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MARCH 22, 1997 |
Just so everyone knows, these are still the names, phone numbers and e-mail accounts for the Storytelling/Narrating team.
Please call with any concerns or questions. Try your clan Narrator before going to a Storyteller, please. All calls will be dealt with! Please give us a chance. It may take a day or two to answer questions and you don’t make things go any faster by calling with the same questions multiple times. If anyone would like to Narrate, please give us a call.
On June 6, 7 and 8, in Indianapolis, Indiana, there will be the biggest collection of Shared Universe characters that anyone has ever dared assemble in one place. It’s the First Annual (hopefully) Shared Universe Convention, with people attending from literally all over the continent. Ever wonder what the people you’ve been e-mailing to are really like? You think you’ve got it tough in your city? Want to swap war stories, trade boons, shmooze with elders, snub neonates? Our tentative plans are to rent one or more large vehicles (vans, RVs, possibly a bus) and start off on Thursday June 5, returning on or about June 10 (it’s about a 28 hour drive). I’m estimating costs to be about $200 (vehicle rental, gas, convention fee, hotel rooms and food). Anyone else up for it? Talk to one of the Narrators/Storytellers!
Do you want to play an ancillae level Malkavian? Submit your idea for the character’s background to us before April 16. This character can be up to 200 years old. If we like your background and character idea best, we’ll give you the points to create the character! This offer is open to anyone, but you do have to permanantly retire your current character.
There seems to be some confusion about Influence. We are using the “Brandon” system, where influence goes up to a maximum of 9 levels (the first five or six correspond pretty closely to the ones in Laws of the Night). However, there can only be a limited number of people at these exalted levels. If you want to know more about the Influence levels, contact your Clan Narrator. Our photocopy budget won’t let us make copies for everyone; sorry, but we’ll give you one to copy. If someone asks you for your Influence to help them do something, you do NOT have to give it to them. Ask instead what they need done, and offer to do it for them. Think about it. By giving someone your Influence, you are giving them a name of a person. You are now vulnerable to someone killing your Influence or luring it away from you, because they know who it is. If you are coerced into revealing your Influence’s names, that does NOT mean that the person that did it automatically adds your Influence to his, though. Just because he knows the names of your contacts does not mean that they will automatically help him. On a related note, if you have one point of Street Influence, and someone agrees to help you with their one point of Street, you are not necessarily able to do what a person with two levels of Street can. You can do what a person with one has, twice. Also, having influence in one city does not necessarily mean that you have the same amount of influence in another. Think about it in terms of Influence representing people, and this may be clearer. To gain Influence , you must write down exactly what you are doing to get the influence and how long you think it will take (this will probably be a minimum of one month, but the time will be decided by the Influence Narrator). At the end of the time, you’ll do a simple test to see whether your attempt succeeded, or if we have time we might roleplay out the scene. To use Influence, talk to your Clan Narrator if it’s something you can do automatically. Otherwise, write down exactly what you’re doing (do you see a pattern here? Good.) and give it to one of the ST Team. This is assuming we have your character information, of course...
This term occurs several times in the rules, that under certain conditions you will be “X Traits up” or “X Traits down” on a challenge . What it means is that in the case of a tie, you add or subtract X traits from your current total. It does not mean that you have to bid X traits extra on all challenges. This is not a house rule, this is the way the game works.
So far, we’ve had the major games on the second last Saturday of the month. We’d kind of like to keep a pattern going, since that way you can make an educated guess as to when the next game will be (Regina has their main events on the last Saturday of the month). However, we know that Saturdays are bad for some people. If you have a strong preference, please tell us. We can only try to accomodate the majority.
Please keep in mind that if you spend a Willpower to overcome a Frenzy, it only staves it off for 10 minutes. You should use that time to try and get away from or stop whatever is making you frenzy. If you have BeastTrait: Violent, you should not just spend a Willpower and calmly continue to watch a fight. You will be on the edge of Frenzy, and if you don’t leave or try to stop the fight, you will likely need to keep spending Willpower or frenzy anyway. If it helps, imagine your Beast as almost a separate personality. Beast Traits describe situations that affect your Beast so strongly that it might get control of your body. The Beast is nasty! Frenzies are nasty! Roleplay them!
A rules clarification (and yes, it’s been done differently in the past). If you use Fortitude to soak a Called Shot, and the Called Shot does normal damage, then the soak totally neutralizes the Called Shot. However, if the Called Shot is done with Aggravated damage, then soaking it reduces it to normal damage, which you can spend blood to heal, but the effect of the Called Shot still happens and can’t be healed. You’ve reduced it to normal, but even normal damage is enough to cut your arm off. Would an example make this clearer?
Rita is attacking Frost and Zaq, who both have Resilience. She quickly leaps in the air, gracefully twists, and ferociously lets fly a two-footed kick to Frost’s tough head, in an attempt to stun him. Rita wins all the challenges (hey, this is my example!) so normally Frost would take a box of damage and be stunned for three rounds. However, Frost spends a Physical trait and wins a simple challenge to soak the damage. Because it was normal damage, he soaks it all and he is not stunned. Now Rita goes after Zaq with her Wolf Claws, and in a lightning quick display of brutality, she ferociously tries to rip his snout off. Again, she wins all the tests despite his attempts to be nimble. Zaq spends a Physical, wins a Simple Test and soaks the agg damage to normal. If he now uses a Blood Trait to heal, he is not down any Wound Boxes, but no matter what, his snout is gone because that was the Called Shot effect (how does he smell? Awful!)
Well, the thought of characters having a one in 14 chance (on the average) of getting killed instantly and irrevocably by some lucky punk doesn’t really appeal to us either. However, if some samurai master with a katana decides that he wants your head off, he might be able to do it. So here are the requirements to do a Called Shot: Decapitation on someone:
1) The person’s neck must be unarmored. (if they’re wearing armor, it will keep soaking damage and neutralizing the Called Shot until it’s soaked all it can. Then the person is considered unarmored. Remember that we require props for armor!) 2) The attacker must have at least a 3 Melee if using a weapon, and the weapon must be capable of shearing through a neck in one sweep. (i.e. have a blade longer than about half a meter). You can’t decapitate someone with a firearm in combat. Sorry. 3) If unarmed, the attacker must have at least Potence 3 and Brawl 4.
Believe it or not, we are still missing background/haven/influence information from people! Don’t you folks want to spend your experience? Don’t you want to use your influence? Come on!
If you choose to play a Ghoul of Note (one with extra build points) you are agreeing to play that ghoul for at least X months, where X is equal to the number of points paid by your Regnant + 1. (If you have 20 extra build points, your Regnant will have paid 4 points for you, and you are going to play the ghoul for 5 months, minimum.). Also a reminder that the time minimums for playing any ghoul are minimums. You still have to wait until you’re at or near the top of the Ghoul List before you’ll get embraced.
Since we have taken over as the new ST team, there has been some interest by some individuals in making things go boom. Smoke canisters, firecrackers, grenades and plain old bombs have been discussed, but until now, we really haven’t had rules for specifics. Until now…
If you can’t make your own, then you might be able to get explosives with a minimum of Street 5, Underworld 5 or Industry 4 (from an appropriate Industry).
NOTE: It is not required that one person have these skills. If the appropriate skills are available from two or three people, they can work together and make explosives. There are two main abilities required for the creation of explosives. They are Science(Chemistry) x 2 and Repair x 2. The former skill lets you mix up things that will go boom, and the latter lets you safely contain it until it does go boom. With these, all you can create is smoke bombs and small fireworks (make a loud noise, and one point of damage if they go off when you’re holding them.) NOTE: If you want a smoke bomb that kicks out enough smoke to completely obscure yourself in one round, that will be a prop about the size of a coffee can. Little smoke pellets do not kick out enough smoke to hide you instantly. They will take several rounds to do so.
For that, you will also need Science(Physics) x 2 or Science(Materials) x 2. With one of these in addition to the above listed skills, you can now make portable explosives that either do up to three normal OR one aggravated damage.
With an additional Science(Electronics) x 2 ability, you can make a time-delayed bomb. Other skills can be useful too. The ST will decide roughly the size of the prop required to represent a bomb. DO NOT WRITE “BOMB” ON THE PROP. Certain legal authorities have been known to react poorly to a plain brown box with “Bomb” written on the top. The ST team will mark the prop appropriately. Just bring it to us.
Whenever you make a bomb, you will be making three (two for smoke or fireworks) tests, one against each skill. (It will be a Mental challenge against a difficulty that depends on what you are trying to make. Most damaging explosives will be around the 15 trait level. (minus 1 for every extra two days you devote to the challenge)) If you fail at one of these test, the bomb is a dud and you know it’s a dud. If two or more of these tests go wrong, you have just blown yourself up. Take double the damage that the bomb normally inflicts (only one point if you were making a smoke bomb.) The ST may also inflict other wounds depending on circumstance. (You had your legs blown off. You are considered parapelegic for the next week until you can regrow them.) You can use the ability for a retest on the specific test that you have failed, but if that would leave you with less than the required two abilities to make the bomb, it’s now a dud. (So why would I retest? A dud is better than blowing yourself up…). So how does this all work? Here’s an example…
Benito, Hera and Timmy get together to make a bomb. Benito has Science(Chemistry) x3, Hera has Repair x2 and Timmy has Science(Materials) x3. They spend two weeks at it to make it relatively safe and still ready for the conclave. The ST says that is a difficulty of 8. Now they decide what order they will attempt to work on the bomb. They decide Benito first, followed by Hera, then Timmy. Benito makes his test. Hera fails her test. Hera can burn a Repair for a retest, but if she does, she no longer has the required skills, and the bomb will be a dud. She does the retest, hoping not to blow up Timmy, but she fails on the retest. Now Timmy has to test. He cannot withdraw at this stage! Once the process has begun, it must be finished. If Timmy fails at this stage… he goes boom. Benito and Hera may or may not be present. Timmy wipes the sweat from his brow, and goes to work. Luckily, he wins his test. Timmy examines the bomb, pronounces it a dud, and tells the other two. Looks like they are going to have to come up with something else for the conclave.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: The ST team will give you one card to represent one explosive. If it goes off, rip the card up. Violation of this will be severely dealt with. So go out there and have a blast!
