After Sundown tweaks/house rules

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:26 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:So if Pain Drops (for example) let you breathe water...

If that's the shape of it, may I suggest Rising Mist (which they already have; or any basic Chasing the Storm)?

Veil of Morpheus could provide pseudo-immortality involving sleeping for increasingly large amounts of time. This works thematically for every Astral immortal, including golems.

It really is a shame that nezumi should not be inherently immortal, because Descent of Entropy is the perfect fit otherwise. Perhaps Light of Ennui could prevent people from aging while illuminated.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Sat Aug 31, 2013 7:11 pm

Suffocation, Starvation, Fatigue, and Poison are real things in the game that someone might conceivably want to spend real character resources to become immune to.

Mortality ... just isn't. Even a magical artefact that turned you young/old isn't going to subtract/add years from your life, they're essentially protean effects that transform people into specific stages in life. That way Leviathan don't gain potency every time they look into a mirror that ages you 100 years, they either become weak and wizened, or it just fails.

People should actually have to do horrific things to become immortal. Elder necromancers use Resurrection to obliterate someone else’s soul and take over a new body. Leviathans become cthonic horrors. Fallen obliterate their fundamental selves. Nobody's going to do that if you can just just give yourself crackberry blood or intern at the dream messenger's office for a year and whoops! I'm immortal!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 31, 2013 7:15 pm

Sure. Water Breathing could come with Rising Mists. Actually, if Chasing the Storm just in general lets you get by under water, then it would take care of the Android's resistance to drowning as well.

The world would still need an "isn't biological" trait to cover all the numerous resistances of Golems, Ghosts, and Zombies, but that could jolly well be a standalone power. It just wouldn't need to be nearly as frequent as Patience is in first edition if Immortality and other standalone immunities were handed out with sorceries.

-Username17

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:50 pm

Honestly, I feel that wondering over Patience of the Mountain is too powerful; when it's one of the weakest powers in the game, feels like excessive navel-gazing which won't simplify the mechanics for determining how the narrative plays out.

Nor is it covering aspects of the engine that are currently very vague, or not covered at all.

Here are some more pressing concerns that I've got because I have players who are writing down equipment on their character sheet; and I want to have some sort of Rubric for what the point of having them in the first place is. I also have a player who has spent multiple of their Resources getting Items of Destiny which are "Sorcerous Libraries":

Non-Weapon Gear: Supplies & Equipment

Right now, I'm using them as giving their Rating in hits if the user botches a check (i.e. they got no hits).

Supplies can be 'used' this way a number of time up to their Rating, before they need to be replaced.

[This may need to be changed so that you can instead take the hits your Gear would give you; which counts as a 'use' of Supplies]

A Character can have both Supplies and Equipment that applies to a specific Active Skill.

[Which could mean that a Character could get 6 hits with state of the art gear and supplies; but could only do so 3 times before needing to restock their Supplies. I'm unsure on this b/c it breaks the 5 Hit threshold being the peak of Mortal accomplishment]

A character can only afford Supplies or Equipment whose Rating is equal to their Finances; and only one S/E per set of Finances that they have.

This makes "having a bunch of wealth" a lot less powerful, and potentially game breaking, that it was in WoD as it doesn't matter if you have Rating 6 Finances (Global Corp.), you're only going to be able to afford a single Rating 6 Supplies or Equipment on your character.

Right now, any Supplies or Equipment can only be used for one Active Skill; however, I may expand it so that a piece of Equipment can apply to a number of skills equal to its Rating; as more valuable things, can often apply to a wider array of applications (usually).

Non-Mundane Equipment & Supplies: Components & Foci

[Note: This is much more theoretical; I don't even have tests to see how "casting spells you don't 'know'" works done at all]

Components & Foci are used by Sorcerers who have access to Sorceries; but can't cast them innately. Components are required for Basic Sorceries; and count as Supplies. Foci are required for Advanced Sorceries, and count as Equipment.

The Rating of a Component or Focus determines how many Paths of Sorcery it can apply to.

I'm also leaning towards C&F being limited to single types of Sorceries; Infernal, Astral, and Orphic.

Destiny Items: Spell Books; and Magic Libraries

A Rating 3 Magic Library should give how much of the Sorceries?

Could a book from a Library be carried around by a person to perform D&D wizard-like rituals/spellcasting (old school OD&D/2e where spells take a round or more to cast)?

Should this type of magic require Components, Foci, and Relics?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:53 pm

While we're talking about water breathing, let's take a moment to note that 1st edition doesn't have rules for swimming, shooting guns underwater, making eye contact in murky water, whether sorceries have verbal components or not, or what happens when you conjure lightning, fire, or etradimensional portals underwater. And that's terrible.

If we created real underwater rules, we might end up needing several new powers or even an entire discipline for underwater stuff, at which point it's trivial to staple water breathing on somewhere.

In other news, Dream Vision can't give agelessness because it's a signature power for witch spawns, psychic children, and various all-too-mortal types who really need to age. Light of Ennui and Gift of Health are fine. Agelessness also works as an Advantage if we load everything else into an Unliving Fortitude power.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 2:05 am

If Dream Vision needs to not make extras immortal, make it only do that if you have Edge.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:23 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:If Dream Vision needs to not make extras immortal, make it only do that if you have Edge.

Or have it take 7 power points to enter 'hibernation', which gives the character something like twice the time spent hibernating as additional life span.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:28 am

Orion,

A lot of what you're talking about is handled in the basic rules.

Swimming is an Athletics check.

Shooting guns underwater? Reduce ranges by one category; or to Adjacent if fired from above water, into water (avg. penetration into water is about 10 cm; remember, water > cement in density).

Making Perception checks underwater? Usually going to take at least one more hit than normal. The rules for storms and fog might also work if trying to determine murkiness of water (not all water is clear; and in some of the NGS articles that I've read about underwater digs, murkiness was so bad, that people have seriously built steel coffer dams in the middle of american inlets to make the area remotely visible).

For the most part; Sorceries are described as being Covert, or Overt.

Adding incantations is something that I'd like to use in a "unknown" or "memorized" spellcasting mechanic (a sorcerer making an Social check for example).

However, as it stands, there is no need for a Sorceror to do more than raise their arms like Palpatine when calling lighting.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:58 am

Maybe it doesn't matter that Witch Spawn become Ageless. They're also spawn, and as spawn will go increasingly frequently mad over time until they're always berserk. Then they're just a raging danger that you don't go near unless you specifically know that you're out to kill it, kinda like a troll or something.

Other Second Edition concerns while we're on the subject:

Injury and/or Wound Festering needs to be re-worked. The intent is that an untreated wound can cause you to die if you leave it alone long enough, even though you survived the initial attack. The actual result is that unless you took a very large number of boxes of damage (such as 6 of each kind of mark, or 7 Lethal and Normal marks) and then you also fail all of your Healing Tests then that simply will not ever happen. Players are rolling lots of extra dice to prevent damage buildup that in the end can't possibly actually kill them, it just makes the "and then you heal until you're better" montage take arbitrarily a few extra days sometimes (assuming they don't pick up Revive The Flesh). So, we need a system where a wound can get infected and kill you even if you took a very light amount of damage from an injury. The severity of the injury will probably affect how easily it becomes infected though, a broken leg will kill you more often than a cut on the finger.
I'd personally like to see more elemental attacks. I think they're cool. There's a fireblast power, and one that shoots lightning. We can probably at least add some Ice powers and get the Elemental Trio going. I mean of course you can reflavor an existing power to just be Ice themed instead of Fire themed, but there's probably space for some effects unique and interesting to "cold magic" and Mictlan.
It's not "realistic", but maybe Electricity should be changed so that it can have partial protection against it like with Fire damage, and then special situations can provide the "Electric Immunity" if they really should be giving it. It seems very "movielike" to have electric protection gear like rubber gloves or something that gives protection when you try to shut off the big switch or fight the evil device or whatever, but doesn't grant outright immunity.
Equipment for sure needs a little more attention, even if it's just moving all the Equipment to it's own chapter and listing a few more weapons and armor along with some "common" other equipment. If it's possible to do, some sort of vague economy system might be appropriate, or just a discussion and examples of what people in different areas would trade in similar to the "The World at Night" chapter talking about cultures, factions, and sights of different places.
Not that we would ever glorify or support drugs, but having some more common street drugs on the Poisons chart would be nice. I'm sure Frank knows that all sorts of drugs will have the same effects at different ratings because they're all made from one another or something, but I don't. The list should probably at least include PCP, Heroin, and Marijuana, to start. Also maybe some weird otherworldly drugs? Like the Black Centipedes they kept grinding up and injecting in Naked Lunch.
As mentioned, more "survivalist" rules would be amazing. The DOT rules sorta cover starving and suffocation/drowning, but not entirely the best. Perhaps it could even be the paragraph on DOTs, and then having different paragraphs after that talking about specific DOTs that will come up often and talking about them a bit; instead of having just the chart list examples.
Extra Otherworldly info if it can be put together. It was always wanted but pushed towards "expansion books" at the time. Instead of needing an entire book on each hellplane, it could be just one chapter with three sections. Example random encounters, random locations, resources you can find and use, people and things you might intentionally seek out, rules on dangers unique to each plane, etc.
When my players were selecting Resources, they had a harder time with the idea than with the rest of the character creation stuff. Perhaps instead of just 2 examples per rating in each Resources category, expand it out to 5 or 10 examples at each rating level. Also, more magic item examples would never be out of place.
The "Trail of Tears" discipline should probably get a new name.

Judging__Eagle, some of the stuff is "obvious", but the point of a Revised or 2nd edition is to look at how the rules were used in 1e, see what seemed to be missing based on what players/GMs expected to be there and didn't find, and then expand into those areas when possible to provide better coverage in the future. If it's so simple to figure out underwater stuff, we can write a paragraph to that effect and put it in. I suspect there may be more to it though.

Remember that since this is an electronic product we don't have any reason to cut content for space and pagecount. We only need to cut content if it's badly written or badly designed.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 7:20 am

Lokathor wrote:[*]I'd personally like to see more elemental attacks. I think they're cool. There's a fireblast power, and one that shoots lightning. We can probably at least add some Ice powers and get the Elemental Trio going. I mean of course you can reflavor an existing power to just be Ice themed instead of Fire themed, but there's probably space for some effects unique and interesting to "cold magic" and Mictlan.

And then you could come up with some kind of evocative name for the Orphic cold discipline. "Symphony of Silence" has a certain ring to it.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 7:25 am

Absolutely; I'm all for patching up holes, filling in gaps, and redesigning elements.

I've also got this idea in my head that that covering street children might be something that Fallen/Lost could be related to.

A lot of this content covers horror elements, and Street Urchins is certainly a part of that; with Lose spawn being literally labelled "lost & damned" in the 1e rulebook.

Mileage, and tolerance for real horror, may vary; but I feel that tying elements that are sort of loose to more solid notions can anchor the ideas and themes of the different types of creatures.

More example resources would also be helpful. Often my players simply copy out what's in the rulebook; even I do as well to save time.

As for "cold" attacks; there's seriously a "shards of cold glass" attack that exists. I'm assuming you want something also freezes targets.

One major change that I would like is to the overall layout of the book, and the arrangement of the chapters.

Right now, the layout of the book is one the the ongoing largest, and most time-consuming parts of character creation. Every time that I've had a player make a new character; the layout of the chapters constantly works to make it take more time.

I'm not sure how exactly the ideal layout would be. However having character creation at the very beginning; equipment/resources, character advancement and mechanics in the middle, with and setting stuff at the end might be a better direction.

Ideally, the chapters should have the elements of character creation show up in the book in the same order that they appear on the character sheet. That's not really feasible with some of the chapters being the way that they are; but it's what has been mentioned by about a dozen or more players at this point. Occurring at both my on campus games, and my hometown games.

It's something that I should have mentioned a couple of years ago really, because it's something that was brought up more than once, by more than one player; in more than one game that I've run.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:10 am

It would be very handy for 2e to have a quick reference page or two, where one gets the character creation rules, basic system and all the various charts.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:07 pm

Lokathor wrote: Other Second Edition concerns while we're on the subject:

The "Trail of Tears" discipline should probably get a new name.

The Depths of Despair

Lokathor wrote: Remember that since this is an electronic product we don't have any reason to cut content for space and pagecount. We only need to cut content if it's badly written or badly designed.

True, to a certain extent. But if something is too huge that can be problematic. Less can be more, even online.

I had a notion for a more modern Sorcery niche that I felt twas needed. Here's an outline.

Spark of Knowledge (infernal sorcery)
Electronics +2/4/6 (ranges advance with level of discipline from S to W to E)

• Electrognosis (Basic) Detect powered devices at range
• Static (Basic) Put out electromagnetic interference (cause electrical malfunctions) at range

• Electrokinesis (Advanced) Use Operations on electrical device by touch
• Magnetic Hand(Advanced) Can direct magnetic fields to either attract or repel metals at range. Essentially Telekinesis for ferrous metals.

• Ghost in the Machine (Elder) Use Operations to control devices at range
• Ride the Lightning (Elder) Travel along power lines, or during a lightning storm accompanied by lightning strikes.

And something to add to Necromancy because wrestling and throwing down against ghosts is cool:

A Necromancer can physically touch Orphic users of the Empty Body devotion. This means they can touch ghosts and ghosts can touch them back. Since Wisps have a strength of 1, however, even a Necromancer of middling strength has no trouble man-handling spirits.

Incidentally, Compel Spirits should really be named "Banish Spirits" since that's what it does. The name Compel Spirits implies to me that Necromancers actually get to command Ghosts which ain't the case(sadface). Heck, Necros never get to command ghosts except poltergeists only briefly with Nightcry.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 2:10 pm

On the organizational side, leading with chargen rules is not going to happen. There is a reason that the chargen rules of nVampire are on page 89. It's the same reason that chargen rules in SR4 are on page 72. While the chargen rules are something that is going to be accessed repeatedly when the book is used as a reference, it's all meaningless gibberish to someone reading the book for the first time. A basic understanding of what's going on and what the numbers mean has to be had before any of the chargen rules mean anything to the reader.

What can be done is is putting a chargen summary at the end of the book, where people can find it easily. Because the end is about as good as the beginning if you're using the book as a reference, and that way you aren't bombarding a new reader with an incoherent rant.

What definitely won't be copied from White Wolf though, is the use of setting fiction before the table of contents. That's just fucked up.

-Username17

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 4:19 pm

It doesn't have to be top of Chapter 1, but it could be placed in the book a little sooner and more prominently. They may be a little dumb for wanting it, but lots of players just want to make a character right away and then learn about setting and learn more deeply about options and stuff later, as they're playing along in the game. Just reading the text is not very engaging to them, and learning about it first from talking with friends is often more interesting.

To accomplish this, I've always found that the DnD PHB 3e/3.5 is remarkably good at getting people into a new character quickly. Each chapter is a character creation decision thing, you browse the listings a bit, make your pick, and then go to the next chapter. By the end of "Chapter 7: Equipment", you're done. You could keep reading from there, or you could skip it for now and just play along with the others. This builds up their initial enthusiasm towards the concept of the game, which is then spent later on to keep the player from getting bored while reading 100 pages of rules stuff.

Assuming that the fully DnD organizational approach isn't taken, the structure could still be something a little more like:
[*]Chapter 1 should give the "What is this game?" and "What is a roleplaying game?" speech and stuff. It should also explain the basic mechanic of rolling dice right here, as well as going over the stats and just listing out very briefly the kinds of playable and non-playable creatures. Just to get people started on the idea of monsters.
[*]Chapter 2 can be an entire chapter devoted to the idea of character creation and talking about playing the game for newer people that aren't used to roleplaying, or that aren't used to roleplaying in a horror themed or modern themed game. So the first half of this chapter is the actual character creation sections, then the "Points of View" essays can go in too. If someone is reading through the book cover to cover, this gets them into the right mindset of how to utilize all the rest of the info that follows. So that they will hopefully read about the places and societies from a perspective of "how can i use these ideas to tell interesting stories?", not just "oh here's a bunch of shit I have to read".
[*]From there you have Chapter 3: Places. Chapter 4: Societies. Chap 5: Skills, etc. like the 1st edition book has.

Additional thoughts:
[*]We have a "Veil" discipline and a "Veil of Morpheus" discipline. Maybe another place to make a name change to one of those. I'm sure there's other magical words for "hide things".
[*]Authority works kinda like a sorcery but isn't. Not sure if this can be solved since it's supposed to be generic and just have a type based on your own type.
[*]As I recall, officially the term "discipline" isn't used in the book. There's "powers" (little p) which are each grouped into the "Powers" (big P). That needs to be fixed up.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 4:38 pm

I can't disagree strongly enough. I've done production and layout work on shit before, and this has all the earmarks of the kind of change that reads like a great idea once you already have familiarity with the topic but ends up making the uninitiated hate your document with the fiery heat of a thousand suns. You can't please everybody, and in this case I think deference needs to be shown to the new reader. It's really the same logic that leads to indexes being in the back.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:21 pm

Whipstitch wrote:I can't disagree strongly enough. I've done production and layout work on shit before, and this has all the earmarks of the kind of change that reads like a great idea once you already have familiarity with the topic but ends up making the uninitiated hate your document with the fiery heat of a thousand suns. You can't please everybody, and in this case I think deference needs to be shown to the new reader. It's really the same logic that leads to indexes being in the back.

Basically this. 3e D&D gets away with having the PHB be 100% reference book because there are two other core books to tell you what the fuck is actually going on. They can afford to have character stats begin on page 8 of that book because there is a 320 page hardcover book that comes with it that defines terms and setting. A standalone RPG can't do that. Also, D&D is the biggest gorilla, which means that it can rely on word of mouth transmission of "what the fuck is happening" in a way that a minor RPG like AS or even Shadowrun cannot.

Lokathor wrote:As I recall, officially the term "discipline" isn't used in the book. There's "powers" (little p) which are each grouped into the "Powers" (big P). That needs to be fixed up.

Yeah, also power points. The word "power" is over used and we need to go to the Thesaurus. For starters, would people rather that power points stayed being called "power points" while the powers you used them with got renamed "talents", "boons", "crafts", or something? Or would people rather that you had powers and activated them with points of "energy", "cruor", "force", or whatever?

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:28 pm

I like 'Talents,' but I think people are going to call the powers 'powers' no matter what the official term is, so you should rename power points instead.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:34 pm

As an aside, I'd prefer to see more work on the world sourcebooks than a 2nd edition. But, as this is the current topic...

FrankTrollman wrote:
Lokathor wrote:As I recall, officially the term "discipline" isn't used in the book. There's "powers" (little p) which are each grouped into the "Powers" (big P). That needs to be fixed up.
Yeah, also power points. The word "power" is over used and we need to go to the Thesaurus. For starters, would people rather that power points stayed being called "power points" while the powers you used them with got renamed "talents", "boons", "crafts", or something? Or would people rather that you had powers and activated them with points of "energy", "cruor", "force", or whatever?

I myself prefer using "power points" way more than "energy/force/whatever," though "mana" has familiarity, I think it's got too much of a D&D-milieu around it. My vote is for the direction of talents/crafts/etc.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:17 pm

Whipstitch, could you be more specific on that subject? JE, myself, and Frank all seem to be saying that the organization can be improved, we're just not all thinking that it could be improved in the same way.

JE wants to make character sheets match chapter order so that you can fill in the page as you flip through chapters. This serves new players because they can get a printed off character sheet from the GM and go down the sheet filling in sections as they go through the chapters in the book. I hadn't even thought about that before because I always just use blank notebook paper and write it all in, "oldschool" style. So either we can reorder the chapters or rearrange the character sheet print-off so that they match more closely.

Frank wants to put setting up top before character creation so that players know what they're getting into before they create characters. This serves new players because it gives them an idea of what sort of characters are and aren't appropriate to the game at hand.

I'm not entirely sure how most people actually go about the process of creating characters though. From what I've personally seen, if someone is new to the game, they usually create a character with the other players around them, at least one of which knows how to play the game already and can answer questions. In that context, players usually pick up a book or open a PDF and then just start leafing through pages until they see the "This Is How You Start Playing Right Now" rules section. Of all the players I've gamed with, probably less than 25% have actually read the "welcome to the shadows" timeline and setting outline at the start of Shadowrun before starting in on the character creation process. Same goes to the explanation of The Scourge in the Earthdawn books, and all the weird bullshit at the start of any of the nWoD books. Instead, they rely entirely on the GM to explain major plot details like that to them the same way they expect the GM to tell them what time of day it is and where they're all standing when they start the game.

Now this might be because in DnD (most people's first RPG) there actually isn't a setting at all expect what the DM makes up, so players are used to just making a guy and then waiting to be told what's going on. It might be because in a board game or other "game" non-RPG players are used to playing, the players sit down and have someone that knows how to play show them how to play, so they just wanna "make a guy" and get playing. Either of those kinds of players probably just expect the rule book to be a reference manual used later on for looking up how to do a thing you forgot, or to resolve arguments about a rule.

Now personally I think that spending Chapter 1 on all the introduction stuff and the presenting the rest of the stuff in character creation order, with setting and danger and magic after that, might be the best ordering of things. The intro chapter would have the outlines on stuff you'd need to know to make sane choices, but wouldn't give it all at once. Basically, the "After Sundown" and parts of "Terrible Places" should be stuffed together into an "Introduction" chapter. Chapter 2 can actually be called "Character Creation" or just have that put 'higher' in the chapter's ordering of sections, and then go from there.

FrankTrollman wrote:
Lokathor wrote:As I recall, officially the term "discipline" isn't used in the book. There's "powers" (little p) which are each grouped into the "Powers" (big P). That needs to be fixed up.
Yeah, also power points. The word "power" is over used and we need to go to the Thesaurus. For starters, would people rather that power points stayed being called "power points" while the powers you used them with got renamed "talents", "boons", "crafts", or something? Or would people rather that you had powers and activated them with points of "energy", "cruor", "force", or whatever?

Activating "powers" with "power points" is something I'd strongly suggest sticking to. When the sheet or the character creation section says that you have powers and that you also have power points it becomes very intuitive that you'll probably be spending these power points in a way that's related to those powers you have. It makes Power Points more immediately obvious than Edge and Potency for sure.

If Potency could get a stronger explanation of what it is, or if it could be given a reason to be used directly more often, that'd be cool.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:28 pm

I, personally, tend to go through chargen in the order of class/role, race, statistical assignations, equipment.

Then I tend to go through the whole thing two or three times more to fill in all the details and make sure that, in D&D terms, my initiative reflects my Dex bonus

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 7:53 pm

I think a 3-5 page summary reference would be fantastic. Especially since it's a .pdf and you can just print out those 5 pages for every player.

Page 1: character creation and advancement
Page 2: Skills & Master Passions
Page 3: Combat, healing, environmental effects
Page 4&5: Magic

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:15 pm

Maxus wrote:I, personally, tend to go through chargen in the order of class/role, race, statistical assignations, equipment.

Then I tend to go through the whole thing two or three times more to fill in all the details and make sure that, in D&D terms, my initiative reflects my Dex bonus

That is true. While technically you're supposed to assign ability scores, assign race, assign class, assign skills, assign feats, and select equipment and spells - that is not the actual order you need to do things if you want to not suck ass. In D&D, you actually select your class, then you assign stats and select race in order to work with the class you've chosen. Unless you're doing a "roll stats in order" thing (and frankly even then), the 3e PHB is in the "wrong" order. And indeed, the players don't normally reference the stat assignment rules or tables, so the "meat" that they care about begins effectively on about page 30.

Practically speaking, you'd want to decide your splat, decide what powers to invest in, and then fill in attributes and skills afterward. But you can't present things in that order because everyone in the setting has attributes and skills, but only the player characters and a few important NPCs have a splat and access to sorcery.

For origin stories, it's more complicated still, where they presumably design a human character with skills and attributes that are going to be useful if and when they turn into a werewolf later on.

So I can't really see doing a "design a character" order for the book. Because the order isn't going to be constant. I can see doing a short version of chargen with some important tables and shit at the back of the book for people to use as a reference. That seems like it could be useful.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:42 pm

Lokathor wrote:Whipstitch, could you be more specific on that subject? JE, myself, and Frank all seem to be saying that the organization can be improved, we're just not all thinking that it could be improved in the same way.

Basically, I agree with Frank and think that character creation information isn't very useful when divorced of context provided by the other areas of the book, so it should pretty much never be first (although admittedly it can be put in fairly early). I mean, ffs, your example of how players learn the game sounds like you're saying that most members of your group hardly use the book, because they're getting their information heavily mediated by Mister Cavern either beforehand or by learning through play starting from a place of relative ignorance. Which, you know, is fine, whatever works, but I would suggest that the person whose needs the book needs to be designed around in that case would be the MC, because he's the poor dumb bastard who drew the short straw and will actually be expected to read the damn thing and parcel out its contents. Because really, you only have a couple real options when you roll out with character creation as Chapter 1. You can introduce the terms largely shorn of context, which is confusing, or you sprinkle in a whole shit ton of supplementary information throughout the entire chapter, which makes things both overwhelming for the first time reader and annoying for the people who have already read the damn thing but are trying to sift through your confusing layout in order to remember how many extra powers a Media Res character starts with. I really can't think of any advantages of putting it in front compared to putting a chargen quick reference sheet in the back right before the character sheet printout. It's only marginally more inconvenient for the players that way and won't inspire would-be MCs to fantasize about finding your layout guy and shitting down the back of their neck.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:12 pm

"Veil" could be changed to something like "Shroud" or "Masks". "Veil of Morpheus" could be changed to something like "Sea of Dreams" or "Depths of Slumber".

"power points" could become "soul", "chi", "force", "animus", "essence", "vita", "blood", or "energy".

"powers" are fine when collectively referred to as "supernatural powers". The collections of powers can be "disciplined paths" and "sorcerous paths".

For levels of power, I like "fundamental" ("basic" sounds too dismissive), "advanced", "elder", and "gestalt" (more descriptive than "devotion"). That is, "fundamental sorcery", "advanced discipline", "gestalt discipline", etc.

You can get around saying "powers" at all, unless you are talking about all of them at once.

As far as organization, reading the book for the first time are probably most interested in 'what kind of monster can I play' and 'what kinds of magic powers I can use'. There's no problem with having a short introduction to the world and the basic mechanics, followed by playable supernatural types and then disciplines and sorceries. The only real issue is that they'll see skills in the supernatural powers before they see the skills.