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 Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:06 pm
Okay... so, technically speaking, these questions haven't really been publicly "pondered," but they're things we've noticed in profiles or posts that we probably should have addressed and didn't, because we're RPG-Moderator n00bs. sweatdrop
Anyway, below are a list of questions that you might have, and hopefully the answers will be of some help. If you think of anything else you want/need to know, send either 'Cia or myself a PM and we'll (1) send you back an answer, and (2) post it in this section for everyone else, too.
Okay, off we go!
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Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:07 pm
How Strong is “Annoyingly Strong”? Well, there is no real rule for this, of course, but here are the kind of things We the Mods tend to shy away from:
Strong Craft and Strong Physical Abilities – We’re fine with one or the other, and we’re fine with moderate abilities in both, but when you can encase someone in a block of ice and slice them in half with your 15-foot claymore, then we’ve got a problem.
Impenetrable Craft – In other words: “Wow, you can shoot Water Arrows of Death at me, create barriers that break all attacking weapons, and heal yourself with the power of the Magical Water Pixies? That’s some Craft you’ve got there, mister!” sweatdrop
In my mind, there are three basic things Craft can do in a battle-type situation: attack, defend, and heal. Overall, the ability to use two of these to a moderate extent is fine, but all three is pretty insane. And if you’re going to be crazy-strong, then we’d prefer if you were crazy-strong in only one category. For example: your character can blow up buildings (with his miiiiiiind!) but if someone shoots a bullet at him, well, he’s pretty much screwed. Savvy? pirate For more details on all of this, check out the Super-Deluxe Craft Database, under "Forms of Craft."
Incidentally, this rule also works on characters with intense physical abilities: if they get too intense, we’ll have to ask you to tone it down a bit (it’d be really unlikely to find someone skilled with 12 totally different weapons, for instance).
Multiple Crafts out the Wazoo – I won’t get too into this because there’s a note about it under the Craft section in “Odds ‘n’ Ends,” but characters don’t get more than 1-2 innate (“born”) abilities. Everything else is Learned… and, since Learned abilities take a lot of time to master, I don’t see people having more than 2 of these maximum, either. So basically, no more than 3 Craft abilities per character, and the more you have, the weaker they become.
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Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:08 pm
What’s Up with These Demon Things Anyway?
The species “demon” does not actually exist – it is a term that the Church uses to describe any intelligent (in this case, I’m using the term to mean “something that uses language”) creature that is not human. This includes a variety of races, pretty much anything you can find in mythology, really, and several of those species are listed under the “Description of Races” thread in the Database forum. The so-called “demon races” do not typically refer to themselves by this term; elves call themselves “elves,” and call vampires “vampires,” and so on.
Also, most of the time they don’t interact with each other, since they are of separate races (and cultures), though the recent trouble with the humans has caused some of them to bridge the racial gap.
A few other things that have been brought up:
Demon… Races? - Yes, races! All of these creatures are real, physical animals, just like humans and penguins and box turtles. So even if they are considered “spirits” in the myths, don’t let the title fool you: they give birth, live, and die pretty much the same as the rest of us.
”Now Honey, Sometimes When an Elf and a Human Love Each Other Very Much…” We sometimes refer to the other races as different “species,” but the term isn’t entirely accurate: there has been interbreeding between some of the races, particularly among humans and some of the more humanoid races, and their kids can go on to have more kids, and so on.
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Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:10 pm
Science! History!
And Other Subjects We Slept Through During High School The official genre that we’ve given this RPG is “realistic fantasy,” meaning that even though ‘magic’ and ‘demons’ exist, they exist in a very real-world sense. Now, of course neither of your mods are science majors, and neither of us are going to start holding everyone to strict laws of physics and whatnot, because that would just be silly. There are, however, a couple of important things to keep in mind when creating characters and working in this world:
Death and Taxes – There really are only three things that are certain in this world “death, taxes, and the Jayhawk basketball team making Rihga cry at the end of every season crying .” This rule applies to the RPG world too, and all the ‘demon’ races. Cells get old, they wear out, and eventually they die off. Nothing lives forever, no matter what the old myths say.
Now this doesn’t mean, of course, that every species has the 100-some year life span that humans technically possess. Those myths about immortality probably came about because the particular ‘demon’ race lived longer than his human counterparts. So, for example, Rihga decided to make vampires live about 300 years. Anything over 500 years we tend to shy away from, but don’t feel like you’re stuck in the human world all the time. “Realistic Fantasy” still has the word “fantasy” in it, after all. 3nodding
“It’s MaAaAaAgic!” – Not exactly. We call it Craft instead of Magic, and we call it that for a reason. Magic has this sense of “Poof! Look! Now you’re a frog!” while Craft is more technical, along the lines of “Well I need to learn the right incantations and figure out where I need to draw the power from and how to hold it in my mind so I don’t lose control…” and so on. The basic idea here is, your abilities don’t just pop out of thin air: it took work to get where you are, and now you’ve got a pretty good grip on whatever-it-is your abilities come from. Of course, some people learn faster than others, so there’s no real learning curve. Just keep in mind that, if you only awakened to your abilities recently, and you haven’t used them very much, here’s what’ll probably happen:
1. If you have good control, it’s not going to be very strong yet
2. If it’s really strong right away, you’re not going to have very good control over it yet
Like I said before, there aren’t any fixed rules about this stuff. These are just some things to keep in mind when you’re writing.
“Lo, a Clergyman Doth Approach! How Fare Thee, Kind Sirrah?” Uh… sweatdrop Please don’t talk or act like this unless you’re performing a play. Even though technology has backtracked a bit, we’re still 200 years into the future, not in the Dark Ages or the Renaissance. That also means no Guilds, Knights, Fairy Princesses, or Eyes of Sauron (woohoo! Nerd joke! blaugh ). Although there are some exceptions, society is more-or-less organized under modern rules… it just happens to be run by an almighty Church, now. whee (Why did that get a “whee” face?)
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:31 pm
RELIGIOOOOOOOOON… RELIGION!
(I really hope you were thinking of “Fiddler on the Roof” when you read that, by the way…)
Bishops, Cardinals, Priests… ah-hah, so those damned dirty Catholics got a hold of the world again, did they! – Actually, no. The Catholic hierarchy was adopted by the Church, but that’s mostly because that particular branch of Christianity always had more of a hierarchical system, so it was easier to copy than the other denominations (you’ll notice that they got rid of the title “Pope,” because that one really screams Catholicism). Admittedly, the Church has a lot of Catholic influence because the creators of this RPG are more-or-less Catholic themselves, but officially speaking, the Church doesn’t follow any one denomination of Christianity… and, to tell the truth, they aren’t even that Christian. They use the cross as their symbol but crucifixes are fairly rare, and few of the Church’s people will talk about Jesus or the lessons of forgiveness and love that pervade the New Testament. The message is more along the lines of “God’s eternal wrath” or “God’s redeeming love” – and among the higher-ups, it tends to be rather fire and brimstone.
Diff'rent Strokes to Rule the World – Although a Judeo-Christian Church runs society, that doesn’t mean that other religions have been completely stamped out. Persecution isn’t something new, and it certainly isn’t something that’s going to stop people from practicing what they truly believe, no matter what punishments might await them. So all the lovely sects and subgroups of the Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Wiccan, etc., etc. religions still exist – they just exist in smaller, less publicized numbers ("demon" races have their own religions as well, of course). In fact, the only “belief system” that I can’t really see working in this world is full atheism, because shamans and necromancers have proven, through their interaction with the spirits of the dead, that there is in fact some sort of afterlife. That’s not to say that a person has to believe in a higher power, of course, so in that sense atheism would be fine – it’s just gotten pretty damn hard to believe that nothing exists after death, is all.
What do Church Officials and Lex Luthor, The Penguin, & Team Rocket Have in Common? - Very little, it turns out. ^^; Even though some of the Orders are run by rather corrupt individuals, that doesn’t mean the Church system as a whole is filled with villains to be thwarted, captured, and “blasted off again.” Many of the people who work within the Orders, even those within Saint Peter, are honest, kind, hard-working individuals who truly believe in their duties and strive to help and save as many people (and even demons) as possible. Now, this doesn’t mean that your character knows this, so it’s understandable if someone is bitter about “those Church bastards”… but do keep that in mind when creating characters and interacting with one another. The world is mostly filled with good people, and the Church is no exception.
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