwing them off their stride, letting them set up for another pass then driving over and through them, letting the frames twist and knot under my wheels.

Good times.

I just had to upgrade my ride, though. The old Sirocco was just not throwing down enough mass. Nice pick-up, not enough weight to truly drive over and through targets. So, away with that and in with the Tremula 550, justly named FlayedGod, since I'm going with the vaguely pseudo-Aztec symbology. Six tires, heavy mass, not quite the speed of the old hoopty, but with a much deeper power pool and a considerable amount of heat dissipation. Its a good change.

I just need some white paint. Damn it.

Alright, so Starchild is having trouble getting Auto Assault to run after login, and Eric the .5b hit the sack after he got home instead of catching some air in his dune-buggy ... which left me with a fist full of electrons and a seriously perverse attitude.

In itself, nothing new, but I didn't feel like leveling up my Archon and pushing my Champion forward would have been vaguely irritating, too, since she was built to run with Eric the .5b and nyxsis, so I did what I've always done from the beginning of time when it comes to online gaming.

I started a new character based on a perverse theory.

In this case, it sprang from studying the Shaman skill tree and having the bizarre insight that there's nothing that keeps one from taking all the skills that buff and heal themselves, then running the Convoy-boosting heals or heat dissipation to let them play "attrition tank." They already drive some of the highest HP rides in the game, so its not that crazy a thought. Split character points between Tech and Perception (for the crit and evasion), take all the Skills that heal yourself and run passive so you don't need to burn Power all the time and you should be a mean, green, killin'-and-healin' machine.

So, Vali is up to Level 8, nearly 9, and I'm well on my way to memorizing the entire opening series of Mutant mission arcs.

UrsulaV just keeps providing me fodder from which to create these bizarre, pseudo-mythic Capes characters. I'm starting to get really resentful.

Indri
Greatest of the Lemurs

Abilities (all P)

3 Dexterity
5 Lightning Quickness
4 Sharp Teeth
2 Elegant Fur
1 Blue Eyes

Styles

4 Mythic Heroism (P)
1 Not That Bright (P)
3 Vain Beyond Reason
2 Arboreal Understanding

Attitudes

1 Proud
2 Vain
3 Brave

---

Cloud Fossa
Cat-Mongoose Made of Boiling Cloud and Lightning

Abilities (all P)

5 Lightning Claws
1 Intangibility
2 Dark Shadow
4 Predator Quickness
3 Keen Hearing

Styles

3 Mythic Predator (P)
2 Grace of Heaven
1 Generally Lazy

Attitudes

3 Hungry
2 Aggressive
1 Lethargic
4 Intent

Description

Cloud Fossa are inhabitants of heaven formed of cloud and lightning. Typically, they laze about, being both predators and not needing to eat to live, they find little to rouse them in heaven normally. But when someone steps into the tree-lined savanna of their domain, they take a territorial stance and seek the interloper.

Damn you, UrsulaV, for creating art I feel obsessively compelled to create Capes character write-ups for.

Tongka
Lemur Warrior of the Sky Tribe

Skills (all P)

3 Prehensile Limbs
2 Grasping Tail
1 Foliage Stealth
4 Archery
5 Millipede

Styles

4 Drunken Boxing (P)
3 Arboreal Acrobatics (P)
1 Cute and Fluffy (P)
2 Vicious Aggression

Attitudes

3 Wasted
1 Confused
2 Vicious

Description

Tongka is not old, as the Lemurs of the High Reaches go, but he is wise in the ways of the shaman and the warrior. He knows where the millipedes which bring the warrior-trances live, and the 'pedes which excrete the poisons for the dire arrows, and the 'pedes which are simply good to lick. He likes to lick 'pedes, does Tongka.

Poor UrsulaV. She made the mistake of inspiring me, and I made the mistake of following that inspiration.

An excerpt:

Description

The Battle Hamsters of the Northern Gardens are well-known for their cold brutality, their incisive berserker mentality, and their adorable cuteness. Seldom appearing in groups of less than thirty, they swarm and chitter and kill amid the icy wastes. Their battle-lord, Helm Eriksson, is the foremost of their mighty ranks, and epitomizes all that which they aspire to. Few cross him and live.

National Geographic provides lots and lots of squid-based news footage, but this piece on the evil and capricious Humboldt squid reminds me of where my DNA is sourced. A six foot long tentacled monstrosity that's been known to attack humans, sharks, and even each other if opportunity arises speaks to the best in all of us.

Which, of course, has its own demands:

Giant Squid
Destroyer of Ships and Entire Cities

Abilities

3 Sharp Beak (P)
4 Grasping Arms (P)
5 Ink Cloud (P)
1 Powerful Jet (P)
2 Enormous Eyes (P)

Styles

3 Tangled Up In You (P)
2 Hit and Run (P)
1 Surprise Attack
4 Collateral Damage (P)

Attitudes

3 Aggressive
1 Shy
2 Hungry

Description

Its a giant frickin' squid! Whaddaya want?

Of course, for extra spicy gaming, bring this into a Scene on land, and watch the head-scratching begin.

Sean insists this insight should be recorded:

[06:30] exopilot: (Unrelated, but Lost is just Gilligans's Island without the coconuts.)
[06:30] jackslack@mac.com: *SNICKERS*
[06:30] jackslack@mac.com: Dude, that should go in your Livejournal.
[06:31] exopilot: [grin] Possibly so.

I have fulfilled my duty to blog comedy.

No, I'm not going to post Capes write-ups of the Gilligan's Island crew ... tonight.

OK, maybe just one:

The Professor
The Professor

Abilities

4 Science! (P)
1 Sexual Imperviousness (P)
2 Charm (P)
3 Mary Ann (P)

Styles

3 Coconut Obsession (P)
1 Techno-Fetishism (P)
2 Hyper-Rationality

Attitudes

4 Obsessed
1 Distracted
3 Concerned
2 Focused
5 Witty

Drives

1 Justice
4 Truth
1 Love
1 Hope
2 Duty

Description

Tall, inspiring, just a bit square-jawed, the Professor is like Doc Savage without quite the degree of two-fisted. And he's way more obsessed with coconuts. With his faithful, and beautiful, assistant Mary Ann by his side, he can build a radio out of coconut husks and salt water, but can never seem to construct a floatable boat.

You know, I'm probably going to Hell for this.

Eric the .5b and I should probably be restrained, since every time I come up with an idea, we both just keep coming up with endless, disturbing riffs on the idea that takes it in a wholly different direction.

Witness, Dragonstaff's newest additions:

( Dar Haken, Necromancer of the Second Age )

Background

Dar Haken has been a name to conjure with for thousands of years. In some portions of the world, particularly old and nasty ones, he's considered a god to be worshiped. Unfortunately, Dar has mostly forgotten those.

Having become a Lich almost purely by accident so long he doesn't even remember where he put his heart in a jar, Dar putters around in his garden out back of an obsidian black castle entirely staffed by skeletons and particularly dried mummy-zombies. Its probably a good thing Dar has mostly given up on the "conquer the world" thing to look after his begonias, though. He can still cut a fine swath. When he remembers where he put his wands and ioun stones.

---

( Skeleton Crew, Ray Had a Good Design  )</u>

Background

Without certain preparations, animated corpses don't wear well. The flesh often tears off messily in motion, especially if the body is rather old. Many necromancers prefer to flense the corpses down to the skeleton with beetle-filled cauldrons (sometimes bleaching the bones in the sun) for greater efficiency - and to avoid flies.

As Eric the .5b points out, Dar has a few interesting uses:

point5b: Does that guy even quite count as a villain? :)

exopilot: He would if someone or something motivated him. :)

point5b: Or he might hire the PCs to take care of the curious creature that's attacking his garden. This amuses them until they twig that he's been unable to solve the problem with his SKELETON ARMY.

exopilot: [laugh] Exactly.

exopilot: And he's not a guy to piss off, since he probably has some kind of artifact that could crack the world right down to Hell. If he, y'know, could find it.

point5b: *laughs aloud again*

point5b: "But wait - the world is where I *keep* my *garden*. Hrm."

exopilot: Imagine him joining the Party in town. "I'm worshiped as a god, y'know." "Shut up, old man, before I pop you one!" "[draws himself up] Excuse me, did you say something, son? [ominous sound of rattling surrounding the inn, screams]"

This is why you keep ideas away from people with psychological issues.

Eric the .5b was complaining the other day about the lack of costumed superheroes, by and large, in This Present Darkness. Well, I couldn't let a challenge go by untouched.

Starlight Express
The Light of Heaven

Abilities

• 5 Light Beam (P)
• 1 Photonic Armour (P)
• 4 Flight (P)
• 2 Quantum Engineering (P)
• 3 Holy Enlightenment (P)

Styles

• 3 Ubiquitous Self-Destruct Buttons (P)
• 2 Purifying Blast (P)
• 1 Light-Speed Reflexes

Attitudes

• 4 Righteous
• 1 Steadfast
• 2 Insightful
• 3 Generous

Description

5'7, female, Asian features, slight build. She wears a tight-fitting body-suit of what appears to be white lycra studded with silvery-green metal plates and features with a pale cloak. Her hair is short and black, and her eyes glow with a holy white fire.

Background

Starlight Express was recruited by the prelate from a radical Protestant vigilante group which called itself "Heaven's Light," led by Express herself. She claims to have been a particle theorist working for the DoD when she experienced, as she put it, a "Paul on the Road to Damascus moment," and understood at an intuitive level that God intended for her to use her knowledge for the betterment of Humanity. Constructing a protective suit which harnesses photonic energy for attack and defense, she was flattered to be approached by the Council to expand her horizons.

In conflict, Starlight has been known to use the light energy she can create to blast enemies and purge the spiritually corrupt.

Inspiration comes from a perverse blend of Doctor Light from Teen Titans, Sailor Moon, and The Flying Nun. Try not to think about it overmuch. Hero Machine provided a bit of drawing capability, followed up by some serious editing in Illustrator and Photoshop.

I'm such a geek.

OK, you knew it was inevitable.

---

Snakes
Long, Short, Venomous and Writhing!

Abilities

5 Venomous Bite (P)
4 Concealment (P)
1 Scaled Skin (P)
3 Serpentine Speed (P)
2 Fangs! (P)

Styles

2 Sneak Attack!
1 Cold-Blooded Calculation (P)
3 Poisonous Side-Effects (P)

Attitudes

1 Cold-Blooded
4 Sneaky
3 Hungry
2 Agitated

Notes

They're snakes! Long, short, thick and thin! Some of them are poisonous and some of them are not, but why take the chance, right?

---

On a Plane
(NPC Location) On a Motherhumpin' Plane!

Abilities

1 Stews
5 The Tiny Bathroom
3 Overhead Bins
4 Cargo
2 Rows of Seats

Attitudes

1 Sick
2 Tired
3 Terrified

Free Conflict

Event: Someone pulls out an air-sickness bag!

Notes

You can't have Snakes on a Plane without the plane! From the long rows of seats, to the harried steward{s|esses}, to the feelings everyone has when they have been in the air a couple of hours. Inevitably, someone'll pull out an air-sickness bag, and whether its full of yuk, hides a gun, or a snake jumps out is up to the resolver!

---

Snakes on a Plane in Capes is probably only worth one Scene in most folks' games, though if it really gets rolling, that Scene can go a goodly number of Pages. The plane part of things itself will be fairly reasonable if someone brings it on as an NPC; the blocking Traits will make sure that the standard tropes (the tiny bathroom, for instance) won't get too abused, and the Free Conflict just begs for lots and lots of bidding escalation.

Just as in chadu's Truth & Justice version, its probably a great idea to have your characters' Secret Identities or latent forms on the plane for some trumped-up reason, then bust this out. As such, probably not an effective opening Scene, but a damn fine option for when you've got some Story Tokens to burn on bringing in one of your usual characters, the Snakes and On a Plane, all at once! Good Conflicts to break out include:

• Event: A snake slithers across someone's foot!
• Event: A snake drops from above, off-panel!
• Event: A woman screams!
• Event: A snake bites someone!
• Goal: A stewardess stops screaming!
• Event: Someone dies!
• Goal: A snake dies!
• Event: The pilot pulls the plane out of a fatal nose-dive!
• Goal: Someone convinces one of the passengers to pilot the plane!
• Event: A hero takes the pilot's seat!
• Goal: The plane returns to a semblance of calm!

The best part about all of the above Conflicts is that they're all blocking Conflicts; once introduced, until it's resolved, the postulated situation simply doesn't and can't go away. So if you narrate everyone goes into paroxysms of terror and drop Goal: The plane returns to a semblance of calm! it simply can't return to calm until the Conflict's resolved ... and might not return to calm as a result of that Conflict, given it's a Goal and not an Event! (After all, someone might want to stymie attempts to calm things down -- like the snakes!)

It's hard to write about Snakes on a Plane without using entirely too many exclamation-marks.

I'm thinking that this might actually be my Convention Starter Scene of choice. Give everyone two Story Tokens to kick off, and either burn both of mine to bring in both Snakes and On a Plane, or conspiratorially arrange to have someone else bring in Snakes after I set the Scene, bring on one of my usual Characters, and pop off On a Plane ...

Post Scriptum:

This just in.

SNAKES ON A PLANE
The Roleplaying Game
of Personal Discovery
Dire Combat
And Motherf%king Snakes

While we're talking This Present Darkness, let's talk about the only unabashedly heroic organization I've put in so far:

The Council of Apostles

Established in 1002 AD by Pope Sylvester II, the Council of Apostles was conceived and forged as an ecumenical meeting of religious minds. That is, it would be composed of more than just Catholics, any who professed a belief in God, in some form, and was devoted to the good of mankind would be admitted to its ranks. The Apostlic Council's purview would be the threats that the Church discovered in the course of discharging the duty of Christ, both to investigate and, if necessary, eliminate it. The number of seats on the Council was deliberately kept small, the better to keep their activities and knowledge secret. At its head would sit a prelate devoted soley to making sure the activities of the members were directed and managed in accordance with holy responsibility, and that role fell on the shoulders of one family: the Stregazzi.

Technically, the Council of the Apostles only has thirteen seats, twelve reserved for operatives and one for the prelate. If need is dire, the Council can call on other Tribunals within the body of Christ if more resources are necessary (and several have somewhat overlapping areas of concern if not methodology).

Appointments to the Council are for life. If a seat becomes vacant, the prelate is tasked with finding and recruiting a replacement.

We can't have a Council without at least one operative, of course.

Father Andre Di Meo
The Sword of God

Abilities

• 1 Invulnerability (P)
• 5 Regeneration (P)
• 2 Inhuman Stamina (P)
• 3 The Sword Kyria (P)
• 4 Priest (P)

Styles

• 4 Plodding Unstoppability (P)
• 1 Takeing Incredible Abuse (P)
• 3 Bleeding (P)
• 2 Being Sent Flying (P)

Abilities

• 3 Pious
• 1 Centered
• 2 Determined

Drives

• 3 Justice
• 1 Truth
• 1 Love
• 3 Hope
• 1 Duty

Description

5'2, blue eyes, brown hair, an average Italian man in almost every way. He wears his clerical vestments with familiar comfort. Its almost impossible to get a grip on how old he is; his face is unlined but his eyes are deep-set; he could be anywhere from 20 to 45.

Background

Father Andre Di Meo is a relatively new addition to the Council, transferred over from the Tribunal of the Holy Blood (devoted to the investigation of the vampire threat) within the last year. He's tight-lipped about his past, but has said that his amazing ability to survive any injury is wholly an act of God.

Note that Father Di Meo gathers narrative power almost wholly from describing how he's getting his ass beat down, then dusts himself off and keeps coming. I've been wanting to do a character design in Capes like this for a while, almost from the first day I read the text, in fact. There just aren't a lot of game systems in which such a thing is feasible.

And he has Bleeding as a Style. How cool is that?

Are you wondering where I picked up some of the inspiration for the good Father? You clearly never read Xombi.

(Yes, putting Nun of the Above and Catholic Girl on the Council is disgustingly tempting.)

Well, we did the Stregazzi family and their current Don, Carlotta Stregazzi, yesterday. Today, we go into more depth on her late-but-not-gone husband.

John Lanier
Dead Man Walking

Abilities

• 2 Aura of Death (P)
• 1 Perfect Recall (P)
• 4 Drain Lifeforce (P)
• 3 Intangibility (P)

Styles

• 2 Pass Through Walls and Floors (P)
• 3 Paralyze the Living (P)
• 1 Knows Secrets (P)

Attitudes

• 2 Lost
• 5 Devoted
• 1 Unfocused
• 3 Dead
• 4 Damned

Drives

• 4 Obsession (Exemplar: Carlotta Stregazzi, Head of the Stregazzi Crime Syndicate)
• 1 Pride
• 1 Power
• 2 Despair
• 1 Fear

Description

Approximately 5'8, but seldom seen in contact with a supporting surface. Mid-30's European male, thinning hair, monochromatic blue-grey semi-translucent form. Naked. Head has a massive gaping gunshot exit wound at the front-left of the forehead, entry is at the rear right.

Background

At best a minor-lieutennant under the previous Don of the Stregazzi, his luck seemed to be changing when the Don's daughter expressed interest in him. When he fell entirely head over heels for her, she revealed the first steps of her plans to take the seat of power for herself. What could he do? The love of his life wanted to rule the Stregazzi, he'd make sure she ruled the Stregazzi without question.

Carlotta's affair with Marda Nova made Lanier very, very aware of his own mortality and replacability. Even so, his devotion knew no bounds, so that when he approached Carlotta with the plan that would allow her access to the perfect spy and assassin, and allow him to serve her and the family in-perpetuity, she knew immediately it was the only option he had. With the strega binding laid firmly on him, Lanier's final thoughts before his wife blew his brains out across the conference table was how much he would love seeing her forever.

The afterlife hasn't been as rosy as Lanier expected, however. With death came knowledge and with knowledge came the desire for ignorance and rest. Those options are definitely off the table now, however. Lanier knows the secrets of those he watches, and he can never, ever, forget them. It is only the threat of torment by the strega, who can reach across the boundaries between life and death, and obsessed devotion to his Carlotta that keeps him from using those secrets to find someone to release him from his unearthly chains.

Free Conflict

Carlotta Stregazzi

Goal: Lanier earns a sign of affection from Carlotta.

There's something very interesting I've noticed about doing villainous characters (and, frankly, heroic ones as well) in Capes: There's a significant advantage to working the Exemplar Character angle between groups who are notionally opposed or where there's some deep and abiding conflict. Which, I suppose, goes without saying -- after all, that's what its there for for -- but most of the time you don't think about the simply unresolvable conflicts between villain characters, even though in the source material its all over the place. As an example, consider Destro and Cobra Commander. Cobra Commander very easily fits the mold of Destro's Power Exemplar, with the Free Conflict being Goal: Destro usurps power over COBRA. Almost every time they're in the same scene, Destro attempts to take some part of the reins of COBRA, whether it be by simply overruling CC's (admittedly insane) orders or by undercutting him with one of his "trusted" lieutenants (the Baroness being the most oft targeted; wouldn't you go after the smoking hot busty brunette, too?). Conversely, CC would seem to have Destro as his Obsession Exemplar, as often as he seems to be dropping (and losing) Goal: Cobra Commander impresses Destro with his successes.

(Does anyone else think there's some kind of homoerotic sado-masochistic yaoi dynamic going on there? Try not to think overmuch on it.)

Creating more complex villains really leads to more complex heroes, as the latter can then play off the tensions which always surround various villainous characters. After all, how better to distract Destro from Goal: Destro forces the heroes to leave the base than to back CC's control being held in the face of Destro's subversion.

Some people like the Sopranos. Me, I like my crime families to be a bit more ... interesting. So, for your reading enjoyment, here's some in-progress stuff from This Present Darkness:

The Stregazzi family has been an active and profiting, spread from Rome to the western shores of southern Spain even earlier than 1000 AD, when they controlled a valuable import / export business which dealt regularly with the Pope, Sylvester II. Their ability to get access to anything the scholar-pope desired in terms of books or material was not lost on him, and the Pope often was in communication with the head of the family, Marcus Stregazzi. Marcus impressed Sylvester even more with his steely intent and hard-minded idealism. When Sylvester asked Marcus about an ongoing problem that the Holy See was having with things and influences that exceeded the bounds of the normal, the old man gritted his teeth and asked aloud why the Pope did not simply send his men to investigate the disturbances, and if they proved a corruption in the eyes of God, to exert a stark fist upon them. After Sylvester finished his laughter, he asked Marcus who he thought should lead such a "ecumenical" council.

After a bit of thought, Marcus considered and discarded his first-born, Marius. Instead, he suggested his third son, Fortunato, who was already an acolyte of Rome and who, Marcus, thought, be well positioned to influence the innermost positions of Rome after Sylvester died, if he was seen as the Pope's hand-picked successor. He said as much, and Sylvester stroked his chin.

Two years later, Fortunato Stregazzi was not only a fully vested bishop, but placed high up within the Church as the prelate of the Ecumenical Council of the Apostles, a group limited to thirteen members of the most trustworthy sort, each with skills or talents useful to the Pope in investigating supernatural or heretical influences and, if need be, eliminating them quietly. Fortunato himself was gifted with an admirable and organized mind, born to management of a trading empire but turned to serving the Church in commanding its rarest soldiers.

Marius Stregazzi was more his mother's son, and his mind was less managerial but far more calculating. Like millions of Roman wives before her, Maria Stregazzi was the secret power behind the throne, and in the case of Marcus, was made of even harsher stuff, and with fewer qualms about using them. Marius was her boy, and at her knee he learned the most cunning and manipulative of methods, how to rule through force and through sex, and about selling a man exactly what he wants but not what he needs. Marius drank it up like a sponge, and by the time Marcus was planting the seeds of the Council of the Apostles, Marius was learning his way around the Stregazzi transport empire from the bottom up, working days loading cargo onto ships bound from Rome and nights pimping both the finest and basest whores to be found outside the Vatican, including his more-than-willing mother.

It was from this essential division that the family Stregazzi found it's essential split. Two-hundred years later, an inheritor of Marius' line rubbed salt in the never-healed wound by joining the Church as an operative of the Council of the Acolytes, putting one of the fanily's most prized and rarest traits in the hands of a descendent of Fortunato. The Stregazzi were so named because of their tendency to birth witches, or "strega," into both genders. Once, at most twice, a generation would be born a child with a caul, who would have second-sight and the power to hex. The loss of one of the family's few strega to the Church was a dire blow to the men and women who had devoted their lives to expanding the empire into drugs, sex, and violence for hire.

In this day and age, the two branches of the Stregazzi heritage have a wary distaste for one another, but still share a bond of blood, strengthened slowly and erratically over the years as members would defect from one side to the other. "You against me, us against our cousin, all against the outsiders" is the central axiom of the Stregazzi. While Marius' line and Fortunato's clash on occasion, a threat directly against one can count on the other being more than willing to bring its might to bear -- but only if asked.

---

The Stregazzi Syndicate is the outgrowth of the historical Stregazzi family's business empire with over a thousand years of consolidation in the Mediteranean region. While it originally only was involved in smuggling, tax evasion, and the crime of the docks, the Syndicate came to grow without bound as access to ever better technological means came along. Generally run with an eye toward ruthless efficency more than honourable intent, the Stregazzi found themselves among one of the earliest founding members of the Italian Mafia.

Named because of their genetic propensity for birthing witches (or strega) to both sides of the gender line, the Stregazzi have leveraged their unique ability throughout their history. Almost invariably, the head of the family is a strega. Those which aren't are among the most ruthless and agressive of the lot.

Carlotta Stregazzi, the current holder of the seat at the top of the family table, is one of the latter kind. She is a widow, her husband lost years ago to the machinations of business (in fact, she had him killed because he was simply too incompetent at the tasks she assigned him), and she apparently has taken no lovers since.

Beneath Carlotta is a network of very, very connected members of the syndicate, the important nodes of power held by family members by birth or marriage. The syndicate is remarkably liberal in its sexual inclinations, with women holding powerful positions more often than men, possibly harking back to the influence of Maria Stregazzi on her son Marius.

---

Carlotta Stregatti
Head of the Stregazzi Syndicate

Abilities

• 2 Pistol (P)
• 3 Air of Command (P)
• 1 European Beauty (P)
• 4 Stregazzi Family Domination (P)

Styles

• 3 Vicious Assault (P)
• 2 Attack From Behind (P)
• 5 Takes No Shit (P)
• 1 Calculated Damage
• 4 "A hundred men wait to die on my word."

Attitudes

• 1 Cold
• 3 Agressive
• 2 Passionate

Drives

• 2 Obsession (Exemplar: Marda Nova, head of the Pact of Warsaw)
• 4 Pride
• 1 Power
• 1 Despair
• 1 Fear

Description

5'10, 42 (appears 34), long, brunette hair typically worn loose. Classic European beauty with long, clean lines and high cheekbones. Brown eyes. Usually dresses in Italian tailored pin-stripe suits.

Background

Carlotta Stregazzi was, in every way, a spoiled, Mafia Don's daughter. Her father saw to it she received the finest education in the most prestigious schools in Europe, and Carlotta moved through them as an icebreaker moves through fog, leaving a chain of broken hearts and the occasional broken limb in her wake. As Carlotta lacked the strega ability, she was expected to make an advantageous marriage for the family's sake, and then live out her life comfortably but uneventfully.

That was not to be.

In the wake of Don Stregazzi's death, there was significant jockeying for the top spot in the syndicate. Carlotta married the Don's third-place lieutennant and it was expected that she would use his influence to help him take the seat and solidify her security. When he happily put his support behind her, and she began clawing a bloody swath to the top, heads were turned. In the aftermath, when Carlotta put the gun to her own husband's head in the board room and pulled the trigger, jaws dropped.

Two things occured unknown to the rest of the family in the two years between the Don's death and Carlotta's husband's murder:

• John Lanier, the dead husband in question, was bound by a strega to serve the family even after death, and he was a most active participant in the binding.

• Carlotta met and was seduced by Marda Nova. Afterwards, Nova used her leverage to "borrow" resources from the Stregazzi family, in particular a number of the younger strega. When Carlotta realized she'd been duped by one of the few she considered an equal, she decided that the Pact of Warsaw, and Marda Nova in particular, were her enemies evermore and resolved to take power to see that end brought to pass.

Carlotta commands the syndicate with an iron fist and a far more aggressive anger than any Don in a century.

Free Conflict

Marda Nova

Event: Carlotta is about to injure Marda.

Had a bit of inspiration earlier today that resulted in more characters being added to This Present Darkness. We already had Nazi werewolves, but no setting is complete without Nazi zombies!

Martin Henge
Zombie Commander

Abilities

• 1 Assault Rifle (P)
• 4 Undead Stamina (P)
• 3 Air of Command (P)
• 2 Strength of Ten (P)

Styles

• 4 Only a Head Shot Will Do (P)
• 1 Just Keeps Coming (P)
• 3 Bystanders Feel Compelled
• 2 Organic Material Feeds the Beast (P)

Attitudes

• 4 Happy
• 2 Calm
• 1 Casual
• 3 Relaxed

Drives

• 1 Obsession
• 4 Pride
• 1 Power
• 2 Despair
• 1 Fear

Description

6'1, apparently 16, blonde hair, blue-grey eyes, relatively squarish build, pale-grey skin that's only slightly inhuman. Typically smiling or even laughing. Usually wears a Pact of Warsaw soldier's uniform with the shirt untucked and the shoes unpolished.

Background

The Alies had their Super Soldier program and its secret success. The Nazis had a failed Ubermensch project, and in the shadow of that colossal investment, the Thule Retreat's successful experimentation with fusing alchemy and science under Mengele's supervision gave rise to several successes, though none without some inherent problems. Martin Henge was a fairly normal member of the Hitler Youth when he was invited to be a subject of enhancement at Thule, and the resulting innundation of his flesh with necrotic energy was hailed by those working on creating Undead soldiers with pleasure. Henge himself felt his fears of mortality fading away, discovering his effective immortality. Henge's compulsive fear of his own mortality dried up in a flash as it was simply no longer relevant.

The rest of the experimental subjects reacted less well than Henge to the treatments, becoming mindless automatons, though able to follow orders without hesitation or fear. Henge maintains human-level intelligence and an inherent facility with command, so he was put over command of the other Dead Squads (Totegruppen). Their relative durability and lack of need for significant support makes them perfect garrison troops.

Henge is vulnerable to head shots, but unlike his soldiers, they do not completely destroy him. In fact, he has been burned, exploded, bathed in acid, and other means too gruesome to speak, and always has reformed from the most egregious damage in weeks at the longest. A bullet directly in his head will put him down for hours at best.

---

Totegruppen
Zombie Soldiers

Abilities

• 2 Assault Rifle
• 3 Undead Stamina
• 1 More Than Human Strength

Styles

• 5 Outnumber
• 1 Unstoppable Shamble
• 2 Unthinking
• 3 Following Orders
• 4 Head Shot Vulnerable

Attitudes

• 1 Silent
• 2 Mindless
• 3 Empty
• 4 Vicious

Description

5'7+, built lean and lanky, thinning colourless hair, skin grey and clearly inhuman. Always appears slack-jawed and vacant unless feeding on flesh. Uniform is standard Pact of Warsaw but almost always disheveled and unkempt.

Background

Created in the same experimentation by the Thule Retreat that created Martin Henge, the Totengruppe soldiers are zombies, dead flesh animated by necrotic sorceries channeled by Nazi superscience. Incapable of reason or much volition, they exist to simply obey and protect. Particularly vulnerable to others of strong will, they will follow almost any order given strongly enough unless another prevents it. Cold, heat, even the vacuum of space -- none are matters of concern to the Totegruppen.

Nothing goes down with Nazis like Zombies!

Hey there, marks. Everyone who's hung about me for any amount of time knows I have an on-again off-again affair with that great pillar of Southern athletic entertainment, wrestling. (Or "rasslin'" if you live further south than I do in the state.) I have possession of one of the rarest of old-school game designs, the WWF RPG -- and if you don't know what the WWF was, you're not old enough or Southern enough to be reading my blog anyway. Unfortunately, even that venerable game was well short of the requirements of the setting it tried to take on, the complicated, physically demanding spectrum of "sports entertainment."

There's a new contender in the arena, and its entrance, while understated, is attention-garnering. Its Kayfabe! [Cue pyrotechnics.]

Kayfabe is another game design inspired by the Forge side of theory, so it takes a somewhat radical departure from traditional spins on the wrestling model. Traditionally, wrestling has been seen in game terms as a very limited scope wargame. The detail was heaped on the denotation and quantification of the physical abilities of the wrestler himself, with little reference to the outside influential environment of the setting. In the case of wrestling, that elides a massive amount of influence from the characters, like trying to run a supers game without once talking about the act of stopping crime.

Kayfabe departs from this in a markedly significant way: the players are focused on creating a wrestling promotion rather than a single character. That is, the players create four to ten characters each, wrestlers, commentators, managers, valets, referees and the like, and then a significant chunk of their gameplay time is targeting the pre-determination of the actual wrestling matches while putting the mechanics on modeling the influence of characters politically, conflicts between ring-life and real-life, and working out the implications of the pre-scripted results. The open acknowledgment of the unreality of the matches themselves and how that changes the dynamic is the work of a "smart mark," in the terms of the wrestling establishment.

The mechanics themselves are pointed strongly at keeping up with the wrestlers' and the promotions' Heat, the amount of emotionally investment that the public has in the promotion and in the characters. Heat determines an immense number of things in the system, including how much money the promotion has to pay its characters (an issue which has a fair amount of crunch devoted to its depiction as well). The actual play of the matches is almost entirely driven in a narrative style, with the players involved handing off narrative duties when focus changes, and with mechanics available to force a change if there's contention. There's not an immense amount of focus on modeling individual wrestling moves (in fact, there are only two stats remotely involved, Wrestling and Work Rate), but a relatively detailed accounting of how the characters can act to create and raise Heat during the match by succeeding at Move Sets.

The continual reinforcement of the players' attention on the Heat that characters can generate in interviews, promos, and other acts even off the mat really brings home the centrality of the Heat rating to the game. Combined with the narrative wrestling mat events, the game provides a definite change of pace for the wrestling enthusiast or others interested in the Troupe Style play of multiple characters, some of whom will be at odds with others under the same player's control. The separation of the game play into well-defined sections (Writer's Conference, the Locker Room, the Show) along with a formulaic structure of a series (generally eight shows and a PPV, the latter which typically has its matches determined at the beginning of the series so that they can be built up to), mingled with the focus on narrative roleplaying within the framework provides a very unique and desirable system.

Now the bad news. You knew there was going to be some.

The editing is abominable. At least one whole sentence is missing from the bottom of the column on page three, and there are spelling errors that a spell-check pass would have caught. The editing is bad enough to the point I'm tempted to just ask for the source files and offer to do an editing pass for free, just to get a decent book out there. The actual structure of the book is also seriously lacking; its clearly the product of a first-time publisher. Layout, in the graphic sense, is serviceable but several pieces of art are reused and the standard font is too small by a good two points. We won't actually talk about art quality because getting decent art for an RPG is a terrible trial and I don't begrudge anyone getting what they can.

Are the layout, editing, and structure problems significant enough you won't want the book? I don't think so, but I'm an obsessive collector. If I were a newbie to the independent RPG scene, I'd likely hold off until they released one more edition to try and get things cleaned up. If you've dealt with books of this generation before, its nothing you haven't seen before in terms of quality, though the actual binding of the book itself is pretty bad in my copy; I'd put the next batch through Lulu, I think.

Something written by me on RPGs wouldn't be complete without a sample character, though, would it?

Wrestling Name: Venger Mortis
Real Name: Edgar Burroughs

Wrestling: 2
Mic Skills: 4
Work Rate: 4
Clout: 2

Injury: 0 / 0

Heat: 5

Assets:

Aerial Tactician
Fast
Hardcore

Flaws:

Adrenaline Junky
Old School Mentality
Small

Age: 23
Height: 5'4
Weight: 160lb
City of Origin: Atlanta, GA
Face or Heel: Heel

Trademark Moves & Finishers:

Backflip Mule-Kick, Flying Bulldog, Zombie Head-Bite (hangs onto the back of opponent, then flips them over himself to land sitting on them; finisher)

Gimmick:

Venger is the result of clawing his way up out of Hell, which is the only way such a little guy could be tough enough to compete in the big leagues with the big boys. Not particularly muscular, save in a wiry way, Venger seems to get by on pure hatred and a casual disregard for his own safety in high-flying luchador-inspired moves.

Background:

Edgar is a relative newcomer to the wrestling world, but he's taken to the idea of hard work for the adoration and/or despite of the viewing public like a duck to water. While not the best wrestler in the promotion, his skill on the mic bodes well for his future. Combining his love of the high-risk, high-flying, high-speed moves with an absolute real lack of concern for his health means that his matches against bigger wrestlers center on him touching the mat as little as possible, and largely setting the pace for the show, while the audience is enthralled by seeing such a little fellow take down the much bigger behemoths.

Burroughs spends a lot of time with his girlfriend Andi when not working the mat, as well as his brother William, who works as a referee for the federation. Perry Admundson, who wrestles under the moniker "Tempest" in a neighboring promotion, went to wrestling school with Edgar and developed a serious hatred of the young man due to his intuitive wrestling style.

Yes, its time for more discussion of Capes. Or at least, time to share with my readers some of the work going into This Present Darkness. As much of the ongoing library of goodies is being placed on a private wiki, it would be inappropriate for me to link directly to the site. But that doesn't keep me from posting material to my blog, since I've written most of it so far!

Eric the .5b was good enough to transfer over an organization that he remembered from the SF of his youth.

Homo sapiens argentatus - developing human subspecies first observed in the mid-1980s. Due to a remarkably consistent mutation that occurred in 1 out of every 400 embryonic exposures to Ty-Pan-Oromine, a painkiller discontinued in the late 1970s, perhaps a few thousand people born in the United States during the 1970s share two unusual traits. First, the irises of their eyes are a distinctive silvery-gray, regardless of any other coloration. Second, they all possess psychic abilities - telepathy, telekinesis, and extra-sensory perception.

Upon initial discovery of such individuals, the federal government quietly gathered and segregated members of H.s.a. in special primary (and later, secondary) boarding schools. The primary stated goal was to prevent members of this new, peculiar minority, apparently prone to social isolation, from becoming alienated enough to become a threat to society at large. This seems to have largely succeeded, with the first generation of H.s.a in their early thirties and with very few instances of criminal or violent behavior.

Public knowledge of H.s.a. as a phenomenon is limited. Most H.s.a's are a bit wary of fully interacting with normal society, much less publicizing their differences. The majority live in either of two small towns constructed by the government in the early 1990s. The actual scientific study of the population has been largely classified, though oblique references to this development have turned up in unclassified material that's been largely overlooked. However, upon the births of the first second-generation H.s.a.'s, some voices within the little scientific mini-community have argued for making the public more aware of the next - or at least, a next - step in human evolution.

Well, there was no way I could let that go without elaborating on the implications, now could I?

Jacobin Washington
Psychic Enforcement Officer

Abilities

• 3 Telepathy (P)
• 4 Telekinesis (P)
• 2 Precognition (P)
• 5 Federal Authority (P)
• 1 Silver Eyes (P)

Styles

• 2 Calling In Reinforcements
• 1 Aura of Creepiness (P)
• 4 Psychic Tactician (P)
• 3 Just a Soldier

Attitudes

• 3 Calm
• 2 Intent
• 1 Distant

Background

In his late 20's, Jacobin was raised, like the other members of Homo Sapiens Argentatus, in a government-controlled and isolated town. Like the others, he has always had socialization problems, not only because of his innate disconnection from Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but because the community of people who don't discover means to separate their minds from one another and all sport telepathy rapidly becomes intolerable.

Partly because he's always felt beholden to the government and partly because he was looking for an out, any out, from the insular community he was raised in, Jacobin signed up for the Men in Black program as soon as he completed a degree in criminal science. Leveraging his particular talents and hiding his tell-tale eyes behind the trademark mirrorshades, Jacobin acts as the subtle fingers at the end of the long arm of the law. Personally, Jacobin is content with his constrained responsibilities.

Having had a taste of creating whole organizations, however, I just couldn't stop. Thank Hades for Wikipedia, however, since it provided me with the historical backgrounded I needed.

( The Pact of Warsaw, its Leader, its Soldiers, and a Special Guest )

There's just something gratifying about doing chargen when the inspirations are so brutally intriguing. I just can't seem to stop coming up with ideas. At least in Capes, my creativity goes into the common character and idea pool, and anyone in the game can use the results to their own ends.

Or, as Webster's would have it, "exalt."

With Exalted 2.0 coming out soon, and with Zach Bush being one of the writers for the project, it's rather demanded of me that, in this rash of conversion-madness, I do a little something along those lines. This isn't really the imposition that it might otherwise be, because Exalted is actually one of my favourite fantasy settings of all time. The setting for the game was never my problem with Exalted. The intricate political setup, the multiple axes of personal and political power, the intrigue, the Abyssals, the Autocthonians, I was pretty in from the ground floor -- and the fact I knew the developers and writers even before first edition was released has nothing to do with it.

Well, very little.

In fact, the project I write for White Wolf, Iteration X: Conventionbook Revised, wasn't actually developed in a vacuum (though the horrid suffering inflicted by the cover art may make me wish it had been suffocated in one). One of the reasons I agreed to take up the contract in the first place, aside from the inchoate need to actually rewrite the Technocracy as a whole into something not overtly insulting to scientists and the last several thousand years of social and technological advance, was the desire to do something cool with Autocthon, the alternate dimension/other planet of artificial life-forms and possessed of a potentially malign and ancient intelligence. Luckily for me, Exalted was under development at the same time and I had the privilege to pre-figure some of the revelations of Autocthon as primordial forge-god in my text. That was some good stuff, right there.

Historically, my problems with Exalted have been entirely due to its lamentable saddling with the White Wolf Storyteller system, a mechanical framework which is almost entirely at odds with the sleek and high-speed combat that the manga/anime-inspired art and direction implied. And don't even get me started complaining about the unwieldy and nightmarish complexity of Charm trees, which effectively neutered the power that the various archetypes had for me, even then, in the days before I was aware of the flexibility one can gain by going well outside the usual RPG framework of design. Up until now, the best mechanical conversion I've ever seen has been from Exalted to Wushu. That work actually manages to capture the feel of the over-the-top action implied by the Exalted history and setting, while still having hooks into that setting and story.

(If you're not familiar with Wushu, I strongly suggest you look into it and buy every single PDF available for it. Not because you have to, but because rewarding freeform design with such style is the just act of every righteous soul. Besides, before Capes, Wushu was the obsession I was rambling about at great length. It elaborated on the idea that broad, simply defined Traits were far more expressive than a hundred little skills that was so wonderfully introduced in Jon Tweet's Over the Edge years before, adding a mechanical sensibility that promotes greater detail to get more chance of success and furthering the school of gaming that is predicated on the axiom: "Whatever you say is what happens." I still need to finish writing The Wushu Guide to Giant Robots, but I digress.)

The new edition of Exalted promises to try and address some of the original issues with the mechanical system, but it appears that a lot of my concerns aren't really addressed by the new text. Nor, I suppose, should they be since the bulk of the targeted demographic for the system is disenchanted Dungeons and Dragons players who are looking for a game with more depth and consistency, not necessarily any more simplicity.

Rumor has it that the new Storyteller's Handbook has an Interactive History section, reminiscent of my last lengthy, rambling blog post, so at least I'm well on my way to being an insider with more prescient skill than most of the Weekly World News' reporters, which is a good feeling.

Discussing a conversion of Exalted to Capes has one, significant, difficulty: Much of the mechanical power of the setting and the characters comes from the semi-rigid structure which the characters are defined by. Dragon-Blooded Terrestrial Exalts are meaningfully different than Solar Exalts which are mechanically different from Celestial Exalts who have little definitionaly in common with Lunar Exalts. (I have to leave Abyssal Exalts out of the equation because they are mechanically and meaningfully similar to Solar Exalts, and for in-game reasons, too!) Capes makes different distinctions between characters; the level of detail is at an entirely different level of understanding.

So, this means we have to think about character definition differently. This is actually not a bad thing. Its very, very easy to fall into the bipolar means of character expression in Exalted. Solar Exalted of the Dawn Caste have a very defined role in the original philosophical underpinning of the setting, and that comes with a lot of baggage mechanically and psychologically. The vast bulk of Dawn Caste characters are either very close to that design, or 180 degrees from it. Since every Exalt has Caste-equivalents, all of which have defined expected natures, that means the bulk of characters are either aligned with expectation or can be expected to be directly non-conformal.

Similarly, all Exalts of a given type have a handful of traits which are common to all Exalts of that type. The broadest of these are the anima flares that all Exalts evidence, which is coloured by the Caste-equivalent nature of the expressing character. (For those who aren't Exalted geeks, anima flares are big bursts of energy that blaze around the character when they use their Exalted powers. Some are somewhat less obvious than others, but they're iconographic of the character and emblematic of their "different nature," so get brighter the more power the character burns.) All Lunars are shapechangers with a heart-shape (an alternate animal or plant form that they can switch to at will, along with any other creature they drink the heart's blood of; hello Bjornaer). All Dragon-Blooded have an elemental affinity to one of the five elements. And so on.

We don't define things that elaborately in Capes. For one, that would take far more traits than the twelve our system of choice brings to bear. For another, they're not important to every character, even if they are intrinsic, definitional traits. Let me go on a bit further about this, because its important for a true understanding of Capes mechanics.

The core conceit of Capes is not the fact that there are no GMs, nor that players define Scenes, nor that characters are defined by a smallish number of broad traits. The core conceit of Capes is the Conflict, and the reason that Conflicts exist: to gather more resources for a player to further control the story. The more frequently that players introduce Conflicts that the other players find interesting and care about, the more resources, be it Inspirations or Story Tokens, that they will be able bring to bear. It doesn't even matter that the player win the Conflicts that they introduce, its only important that they engage others' interest. (In particular, losing Conflicts is the only way to gain Story Tokens, the most far-reaching resource in the game.) In that light, Characters (in the sense of the defined set of traits laying on the table tabulated) only exist meaningfully by definition in how they engage with Conflicts. Their traits only define the kind of narrations that the player is likely to engage in to drive forward others' involvement with Conflicts.

That is to say, their traits are not defined as expressions of inherent truths about the character, they do not define the scope of a character's power for the purposes of simulation, traits on a Character define how that character -- note the difference -- narratively engages with Conflicts! This is a significant difference and departure not only from Exalted, but the mainstream of game-design altogether. A character can do anything, any given action can be narrated for a character, no matter what is defined on the Character sheet. What they can accomplish is constrained by their named and enumerated traits, and the traits that go into defining the means of accomplishment is a whole different way of thinking.

For example, let's talk about the anima banner. In Exalted, the anima banner has a number of potential powers and effects, depending on what kind of Exalted it is (Fire-aspected Terrestrials are surrounded by blazing fire, the Solar Dawn Caste tend to have pale white and bright gold flares which terrify onlookers, and so on.) For our purposes, none of this matters, unless the player who has created the Character thinks it interesting or engaging to the other players for it to be a means by which the character engages with Conflicts. Otherwise, the anima banner is just another piece of narrative text which exists in the space of description. For some characters, the anima banner will be one of their primary means of expression in the context of Conflicts, and as such will be listed as an Ability . For others, the anima banner may just be one of the ways they tie together a multitude of other powers and really subsume the practice of their Abilities, just being a Style. And still others won't interact in the context of Conflicts with the anima banner at all, save as narrative flourish for the usage of other traits ("Activating Angry. As the fury of the betrayal of the usurper burns in my gut, my forehead flares with the light of my caste mark and my anima banner unfolds like massive golden wings of solar light!").

Equipped with this knowledge, doing character creation for Exalted becomes a different exercise. We're not trying to define what the character is capable of, as the original system does. We are, instead, defining, literally, why we should care about the character.

( Exalt the Examples )

Exalted is not the most direct or neatest conversion to Capes, but a due consideration of the tropes of the setting and the underlying reasoning about why a Character possesses certain traits on the sheet may be the most revealing discussion I've written on the system so far. The setting itself is brilliant and, in places, beautiful. Its certainly worthwhile to consider how to reframe it in terms that actually work with my current style of play.

(As a post scriptum, its worth noting that, unlike the Exalted mechanics, you don't need any special systems to cover mass warfare in Capes. Characters can just as easily represent ten-thousand blood-thirsty barbarians as they can one little old lady. Armies, just like anything else, may simply be narrative entities, without a Character of their own, the Conflicts only being meaningful as the conflict between individuals. For example, the player of the Dawn detailed earlier, in a Scene framed as a clash between armies, say "Activating Swordsmanship. Charging into the teeth of the enemy, my hundred fighters lay about with the skill of mortal men drilled by an agent of the Unconquered Sun, bodies flying back from the force of their blows!" and the Dragon-Blooded could respond, "Reacting with Military Expertise. The Legion meets the thrust of the mere hundred men like a vast set of jaws, closing around them in a classic pincer movement, cutting off every avenue of escape." The armies themselves are purely notional, constructs of story for the purposes of illustration.

Woe betide the Dragon-Blooded if the Dawn's player burns a Story Token and brings in a Character for the forces under his command; he then would have an Action for each Character and a much higher likelihood of winning Conflicts in this Scene. But that's why Story Tokens are useful to have!)

I know I'm an utter geek. There's no real question. I take books places I shouldn't, and read inappropriate things. But this is never a surprise.

Combine this with the fact that I just picked up Battle For Middle Earth II, the Collector's Edition (as if I'd settle for less), and you get things like this, me carting the manual off to the restaurant to flip through and try to get a handle on in the middle of ordering teriyaki steak. There's a certain madness that ensues when one has utterly lost one's flippin' mind that's both casual and quite comforting. I've relished it for decades.

Of course, that's just prime material for me to launch into my impressions of the game so far.

Here you see the result of my inevitable favourite part of the game, the Create-A-Hero system. Ever wanted to sit down and create your own, customized, personal RTS unit, a hero, capable of mighty magics and powerful destruction? Now, you can! CaH is particularly interesting in that it allows you to not only pick your character type and some minimal equipment / colour editing (which makes sense, I suppose, so characters remain distinct on the screen at all scales; wouldn't do not to know what kind of hero it is) but also what exact power progression they access as the character levels up during the course of the game.

In the case of the character here on the left, Vrai Sarkur, an "Avatar," or wielder of the profane Istari power, that meant picking Lightning Bolt as his first Power and taking every single upgrade for it as the levels advanced, first thing. In play, I tend to just right-click to set it to auto-fire, and just wade into combat with a particularly lovable smile. Since you point-allocate several of your traits at creation time, including things like Armour, Health, and Heal Rate, Vrai ended up with a chunk of Armour, high Power, and really lousy Heal. Just like the original!

Contrast that with Ky-Lin here on the right (inspired by one of nyxsis' characters in other contexts, certainly not Middle Earth) who's a female Elven archer with pretty much every archery upgrade one can take on the power tree, the ability to summon a powerful tornado at her higher levels, and a tendency to heal herself at opportune times. Handy stuff, especially the "No, I just keep getting scarier and scarier as an archer as I go, thanks!" Plus, check out that lovely blue I managed to wrangle out of the system!

So, that's Create-a-Hero.

In-game itself, the graphics level has been pushed up over even the original, which wasn't slacking, and they've changed the factions around a bit, including adding the Goblins in, which I'm sure will come as great pleasure to Eric the .5b, since their primary calvary unit is a big-ass spider-riding goblin that you can upgrade with venom sacks later. Whoot! Plus, the usual assortment of Nazgul, Witchking of Angmar, and your custom heroes (of which, only the mages can fight on either side; the rest are one or the other).

The base-building system has been significantly altered, though. Now you have to build a Fortress instead of having a pre-chosen plot on which to build, but you still get the cool surrounding attached nodes on which you can build things like guard towers, catapults and the like. Oh, yes, and several factions can actually build walls which can be modified with defensive and offensive options. Very cool stuff.

The rhythm of construction still eludes me. You have to build resource gathering sites to have enough funds to recruit an army, of course, and I haven't quite figured out the right rate at which to juggle constructing things like mines and building up my army. Playing online, I generally get smacked with an archer rush early on, because the factions I tend to play don't have anti-archer hordes that work for shit in the first tier. So I clearly need to work on building some defenses for my Fortress first up and then work on a defensive push.

Still, Battle For Middle Earth II has some of that same coolness that Dawn of War dragged me, Heather, Eric the .5b, and Mike into it with, the fascination of interesting-looking bases to build (the Goblins have the coolest Fortress in the game, bar none, even better than Mordor, which can have the Eye of Sauron atop it at full build), powerful hero-units (the Balrog is a summonable for the side of Evil and Good can summon floods), and pretty graphics.

I think we have a winner, here. At least until the next Dawn of War expansion comes out. Necrons, ho!

CYCLOPS!!! Holy crap! You are:

Most of the civilized world will call you a pussy. They're right. You play it safe everytime, and have no problem with ordering others to their deaths while you take all the glory. You also get everything you want, because, even though you are a dickhead, you're really fucking smart. Famous Cyclopses include: Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Paul Walker

You know, I think I'd be offended if this guy had anything like a clue, but ... I'm feeling magnanimous.

Really magnanimous.

( Cyclops With Cape )

Everyone needs an example of things to start off with, and it seemed just that I start with myself.

Alexander Voynich
English Teacher / Occultist

Abilities

1 Teaching
4 Mythos Occultism (P)
2 Linguistics
3 Willpower

Styles

1 Social Censure
3 Obnoxious Arrogance
2 Commanding Voice

Attitudes

4 Arrogant
1 Angry
2 Frustrated
5 Obsessive
3 Charming

Drives

3 Justice
3 Truth
1 Love
1 Hope
1 Duty

Background

Born Alexander Williams, with a marked physical disability that left his arms and hands virtually unusable. Driven by an obsessive nature and the overwhelming drive to bring order to his world, he stumbled over HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Cycle" writings in his early teens. Intrigued and tantalized, Alex shifted his focus from computer science to more occult explorations. After several years, he finally acquired a copy of the Necronomicon of the Mad Arab and began unraveling its secrets. After nearly a decade of study, he was ready to work the foul tome's greatest rite, the Hasturian Elevation.

Unfortunately, the rite was interrupted by the scions of the Cult of the Elder Worms, a foul accumulation of the worst elements of society. In the fractured sorcery, physical aspects of the Elder Gods infected the form of Alexander, transforming him into a hideous monstrosity and consuming his mind. When he came back to himself, Alex realized he'd destroyed those who attacked him and left his childhood home ruined and burned.

Hearing of the possibility of a ritual that would strip the detritus of the Elder Gods from his astral form, Alex went underground in his search, taking the name of one of the greatest of Mythos texts as his own, the Voynich Manuscript.

( Nachtmaren / Cult of the Elder Worms / The Voynich Transfiguration )

That seems like it should be pretty much a fine example of how much madness one can cram into one character and its Nemesis. And to think, I haven't even created any Exemplars! (Those'll have to wait until I see what other characters are in play.)

Poor Tony Lower-Basch. Having been tormented by the most active poster on the Capes forum being a psychotic drooling geek, he unmasks himself as a fanboy and discovers my secret agenda, getting to write the next edition of Capes!

Or, er, some such madness. More accurately, I asked some questions about the uses and applicability of multiple Characters, each representing some aspect of a narrative character, and he had a geeky fanboy moment with me, which is all kinds of flattering, I'd like to note. None of you have revealed yourselves as Evil Squid Fanbois/goils. And why is that?

Having discovered the secrets of multi-aspect characters, however, it occurred that I really needed to do some write-ups of more traditional characters in the comic medium, and introduce what I think may turn into the next Big Game I Run(tm).

Multi-aspect Characters are an interesting idea at the core of it all. The obvious applications are for those characters who have a secret identity, Peter Parker / The Amazing Spider-Man being the best known example of the medium.

( Friendly Neighborhood ... )

Given the above write-up, its interesting to note that two characters could very well play each aspect of Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the same scene, narrating actions and thoughts for the same narrative body. Since, conceptually, Peter and Spidey have ostensibly different goals -- at least in the sense of Peter often wanting to have a "normal life" and the Spider-Man persona, necessary as it is, interfering with it -- the idea of them having different players and being in mechanical opposition over Conflicts makes perfect sense. The Conflicts would play out largely as internal dialogue between the conflicting parts of Peter's emotional self. From a meta-game perspective, the presence of both aspects of the character appearing in the same Scene is an indicator from the beginning that the conflict between Peters' needs will be manifesting in-game.

Tony's cited example from the Forge thread I linked to first in this post approaches the other clear use of aspected characters that I had, the presence of "modal minds." Tony's Doc Achilles and her multiple personality shadings is an excellent example, as is the idea of a secret agent who is both a deadly combatant and seductive socialite. In both cases, the different aspects of a character capture one mode of thought that the character can express, and whose baggage can come from either side. In fact, there's no reason that an entire Scene couldn't be wholly populated by players playing aspects of a single character, their narration bringing in conflicts from the outside while the resolution of those conflict elements represents the tug-of-war between the aspects on the fabric of the story.

An extended example likely belongs here, but I'm awfully tired to be writing up one of those. It'll wait until later (and this might become one of those arcane bits of marginalia that linger until after my death with people wondering what I meant).

Regardless, this is a particularly unique facility of Capes and one I've seen be even addressed in many other game designs, though I'm told Universalis has a similar non-GM'd structure and focus on story as the mechanical inspiration. The ability to decouple the aspects of a character from the control of a central player goes one step beyond the decoupling of Characters from specific players; as a result of this second-stage decoupling, more complex stories arise naturally from the interplay of players and mechanics, without being forced by the imposition of some external structure such as one finds in With Great Power while still emerging in a way that provides a coherent story.

A design with the ability to emergently encourage traditional story-structure without forcing it is a pretty incredible thing.

And that brings us around to the idea I had for a game ... but that'll be the next post.

I just had the oddest idea, and wanted to get it down before it escaped my mind (because writing it down mechanically pounds it into my brain).

Run Sorcerer using Capes.

The first House Rule is "All core characters are straightforward normals, with Skills, not Powers, save for one, which is their Lore."

All core characters have Demons which are Exemplars of one of their negative Drives. The Free Conflict associated with the Exemplar should hook into the Demon's Need somehow.

The third House Rule would be the kicked: No matter what character you play in a given scene, you cannot play that character's Demon in the same scene.

I think that really gets to one of the most interesting potential dynamics in the hybrid Capes/Sorcerer crossover, not in defining who you can play (as in most RPGs), but in defining who you can't. That would easily keep the sense of wary concern between the Sorcerer and the Demon very real, while still letting characters be traded around the table every scene.

Hmm, let me try some chargen.

( Test Capes/Sorcerer Character )

[thoughtful look]

With a coolly measured demeanor and adaptive thinking, you enforce your will
on others using your multitude of abilities.

Do you hear that, Mister Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.

I suppose this really goes right to the heart of how I feel about humanity.

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

I've just finished reading chadu's Truth & Justice RPG, the latest thing from Atomic Sock Monkey Press (a company so well-named that you probably ought to buy their products on that virtue alone). Like so many designs these days, its a superheroes RPG, eschewing the painful crunch of mechanics like Hero and even BESM 2nd Ed for the smooth free-flowing nature of the PDQ System as used in Dead Inside and Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: the Roleplaying Game.

I don't want to go on at vast length about this; there are scads of reviews out there if you want to read them, and they're all pretty unrelentingly good. As should this be read to be, actually. T&J captures the important bits of the superhero experience in directly simple ways, using Fudge / Over the Edge-like traits/descriptors as the core of the system and with a significant amount of work invested into Spin-Off Stunts (things supers can do with their powers which are implicit) and Signature Stunts (things supers can do which are markedly descriptive of themselves and suitably powerful). By focusing the mechanics on the staged-level trait-like core, for both damage and targets for rolls, simplicity is captured without having to resort to the crazed level of detail we're used to seeing in superhero games.

The core of the PDQ System is effectively like the core of Fudge: A ladder of increasing trait values, Poor [-2], Average [0], Good [+2], Expert [+4], and Master [+6]. The core randomizer is 2d6, for that bell-curve feeling, and generally traits act as direct modifiers to the roll. When you need a solid target number (and even things which don't exist as explicit rolls do on occasion, like determining areas of effect, etc) simply use 7 as a base and adjust by the modifier.

Interestingly, my brain effectively filled in the Fudge conversion as I was reading along. Replace Fudge Mediocre with Poor and drop anything lower. For combat rolls, roll 5dF and add a step between each rung, ie. Poor, Poor+, Fair, Fair+, Good, Good+, Great, Great+, Superb. The difference in results gives you the number of Damage or Failure Ranks. The rest runs entirely without significant modification.

I note this only because I've become so used to the Fudge nomenclature. The leverage into 5dF is an interesting shift, but its effectively the same as 2d6, with a range of 10 steps.

Chargen is a breeze, and probably should set the bar for such things in the future. With so much being allowed in the penumbra of a given Power, there's far less focus on trying to wrangle the system into getting just the right thing and more relaxation of allowing the Spin-Off Stunt system to just work. Bought Master [+6]Ice Blast and want to use it to freeze the bad guys' hands together in ice manacles? Spin-Off Stunt it at Good [+2] (ie. two ranks less than the source power) and you get it, and you even get the instant knowledge of what he'll have to roll to get loose (9 or better). Chargen even covers the likes of Batman and other super-normals with the ability to convert ranks of Powers into Qualities (skills, in other systems) at a good rate. Batman can pretty handily have Master [+6] Detective and Gadgeteering without breaking a sweat.

Combining chargen with the way the system handles two kinds of "damage" really balances the scales for the super-normals. Pretty much any trait can be used for inflicting "damage," and both social and mental Failure Ranks are as impairing as actual physical Damage Ranks. Both have to be allocated away from the Qualities and Powers of the defending character, and if any trait drops below Poor, the character is "out of the action." Explicitly targeting a character's vulnerabilities and weak spots gives more ranks of damage, taking them down that much faster. (Interestingly, in a nod to Nobilis, attacking a PC's Vulnerability can give the character Hero Points.)

T&J includes several different super settings at the back of the book and short story arcs for all of them. Surprisingly, they're all pretty solid, though my favourite is the near-future SuperCorps and my least, by a long margin, is Fanfare for the Amplified Man.

As ever with a new RPG, I have to engage in edge-pushing chargen, and this time, its a character concept I really haven't been able to do in any other system except Nobilis before now. Observe the terrible and terrifying ... Dreadlord!

( Dreadlord )

The key difference in this character is that he uses a medium other than his own body to pursue his ends; in this instance, the ability to control and mold dead things to his will. How many other systems let you have a veritable army of unpowered minions at your command?