The Cadaverous Earth

[LD]

It's term paper season so updates are slowish. I'm currently 2000 words into the Skein adventure outlines, though, and have some unfinished material on Crepuscle and Somnambulon... hopefully I'll find time to do at least a mid-sized update soon. Good to know people aren't tired of the setting!

Okay, I'm looking forward to seeing what you have!

Good luck.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]As promised, the Skein adventure outlines have been posted (you can find them right after the description of Skein itself.  I'm proudest of the first and final adventures (arcs 1 and 4); the former is sort of Pinocchio meets The Silence of the Lambs and is one I've been wanting to do for a long time - in fact there are a couple of references to its "villain" scattered throughout the rest of the setting.  The latter is a kind of subverted dungeon crawl, where the item to be retrieved is alive...[/ooc]

[LD]

Glad to see the update!

with a clockwork eye called Queros.

How does it report the information back to his brain?

I like how 1 and 2 were integrated.

I've been considering the setting. If I were to run it, it seems a Cthulu or Hero system would be most appropriate. Somehow it doesn't seem like D20 would be the best system to simulate the skills. I have considered the White Wolf Storyteller System, but it seems that too much "modifications" would be need to be made to the skills there... a d100 system like Cthulu or Hero would probably be best. Also, in those systems it is more likely that the characters can die- thereby suiting a more "realistic" or gritty system.

I have not played Shadowrun so I cannot comment on its system.

...I think that covers all the major designed systems that would appear to be applicable to this project.

What do you think Steerpike? What would be the most suitable platform to run your game?

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Clockwork/cybernetics are kind of same/diff in CE... think the steampunk bionics of Thief or even Warhammer 40 000: as in this awesome video, near the beginning, or  this one at 2:04.  Not terribly realistic physically, maybe, but aesthetically pleasing.  Think "clockwork" microchips with a wire infrastructure to convey electrical signals.  Or, as I'm inclined to do, stick your fingers in your ears and repeat "it's magic" over and over.

What system to use is a big question for me... I'm inclined towards FUDGE/FATE for its flexibility, but I'm not sure yet.  I have no experience with d100 systems but I know Cthulu has some detailed madness mechanics that might suit the setting well.  I think the whole thing could be converted to d20, but it would take a lot of effort.  I'm inclined more towards 3.5 than to 4E based on what little I've seen of the latter (its lack of Vanceian magic, for example).

EDIT: You convinced me that clockwork isn't the right term; I changed it to "mechanical."  Basically I just want clunkier and more nakedly mechanical technology with all its guts exposed rather than streamlined cybertech.[/ooc]

[Superfluous Crow]

Well, system-wise i think Unhallowed Metropolis could be worth considering seeing as the settings have some similarities. Then again, UnMet has pretty much become my universal answer to setting questions so just take it as a suggestion (i know you've looked at it).

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Is UnMet under the open gaming license or whanot?  Not that I'd particularly care for my own use, but if I was going to go to a lot of trouble to write up CE with a gaming system, I'd want to use something open source as it were, as I know FUDGE is...[/ooc]

[LD]

Re: The Mechanical Eye
-Interesting, thanks for the imagery!

Re: the System
- I can't say I'm too familiar with FATE/FUDGE, (or UnMet) I'll have to look them up.
- Do you really think Vancian magic would be best for your world? Perhaps a Mana based system might better fit its themes? (you would know better than I, though). Or something different, like a "sacrificial" system where players damage themselves or others to create spells?

[Steerpike]

[ooc]It might not be straight-up Vancian, maybe a hybrid of Vancian and mana/"numina"-based.  I was thinking something close to the Wheel of Time d20's channeling system, where overchanneling is possible but can lead to damage/madness.  I like the idea of discrete spells that are named much like Vance's spells.  The whole memory thing could be dropped, though, I suppose, its just that I want every spell to be built around specific formulae and glyphs and such rather than simply being a manifestation of arcane power; I want it to feel ritualistic and grounded in lines and characters.[/ooc]

[Kindling]

I think the idea of a kind of Sacrificial-Vancian spell system might work. Something with, as you say, clearly set spells, a la Vance, but where the spellcaster's level and/or willpower equivalent stat determines how many spells he or she can use, and how often, and how powerful they are, but that this amount of mana (or whatever equivalent name you may choose) is delibrately insufficient (maybe becoming closer to sufficient at higher character "levels"), forcing spellcasters to step outside the safe zone and take some kind of psychic damage as a result, in order to be properly effective... I see that as fitting quite well with the tone of the setting, as it leads to that kind of classic tampering-with-forces-beyond-mortal-understanding mentality, whereby in order to produce any significant magical effect without spending an unacceptable (to most PCS, anyway) amount of time carefully spacing it out so as not to get hurt, the spellcaster has to risk his or her sanity, or perhaps more....

[LordVreeg]

[ooc]It might not be straight-up Vancian, maybe a hybrid of Vancian and mana/"numina"-based.  I was thinking something close to the Wheel of Time d20's channeling system, where overchanneling is possible but can lead to damage/madness.  I like the idea of discrete spells that are named much like Vance's spells.  The whole memory thing could be dropped, though, I suppose, its just that I want every spell to be built around specific formulae and glyphs and such rather than simply being a manifestation of arcane power; I want it to feel ritualistic and grounded in lines and characters.[/ooc]

ok.  Discrete spell names and mana are not mutually exclusive at all.
Was the nectar the source of magic here, or am I having a different flashback?  I'm just asking again so that I can try to wrap my head around what the glyphs are doing...

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Witchcraft is all very muddled at the moment.

Basically, here's how I have it sketched out:

Lots of different groups of spellcasters have developed systems of glyphs, runes, sigils, incantations, or other symbols that describe and evoke magic.  These are akin to "magical languages" or scientific systems.  The idea is that these systems create a kind of "magical text" that can then be interpreted or "read."  It doesn't matter what the system/language is so long as its internally consistent and cohesive.  This is similar to the theory that scientific knowledge is never discovered but only described; that in a sense we create scientific knowledge, and various metaphors for it.

It's like in M. John Harrison's novel Light, in which various different engines can all produce FTL travel even though they assume competing and even contradictory systems of physics: some assume a Newtonian base, others run on quantum logic, others assume string theory, some that space is a foam and "waves" must be caught and ridden, some that its smooth and must be glided along, etc.  Even if that's nonsense in terms of real scientific knowledge, that's how magical systems work in CE.  They're all equally valid, in the same way that all languages are equally valid - its not possible to say, for example, that French is a "truer" language than Russian, anymore than you can say that Moroi's nigromancy is truer than leechkin shamanism.

What matters, then, is a set of symbols.  Some are spells (hexes) which use incantations; others are more ritualistic (wards) and use glyphs.

The next step is to invoke arcane energy into the set of symbols you've selected.  This involves channeling "numina" (mana, basically) from the aether, which is sort of the realm of the imagination or the collective unconscious (the Suppuration being a bleed from the aether into the physical world).  This is akin to giving the symbol meaning, interpreting it.  It doesn't have magical meaning until you've "read" it.

Nectar facilitates the channeling of numina.

Therefore as presented right now, witchcraft combines some basically Vancian concepts (forumlaic, systematic magic with discrete spells rather than sorcerous channeling of nameless magical energy; systems of magic must be learned and cannot simply be intuited) and a mana system (you need numina to power your symbols).[/ooc]

[LordVreeg]

OK.  will get a better look tonight.
(Psychology has this issue...many competing ways of viewing how the dynamic works...none are right, per se, they are just different)

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Wow I somehow missed Kindling's post... that suggestion is pretty much exactly in line with how I see magic as functioning.  You learn a set of spells as in Vance, but you can only channel so much numina, and attempting to channel too much leads to madness.  Nectar cataylzes channeling and makes it easier, but overdose is quite possible as well.[/ooc]

[LD]

Okay, Channeling too much leads to madness- that reminds me of how White Wolf has a sort of "point break" system in Mage.

IT seems like that would work well for your world!

[Superfluous Crow]

Maybe focus more on the aspects of mental fatigue and over-use rather than an expendable pool. So instead of being able to "run out" of numina, it just becomes progressively more dangerous.

EDIT: i think Iron Heroes did something like this; i'll look into it at some point if you don't have the book yourself.