Saturday, March 16, 2024

The Road Between Light and Dark: Moving Onward (Exalted)

Hey there, folks, hope everyone's doing well, so on and so forth. I know a few folks have had a rough time of it as of late, and just know that my thoughts are with you whether you're reading this or not. (I'm not sure how you'll know my thoughts are with you if you're not reading this, but just don't think too hard about it.) 

I've been running at a little less than peak efficiency myself, which is why it's been quiet around these parts, but hopefully I'll be back up to speed soon enough.

Anyhow...

Saturday, March 2, 2024

The Road Between Light and Dark: The Territory is Not the Map (Exalted)

Greetings and salutations and all that, welcome back! Once more unto the breach and all that.

I can't really think of anything special to add here, other than repeating -- for those who may have missed it -- my announcement from the previous post that I'm working on the Alchemicals 'fatsplat' for Exalted Third Edition. There's not a whole lot of detail I can get into other than that I'm writing a few things for a few different parts of the book. But there's lots of gears turning and things interlocking (that's an Autochthonia joke) and I'll get into more detail when I can.

And now, let's get into it as we start our next 'episode.'

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Road Between Light and Dark: Chain of Command (Exalted)

Hey there, y'all. Sorry there's been a bit of a gap in Exalted posts, out of play issues caused a bit of a delay and that kinda led two sessions to get smooshed together enough I held back to write them up together as a single blog post. And then other stuff delayed me getting the blog post finished a little later than I've been managing recently. Ah well.

Before I get into it, a bit of personal news -- I feel really awkward saying anything this early in the process, but as it's been formally announced, I'm allowed to say that I'm working on the upcoming Alchemicals splatbook for Exalted 3rd Edition. It's kinda funny that I start running a game using the Essence system, and then I get invited to work on a book using the core rules. Just when I think I'm out...

It's a bit premature to get into exactly what I'm writing for the book, but it's promising to be a fun project and I'm working with some folks with whom I'm genuinely excited to be collaborating. I'll go into more detail when it's appropriate to do so.

And now, let's get Exaltin'!

Saturday, February 3, 2024

The Road Between Light and Dark: Back on the Road (Exalted)

Welcome back, everyone and anyone who's come to join me for another trip into the North of Creation!

Quick note before I get into it, I did another character write-up, this time for Trinity Continuum: Anima. It's actually spread out across two posts -- one for the character herself, and one for her MMO characters that she'd be playing in-game. (No, really.) 

So with that out of the way, right here I've got the third session write-up for my group's Exalted series, in which we wrap up the first episode and begin the second. I can't think of anything clever to add to this at the moment, so let's just get into it!

(Just a heads-up, this is one of my 'talky' sessions, so it's possible I might miss a detail or two or put something in the wrong place conversationally. I'll at least try to keep it consistent in the post.)

Monday, January 29, 2024

Building a Character: Terra Surge (TC: Anima)

Welcome back! This is a little weird, I'll admit, because this is the second part of a character write-up. The game in question is Trinity Continuum: Anima, a tabletop RPG that plays in both the cyberpunk and LitRPG genres, and this post focuses on the latter. You really should have read the first part of the character write-up in which I created Erin Taylor, a youth counselor in the city of Cascade and know all this, but I'll quickly contextualize.


In TC: Anima's setting of Cascade, there's a mystery involving missing players of a popular MMO called Terra Surge, linked to possible weirdness within the game itself. It may also tie in to rumors and mysteries surrounding the revolutionary neural implant, called Glass, that most people use to play the game and is given out to Cascade's citizens for free. Different gaming groups can adjust how much of the story is spent in the real world versus the virtual world, but by default the narrative is expected to move back and forth. Not only are there clues and leads in the game itself, but it's also going to be the best (and often only) way to connect with other people in the community who might know something, even if they're only using Terra Surge as a meeting spot.

In my previous post, I wrote up Erin as a character, but the game also has a well-crafted ruleset and setting for Terra Surge, and players are expected to write up at least one character -- called an 'anima' -- for the MMO as well. And since I'm really wordy and the previous post went on as long as it was, I decided to handle the creation of Erin's anima separately. So let's get to it.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Building a Character: Trinity Continuum: Anima

Been a while since I've done one of these, and I've been meaning to do this one for a little while now. Just been getting distracted working on other projects and getting my group's new Exalted series started. But I'm feeling like I need a bit of a palate cleanser, so let's get into it.

Trinity Continuum: Anima is interesting and a little experimental for a few reasons. To start, it's the first new time period introduced to the Trinity series after the initial three, taking place in 2084, between the end of the Aberrant War and the start of TC: Æon (and, in the default Æon timeline, a couple of years before the Shanghai Accords banned true AI and certain brain-computer interfaces). (Speaking of which, assuming I get this up in time, there's a campaign still up to crowdfund a fresh printing of the core books.) Second, it's very focused setting-wise -- while there's enough info to run a game elsewhere in the setting, by default the focus is on the city of Cascade, in the Federated States of America (the fascist military junta that the US turned into during the Aberrant War). Implied to be on the site of a war-destroyed Vancouver, Cascade is a newly-built city where the FSA is encouraging people to emigrate to start new lives. Third, it's got a pretty focused premise, which I'll get to after explaining the genre for context.

Where the other Trinity Continuum games present different genres, TC: Anima covers cyberpunk and a little something else (keep reading). See, as incentive to get people to move to Cascade, they're offering free implantation of the 'Glass' brain augmentation. Invented by a company called FulgurTech, Glass allows for the sort of mind-machine interface and virtual reality shenanigans long-promised by cyberpunk fiction. It also offers tools for better cyberware interfacing, managing a number of neurological or hormonal issues, and therapeutic functions like editing sensory input or one's own memories.

And yes, you can run Doom on it.

Which is where I'm getting into the 'little something else' genre-wise -- I don't want to get too deep into the weeds explaining if you don't know it, but TC: Anima is also a LitRPG game with the addition of Terra Surge into the setup. Terra Surge is a free-to-play MMO taking place in the fantasy realm of Synestia, in which players have adventures in a virtual world that's run by a number of powerful AIs called 'Narrators,' who are capable of greatly customizing the game experience to individual players' tastes. The Narrators can create custom quests and NPCs for players on the fly, all woven into a larger narrative being crafted by the game's developers. The MMO is actually playable in-game, with a proper ruleset and a fleshed-out setting of its own.

In a world still recovering from the Aberrant War and the Crash (the total destruction of the OpNet), Glass and Terra Surge offer much-needed options for coping with the fallout and trauma of the last couple of decades. (Incidentally, this game was pretty much entirely written in the early years of the Covid pandemic, and it shows in a lot of ways that make the game stronger for it.)

However, while TC: Anima is meant to be a more hopeful take on the genre, it's still a cyberpunk setting. Naturally, there's something wrong with it.

The game's premise, by default, revolves around a mystery surrounding Terra Surge and Glass itself: Popular players are going missing (sometimes with their game streams abruptly ending after the game's built-in spoiler warning system blanks the feed), and the ones who've turned back up have been behaving... differently. Conspiracy theorists link the phenomenon to the recent introduction of the Jahat, a mysterious new antagonist faction in Terra Surge. Some think it's all a planned marketing stunt, but others insist there's something wrong with the Jahat and the missing players learned something they shouldn't have. And then, of course, there are all manner of conspiracy theories in general about Glass itself and FulgurTech's relationship with the FSA, even before you factor in the possibility that there's a connection between this and the mystery of the Jahat.

So yeah, this is a lot of new territory for Trinity.

It's technically possible to play a psiad (a naturally-occurring psi-user) or even a low-power nova with the right supplements and a permissive Storyguide, but by default TC: Anima player characters are Talents, and I'm going to build one of those. Because there's a two-part character creation setup here -- one for the actual character in Cascade and one for their Terra Surge avatar (no, really) -- I'm going to split this up between two different blog posts for length and readability.

Before I get into it, in case it needs to be said, this write-up assumes you know the basic Trinity Continuum character creation structure, as seen in my first Trinity character build. I can't imagine it being indecipherable without having read that, but I'm not going to stop and explain every step as much as I do there (for better or worse).

Thursday, January 25, 2024

The Road Between Light and Dark: The Horned One (Exalted)

Hey there, folks, here we go. More Exalted shenanigans from the cold, dark North of Creation.

And assuming I don't take way too long writing this post, the Indiegogo campaign to reprint Trinity Continuum, Trinity Continuum: Æon, and Scion 2nd Edition should still be running, so if you haven't picked up the books yet and want to save a buck on a traditionally-printed copy of any of the books, now's the time!

And with that...