<TBODY> Major Arcana and Minor Indiscretions

Newsletter           June 9^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, July 14^th, downtime submissions due Saturday, June 23^rd

The next game is tentatively set to be in the MUMPS Lounge, and is hosted by the Wicked.

Attuning to a Hallow

Now that characters have been set up in Saskatoon for awhile and have things under control, I am introducing a new possibility:  you (or your Cabal) can attune a Hallow to themselves.  This is a new type of downtime action that must be taken by every person who wants to be part of the Attunement – they all must succeed at a simple Composure + Gnosis roll(with a +2 if they are part of a Cabal with an unifying symbolic theme and can work that theme into the Attunement), although if any one person fails then the entire group fails(making it largely impractical to, for instance, attune the entire Consillium to a given Hallow).  The Attunement lasts until either the Hallow goes dormant, or until someone who isn’t attuned to it accesses the Hallow(including if they decide to Attune themselves to it).  You can be Attuned to more than one Hallow at a time.

There are three main benefits to being Attuned to a Hallow.  The first is that you can ignore the first point of any Mana cost of spells cast while you are on the physical premises of the Hallow(this replaces the similar rule on spell-casting in Hallows from the book which I had not been using until now).  Secondly, you can potentially get more Mana from a Hallow you are Attuned to – your Oblation downtime action gets a bonus based on how much untapped Mana there is left in the Hallow that month(so more powerful or underutilized Hallows can potentially give more Mana in a single Oblation downtime action).  Lastly, when you personally examine a Hallow, you will know whether you are still Attuned to it or not, giving you notice if someone has broken your Attunement(forcing you and your fellows to spend another downtime action attempting to restore the Attunement).

High Speech, Dedicated Magical Tools, and other Roleplay Bonuses.

Just a reminder that when you are casting a spell, there are two things that you will often want to roleplay in order to assist casting:

• Chanting in High Speech(which makes a spell take an extra action – two turns instead of one) gives you a +2 on the roll to cast the spell.  The chanting must be roleplayed, and should be at a volume that someone standing next to you could hear it.  What High Speech sounds like is up to you – you can mumble resonating mantras, you can proclaim in Latin, or just chant made-up words, so long as it is roleplayed.
• For Extended Castings, it is presumed that you are already chanting in High Speech and there is no extra bonus from doing so.  However, I have generally awarded the +2 bonus for Ritual Castings that are important enough for players to get together for a scene and actually play through a Ritual.
• If you use a Dedicated Magical Tool(p. 89-90 in Mage) in your casting, you reduce the Paradox Pool by one.  The tool must be visibly used in the casting, not merely worn or carried – brandish your staff, play with you ring, wind your clock or whatever. You can spend extra Mana when you cast the spell(limited by your Gnosis, as always) – each point of Mana reduces the Paradox Pool by one.

Generally I have been reminding people about these options when they are casting, but I’ll probably trail off on that since most people know about them by now.  Instead, if you roleplay High Speech or using a Tool I might remind you about the mechanical bonus if you forget, but if you don’t roleplay it I’ll assume that’s because you’re choosing not to this time(and there are times when subtlety is better!).

Casting from Twilight or Shadow, and dealing with others in Twilight or Shadow

The book is somewhat inconsistent on whether you can cast spells from Twilight or Shadow.  In the interests of simplifying and balancing things, I’m just going to make a blanket policy – Yes, you can cast spells from Twilight or Shadow into the Material but such spells always cost 1 Mana.  Also, if the spells directly change or affect a Pattern in the physical world, they are also considered Vulgar.  If you are in Shadow as opposed to merely in Twilight, you might also have to overcome the local Gauntlet.

If you are in Shadow(generally only possible with Spirit magic), you can cast spells on other creatures in Shadow normally.  Affecting Spirits in Twilight from Shadow is no harder than affecting them from the Material world.  Affecting non-Spirits in Twilight from Shadow will generally be difficult.

If you are in Twilight(using either Death or Mind, generally) you can only easily affect or perceive beings of a similar type to yourself(ghosts if you’re using Death, mental projections if you are using Mind) – you can interact with those in the same way you would in the Material world.  For beings of other types, you are no better at perceiving/affecting them than if you were in the physical world still.

Rolling for Initiative at the start of every action scene tends to really slow things down.  Now, for most standard scenes, initiative is not rolled; characters simply act in order of their Initiative scores.  The one time Initiative is rolled is if two characters are taking dramatically important competing actions – for instance, if one character is diving to cover the magical McGuffin with his body, and the other is trying to shoot the McGuffin, they might roll Initiative for that one set of actions to see which goes off first (and then the rest of the scene is run just off static initiative scores).  In short, Initiative is only randomized when something dramatic is at stake – most of the time people just go by their base scores.

Spells for gatherings, etc

To speed things along – if you want to put up spells like Mage Sight, Mage Armor, and other utility spells for a gathering or side scene…  Instead of rolling for them, you can instead do this – Sum up your casting bonus for the spell.  Subtract appropriate penalties(the most common would be if you want the spell to last the entire game – for Prolonged spells, that would be a -4 penalty, or if you can cast the spell with Advanced Prolongation only a -2).  Take that final bonus, and divide it by three, rounding down – that is how many successes you got on the casting of the spell.  If the spell cost Mana, let me know so I can deduct the Mana cost.  Write it down on the back of your character sheet under “Active Spells” or “Spells cast upon self”.  If the spell is not written down there, I probably won’t humour any “Oh, but I would have cast such and such a spell for the game…” type arguments.  If you want to cancel that spell mid-game, erase it from your roster of spells on the back of your sheet.

Generally you can do this for any Covert spell that doesn’t really affect other people.  When in doubt, you can always come and ask me anyway(and you should always come talk to me if the spell is Vulgar).  You’ll have to come to find me to do the casting if your total is low enough that using this method would result in 0 successes, anyway.  This is just a stream-lined way of handling spells you’d be casting often on yourself, and that you are good enough at that failure won’t often occur anyway.

In Character Venue – Golden Dragon Restaurant

This Gathering is being held at the Golden Dragon Restaurant, in downtown Saskatoon and just a block or two away from the river.  ICly it has been booked for a private party, but there are some Sleepers still about(i.e. be mindful of Education students using the lounge).  What you see is what you get, assume everything is IC.

In the Community – SLARPCon 07!!  June 15^th-17^th

This Just a reminder that Saskatoon’s only LARP Convention, SLARPCon, is happening next weekend.  Scheduled events include:

Friday the 15^th, evening – Vampire: the Requiem, run by Wade Lahoda

Saturday the 16^th, afternoon – Legend of the Five Rings, run by Trent Rasmussen

Saturday the 16^th, evening – Kingdom Come, run by Dave Richards

Sunday the 17^th, afternoon – Shadowrun, run by Layne Myhre

Sunday the 17^th, evening – Serenity, run by Shani Russel

Sign up at the desk or visit www.slarpa.com for more information!