NWoD: The God Machine rules update.

To say that some kinda of rules update for the core NWoD system has been needed for a while, is an understatement.

With eight(!) separate splats, countless expansion books for each splat, and one core book to connect them all. NWoD has become a little bloated and unwieldy. Especially when you consider that the Core book itself has a huge number of expansions covering a variety of subjects from expanded armouries to books about deamons, the spirit world, artefacts, and lord knows how many city books. It was getting to the point that to make yourself a fully rounded character you'd have to check through between four and five books.

That kinda book keeping can be slow and annoying to deal with at the best of times. So thank god for the God Machine Chronicles. One of a new series of books for the splats introducing new mechanics and collected merit lists. This one dealing with the core system, which will act as a springboard for the later books which will provide splat specific changes.

So what has changed?

For a start, they've done away with the old EXP system. Instead introducing the 'beats' system. Beats are awarded for fulfilling certain criteria, or at the GM's discretion. Five beats get you 1 experience. The experience costs have been changed to reflect this change. For instance, there is no longer changing exp costs based on dot levels.

Previously, the cost of increasing an attribute, let's say strength for this example, increased as more dots were put into it. So to go from three dots to four cost 20 exp (new dot times five). Now, there is a universal cost of 4 experience to increase an attribute. Want to go from one dot to two? 4 experience please. Want to got from four dots to five? 4 experience please.

Skills and merit costs have been similarly changed too. Skills costing 2 experience and Merits cost 1 experience.

Other new introductions are the change to the morality system and the new 'Conditions' system. Conditions replace the derangements previously attached to morality, however they also can be gained from a variety of sources, rather than just morality degeneration. Additionally, there are both positive conditions and negative conditions. Some of which can be taken at character creation as a permeant trait. I like this system, it's a lot more interesting then the derangements which always struck me as kinda badly though out. They were all mental illnesses and the only way to gain them was to have your morality drop. Normally though committing a sin.

Or to put it another way, the implication was that the mentally ill are terrible people.

The morality system changes are very interesting. "Morality" has been replaced by "Integrity" which rather then working from a singular set of 'sins' are drawn from a set of choices made by the player. Finally players get to craft their own moral code and live by it!

I'm hoping that when the follow up books come out for each splat, there'll be new options unique to each supernatural species.

A huge number of merits from a bunch of the core supplements have been collected together into the new list.  Given new dot costs and a couple of corrections for some of the already existing merits. There are also a ton of new merits all of which I love. Including a general 'safehouse' merit and the inclusion of the 'profession' merit from Hunter: the Vigil line. Now your characters can have an actual job as opposed to being murder hobos!

But my favourite inclusion is something called 'Truest Friend'. This effectively gains the player a loyal companion which is protected from the GM (can't be killed without player permission). Is damn near impossible to turn against the player character (-5 to the role to turn them, which is huge!), and spending time with them restores Willpower points. Thematically it's a wonderful thing, but also because it can be attached to the retainer merit and change the dynamics between the characters, making the retainer a friend or a love interest rather then an employee or work college.

Fighting styles have been put into their own category now, so GMs who wish to ban them can do so much easier. The expanded list contain both defensive and offensive styles which can provide a lot of different options.

Additionally, they've added a new category called 'supernatural' merits. These are psychic powers and lesser magics for use by lesser supernaturals and possessed people. While they do become inaccessible once a character takes on one of the mainline Supernatural natures they're a welcome inclusion. Especially as new rules state that any merit lost are automatically converted into equivalent experience to be spent on new things!

Combat rules have changed, ranging from the introducing their own selection of conditions called 'tilts' to changing the way weapons work and a change to the defence rules. Defence is still calculated the same way, lower of Wits or Dexterity. Defence is applied as a penalty to the attack roll of the guy trying to smack you. But now when you attempt a dodge action you roll Defence plus Athletics. Successes are removed from the attackers successes. Meaning that you could theoretically reduce the damage to nothing. I'm really not sure what I think of this. Sure it's giving a little more agency to the player, but it also comes with the downside that you don't apply your defence to the other guys roll.

Or to put it another way it's possible that the attacker can get more successes and do more damage from you using your turn trying the dodge manoeuvre then just attacking him normally. It just strikes me as an odd choice.

Then again this change in defence might go hand in hand with the new Weaponry rules. Pre-God Machine the weapon would be added to the rolled dice pool. Now the weapon's ratings are added to the successes after the dice are rolled. Making weapons a hell of a lot more deadly. Although it should be noted that this is done after successes have been deducted from a dodge move. No successes means no additional damage. So now the attack dice pools aren't unbalanced between brawl and weaponry users. Although Weapon users will always do more damage.

Weapons also now come with initiative modifiers. The bigger a weapon the slower you'll be reacting. No longer will players all grab whatever weapon gives the highest attack bonus (the chainsaw), because they'll get stomped by everything faster then they are.

Finally there are the tilts. Effectively they are a mechanical representation of the changing nature of a fight. They were first introduced in Vampire: The Requiem- Danse Macabre supplement and make a triumphant return here. They can only be gained in combat and outside of combat some of them can become Conditions. They can represent anything from Weather effects to drugs and poison to statuses to be inflicted. They're split into two categories, environmental, which effects everyone, and personal which effects a single character.

Personal Tilts range from annoyances to 'oh god I'm going to die'. I'm concerned about the Tilt 'Beaten Down' personally. It's a Tilt which is inflicted if the defender takes bashing damage in excess of his stamina or any lethal damage. It's effect being that to attack you must spend a point of Willpower. I understand what it's trying to represent, the exhaustion and weakness which comes from being hurt. But it still strikes me that this could very easily be abused. Willpower is pretty finite resource ranging from three to six with most starting characters. It's not all that easy to recover ether. Beyond ending the combat the only way to cure this Tilt is to surrender. Upon which point the character regains a point of Willpower and gets a beat. But can take no further action in the combat.

I like the concept, don't get me wrong. But I find the triggering requirements a little harsh. Taking a single point of Lethal brings on the Tilt. I'm probably going to houserule it.

The book provides a helpful table of all the Tilts for easy reference, but it only contains the effect of the Tilt. To find out the trigger or how to cure it you'll have to look it up in the book. It's still nice they included the table but you still have to be on your toes for when they activate.

Not only have there been changes to the combat system, they've introduced what could be considered a brand new social system. Really it's just a brand new complicated way to track how well you're doing with your conversations and politicalising. I'm still trying to get my head around it. But I've never been much of a social player. I'll report back once I understand it better.

Lastly, the book presents some unified 'spirit' rules, which come in three flavors. Ghosts, the echos of the dead, they're a pretty common antagonist for Mortal or Hunter stories or make NPCs for Giste games, though they can show up in any of the game lines. Spirits, the personification of ideas and objects, think the Kami from Shinto mythology, mostly deal with Werewolves but also Mages, can make pretty entertaining antagonists, a good stand in for more traditional deamon antagonists and the like. Lastly there are Angels, beings who are made by and serve the God Machine. I'm a little fuzzy on what their deal is, though with Deamon: the ??? coming out at some point this year I should have answers before too long.

Spirits work as they've always done, five playable ranks of power, and five more above those. Though anything beyond rank five is effectively a god and unusable in game. The three types have their own style to them. Working of different goals and requiring different things to recharge and increase their rank.

They've collected a new list of Numima (powers) together and combined it with a new system called Influences and Manifestations. Which represent how much power a ephemeral has over the enviroment. I like the idea, but like with the social system its taking me some time to get to grips with it.

So that's the rules update in a nutshell. If people want I can do a more detailed examination of sections of it. I will be revisiting the social and ephemeral sections anyway.

Up next: Great Ork Gods.

NeverDead? Never fear!

Recently I picked up a second hand title for the X-Box 360 called Neverdead. It had caused a bit of a buzz at the time of it's release due to it's primary mechanic. That being that Bryce Boltzmann (the player character) can never die.

He can be dismembered, decapitated, disarmed, broken, battered, burned, exploded, crushed, eaten, sure. But die? Pshh, whatever.

The usual disconnect between the story and the game was thrown to one side. The game took advantage of the recurring element of super hard demon hunters taking hits that would knock a building down and played it tongue in cheek. Of course he can take those hit! He's immortal! Then again hits like that do have a habit of making all of Bryce's limbs fly off as though the demons are playing Fallout 3 and just went into V.A.T.S mode.

So, how do you loose a game when you can never die? That's easy, there are two methods of 'loosing'. The first is to introduce an allied NPC to follow you around that you need to keep alive instead! The game replaced the health bar with an escort quest and then toted it as a feature.

It some respects it's actually kinda funny, the NPC is actually better at taking hits than Bryce is. Leading to points where I've had my head knocked off by the slightest of breezes, and Miss NPC is tanking hits like Superman while I attempt to find my torso.

The second method is that there is a enemy type which doesn't nothing and re-spawns infinitely while a fight is going on. But once you loose a limb or your head they rocket over and eat them. Giving you a limited amount of time to destroy them and reclaim your limb. If it's your head then it's a matter of completing a QTE or getting sent back to the last checkpoint. It feels pretty pointless and doesn't really have any consequences beyond making you redo a fight from the start again.

If your limbs do get consumed (which is likely, given how distracting the fights can be. More often than not I didn't notice I'd lost anything until the limb was already gone.) Then you can regenerate by clicking the Left Analogue stick. Unfortunately this is on a cooldown timer that activates once the limb/head is lost. Some skills can reduce the cooldown time but there's always a little waiting required. Which of course carries the risk of getting your head eaten.

With this in place the game has to make it's best attempts to mess you up. Which unfortunately it does by dropping as many enemies on you as possible with spawn points. Which it never lets up with throughout the entire run. Combined with the lack of enemy variety this can make some fights stale quickly. Although the developers have been smart enough to add a few environmental switch ups. Both in the form of destructible scenery to do large chunks to Deamons caught in the blast zone, and environmental dangers such as subway trains. Even so removing the spawn points ASAP can make things a lot more manageable.

The game also offers a large selection of skills to buy with XP gained from killing Deamons and grabbing collectibles. They unlock as you complete levels and can be changed and bought at any time in level. I like this system, it gives the canny player the chance to switch up their skills as the situation calls for it. Providing both passive and active bonuses to a variety of things. With the best skill stopping your limbs from detaching. True immortality. Unfortunately to get that you have to buy all the other skills first and then gathering the 10,000,000 EX required to buy it. Which would mean 16-17 total playthroughts of the game. Still, it gives you something to aim for.

So with the major selling points of the game explained, let's move onto the narrative stuff.

I'll say this much. The games story is pretty piss poor. It's focus is on the relationship between Bryce and Archadia (the allied NPC). They can play pretty well off of one another in some cases. But it's not enough to carry the story on it's own. Especially when they introduce the other main character, Nikki. Who is very. Very. Annoying. I cannot express how irritating she is at the start, and only becomes less annoying because she says less towards the end. She also wears the most ridiculous costume. Which is hand waved because she's a 'popstar'.

The story can be summed up as: Drunk cocky arsehole with tragic backstory kills deamons to get revenge for dead wife. There's not much more to it then that. There is a couple of twists, but nothing that really breaks the mold. It's the usual stock 'oh by the way I'm actually evil, surprise!' stuff which is never really all that shocking.

Nothing much is actually explained, so don't expect to have many answers by the end of it. The lack of explanation almost feels like there should be some kind of supporting material. Like a comic book or some kind of in game info files. Which there aren't any, so it's kinda strange really.

But weak plot aside, the gameplay is quite fun. It's fast and can be very hectic at times. The destructible scenery adds some nice flavour to the set peaces and the skills can change up your playstyle on the fly.

I wouldn't recommend buying it full price, but picking it up second hand might make for a nice distraction over the weekend.

The magical adventures of the strange and disturbing... Bioshock: Infinite

Herein follows a half arsed review. You have been warned.

In the years of my inactivity upon this dusty web covered sudo-diary I found myself considering the nature of sociability.

That is to say the way we perceive the world through our upbringing and interaction with other people. I will admit, before a certain point was reached my interaction with these 'other people' were limited and honestly pretty pitiful. Yet even I shut off and awkward as I was knew not to be an arsehole to people and to generally be a nice person.

This message has apparently been missed by the residence of Columbia. A good thing too or else we wouldn't have the latest in the Bioshock series.

Bioshock: Infinite takes a different aproch from it's predecessor titles. Not only happening in a different city (This one flies!) but also a different universe. There is no Rapture in this game, no Adam, no Little Sisters and Big Daddies, no 'sploysers' or whatever the phonetics are.

No, all of that has been done away with, gone are the dripping tunnels, the dark interiors, the genetically mutated inhabitance, no cameras and no hacking minigame. There is a lighthouse at least so we can be thankful of that.

The changes made to the game don't quite stop there. Your character (Booker DeWit) talks and has a personality. A welcome change from the past silent protagonists. What's more he's kinda a bad guy.

The games themes have changed drastically, no longer is it an examination of Objectivism (the creed of Andrew Ryan) But instead looks upon secularism, cultism, racism, redemption and rebirth and in some respects fate vs free will. It covers a lot, but the game takes it in it's stride. Impressive given that there's no clear moral ground for anyone to stand on. We root for Booker, he's our viewpoint, we want him to succed. But morally speaking he's just as bad as everyone else in the game.

The only innocent is Elisabeth, in many respects we look to hear for a true reaction to everything which is happening. She is our face throughout the game, a reflection of the emotions we as players feel. But interestingly enough, Booker isn't spared from her feelings. She reviles our avatar as much as she does everything and everyone else. The only difference is that Booker is offering her a way out. Freedom as opposed to manipulation. Elisabeth helps Booker, but only because he is the lesser of two evils.

Musings of the themes aside, Elisabeth makes for a great companion, unlocking doors, finding cash and ammo and supplies for you. She doesn't even have a health bar, instead keeping her head down when the fighting get's going. She is honestly the best NPC companion I've ever seen in a game and I hope that other games take note. Additionally her other mechanic (Which I won't go into for spoiler reasons) actually makes her useful in combat situations, and has the benefit of explaining in universe occurrences without making it all seem like a game mechanics. It's very well done and I'd love to see it explored more.

Elisabeth isn't the only good thing about this game. The environments are very pretty and a hugely welcome change to the dankness of Rapture. The NPCs that we meet along the way (Especially the lady and Gent, those two are amazingly good fun) ether through face to face confrontation or the audio diaries we find range from the sympathetic to the downright evil. But never cartoonish, just human.

Even with the occasional minor backtracking you'll do to complete some of the sidequests. The gameplay never stales, your madcap dash across this city in the sky makes sure you're never in a place long enough to get board. It is bright and open and fast. Everything feels like a rush, this isn't a slow methodical plod through a dying civilisation, this is a sprint to escape from a very much alive and very angry swarm of wasps.

Wasps with fireballs and a flying city.

The tonics and Plasmids have been replaced with Vigors. Thematically the same but diffrent in their uses. Nearly all of the powers have a second ability right from the get go and none of the Vigors work like the Plasmids. For example, Fire Plasmid: Burst of flame at a place or single target. Fire Vigor: Throw a flaming grenade of magma which expodes for AoE flames for all.

All of the Vigors have some utility or trap mechanism, and upgrades are limited to two purchase, some form of power boost, or an aid which'll do different things, like increase effect time, or lower the cost of use. Additionally, due to there being no Adam, upgrades and new Vigors are payed for with cash. The same cash used to upgrade your guns and purchase bullets and supplies.

This brings up an interesting quandary while playing, do you prioritise your gun's and upgrade them first? Or do you focus on your powers? It's impossible to get both and remain as effective as a focused playstyle. This question is especially as important as you can only carry two guns at a time. Though your upgrades are carried over if you drop one gun in favour of another.

No longer are you armed for all occasions, carrying every gun in existance. Now it's a matter of practicality. 'I could take the RPG, but it doesn't have much ammo, maybe the carbine would be better?'. Additionally tonics have been done away with in favour of magical clothing which does stuff when you wear it. This "Gear" is found scattered about and can do a variety of useful things such as increasing the clip size on all your weapons by 75%, or setting guys on fire when you hit them in melee.

Bioshock: Infinite has been parred down in many respects. But each change has added to the game rather than taken it away. It's fast paced gameplay, interesting narrative, and fascinating setting will keep you skyhooked. Certainly an improvement on Bioshock 2

A return to the printing press.

Oh man... this old thing.

It's been a while since I've had any use out of this blog. A shame really, but it's an old habit of mine, picking something up, enjoying it, putting time and occasionally effort into it. Then loosing interest and never really going back to it.

But I'm bored, so what the hell.

Interests have changed of the years since I last posted any updates, educations were completed, friends were found and the world went into an economic meltdown which only seems to get worst with every passing week. Leaving thousands, maybe even millions destitute and ensuring that nothing will ever be the same again.

I could say something pithy and oh so witty, but all the good lines have already been taken by people far cleverer and more tuned in to Global economical events and the ever increasing socio-political fall out which surounds them like a cloud of flies on a corpse. So I'll talk about something which interests me instead.

For the past few years I've become something of a Role Play fan. Role Play being dungeons and dragons as opposed to sexy nurses/teachers/police officers in the bedroom. This is an important distinction to make early on or otherwise you're all going to start thinking that my sex life is very odd indeed.

Recently I've been spending much of my time exploring the many and varied Splats put out by White Wolf. Primarily in it's New World of Darkness lines, (henceforth referred to as NWoD) these range from the typical big three of Vampire, Wearwolf, and Mage. To the smaller games of Hunter (Supernatural the RPG), Changeling (People who escaped from imprisonment by fairies), Promithian (Frankinstines monster gives you cancer), Geist (I don't even know how to explain this one), and a new upcoming edition to the world.

Mummy.

Mummy: the Curse to give it it's full title, involves, shockingly, Mummys. As they attempt to fulfil the needs and whims of their dark gods, remember who they were, keep their Cult happy, and generally fuck up anyone who gets in their way. Of which they are really good at.

White Wolf have changed up the game plan with Mummy. As opposed to the previous lines wherein the players would be persistently active within the game world, Mummys (Mummies?) only wake up when certain conditions are met. Spending the rest of the time sleeping in their tombs and being tended to by their cults. Said conditions range from Peeps breaking in and nicking stuff, the Cult waking you up or the stars being right. This conditions are pretty convenient plot hooks for your players to sink their teeth into right off the bat, and the system actually rewards payers who work towards the goal as opposed to just fucking about and not getting anything done.

It does this via a reversal of the usual progression of power most NWoD players go through. Every supernatural has a stat related to measuring the innate power which makes them what they are. In the vampires case this is 'Blood potency' or with the Werewolf it is referred to as 'Primal Urge'. These Powerstats universally begin at 1/10 giving the player plenty of time to become familiar with the mechanics of their character before taking them (in some cases) to godhood.

Mummy: the Curse starts it's characters with a Powerstat of 10/10. Making a freshly arisen character one of the most potent supernatural creatures on the planet. But here's the catch, their Powerstat, called Sekhem (roughly translated to 'life energy' I think) slowly drops as time goes on. Giving Mummies limited tenure to do what they gotta do. Fucking about will make it lower faster, cutting time between each separate Decent role. Where as working towards your goal and pleasing the Gods will grant you a reset to the counter before the next Decent role comes along. The degeneration will inevitably happen there's no two ways about it, but doing what you're supposed to be will let you stay at the top tiers that much longer.

In another reversal the Morality stat is replaced with Memory and starts you off at the bottom of the gauge as opposed to the top. In this case Memory represents how much of their existance the Mummy can remember. The lower it is the less they can remember, but the easier it is to tear a guy limb from limb and not feel all guilty over it.

Both of these changes gives the game an interesting new flavour, and has the added bonus of focusing the players on what's important to the campain. They can go off and do their own thing by all means, but don't go crying to the GM when your Sekhem starts dropping like a stone. Sekhem is also be spent for a number of other things, such as repairing Aggravated damage on the fly, or restoring all used Willpower dots. It's useful but risky tactic that can bring a Mummy closer to their end, but be the very thing they need to complete their objective.

I haven't mentioned Utterances and Affinities, well these are the powers granted to the Mummies. Affinities are small traits which can give the Arisen some cool little powers. Like seeing ghosts, being amazing at parkour, or punching through a bank vault door. The Affinities also have a quality which I'll talk about later but for right now I'm focusing on the positive.

Utterances are the bigger magical powers. Crazy shit like breathing fire, summoning swarms of Scarabs, or... I don't know... BEING THE STAR WHICH LEAD THE THREE WISE MEN TO BETHLEHEM AND THE ANGEL WHO APPEARED TO THE SHEPHERDS.
THAT IS A THING.
THAT YOU CAN DO.

I fucking love it!

Some of the Utterances are bible inspired (Like the one which let's you part bodies of water), where as others are inspired by film and TV (making sand storms eat people). There's a lot of variety and pretty much all of them do some really cool things.

The actual progression of the powers is pretty unique as well and ties into my next point. When you get an Utterance you have three 'tiers'. Each one does something different all of them have their uses. Unlike the normal powers in NWoD, you only need to buy an Utterance once. As long as you meet the requirements for the next tier you can cast it. Meaning that clever players will plot out their purchases ahead of time to take maximum advantages of their pillars.

Oh yeah, Pillars.

The Mummies have a thing called a "Five part soul" each part represented by one of the five Pillars. Ab (Heart), Ba (Spirit) Ka (Essence) Ren (Name) Sheut (Shadow). Mummies can have up to five levels in each pillar. These Pillar points are used to fuel their abilities, from stat boosts, to improved healing, powering Utterances, and activating Relics. Unlike other Supernaturals a Mummies max pool is twenty five Pillar Points, so five dots in each pillar. However the relatively low cost of the Mummies abilities makes that a very minor problem. The level of the individual Pillars is used to work out which Tiers have been unlocked on the Utterences. So expect a Mummy with a lot of Pillars to be able to throw around a lot of moves.

The thing is, that while you might start out with access to the cool awesome powers and shit tone of Pillar points. The slow inevitable decline of your Sekhem stat will eventually hit a point where it will start to lower your statistical maximums. Your attributes, skills, Pillars, and by extension your Utterances and affinities will ether be capped or disappear completely, loosing you access to your cool shit as your overall power weakens.

But the powers aren't lost, you simply don't have enough energy to fuel them. And thankfully there are ways to get it back. The primary being, break the things the gods what you to get in the first place. The world is littered with Artefacts, objects containing Sekrem granting them strange abilities. It is these Artefacts that the Mummy is occasionally woken up to find. For the most part grabbing it and stuffing it inside your tomb works for your fickle gods. However, if you fancy some more time running about the mortal world, or theres that one guy you really want to kill before you go and have your nap, you can drink Sekhem from the Artefacts and re-energize yourself.

This comes with it's own dangers, creating horrific monsters, weakening or destroying the artefact, and pissing of your god. Which is a very bad idea. Do it enough and he might just wake up some other mummies to come and stomp your face in. They're kinda dicks like that.

Speaking of getting your face stomped in I've yet to talk endlessly about the unique enemies that Mummy brings to the table. But I suppose that that and the background details can wait for another time. This is pretty long as it it.

So stay tuned for part two, where in I talk about the bad guys, the setting, and maybe even how to integrate Mummies into other NWoD games.