Kushiel's Debut

[Sunny]

Kushiel's Debut is a game set in the world of the Kushiel's Legacy novels by Jacqueline Carey, and using a modified version of the New World of Darkness rules for conflict resolution. We have done a good deal of work to make the game world as close to what is in the novels as possible, but because our timeline is set well after that depicted in the books, the stories that we are telling are only loosely related to those from the series. Thus, there is plenty of room for new characters and plotlines.

Those familiar with the novels will be aware that the setting contains strong themes of politics, intrigue, and romance in a low-magic setting, but we don't require people to have read the books. If you are interested in these themes, our staff and players will help you get adjusted to the details of the world, which is roughly equivalent to a late Medieval/early Renaissance version of Europe, France in particular. More specifically, play focuses on the capital city of Terre d'Ange, a country where the inhabitants are descended from angels. In Elua, named for the divine figure these angels fell from the heavens to follow, the noble families of the realm gather to plot against one another behind a veil of courtly etiquette, lavish parties, and artistic accomplishment.

Join in the fun at:
Address: kushielsdebut.org
Port: 2009
Website: http://kushielsdebut.org

And.....

Message: 23/15 Posted Author
Ducal Positions Mar 30 2015 Skaldia

We currently have a number of ducal openings, the highest ranking of noble available for play in the game. In particular, there is one opening for a sovereign duc or duchesse, that of the Chalasse duchy in l'Agnace. Though we prefer long-time players for sovereign positions since there are expectations that staff has for players who take them, time spent in the game is not the only factor in making such decisions. For a 'normal' duc or duchesse, there are no such requirements, the only limitation being that you can have only one ducal character among your alts. There is also a need for the heads of some other important families as well. So if you would like to get into the political game at the higher end of things, feel free to app one of these characters.

--

I'm really a huge fan of this place for a variety of reasons, and getting some new people in would be great. It's been a LOT of fun, and this is a great opportunity to do so. I play Emma there, and I'm happy to help people get things figured out, answer questions, and get involved.

[Rook]

I am working in CharGen for a character here, and wanted to post a mini-review to back up Emma's claims else-thread that the game is very friendly.

So I've sent off a background hook idea to a player on the game, and since we have opposing play schedules, I am waiting to hear back. Someone is always looking for RP on the Public channel, and today it raises eyebrows that I'm still waiting in CharGen. I quickly point out that this is not a slow staff thing, I haven't even finished, I'm waiting on a player.

Instantly, three people page me asking who it is, how can they help. Two are players, one is Skaldia. One even offers to contact this player /immediately/ in RL and get them to look at my @mail. Now, that's (unnecessary) service!

The friendliness here is outstanding. The helpful attitude of everyone I've run into is great. I highly recommend this game if you are into this Lords and Ladies sort of play setting and style.

[3543thrh67]

I might have to try it. Though, I know little about Kushiel stuff. I always take longer when I know little of the theme.

[Sunny]

There is LOTS of information available on the wiki for the game; enough for you to fake it till you make it. And from experience, Skaldia is VERY patient with answering a newbie's questions; I bothered him throughout my entire creation process and he was always always patient and kind. I imagine it's very helpful if you've read the books (I grabbed the first three, reading them now), but it's not vital.

http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/New_Player_Quick_Guide

That's incredibly helpful, and fairly well outlines much of the difference between what you would expect from a L&L game and a Kushiel game. The only negative thing I can say at all about the place is that the wiki is kind of a mess and finding things can sometimes be a pain, but even with that everybody on game is generally happy to help find where things are on said wiki.

[Apollonius]

The stat system is based off of nWoD Rev. 1 so that takes care of any learning curve to figure out a new stat system.

[lordbelh]

I played it a couple of years ago, for a little while. 3 months perhaps. I think it was my second ever MU. I found Skaldia super friendly to start with, but that faded in favor of his sandbox mentality. When one of his characters couldn't win the affection of a friend of mine, he just made another in a position of power over her. His NPC king was one of those NPC leaders whose good side you get on by TSing him a bunch. Of course it's a Kushiel game so you might think that's just a given. (I never even heard of the books until after I joined.) I was just looking for a historical themed setting, and I'm an adult and don't really care if it's uber sexual. But I did hope it was more than just that. My bad. I can't say I recommend it at all. I heard for a while it was really dead, but I suppose if the owner is die hard dedicated then those are just cycles.

[Arkandel]

@lordbelh said:

His NPC king was one of those NPC leaders whose good side you get on by TSing him a bunch. Of course it's a Kushiel game so you might think that's just a given. (I never even heard of the books until after I joined.)

It's been forever since I read the books (man those are a lot of House names, I remember thinking I should keep notes or something) but yes, that sounds about right for the setting. Nepotism and sex were legitimate ways to get ahead.

Somethingsomething real life.

[Coin]

@Arkandel, @lordbelh, I guess the real question becomes: if you ask him to fade to black, does it still count as having banged him like a screen door in a hurricane, or does the lack of actual sexual content influence his IC decisions?

[Arkandel]

@Coin said:

@Arkandel, @lordbelh, I guess the real question becomes: if you ask him to fade to black, does it still count as having banged him like a screen door in a hurricane, or does the lack of actual sexual content influence his IC decisions?

If it's the latter he's a creep the kind of whom deserve a special mention by name right here in these hallowed threads.

[Coin]

Well, my question was geared towards that, yeah. Is he a creep just in character, or is this an out of character trait that defines the way the MU (not the "kingdom") is run?

[Sunny]

I haven't picked up on any sort of OOC being influenced by that sort of thing. Current plots and other such things say very loudly that this is not actually the case. I've now had a number of people that I know come in to fairly hefty positions without knowing anybody but me there (at least one Duc), and I've never been even vaguely approached by him. If this WAS the case (and perhaps it was), I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it's not the case any more. Skaldia has never approached me for TS, but my character's stuff is chugging along just fine, and I've had people get into positions when they haven't even talked to him, let alone TS'd him.

Pretty sure the character is the creep (if there's creep at all), not the person behind him. I REALLY don't want to get into the plot stuff (spoilers!), but I can say with fair certainty that it rather proves this to be bunk.

[lordbelh]

Like I said, it's been a couple of years. Perhaps the game has changed for the better. It occasionally happens if people become cognizant of their own less than noble actions and actually amend their ways. Rarely, mind, but not entirely out of the realm of possibilities. I know for a fact how it was back then, because I got numerous stories about it as it was happening, from multiple sources, but yeah. Could have changed. If so, great!

[Sunny]

Yeah, I have nothing to say about a couple of years ago, because I don't know, but I can say for sure that it's really not the case now. I'd have already run up against that wall hard if it was there, or one of my group would have. Somebody would have. We've been there long enough and we're a diverse enough group of folks that it would have come up.

It's good to know that it's something to keep an eye out for and all, but at this point I am confident enough to speak with certainty that it's not an issue that if it does exist, is causing any negative repercussions for the game at all. I'd encourage you to give the game another shot if it's something you're interested in. There's plenty of folks about that are more than happy to provide hooks to incoming folks and so on.

[3543thrh67]

Okay! I'm gonna try this game. Anything anyone want? There seems to be plenty of people I like on it so I am willing to try it out.

[Sunny]

Staff is REALLY good about keeping bboard 23 up to date with what they need/want. There's a few different sorts that could use some loving for plot purposes (specifically the group that wants to keep d'Angeline blood pure) and a couple of the Provinces need nobles to flesh them out. Though that may have changed today while I was sleeping. But really, check bboard 23 for 'staff wanted' or variations on that theme; that guarantees involvement in plot.

House Morhban or House Shahrizai could both use people that are interested in politics, as there's a traditional feud there that I personally would love to see.

http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Category:Shahrizai
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Morhban

You're going to want to play either a noble, a courtesan, or a priest. Typically commoner characters that don't fall into the latter two categories will have a fairly difficult time finding RP. It's not forbidden, but there's definitely an attempt to discourage people from going this route because it's not as potentially fun for people to play them. Exceptions to every rule and all. I would recommend against foreigners for the same reason, right now.

It does look like war might be on the horizon, so characters with that sort of leaning would be rocking. Oh man, I have so many things that I would like to see, but that's different than what the game really needs or what people might want to play. Feel free, anybody who pops in, to snag me (Emma) for pointing in particular directions.

[ThatGuyThere]

I can definitely second the recommendation against playing commoner characters. I played one and while it was fun and in general I liked the game and the people there. It was an uphill climb to be active and get involved. I know that was the major reason I ended up drifting away when RL got busy. Though in general I thought it was a very positive place to play and I enjoyed it.

[Sunny]

I pass this info along pretty regularly for new folks coming in, so I figured I'd post it here, as well. There is a LOT of info on the wiki, and it can get pretty overwhelming. To get a really good 'quick start' idea of the setting / what's going on / etc, really the following pages should do you:

http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/New_Player_Quick_Guide
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Timeline#Present
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Nobility
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Night_Court
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Religion
http://www.kushielsdebut.org/index.php/Temple_Orders

Then of course once you've got a character firmed up a little bit, looking at the houses specifically and the provinces, all of that sort of thing. The above links, while not a complete and total understanding of the books and blah blah should give anybody enough information to be able to play the game without having any major confusion.

[Apollonius]

So my only beef about KD is the lack of end goal. So far, staff has been good about plots and stuff, but nobility is inherently an entrenched system that values stasis over dynamics. There's no econ system and a very rudimentary mass warfare system in place. Social interactions are great, but I am somewhat curious how this will not devolve into a complex marriage simulator, which it already kinda seems to be...

It's not as much a complaint as a head scratcher. Maybe I'm just playing the game wrong.

[Misadventure]

I would suggest that the game is meant to produce similar stories to the books. Or perhaps the stories of the characters who were background or secondary in the books, depending on just how Special the main characters) are.

So if you are looking for political revolution and bloody coups, it's probably not going to happen. Unless it happened in the books.

[Echx]

End goals are very much dependent upon individual player motivation.

While it's true that there is not likely to be a civil war or a bloody coup or anything of that nature, that is partially (but not entirely) because nobody appears to play that way, or to desire that particular outcome. It certainly is within the scope of theme for a very politically savvy character to dramatically shake up the board; in the books there were a few arch villainesque characters that were almost successful in that sort of thing, foiled of course by the plucky heroine and so on and so forth.

Very recently there was an attempt to poison the crown princess and her unborn child which was somewhat narrowly foiled; circumstances pointed to the king's mistress as one of the key figures in that and she's been executed for her crimes.

Currently there are two formerly sovereign duchies that have been demoted, their former subordinate provincial duchies elevated instead for Reasons, all within the past two IC years. It's a bit Game of Houses, but the kind of thing someone from one of those families could decide they wanted to fix.

There's a fairly hush-hush plan to go to the game's version of the Middle East in search of some kind of spell to repair the severed magical connection a lot of d'Angelines have with their founding angels - which may or may not be successful. In the meantime the College of the Occult could probably use some occult scholars of its own.

And there's a great big giant bloody war brewing on the horizon, of the kind that is liable to impact almost everyone.

All of the above have significant player involvement and contribution. Some of it is fall-out from character decisions. (The duchy switch-ups were due to really POOR judgment on the part of their then-rulers.) They may not be sufficient to give you personally an end goal, but it's not meant to be the sort of game that has win conditions, exactly.

Like Sunny said, there's plenty of niches and things interested people can play, and if she can't steer you in a proper direction I might be able to pull you into some things. (I play Reynard, and I'm about >< close to marching the country off to war. That'll be fun! No, really!)