Nevermind! (Not Active)
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As mentioned in a below post, ended up shelving this idea as it wasn't going anywhere.
SANCTUARY
sanctuary.aresmush.com
sanctuary.aresmush.com 4201The air smells like ozone, full of electricity that crackles all around. That electricity flows through you, too, like blood, or perhaps fire. Your first breath fills your lungs in a gasp, your body going rigid as muscles and nerves awaken. The world comes slowly into view, blurry at first, but soon sharp and crisp and bright. You're alive.
You are alive.
Promethean: The Created is a roleplaying game of existential horror, where players take on the roles of creatures that were never meant to be. The monster in Frankenstein is the most well-known example in pop culture. The wooden boy Pinocchio is another. By one means or another, a spark of divine fire has been infused into a corpse (or parts of several!) or some other kind of humanoid construct and unnatural life has been created. Reality rejects these poor creatures, slowly twisting and warping everything around them if they linger too long in one place. Humanity abhors them on a subconscious level, their lizard-brains whispering that something Is Not Right even though most of the Created appear quite normal. Over time, that whisper grows into a scream and humans lash out in extreme and often violent ways without understanding why. The Created can never escape Wasteland and Disquiet, as these two phenomena are known, for very long. What's worse, they come to know that they are not human, but monsters, when human is all they want to be. So they travel to avoid lingering, and they make acquaintances instead of friends, and they seek a way to transcend their unnatural state and join humanity as one of them.
You don't need to own the RPG to play on Sanctuary. In fact, if you're willing to start as almost as much of a clean slate as your character, everything you need to play is right on two wiki pages. Once you've read that, you can answer a few questions and make your character. We're serious. Don't let a lack of experience or knowledge push you away. Give it a read, and if it sounds like fun, give it a try.
Sanctuary is a Promethan: The Created 2nd edition game. It is NOT a Chronicles of Darkness game. Yes, we use the basic rules, but none of the theme/lore/setting. Vampires, Changelings, Mages - you'll find none of it, and any supernatural entities that do come up (if any) will not be from those books. This is a standalone game. The only book we use is the 2nd edition of Promethean, and even that isn't required to play. Because of this, there is no Refinement of Silver/Argentum in this game, and no Spiritism Transmutation.
We are focused on co-operative storytelling first and foremost. Players who feel the urge to stockpile XP and max out their stats will be disappointed. XP is gained monthly at a 5XP per month flat rate. There are no XP incentives or bonuses to chase. We want players who play in and tell stories because they enjoy it, not because they're getting incentives to. Similarly, this is not a competition. PvP is discouraged. We seek players interested in helping each other tell tales of existential horror, tragedy and redemption. There will be plots and NPC antagonists, but action and fighting are far from the focus of this game. Players who want to see more action and adventure are encouraged to run their own stories for anyone interested. Staff are very accommodating to such things as long as power levels and the like are kept within reason.
Most Staff run scenes will be one-shots that involve emitting the human masses your characters move among and interact with. The slice-of-life that makes Promethean what it is. Players are encouraged to do this as well, and playing humans for each other can be a great deal of fun. You can start play as an existing Created or freshly made, complete with a 'Born on the Slab' scene. Existing Created get 15XP on top of their starting points, and details can be found on the Making a Character page under Systems. Newly Created get their 15XP broken up as an extra 5XP a month for the first 3 months. They can redo their stats after a month of play, and every player can respec in March and September.
All character sheets are done in PDF by Staff and posted in a special section on your character's wiki as an image. This image must not be edited or replaced by anyone but Staff - and yes, we can tell. Any tampering will get the character yanked and the player suspended. When XP is gained and spent, Staff will update your sheet for you. Dice are rolled on the game by typing 'dice <#>d10', where <#> is whatever your dice pool is. No, it's not coded chargen and sheet/dice support, but Promethean is a fringe game and doesn't have much MU code or support. Ares has a LOT of great functionality, so this is what we're doing. It's not that hard.
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Hi!
Could you talk a little more about what kinds of things you see PCs doing on the game, and how the rotating setting will be an asset?
I'm intrigued by the idea, but I admit that I worry that without strong human presence or constant things in the 'mundane' world for PCs to get attached to, it'll be hard to capture that passionate longing and envy of Created towards humans.
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@pyrephox Sure! In Promethean, moving around and the vagabond lifestyle is already a major element, so The Sanctuary jumping is actually more a way to keep it with you as you travel. It doesn't jump weekly or anything, though. Months, even a year or more (IC) can pass before it has to jump.
So all of that is to say that, yeah, the real challenge the game will face is having enough going on in terms of mundane interaction and human encounters. I share that concern, but I want to try, at least. When I ran HorrorMu, I was running some pretty plot-driven, break-neck stories for 2-4 months at a time for a year solid. Here, I'll be running SOME danger/action/mystery plots, but what I see my main job being as head ST is running/emitting humanity for you guys to interact with while everyone settles in. Hopefully at least a few players will jump in and people can take turns playing or emitting humans for each other. Everyone is supposed to chip in IC in some fashion, so pickup scenes can easily be the part time job you work to bring some cash in, or the scrounging for useful items around town, etc. Daily life. It's what HAPPENS during that daily routine that gets the ball rolling, and then incidents get talked about at home with other Created, lessons shared, ideas explored, etc.
TLDR; Yeah. It might not get off the ground, but I'm willing to work my ass off to try.
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@botulism Cool! Thank you for elaborating. It sounds really interesting, although Promethean is one of those lines that I don't know a damn thing about. Might be worth learning, though!
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@pyrephox The Quickstart, if nothing else, might be worth a shot!
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Since I've had one whole player interested in this, I think I'll shelve it. Gonna try something a bit different instead.
