Aspects for Wild Talents
To Invoke an Aspect (use one of your own Aspects to your advantage), spend 1 point of Willpower to add 1 die to any pool for a single roll. You can invoke multiple Aspects on the same roll, but can only invoke a single Aspect once per scene this way.

To Tag someone else’s Aspect (or one inherent in the scene or the setting), spend 1 Willpower, and gain 1 die. If you’re tagging someone else’s Aspect, they can spend 1 Willpower to cancel your tag.

Alternately, you can Tag for Effect. Rather than gain a die, you force the target to act in a certain way. If you tag the Godgeteer’s “Cackling Mad Arrogance” Aspect, you could force him to monolog for a few rounds rather than immediately activating his Theoturgical Destroyer and wiping out the Faith of a whole city. If the target accepts the tag, you give them the Willpower point. If they want to resist it, they must spend one of their own to cancel your efforts.

The GM can Compel an Aspect, using it to hose a PC for the greater amusement of everyone at the table, or to just make things more interesting. The GM pays for the right to chewtoy a PC this way in Willpower points, 1 to 3 points, depending on the degree of railroading involved. Players are welcomed and encouraged to suggest this be done to their characters, and if the GM keeps the pressure on them, they might be begging for a hosejob to get back a few precious points of Willpower. If the player flat doesn’t want to accept the Compel, he can spend a point of Willpower to cancel it.

Placing Aspects
If you beat someone in a conflict, you can impose an Aspect on them. Generally, this is a temporary thing which lasts for Width in round in combat or Width in minutes out of combat, but can- with a GM nod- last longer.

Getting beat to crap also sticks you with negative aspects a foe can easily tag. A limb filled with damage gives you CRIPPLED or MAIMED. If your head is filled with Shock you have STUNNED. If your torso is filled with shock, you have STAGGARED. Of course, if head or torso are filled with killing, you have CORPSE.

So, say you want to put the fear of… well… you into a guy. You hit him with your Hyper-Intimidate, he resists and fails with his Cool. You have him with a 4x10 (those hard dice make you a scary bastard). For about four round/minutes, he’s TERRIFIED OF YOU.

You get a free Tag on all Aspects you place.

Phased Chargen
This will differ a great deal based on the campaign, so here is an example of the phases I’m going to use for The Kerberos Club (a weirdpulp Victoriana game crossing the Nocturnals with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). As with SotC, pick 2 Aspects for each phase.

As usual, pick 2 Aspects for each, and crossover at least 2 of your Phases with two other PC’s:

Humble Beginnings- everyone starts somewhere… who were you before you became who you are? How did your childhood mark you and shape you?

Follies of Youth- foolishness is the vice of the young, and the fondest memory of the old. What did you get up to as you sought independence during your formative years?

First Awakenings- when did you begin to realize the world was not as it might seem? When did you become aware- and involved in- the hidden and not-so hidden strangeness lurking about the comfortable hearth of proper society?

Mysterious Origins- when did you come into power of your own? When did you become a player in the Occultus Ludus?

Great Failing- what is your greatest flaw, and how did it bring you near to ruin and disaster?


Further Thoughts
As a way of squeezing extra dice for making things more interesting in character-focused ways, Aspects utterly rock. Right now, Willpower gets risked when you use some powers (failure to activate a power costs you Willpower), spent when you use others (the cost to emulate dice in a power via Spell Casting for example), used to buffer damage and make lethal attacks more survivable, and a few other things.

You gain it back, up to the max of your Base Will, with R&R, gain it when you achieve victories, lose it when you are mentally traumatized or badly defeated. When your Willpower is exhausted, any expenditure forces you to burn a point of Base Will which gives you 10 Willpower.

Base Will (the stable point for your Willpower pool) starts at COOL+COMMAND, and can be increased by 1 for 4 points or xp.

So... some characters (those with will-hungry powers) will likely have big Willpower pools (and lots of Base Will), while others will have only their COOL+COMMAND total.

Oh! And another thing about the phases above- you can take them in any order you like. You can have you Mysterious Origin first, then your Follies of Youth if your early years were spent as a hellraising teenage half-vampire wastrel.

Edit- as to conflicts... generally, right now, the effects are adjudicated by the GM and decided on through a fairly standard unofficial negotiated stakes thing.

 

Comments

Add New Search RSS

Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.