Forum Replies Created
F.A.R.Although I don’t know the origins, it’s a fairly common idea – Harry Potter and Voldemort seem to be accidental proxies, for instance (or perhaps intentional proxies if, as some far-too-intense fans speculate, Harry is a horcrux – but that would cause huge logistics issues and is thus nearly untenable). Many other fantasy novels that involve scrying use proxy-like techniques (name anagrams, family members) to foil that magic.
Hell, it’s not too far from strapping something that smells like you to a moving object to foil hound dogs.
F.A.R.“Bill in Three Persons” is a killer – that’s how I plan to begin my new campaign this fall (don’t tell the players!). If you don’t want to use a published adventure, there are plenty of other options. One of the easiest might be to ask yourself what they’d be doing as mundanes, and to throw something their way that looks like what they’d normally deal with but turns out to have an unnatural root. I did this once in a Call of Cthulhu game that my players thought was d20 modern.
Here’s one thing I’ve had to remind myself of while planning the new game: if weird stuff is falling into their laps, make sure there’s a reason. The Occult Underground is difficult enough to find that the existence of magic has never been revealed to the general public; don’t make it easy unless it’s easy for a reason (i.e., they’re being groomed as tools for a powerful Duke, one of them has some ritual significance to a certain cabal, or maybe they just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time – but decide what it is first).
Also, where is your game set? If you and your players know the area, you can really turn that to your advantage (esp. if you know what the occult mainstream is like there). I guess that’s all the advice I have so far; I’m planning my own game now, so I’ll keep an eye on this thread in case someone who actually knows what he’s doing replies.
By the way, I notice from your username that you’re a Chambers fan. If you’re interested in Call of Cthulhu, I hope you’ll check out the comments in the “Mordiggan” entry under Avatars. There’s some brilliant work in there.
– FAR out
F.A.R.I’m surprised to find people who actually know BoC, but I guess I should expect it here more than anywhere else. I own Music Has the Right to Children and Twoism, plus a handful of others, which I love. One of my old friends had every track, even down to the old tapes. If only I knew where she got them . . .
F.A.R.I have to say, I’m a fan of background music. I don’t usually want it to steal the stage, but to set it. Boards of Canada is what I plan to be playing during my next game. If you’ve never heard their music, check it out. They make analog electronica, playing with magnetic tape and things. It’s a perfect urban horror soundtrack: empty streets, haunting echoes . . .
– F.A.R. out
F.A.R.There could be a ritual – and make it a good one – that the character would to align himself with a new city without losing the connection to the others. It would involve aligning himself with the two cities symbolically; for instance, an urbanomancer who starts in Havana and then moves to Miama wouldn’t have a hard time. Perhaps you’d have to find a number of elements in the new city that signify the original one, reinforcing the idea that all cities of the world are simply one Universal Metropolois. The character’s obsession would have to reflect this, though: if he’s devoted to the All-City, he could work this into his belief system, but if he’s a New Yorker? Fuggedaboutit.
As for storing charges in cities, I like that idea – and would the number of charges storable in a city be determined by population?
You could call him the Global Playboy.
– F.A.R. out
F.A.R.I know this is an old thread, but . . . have you EVER tried taking care of a snake? And if you’ve never seen one outside of a zoo, I’m sorry, that’s your loss.
Snakes are stupid, but very good at escaping cages. If they get out, you have to catch them pronto or they curl around the radiator and fry up. Bam. No more charges. And giving them away? My dad worked at the live animal center of a museum for years, and he was the snake guy; any snakes were loose or abandoned, he’d take them until he could find a new home for them. You know what he found out? There ARE no new homes for snakes. Everyone who loves snakes has as many as they can feed, and everyone else hates them. It sounds to me like Herpemancy was written by someone who knows snakes through and through, but didn’t have enough imagination / was too involved to tighten the school’s abilities. Still, it seems that a wide range of powers could be appropriate for a school in which each significant charge is a years-long committment – just look at videomancy!
That said, the charge system does not appear unbalanced. A person whose obsession is snake care will not be getting more charges than any other adept; he’ll probably be getting far fewer, especially when you consider that most of his money is paying for rats and the heating bill. And travel? Forget it. You can’t trust anyone to house-sit snakes. Think about *consequences*, people! You don’t just buy a snake and stack it on the shelf!