Skyscraper Graveyard II: Jealousy and Ambition

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Edit 2 - Actually reading up on the section in the core book only seems to have muddied the waters further, because it seems to be spelled out to work differently than I recalled even.

Edit 3 - Who needs willpower anyway? Not me!

The book says it has to be in situations that pose some risk to your character. If you've got death magic so that you can bang some hot ghosts whenever you're bored, there isn't much risk. If the fact that you were banging hot ghosts started to get out and you kept doing it at risk to your reputation, then there's a potential willpower there.

The sleeping willpower being gone is Thanqol's custom rule, which I've also adopted. It makes willpower matter more and encourages characters to actually play to their virtues and vices.

[Thanqol]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Edit - Though, to be fair, much as I like the Virtue/Vice system itself and understand how they can interact to shape your character, I do find the whole willpower and willpower regaining thing a little more confusing, though on a rational basis it's simple enough. Suffer for your vice, one willpower per scene. Suffer for your Virtue, all willpower once per chapter. Simple enough, but less intuitive for me, too. (And deliberately having chosen virtue and vice for jack outside of my comfort zone doesn't help with this).

Gaining willpower for indulging in a vice is choosing your vice over a better alternative. I think the best example of this was a detective with Sloth in one game I played who was investigating a crime scene, found it was all clear-cut open and closed - except for one piece of contradictory evidence that he spotted.

He thought about it, decided he didn't need that hassle, and scuffed out the mark. Just, "I don't need this today."


As for a virtue, it doesn't have to involve screwing yourself over - it can mean taking a risk to follow a higher calling and having it pay off. A great example of this is a person with Faith, tied up and smothered in countermagic and only able to get off one subtle spell without being detected. Rather than do anything herself, she sent a message carrying her true name to one of her friends - giving her the connection she needed to scry and then rescue her.

[Anarion]

Tiki, you actually had suggested a really good vice example when we did the exorcism. Imagine that once we had it going and the spirit did its happiness thing, Tessen had just shrugged and headed to a coffee shop a few blocks away with a quick "you guys got this" on the way out. Easy vice willpower.

[Tiki Snakes]

Well, I mean, I read the section in the core book and it seems to have not only a slightly different spin on it, but a slightly different spin from it's own descriptions on the virtues and vices section.

The regaining willpower passage simply implies that if during a scene you act with regards to your vice, willpower +1. If you act according to your Virtue, willpower +all but only once per (session).
The virtue and vices session instead gives really specific actions and circumstances that trigger it, (Inspiring someone else to be all fortitudey and not give up via your Hope and specifically victimising someone in order to fullfill your lust).

Neither of which make much of a deal of the hindering yourself angle that I thought was a major part of it, though I'm likely just missing something.

It's almost enough for me to just decide to ignore the entire mechanic and simply do what jack would do. If WP happens, bonus, otherwise sod it. Almost.

[SiuiS]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

If coercing vulnerable spirits of the dead to adopt extoplasmic forms only to get your rocks off doesn't involve a potential cost or consequence you're doing something wrong less morally reprehensible than Jack of Spades likely is.

Edit - Though, to be fair, much as I like the Virtue/Vice system itself and understand how they can interact to shape your character, I do find the whole willpower and willpower regaining thing a little more confusing, though on a rational basis it's simple enough. Suffer for your vice, one willpower per scene. Suffer for your Virtue, all willpower once per chapter. Simple enough, but less intuitive for me, too. (And deliberately having chosen virtue and vice for jack outside of my comfort zone doesn't help with this).


Edit 2 - Actually reading up on the section in the core book only seems to have muddied the waters further, because it seems to be spelled out to work differently than I recalled even.

Edit 3 - Who needs willpower anyway? Not me!

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Well, I mean, I read the section in the core book and it seems to have not only a slightly different spin on it, but a slightly different spin from it's own descriptions on the virtues and vices section.

The regaining willpower passage simply implies that if during a scene you act with regards to your vice, willpower +1. If you act according to your Virtue, willpower +all but only once per (session).
The virtue and vices session instead gives really specific actions and circumstances that trigger it, (Inspiring someone else to be all fortitudey and not give up via your Hope and specifically victimising someone in order to fullfill your lust).

Neither of which make much of a deal of the hindering yourself angle that I thought was a major part of it, though I'm likely just missing something.

It's almost enough for me to just decide to ignore the entire mechanic and simply do what jack would do. If WP happens, bonus, otherwise sod it. Almost.

It also specifically calls out alternate possibilities for each vice. Lust being curiosity for example, or my favorite, lust being crushing, painful chastity and paranoia.

[Tiki Snakes]

Originally Posted by SiuiS

It also specifically calls out alternate possibilities for each vice. Lust being curiosity for example, or my favorite, lust being crushing, painful chastity and paranoia.

Not in the sections I read, it didn't.
(The alternative for Lust was that it didn't have to be sexual, it could be any overwhelming passion to be indulged. Someone still has to be victimised though.)

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Not in the sections I read, it didn't.
(The alternative for Lust was that it didn't have to be sexual, it could be any overwhelming passion to be indulged. Someone still has to be victimised though.)

The one I use for this is on page 100 of the main WoD book. Here's the quote (bolding added by me)

When a character's actions in difficult situations reflect his particular Virtue or Vice, he reinforces his fundamental sense of self. If the Storyteller judges that your character's actions during a scene reflect his Vice, he regains one Willpower point that has been spent. If the Storyteller judges that your character's actions during a chapter (a game session) reflect his Virtue, he regains all spent Willpower points. Note that these actions must be made in situations that pose some risk to your character, whereby he stands to pay a price for acting according to his Virtue or Vice. Everyday expressions of, say, Faith or Pride are not enough to reaffirm a character's determination or sense of self.

[SiuiS]

Ah, I've misread that. "Stands to pay a price", it needs to be a gamble. A sacrifice. But that can pay off and still count, that's good to know.

[Tiki Snakes]

Right.
Compare that to page 95, regaining willpower.

The Virtues and vices themselves then further define and limit what counts to rather specific scenarios.

Ironically, Lust and Hope are apparently the most specific and the most loopy.

"Your character is consumed by a passion for something.
He regains one Willpower point whenever he satisfies his
lust or compulsion in a way that victimizes others."

So, Lust doesn't seem to reiterate that you need to be at risk or that it needs to cost you, instead you just can't satisfy lust without someone else being hurt.
What, Consensual doesn't count?

I think Hope takes the cake, really.
First half of the description;

Being hopeful means believing that evil and misfortune
cannot prevail, no matter how grim things become. Not
only do the hopeful believe in the ultimate triumph of morality
and decency over malevolence, they maintain steadfast
belief in a greater sense of cosmic justice whether its
Karma or the idea of an all-knowing, all-seeing God who
waits to punish the wicked. All will turn out right in the
end, and the hopeful mean to be around when it happens.

Which is all great and I'm down with, but then the second half of the description;

Your character regains all spent Willpower points
whenever she refuses to let others give in to despair, even
though doing so risks harming her own goals or wellbeing.
This is similar to Fortitude, above, except that your character
tries to prevent others from losing hope in their goals.
She need not share those goals herself or even be successful
in upholding them, but there must be a risk involved.

Which seems to say that not only is your belief that things will turn out for the better the important bit, but you are more likely to regain willpower from stopping people who are actively trying to harm or thwart you from stopping than from keeping your allies from giving up (because allies not giving up makes things LESS dangerous).

So, yeah, I don't know. It would be easier if I had designed by mechanics perhaps. Just not interested in that, I'm increasingly sure that I'll be happier just staying true to what I understand by the whole virtue/vice thing and using it to inform and round out my understanding of jack and screw the bonus points attatched to the system. If I earn them, great. If not, then that's fine too.

[Anarion]

I would ignore a lot of the specific examples. White Wolf tends to poorly explain its own rules.

My take on the setup is that you have to be hindered by your virtue/vice in some way. Hindered doesn't mean permanently hurt. People aren't psychic and doing something that you think is less than optimal might end up turning out great for you. But I interpret the game rules as something like: "anything that fits with the idea of the virtue/vice and in which you think an alternative to following the virtue/vice is more profitable at the time you make the decision."

[Tiki Snakes]

Drifting back on topic for a moment;

What're we going for, Life Mage or Hospital? That's a trick question son.
Probable Life-Mage rundown;
Kurosawa is already looking after our nameless spirit-victim. He also taught Tessen some spirit magic. I can't help but feel that we've tapped him up for favours for now. Further bodies turning up on his porch would be bordering on rude.
Captain Rushaw, Jack could conceivably call a favour in on, increasing our chances of portrait-reveals but no idea how likely him or his would be to cheerfully patch up our pet seer.
Last time we had this dilemma, Thanqol suggested or at least implied that Errant is a Life-Mage.

If so, do we have reason to believe she'll be turning up, or that we should if we're going for that option, take Slade to that certain empty lot?

Do we know much about Errant's mastery of arcana?

Edit - Thanqol clarify-ninja'd me in the IC thread. Pretty much my understanding, too. Guess We're heading to the vacant lot.

[Thanqol]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

If so, do we have reason to believe she'll be turning up, or that we should if we're going for that option, take Slade to that certain empty lot?

Turing knows Errant can move very fast and turn up very quickly when there's something on the line.

Do we know much about Errant's mastery of arcana?

She's been seen with some Spirit magic up, but she's generally quite conservative about what magic she reveals. Turing would suspect Life from how she talks.

[Deadly]

Can't recall how much mana Tessen's book has, but I believe it was quite a bit. Amun can only take at most 3 points a time anyway.

Probably going to use High Speech on the roll, since it's improvised and it would be sad to not get more than the one point he has to spend on it.

[Tiki Snakes]

We totally did. Of course, we very nearly left slade there too.
Jack was in no state to think about bodies though, given someone was still breathing.

[Anarion]

Tessen didn't care about the bodies. I mean, it'll probably be a problem when the Aether anomaly dies down, but um...oops.

[SiuiS]

The bosies aren't really a problem. They were damaged at a structural level to bring them down. That plus Slade going AWOL means "I dunno mister federal investigator, but I heard there was a shoot-out involving a police officer" totally gets you off the hook, unless your ST is clever.


...

You poor bastards.

[Tiki Snakes]

I'm not overly worried about that side of things, to be honest. It's more that once Jack realises that they left Slade's family on the sidewalk, he'll feel even more rotten than he already does.

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

I'm not overly worried about that side of things, to be honest. It's more that once Jack realises that they left Slade's family on the sidewalk, he'll feel even more rotten than he already does.

It's just sloppy.

I'm not worried about the police or whoever, but given the already poor showing (all Tessen's fault, by the way), leaving the bodies on top of that just makes us look terribly sloppy. If I were a member of another cabal, I totally wouldn't trust us with any responsibility.

[SiuiS]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

I'm not overly worried about that side of things, to be honest. It's more that once Jack realises that they left Slade's family on the sidewalk, he'll feel even more rotten than he already does.

Originally Posted by Anarion

It's just sloppy.

I'm not worried about the police or whoever, but given the already poor showing (all Tessen's fault, by the way), leaving the bodies on top of that just makes us look terribly sloppy. If I were a member of another cabal, I totally wouldn't trust us with any responsibility.

Both valid. I think it says something that we are more concerned with keeping up appearances though, Anarion.

[Thanqol]

Originally Posted by SiuiS

The bosies aren't really a problem. They were damaged at a structural level to bring them down. That plus Slade going AWOL means "I dunno mister federal investigator, but I heard there was a shoot-out involving a police officer" totally gets you off the hook, unless your ST is clever.


...

You poor bastards.

Heh.



I would like to add that Skyfall was an excellent movie and one of the best Bond films ever. Go see it.

[Deadly]

Originally Posted by Anarion

It's just sloppy.

I'm not worried about the police or whoever, but given the already poor showing (all Tessen's fault, by the way), leaving the bodies on top of that just makes us look terribly sloppy. If I were a member of another cabal, I totally wouldn't trust us with any responsibility.

That's how I feel half the time as a player, no matter the game. Always bumbling around and doing things or not doing things that in hindsight (or with a better appreciation for the situation) are seriously groanworthy.

Like this, I don't think the bodies entered our minds for a second until it was pointed out. None of us thought about the bodies and decided to leave them behind. None of us decided that our characters should act this way because we imagine they're that kind of people.

We post-rationalize that, sure, they were distracted, but really it's just a cover for the players not thinking of it, and the reason we don't think of it is probably that we sit here in our comfy homes, safe and sound, and don't have to worry about magical mayhem and dead bodies on our doorsteps.

It doesn't affect us, and it's not our fault for not thinking of it, because that's just how the human brain works, it leaves out "unimportant" details all the time and you can yell at it as much as you like after the fact, trying to tell your own brain that it's being dumb, but it'll do it again next time and look pleased with itself for being so very helpful.

Dumb brains

[Tiki Snakes]

It did actually occur to me, I had thought how I was going to handle it, but when they dropped and Jack was encouraged to get the car to save Slade's life, that was it. Gone. Meep-meep.

[Deadly]

No way that's Covert Amazingly it probably is Covert - Deadly edition

Hey! Where's my island?

So ... who's hiding what on that island, you suppose? Also, could one Covertly hide and/or remove an island? Fate?

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

It did actually occur to me, I had thought how I was going to handle it, but when they dropped and Jack was encouraged to get the car to save Slade's life, that was it. Gone. Meep-meep.

At least Jack then had the opportunity to actually act in character rather than being randomly forgetful

[SiuiS]

Man. Poor Turing. Poor Slade.
I bet this wouldn't have happened if he had striking looks, the poor ugly bastard.

A spokesman from the service told Australian newspapers that while some map makers intentionally include phantom streets to prevent copyright infringements

What

[Tiki Snakes]

It's kind of hilarious in it's own sick way.

Of course, this all leaves me wondering if this was Thanqols plan all along.

Edit - There's a thought. Isn't Turing due a degeneration role at this point? Or are the extenuating circumstances such that it's not necessary?

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by SiuiS

What

You can't copyright facts, but maps are sort of like artwork, so if you make up untrue stuff and people copy it, they infringe your copyright.

[SiuiS]

Originally Posted by Anarion

You can't copyright facts, but maps are sort of like artwork, so if you make up untrue stuff and people copy it, they infringe your copyright.

I get that. But in practice it's asinine. Including false information so that of someone accidentally copies that instead of the factual data they think they are, you screw them over. Especially since you're at that ponit creating a potential crime when there was none, as if you hadn't included fake roads you wouldn't have anything you would need to protect in the first place.

I'm missing something here. These people think its a sound business decision, and I think it's bass-ackwards. What am I not getting?


Degeneration for Turing? Probably. I think we can save it for after he summons his shade and interrogates it and has to deal with the ghost's accusations. You only roll once, on the worst part of the chart after all.

[Tiki Snakes]

Thing is, a map kind of is an artistic endeavor first of all. Even using computers, at some stage some group of schmucks have to sit down and design it and there's a hell of a lot of work involved in getting the information together and so on.

I can very much see the logic in including a tiny deviation or two in order to stop other people from taking your work and simply re-selling it.

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

I can very much see the logic in including a tiny deviation or two in order to stop other people from taking your work and simply re-selling it.

Yeah, it's basically this. If you make a perfectly accurate map, anyone can copy it because it's just factual data about what a city looks like. They can't copy the legend or the color-coding necessarily, but all the details, shapes, streets, etc. are factual information. So people put the fake stuff in as a way to make copyright claims so that the effort and time they spent mapping gets rewarded.

It's a crummy system in that it leads to mistakes and people getting confused at phantom streets. However, it's better than the map makers getting no return because some schmo with a Xerox decides to undercut them, and it's also better than protecting all maps with copyright, since that would create a monopoly map-maker anytime a new area was mapped for at least 75 years.

[the_druid_droid]

Originally Posted by SiuiS

Man. Poor Turing. Poor Slade.
I bet this wouldn't have happened if he had striking looks, the poor ugly bastard.

Heh

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

It's kind of hilarious in it's own sick way.

Of course, this all leaves me wondering if this was Thanqols plan all along.

Edit - There's a thought. Isn't Turing due a degeneration role at this point? Or are the extenuating circumstances such that it's not necessary?

Yep, Turing will have to roll for this. I have to admit, this system and Thanqol's NPCs are pretty awesome. I spent the better part of an hour OOC agonizing over whether or not to pull that trigger.

Originally Posted by Anarion

It's a crummy system in that it leads to mistakes and people getting confused at phantom streets. However, it's better than the map makers getting no return because some schmo with a Xerox decides to undercut them, and it's also better than protecting all maps with copyright, since that would create a monopoly map-maker anytime a new area was mapped for at least 75 years.

Is there no way to get a more limited form? 75 years seems pretty crazy even for a lot of more conventional art...