Character Creation Rules

[Sensibleshoes]

15 hours ago, 8w_gremlin said:

hey @Sensibleshoes I have some setting questions:

Law, magic, psionics, mutant powers how do the powers that run Kamden treat those, are any illegal, frowned upon, etc.

How does the general population see mutant animals, What is the prevailing religion, etc.

Are there any settings or political things that we should be aware of?

 

The Knights of the Lilly tend to be very suspicious of arcane magic. One of their main allies are an order of cat psions -- mostly mind melters called the Order of the Judging Eye. They are interrogators and intelligence masters. In this respect they resemble the Coalition in Rifts

There are accepted magic users, but they're definitely not as uncharacteristically accepted as the divine casters.

 

The prevailing religion is a version of the Church of Light and Dark from Palladium Fantasy. This version has more explicitly Judeo-Christian type imagery--Osiris/Isis/Orpheus are the subjects of mystery cults that are salvific and personal in nature. It also has a strong admixture of Greco-Roman elements reminiscent of Ptolemaic Egypt. The mutant animals are the majority population.

The main mutant animal 'kingdom' on the east coast are the 'Dominions of New England' there are two large human arcologies at New York and Boston, but human numbers have been decimated, and mutant animals are now the dominant species. There are other polities in the South -- including South America, the West, and the Far East -- you'll meet a character from somewhere like Vietnam or Thailand in the first session. Central continental Europe is an ethereum irradiated wasteland. Mu, Atlantis, and Lemuria now exist.

[violentprincess]

On 9/8/2023 at 5:25 PM, DecoyGirl said:

I only have the Heroes Unlimted books but I have all of them.
Do I just use the same rules for that?

The HU mutant animal rules are basically the old school TMNT rules just with a more limited selection of animals. A bit more limited than the newer AtB books and the educations options have a lot less stuff. So notably weaker but if you are combining it with one of the other power categories or a rifts OCC or something you should end up fine.

[DecoyGirl]

5 hours ago, violentprincess said:

The HU mutant animal rules are basically the old school TMNT rules just with a more limited selection of animals. A bit more limited than the newer AtB books and the educations options have a lot less stuff. So notably weaker but if you are combining it with one of the other power categories or a rifts OCC or something you should end up fine.

Okay thanks!

[Inash]

It has been years since I made a TMNT character (yes my play in this system is old) I'ma have to try and come up with something.

[Inash]

So they still do the exploding die on stat generation?

 

[Svartalf]

20 minutes ago, Inash said:

So they still do the exploding die on stat generation?

 

If you score a 16 or more, yes, you add a d6 to the total

[Inash]

So... Since OCCs from other palladium systems are on the table... How about Robotech?

 

Edit: Nevermind. found the question essentially answered on the first page. No space age tech, so no transforming hovertanks.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Inash (see edit history)

[Sensibleshoes]

14 minutes ago, Inash said:

So... Since OCCs from other palladium systems are on the table... How about Robotech?

 

Edit: Nevermind. found the question essentially answered on the first page. No space age tech, so no transforming hovertanks.

You can probably refluff it to something that would fit -- just try to imagine a more steam punk concept, like a transforming battle wagon or something.

[Inash]

 

It's been ~30 years since I've played any Robotech RPG. Time to try to scratch that itch.

 

Edit: Though in fairness, given that Robotech and other giant robots are all on MDC instead of SDC, you may want to rethink that, just so things can be damaged by players without giant robots.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Inash (see edit history)

[Sensibleshoes]

In case anyone's interested, this is a session summary of the first session of the live version of this game:

The Blood Moon draws near to Kamden, New Jersey, promising a day of horror and supernatural terror. The Town of Kamden has been seized by the zeal of the Knights of the White Lilly, a puritanical order of Knights Templar that have begun a purge of the demonic forces troubling the seaside settlement. Two major factions of demonic forces are feared to have a presence in the town.

The Sable Circle -- formerly an order of mutant animal fawn and deer druids -- in their eagerness to preserve their sacred woodlands from the encroachment of civilization, they turned to the dark forces of Dyval -- especially the Supreme Lord Dyval -- Sahtalus. These have now become chimerae -- jersey devil mutants.

The Cult of the Scarlet Veil -- a fallen splinter faction of the Awakened of the Crimson Spire, an order of wizards that delve into dark knowledge to preserve the town of Kamden. They became the abyss which they looked into.

Having lost a game of Tarot-Flux in the Eclipse Inn in the center of Kamden, 2 different parties, one in the employ of Saphira, a mutant-animal iguana elementalist of the distant realm of Siam, and another in the employ of Sir Reginald/'Rusty' of the Obsidian Paladins, were hired to retrieve the fabled Shadow Lantern of Orpheus, a relic of the Church of Light and Dark that had been stolen by the Shadowwhisker thieves' guild of Kamden.

They met at the foot of the Ravenfold Bridge in the ill-omened district of Raven's Landing, where they set an ambush for the thieves. Having successfully stolen the lantern, and driven off the party of the Shadowwhisker Guild, the party attempted to assess their ability to copy the item. Upon inspection, it was found that the lantern was not in fact a noble artifact of the Church of Light and Dark, but instead a dark relic of the infernal realm of Dyval -- the Dark Heart of Dyval. One of their number returned to the Eclipse Inn, only to find it burned to a crisp, with a mysterious note written in blood in the center of a pentagram -- the note announced that the Sable Circle desired the return of this terrible artifact, and that they had kidnapped both of the groups' employers -- Saphira and Reginald.

The letter concluded with an ultimatum -- return the Dark Heart to the Sable Circle in three days or evil would follow.

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Sensibleshoes (see edit history)

[Llyarden]

That actually brings up a question - I was assuming this was an SDC world, using the MDC-to-SDC conversion rules; is that actually the case?

[Svartalf]

I was assuming that any MDC tech would be converted at 1 SDC for every MD, but honestly, when time comes to equip my character, I guess I'll have some major talking to do with the DM (will have some to reskin various skills I copied under their basic name)... BTW @Sensibleshoes, are you British or American or Aussie? I know you have special times to be available, and I'd rather know the time zone difference to know when bothering you is really bothersome.

[Inash]

1 hour ago, Svartalf said:

I was assuming that any MDC tech would be converted at 1 SDC for every MD, but honestly, when time comes to equip my character, I guess I'll have some major talking to do with the DM (will have some to reskin various skills I copied under their basic name)... BTW @Sensibleshoes, are you British or American or Aussie? I know you have special times to be available, and I'd rather know the time zone difference to know when bothering you is really bothersome.

I was assuming the default 100 SDC per MDC, which is why I'm a bit hesitant to actually use any MDC stuff, but it's so tempting.

[Sensibleshoes]

3 hours ago, Inash said:

I was assuming the default 100 SDC per MDC, which is why I'm a bit hesitant to actually use any MDC stuff, but it's so tempting.

It is an sdc world -- there are different proposed formulas for converting MDC -- SDC. It's not 100 SDC = 1 MDC when you're moving from and MDC to an SDC world. The 100-1 formula is only in an MDC environment like Rifts or the Splicers world. If you travel from Rifts to Fantasy, for example, everything gets converted to sdc -- there's no MDC on Palladium Fantasy or Dead Reign, etc. The nanotech weave or whatever MDC is gets converted to some kind of SDC armor, but it's on a lower conversion rate than 1-100, it's converted to a value where someone from the sdc world could actually interact with it meaningfully. One of the formulas is just to do 1-1 so that 1 MDC = 1 SDC -- that's the simplest one KS proposes in Rifts Ultimate Edition if you want to get rid of MDC. There are other formulas if you look at the Rifts conversion manuals and other books like God and Dragons and Fantasy that have dual values for sdc and mdc creatures.

I just did a session with sdc only rules -- I think it works much better without the mdc element myself.

I think this post has some good rules of thumb to get sdc values out of MDC if something, or something equivalent, isn't listed in the conversion books: https://www.palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=137800.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Sensibleshoes (see edit history)

[Sensibleshoes]

4 hours ago, Svartalf said:

I was assuming that any MDC tech would be converted at 1 SDC for every MD, but honestly, when time comes to equip my character, I guess I'll have some major talking to do with the DM (will have some to reskin various skills I copied under their basic name)... BTW @Sensibleshoes, are you British or American or Aussie? I know you have special times to be available, and I'd rather know the time zone difference to know when bothering you is really bothersome.

I am American, but I'm a night shift nurse, so I tend to have an opposite sleep schedule and work schedule to almost anyone else that is online.