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Scion: The Long Night - Scion - Long Night] Player Expectations and Guidelines


Hyoseph

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Shamelessly Lifted from Dave's House Rules post from the Cycle of Six Rivers.

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What to Expect
The game will, hopefully, be more than just the typical Scion high-octane action where the PCs are walking away from explosions they’re too cool to look at. I’ll break it down:

Physical: Combat falls into this category so I’ll get that out of the way first. Scion only permits a single dice roll per action and that speeds up combat tremendously. Challenges will be geared to the characters themselves, which means if you made a combat monster with DVs in the untouchable range, I will create challenges to test the PCs ability. It will be impossible to get through this unscathed so, honestly, it’s useless to try.

To help speed things up, most ‘Extras’ will be felled with a single blow, so, providing you hit, you don’t need to worry about messing around with them. Those characters will be defined as such. Since this is a PBP venue we need to cut corners where we can to save on time and increase posting frequency. Keep in mind though that just because extras can be felled in a single blow, doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Physical challenges are a staple for any good legendary tale. Even the weakest of you will be called on to perform great feats of physical prowess from time to time. No one gets anywhere in life by sitting on their ass while the tough guys make them look good.

Social: Social themes are a necessity. Frankly if people are just running around kicking open doors and blowing stuff up the game will get tiring fast. Since a majority of social knacks take a majority of the difficulty out of social situations I’ll remind you that they usually cost Legend to activate and spending Legend causes Fatebindings to occur. You are encouraged to rely on your characters skill first and fall back on knacks as an alternative.

Also remember that most social knacks require you, the player, to be as convincing as your knack is allowing you to. Benefit of the Doubt for example, has no mechanic, but the character attempting to use it still needs to provide something tangible for the victim to believe, not just any old B.S. story will work. I’m afraid ‘I use X knack’, will not be acceptable and a convincing post must be provided to back up the knacks use.

Command, Empathy, and Presence are the most commonly use social abilities and they are usually resisted with some combination of [Attribute] + Integrity or Empathy dice roll. The abilities are used as follows:

Command: Characters use Command when they need to direct or lead other people, especially in crisis situations. This is more useful than it sounds, since chaos and trouble seem to follow Scions wherever they go.

Empathy: Characters use this Ability to tell if they are being lied to, to aid in a negotiation with a hostile party or to convince someone to open up to them. Great for pick up lines, breaking the ice or trying to get people on your side so you can juice them for intel.

Presence: Characters use Presence when they want to terrify their foes, motivate their allies or give hope and courage to the downtrodden. Also, this ability is great for posturing or social situations that require less tact than Empathy, like trying to bribe a bouncer at a nightclub. You don’t need to connect with they guy, you just have to show him you’re cool enough and deserve to be in that club… for a small fee.

Keep in mind; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. NPCs can, and will use their knacks and boons on you. This means that your PC might be the target of Benefit of the Doubt, or Overt Order and you are expected to have your act accordingly (sometimes you won’t even know it). This isn’t Aberrant where you get screwed and just spend a Willpower point to completely negate the effects (which always pissed me off).

Let’s clear up the Willpower argument, shall we? “Resist mind-influencing powers: The player of a sentient supernatural character (read: you) may spend a temporary Willpower point in order for her character to automatically resist the effects of supernatural or divine powers that attempt to influence her mind or emotions.” Keep in mind that this rule is contingent on your character knowing that he’s being influenced. If an NPC just beats you in a social roll to lie to you or get you to see things from their point of view doesn’t necessarily mean you can spend a willpower point to automatically win. People lie all the time and Willpower is not end all be all argument to make your PC immune to being gullible. People get tricked sometimes, get used to it.

Mental: I love to challenge players mentally at the gaming table. The problem is: this isn’t a gaming table. At the table I don’t let people get up and reference the Internet to search for the answer. This is a PBP forum and frankly any mental challenge is wasted on players because someone out there is going to just look up the answer. The down side is that I can’t award bonus incentives for a player using their brain on the fly but the upside is we can be sure everyone will be honest.

Mental tasks such as research and riddle solving or perusing through ancient lore will require rolls and to accumulate successes in order to solve them. There will be no blurting out the answer simply because you know it or looked it up. Certain Knacks will assist you with your research, like Know-It-All might provide bonus dice to a roll or what have you.

Stunts
Stunting is something that’s hard to do in a PBP setting from the mechanical standpoint, since one must read the post in order to award stunt dice. Awarding something after the post is complete complicates things by asking the poster to go back, edit his/her rolls then apply the new totals. Frankly, that’s a pain.

Stunting is equivalent to good posting and everything can be stunted. Research, combat, social interactions, all of these can be more than just “I do X, so I roll to make it happen.” So when players put forth the effort to make even the simplest actions legendary they may be awarded with bonus successes instead of dice to roll.

These successes I will add to their total roll so the player doesn’t have to go back and edit anything new. The catch is: since I’m awarding successes and not dice, that it will be a bit harder to garner those two and three dice stunts but not impossible. Our posts are more than just us being descriptive at the gaming table, we are writing stories so it’s required that we do more than simply explain what it is we’re doing.

Legend
Legend is cool. It allows Scions to do all sorts of really neat stuff, but it’s more than that: it’s a representation of your PCs deeds in the World. Character’s who aren’t doing much, simply put, don’t gain Legend. While not every character is required to be a combat monster he should be able to defend themselves but there is more to Scion than combat or standing toe to toe with monsters and mayhem. Being that guy who researches the weakness of a creature and then applies it while his brave band distracts the beast is an example of something Legendary. Without that PC, who never lifted a finger in combat, victory never would have been possible. Drowning an enemy whose skin is impervious, dowsing fire giants with you powers over water, convincing an entire cult you are their god in the flesh… these are examples of awesome things that make your Legend grow.

The higher your Legend the greater your Fateful Aura. The more powerful you are, the more trouble you bring to you which can be a problem for the lower Legend characters who are in your presence.

The long and the short of it is that your PC must accumulate a certain number of heroic deeds in order to get the okay to spend experience on raising your Legend score.

Fatebindings
Fatebindings are really simple. When you spend Legend, you run the risk Fatebinding mortals, titanspawn and even other Scions to you. Keep this in mind when spending your legend. The rules for Fatebindings will be in effect, even for PCs (meaning you can Fatebind one another).

There are a few rules changes for the degree of Fatebindings. The strength of a Fatebinding is anywhere from 1 (24 hours) to 6+ (permanent, even after death). When you accrue a Fatebinding then that binding remains in effect for a number of fictions equal to the strength of the binding. The Fated will always a character in those fictions and they must be Plot Driven fictions. You can’t just write a couple short fictions to remove yourself from an unwanted burden.

Permanent Fatebindings will be just that, permanent.

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House Rule - Untouchable Opponent

As tame as it starts, Untouchable Opponent has potential to make combat into a "Go Twinked or Go Home" type of affair. As such, rather than doing what it normally does (which is double the amount of defense that Epic Dexterity offers when you're dodging at a cost of 1 Legend per scene) it instead adds the Scion's Epic Dexterity Dots to their Dodge defense at the same cost.

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House Rule - Perceptive Marksmanship

Without modification, there is seriously no reason to use a gun or a bow in Scion when throwing weapons are available (note - you can throw a gun. And a bow.). To bring firearms more in line with their "competition", Scions add their Epic Perception dots as auto-successes to damage rolls for marksmanship attacks. This is equivalent to the Epic Strength auto-successes for melee or thrown weapons.

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  • 1 month later...
OOC vs IC - RPG Post Chat
It goes fairly without saying that there's a very strong group of personalities in this group. Every single one of us has what we think the best course of action for any other character. Whether that's the character that we're playing, the character someone else is playing, or even an NPC. When you add the ready forum for expressing those opinions, it means that at some point there will be disagreement.
I'm of the mind that when those disagreements happen, we're adults here. At the end of the day, the only person that any player should be concerned with telling them how what they just posted is wrong or against character is me. Everyone else's opinion is just that and they are entitled to it.
If IC action is taken, followed by OOC discussion of the IC action, and then that action is reversed, I WILL require an explanation for the change using IC rationale and mechanics to back up the change. If no such rationale can be given, the change is not permitted and the initial action will be the one that stands. I'm fine with someone coming up with a "more in character" action, that's what the edit button is for. Changing because an action led to OOC "heat" is not a good enough reason.
Game Participation
Put simply, I want every player in my game that I can get. I do everything in my power to ignore reputation and second / third hand stories and rumors. I give everyone as fair a shake as I can.
With that in mind, know that there are two things that I do not tolerate at all in any game I run.
1 - Intentional Cheating - Not knowing the rules of a game is one thing. This can be resolved through education and correction. Intentionally breaking them is an act defying the spirit of the game itself and I will not stand for it. I can and will kick any player who does this from whatever game of mine I catch them doing it in and from any games in the future I run until such a time as I feel that they are meriting a second chance.
2 - Rage Quit - I am a member of the Mind's Eye Society OOC, aka the Camarilla Fan Club. I deal with people "quitting the game forever" and then coming back in a few weeks regularly. In the case of games that I run, it's one and done. If I get a message whether in PM, OOC thread, or in chat that says you are quitting my game, it's over. That is a one way street. Future games, open, sure. That game being quit from, there is no coming back.
Just making sure everyone is aware. Thanks for your time.
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