Shadow's Dawn: Diving into the past, Pre recruitment: Feedback on idea appreciated Options

[Seth]

I guess this is becoming the recruitment thread!

My intention is to start the OOC and IC thread around the 7th March. I will try and ensure that I respond to posts 3 times a week: probably monday, wednesday and saturday as those fit in best with my schedule.

The first game I run in this style will be quite short (for a pbp), will be fairly structured and is telling a specific story: this allows me to find my feet GMing this sort of game, and should engender some pace into the game. If the first game goes well, we'll have another, but that will probably be a lot more sandboxed and political. Many of the PnP campaigns that I run, have lasted for years, so I hope this is the beginning of a long and enjoyable relationship.

In no particular order, the players that I note have registered an interest are. If I have missed you - let me know

• Blackhat
• Ol'scratch - troll alchemist
• Sabs
• Pbangarth
• Halinn
• Zadine

In addition I have 2 others that are planning on playing.

I will be happy to take up to 7 in total, which means that we are already over number. If you all go ahead: well 8 is only 1 more than 7!.

I am still open for receiving stand bys though.

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Back to the original post:

I am interested in running an Earthdawn / Shadowrun crossover game. In this game, the players will all be people who were alive during the Earthdawn period, and alive now. I'll be starting the game in about a month.

Before I start the game, I would appreciate some feedback on whether the character creation feels right.

A basic premise of the game is that for sentient beings memory fades with time: 100 years ago is a long time, 200 is a very long time, and 1000 years is so far back that mostly you remember once remembering things about it.

Another is that of "power level". Power level is the cap of the number of BPs that you can easily gain. After you meet this cap, in order to gain stuff you have to loose stuff. i.e. in the 15th centuary you were probably a dab hand bladed combat. Today you have forgotton those skills, but learn Electronics.

Tier 1 creatures: The great immortals (Harlequin, Ehran, Queen Alachia) have 800-1500 bps.
Tier 2 creatures: Their paladins, a few nobles from the elven courts, lesser dragons, greater drakes have 500-800
Tier 3 creatures: You. Have settled at around 450bp and have been at this very respectable level for around 10,000 years.

Fortunately there are two ways for you to recall long ago times: you can write things down (I suspect most of you will be avid diary keepers) or you relive the memories using a varient of astral questing. This varient means that you literally relive the experience: you (with companions) project into the past and reenact the events. You remember you are from the "future", but you also remember things from that time. Mostly the reenactments follow the same line as they did originally. You can get hurt there, and if you die in the past, it is very bad for you in the present.

When you go into the past, you can shuffle some of your BP that you spent on skills around, and modify your attributes a bit (+/-1 keep the same bps), and your skills (you can mostly respend all your skill bps, please do it in a sensible way and stay recognisably the same). In the past there will usually be a different base mana level. Cyberware will probably not be there (you almost certainly were not cybered when you were there).

You can be opposed in your search for memory. Other people reliving their memories may well be in the same astral quest as yourself, especially if they are trying to hide memories.

The rules for character creation have a few modifiers, given the nature of the game

[ Spoiler ]

You all start as 450 point characters.
You start with 20 karma which you can spend or keep
Knowledge skills: are equal to 10 times (logic + intuition)
Free contacts: are equal to 4 times charisma
Free wealth: willpower * 10,000
Initiation grade = 10 points for level 1, 30 for level 2, 60 for level 3, 100 for level 4

Knowledge skills:
History is a very broad and useful skill. All of you have your general history at a level equal to your logic. You can also buy specific histories. The following may be useful: Earthdawn history, Egyptian history, Roman history, The dark ages, The Reformation, Modern History. The Earthdawn time is so long ago, that you can remember little about it, so it is capped at 1.

Character races are restricted to:

• Drake
• Elf
• Free spirit
• Any thing else that you can persuade me is 10,000 years old. If I accept a different character race there may be a tax for being so unusual, or a bonus if you write a beautiful back story

Drake:
This will cost 30 build points, the armour (hardened and mystic) will be raised to 6 points. The drake stat bonus's increase maximum stats by 1.5*the bonus.

Immortal Elf:
This costs 0 points. Same bonus's as for an elf + immunity to age

Free spirit:
This costs 30 points. You buy attributes exactly the same way that all other players buy attributes. You gain karma like regular characters. You cannot gain karma by selling spirit pacts. Your natural maximum for attributes is your force, which is capped to 6 + initiation level, and is also capped to 5 + minimum physical or mental attribute. Remember to raise an attribute to the natural maximum costs 25 points. Note that in many historical places there will be a background count that is negative, and this will affect your force, and hence your natural maximum.

Magical qualities:
Adept, Mystic Adept and Magician are available, and recommended
Technomancer is available if you really want it: you will be gimped in most memory sequences, so I will use some of the optional rules that make technomancers more impressive in the current day.
Cyberware and Bioware is also available. All cyberware and bioware that you have is deltaware, but costs the same price as standard.

Rule system:

• Mostly RAW
• Empathy software doesn't exist
• Resisting possession is willpower + highest mental stat.
• Possessing creatures add half their force (or for free spirits half their attribute) to the hosts, and the augmented max attribute of the hybrid creature is the lower of the host and the spirit.
• The attribute used with the Arcana skill is the same as your traditions drain resistance attribute
• Damage spells do your magic stat as damage

Relationships:
You have Charisma*2 points of relationship (you can spend 1 bp for 1 extra pt) for the following factions:

• Queen Alachia
• Harliquin
• Ehran the Scribe
• Prince Sean Laverty
• Prince Jenna Ni'Fairra
• High prince Lugh Surehand
• Dunkelzahn
• Hestaby

Rating 0: They don't like you, and will occasionally go out of their way to cause unpleasantness
Rating 1: Neutral-mild dislike
Rating 2: Neutral
Rating 3: Neutral-mild like
Rating 4: Mild friendship
Rating 5: Mild friendship + respect
Rating 6: You can knock on their door, and if they are in a good mood and not busy, they will invite you in for a chat.

A brief history

[ Spoiler ]

All of you were alive during the peak of the last mana surge. You need to decide how you survived the horrors:

• In a dwarven kaer
• In the elven wooden kaers, which became the blood woods. This means you lived around 500 years in agony
• In a secret dragon lair as a dragon servitor (need relationship 4+ with that dragon)
  Some other way that you think is credible

Just before magic left the world, you all took part in a ritual of hiding. You vaguely remember something went wrong with the ritual, but it was so long ago, you cannot quite remember what. Elves and drakes morph into human appearance (duration: until magic returns). The free spirits hide in jewels. While in the jewels they are protected from the worst effects of the mana loss.

Although magic mostly left the world during the 5th age, there were places in the world where magic did not totally leave. In game mechanic terms, the 5th age varied between -10 and -5 mana. Some places are +/- around 3 on this scale. Most of the remnants of the 4th age naturally gravitated to the most mana rich places (or more specifically the least mana poor places).

During the period -5000 to -2000, magic decayed from -5 to -10 average it was highest in some parts of Egypt, but even there it was was pretty low.

From -500 to 500 magic was strongest in Greece and Italy. There was a temporary 100 year blip in mana around -400 AD, taking magic levels to average -5, and in parts of the greek islands, -2.

From 500 to 1500 magic was strongest in south and central america. The average level was -10.

During 1500-2000, magic was highest in Germany and the UK. The magic level started climbing in 1900. By world war 2, it reached -6, and stabilised there until the dawn of the 6th age. World War II was a particularly disturbing time. The Nazi party came out of nowhere (to Elven eyes), and Hitler was a being of vast magical, charismatic and technological might. The Nazi search for occult treasures was real, and scary. Many of the greatest magical treasures were stolen by the Nazi's and have not been recovered. Many people feel that Hitler was a rogue elf or drake. A few claim it is Queen Alachia, but she refutes this, and no proof has ever been recovered.

From the point of view of the remnants of the 4th age, the years up to 1500 were mostly the same. It was something of a surprise to them, that from 1500 onwards, change started and kept happening faster and faster. The two important themes during this time were the movement of power from monarchs to the masses, and the rise of technology. Some of the elves (led by the queen) generally opposed these trends. Although their magical powers were dramatically reduced, most of the remnants maintained a very small amount of magic which gave them an advantage over mortals. In addition they had a very high level of skill compared to most mortals. Technology basically reduces the advantage they have over normal mortals, and the movement of power from Monarchs (themselves) to the masses was not very palatable. Others (a minority) elves saw the rise of technology as a way to eventually destroy the horrors. Despite everything the Elves could do, tech kept getting more powerful. By the end of the victorian age even the Queen felt that it wasn't really possible to put the genie back in the bottle. With the atomic bomb and the promise of powerful augmentation for the masses, the dream of killing the horrors seems plausible. Other elves remember the dreams that the wooden kaers would hold out against the horrors, and think that this tech is just another crazyness like that.

You are all aware that the Horrors may be returning early. Harlequin has placed the voice of Theyla to stop the enemy, but Theyla has failed before, and may fail again. Dunkelzahn has done something clever to stop them, but even so the horror may be back soon. It is not clear that the kaers will work this time. Technology is good at finding things and at breaking through magical wards. Even the dragons may not survive, as technology is capable of finding their lairs

Choices I would like you to make:
How did you survive the last horrors?
What roll did you take in the Egyption period?
What roll did you take in the Greek period?
What roll did you take in the Mayan/Aztec period?
What roll did you take during the reformation, and the growth of technology?
Where were you during world war II
What is your view on technology?
What is your view on Monarchy vs rule of the masses in a world where the monarch is immortal

An observation on xp
Mostly as immortals you have reached your peak power level. Occasionally you learn new skills (mostly knowledge skills), but mostly you forget them as well. Some individuals have a higher natural level of skills. You have been at about the same power level for centuries. The main message here is that the immortals are not gaining xp linearly at 100/year for the last 10,000 years. Don't worry though, there will be a reason that you start earning xp at approximately normal rates soon after the game begins.

How many remnants from the 4th age are there?
A few hundred. The skill 4th age remnant is useful if you want to identify some of them. The problem with memory again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Killing immortals
No one wants a blood bath. Kill one immortal (which is often harder than it looks), and they have friends who will take revenge. Anyway its much more satisfying to embaress and fool.