<TBODY> Major Arcana and Minor Indiscretions

Newsletter           August 11^th, 2007</TBODY>

<TBODY>Wade Lahoda	Head Storyteller   storyteller@saskatoonbynight.com or 477-0145
Narrators:    Allan Schnell & James Nobel

The official Saskatoon by Night webpage can be found at www.saskatoonbynight.com

Next Game Saturday, September 8^th, downtime submissions due Saturday, August 25^th

“Easy” Rituals at Gatherings

After collecting some feedback on the forums, I’m deciding to go ahead and try a little idea.  We’ll see how it works over the next couple of games or so, and scrap or amend it as needed.  Consider these rules in place for tonight.

The time/location choices for the Gatherings occurred at the “high tide” of magical power in the city.  By linking other extended castings into the phenomenon, other ritual magic can also be made quicker and somewhat easier to perform.  The goal here is to give people more opportunities to roleplay magic and ritual at the game.

All Ritual(Extended) castings take only half an hour per roll at Gatherings instead of the usual "Three hours for one roll, or a downtime action for several" that is normally the case. The catch is, of course, you have to actually roleplay out the Ritual - declaring you're performing a ritual casting and then going off into a side room and chatting OOC until the time is up would rather defeat the point.

So, 30 minutes per roll. And maybe for the first roll, half that time can be prep time and set-up of the space, etc, and only the other half actual ritual actions. If you decide to do multiple rolls, the extra half hours beyond that should probably be all ritual. I wouldn't think most people would do a lot of multiple-roll castings still - the main use I think would be group castings, which can only be done as a ritual, and are more interesting to play out than solitary castings, anyway.

All of these castings must be done after the main ritual has been performed, and only those who participated in the main ritual are eligible to gain these benefits.  They also have to be done in or near the ritual space, and any significant attempts to cordon off or separate the ritual from the rest of the gathering will disrupt the energy flow and make it not work(this is so folks are essentially doing these things open to access by the public, as opposed to cloistered in side scenes).  The end of this window of opportunity will be 11pm(which means any rituals taking advantage of this should start by 10:30p at the latest).

So you come to me when you start the ritual casting, let me know what you're trying to accomplish - I probably take the participant's character sheets at this point so I can roll the results and have them ready by the time you're done role-playing the ritual, especially if you're trying something cool or funky. For the most part, otherwise, ritual casting acts like normal(including the usual requirement that all participants must have all the required Arcana for the spell being cast).

But what do you actually roleplay out when doing a Ritual Casting? Many players might struggle with filling half a minute, never mind half an hour. Well, obviously, I'd recommend whoever is leading the ritual might want to do some brainstorming and script something. Just doing a few googles for ritual or ceremonial magic can come up with plenty of fodder. Many religious ceremonies could also be adapted. Going a bit further out a lot of theatre type stuff - from passion plays to dance - could easily be given a magical and ritual context. Sure, you could satisfy the bare minimum effort required by spending half an hour cross-legged meditating and mumbling to yourself, but that probably isn't as much fun as something more elaborate.

The ritual you perform would probably have a positive impact on the casting itself, too... A possible list of modifiers(added to the final total) might look like this, all of them cumulative:

+1 Includes chanting, singing, or other vocalization
+1 Vocalization is interesting and ritual specific(it has meaning, at least to you, instead of just made up syllables to fill time)
+1 Includes gestures, dance, signing or other ritual movements
+1 Ritual movements are interesting and ritual specific(as above)
+1 Includes props or visible physical preparation of the space
+1 Said props or space preparation is specific to this one ritual(instead of having one prop for all your casting, you have a prop that is specially designated for this spell and no other, and reflects that in its design, frex)
+1-3 Elements require significant coordination and interchange between participants in a group ritual(bonus dependent on complexity and execution)
+2 There are equal numbers of all Paths participating
+2 All participants are of the same Path, and incorporate the path's symbolism into the casting*
+2 All participants are members of the same Cabal, and the Cabal's ritual theme is incorporated into the ritual*
+2 All participants are members of the same Order, and the Order's symbolism is incorporated into the ritual*
* Bonus only applies to group castings with three or more participants

This means your actions could potentially have as high as a +15 bonus(5 successes!!), but in practice most rituals should probably be able to pull off a +5. Cool, eh?

Think about buying Contacts

The Contacts Merit is one of the main ways to have information come to your character instead of having to go and hunt it down.  Sure, Allies(Police) will let you spend a downtime action hunting down details about a case – but with Contacts(Police), you’ll get a note in every downtime about what weird or interesting things are happening with the Police(assuming anything is going on that month), without spending a downtime action.  Allies or Status(Underworld) can get you the word on the street, but you have to spend a downtime action pounding pavement and asking questions, where with Contacts(Underworld) your friends in the mob will come to you with rumours and tidbits.

I mention this in the newsletter because the Contacts Merit is both a) one of my main ways to get plot leads out to the players and b) is generally underrepresented in the player base.  There are a couple of characters who have a large number of contacts and get all the leads, while the larger majority is largely in the dark.  Contacts doesn’t suit all character concepts admittedly, but if you see your character as being “in the loop” it might be worth your while to spend that downtime action on Acquiring some Contacts.  First dot is only 2 XP, after all.

Policy on Losing Merits in Play

Some Merits can be lost in play.  Retainers can be killed or subverted.  Allies can be turned against you.  Sanctums can be burned to the ground, or you can decide to move away.  When that happens, I just go and remove the Merit from your character sheet.  Now, depending on how that happened, you might get some or all of the XP the Merit was work back:

• If the loss was entirely out of your control, you get all your XP back.  This will be a pretty rare occurrence, but it could happen due to twists of plot(and ST fiat) or through the evil maraudings of other players.
• If the loss was something you had a say in, but you didn’t take any exceptional risks to cause it, you’ll get half your XP back.  This is pretty much the default.  If you sent your Retainer to trail a guy, not knowing he was a werewolf, and he gets shredded – well, you didn’t know your target was supernatural, but sending your Retainer out to follow people is always a little risky.  If your Library is stolen by a rival character because you bragged about your library at a gathering, you may not have deserved to have your library stolen, but the theft didn’t come out of nowhere, either.
• If the loss is directly a result of a knowing choice you made, you don’t get an XP back.  If someone finds out the location of your Sanctum and you decide to move out of fear – well, that’s your choice, but you don’t get a refund.  If you send your Retainers to trail someone you know is dangerous, set them to guard an item bad guys will be hunting for, or get them into a fight and they die…too bad, no pain, no gain.

I’ve been operating with this policy for quite awhile now, but I figured I’d make it explicit.  Let me know if you have any questions.

In Character Venue – Piccolo’s house

In character, this is Piccolo’s house, and should be considered more or less WYSIWYG with a few exceptions spelled out by John:

“The basement door is locked IC. Also IC out the back gate is a Garage that is locked also. OOC. The two bedrooms at the back of the house are out of bounds for playing in but everywhere else is fine to go. Oh and please don't freak out my neighbors. Let's keep the game in the back yard and inside mostly.”

John is being kind enough to host, so please don’t break his house or his stuff.  Thank you.