That is what Emily sounds like ALL THE TIME, and it's AWESOME.
Oh, and the map, which they include in the preview packet? Freaking gorgeous. Just a delight.
This is a godddamned delight.
Oh God.
@multiplexer you are NEVER ALLOWED TO PLAY ONE OF THESE
I have no idea how money works yes, nor do I know exactly what Lifestyle & Repute are, but I LOVE THIS
SotS has some useful checks against this, but the issue is still there, so let's walk through this.
By default "cover" is anything which impedes communication, like a great deal of noise. I love this idea, but I want to expand it
That's powerful. Done right, it makes action more of an ebb & flow and less of a steady depletion, and I can get behind that.
So, if you have The City Watch as an alliance, you can use it as an investigation skill to know things about the guard and stuff, or to spend points to call in favors. If you just have favors, you get no knowledge and favors run out
More details on this later, but I'm intrigued.
With maybe one exception, each one of these diseases has a strong story component and has stages of progression that map to story beats, and that's freaking brilliant.
But perhaps more interestingly, the same is applied to *social* maneuvers.
With the caveat that all social manipulation in games is fraught, this seems a clever hack. Always has an escape hatch.
I had questions going into this, and I'm not sure they're all answered. As with combat, difficulty in cross referencing complicates things a little.
So, yeah, pricey.
And that's kind of brilliantly evil.
Because the payoff for spending even a little corruption can be dramatic, and the cost of any single spend is relatively mild, sooner or later you're gonna do it.
The opening is promising - this is not a game where resources are built up and invested in. It is a game of fortunes won and lost.
So, at the start of an adventure, spend 1-5 wealth for:
1 Low Repute 2
2 Low Repute 1
3 No Repute
4 High Repute 1
5 High Repute 2
You can have an Ally pay for your lifestyle, but doing so incurs a grudge with that ally. Looks like it's always 1 point of Grudge, so definitely milk them for all they're worth!
No. There is gear.
Also, the actual poisons are here, and they are as delightful as I'd hoped.
Gonna be honest - I hope that's true. If it's not, this is some mean advice.
This might seem powerful, but as the text notes, it's a gift to the GM.
Which is awesome.
But if you have? You're off to the races.
1. Ask a player what went wrong.
2. Ask another player to make it worse.
3. Ask another player to resolve it.
Simple as that.
But if you can set that aside and look at this as a constant gift of meaningful future plot hooks, the true gold reveals itself.
There's an artistic purity sort of argument here which bumps right into the reality that mechanics like Corruption are not everyone's bag. Enough people to be a real issue, I wager.
Though, of course, it's also a profound opportunity for hacking. :)
Plus rules for playing ghosts!
Need to go check on the kid and do household stuff, but at last, I am at the promised land. I shall return.
First, every building sinks. At different speeds - couple inches a year, a floor every 50 years on average.
There is no good reason why this is so.
The lack of an explanation is, honestly, kind of a delight.
When I say "body" I mean it bother literally and also not literally.
Also, there's some pretty clear subtext that the act of living in the city tends to result into buying strongly into jingoistic, trickle down super capitalism.
Or, skip the hassle and stick to the canals.
Funerary rites.
Until something happens to the statue. Boo!
Upshot: There are a LOT of statues in Eversink.
I mean, there's an arena and pit fights and stuff too, but c'mon - EELBALL
I am inclined to call it "Penny", after the traditional starting amount.
Despite this, food carts find there way to the rest of the city, despite opposition.
Which is to say the stage is set for robust food cart adventures.
I am THERE.
A) Sacred
B) Protected by Law
C) Noisy pains in the ass
Also, lots of rats, snakes, birds and pigs.
This is handy for an RPG, since there's less to keep track of.
BUT AS I SAID, NO SUBTEXT TO BE FOUND HERE.
And the thing is, it might be true. But there's no real way to be sure.
Gentrification and Real Estate fraud.
Like, literally, the New Money are tying to brute force build a new old district.
It has flyers and live music!
I am not joking, even a little.
Sure, this COULD get organized, but that might interfere with COMMERCE, and that's just intolerable.
I don't know, but neither does the watchman who just caught you lockpicking. But it sure SEEMS like it could exist!
#1. Sorcerous Corruption - This is an existential threat to the city and taken quite seriously.
#2. Counterfeiting - Fake currency makes for (often unintentional) false contracts. Unacceptable.
#4. Everything else.
I mean, yes, Murder is *illegal*, especially if you're tacky about it. But, priorities are pretty clear.
That sounds like a tautology, but it's not. To unpack, it matters to have a world that hangs together with enough detail, logic and life to FEEL authentic. That is, it matters to your game that there are things which matter in the setting.
Because if the authenticity of the setting doesn't matter, then it also doesn't matter when player's CHANGE it through their play.
The value of that change depends on the value of the world.