This is a Superior Skill you might take to represent being a unicorn, or, at least, more of a unicorn than average.
The levels look like this.
Unicorn
0: You are about as much of a unicorn as anyone else, really. Maybe a
little bit more.
Unicorn
1: People think you seem like a good sort. Your nails and optionally a nub
on your head are pearlescent and unnaturally tough. You’re faster than normal
over medium distances. You do not
have a radar for virginity[1],
but you can get a pretty good read on
someone’s character.
Unicorn
2: You radiate a sense of purity and holiness. You’re not physically a
unicorn, although you’re allowed to have the horn, but small children, wise
women, people who catch glimpses of you out of the corner of their eye, people
who see you running in the distance at night, blurry pictures from conspiracy
nuts, and such might see a unicorn instead of the usual you. Your nails and
horn, if you have one, can scratch diamond. You’re quite fast over medium
distances. Your running posture is probably bipedal but you might sort of
stumble and use your hands a lot. You’re an excellent judge of character.
Unicorn
3: You’re a unicorn! Pretty much. And that means that you’re marvelous. You’re stunning. You’re radiant.
Your horn is tough enough to parry chainsaws and stab through molten metal
safely—well, as safe as it gets
given how close it is to your head, anyway. It takes you twenty or thirty yards to really get going, but
then you’re at least twice as fast as a normal human for the next twenty miles—and, while you slow to within human
maximum speeds after that, you’re still really
fast. You can discern the state of a person’s soul, which is basically like reading their character
the normal way except that it can’t be gotten around with non-magical
deception.
Unicorn
4: You’re as breathtaking as a sunrise. Your horn can shatter walls, crack
open hills, or uproot a good chunk of forest with a toss of your head. You’re
light enough on your feet to balance on three or four leaves, can leap small
buildings in a step, and can run several hundred miles per hour. You know more
about the people you meet than they do themselves.
Unicorn
5: You are sufficiently awe-inspiring to break weak minds and inspire
spiritual devotion in the rest. Pick a more specific theme and structure, but
in general, your horn can rip away someone’s shadow, knock a star out of the
sky, pop a daydream or a singularity, or stab away the wickedness from a soul.
You run where you will; rumor, the wind, and sometimes even light have trouble
keeping up with you. You are still quite good at reading people, and if they do
not satisfy you, you can nurture the seeds of goodness (or, I suppose, something else) inside them.
[1]
That kicks in at level 2 if you’re
playing the kind of game where that kind of thing’s a thing. Otherwise, it
doesn’t. Not even at level 5!
So over the past few days I’ve been talking about some minigames that could conceivably take the place of Pastoral XP Actions. I haven’t really gone into when you’d use them, but I mentioned on Patreon comments that I imagine two main reasons:
for pacing—you’ve run out of interesting play somewhere, but you still want it to take time at the table; or
most of your game is working, but one particular kind of Action is falling down for you.
And as kind of the frame story for these posts, you might also use them if you just really want to prep stuff but are frustrated because Chuubo’s is a low-prep game. ^_^
Today I’d like to cover Silver Challenges, and then to observe that Black and Blue Challenges are unchanged.
Build: I can see Nathaniel summoning artifacts from hometown legends with this, or at least facsimiles of such. Fluff-wise, this will most likely be expressed by him “finding” where the treasures are “buried” and calling them up from the ground there. At the end of the story, they “return to the earth.”
Exile: I feel Nathaniel would mostly use this power to exile intruders into his hometown, or to prevent them from getting in in the first place. Of course, he could also use it to kick out a member of the town who’s hurt others, and basically make them no longer be recognized as belonging there.
Less often, he could use this power to create a place where people have no sense of community with each other, where they are naturally set apart. Or perhaps a place that is not wild at all, where there is no space for herds of Mareep to roam. I’m not sure why he would do so, but he could.
Wake: When used, this opens someone’s eyes to the importance of community, and helps them see why Nathaniel values his demesne and Treasures so much. They generally gain powers related to searching, protecting, or rarely attacking without hurting allies.
Ride: Nathaniel would only use this power in the direst cases, due to the cost it sustains. He would only use it with his Treasure’s full cooperation as well. He might combine it with Treasure Possession in order to get in contact with two of his Treasures at once, which would likely only happen if things were extremely dire.
Let’s see how these new powers work for building Nathaniel!
Man, his choice of Un-element makes these powers seem a little villainous, don’t they? Then again, the same could be said for a lot of this Arc’s powers.
Transform: This lets Nathaniel transform one of his Treasures into a creature of the community. Quite literally, it lets them become more easily accepted by other members of the community, and have little or no trouble fitting into said community. It probably also makes it easier for them to cooperate with others and keep track of the general rumors and stories flying around. Possibly with supernatural knowledge, even.
Flame of Wonder: In my mind, the manifestation of community is something like lightning bolts connecting people, at least partly due to Nathaniel’s connection to the Storm God. He can send these bolts into people to tie them into the community, or perhaps maintain them as a sort of communication system.
Deepen the Mystery: This lets Nathaniel give places the feeling of his small shepherding hometown. Plants grow more wild, or change to something more suitable for grazing. Mareep start appearing more. People in the region gain a feeling of knowing each other more personally, no matter how large it is. He can also manipulate those spaces through his connection to his hometown.
I don’t know what the mystery at the center of a transformed place is, but something tells me that it has to do with Nathaniel’s memories, when he was young and carefree. Perhaps there’s a ghostly image of him, Ninda, Brian, and Macy, just freshly started on their journey.
Control: Well, this is kind of odd to think of for Nathaniel, at least partly because PTU characters already get so much to play with, and I want these powers to fit his theme at least somewhat.
Macy the Carnivine gains the ability to sink her roots into the ground and control the plantlife in the region, as well as sending vines shooting out of the ground that she can manipulate more finely. With enough practice (or a higher Arc) she might even be able to sink into the ground completely and emerge somewhere else. This power is most likely used to search for those members of the community who have gone missing.
Brinda the Zapdos gains the ability to sense the position and movement of other Electric-types. The higher-levelled versions of this power might allow them to sense the thoughts and emotions of those Electric-types, or direct their movement to some degree. This is usually used to keep track of the Mareep, or to herd them at higher levels.
Gideon Faust, if he does become one of Nathaniel’s Treasures, will likely get some kind of “smiting” power, allowing him to burn a large swath of enemies without hurting any allies, or the land beneath them. Admittedly this is drawing more from the AU where all members of Quan’s Hope become deities, but eh…*wiggles hand*
Kimber Folchart, if she becomes a Treasure, will likely get some power to freeze someone cryogenically, and later reawaken them from their frozen sleep as well. This idea is also drawn from the “deity AU,” but it could also be used to save critically injured people while transporting them.
Since OJ’s been doing it for a while, I figured I could try it as well. Nathaniel Berger has already read as Sickly Shepherd to me, but this doesn’t really fit him as currently stands. But I’m not going to let that deter me!
Don’t let him know I’m sharing his last name with you. He’s abandoned it. Ten years ago, he was a child of ten, a shepherd boy who’d left his home to go on a Pokemon journey. He’d captured a Cranivine threatening his flock, you see, and she was tame enough, but the Mareep were still nervous around her, so she had to go. And now that she was bonded to the boy, it seemed cruel to separate them.
It’s a good thing she was with him. Because ten years ago was also when the God-Hunters appeared. As their name suggests, their goal was to kill off all the legendary Pokemon. They didn’t succeed, but they succeeded well enough. And do you know what happens when a ten-year-old tries to fight a ruthless criminal organization?
There was a Houndoom, with jaws of burning flame. It mauled his legs and left him a mangled wreck in a room that was now aflame. If his other two Pokemon hadn’t sacrificed themselves to buy him time, and if Macy hadn’t dragged him out, he would have died there. Even so, he came out of it with a lot of scars, both physical and mental.
He’s only recently emerged from his depression, hearing rumors about the God-Hunters returning, and Quan’s Hope, who originally opposed them, requiring assistance. Slowly, he’s started to heal from the pain. He even has a Fire-type of his own now, Memo the Lampent. And he’s also assisted in the resurrection of the legendary Zapdos, and took the new baby Legendary into his care, raising them back into their full power. Most recently, he and his team helped defeat Zygarde, who had devoured the other Kalos legendaries and created an amalgamation of all of Kalos’ psychic-types, erasing the region from everyone’s memory.
At least part of that fight happened in the afterlife, or at least adjacent to it, and it was there that Nathaniel met the souls of Ninda the Mareep and Brian the Hoothoot once more. He finally got to say his goodbyes and express his gratitude to them. And it’s quite possible that time spent between life and death, and as the guardian of a growing god, could have given him a few new abilities…
His Demesne is his hometown, and the green hills around it where the Mareep graze. Although he hasn’t been back there for so long, it has always been a part of him, a memory alternately sweet and painful. His Un-element is the sense of the community that the place holds. Everyone is familiar to everyone else, for ill or for good.
A Choice of Treasures: Nathaniel’s Treasures are his oldest Pokemon companion, Macy the Carnivine, and the newborn legendary, Brinda. He might also have his teammates, Gideon and Kimber, as Treasures. (Although Kimber might already be a Treasure for Kyurem, who might also have a few points in this Arc…)
Treasure Possession: Close contact with the dead has, well…shaken Nathaniel’s soul loose a little. He can use this power to slip his soul into the body of one of his Treasures, and control their physical actions from there. He can also use this to enter into mental contact with them, although he’s unlikely to use the full extent this secondary power due to it being too invasive. The first time he used this power was most likely an accident, and it’s unlikely that he’ll do it without permission.
Brinda most likely lets him use this power on them most often. It’s a good way for him to temporarily ignore the pain when his old scars start acting up too much, and being in control of their flight is exhilarating to him. They might share mental contact occasionally, since it’s easier for them to communicate this way.
Demesne: Nathaniel gains an inherent Connection of 3 to his hometown and the hills around it. He can use this as a Skill to do things for the sake of the town or hills, as well as for extra effects granted by his Arc.
At Arc 0, he can:
adjust the timing of events in town, so that the holidays seem to stretch on for longer and the cold snaps shorter. He can make the night come later, to give more time to find one lost Mareep.
control the weather, toning down the more severe thunderstorms and herding stormclouds to places their lightning will be wanted most.
At Arc 1, he can:
get an understanding of almost anything going on in his hometown, or even the wilderness surrounding it.
know previously-undeclared facts about the topology, geography, and so forth of his town and its hills.
At Arc 2+, he can:
alter abstract things like the “safety” or “production” of the town.
with a level 6+ Intention, actually completely change how the hills are arranged, shore up a decrepit building, or move houses around.
Sburb is a game about growing up. Chuubo’s is also a game about growing up. What could go wrong?
So
my project for the last year has been a setting-book for the Replay
Value AU of Homestuck. It’s based on a tabletop RPG called Chuubo’s
Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. What are these things, you might ask?
Allow me to quote the beginning of the book…
About Chuubo’s
Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is a diceless RPG system that is written by Jenna Moran, the same person that wrote Nobilis.
It is designed to focus on character development and emotional
interactions. It involves earning XP and completing quests. Unlike most
tabletop systems, though, you receive XP for things like “heartfelt
conversations”, “making other people feel emotions towards your
character”, or “you sit on cracked stones and share a meal with
friends”. I’ve found it to be like some freeform RPs I’ve been in,
except with established resolution mechanics for conflict.
Chuubo’s
is designed to emulate stuff like Studio Ghibli films, Adventure Time,
and Homestuck. It is also extensible to other types of stories and
genres, such as the ones that I’m running Replay Value on.
Chuubo’s is available digitally as a PDF, as a print-on-demand book, and as an ePub available for $10.
About Replay Value AU
Replay
Value AU – the story that got taken apart and put back together to make
this sourcebook – is an alternate universe (AU) of Homestuck based on a
Homestuck fanfiction called the Sburb Glitch FAQ. Sburb Glitch
FAQ is notable for laying out how a normal Sburb session is supposed to
go, its new fanclasses and fanaspects, and a narrator who infuses the
entire thing with a tone of endurance and survival.
Replay Value
AU is a setting in which Sburb players are trapped within the Game due
to the fact that the Door does not work; thus, instead of being able to
continue on to a new universe, they repeatedly play Sburb until they
die. Despite this, many Replayers have launched servers into the Ring
that allow people to form social connections across sessions. These
Replayer networks are often the only lifeline to sanity that many of
these Replayers have. Thus, the Replay Value AU setting is a mix of
existential horror and slice-of-life elements.
Some setting
elements from the FAQ were tweaked for better play; for example, Replay
Value AU characters can prototype their own kernelsprites rather than be
bound to their Replayee’s choices.
Replay Value AU was a story
about having Internet friends far away, and about how people learn to
survive and live in oppressive environments. The roleplay fell apart due
to interpersonal conflicts. It’s been rebooted at least once, to no
avail. In this book, though, I’m not writing about RVBoot. I’m writing
about RV Classic: the characters and setting I knew and loved.
About RV Chuubo’s
RV
Chuubo’s, i.e. this book, is an adaptation of Replay Value AU that
condenses the canon and setting information into a single document. It
describes many of the setting details we never wrote down. It also
shares some of the characters we played, and some of the stories we
told. […]
I want to share Sburb.org and Pits and Corpse Fiesta
with you. I want to show you the tales of the Seer Network and Aelfrida
and Lotus and Myra and the Mannerist blogosphere. I want to do more than
tell a story – I want to tell you of the many, interlocking stories of
this world.
Perhaps, when I’m done, we can play a game…
Who’s writing it? I (Elaine “OJ” Wang) am responsible for the vast majority of the book. I got a few essays from other people. And, of course, Chuubo’s is Jenna’s, not mine.
Where can I read this?Right over here
(PDF, almost 400 pages). That link will always point to the newest
version available. There’s also a campaign and an example-characters
booklet, but those are less finished; see this page for links to those.
How polished is this?
It’s about 85% finished – I still have to complete a few straggling
power descriptions, and it isn’t edited or properly playtested yet. But
it’s readable, playable, and (according to multiple sources) quite
spectacular.
This is relevant to my interests and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’d like news on where this is going, snippets of new content,
announcements of when I update the PDF, and other such things, follow
the project tumblr at eternity-braid.tumblr.com!
(Mind you, that blog also contains other tabletop RPG stuff, but I post
maybe once or twice a day, so dashboard-clogging shouldn’t be a
problem.)
Please reblog this post! This has been my life for the last year, so I’d like for more people to see my work.
Each type of scene is described by an XP action.
If you fulfill the criteria for an XP action, you can claim it as an
XP action and throw a group XP into the pot. (The experience points
earned through XP actions are shared evenly across the group –
after all, nobody can carry a scene alone.) You can do this twice per
chapter.
So, when you’re playing Chuubo’s, you should keep
an eye on the XP actions of your genre, and try to make them happen.
Your characters don’t have to consciously decide to
participate in these kinds of scenes. If your character isn’t biting,
ask the HG to help you arrange suitable circumstances! The
environment might suddenly force an XP action on your character, or
they could get dragged into it even if they complain.
Similarly, you should be looking for ways to play
out the quest-flavor options of your Quests. One of the less-obvious
functions of a Quest is that it lets you assert certain things
about the world. [1]
For example, if you have a quest flavor option of “you’re bitten by
something poisonous”, the HG should let you assume something
poisonous and bitey exists (although they might quibble with your
exact description of it), and that whatever you’re doing is going to
get you bitten.
The HG might give you extra criteria that you can
fulfill for extra XP, or let you declare an XP action even though it
doesn’t belong to the current genre. They’ll explain how that works
if it happens.
[1] OJ:
Note that the HG needs to approve each Quest you take up, so you
can’t write a quest with flavor options consisting of “I win”.
Nice try, though.
Technically, “I win” might be allowed as a flavor option, depending on what you’re winning and what the overall goal of the quest is. That does mean that winning whatever-it-is is probably going to mostly just be a minor thing for you though.
The people of Fortitude live their lives at the shores of Big Lake, so it is no surprise that fishing is in a way at the core of their lives. Fishing and cooking fish is one of the most ordinary, everyday things one can do. As such, it is also no surprise that there is no formal magic discipline to aid and assist catching fish – Magic is, after all, unnatural and usually more trouble than it’s worth.
But perhaps, if you come from Earth, or study ancient lore, or perhaps once saved a fish prince or princess from the Lake and they were grateful, you may learn how to use this skill.
This is a magic skill for facilitating or complicating life when fishing, communicating with marine life, and doing prodigious fishing feats.
Restrictions
Fishing Magic is very simple as far as techniques go, but its complexity of invocation increases with its obstacles. Obstacle 1 techniques only require a somatic and verbal component, such as twirling a hand and saying an incantation for a few seconds. Obstacle 2 techniques may require that for a minute or so, or twirling a fishing rod in complicated ways. Obstacle 3 Techniques may require up to an hour of invocation, rare reagents, or some kind of sacrifice or tribute to the lake and the sea. Ultimately though, it’s mostly a matter of putting your mind in the right framework and pouring effort into it.
It’s almost universal for users to respect their catches or have associated ritualized habits to power this magic. Abusing it is liable to attract danger from fish spirits, deep sea creatures, or vengeful supernatural creatures. I also suspect that too much use of Fishing Magic may lead you to abandon life on the land, and to become a creature of the waters, but I have no proof or evidence of this.
Non-magical techniques:
[Obstacle 0] Catch a normal fish with a rod or a net. [Obstacle 0] Sail a boat or ship under normal conditions. [Obstacle 1] Catch a particularly big or slippery fish. [Obstacle 1] Calculate the weight and length of an aquatic creature without using tools.
Magical techniques:
[Obstacle 1] Summon a generic fishing tool – a rod, net, lure, bait, string, etc. [Obstacle 1] Attune your senses to underwater beings, even from very far away. [Obstacle 1] Cast and extend your fishing line far longer than it should be possible to.
[Obstacle 2] Summon a generic small boat or ship of some kind. [Obstacle 2] Talk with any aquatic creature or spirit as though it were human. [Obstacle 2] Catch big or obscure aquatic animals, like great white sharks, whales, or fish so rare as to be practically extinct.
[Obstacle 3] Summon any aquatic creature you’ve caught before and command it to do something for you. [Obstacle 3] Take the form of any aquatic creature you’ve eaten before. [Obstacle 3] Catch aquatic supernatural beings, like kaiju, merfolk, selkies, or fish spirits.
Obstacle 4 and 5 techniques emulate other magical techniques at +2, so for them I suggest summoning specific supernatural creatures to aid you – a wise mermaid to divine the future, or an eel spirit to cast a jolt of electricity at someone, for instance.
Summoned objects are spiritual copies of existing kinds. If you summon a generic fishing rod, it’s assumed that one like it could be found in Town or the Outside. Summoned creatures are the real deal, however, so it’s best to treat them carefully.
In all cases, the summoned object or creature usually fades away or returns to wherever it came from by the end of a chapter. Multiple applications of these techniques may render them semi-permanent, but usually it’d be more practical to just go out there and buy or make or obtain whatever it is you’re summoning.
The ‘catch big or obscure aquatic animals/supernatural beings’ techniques make it possible to catch something even if you don’t have the appropriate tools or are not in the correct location for it – for example, catching a great white shark with just a fishing rod, or in Big Lake, where great white sharks don’t necessarily exist. As part of these techniques, you can also enchant your lure to attract a specific kind of creature.
Common Bonds:
As a fishing-magician, I must free or eat anything I catch. [1]
As a fishing-magician, I must never pass up an opportunity to buy bait.
I am bound to mediate disputes between humans and water-dwellers.
I must protect aquatic beings that can’t protect themselves (beached whales, species in danger of extinction, etc).
I carry a distinctive smell.
Fish fear me.
I am haunted at night by fish spirits. [2]
I tend to catch more than I can eat. [3]
[1] My favorite of this list. [2] It’s weird and/or creepy. [3] The fishing equivalent of biting off more than you can chew.
This Is a Backup Blog 