does anyone want to kungfu an uproar in heaven

Alright answering all these things now...

With the mode, yes, you MUST pick the one tied to Tianshen. The other two are entirely yours though. With the other two modes you can pick from the standard four modes or you can make up one. You can conceivably make up a mode associated with your Office but you do absolutely need to take the Tianshen mode. You do not need to choose the special effect given for Tianshen in the book though. It's a suggestion. You can pick it if you want though. Otherwise you must make up one that is somehow tied to your position. With Seeds you don't have the option of selecting the premade effect.

Anyway, I'd say not to sweat what you currently have. Even with this I don't say you'd be gimped compared to the other characters. It's not as vital to have well set up characters as it would be in a more numbers heavy game. So I'm thinking maybe we keep your effects as they are or you and me work on writing up two you like. And then after we get through the first session you can see how things went. Get a better hang on things, yeah?

Also I'd say keep the character, honestly. She'll provide an interesting contrast to the three beasts we have, I think. Your characters don't necessarily need to get along perfectly. In fact it is best that they don't. We're not here to win, we're here to tell stories. And sometimes the best stories involve people getting upset with their friends or group. An example I guess be Abhaya didn't really match up with the morals of her two partners. At all. In particular she'd disagree with the naga and one time the naga actively fought against and hampered Abhaya. Because Abhaya was trying to murder someone, a thing that the naga could not stand by.

As far as premade characters go...That's definitely an option? The first few test runs of it were done with premade characters, including premade aspects. I'll have to talk with him about though if he's going to include premade characters to get people acquainted with things.

Rolls meanwhile are very simple. So we have a few sorts. One is the overcome roll. This is basically your character is presented with an obstacle. The obstacle has a set challenge rating that your character needs to roll against and beat with the appropriate skill. So let's say Jame is, I dunno, trying to run away from a rapidly falling apart house. We'll say she's gotta beat a +5 move check. So her player rolls the die. She takes the number she gets and adds her move modifier to it. Then we compare the number she got to the rating. If she ties it she just barely succeeds. If she is lower than it by one level she fails it or she can succeed at a cost. If she is lower than it by more than one then the consequences of succeeding are greater. She might end up with a broken leg or something but still out. If she gets higher then she succeeds. If she succeeds by more than three what the rating was (so she got +8 or +9 and so on) then she succeeds with style and gets an advantage from this.

Next is the contest. Which is two characters directly opposed to one another in a situation other than combat. So let's say that Jame is trying to get a crowd to her side via dancing, while Gerridon is actively opposing her control via the Dreamweaver. They're both dancing. Each round Jame and the Dreamweaver take an action. Now whoever gets the higher number in this via dice rolls and bullshit with special effects, making advantages, and fate points? They get a victory. We'll say that Jame needs 5 victories to win the contest. If she gets a bigger number than the Dreamweaver five times she wins. If the Dreamweaver gets there first though she wins. The rolls again are made with the appropriate skills and then have modifiers added on.

Then we have combat. So someone makes a roll using an attack skill against another character. That character then gets to roll to defend themselves. Whoever gets the bigger number wins this exchange. If an attacker succeeds then their target needs to take stress damage or consequences to stay in the fight. If they've no more open stress boxes then they're taken out and no longer in the fight. So let's say that Jame is fighting some asshole. She's managed to succeed on her attack roll by +5. This means that the person she is attacking needs to be able to tick off five stress boxes or to take consequences. If they aren't able to do that they're out of the fight. If they can they're still in.

Basically though you'll be picking a skill to roll for. Adding the modifier to your roll and possibly adding on more bonuses from special effects, fate points, or from people helping you. Then if you've got the bigger number you win.

 

...i think you found a root problem i was having that i wasn't aware of. i was stuck in "numbers heavy game" mode. because the rpgs i HAVE played are all that, mostly on a computer so the numbers bit is less filing taxes and more min-maxing. which, while i was consciously trying to avoid doing, i apparently did anyway unconsciously

but yeah. i think i'd like help with the office special effect. i can live with the tianshen one just for simplicity's sake but not having an office one made by someone who knows what their talking about is driving me up the wall. (which is kind of unfair of me since i picked that office despite KNOWING there wasn't a canon special effect for it yet :/)

i get that its tied to what the office does (like armaments turning your character into a weapon, or doors having a pocket door you can toss out and call reinforcements through) but im not entirely sure how to relate that to Seeds.

would it be something about growing plants better? more effective healing? some kind of blessing or ward-like effect?

im not sure if what I would associate with Seeds from my Very Western perspective would be anywhere near what is meant to be associated with Seeds from the setting's Very Eastern perspective

ah, okay. i wasn't sure if, by keeping her, i'd be sacrificing other's enjoyment of the game for the sake of amusing absurdity. (see also: chaotic stupid)

okay the "at cost" bit was throwing me off. i wasn't sure if that was some kind of dice thing or fate point thing or what. this clarifies that a bit better than before

an advantage like what though? can i get a working example? does it like lower the target number to overcome or give bonus dice or am i thinking too much on the mechanics side again?

quick question: can i get an example of fate point usage? can i also get an example of how people helping you would work?

 

The effect could be any of those things or it could just stay as her tea thing. Those all fit. More it's...what do you want to do?

Also advantages tend to be getting temporary aspects or the ability to be like "Ok now I just get +2 now". So let's say we've got Jame. Jame is having a sick dance off against her mom. Mommy gets +3 but Jame? She gets a +7. Wow. So we can say that I dunno Jame gets a temporary aspect like All Eyes Are On Me that she can freely invoke without using a fate point! So the next round Jame is one victory away from winning the contest so her player makes the roll and invokes All Eyes Are On Me, giving her an extra +2. Jame wins. Gerridon grumbles like the ass he is. Mom is like yes good.

So let's go over fate points now...You can either invoke an aspect or have an aspect compelled. So let's use We're like Izanami and Izanagi come again, you and I as our aspect example because I am shipper trash.

Let's say that, gasp, Rawneth has kidnapped Tori! Holy shit! She's got him over her shoulder and is running away like the bitch she is. She makes a huge jump across a rooftop. Now Jame makes a roll and sadly her roll comes up short. She's one point behind succeeding! Fuck! But her player has a fate point. So the player goes and talks with the gm about her aspect. She argues that, given how close she is to Tori and how much he means to her, Jame would be putting in her absolute all to save him from being tortured by Rawneth. The gm may or may not agree with this reasoning but we'll say that they do for now. So Jame's player loses one fate point and gains a +2 to her existing roll or the ability to reroll. Player picks the +2 as that would mean she succeeded. Now let's say that Jame's player did succeed by a +1 over the difficulty. That's great and all but we want to absolutely make sure to the best of our ability that Rawneth does not get away. So again the player argues the case for the aspect and gets the pass. They add +2 to their roll meaning they succeed by three shifts, or +3. So now Jame not only makes the jump but she gets another temporary aspect that she can freely invoke. We'll say that it's I'm Right On Your Tail for the moment and next round she invokes that to close the distance even more. Allowing her to get into a fight with Rawneth.

But that's invoking. Compelling is a thing too. To compel means that the gm is using your aspect against you. You gain a consequence or a negative aspect is attached to you or you automatically fail a roll. So let's say that Jame's a pc and Tori is an npc controlled by the gm right now. So Jame and Tori are in a tough situation with the CIS, aka THE COPS. Tori being a little shit is siding with the authority and not her. At the moment the situation is peaceful though and can be resolved without getting into a fight. Now the gm goes ok yeah Jame's in love with Tori right? And she's often sick of his bullshit because wow We're like Izanami and Izanagi come again right? What if we compel that aspect? Say Jame gets fucking furious about his shit because she loves him so much that she cannot believe his stupid ass would do this. So Jame physically attacks Tori which pisses off the police and starts a fight and she also has the aspect of The Cops Want Me attached to her poor head now. The player agrees to this. In exchange for the trouble though the player gets one fancy new fate point that they can use to metagame things back in their favor.

With helping you can either stack skill bonuses or stack advantages. So in the case of skill stacking we look at the skill ratings of each player helping out. The one with the highest rating has their rating treated as our base mode. A +1 is added for each player that is helping who has at least a +1 in that skill. So let's say Jame is being helped with some skill where she has +3 and everyone else +2 or +1. There are three people helping her so that's +3. She then gets a total bonus of +6 for that skill. With stacking advantages meanwhile, players take rolls to try and Create An Advantage. Aka you're rolling to get free invokes. Every player that succeeds then hands off all those free invokes and aspects to a single player. So again we have Jame and her three partners. All three players succeed in creating advantages as does Jame. So Jame now has a total of four free invokes on the aspects created. She can then stack all those to get her a huge +8 bonus on top of her skill mods. Which is fucking absurd. But then it's Jame so of course it fucking is.

 

okay holy shit that answered so many of my questions about all of this
thank you! i think i get it a LOT more now

XD
i needed that laugh

okay so i think i want to keep the theme of it tea but since i don't know how much help medicate is gonna be i think it would work better if like...she's got all sorts of tea she can make that is good for giving you that extra pep you need for whatever thing. so like instead of what it's at now, maybe something about if she gives you a cup of one of these special teas you get a bonus type thing you can apply to something later.

like say the bus gets kind of detoured near a cliff or something and hacker bunny (are they still driving the bus?) needs to get it back on track but its Complicated for Reasons. and sometime way before then Lei Lei was all "oh you're the one driving? what a good and useful rabbit! here have some tea to keep your concentration up (or something like that)" and it gives hacker bunny some kind of bonus in reserve they can use NOW when the bus is in danger to like make Extra Sure we don't all drive off the cliff and die.

like it doesn't have to be a bonus to my skill but a way to use a thing that can give a limited bonus to others they can use later. with limits like "only one bonus from this per player at a time" or something. maybe even some kind of "when she has access to tea making supplies and the target has time to drink it" kind of thing.

basically a bardic inspiration from d&d 5e but with tea and plants (if you're familiar with that)

i just...don't know how to word that in game terms. or keep it balanced.

 

So basically she'd be giving people a temporary +2 to a roll of theirs? So something like "If Lei Lei has the materials and time to brew, she can make a particularly potent and invigorating tea. The drinker gains a bonus of +2 to a roll of their choice. Only enough tea is brewed for a single drinker and the drinker can only consume one such drink per day or will die of tannin overdose." I suppose as an example of wording.

ALSO I AM PLEASED THAT YOU ARE AMUSED BY RAWNETH'S BITCHY ANTICS.

 

okay yes that works SUPER well
THANK YOU SO MUCH

not initially sure of the "or will die of tannin overdose" bit but i can also see that being funny as hell when she mentions it the first time only AFTER someone took a drink, so i think i'll keep it :D

only one question: the effect ending when? cause otherwise its just...boosting them continuously one day at a time.

maybe:

*goes off to fix my character sheet*

 

...and then there's lei lei XD

 

i feel i owe you an apology

i read the rules for Sutra Stories but i didn't read the FATE core rules. i thought if the first was overwhelming me then the second wasn't going to be any better, and i was wrong. a lot of what i poked your brain about could have been answered much faster if i'd just have read the damn thing myself. so yeah, i'm sorry. i made an assumption and it cost time and effort that didn't need to be spent and that's my bad.

 

okay so im having some ongoing health issues both physical and mental and im thinking the added stress from babby's first roleplay isn't helping, even though it's also fun

so i think imma have to back out
sorry :[

i hope you all have lots of fun though, @Aondeug

 

Awwwww.

Maybe another time then, Wocky? I hope you get better soon.

 

yeah definitely want to try again
just want to be well enough to properly enjoy it
and thanks for the well-wishes