Ryecatcher15:WoD:House Rules

General Rules

Character Creation

Attributes, Skills and Merits

Purchasing the fifth dot in an Attribute, Skill, or Merit does not cost two points at character creation.

Purpose: This rule was first introduced in the Mirrors supplement, and synergies with modified experience costs.

Specialties

All applicable skill specialties under a given skill apply to the roll, even if you have more than one. For example, a character with a specialty in cardiology and surgery gets a +2 when performing heart surgery, but only a +1 when diagnosing heart conditions or performing a tracheotomy.

Note: This rule is provided in the (free) supplemental material from the God-Machine Chronicle. Specialties still have to be sufficiently narrow and are subject to storyteller approval.

Languages

One Merit dot makes you fluent in an additional language.

Purpose: Learning a language is not difficult. Even the developers admitted to be embarrassed about their Western notion of linguistics.

Assistance

In most cases where assistance can be provided on a roll, each player rolls their dice pool. The player with the lowest result adds their result to the other player's dice pool.

Purpose: This should eliminate most of the disappointment experienced when a roll that would have succeeded if only one person attempted it fails because that person was assisting.

Assisting on Perception

You cannot typically assist with a perception roll (Wits + Composure) without special training or an ability that allows you to do so. You can, however, direct another toward something you see or hear. Generally, they will perceive it if you do so.

Purpose: Help me notice something that neither of us notices. Spoiler: you can't. That's not how seeing, hearing, smelling, perceiving works. We can both look, and we can split up to cover more ground more quickly (if we have the capacity to organize), but we can't actually supplement one another's vision. I believe this is better represented by allowing multiple characters to make the check than allowing assistance on the check. I MIGHT allow characters to take a Teamwork Merit to allow this (representing ACTUAL training / coordination at such), but not by default.

Support Actions

In addition to typical assistance, some actions support more important actions. A character might, for example, create a distraction as part of another's Stealth check. The Distraction might be, for example, Presence + Persuasion to hold someone's attention, with the successes added as additional dice on the Dexterity + Stealth check.

Purpose: Only one action is really the focus, but allowing other actions to assist grants an interesting way to cooperate.

Rolls

For fuck's sake, if the die falls off the table, you reroll it! If you roll a partial dice pool and realize you were supposed to roll more dice, just add on the dice you should have rolled! If you should have rolled less dice, reroll them all! It's not complicated.

Armor

Where applicable, roll armor as a dice pool like Soak in Old World of Darkness.

Purpose: This means that sometimes you can be saved from a serious injury by pure dumb luck and a kevlar vest. I like that better, and it clears up issues that arise from called shots vs. armor.

Experience

Experience Costs for Progression

Mortal/General

Merit: 1 Experience per dot

Skill Specialty: 1 Experience

Skill: 2 Experience per dot

Attribute: 4 Experience per dot

Morality/Integrity: 2 Experience per dot

Willpower: 1 Experience per dot

Vampires

Clan Discipline: 4 Experience per dot

Cross-Clan Discipline: 5 Experience per dot

Devotion: 1 Experience per dot

Blood Potency: May NOT be increased.

Humanity: 3 Experience per dot

Werewolves

Affinity Gift: 3 Experience per dot

Non-Affinity Gift: 4 Experience per dot

Ritual: 1 Experience per dot of Rite

Primal Rage: 7 Experience per dot

Harmony: 3 Experience per dot

Mage

Major Arcanum: 4 Experience per dot

Arcanum: 5 Experience per dot

Minor Arcanum: 6 Experience per dot

Gnosis: 7 Experience per dot

Wisdom: 3 Experience per dot

Rote: 1 Experience per dot

Promethean

Affinity Transmutation: 3 Experience per dot

Non-Affinity Transmutation: 4 Experience per dot

Azoth: 7 Experience per dot

Humanity: 3 Experience per dot

Changeling

Contract: 1 Experience per dot

Goblin Contract: 1 Experience per dot

Wyrd: 5 Experience per dot

Clarity: 2 Experience per dot

Mummy

NO.

Gaining Experience

Certain conditions allow you to take a Beat. A Beat comes from a term describing a pause in the action in theater or film where the audience is given an opportunity to take in the a dramatic moment. Every five Beats that are taken by the group grant an experience point to everyone.

Frequently, the Storyteller will also allow a character who takes a beat voluntarily to recover a point of Willpower.

The following events grant one Beat:

• When your character fulfills an Aspiration (see Aspirations below) take a Beat
• When a character's Flaw adversely affects the character or the group take a Beat
• The Storyteller may offer to allow a player to take a Dramatic Failure on a roll they failed. If the player does, take a Beat.
• If the rightmost box of a character's Health is marked, take a Beat.
• The Storyteller may award a Beat for exceptional roleplaying, a delightful quip, or the completion of a tense scene.
• If a character experiences a major learning experience or change of paradigm, take a Beat.
• At the end of a game session, take a Beat.

Supernatural-specific sources of Beats:

Vampires

• The Storyteller may ask if you if you give in to Frenzy when you could instead resist; if you do, take a Beat. Note that you may still fail even if you choose not to take the Beat.

Werewolves

• The Storyteller may ask you if you give in to Blood Rage when you could instead resist; if you do, take a Beat. Note that you may still fail even if you choose not to take the Beat.

Mage

• The Storyteller may ask if, in an act of Hubris, you trigger a Paradox when you normally would not (or trigger a more severe Paradox if you would); if you do, take a Beat.

Promethean

• The Storyteller may ask if your Wasteland or Disquiet grows when it should not; if it does, take a Beat.
• The Storyteller may ask you if you give in to Torment when you could instead resist; if you do, take a Beat. Note that you may still fail even if you choose not to take the Beat.

Changeling

• The Storyteller may make a Faerie Tale suggestion (typically a simple course of action that the protagonist of such a story would take such as "...why don't you have just a taste? It looks so good," although it may alternately be a more cryptic suggestion such as "Didn't you dream about this?" "Does this remind you of something?"); if you accept the suggestion, take a Beat.

Purpose: The purpose behind this system is to make awards more frequent without overpowering the game. It also adds a narrative benefit to failure, which makes players more willing to play into interesting situations.

Aspirations

Aspirations are goals for your character - either their own, or your goals for your character. They’re also statements to your Storyteller that show the types of stories you want to play through.

Aspirations are simple statements of intent; things that can be accomplished within the scope of the game you’re playing. Since we're playing a single storyline, be sure to choose realistic and short-term goals. Ideally you should be able to accomplish at least one of these Aspirations per game session.

It's important to phrase Aspirations as active achievements or accomplishments. Do not phrase them as avoidance. "Do not betray my friends" isn't really an appropriate Aspiration. Instead, consider "Prove my loyalty to my friends." Phrasing as an action as opposed to a lack of action helps to determine when the Aspiration is met and when it should be rewarded.

When choosing Aspirations, use them to help to customize your character and give them identity and purpose outside of whatever plots the Storyteller cooks up. Find a balance between being general enough that the statements can be fulfilled realistically, and being specific enough to inform on your character's identity.

In many World of Darkness games, we explore the strange and horrific. This can often mean visiting those things upon our characters. If you're interested in seeing certain things happen to your character, note them as Aspirations. Or if you expect something to occur, it would be worth noting it. If you know tonight's story will deal with your character trying to seduce a mortal to feed on them, and you always seem to roll terribly on your socialize rolls, consider an aspiration like "Recover from a faux pas." That way, while your character might fail in their efforts, you'll still have the opportunity to be rewarded for achieving the Aspiration.

For the first few session of play, you might not have a good enough sense of your character to choose Aspirations. Give it a try anyway, and if during the first session the Aspirations you've chosen just don't fit with the way you're playing the character, change them. No harm, no foul. After the first session, I'll ask you to choose supernatural aspirations - things that relate directly to being Vampires. These may be in addition to your existing aspirations, may replace them, or a combination of both.

Aspirations at Character Creation

Create your character with three aspirations, which should be entirely mortal aspirations. Two of these should be relatively immediate, that is, things that could be accomplished in a short amount of time ("Meet back up with my partner" or "Get rid of the expensive silverware I stole") and one should be a more major aspiration ("Complete my documentary" or "Find some way to get out of the ghetto for good"). These will, of course, change depending on your circumstances and any supernatural elements in the story.

Character Sanctity

All items represented by dots on a character sheet are GUARANTEED to be part of the character. If, at any time, the Storyteller chooses to take narrative liberties with anything represented on your character sheet in dots, he is obligated, at the very least, to reimburse you the full value of any lost dots. He should, most likely, also award a Beat. It is understood, also, that depriving the character of control or access to a given item is functionally identical to this, and should not be used as a way to avoid this.

Likewise, anything that temporarily removes access to an aspect of a character should, at the least, award a Beat, even if this loss were the character or player's "fault." The recovery of a new version of the same item may also be possible, but that option should typically be left up to the player.

If an aspect of the character is removed for balance purposes, the Storyteller should allow the player to rebuild their character.

Example 1: Sunshine has a four-dot Retainer named Leo who she has, lately, been using as something of a human shield. Unsurprisingly, Leo is nearly killed in a firefight and expected to be hospitalized for six weeks. A Beat is awarded, but Sunshine loses access to her retainer while he languishes in the ICU. If the Storyteller decides that Leo has been through too much and gives up the ghost (or quits her employ), Sunshine would receive her option of a new retainer (though it may require roleplay before the retainer would be restored, and the retainer may be completely different from the one she had previously) or the four experience back.

Example 2: The Storyteller decides that Violet's 4 dot Mentor, Theseus, is severely impeding the progress of the game. The storyteller explains this to her and tells her that replacing him with another 4-dot mentor would likely defeat the purpose of removing him. Instead, he tells Violet's player that she will be reimbursed her experience, grants a Beat and offers to let her rebuild her character. Since Violet relied on Theseus for deep meditation to access her Oneiros, she opts to use the points to increase her Composure and drops her Direction Sense merit to replace it with Meditative Mind. Satisfied that she can still explore her soul, Violet returns without her former Mentor.

Purpose: White Wolf has clarified (albeit many years after the game was released) that something to this effect was implied by putting numbers on a character sheet; lousy DMs are prone to remove aspects of characters that they find problematic to their stories without considering that players are expending resources on them. The DM is always at liberty to change aspects of the story or destroy player resources, but this system should, at the least, alleviate anger players are likely to feel when this happens. Life isn't fair, but games should be (at least insomuch as that is possible).

Vampires

Blood Potency

Blood Potency may not be raised by spending experience. Every decade a vampire is alive, they receive 1 point toward raising Blood Potency. When the points equal the new level of Blood Potency, they are immediately spent, and the Vampire's Blood Potency increases.

When a Vampire successfully Diablerizes another Vampire, they gain points toward Blood Potency equal to that Vampire's Blood Potency in addition to other benefits.

Blood Potency

Blood Potency	Age	Total Points	Title	May feed from...	Vitae/Per Round
1	1	0	Neonate	Animals	10/1
2	20	2		Animals	11/1
3	50	5	Ancilla	Mortals	12/1
4	90	9		Mortals	13/2
5	140	14	Elder	Mortals	14/2
6	200	20		Mortals	15/3
7	270	27	Methuselah	Vampires	20/5
8	350	35		Vampires	30/7
9	440	44		Vampires	50/10
10	540	54		Vampires	100/15

A Vampire in Torpor loses 1 point of Blood Potency per decade instead of gaining one.

Purpose: Blood Potency is based, in part, on the oWoD concept of Generation, except it's both easier and harder to raise. In oWoD, it wasn't unheard of for a 12th Generation Vampire to diablerize a 6th generation Vampire and immediately become immensely powerful. In nWoD, diablerizing a 7 Blood Potency Methuselah will only, at best, get you 1 point of Blood Potency and, maybe, a powerful Discipline (more likely, it will just boost something you're good it), which doesn't have the epic feel I was hoping for. This strikes a happy medium, I think, making Potency rise much faster than in standard nWoD (1/100 years) and making it possible to, like Saturn, devour your children to become more powerful.

Auras

Perceiving an aura takes an uninterrupted moment of staring, which could look suspicious even to the unaware. For every success, ask the subject's player (or the Storyteller) one of the following questions. Alternatively, take +1 on Social rolls against the character during the same scene, due to the understanding of their emotional state.

With an exceptional success, you may instead choose only one of the following, but receive the italicized benefit as well.

• What’s your character's most prominent emotion? Receive a +2 bonus on all Social rolls again the character.
• Is your character telling the truth? About what specifically are they lying?
• Upon what or whom is your character's attention most focused on right now? What if anything do they intend to do?
• Is your character going to attack? If so, you automatically act before them.
• What emotion is your character trying most to hide? Toward what present individual or object is this directed, or is this emotion focused on something that is not present?
• Is your character supernatural or otherwise not human? What sort of supernatural creature are you?

Hunter: Mortal Remains

Ryecatcher15:WoD:House Rules:Hunter

Changeling: Lost and Found

Ryecatcher15:WoD:House Rules:Changeling