Aberrant: Infinite Earth - Cosmos Nova - Sanctum Sanctorum Discussion

[Sailor OOC]

With all due respect to Mala, I've noticed that suddenly Sanctum Sanctorum has become a discussion point among CN players. As the conversation in regards to Quantum 6 has been mixed up with discussion on Sanctum Sanctorum, I feel that it may be a good idea to discuss how to fix/improve Sanctum/Sanctum Sanctorum as a feature in Cosmos Nova.

I know something got posted in the Q6 discussion, I would like to offer something as well. I will post it in the next post for ease of reference.

[Sailor OOC]

Sanctum Refit

Being a Nova, it can be hell keeping a place to live, depending on the enemies you make or even your choice of hobby. Luckily, Novas being the industrious fellows that they are, are capable of creating abodes that are either easily repaired, far from common sources of harm, or reach increasing levels of self-sufficiency. A sanctum instead of one set of dots representing the power of a sanctum, it is rated on different categories, paid for like normal backgrounds. Also note that this cannot be purchased through initial background dots during character creation, only through experience points can a sanctum be purchased.

First, your Sanctum must have one of these features selected at no cost:

Mobile: Your Sanctum is somehow mobile either in the air or on the sea. It's just too big to move on land.

Fortress: Your Sanctum is stationary somewhere that is suggested by it's isolation rating.

A note on Space: If your Sanctum is a space station or small space craft designed by your nova or with someone's help; It is restricted to low-earth-orbit until it is a Sanctorum or has the proper enhancements, or it has a higher isolation rating. If you take space you are required to have your all of categories at least at 3 dots.

These categories are:

Isolation - Covers how hard to get to the Sanctum is. Note that this can also represent how well camouflauged or Mobile it is.

1: The Sanctum is semi-easy to find (A suburban manor, a lakeshore property)

2: The Sanctum is semi-isolated (A rural manor, a home sourrounded by small rivers)

3: The Sanctum is isolated (somewhere in the north woods off of a dirt road, a small island in a sea, low earth orbit)

4: The sanctum is remote (somewhere nestled in the mountains or a small pacific island, high earth orbit)

5: The sanctum is remote and dangerous to approach, or is difficult for normal humans to approach or visit. (A former oil rig in the north sea, a research base in Antartica, a small caravan shelter in the Sahara, a uncharted island, geostationary orbit)

Power Source - Covers what the power needs are for the Sanctum

1: The Sanctum is still on the grid or has almost a constant fuel need

2: The sanctum has some generation ability (solar panels, wind turbines) but still needs outside power or fuel

3: The Sanctum power generation needs are met, with self-sufficiency. But there is no excess. Or doesn't need refueling for 6 months.

4: The Sanctum can be completely off the grid, relying on it's own source of thermal or hydrological power generation or perhaps a huge solar/wind farm that it sells excess to the grid (Resources requirement reduced by 1). OR it is so efficient that it can operate for a year without refueling.

5: The Sanctum is fully self-sufficient for power, and could sell it's power, but the power source may be troublesome to manage (Fission) (Resources requirement reduced by 2). Or the Sanctum needs no refueling for a long time (5 to 20 years).

Sufficiency - Food, water, utilities, as well as it's room and board capacity. Staffing can't be higher than the dots in this category.

1: The Sanctum needs outside support for food and water (One Day's Supply)

2: The Sanctum needs an outside water or food source

3: The Sanctum has it's own water and food supply for half a year in an emergency

4: The Sanctum can take care of food and water needs for a year

5: The Sanctum has a renewable source of water and food, enough to sell, although the source could be tainted/destroyed (Resources requirement reduced by 1).

Durability

1: The Sanctum is just a bit tougher than a normal house, but easily repaired

2: The Sanctum has light security, more resilient, and is modular to reduce damage

3: The Sanctum has moderate security, hard to damage, and has multiple redundencies incase it is damaged to prevent secondary damages (fires, gas leaks, broken water mains, etc...)

4: The Sanctum has high security, is practically a bunker, and is difficult to near impossible to damage in natural or man-made disasters.

5: NORAD, Fort Knox, or any missile silo in North Dakota are your models for this Sanctum.

Staffing

1: You and maybe a groundskeeper

2: A small staff of caretakers

3: A large staff of caretakers and a small team of administrators

4: Your Sanctum is crewed all day, with three shifts and any needed position filled

5: Your Sanctum is crewed all day, with enough to have even sick staff replaced at a moment's notice

Now, when you want a 6th dot in a category, instead that dot is purchased at Current Category Rating x4 and that dot becomes an "Enhancement" instead to a category.

Isolation: Forever Alone: The Sanctum is located where no human can reach without a great effort (The Moon, Mars, The Marianas Trench)

Power Source: Power Overwhelming: The Sanctum has within a truely amazing power source (Fusion, Zero Point) that can be shared with the world, or kept to yourself. You never need refueling.

Sufficiency: Horn of Plenty: Your food and water source is constantly purified and managed, ensuring it's safety.

Durability: Iron Fortress: Either through dilligent damage control, impenetrible defense, or brilliant safety features you are almost completely safe.

Staffing: Micro-Goverment: Your Sanctum as practically a private army staffing it.

Once you have two of your 5 categories enhanced, you qualify to become a sanctum sanctorum.

Note that when a Sanctum Sanctorum qualifies to be as such, the Sanctum Sanctorum provides a useful utility enough to have the necessary funding and supplies to keep functioning, or the nova is able to sufficiently fund and supply the Sanctum Sanctorum on their own with little effort.

Roomates/Family

If the Nova decides to take on other Nova PC roommates or PC family members, they can divide up the experience cost between them as they see fit. As long as the points are covered, it can be done.

Plot Relevance

The Sanctum or Sanctum Sanctorum should have an important plot relevance. A Sanctum is important to the Nova, as the Nova uses the retreat to escape from the world. Also as it's position is assailiable unlike a Sanctorum, there can be events that damage or temporarily knock offline a Sanctum, potentially at lower levels even destroy a Sanctum. Once a Sanctum is a Sanctum Sanctorum, the location is semi-protected from plot events, although if a Nova is not participating in a thread when a event in the world occurs, or has not participated in a meaningful manner in a thread for the month, they gain no experience at all. If a character with a Sanctum Sanctorum has some sort of event happen to the location where it is placed in jeopardy, or it is used as a plot device in said thread, the player gains the full benefit of any XP for thread participation, although they recieve half their experience for the month. If the character is active outside their sanctum for the month, or the sanctum is used for nothing more than being a set piece, then standard experience rules apply for that character.

Enemies and Plot Protection

A Nova with a Sanctum or a Sanctum Sanctorum, while hard to find, may give motivation to their enemies. As such any player taking Sanctum for their character agrees that their Sanctum is fair game in a plot. A Sanctum Sanctorum's fate is completely up to the player whose character owns the Sanctorum.

Allies/Followers

If you have either of these Backgrounds the followers or allies you have can live at your Sanctum. Allies may appreciate the new room and board arrangements provided by you, while with Followers you may need quite a large facility at higher levels. You can have as many dots worth of Allies (who like more room and board) or Followers (Who will life anywhere to be closer to their interest) as you have dots in Staffing.

Resources

Your character must have a Resources level that matches the average of the number of dots in the categories of Sanctum you have, rounded down. If the average rating of your Sanctum is higher, your Resources is penalized one dot per level higher until you can catch your resources up or downsize your sanctum temporarily (by temporarily reducing the rating in a category in RP). If you have a Enhancement in Sufficiency or Power Source, the Sanctum can be considered self-funding, removing the necessity for devoting your own resources to it. If you have a Sanctum Sanctorum, there also may be special arrangements you may do to cover the cost of operating your Sanctum as well. Certain levels of certain categories can reduce the character's resource requirements at certain levels.

Backing

If you are backed by a governmental organization, you can defer some of the cost of operating your Sanctum, in trade for having your backers having a small presence at the place you call home. If you are short on resources, every dot of Backing you have can step in. If you have a Sanctum Sanctorum, the backers having a foothold at our Sanctum will find the location too good to pass up if invited and would be happy to assist in filling in where needed.

Equipment

The nova may invest in Gadgets and Devices that they can assign to the Sanctum, also anything that the nova can purchase or requisition within reason may be stored/staioned at their Sanctum. Also, it is considered that the Sanctum or Sanctum Sanctorum has enough equipment to do it's daily functions, provide for it's protection, and provide a level of safety for it's resident(s) equal to it's rating in it's various categories.

What Sanctum/Sanctum Sanctorum is not

Sanctum and Sanctum Sanctorum cannot provide any feature that creates a power like a power a nova has. Nor can it influence nova powers in any way. The vast majority of a Sanctum or Sanctum Sanctorum must be mundane in origin, or built through a Nova's own skill. While a set in-game or out of game time is not necessary to set, there must be adequate effort expressed by the player in showing that their character on their own (or assisted) is assisting in the creation of their Sanctum. Any effort must be guaged with common sense, and any obvious abuses must be called out and corrected. By taking a Sanctum a player agrees to this oversight.

[The Story Guide]

Hey, I'm not going to take any offense. I made up the Sanctum stuff for QF, for one, and just to give actual mechanics to the benefits of the background, since Adventure! is pretty light on it. I don't care at all if the player base of CN wants to change, chop, or otherwise futz with it.

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Cent did have some good points about how powerful some of the things you can get with SS are (again, it was made for QF originally, where Q8 was rather the norm for characters), so needing adjustment for CN seems appropriate.

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*shrugs*

[Sailor OOC]

Truth. Your version of Sanctum can be fixed as well (I sorta like it personally).

I thought I would offer mine as a plan B. But I would actually prefer yours. It just with the conversation about outside things confusing things at least in my linear mind, I thought the issue was with Sanctum as we were using it, not the fact there was vestigal remnants of QF in the background.

I am just as willing to talk about fixing what we got.

In fact, what in Sanctum as it stands should be outright removed? I have an idea, but just out curiosity.

Also note, I don't see a reason to change any costs.

[Mr Fox]

For the record, Nate's Sanctorum the Star Gem, was built almost entirely by inventing (and paying the individual costs to do so) the parts needed to make it up. Only the Traveller part itself was paid for by the background rather than the cost to personally invent it. One of these days when life gets a little less hectic I will get around to posting the work he's been doing in story form.

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I don't see a problem with Tommy's revision, but I'd be just fine with leaving it alone as well. For those already built I'd want them grandfathered in. I've spent most of the XP that Nate has earned building his Sanctum from the ground up and I wouldn't want that to disappear in a puff of smoke resulting from a game rules revision.

[Dave ST]

I think it's way to powerful and you guys should spend the next several pages bickering and bitching about why it is/is not instead of finding some way to compromise instead.

[The Red Man]

I think Mala's SS rules are fine, and don't need changing.

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Also, in keeping with Dave's desire to see blood in the water, I think Tommy is a gigantic douchebag for trying to make the discussion about improved Sanctum rules rather than about Q6.

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Also he smells.

[SalmonMax]

Though I'm not actually an active player at the moment and have no vested interest, I do enjoy a good spectacle so I'll just chime in and say that expanded dots for Backgrounds are a contrivance never intended to be in Aberrant, and that existing rules as written are more than sufficient to encompass gameplay. If you want to rewrite things, why not just write your own game system?

[Dave ST]

Because that's like buying a house, hating the color of the walls so you tear it down and build the exact same house with different color walls. Aberrant is shit, we can all admit this. However it has a foundation that's solid to build upon, so why not add to that foundation and help smooth the crappy spots out? Maybe add some ceiling fans, or central heating... make it a cozy system.

,,

Creating new things for a system, any system, is fun. If people want a Fortress of Solitude... why the fuck not? They already have Jedi Masters, cyborgs, cartoon people and dragons. Let's face it, I hardly consider the motley crew that are the players of this show to be using Aberrant as it was 'intended' to begin with. Remember, it's not a game of super powers, it's a game of political intrigue. The book even says so.

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I like Tommy's write up. It's damn good. It's not perfect, but hey, he's not me, right? I haven't read Mala's but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts (and I don't even know what the fuck that means) that if we looked at both, picked them apart and melded the best of each proposal (or simply stuck with one) these guys could have one hell of a great new addition to the game. My original point was though, is that this 'game' is infamous for being pretty much being the worst for compromises and communication. I think that if these guys put half as much effort into working together and compromising with each other as they do into long ass posts that do nothing but prove only why they are right, they'd have one of the strongest on going OW games filled with infinitely awesome content.

[Sailor OOC]

I can't tell if there is actual sarcasm coming from Red or not... and I think Dave hit the nail on the head.

I originally stated the reasons why I thought the SS discussion should be itaken here so that the Q6 situation can be straightened out.

But again, as I am a poor reader of sarcasm I would like people to clarify the intent of their postings. Be assured I only do this to make sure I understand over justgoing on first impulse.

Also I am in agreement with those that like Mala's SS rules.

Max: Well... then again I am a child of Mutants and Masterminds and BESM 2e. Consider the source.

[SalmonMax]

...I am not a very good troll, it seems. Heart's just not in it.

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Ah well.

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Proceed.

[Sailor OOC]

Okay, now that the tomfoolery is out of our collective systems, class, let's go after the low hanging fruit first then with Mala's. What's the OBVIOUSLY not CN compatible portions of Mala's Sanctum writeup? I would think the things that allow warps for a vehicle is a start, at least for now in CN as the technology level isn't there. Not too sure on the warp/teleport anchor either.

[The Red Man]

I think Mala's SS rules are fine, and don't need changing.

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Also, in keeping with Dave's desire to see blood in the water, I think Tommy is a gigantic douchebag for trying to make the discussion about improved Sanctum rules rather than about Q6.

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Also he smells.

,,

One of these statements is true.

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One of these statements is also true.

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One of these statements might be true.

,, ,,

Additionally, I wasn't tomfooling. I've not even begun to get it out of my system. And if you're seeking low-hanging fruit, go fondle your own.

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I like the Sanctum rules written up by Mala. I see no issue with them in a game that permits 25xp per month and for people to pretty much write their own power fantasies, however highbrow or lowbrow they want them to be. So the hell what if I want Telluris to have a fortress of solitude that can allow people to teleport to it or open warps rather than buy the Increased Attribute body mod 9 times and jack them all up to 10. Are you seriously telling me that Telluris, or Coyote, couldn't make a teleporter? Or place advanced sensors around the world? Or, indeed, create an Espresso Bomb?

,,

Sheesh, give me a bloody break.

[Sailor OOC]

I think I should just consider this matter closed. I'm recusing myself from this thread and any further conversation that goes on is between you guys.

I was honestly trying to help the situation here.