You can either make one up OR use one of us or both. Mine is one of each. If it's one of us, we're supposed to write you in somewhere along the way. Mishie said I'm part of his earlier phase aspect, so maybe it can be a chain. I'm in an early part of Mishie's story, he's in the late part of mine. Mishie appears early on in yours, and you late in his, etc. We can just do our own sheets, then make minor corrections to accommodate everybody before we start the PbP proper.

 

That sounds nice. Have been reading the Dresden Files rpg book and the guest stars are supposed to be the other characters, so I wondered because it seemed kinda presumptuous to just write other peoples characters without their input. I mean, we are 5 players, right? So, 4 guest stars where each character should appear, but that seems a bit odd as well.

 

Well, you're free to write me somewhere into yours, if you wish. I'm going to be editing mine after Mishie finishes his bio to make sure it fits.

 

Thanks. Once I have something semi-substantial, everyone here is free to write in my character as well.

 

Basically, the way in which a guest star section works is that you're involved in somebody else First Adventure. So Ashan turns up in my first adventure, but maybe somebody else was involved in his.

The easiest way to do it is if we have everybody's first adventures out so we can then do the guest star part.

 

Maybe one of us was in one of the gangs I hit, or was going to do a similar hit on the same gang? Alternatively, you were stealing something from nearby, which triggered an alarm, which resulted in me having to flee and I ran into you? (something along those lines).

 

Both of my guest bits are still empty, and I have no idea who to put in.

Odds are, with all the running around the city, I've run across any of the rest of the group, or delivered something for them.

Any ideas?

 

They don't necessarily have to be other players in your guest stars. Just as long as it establishes your presence in the city.

 

Aaaaand here's the Suits.

The Suits are the equivalent of the Protectorate in Great Britain. At around 400 members strong, spread over the 14 major cities, the Suits are the largest parahuman organisation in the country. Despite this, however, times have been hard on the Suits. The Council of Nine, consisting of the 24 Faces plus the Joker, has a standard policy of sending combat teams to every Endbringer attack it can.

This has had a dramatic effect on the number of combat-capable capes the Suits have available, with the Mover class capes being most heavily affected. In response to this, the Council of Nine have slackened the entry requirements into the Suits, following the Protectorate in allowing vigilantes and repentant villains to join their ranks under probation.

Organisation

There are eight divisions of the Suits, each named after a suit from a deck of Tarot cards and each with a distinct role to play in the overall organisation. Heading each division is the King, with the Queen and Knaves supporting them. Below these are the rank and file of the organisation; squads numbered from Two to Ten, with the Ace of each suit being the flagship team. Each squad has 4-6 capes, with the head of each squad taking on the name of it (e.g. the Five of Hearts). Promotion to the Ace Squad is considered very prestigious among the Suits and is a sign of being fast tracked on the way to greater power.

Divisions
Spades - Combat
Diamonds - Intelligence
Clubs - Policing and Non-Parahuman Support
Hearts - International Relations and Diplomacy
Swords - Fast Response
Wands - Forward Planning and Crisis Response
Coins - Logistics
Cups - Domestic Public Relations

London Garrison
I'm going to focus on the London capes only for this, since it's too much work to plan out an entire organisation that isn't even likely to show up. Feel free to add other members if you've got ideas.

The London Garrison is the most well known in the UK and internationally, with some of its more notable members being Endbringer veterans. There are two Kings in the city at the moment; the King of Coins (the head of the London Garrison) and the King of Spades (visiting for a recruitment drive for non-cape support members). The Queens of Hearts and Coins are also in attendance. There are also rumours of the Suits' Knave of Diamonds, the most illustrious and secretive of that division, being in the city though none of them have been confirmed.

While there are a number of squads across the UK that are capable of travelling to London on short notice, the squads based in the city usually consist of one team from each of the Spades, Diamonds, Swords and Coins divisions.

Squads currently in the city are the:

Ace of Spades
3 of Diamonds (notable for being the current Knave's former squad)
7 of Swords
10 of Coins

The Suits house themselves in the Tower of London, with extensive underground facilities having been added to it in the years since the Suits moved in there. Its previous role as a tourist attraction has been adapted to function as both the public front of the Suits and as a symbol to the villains of the UK. Before the Birdcage was created by Dragon, the Tower often housed the more dangerous parahuman criminals apprehended by the heroes.

The Ruling Suits
King of Coins - Formerly known as the Architect - Over time his power expands to cover the entire building he is in, giving him complete control over the structure while he is inside.
King of Spades - Black Dog - Imbues dogs with enhanced speed and strength, as well as short range teleportation. Speculation has him as having limited Master control over them as well.

Queen of Hearts - Red Cross - World famous doctor able to grant a powerful regeneration ability to anyone she touches. The effect lasts for approximately half an hour before wearing off. She also has a personal invulnerability to harm.
Queen of Coins - ??? - A Tinker with a broad, but unknown specialisation. Known for her bandolier of weapons and powered exo-skeleton.

Knave of Diamonds - Webweaver - Not much is known about this cape. Speculated to have a Stranger power after several villain groups were arrested in their hideouts in the wake of his recruitment.

Ace of Spades Squad
Recuperating after the death of two members at the last Endbringer attack. Fresh recruits have been brought in to fill in the gaps.

Ace of Spades - Graviton - A shaker with the ability to selectively change gravity over several city blocks distance. Recently promoted to head of the squad upon the death of the last Ace.
Pewter - A Case-53 whose skin is made of a tough, silvery coloured material. Has shown a limited ability to shapeshift his arms into bladed weapons. Shies away from the media's attention after the deaths of his teammates.
Warp - A teenager that has recently been transferred from the Glasgow Garrison.
A fourth member that has not been announced to the public yet.

3 of Diamonds Squad
Not much is known of this squad, given their division, but one member was once known as:

Motive - A former villain recruited into the Suits after the rest of her team was killed by the Three Blasphemies. A known Danger Sensor, though the specifics of her power are less certain.

7 of Swords Squad
Often the first response to any crime involving parahumans, this group has retained the same members for over three years.

7 of Swords - Hammerspace - Able to store non-biological objects in a pocket dimension and then summon them back in an instant. She is well known in the public sphere as a gifted orator.
??? - A Tinker specialising in anti-gravity. Functions as the primary means of transport for his squad.
The Martian - Flying Artillery with ability to fire blasts of heat, cold and concussive force at opponents.
Copycat - A Trump with the ability to copy the powers of any single cape in her line of sight.

10 of Coins Squad
Haven't come up with much in the way of members for this one. Non-combat, though capable if necessary. Often hired out for commercial and/or strategic purposes. If anyone has any ideas, post them and I'll see if they fit.

That should do for now. How does it look?

 

I would actually think that London, being the capital city of the UK, would have the a team of Cups.

 

The Cups are the public face of the organisation and are usually off doing recruitment drives and other public relations things. But yeah, I suppose London would have one, especially when the Queen of Hearts is around for that reason. Yay, more heroes to think up.

 

Okay guys, we need to get characters sorted now? Powersets appear to be decent so all we need are actual characters to go with them. If you want advice or are unsure about what to name your Aspects, just post ideas up in here and the rest of us can make suggestions.

@Corellon: I've been working on Inhuman Dexterity with the guys on the JB forums and we've come up with a much better power than the original or my first draft. It's now called Inhuman Swordsmanship [-2] and works on basically the same principles, except without the total Weapons bonus (it's just too unbalanced since it counts as both an attack and defence skill).

Supernatural & Mythic Swordsmanship are here. I'll probably be putting these up on the wiki in the next week or so, once there's a consensus that it's fully balanced.

 

As far as powers go, it looks all right, but frankly it doesn't really fit with my character's powers or circumstances. I'll probably drop it in favor of Precognition.

On a better note, I've got my guest star aspects figured out, I just sort of needtowriteitoutcough.

 

Just a suggestion...

Propmistress - cobbles together things she's seen in a movie or television show. Still working on a Tardis, and she crashed KITT into the Thames after a bad breakup. Everybody loves the cricket-chirping Trek communicators, even if they are a little impractical.

= Nimbus, right? Like Goku's little cloud thing?

 

Stealing this idea, just not for this character. She'll make an excellent villain.

Aaaaaand named.

 

Okay, I've gone through Mishie's, Ashan's and Corellon's character sheets and I've noted something rather important:

None of you are particularly high in stress boxes. Since we've got a few new players in this game, I'm going to give a quick guide to stress and how it relates to skills/consequences so that you're all aware of how it works.

Stress boxes are what get filled up if you take damage, so the more stress boxes you have, the tougher you are. There are three types of stress you can deal/take: Physical, Mental and Social. The number of Physical stress boxes you have is dictated by the Endurance skill, Mental stress boxes by the Conviction skill and Social stress boxes by the Presence skill.

There's a fourth type of stress called Hunger (think Vampires needing blood/emotions/etc.), which uses Discipline in the same way, but that doesn't really show up much in Worm (There's one character I can remember that would need to have a Hunger track for his powers and he was only mentioned in one line).

Anyway, you start off with a default of two stress boxes in each category. If you take one of the stress skills (Endurance/Conviction/Presence) and assign it to +1/2, you then have three stress boxes in that category. If you assign it to +3/4, you have four stress boxes. If we were playing a Submerged game you'd be able to take it up to +5, which would give you four stress boxes and an extra Mild consequence to use (in that category).

So at the moment, Wisp/Mishie has 2 stress boxes in the Physical and Social tracks and 3 in the Mental track. If someone were to attack him and do 1 Physical stress to him, he'd cross out that stress box. From then until the end of the scene Mishie would have to use either his other stress box or take a Consequence. If a second attack were to do 1 stress after that box has been filled, Mishie would then have to fill in his second physical stress box, despite the attack not having done that much damage.

Consequences are how you deal with attacks that deal more damage than you have stress boxes to work with. If that happens, you can take either a Mild, Moderate, Severe or Extreme Consequence to cancel out some of the stress dealt by the attack. Each level of Consequence negates 2 more stress than the one before it, so a Mild Consequence negates 2 stress, a Moderate negates 4, and so on. If you take a Consequence but are still left with some stress to take, it fills up a stress box in the usual way.

So if Wisp were to take 5 physical stress from an opponent, he would be forced to take a Moderate Consequence (4 stress negated) or higher in order to bring the amount of damage down to a manageable level (i.e. so that the damage is completely absorbed or only does enough damage to deal stress). After taking that Consequence Wisp would still be left with 1 stress to take, so he'd fill in the first physical stress box as well. If he'd taken a Severe Consequence (6 stress) he wouldn't have to fill a stress box at all.

Now, consequences are not a good thing. If you take a Consequence of any level your opponents may tag/invoke it for a +2 to any roll that would be relevant. So, if you take a Consequence you are subsequently easier to hit and hurt than if you hadn't. Try not to take Consequences if you can help it.

So, if you've taken enough damage that you're worried about being killed (or something else as dire - I won't attempt to kill off PCs without your say so or giving plenty of prior notice), keep in mind that you can Concede and drop out of the conflict. Basically, this eliminates you from affecting the scene in any significant way. You can still talk/act, but you're not going to be rolling any dice until the scene is over (or you head off to a side quest).

However, you do get a consolation prize. For every Consequence you have taken in that scene, you gain a fate point.

As a side note: Recovery powers need time to work, so they don't count as additional Consequences to all be taken at once if an attack is strong enough to warrant it. You take a Consequence, then clear it, then you can take that Consequence again.

Finally, once a stress box is filled, it's filled for the scene. You can't take a Consequence to erase stress that has already been dealt, so if you've got a full stress track, think very carefully about whether you want to stay in the conflict or not. Consequences take time to heal and they last between scenes (unlike stress), so a Consequence taken in one scene can weaken you for one or more afterwards (the time it takes to heal increases with the severity of the Consequence). The more Consequences you have, the longer and more pronounced this effect is.

P.S. Time to heal will be counted in scenes or the progression of game time, the latter at my discretion. One session = 3 scenes. One scenario = ~3 sessions.

-----------

On an unrelated note, I had enough free time at work today to create an entire villain team for you guys to work with/against.

 

Okay, will post what I have so far. Am 100 % certain that there are wrong things here, sorry for that.


[FONT=&quot]Power Level:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] 10 refresh, 25 skill points
Name: Ege Masal[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Alias: [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
High Concept: Manipulative Translator[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Trouble: [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Overly Cautious
Other Aspects: [/FONT][FONT=&quot]


Description: 1,74 m, short black hair, brown eyes, normally wears comfortable jeans and shirts.

Costume: His “costume” is mostly self-made and entirely minimalistic. Dark clothes covering his whole body, with a dark leather jacket, trousers and gloves. A ski mask is covering his face except for his eyes. He is looking for something better but he doesn’t really want to fight and the money he has earned so far has gone mainly towards keeping himself and his sister afloat.


Power Description: Ability to understand all languages perfectly. Also allows him to read body language which gives him an intrinsic knowledge on how the enemy is going to move in combat and allows him to spot whether or not a person is lying in most cases. However, he is not particularly experienced in combat and wants to avoid it whenever he can.

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Skills[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
4 – Empathy, Scholarship
3 –Deceit , Alertness
2 –Discipline, Performance, Conviction [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]1 –[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Rapport, Contacts, Presence, Capes[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Stunts[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Linguist[/FONT] [-1]
[FONT=&quot]Read the Surface [-1]
Won’t Get Fooled Again [-1]
Honest Lies [-1]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
Powers: Thinker 4
[/FONT]
Supernatural Sense [-1] (Human Languages - Scholarship)[FONT=&quot][/FONT]INEXPLICABLE KNOWLEDGE[FONT=&quot] [-1]
Mental Library [-1][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Precognition [-2][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Limitation [+1] (Line of Sight)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]
Total: - 8 refresh
Fate Points: 2

Equipment: Taser, pocketknife (weapon 1), motorbike leathers (armour 1)

Background: [/FONT]Ege is 17 years old, and the second child of an immigrant, Turkish family, but he himself was born and raised in London. He has an older sister and two younger brothers. His was a fairly normal life, mostly spent between school , family and friends. While not well-off, his parents both had jobs, with their mother working at a library and the father being a taxi driver and were able to afford a relatively comfortable life.


His parents and younger siblings died during the Behemoth attack. He and his older sister were the only members of their family to survive and were placed in a boarding school. Ever since then, the two had been on their own, with the sister, Gizem, taking care of him, despite losing an arm herself in the attack. In order to help with the income, Ege started working, but had to resort to more dangerous work pretty quickly, since the money from the legal jobs that he could get wasn’t nearly enough. [FONT=&quot]

Phase Aspect: Overly Cautious[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ege triggered during one of his delivery runs. He was supposed to drop of a bundle, but before he could deliver, the place was raided by the police, forcing him to flee in a panic, seeking shelter in the nearest building. Unfortunately, that building was the hideout of a eastern European gang. Hiding in a small niche, hearing a bunch of people talk in a language he couldn’t understand for two hours, fearing for his life, forced him to trigger, and he was suddenly able to understand what they were talking about. The uncertainty gone, he was able to calm down, now knowing they weren’t talking about him or suspecting anyone being here and eventually he managed to escape. Ever since then, he hates being cornered and prepares exit plans. He never wants to take such a stupid, unnecessary risk again.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
Rising Conflict: Know Too Much

Phase Aspect: Ever since he triggered, he was able to understand all languages as if it was his mother tongue, and this included body language. This allowed him to understand people on a level that made him uncomfortable, as he soon understood how big the discrepancy between someone’s words and their body language was. Knowing that most people lied to him, including his sister at times, made him cynical.

Your Story: Using his new abilities, he reintroduced himself as a translator to the various gangs in the city who didn’t necessarily speak fluid English or wanted to communicate with someone who didn’t. This also allowed him to gather information faster. This way, without binding himself tightly to any one gang, he was able to exist as a freelancer who avoided antagonizing a group to the degree that would outweigh his usefulness.[/FONT]

 

Uh, not sure what's going on here, is this meant to be a single Aspect? Because to me it looks like 3 kinda related ones.

Going to be honest, kinda seems like a weaker version of Tattletale/Numbers Man although I could be missing something, could be useful for Social Combat, but I'm not really sure what else you would be able to do. Nothing wrong with that though, Social Combat can be awesome .

I legit have no idea what this is supposed to mean, mainly because of the fact that most of those aren't actually stunts and are actually trappings.

May want to check the math on that one

Pretty sure that most of the words are under the wrong heading and you may need to move some things around before I can say any more. Although, "Trigger Aspect" is kinda generic for an Aspect, maybe instead of just having that he triggered, why not go into how it's effected him and shaped him as a character. Like it says in the book, have fun with your Aspects, they're meant to be the defining traits of your character, and you're going to want to have ones that you can use to help yourself, and that Aek can use to make things interesting.

 

No problem, that's what I'm here for.

Your Trouble is just one aspect, so unless you mean for it to cover that much detail, I'd split those up into other aspects. Manipulative is already covered by your High Concept as well, so there's no need for that.

This bit looks fine.

Very broad description, but fairly cheap power wise. You're going to be using Assessments and Declarations a lot with this kind of power, so read up on them.

'Falsehood and Deception' is a 'trapping'. That means it's just a facet of the Deceit skill, which is the only thing you put points in to. Trappings are basically just ways in which a skill is used. Like how sprinting is part of Athletics, for example.

Given that you're taking Precognition, I'd suggest replacing it with Alertness.

Also, if you'd counted F&D as a skill, you'd have only spent 22. The typical skill pyramid I use for 25 skill points goes like this:

4 - 2 skills
3 - 2 skills
2 - 3 skills
1 - 4 skills

It gives you the maximum number of +4 skills and leaves you a nice foundation for upgrading skills in the future.

Finally, you're another one that's very low on stress boxes. You should consider maybe replacing one of your level 1 skills with Conviction, since you're more likely to face mental attacks than the fighters.

See all those ones I've crossed out? They're trappings. No need to pay for those.

Stunts cost -1 refresh, from the same pool of refresh as powers, so you might want to think about dropping a couple of these. Fate Points are going to be thrown about like candy for you.

Nice use of Limitation and Precog to show your body language reading.

Motorbike leathers count as Armour:1. Might want to note that down.

Taser is a weapon that doesn't do damage; it inflicts an aspect like Tazed! on the target, which you can then 'Tag for Effect' in order to incapacitate them. Read up on Tags/Invokes for Effect. They're going to be fairly common in this game.

Pocket knife is Weapon:1.

A couple of things here:

1) Phase Aspects are like your High Concept and Trouble, only they're summations of your Background/Rising Conflict/etc. rather than summations of your entire character. So your Background phase aspect should be something that is relevant to that story (Orphaned by an Endbringer is a decent generic one, though I'm sure you can think up better).

2) There are Phase Aspects for each of the five mini-stories, so you'll end up with seven aspects in total.

3) In character this time; British boarding schools tend to be privately run, so if you don't have cash you don't get in. You'd be better off having Ege drop out of school to find work or to just finish his exams then go straight to it (we finish school at 16 over here).

Otherwise this looks like a good character. Plenty of conflict in his background to make some aspects from, both to compel and to invoke. I like it.

 

Thanks guys, fixed the most obvious mistakes, will ponder on the aspects a bit more.

About the power, not sure if it is truly feasible or not. I was reminded that the "knowing when people lie" part could also be shitty for the other players, so, wanted to ask if that was okay or if I should change it after all.

And yes, I realize the similarity to Tattletale and co but apparently I really suck at coming up with Thinker powers xD

And the inspiration for the body language reading was obviously Cassandra Cain, only without the super-lethal martial arts knowhow. =P