Splendid Kintsugi Paintbrush of Serenity (Resplendent) is a kind of pressure point based martial art that attacks the moral flaws in the opponent and fixes them.
Hit someone so hard in the armpit they stop what they’re doing and become a noodle vendor.
That's Charcoal March of Spiders lol, you punch someone and they turn into an inanimate object, or an animal, or a human living some sort of life as you dictate. So you absolutely can hit them so hard in the armpit that they become a noodle seller, it's just that they now always were a noodle seller and don't remember otherwise
I think it's fair to say as well that the concepts of these get so far out that "I punch you and now you're a noodle seller and always have been" is not even really that weird compared to like, the Albicent Sepulchre of Extinction Style which starts at the level of ripping your emotional attachments from you and using them to bind you physically and drag you down
So you kind of do need a good core philosophy of something because otherwise it gets very messy and the styles are invented by thousand year old Kung Fu masters sitting on a mountain and thinking hmm what if I made a kung fu style based on pondering the way that identity is a function of socialisation and certain assumptions of a stable perception of reality
And then you give it a sweet badass name, cos obvs it needs that
Now I'm curious what awful things this does to someone.
I imagine it’s something that is impossibly delicate seeming, gentle even, but with a swift finality like the clean severing of a thread. Practitioners seek not prolonged fights, for that is sorrowful and unnecessarily cruel. The mercy they offer is a kindness, it is the mercy of an executioner who holds their duty with reverence.
Havelock2.0 on
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
I wanted to come up with one that's sinister but sounds innocent.
Blushing Tincture of Breath: a return to earliest life before we needed air -- in the womb or the sea; techniques to fill the lungs with blood so the victim drowns on land (alt Rosy Wellspring of Life, mix n match).
This Style focuses on the distinction between a world in harmony and a world in chaos, and how the smallest change can bring about either. It's charms are dual effect, they have Harmonic and Chaotic executions, with the stylist either bringing energy into balance or causing it to violently surge forth. While in the Style's Form, they can merge the Charms to combine executions, showing to all the world that Harmony and Chaos are one to the enlightened master.
Example Charm;
The First Decision
Upon striking the stylist, the energy either is disappated into their body, causing them to move more swiftly and smoothly, or it explodes from their ruined flesh with a flash of black light
Harmonic Execution: When the stylist takes damage they may pay 1wp total and 2 motes per level of damage to gain initiative equal to the damage received
Chaotic Execution: When the stylist takes damage, they may pay 1wp total and 2 motes per level of damage to roll that many dice of lethal damage against their attacker, ignoring hardness
Form Execution: pay 1wp total and 3 motes per level of damage to roll that many dice of lethal damage against their attacker and gain that much initiative
Amber Smoke of Hours
This Style contemplates the preservation of the body and soul following death and the significance of funereal dignity. It is not a brutal style but rather a gentle one, laying those it faces to rest in peaceful repose. It's charms restrain, preserve and bring deep sleep through billowing soporific incense. It calms the distressed and resolves grief through quiet acceptance of the ultimate fate of all life
Example Charm;
Gentle Embalming Approach
As the stylist steps forwards and moves their hands through the proper approved motions, amber smoke wisps from their fingertips, coalescing into funereal bandages around their foe
The stylist makes a Grapple Gambit up to short range, paying 1wp and 8m. If it is successful they must use it to Restrain/Drag the target, and the target must also roll stamina+resistance vs the thick heavy incense filling their senses, difficulty (higher of stylist’s essence or 5) or suffer a poison with Penalty -2, Duration 5 rounds and Damage 3i.
If they are crashed they take bashing damage instead, if this incapacitates them the stylist may cause them to then die (in which case their spirit is assured to pass on peacefully and receive a beneficient reincarnation, and their body is properly embalmed and protected against reassurection) or fall into a deep, dreamless, peaceful sleep for up to a year (they can be woken from this by another through physical touch)
I imagine that the high essence charms for ALoH involve redirecting massive amounts of energy to diffuse or cause natural disasters, and that the high essence charm for ASoH is that you create a mausoleum where you are the psychopomp master of death and lead your foe to a spirit that judges their lives. If they are found wanting they are ENTOMBED
After almost 28 years, I finally got my wife to play a TTRPG with me yesterday. [1]
I ran her and a few friends from her horror-themed book club through the Camp Terror slasher funnel adventure for Savage Worlds. All four players were brand new to TTRPGs. The adventure follows a horror movie structure (Friday the 13th in specific) pretty closely: The players are camp counselors reopening a summer camp that had been closed for years due to tragedy. Act I is primarily exposition and finding clues about why the camp had been closed, Act II starts the kill count off, and Act III is the resolution. It's nicely structured in that characters are much more vulnerable in the first two Acts, only able to take one Wound instead of the three a PC/Wild Card is usually able to take, and a Critical Failure on any roll is instant death. The players get to narrate how their characters die, and there's a decent sized pool of pregen characters to choose from (at the beginning of the game, players chose a primary and a secondary character so they have a backup ready to introduce quickly). It requires some buy-in in advance to lean into horror movie tropes; the expectation is that the body count will be high. In Act III, PC characters become full-fledged Wild Cards as is normal for the system, representing their survival to the endgame.
I was worried that the opening would be a little too open to brand new players, but they jumped right into their descriptions and played off of each other really well. Their death descriptions hit the right level for the table (we started with a quick discussion of safety tools which they also took to really well), and the dice and cards were just the right amount of generous and fickle. They handled Bennies well, and the flow of awarding and spending felt really good.
I'm always going to evangelize for Savage Worlds, so take it with the appropriate amount grains of salt, but I felt like this adventure worked well as an introduction to the system for fans of the genre.
[1] She's always been supportive of my involvement with the hobby and a great sounding board for my ideas as a player and a GM, but had never been interested in playing until now. My patience has been rewarded!
+17
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I'm always happy to see someone singing the praises of Savage Worlds.
After almost 28 years, I finally got my wife to play a TTRPG with me yesterday. [1]
I ran her and a few friends from her horror-themed book club through the Camp Terror slasher funnel adventure for Savage Worlds. All four players were brand new to TTRPGs. The adventure follows a horror movie structure (Friday the 13th in specific) pretty closely: The players are camp counselors reopening a summer camp that had been closed for years due to tragedy. Act I is primarily exposition and finding clues about why the camp had been closed, Act II starts the kill count off, and Act III is the resolution. It's nicely structured in that characters are much more vulnerable in the first two Acts, only able to take one Wound instead of the three a PC/Wild Card is usually able to take, and a Critical Failure on any roll is instant death. The players get to narrate how their characters die, and there's a decent sized pool of pregen characters to choose from (at the beginning of the game, players chose a primary and a secondary character so they have a backup ready to introduce quickly). It requires some buy-in in advance to lean into horror movie tropes; the expectation is that the body count will be high. In Act III, PC characters become full-fledged Wild Cards as is normal for the system, representing their survival to the endgame.
I was worried that the opening would be a little too open to brand new players, but they jumped right into their descriptions and played off of each other really well. Their death descriptions hit the right level for the table (we started with a quick discussion of safety tools which they also took to really well), and the dice and cards were just the right amount of generous and fickle. They handled Bennies well, and the flow of awarding and spending felt really good.
I'm always going to evangelize for Savage Worlds, so take it with the appropriate amount grains of salt, but I felt like this adventure worked well as an introduction to the system for fans of the genre.
[1] She's always been supportive of my involvement with the hobby and a great sounding board for my ideas as a player and a GM, but had never been interested in playing until now. My patience has been rewarded!
Yeah, my group was super excited when our oldest player (I think he's in his late 50s?) got his wife to play D&D with us once. She'd been supportive of his hobby, she just hadn't shown any interest in playing (plus she seemed really busy with work and their farm, while he was busy playing games with us lol) until one day she did. I still don't know if she asked him if she could join us or if he somehow convinced her, but it was an honor to be the one to run the one-shot she was in. A lot of pressure too because I wanted to make sure she had fun and enjoyed herself. It turns out she was a natural and it was so cool seeing how creative someone brand new to the hobby and fantasy in general was. It's been talked about here before about how players can sometimes get into a rut, especially in D&D, where you don't think much farther than if you have an item or skill or spell for a problem, and this session really made it real for me.
Anyways she hasn't joined us again so I figure it's not really her thing, but at least she had fun the one time she tried it!
I'm still playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder, and while I think it has certain weaknesses compared to other adventure TTRPG's, man can it just be fun to do cool shit and be competent from the gate and just add cool shit as you go.
I'm currently running a gnome alchemist/arcane archer/loremaster who is actually the same character I previously ran through Rise of the Runelords in PF1, beat the boss, fell through a rift, lost my memory, started all over again. So now I'm playing Rise of the Runelords with him again.
But while I started out as a really competent melee/ranged/bomb fighter, I've slowly morphed into the archer for the group, and now I'm just an AoE machine. Hail of Arrows + Bombs. I grabbed Loremaster, which gives me one class feature from a class that I don't have, and I grabbed the Judgement ability from the Inquisitor. So now, once per encounter, I pick someone I really hate, and I get 5 Judgement tokens. I can spend them willy nilly throughout the encounter to either add or subtract 2 from any roll associated with the person I picked for Judgement.
So this happened last session: I hit the big guy, I did enough to shake them. I added 2, now he's got a wound. He soaks. He rolls a 5, so he soaks. BUT WAIT! I subtract 2, so he ends up with a 3, and doesn't soak.
GM: (laughing) "Goddammit I hate you"
The GM has also been working with my weird backstory, indicating that I've done this loop many times, and I'm reading my own journals now from the future/past. I also learned how to make a homebrew elixir of forgetfulness, which I made much of. It erases the past hour of your memory. The GM didn't think I'd actually craft them, or use them. He was mistaken.
I currently have 20 of these elixirs of forgetfulness on me, and I drink them pretty regularly. Especially if we hear or see scary shit, or are responsible for a tragedy. I also drink them when we're traveling to make the travel time "shorter." I will also regularly accuse other party members of drinking said elixirs, and will scold them for doing so, and that they shouldn't do that because they're dangerous. I made many of these and several of them are gone, you see, and the only explanation is sticky-fingered party members. THAT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION!
Apparently there's been a few interventions on drinking these potions as well, but that can't be right, because if that happened, I'm sure my alchemist would remember that.
And that silliness actually led to a character growth moment recently when one party member died horribly, rolling snake eyes on their Don't Die Roll, and my alchemist decided that while this sucked, they would not drink, and they would not forget, for they crave vengeance now.
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
This weekend I visited a used bookstore and, while checking out, spotted a $10 copy of the Dungeon World book.
So, I picked that up.
Today I'm reading my way through it. It's good! I like what I see!
I also think this is the type of TTRPG system that my friends would actually be able to grasp/handle, as its significantly less math than something like D&D or Pathfinder.
+6
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I've been playing Dungeon World off and on for several years now
I still enjoy playing it a lot, it's a game I would generally recommend over something like D&D for getting that to that sort of heroic fantasy genre, but also I have a small litany of complaints about it based on all that playtime
+2
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
In case anyone wasn't aware, one of the Dungeon World creators, Adam Koebel, is problematic.
The other creator, Sage Latorra, is thankfully fine from all I can tell.
If it's something that matters to you RE: not supporting creeps, Dungeon World's co-author Adam Koebel is a grade A fucking weirdo who has, multiple times, sprung incredibly unwanted SA-laden interactions on his players during livestreams. I only became aware of this after a podcast I listen to used Dungeon World during an arc, which they decided not to release after recording the whole thing due to not wanting to give Koebel the positive attention.
+2
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited October 7
well, it was only once but he was at that point the public face for safety and consent in RPGs, so that and his incredibly poor handling of it was enough.
he's pretty much vanished from the internet though, so I don't think you're doing any harm by playing it as there's no brand left to support, even tacitly.
well, it was only once but he was at that point the public face for safety and consent in RPGs, so that and his incredibly poor handling of it was enough.
he's pretty much vanished from the internet though, so I don't think you're doing any harm by playing it as there's no brand left to support, even tacitly.
Luke Crane tried to backdoor him onto a Kickstarter project without telling the other contributors, and it fell apart when they discovered this and backed out of the project.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited October 7
I do quite like DW as a game to introduce to people who have heard of but either haven't played RPGs or only played in absolutely terrible groups, because I think it's a lot easier to capture what people imagine playing D&D is like.
well, it was only once but he was at that point the public face for safety and consent in RPGs, so that and his incredibly poor handling of it was enough.
he's pretty much vanished from the internet though, so I don't think you're doing any harm by playing it as there's no brand left to support, even tacitly.
Luke Crane tried to backdoor him onto a Kickstarter project without telling the other contributors, and it fell apart when they discovered this and backed out of the project.
I do quite like DW as a game to introduce to people who have heard of but either haven't played RPGs or only played in absolutely terrible groups, because I think it's a lot easier to capture what people imagine playing D&D is like.
but it does have a lot of its own problems
Yeah, I think it's very good at some of that, focusing foremost of the feelings and vibes of heroic fantasy in a way that newcomers can really easily get into. I'd also argue that it's not really designed to be that - it's building on a bunch of classic D&D stuff, whether that's the idiosyncratic playbooks, the almost D&D stat system, or the general focus on like, traditional oD&D dungeon crawling. It's directly in conversation with D&D, and was kind of originally designed as a part of that conversation for people who were already having it a bunch (not too dissimilar from folks around here).
Like I said, I've played a couple of campaigns of it, I think it can be made to work. But there's some house rules there, some things we bend to fit because we're not really interested in dungeon delving, and increasingly it reminds me of, well, Dungeons & Dragons.
well, it was only once but he was at that point the public face for safety and consent in RPGs, so that and his incredibly poor handling of it was enough.
he's pretty much vanished from the internet though, so I don't think you're doing any harm by playing it as there's no brand left to support, even tacitly.
I was able to find two different examples (one involving SA and another involving possession of a character, leading that character to go on DM controlled sexual escapades). But anyway, yes, get used copies!
Posts
Amber Smoke is definitely a very nice bit of wordage though
That's Charcoal March of Spiders lol, you punch someone and they turn into an inanimate object, or an animal, or a human living some sort of life as you dictate. So you absolutely can hit them so hard in the armpit that they become a noodle seller, it's just that they now always were a noodle seller and don't remember otherwise
(Also, incense!)
e: different body part idiom!
I was going to ask how amber was a method of preservation and then I remembered it's not just a color lol
So you kind of do need a good core philosophy of something because otherwise it gets very messy and the styles are invented by thousand year old Kung Fu masters sitting on a mountain and thinking hmm what if I made a kung fu style based on pondering the way that identity is a function of socialisation and certain assumptions of a stable perception of reality
And then you give it a sweet badass name, cos obvs it needs that
.. idk maybe its a defensive stance. They forget that they wanted to hit you
For when you need to bring the battlefield low.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Good cow pun, but also cowing as in forcing someone to comply via scaring them would be cool as well
Oh, I was being pithy for the joke, but I am imaging a technique powerful enough to force an entire group of enemies to their knees.
Like a flurry of blows that sends out a massive shockwave or something.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The Hazy Palace of Déja Frappé
Distract opponents with thoughts that they've already had this fight before, and lost
Now I'm curious what awful things this does to someone.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I imagine it’s something that is impossibly delicate seeming, gentle even, but with a swift finality like the clean severing of a thread. Practitioners seek not prolonged fights, for that is sorrowful and unnecessarily cruel. The mercy they offer is a kindness, it is the mercy of an executioner who holds their duty with reverence.
Like, just a bunch
Blushing Tincture of Breath: a return to earliest life before we needed air -- in the womb or the sea; techniques to fill the lungs with blood so the victim drowns on land (alt Rosy Wellspring of Life, mix n match).
Example Charm;
The First Decision
Upon striking the stylist, the energy either is disappated into their body, causing them to move more swiftly and smoothly, or it explodes from their ruined flesh with a flash of black light
Harmonic Execution: When the stylist takes damage they may pay 1wp total and 2 motes per level of damage to gain initiative equal to the damage received
Chaotic Execution: When the stylist takes damage, they may pay 1wp total and 2 motes per level of damage to roll that many dice of lethal damage against their attacker, ignoring hardness
Form Execution: pay 1wp total and 3 motes per level of damage to roll that many dice of lethal damage against their attacker and gain that much initiative
Amber Smoke of Hours
Example Charm;
Gentle Embalming Approach
As the stylist steps forwards and moves their hands through the proper approved motions, amber smoke wisps from their fingertips, coalescing into funereal bandages around their foe
The stylist makes a Grapple Gambit up to short range, paying 1wp and 8m. If it is successful they must use it to Restrain/Drag the target, and the target must also roll stamina+resistance vs the thick heavy incense filling their senses, difficulty (higher of stylist’s essence or 5) or suffer a poison with Penalty -2, Duration 5 rounds and Damage 3i.
If they are crashed they take bashing damage instead, if this incapacitates them the stylist may cause them to then die (in which case their spirit is assured to pass on peacefully and receive a beneficient reincarnation, and their body is properly embalmed and protected against reassurection) or fall into a deep, dreamless, peaceful sleep for up to a year (they can be woken from this by another through physical touch)
I ran her and a few friends from her horror-themed book club through the Camp Terror slasher funnel adventure for Savage Worlds. All four players were brand new to TTRPGs. The adventure follows a horror movie structure (Friday the 13th in specific) pretty closely: The players are camp counselors reopening a summer camp that had been closed for years due to tragedy. Act I is primarily exposition and finding clues about why the camp had been closed, Act II starts the kill count off, and Act III is the resolution. It's nicely structured in that characters are much more vulnerable in the first two Acts, only able to take one Wound instead of the three a PC/Wild Card is usually able to take, and a Critical Failure on any roll is instant death. The players get to narrate how their characters die, and there's a decent sized pool of pregen characters to choose from (at the beginning of the game, players chose a primary and a secondary character so they have a backup ready to introduce quickly). It requires some buy-in in advance to lean into horror movie tropes; the expectation is that the body count will be high. In Act III, PC characters become full-fledged Wild Cards as is normal for the system, representing their survival to the endgame.
I was worried that the opening would be a little too open to brand new players, but they jumped right into their descriptions and played off of each other really well. Their death descriptions hit the right level for the table (we started with a quick discussion of safety tools which they also took to really well), and the dice and cards were just the right amount of generous and fickle. They handled Bennies well, and the flow of awarding and spending felt really good.
I'm always going to evangelize for Savage Worlds, so take it with the appropriate amount grains of salt, but I felt like this adventure worked well as an introduction to the system for fans of the genre.
[1] She's always been supportive of my involvement with the hobby and a great sounding board for my ideas as a player and a GM, but had never been interested in playing until now. My patience has been rewarded!
Yeah, my group was super excited when our oldest player (I think he's in his late 50s?) got his wife to play D&D with us once. She'd been supportive of his hobby, she just hadn't shown any interest in playing (plus she seemed really busy with work and their farm, while he was busy playing games with us lol) until one day she did. I still don't know if she asked him if she could join us or if he somehow convinced her, but it was an honor to be the one to run the one-shot she was in. A lot of pressure too because I wanted to make sure she had fun and enjoyed herself. It turns out she was a natural and it was so cool seeing how creative someone brand new to the hobby and fantasy in general was. It's been talked about here before about how players can sometimes get into a rut, especially in D&D, where you don't think much farther than if you have an item or skill or spell for a problem, and this session really made it real for me.
Anyways she hasn't joined us again so I figure it's not really her thing, but at least she had fun the one time she tried it!
I'm currently running a gnome alchemist/arcane archer/loremaster who is actually the same character I previously ran through Rise of the Runelords in PF1, beat the boss, fell through a rift, lost my memory, started all over again. So now I'm playing Rise of the Runelords with him again.
But while I started out as a really competent melee/ranged/bomb fighter, I've slowly morphed into the archer for the group, and now I'm just an AoE machine. Hail of Arrows + Bombs. I grabbed Loremaster, which gives me one class feature from a class that I don't have, and I grabbed the Judgement ability from the Inquisitor. So now, once per encounter, I pick someone I really hate, and I get 5 Judgement tokens. I can spend them willy nilly throughout the encounter to either add or subtract 2 from any roll associated with the person I picked for Judgement.
So this happened last session: I hit the big guy, I did enough to shake them. I added 2, now he's got a wound. He soaks. He rolls a 5, so he soaks. BUT WAIT! I subtract 2, so he ends up with a 3, and doesn't soak.
GM: (laughing) "Goddammit I hate you"
The GM has also been working with my weird backstory, indicating that I've done this loop many times, and I'm reading my own journals now from the future/past. I also learned how to make a homebrew elixir of forgetfulness, which I made much of. It erases the past hour of your memory. The GM didn't think I'd actually craft them, or use them. He was mistaken.
I currently have 20 of these elixirs of forgetfulness on me, and I drink them pretty regularly. Especially if we hear or see scary shit, or are responsible for a tragedy. I also drink them when we're traveling to make the travel time "shorter." I will also regularly accuse other party members of drinking said elixirs, and will scold them for doing so, and that they shouldn't do that because they're dangerous. I made many of these and several of them are gone, you see, and the only explanation is sticky-fingered party members. THAT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION!
Apparently there's been a few interventions on drinking these potions as well, but that can't be right, because if that happened, I'm sure my alchemist would remember that.
And that silliness actually led to a character growth moment recently when one party member died horribly, rolling snake eyes on their Don't Die Roll, and my alchemist decided that while this sucked, they would not drink, and they would not forget, for they crave vengeance now.
So, I picked that up.
Today I'm reading my way through it. It's good! I like what I see!
I also think this is the type of TTRPG system that my friends would actually be able to grasp/handle, as its significantly less math than something like D&D or Pathfinder.
I still enjoy playing it a lot, it's a game I would generally recommend over something like D&D for getting that to that sort of heroic fantasy genre, but also I have a small litany of complaints about it based on all that playtime
The other creator, Sage Latorra, is thankfully fine from all I can tell.
https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2020/04/03/something-you-should-know-before-giving-money-to-the-dungeon-world-guys/
he's pretty much vanished from the internet though, so I don't think you're doing any harm by playing it as there's no brand left to support, even tacitly.
Luke Crane tried to backdoor him onto a Kickstarter project without telling the other contributors, and it fell apart when they discovered this and backed out of the project.
https://www.polygon.com/22352782/kickstarter-luke-crane-perfect-rpg-adam-koebel
but it does have a lot of its own problems
I'm aware. I don't see that as contradicting anything I said.
Yeah, I think it's very good at some of that, focusing foremost of the feelings and vibes of heroic fantasy in a way that newcomers can really easily get into. I'd also argue that it's not really designed to be that - it's building on a bunch of classic D&D stuff, whether that's the idiosyncratic playbooks, the almost D&D stat system, or the general focus on like, traditional oD&D dungeon crawling. It's directly in conversation with D&D, and was kind of originally designed as a part of that conversation for people who were already having it a bunch (not too dissimilar from folks around here).
Like I said, I've played a couple of campaigns of it, I think it can be made to work. But there's some house rules there, some things we bend to fit because we're not really interested in dungeon delving, and increasingly it reminds me of, well, Dungeons & Dragons.
I was able to find two different examples (one involving SA and another involving possession of a character, leading that character to go on DM controlled sexual escapades). But anyway, yes, get used copies!