Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*)
-
Hallo, I've embarked on another ares/fs3 project. This is one that isn't going to open in a couple of months or a handful of weeks. I won't have an estimate of when it'll open, because I'm taking my time developing theme and setting stuff. But here's the deets of what I have so far:
Elevator Pitch: BhamMu* is a modern urban horror game set in Birmingham, Alabama. In Bham the magically entangled fight against intruders from realms beyond even as they struggle with their mundane lives.
Setting: As mentioned above, Birmingham, AL. The grid will be made up of five neighborhoods that roughly make up the downtown/metro area of Bham: Central City, Five Points South, Fountain Heights, Highland Park, and Southside.
Theme & Mood: Struggling against magical extraplanar intruders while also struggling with the same day-to-day struggles as the nameless/faceless masses. Trying to stay sane while fighting unknowable horrors from beyond.
Key Points: There is no "veil" or the like, but the majority of the world doesn't know about the other realms or intruders from them. Most people think psychics are scam artists. The witches are just hippies. And that ghosts aren't real. They might enjoy a "paranormal hunters" show but see them as fact or mockumentories. If you start trying to warn people that a squid-faced monster is coming to eat everyone's brains you're probably going to be put in a psych ward, or lose your job. Or be scorned as "a crazy person".
- Unentangled: Those who do not know that magic really exists and are more free of it's web than the Entangled.
- Entangled: Those who become entangled with the reality of magic, the magic web, the silken labyrinth, and the other realms beyond them.
- The Magic Web: A metaphysical barrier between our reality and the silken labyrinth, the entangled are constantly aware of it.
- The Silken Labyrinth: A metaphysical maze that leads to other realms than the human one. It often looks like a crooked version of the world where a person entered it.
- Intruders: Creatures-- often hostile --from realms beyond the silken labyrinth. These can be corporeal or ephemeral.
- Corporeal Intruders: Intruders from other realms with a physical form-- these often prey on Unentangled whose blindness makes them easier targets.
- Ephemeral Intruders: Intruders from other realms without a physical form-- these often prey on the Entangled whose awareness has weakened their sanity.
- Magical Affiliations: Groups of Entangled who have banded together because of shared goals or experiences.
- The Web Burners: A fanatical group of Entangled who believe that the only way to be free of magic and the monsters from other realms is to burn down the magic web. To do so they believe they need to overwhelm the web with more Entangled. They try to force people to become Entangled, and supposedly have rituals that allow them to do this. NPC Antagonists.
- The Weavers: A fanatical group of Entangled who believe that the magic web is the only thing that protects the worlds, as poorly as it does, from terrible monsters from beyond the silken labyrinth. They do their best to reinforce and strengthen the web. They believe that the more who are aware of the web the weaker it gets, and are rumored to have the ability to strip people's entanglement from them. NPC Antagonists.
- The Enlightened Order of Entangled: A group of Entangled who became so through study and ritual. Typically occult academics who believed in magic before they ever experienced it. They believe that mastery over magics and the other realm is done through knowledge and ritualism. They have a rigorous hierarchy with each chapter having a local master with dozen of apprentices and pupils beneath them.
- The Wild Magic Affiliates: Those who believe in spontaneous magic. Often called "Wildcallers" because they are known to simply call on magic with only a vague intention of what form it should take. They call on a wild form of magic to do their works. They are often those who became entangled spontaneously with no prior experience with magic. Their structure is not as rigid as the Order, but they tend to work in cells or covens and expect loyalty from their members. They have a loose hierarchy where covens report to a hierophant in each location where they have a presence. They have no formal teacher/student structure, however.
- The Free: Psychic anarchists, iconoclast wizards, and loners. They may believe in ritualism but can't abide by the rules of the Order, or they may be those who believe in spontaneous magic but don't want to join the Wildcallers because they prefer to be alone. They have no set structure, only a loose affiliation and individual agreements.
That's it for now. That's as far as I've gotten. I'm going to set up a 'development blog' forum on the game/wiki, and be posting updates there as I go. I'm going to work out the details as of the three PC affiliations, and what is known about the two antag ones, then work on some stock enemies, and then work on what magic is accessible to PCs, etc.
Also all of this is subject to change if I change my mind later. :]
-
Ephemereal doesn't mean what I thought it meant, we're going with 'ethereal intruders' for the non-embodied ones.
-
@Cobaltasaurus
-
Sounds like fun! I was disappointed I wasn't able to participate in the last game you created but I'll be keeping my eye on this thread
-
This is my catnip. Looking forward to it!
-
Looks like fun @Cobaltasaurus . The only thing I'd caution on is making sure all the PCs have a shared goal. Too many groups can splinter the population if there's nothing that brings them together, and then you just have a game where people are doing their own thing with their own group and not interacting with others.
-
@bear_necessities said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):
Looks like fun @Cobaltasaurus . The only thing I'd caution on is making sure all the PCs have a shared goal. Too many groups can splinter the population if there's nothing that brings them together, and then you just have a game where people are doing their own thing with their own group and not interacting with others.
Oh, there'll be a common goal, a snippet from plot material:
The following is a recording left in The Order Archives from forty years ago. It was recovered from an old slightly damaged cassette. It isn’t complete and only a short conversation was understandable. Everything before and after the conversation is static, strange high pitched noises, and garbled voices that cannot be understood.
[Male Voice] “This thing is called many things. I have heard it called ‘the thing between the cracks’ and ‘the many and the none’. But also ‘they who walk the shade’. I think these are all the same thing. Lost notes tell me that Unentangled in its presence are driven mad. I’ve forbidden the study of this creature to my apprentices-- not after what happened with Bartholomew last year. We keep him--”
[Female voice] “I’m sorry-- did you say you keep him --keep him? Keep him where?”
[M.V.] “Yes, we keep him locked in a special cell behind a containment ward.”
--
ETA:
@Coin and I have workshopped the names for the PC affiliations a little bit, and come up with some better ones. Both the EOE and the Wildcallers are meant to be a touch pretentious and the third party is a loose affiliation that they've given an equally pretentious name.
-
I can't contain my excitement:
https://bhammu.com/wiki/atarchive#the-many-and-the-none
A friend of mine and his wife are looking at getting experience with voice acting, and so recorded what is an IC 'found footage' bit of metaplot for the game.
Guys I am so excited.
(The credits is pending b/c I'm waiting to find out what names they would like to be listed under.)
-
Making some progress with magic.
15-20 more items to go. quiet sobs
-
Ok, I've made significant progress on the hermetic magic portion of the game. I'd like some general feedback from people-- noting that alot of this might change once I'm ready for alpha open. But this is my general idea so far. I do still need to write up the rules for 'experimental magic'.
-
Arise, Chicken!
I'm working on this again. If anyone would like to help me, especially with the building part, please let me know. :] Today I poked at the magic stuff again. Starting to work on the Wild Magics.
-
Almost a month later and I have finally finished the alpha sketches of how magic will work on BhamMu. I'd be happy to get any feedback people want to give me.
-
Honest opinion? Scrap it and start over.
To prevent magic from spiraling into a mess of chaos and power gaming you have to start really basic. Also, if you have to define every magical effect as your players make them up, you're going to end up needing a full time staffer just for that. Simpler is better.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind, Spirit, Life, Time, and finally Transmutation.
Approach it like old school Mage from WoD does. If you have rank 1 in <element> you can do this kind of stuff. If you have rank 2 you can do that kind of stuff and so forth and so on. Not spells but guidelines. Say, at Water 2 you can shape or control X amount of mass of the water and conjure half that much into being.
Magic should be like building with lego blocks and each block should be clearly defined.
Don't just say your magic system is part science, part magic, make it work like that. Define elements, rules and set up guidelines then let the players build things with those elements.Want to turn a person into a statue? Life 3 to seize control of the person's body, Transmutation 3 to transform one level 3 worth of mass into another element and Earth 3 to shape that amount of mass into a statue.
You could use Life3, Transmute 3, earth 1 to turn them into earth but they would be a lose pile of dirt instead of a statue because you need earth 3 to maintain the stability of the mass of stone in the statue shape until the transmutation process is complete.
If you have a system where everything is defined by properties and values you don't need to write out every spell and every ritual because the requirements can be self-evident.
-
@de-villefort said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):
Honest opinion? Scrap it and start over.
Why? Because you'd rather use a system you're more familiar with?
It seems fairly clear to me that the aim was for a system that had some level of staff oversight to make sure it didn't fly off the rails.
But, yes, it will need an awful lot of staff oversight, it looks like.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
-
@ganymede said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):
But, yes, it will need an awful lot of staff oversight, it looks like.
Other than specific spells how so?
-
@de-villefort said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):
Honest opinion? Scrap it and start over.
To prevent magic from spiraling into a mess of chaos and power gaming you have to start really basic. Also, if you have to define every magical effect as your players make them up, you're going to end up needing a full time staffer just for that. Simpler is better.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind, Spirit, Life, Time, and finally Transmutation.
Approach it like old school Mage from WoD does. If you have rank 1 in <element> you can do this kind of stuff. If you have rank 2 you can do that kind of stuff and so forth and so on. Not spells but guidelines. Say, at Water 2 you can shape or control X amount of mass of the water and conjure half that much into being.
Magic should be like building with lego blocks and each block should be clearly defined.
Don't just say your magic system is part science, part magic, make it work like that. Define elements, rules and set up guidelines then let the players build things with those elements.Want to turn a person into a statue? Life 3 to seize control of the person's body, Transmutation 3 to transform one level 3 worth of mass into another element and Earth 3 to shape that amount of mass into a statue.
You could use Life3, Transmute 3, earth 1 to turn them into earth but they would be a lose pile of dirt instead of a statue because you need earth 3 to maintain the stability of the mass of stone in the statue shape until the transmutation process is complete.
If you have a system where everything is defined by properties and values you don't need to write out every spell and every ritual because the requirements can be self-evident.
I kind of feel like if Cobalt wanted to run a Mage game, or even an Ars Magica game, she would make a Mage game or an Ars Magica game.
It kind of feels like you want to play something completely different from what she's clearly aiming for and instead of, you know, finding that okay, you want something entirely different because ... it's... your preference? Lol. Come on, now.
Also, LOL at Mage-style magic systems "preventing magic from spiraling into a mess of chaos and power gaming".
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
-
@coin Isn't Mage stuff like the thing people complain about the most? Mage confuses the bajeebies out of me. Cobalt thing seems far easier to understand.
-
Yeah, I don't think the 'make your own spells' format really works that well in a MU* format. It usually ends up being a matter of who can BS the current GM the most effectively, which is ultimately frustrating for everyone else.
-
@cobalt said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):
Other than specific spells how so?
You know folks are going to want to create their own spells. I figured that you'd allow that, with staff approval. And that means that staff's going to be working on balancing what effects a player wants against some standard.
I could be wrong.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
-
Somebody is going to be making the spells. Just a matter of whom.
I guess the easiest way is to just say that here are the prereqs for being able to cast that spell with a modicum of normal success, and let the player determine if they want to give it a go or not. As their 'power' or 'skill' is the actual determinant, not the spell itself.
i.e. Anyone can look up the spell in the library, database, ask-a-wiz-network, etc.For Example. Create Volcano. Fire/Earth. TN: 6 successes. Let's say you need 4,5,6 on a six sided die to create a success.
Anyone with Fire/Earth can try. But it's still going to be a weak volcano if a Fire 1 wizard manages to accomplish it... You'd need popcorn dice of some sort for a Fire 1 to have a chance.Or you can set a TN with a total to beat, and a create a system that has both skill and power. ie <skill>D<power>. This tends to make skill the more prominent for getting it done, but power the possibility for doing greater things.
Anyways, off the original post. No two people, well, even the same person, will run the same adventure with the same TN levels every time. It's why pre-made characters and modules are used in tournaments? So it is with spell approvals, as well.
My concern would be more with the non-mages. What do they get? Or maybe worded how much more is a mage spending to get this ability to do or research anything? Especially if there is any kind of PvP allowed.
In closing, it won't matter. Your game, your concept. It's your baby. You'll attract the people who like it, and etc.
Looking for a Wild Talents 2e game.
