Breaking the Chosen definitely effects the god within. We can see that with Blighter and how Alchemy (which is tied to the divinity within) is now tainted. Or how the Breaking of Nyx caused the moon to shatter. What EXACTLY that means (how affected is the deity in question, can this process be somehow reverse) is a complex question that isn’t clear. What I can say is the Shreya believes that if you destroy a Broken the divnity inside will be freed. But she also lost the war she guaranteed she could win … so take that with a grain of salt ^_~
Old Empire tech is definitely a higher category of Alchemy. Old Arthur C Clarke quote and all (All sufficiently advanced technology…). Remember that they had understanding well past anything we have in the current calendar date (Or is slowly catching up though)…
Hahaha, my bad. I think you’re right @Khierdan. That’s on me. I think it’s the 0-nature of Rookie trauma that threw me off, but that’s an excuse not a good reason.
Awesome thank you very much! Good old Shreya I am really interested to see how a game with her in plays.
Hope it’s cool to ask a follow up If Blighter is corrupting alchemy does that mean old Empire Alchemy will also be getting corrupted and changed or is that part of a “different gods domain” for want of a better phrase ?
@Cullen_Lewis That’s the sort of question we leave up to the table and the folks there to decide ^_~
You can see that the transmission stone (Duresh special mission, old empire tech) has this problem, but that there is a different form of side-effects around the warding stones (Long Road). Could go either way or be tied to factors folks don’t understand really anymore (since almost nobody understands Old Empire stuff anymore).
I don’t know that this gets an official/canonical answer. Sorry! On the other hand, feel free to make up whatever works for your group.
It’s a few thousand dollar question at best @pseudoidiot ^_~
Right now I’m enjoying working on smaller games and catching up on playing before our lives become consumed with another book. It’s going to be a bit. I think Throne is in queue before it.
What I can promise is that I’m excited, and we have a lot of the stuff outlined. So it’s a question of slotting it into the already hectic schedule
Is it intentional that all of Blighter’s Infamous and Lieutenants start ungated by any Broken Ability, but that Breaker needs two (one for Devourers, and one for Transformed) and Render needs two (one for Heartless and one for Thorns)? If so, why this design choice?
The question is incorrect, she needs Abominable Science for 3 of them (yes she starts with it but it’s still required and uses up the power pick).
But yes this is intentional.
When you build a game you have certain knobs. Powers, Lieutenants, and Infamous are some of those knobs you can turn. The armies are designed differently. You’re looking at the wrong piece there. The majority of the encounters soldiers have are with line troops—and a lot of it is army design, not special design.
Blighter is a good starter villain. Her infamous and lieutenants are definitely not some of the most terrifying in the game (the Doctor gets iced often in early game for example), and she starts with no real ranged options, which snipers and blackshot help to offset. Her builds and synergies are straightforward, and you should want to pick up her army enhancers just to balance out her troop types and vary up the encounters you get to set up as a GM.
Some villain armies are about the cool lieutenants, and some are about the more common line troops. The builds for them are different and we’re not attempting to make uniform sets so much as some varied options. A lot of our playtesting there had to do with which build path folks picked for their broken.
And also quite frankly, if you want to have a potent, scaled, monstrosity as a unit that can drop out of the sky and snatch up people … you probably should have to spend a power for that.
First, thanks for creating this awesome system! A friend told me about it, and after reading the rule book I just knew I needed to run it (okay, to be honest I am running two games… ) The world is rich and interesting, the mechanics are so good at driving narrative efficiently, and the army management is a fun theme with an elegant system to back it up!
I’ve consumed basically everything I can on the world Lore, I’ve read the book cover to cover, I’ve read the speculation thread, I’ve read this thread, I’ve watched 20+ hours of you running this game… (and it’s a real treat when new-to-me Lore stuff comes up in a session), and I have a couple points of curiosity. I understand if some of this is intended to be “decide at your table” stuff, but I’m curious about your head cannon even so… (and if, as a newbie, I’ve missed a key source of Lore, please point me at it, and/or don’t snark toooo hard! )
The Living God
a. Is the Living God the god -of- something?
b. Why did the Living God create nine chosen back in the day? Does it always maintain nine Chosen?
c. What is the reason that the Living God’s Chosen don’t burn out the same as the other gods?
d. What is the reason Zora in particular has lived for -centuries-?
e. Does Zora regret breaking Dar?
Dar
a. What is the god of Dar a god of? Fire? Is whatever their portfolio is of Broken in some way?
b. Was the Cinder King Chosen in response to a crisis that they are supposed to be solving? Or, is this some sort of revenge being conducted by a wronged god? Is the Cinder King “on mission” right now, or subverting their purpose as a Chosen?
c. What was the crisis Zora solved by breaking Dar? (If Zora even tries to solve crisis, int he conventional Chosen sense…)
Old Empire Blood Magic
a. Why don’t undead created by Old Empire methods respond to Black Powder?
b. Could the Cinder King, the Broken, or their subordinates command an Old Empire undead?
c. What does a wraith do or think about when guarding a chalice for 500 years?
d. Is there something inherently important about blood in the metaphysics of this world?
Breaking
a. How does Breaking happen? I saw the bit of video where during a game Blighter tried to Break Shreya with the distant help of the Cinder King and failed. What is the word that Blighter says, and why that utterance?
b. Does Shreya have any special resistance to breaking, or was it just time and circumstance?
Symbology
a. One can’t help but notice the Living God has nine chosen, Nine Chosen arose to go after the Cinder King, and the Cinder King wears a nine-pointed crown. (Okay, really a ten-pointed crown with one missing, but…) Are these coincidences, or is there metaphysical significance in the world to the number Nine?
b. Zora and the Cinder King both wield fire, and we see in one of the missions True Fire has some properties that connect those with it. (Or maybe this is just because it’s the missing part of the Basalt Crown from Dar?) Are Zora and the Cinder King connected in a similar way? (Or some other way?)
So much gratitude for the imagination and joy brought to myself and friends via your work!
Hoo boy this is gonna take a bit. Let’s take a look.
a. Not the type of god many of the others are. So they don’t have a clear cut portfolio like the Bartan deities do. If I had to condense it to one word… Blood (but like all capitalized divine traits… it’s not that simple).
b. As far as the lore is concerned, it’s because that’s how many he felt he needed to accomplish the things that were yet to happen. He hasn’t made any more since.
c. They’re not Chosen like other god’s Chosen so the same rules don’t apply to them. It’s more accurate to say they are Created. In the end they have a similar level of power and similar rules to other Chosen so … most people in that world don’t really care about (or understand) the distinction.
d. He’s called the Living God for a reason. It’s one of the traits he can pass on. It’s akin to asking why the horned one in particular can shapeshift.
e. That’s something you’ll have to decide at your table
a. Not the type of god many of the others are. So they don’t have a clear cut portfolio like the Bartan deities do. Hmmmmm… ^_~ I will say this to the second part of your question—they themselves aren’t “quite right” as a deity.
b. No. Oh, they were definitely chosen for revenge,
c. You should read the Special Missions on page 409.
a. I’m … not 100% sure what you’re referring to here (like the undead on page 182)? Where does it say black shot doesn’t work on them?
b. There’s no hard ruling here, it’s up to your table. My personal call would probably be—unlikely. Part of what makes the undead fighting the Legion work the way they do is how they are … created (whether by a broken or through corruption). Their connection is ultimately to (and through) the Cinder King. I’m sure some enterprising Broken will start a project to fix that though…
c. There are no rules on this. Up to your table. Most undead are not sentient in the same way the living or Broken are … they may just rest to conserve energy in a sleep like state, or simply not understand that this is a boring thing. It can be an all-consuming purpose.
d. Clearly, yes. Blood has been a mystical substance in every mythology and every mystic practice in our world. The whole concept of it is tied to life and death. Keep enough in you, and you live. Spill enough of your opponents and they die. It’s definitely a powerful metaphysical substance in the BoB world as well. Only people (with blood) can carry the essence of a god and become Chosen who when they die leave bits of god-essence in the blood and bones of the body they leave behind (relics and reliquaries). it’s clearly a conduit and container for power among other things.
a. I’m not super sure how to answer this because I’m not following. Which video are you talking about?
b. Yes. When you say Asrika is the Goddess of Mercy it’s not that this is a portfolio in a greek god sense but she embodies the concept. She IS the concept (hence why it’s capitalized). Blight goes against her very essence. That’s why she hates it so much. She’s in part a goddess of healing. The same property that seals her Chosen’s wounds, makes their god-essence carrying blood resistant to Blight. In a way… she just got lucky or she might already be Broken too. If you take a look at her powers (like her blessing) it helps fight these effects off even for people just in proximity to their Chosen.
a. It’s not a coincidence.
b. Close. The Living God and the Cinder King are connected in a way.
Oh, wow, this is fantastic. Like a little Christmas early for the Lore-focused GM. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer! <3
I’m getting this from Episode 5.3 of the game with Kelsa, timestamp 10:40 - 12:15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3w8IJBtfA&list=PL2B6LjZiMMiL0fSBbmSGJHcSEXcFE21FD&index=21 For context, IIRC you did some narration where you said the animating force was emanating from the Wraith in the chamber with the Chalice. No one tried to use Black Shot on the Wraith, so it wasn’t 100% clear if that would have worked or not; but it didn’t work on the lesser ones.
I guess while we’re here:
d. Would it have worked on the Wraith? Why?
e. Was the Wraith corrupt and/or would it have dealt corruption? Why? (The lesser ones were said not to, due to how they were constructed / made.)
f. What was this chalice? I assume it was an artifact for activities described in the special mission on p. 409, but have to ask!
Oh wow this is a blast from the past. I ran this game in early, early, early, beta. I think some lore stuff wasn’t set perfectly at that point (I know Shreya was at that point still Alanna etc). I don’t remember 100% my prep for that adventure to be honest, but I think at the time what I was trying to indicate there was that the blood rituals helped extend life… so the things you’re seeing there weren’t dead per se… just entombed. Hence the rule of Black Shot (it “kills” already dead things) wasn’t applying. If you think someone used blood rituals to animate a corpse … black shot should work. If you think someone used blood rituals to steal life and somehow extend their own… possibly not?
I don’t think it would have caused corruption because old empire rituals are not a) tied to the broken nature of the cinder king and b) compensate for corruption somewhat if done right. This is why the warding stones (long road) can help fight off corruption for now.
Yes. It’s exactly that type of chalice. It’s used for that. You are correct.
Aha. Now I get it. Hahaha this… is me showing off Lore but it’s hard to understand without a lot of backstory. Basically—it’s god-stuff. Let me give you the shortest version I can.
It’s part of what makes the Cinder King work as they do. Death is a core rule of the world … things live, things die, they don’t come back. Like all gods the Cinder King breaks some rules of reality. That “Word” is how. The gods themselves are unclear on exactly how Breaking works (or they wouldn’t have risked their essence inside Chosen and gotten Broken). This is a new and unexpected thing in the world … not even the Cinder King knows all the rules of it yet. ^_~
All “magic” stuff is tied to resolve. So if you’re doing corruption resists, it’s tied to resolve. Here you’re using your “sixth sense” (aka a magic internal sense like attune) to suss out danger. It’s not about reaction speed or noticing details.
Also remember that powers are not created in a vacuum. You also want to look at spread of abilities (not just stacking one) and how other people that veteran it might use it.
I’ve now read S&V and BitD as well as BoB, and have begun thinking about my own FitD hacking. This has me wondering a lot about some design changes around stress and pushing in BoB.
Was the idea behind specialist abilities like “Anchor” and “Doctor” to replace/upgrade/expand things like Battleborn and Warded?
Did you have to reduce Stress per character because of more implied Stress from specialist abilities, or was this just a thematic thing to make soldiers Trauma more in war?
Was a problem in BitD and S&V that players only wanted to use Stress to Resist, and so didn’t use the fun parts of their power sets that were Push dependent?
Have you experimented with giving characters more Stress to play with? (Implied hypothesis: at some large amount of Stress players use it more freely?) Though, I imagine that comes with other troubles like not having the Overindulge or Trauma tensions that currently exist?
Were there other solutions that were attractive/promising that you didn’t pursue? (The Gambits to power the Way powers for Mystics in S&V was interesting!)
Any other thoughts about Stress and push-fueled abilities in general?
@stras
Awesome, thank you – what is the fictional source of the Sixth Sense? Is there a specific god that gives the Legionnaire that particular ability?
As a note, this is a BoB thread, general design questions should probably go elsewhere.
I’ll answer these though:
No this was more about how specialists impact a mission, and letting players decide (with xp) how often or effectively they wanted to do their “cool thing” (like popping aim or anchor).
If you look at early enough betas they were originally rolled skills, it just had some mechanical hiccups that way.
When you change genre, you also have to change tone. And not always having stress on hand to say “no” when you resist is a big part of the horror genre. Take it away too much though, and it just stops being fun (you lose agency). So it’s a balancing act.
More stress (4) generally implies people seizing the spotlight and pushing on everything constantly, which changes dice pools, probability, and average results.
Why do some folks survive becoming Mercies and others don’t? Why are some folks Chosen and not others? Sure some of it’s timing and location, but some of it’s not.
Corruption doesn’t feel great. Some people just train to recognize that feeling in their gut, and the prickling of the hairs in the back of their neck, and some are just better at it.
Feel free to detail it further at your table (your folks might have a different answer).
No, or it would be in a specific Chosen’s book then.
On the other hand, feel free to make up whatever works for your group.
) The world is rich and interesting, the mechanics are so good at driving narrative efficiently, and the army management is a fun theme with an elegant system to back it up!
)