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

[Ol' Scratch]

How about Availability ratings? Do we really need to spend points on Restricted Gear to have something we would have been able to put together ourselves (like an Enchanting Shop for alchemists)?

Also, are the factions you listed earlier in the thread the only ones available? There's one or two other immortals that I think my character would have had a closer relationship with. Should I just take them as regular contacts instead?

[Halinn]

If I wanted to play a technomancer, how would the BP shuffle work? Would I in the present have a technomancy BP bonus for some resonance and CFs that vanished on going to the past, and would one be submerged for free as magic types do?

[pbangarth]

Thanks for the rethink on the costs. I have been having a lot of 'fun' trying to make a Free Spirit that looks tough and ancient.

That new Free Spirit power for background count, does it cost a point of Edge burned to get it, or a point of edge spent to use it?

[Ol' Scratch]

If it helps, Peter, my character's secondary magical focus deals with summoning and spirits in general, not to mention being quite the Weaponsmith during the Fourth World. As an alchemist/enchanter, he likely could have helped your free spirit find a way to survive the Fifth World and/or hide it away during the Horror invasion, perhaps as a "magic sword" or golem or some such. So if you wanna consider that, maybe we can work on an idea or two to facilitate it. The rules for unique enchantments in Street Magic open up a lot of possibilities. And it would benefit my character, too, as he could definitely have used some protection courtesy of being more of a scholar and scientist rather than a warrior.

[BlackHat]

I'd just like to remind people that the purpose for this thread is to get the feeling of the campaign correct (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Is that a kind way of saying you're not quite ready for people to be submitting character ideas, or should people start talking about what they'd be interested in trying out? Personally, I'm leaning a couple different ways, but could start nailing it down if its time to do that.

[BlackHat]

How about Availability ratings? Do we really need to spend points on Restricted Gear to have something we would have been able to put together ourselves (like an Enchanting Shop for alchemists)?

I was curious about this as well, it seems like for some gear the PCs would have had thousands of years to locate the item, and then could have held onto it for just as long.

[pbangarth]

If it helps, Peter, my character's secondary magical focus deals with summoning and spirits in general, not to mention being quite the Weaponsmith during the Fourth World. As an alchemist/enchanter, he likely could have helped your free spirit find a way to survive the Fifth World and/or hide it away during the Horror invasion, perhaps as a "magic sword" or golem or some such. So if you wanna consider that, maybe we can work on an idea or two to facilitate it. The rules for unique enchantments in Street Magic open up a lot of possibilities. And it would benefit my character, too, as he could definitely have used some protection courtesy of being more of a scholar and scientist rather than a warrior.

This is worth exploring. My guy is not a possession type spirit, but I understand there are mechanisms for hiding away in items during mana starvation. I don't have a good grasp of how a spirit survives in a gem or sword during down times in the mana. Would he still have his powers? A Free Spirit has a lot of his persona wrapped up in those.

My guy is turning out to be quite the artisan, so you could end up with a singing sword!

[Ol' Scratch]

That's one of the nice things about unique enchantments, they can do things that aren't normally allowable. The example in Digital Grimoire features a sword, the Black River, that is basically a force 6 weapon focus that anyone can use, magical or mundane, with no bonding cost at all. In effect, a D&D style magic sword. Give it a gander when you get the opportunity. There's tons of possibilities.

As for the artisan bit, that's fantastic! I had already decided that one of my character's metamagic abilities is Centering (Music Appreciation). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[pbangarth]

I'm getting reeled in here... I can feel it.

Seth, when you say one can buy one pt of Relationship for 1 BP, is that a one-shot deal for 1 BP only, or are you simply stating the exchange rate?

[Seth]

OK even more feedback. Thank you all

Factions:
As far as factions went, I listed ones that I knew something about, if you want to suggest changes to the list go ahead. I will probably have about the same number that I started with, but I am very happy to change the names.

The bp cost for faction is to buy more faction points. You get an initial number, but if you want to spend bps to be on better terms with other hideously powerful immortals, that might be a good thing. It only costs 6 points to turn them from "minor enemy/they have a history with you" to "they like you a bit". To make it even more, I think you can even have -ve points in a relationship (up to about -3, as you will not survive anything worse than that). These don't count against your 35pt disadvantage cost. Go ahead make an immortal your enemy: you know it makes sense (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

On a game design point of view, I felt this reflected the interplay of hideously powerful, not really understandable elemental forces better than contacts. I may be wrong, so if people prefer the contact mechanism let me know. No one is going to be better than loyalty 2 with many of the immortals though.

Free spirits and mana loss:
Free spirits get a number of "spirit powers" equal to their edge. One of those is a new power that allows you to ignore one point of background. Hence the (confusing) words "costs a point of edge", I should have phrased it better. Note that when your force is reduced, all your other attributes (including edge) are reduced too. This means that you will loose spirit powers in the past (don't worry, every one gets chewed on: there is a reason it's called the miserable dark ages).

Free spirits and surviving crazy low mana levels
A free spirit can infuse its essence into a gem. When this is done, the free spirit cannot go below 1/5 their normal force (force 1..5 -> 1, force 6..10 -> 2), even if the background count goes crazy low. The disadvantage to this is that the free spirit cannot go more than their magic rating *10 meters away from the gem. The spirit take bind its essence to a prepared gem (see enchantment rules for preparing vessels) in a ritual taking from dawn till dusk, but most spend a point of edge. They can unbind themselves (also spending a point of edge in a ritual taking from dusk till dawn). The gem will always be a strong sympathetic link to the spirit, and act as its formula (I hope I got those words correct I am away from books). These crysals are the life boats for spirits. They allow them to carry on operating even when the magic is totally gone: although they are seriously crippled. I do not anticipate that the game will visit time periods when the mana level was low enough to require them, although all free spirits probably had 2 or 3 of them during the last 5000 years. Of course all of those will have been destroyed, and there is almost no chance that a bad guy could get their hands on one of them.

The above is "tech" that is available to all free spirits. If some crazy troll enchanter wants to get involved who knows what could be done! I created the mechanism as a survival story for free spirits, allowing them to still operate when everyone else drops to being a mundane. I don't expect the game to dive this far into the dark ages, but you never can tell with players.

Technomancers
Good question. I spent some time thinking about this and talking it over with other GMs. Our thoughts were as follows:

• Technomancers get 50 bp bonus because they are "mundanes" (no magic)
• In the past they get another 30bp bonus if the resonance attribute is worthless (so from about 1970 onwards you get your technomancy, before that its 30bp bonus)
• Techomancers get the following bonus's from unwired page 137: immunity to crash, immunity to nuke"

This still puts you at a slight disadvantage in the past I think, but makes you ungodly powerful in the present. I will try and not do the power inflation game, so most systems are difficulty 3/4, Tough systems are 5, most megacorps are 6, and a very few (megacorp black systems, immortals...) are level 7 or 8. With resonance 7 or 8, stealth/exploit at 8, and a helping level 4 or 5 registered sprite you can sail through anything up to the level 7 or 8 systems. This is an interesting roleplaying thing, as in the past you have been much less useful and suddenly you have come into your own. All that time you knew you were special, and now you are!

Restricted gear
I am letting people buy deltaware at the same cost and availability as standard
If you have 4pts in a making skill you can make stuff up to availability 16. You still have to "buy" it with money and you still need to pay bps to attune to it if needed.
If you have 6pts in a making skill you can make stuff up to availability 20. You still have to "buy" it with money and you still need to pay bps to attune to it if needed
Cybertechnology counts as a making skill for bioware or cyberware.
If you really want a unique enchantment, send me the details and I will work out a cost. Remember that the level of enchantments is reduced by the background count.

I'd just like to remind people that the purpose for this thread is to get the feeling of the campaign correct

Well I am on holiday at the moment, and away from books. Also I want to get the feel of the game correct before I kick off. I think I will start the recruitment thread very early March. I have two real world people who will be playing:

• A bear shifter who was once a horror construct, and is linked to the life of the horror that created him. You can call him Mr Tank.
• An elven horror hunter, who was once a dual class Nethermancer/Horror Hunter.

I'm planning on 5..7 players, so the ones that have registered an interest here will be taken in "first come first served" basis. (that includes people that have already posted registering an interest). This will be my first time GMing a pbp (although I have GMed for 25 or so years) so I intend to be as careful as possible: I think its different GMing pbp, but I am not sure how yet.

[Zadaine]

If you want to avoid having to shift skills around too much from age to age you could do a sort of scaling system for certain skills. Like... from Earthdawn to Victorian era automobile driving and repair become carriage driving and repair. Gun skills become crossbow/ballista skills, etc. Follows the idea that you're not just going to wake up one day and decide to completely get rid of a skillset/talent.

Also, I'm thinking about either an arcane theorist and scientist --> technomancer or a druid.

[Halinn]

I think I'll try my hand at a technomancer elf, then.
Scientist and martial artist in earlier times, who started to get a feel for machines. I'm assuming free submerging, like magic types get initiations. Technomancy could even still be useful earlier, with resonance trodes. So in times past, the mind was manipulated, and now it's tech of all sorts.

Edit: scratch this. I just can't get it to work with an immortal, being as shadowrun-specific as technomancers are.

[BlackHat]

I'm assuming free submerging, like magic types get initiations.

I was going to suggest this, but it sounds like you're changing your mind about it anyway. Might still be relevant to Zadaine.

[sabs]

That's what I think Seth needs to consider in regards to his earlier acknowledgment that Free Spirits could hide in their own plane. If the Free Spirit just zapped back and forth between metaplane and kaer, then there would be no problem, I think. Going anywhere else in the physical or astral could be deadly. If Seth allows hiding in the metaplane, then there would likely have to be a strict edict against going anywhere outside the two safe places during the time of the horrors.

A Free spirit could not have zipped back and forth.

A Kaer amongst other things had Wards and Barriers both physical and Metaphysical to stop such things. Remember, some Horrors were free spirits. You can't be zapping back and forth at all. Think of a kaer as one of those Panic Rooms in a house.


Seth, is there still room in the game for one more? I am a SERIOUS Earthdawn addict (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[pbangarth]

A Free spirit could not have zipped back and forth.

A Kaer amongst other things had Wards and Barriers both physical and Metaphysical to stop such things. Remember, some Horrors were free spirits. You can't be zapping back and forth at all. Think of a kaer as one of those Panic Rooms in a house.


Seth, is there still room in the game for one more? I am a SERIOUS Earthdawn addict (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Once a spirit has been inside a ward, say by being invited in, it can come and go as it pleases by dematerializing, going to its home plane, going to the astral inside the ward, and materializing.

OK, I'm utterly failing here. I'm looking for the reference to support this but can't find it. There is a specific reference to a magician having to be careful about inviting a spirit into his mana lodge, for this reason. Can someone help me out?

[sabs]

Invitation working that way does not jive with the Earthdawn fluff. There were tons of Horrors that got a hold of 1 person, but spent years weakening to the wards so they could break in fully. If they could have just made that 1 person invite them in to by-pass all the wards. Wow. Also, Kaers are more complicated, they're ritual wards put up by many people using special materials and rituals. It's not 1 Magician, it's a 100 magicians working in concert.

Perhaps in Shadowrun it can do that, but being able to do that in Earthdawn is actually world-breaking.

[Sephiroth]

I'm still undecided about joining, but I have a question about the factions.

Should we have any sort of relationship with Icewing/Ghostwalker, Lofwyr (forget what his name was in ED), and/or the Denairastas clan? I've gotten the impression from the limited Earthdawn information I know that there were more than a few immortals in that clan, being fathered by the great dragon The Outcast, but I don't know much else about them.

[pbangarth]

Invitation working that way does not jive with the Earthdawn fluff. There were tons of Horrors that got a hold of 1 person, but spent years weakening to the wards so they could break in fully. If they could have just made that 1 person invite them in to by-pass all the wards. Wow. Also, Kaers are more complicated, they're ritual wards put up by many people using special materials and rituals. It's not 1 Magician, it's a 100 magicians working in concert.

Perhaps in Shadowrun it can do that, but being able to do that in Earthdawn is actually world-breaking.

I see your point. I thought that once people hid inside a kaer, they were there forever. Thus preventing Horrors from getting at them at all. As I say, I know little of Earthdawn.

[sabs]

No, A Kaer is a complex set of layered Magical and Physical Defenses. Physical walls, physical traps, Magical walls, magical traps. Red-herring wards that are there to confuse the magically aware Horrors, so that they spend literally 100's of years figuring out how to break the ward, but never figuring it out because that ward doesn't really work, so nothing they do will 'work'. They were protecting themselves from amazingly powerful magical creatures with millenia of magical knowledge. Some horrors were purely physical, some were purely astral, and some were both.

A Kaer also was openable, they had clock that told them what the magic level out in the world was. Earthdawn background is that Magic leveled out higher than they expected, and just stayed there. So some people opened up their Kaers and went exploring. Most horrors are gone, though some still exist, and people are returning to a new life.

What's unclear is if this is a double-dip magic cycle, or not. We're at a Plateau. What happens when that Plateau ends? Does the Magic level go back up, unleashing horrors again, or does it start to nose dive. We know that eventually the Isle of Thera explodes, marking the end of the 4th World. But we actually don't know how much time passes between the Earthdawn setting and that.

[Sephiroth]

No, A Kaer is a complex set of layered Magical and Physical Defenses. Physical walls, physical traps, Magical walls, magical traps. Red-herring wards that are there to confuse the magically aware Horrors, so that they spend literally 100's of years figuring out how to break the ward, but never figuring it out because that ward doesn't really work, so nothing they do will 'work'. They were protecting themselves from amazingly powerful magical creatures with millenia of magical knowledge. Some horrors were purely physical, some were purely astral, and some were both.

A Kaer also was openable, they had clock that told them what the magic level out in the world was. Earthdawn background is that Magic leveled out higher than they expected, and just stayed there. So some people opened up their Kaers and went exploring. Most horrors are gone, though some still exist, and people are returning to a new life.

What's unclear is if this is a double-dip magic cycle, or not. We're at a Plateau. What happens when that Plateau ends? Does the Magic level go back up, unleashing horrors again, or does it start to nose dive. We know that eventually the Isle of Thera explodes, marking the end of the 4th World. But we actually don't know how much time passes between the Earthdawn setting and that.

sabs, out of curiosity, has it ever been explained in ED fluff what it is about Egypt that makes the dragons so reluctant to venture there? You seem like the most ED-knowledgeable person here right now.

[Ol' Scratch]

There's a few things I think we need to talk about and decide as a collective whole. For instance, why are we all so closely knit and what brought us together? Are we part of a magical group that's persisted through the Fifth Age? What kind of shared experiences do we have? How have we managed to stay friends, or at least associates, through the ages? Did we have some magical means of staying in contact with one another similiar to the orbs Dunkelzahn and Ghostwalker used in the Age of Legends? Do we have any common enemies or friends of a noteworthy nature? etc.

I don't know why, but my natural inclination is that we were a somewhat legendary group of adventurers during the Fourth World. Since we're only "second tier" immortals, I doubt we influenced nations or anything, but we could have easily been in the upper echelon of adventurers, moving and shaking things behind the scenes. I can also see us gathering together to catch up on old times and look out for each other whenever we moved to new areas of the world during the various time jumps. I think that'd be more fun than everyone being off doing their own thing (not to mention easier on Seth).

Just something to start chewing on.

[sabs]

Creanan myth states that dragons sleep beneath Creana, and that no dragon can walk on the earth or fly through the air of that ancient land.

Basically, we never get told why. But Great Dragons won't go to Creana even in Earthdawn. Since Creana is Egypt, this is why they avoid Egypt like the plague. It's more cross-over stuff. Unfortunately it's not really talked about /why/ just rumors.

[pbangarth]

Just something to start chewing on.

If we are a group hanging together through the ages, should our Relationships with the big Names be roughly similar?

EDIT: ... both in pluses and minuses. I'm going to have to read up on those guys, maybe in AH's encyclopedia.

[BlackHat]

I assumed the plan was that the PCs at least teamed up a lot over the ages. Otherwise when they all project back in time, they could potentially be scattered across the world, doing totally unrelated (but equally important) things. Whatever is decided among the PCs, its probably going to be important that they would have spent a significant amount of time together, during each of the major ages.

[Seth]

Some bits of Earthdawn lore that I like, that answer some of your questions since my last post

Threading:
The world is like a tapestry and your lives are like threads moving through the tapestry. You can spend part of your life force (karma) to permantly bind your thread to other others. Examples are binding your self to your magical weapons: the stronger the weaving the more you can use the weapon. Of particular relevance to this group however are the group bonds. It is possible to create an adventuring group, then bind your threads together. In shadowrun terms this is a magical group, but its much stronger than that.

You are all members of a group (I suggest you think of a name), and benefit from that group bond. Group bonds do impose restrictions upon you (it is hard to act against another member of the group) and this is especially true for you as the group has lasted for thousands of years growing stronger.

Note that it is not necessary for you to "like" each other, its just that you work well together, and your fates are constantly bound together.

As far as communicating with each other: your group bond transmits extreme emotions. Should one of you die, a psychic burst will propogate to the other detailing the events of your death. (this is powerful insurance against those that know such things, as they know if they kill one of you, they attack you all). As the magic levels increase, the powers of your group bond will increase. At the moment it was very little effect (other than tying your fates together, and the limited communication described above).


Kaers:
These are magical constructs thousands of years of magical learning beyond shadowrun. They take decades to make. Blood runes are carved into the very rock itself. The description given above was excellant, and if anything undersold how strong they are.

Getting out of the Kaers:
Each Kaer had a thaumaturgy-ometer. A ball of true earth suspended above a bowl of true water. As the magic increases the repulsive force increases. At the height of the horrors, the ball reached its apex. The Therans, who distributed the "tech" for the Kaers stated that when the ball touched the water it would be safe to do so.

Something strange happened just as the ball was about to touch the water: it stopped dropping. For 50 ears many communities waited desperate to leave the kaers, but the ball never touched the water. Gradually the kaers opened: the magic level strong enough to support the weaker horrors. This is the world of Earthdawn.

Friends and enemies
Almost all the friends and enemies that you made during Earthdawn are dead. To your knowledge no other group with a group bond has survived all the way through the 5th age, and made it to the 6th (you may be wrong...remember what I said about memory).

Should we have any sort of relationship with Icewing/Ghostwalker, Lofwyr (forget what his name was in ED), and/or the Denairastas clan? I've gotten the impression from the limited Earthdawn information I know that there were more than a few immortals in that clan, being fathered by the great dragon The Outcast, but I don't know much else about them.

I think Lofwyr was called "Goldensnout". I have no problems with individuals being fathered by the Outcast. I don't have much data on Denairastas (the outcast). Most drakes I think were created by Ghostwalker. As far as relationships go, I'll look at what people spend their relationship points on.

I'm assuming free submerging, like magic types get initiations.

Yes

OK, I'm utterly failing here. I'm looking for the reference to support this but can't find it. There is a specific reference to a magician having to be careful about inviting a spirit into his mana lodge, for this reason. Can someone help me out?

Street Magic page 94. But as has been pointed Kaers are "special", and as guarded on the metaplanes, as they were on the astral and physical (well beyond shadowrun's magical capabilities - unless some immortals remember a way)