Pretty Soldier Sailor Luna: Online OWoD interest scout

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 10:31 am

Ok, those look good.

So, it occurred to me that I forgot to hand out XP at the end of the session. For those not familiar with WoD Exp, here's the break down:
At the end of each session, each player gets a variable amount of XP:
1 automatic, for showing up
1 for Learning Curve, you tell the ST something you or your character learned, these are easy if you're paying attention
(1 for Concept, if you stayed in character so far as your concept goes. Only werewolf mentions this, and I'm not even sure everyone actually picked concepts, but tell me if you did, because I'm more than ok with handing out the points)
1 (or more) for Roleplaying, for those who roleplayed particularly well. This tends to get divisive, so if I award it at all, I'll do it by pm.
1 for Heroism, not just winning a fight, but actually doing something heroic. Usually doing something personally risky for the good of the group. I'll take nominations and pm the person if someone gets it.

So go ahead and each take 1 xp, then post Learning Curve, and your specific Concept, and what you feel fulfilled your concept.

Also, it's been a while since I looked this kind of thing up, but do Mages, Demons or Vampires have hard coded social advancement like Werewolf renown? I kinda need to know about that, and it's easier to ask the players of the splats than pour through the books... I don't think they do, though.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 11:00 am

Demons don't have the renown thing going, no. Thank fuck.

Learning Curve: where do we start?
1. The school is full of supernaturals. More than could be brushed off as a coincidence.
2. The cheerleaders are bitches, but it's not just that they're bitches/have daddy issues, they're being possessed.

My concept is basically "A demon/angel who is more interested in being the human she's possessing, and is a total inspiring happy-friendship++ Sailor Senshi. She's the one who goes and makes friends and fixes problems and cheers her friends up! Bubbly, to the point of acting air-headed."

Not sure how well I played to that: I basically informed Amy that we would be friends (and intend on introducing her to people, taking her places etc.) and used friendship at the cheerleaders, but *shrug*

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:02 pm

Learning: Someone with some serious supernatural mojo is probably after me, since a dude with bone spurs tried to murderate me, and he did kinda seem out of it. I learnt what the local werewolves are like, and I learnt to watch out for the principle.

Concept started off as super-ridiculous overblown hippie, but in actual play he's a lot less extreme than that. I guess it's now more "cares about the environment and the community, doesn't want to be like his parents, wants to protect those he cares about while avoiding violence and remaining in touch with nature."

I think I played to that fairly well- his reaction to Mr. Bony was to try and talk him down and sort the issue out through dialogue, and when that didn't work he went to the local werewolf community and tried to get help and bring them into the fold. There haven't been that many opportunities for his character to come to the forefront, so I guess we'll wait and see.

So, as far as I can see, WoD does the same thing as shadowrun, where you build your character with points that don't scale based on characteristic rating and you improve your character with points that do, which can lead to weird shenanigans and asymmetries. Is that a problem in WoD like it is in Shadowrun?

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:51 pm

Learning Curve: There is some sort of super extradimensional entropic spirit thingy on campus. This is probably VERY BAD. Oh, and there are like three Technomancers, two of whom are rad and one who probably wants to hax my brain and take all my delicious secrets.

Concept: socially awkward life hacker nerd. Amy got her one friend so far because her computer told her the friend was a demon person, they both signed up for the Display Club, and she basically went off on tangents about magical girl anime related to actual magic. Like to think I got this one down.

Re: Social Advancement, the only sort of thing that isn't purely "my magic is stronger than yours!" like that might be Order of Hermes, but even that is based heavily on Sphere mastery. Hell, Virtual Adepts are specifically anarchistic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 9:29 pm

Ok, I was fairly certain that only the changing breeds have "social xp" but wanted to make sure.

I find your learning curves amusing, but sure you each get learning curve. I give each of you Concept, but try and get concepts down to short one or two word expressions (Magical Girl, Hippy Teacher, Technomagical Girl) especially since shorter concepts are easier to get points for.

As far as advancement goes, Korgan, it can be. While talking to a friend, I built a hypothetical beginning mage that could turn people to stone. It's entirely possible to offload all of one's freebie points in bonus "advantages" (the catch all for gifts/lore/spheres/disciplines), but about the only way that werewolves don't rock everyone (except mages) hardcore, is that they can only choose beginning gifts at character creation, where as there's nothing stopping a beginning vampire from having all five dots of a discipline.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 12:35 am

Yeah, I massed all my Lore into Longing for a reason: because it's cheaper to do that then buy a couple of dots in other ones rather than to start out "balanced" and then specialise.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 1:14 am

Damn. Well, next time I play WoD I'll be warned. The werewolf book suggests that we roleplay character advancement- do you want us to do that in the IC chat thread or do you plan to just handwave it?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 1:16 am

Concept: Happy Magical Girl

Also, I'd like to spend my XP on getting Awareness 1. Saving up comes later, but this would be quite handy to have for noticing what's going on.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 4:39 am

Koumei wrote:Yeah, I massed all my Lore into Longing for a reason: because it's cheaper to do that then buy a couple of dots in other ones rather than to start out "balanced" and then specialise.

Yeah, the min-maxer in me is still feeling a slight twinge of buyer's remorse for not going all-in on Faith at chargen, since it's six freebie points per dot vs. current Rating times seven.

Anyway, on to advancement stuff.

Concept: Demon's duality theme makes coming up with a punchy concept name tricky, but since he's a fallen angel who took Martyr/Perfectionist as his nature/demeanor combo let's go with Knight in Sour Armor. By pursuing Isaac's interest in athletics and indulging in Baradiel's habit of unthinkingly jumping to someone's aid I think I did OK by him even if it wasn't flashy.

Learning curve: I intend to play Baradiel as pretty ignorant of the current state of the WoD due to his escape being very recent, so having his spooky sense tripped off a few times and being wounded by another supernatural so soon is a pretty rude awakening. He's certainly alarmed that some of the witnesses shrugged off his Revelation so easily and thus are likely supernaturals themselves. After all, the two most obvious threats to his person is sorcery and being absorbed by another demon Highlander style. So being sent to ghoul school was definitely not in his gameplan. From here out he'll be less willing to just follow Isaac's whims while at school.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 4:41 am

The renown we'll do at intervals, usually at moots and such. I'll have to look back over what you said to Smoke Signals, but i might give you some temp.

Sounds good Koumei.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:30 am

Korgan- take 1 temporary Wisdom, but lose 1 temp Glory, assuming you have any.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 6:10 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Korgan- take 1 temporary Wisdom, but lose 1 temp Glory, assuming you have any.

Nope, no glory.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 6:28 am

K, didn't think so. Lucky you, I guess. (Werewolves, not big on the talking to dangerous monsters.)

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:29 pm

So, inventing stuff. This is probably going to be a big thing for me since I'm basically the team's Q Division outside Mr. Teacher stuffing spirits in things.

In general , creating a new design takes super long (weeks to years per roll) and is super hard (difficulty 8 for moderate improvements on existing Sleepertech, 9 for significant improvements, 10 for revolutionary designs, though the latter still have to be consensual)... without magic. I'm obviously going to use sensory magic as much as possible for that, and take advantage of Ability Aptitude (Science) - with enough juice that might reduce difficulties by up to 5 (no idea how it'll affect timeframes).

And then I'll have to build the things.

The advantage of going through all that, of course, is that once the design is finished and the prototype built, it's a nonmagical configuration of atoms that anybody could build with enough mundane technical knowledge and time. So taking it to a place where it would be vulgar just bricks it for awhile instead of exploding my face. Or making it evaporate.

So... given that in RL wearable neural interface devices exist, but are... spotty, I'm estimating that if I do well enough on the tech-intuition magic, it'll be difficulty 9-2-3=4, 10ish successes needed? Using Mind, Life, and Correspondence (don't see what Prime would do to help) as the spheres. Don't know how often I can make the rolls.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 9:21 pm

Give me book and page number and I'll read up. I'll also read up on Demon Relics, because, apparently, "Making Cool Shit (TM)" is like the one area where mages get hosed by everyone else, so I may work out a house ruled "no it doesn't take you five years to design magitech" thing.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:44 pm

Mage Revised p. 233 (Inventing) and 229 (Building). Although that's actually the rules for inventing nonmagical tech, with magic used to make it easier.

Making actual magitech involves using Prime to freeze other Sphere effects and the like, discounting permanent Pattern changes like "I turn my business suit into a spidersilk-titanium weave". Forged By Dragon's Fire is the most comprehensive for that, and also Mage fetishes.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:40 am

Demon crafting is a mixed bag. You need Lore of the Forge to do it and using Enchant to make items that to do outright magical stuff is a bit of a pain since it's most versatile when you've got a broad base of Lores to bullshit the MC with and things cost a permanent Willpower point in any case. Still, the limits on what things can do are vague in the grandest White Wolf tradition so potentially you can get an awful lot out of 3 dots of Lore of the Forge and a few rounds of Mother-May-I.

And while it's seemingly more concrete, the Enhance Item lore often isn't much less fiddly in practice. For the price of a single dot of Forge lore and a good Perception+Craft pool you can tweak items so that you face lowered difficulties when "operating" your Enhanced swiss army knife/computer/car/dildo/mass spectrometer/whatever for the length of a scene or permanently if you spend a point of temporary willpower. That can be pretty gnarly if the MC is a pushover and lets people fish for a bunch of successes on all their gear.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 2:28 am

Ok, so apparently when I searched for schools in Portland, the school that popped up and got replaced (the Jesuit High School in the area doesn't exist in my WoD), the school was actually in Beaverton, not Portland.

Fortunately, it's like a 15-20 minute drive from my old stomping grounds in Portland, so you guys can all actually live in Portland, and it just takes you maybe half to a full hour at most to get to school in the morning depending on traffic.

So... yeah, if people want to just poke around the Google Map of Portland and call out areas that their characters go and places they visit, that's cool with me, I'll be familiar with the ones around NW Couch.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 5:41 am

A few minutes of frantic googling of "Couch suburb portland) gave me absolutely nothing. Is Couch in Beaverton, or what? I seriously know nothing about Portland, but Tom would probably try and live somewhere around Forest Park, maybe in what Google tells me are the Sylvan Heights. What are the houses like around there?

Also, according to Google, Mt Hood National Forest is only about an hour and a half away, and looks gorgeous as fuck, so he'd probably be doing a lot of hiking around there.

edit: Even though teachers in the States get paid fuck-all, he's probably making decent money, since this seems to be a fairly high-class private school. In that case, he'd probably do his shopping at Whole Foods.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 6:14 am

I'll say Amelia's place is in Beaverton then, a couple blocks from the school. Close enough to hoof it, not close enough that it's visible from campus.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 8:42 am

NW Couch is a street in Portland's pearl district. Here's a map

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 8:57 pm

Concept: Vengeful anti-hero with brooding loser secret identity

That's as far as I can condense it. Problem with Michael/LK is that he's got two very distinct personalities.

Learning Curve: Learned how to delete text messages. I kind of like how Michael thinks he's super badass but is actually more in the dark than everyone else in the party, but it's certainly not getting me a whole lot of XP. Hopefully that'll change next session when he starts investigating stuff and meets Amelia.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:12 pm

Cham, I'll give you the learning curve. Try to play up the vengeful anti-hero part more.

Also, the way I'd express that concept is "Spawn; Secret Identity Clark Kent." But that's just me (though fortunately I'm the ST so if decide to use that, I know what you mean, which can be a common problem in WoD)

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 11:18 pm

Yeah, I'm going to try and put him in the mask ASAP next time important things start happening, so that he can actually be awesome at things instead of just Clark Kenting in the general direction of the action.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 11:21 pm

You could always just carry the LK get up around with you. Hell, you're a vamp, you should have grabbed some obfuscate so you can change in plain view. Though celerity+bathroom stall would be good too.