I ain't abandoned this thing...

Just got sidetracked mildly by the holidays and some other reading (specifically, The Laundry rpg from Cubicle 7). I still have some tweaking to do on the character sheet and get back into the swing of adapting locations and whatnot from the Tribe 8 source books for the wiki.

However, reading The Laundry has gotten me thinking...what if the coming of the Z'bri is CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN? If the Laundryverse is the World Before, it puts a much more Lovecraftian spin on the entire setting. Synthesis would just be computational sorcery, basically using Dho-Na curves. This means that the Tribes have conquered being able to do the computations in their heads without turning their brain into boiled cabbage. It's probably not a crossover I would pursue, but it is an interesting exercise.

Otherwise, everyone have a good New Year and see you on the other side!

Prototype character sheet

I have worked up a character sheet, after much gnashing of teeth and rearranging of things. I think I like it...I've printed it out to check the sizes of things and how it looks on paper, but haven't actually written anything down on it. Anyway, the sheet can be downloaded from the link below:

Character Sheet

Pretty awesome...

Lori Nix's Stunning, Tiny Dioramas Depict an Abandoned World

Possible rules changes

So, I found a tool that seems to do the job nicely (SmartDraw), and I've gotten further in a half hour than I got in hours futzing around with Word.

But when I put the stress tracks in, I realized I have six distinct stress tracks. It made me kind of rethink things a bit to see if it can possibly be simplified.

I know I can subsume Spirit into Equilibrium. They're really almost the same thing, and having them be separate is really a holdover from Silhouette and not really something that is hardwired into the setting. It just means that Consequences need to reflect the source (i.e., Synthesis backlash vs. spirit combat).

Barter is the other one I'm looking at, and it's a sticky-wicket. Technically it represents the goods and services that the character has available to them - either directly on hand or because of things that are owed to them by others. Subsuming it into Social makes some amount of sense. The character's social relationships are going to directly impact the character's ability to get things. The problem is that Social can't reasonably cover what the character actually has, and currently Barter as a separate stress track does both things nicely. I'm very much tempted to leave that alone and just combine Equilibrium and Spirit.

Slowly working on a character sheet

As always, my initial push was waylaid by more mundane things like work, the holidays and family. I've been slowly pecking away at creating a character sheet for DFS. I roughly know what I want - a landscape character sheet, laid out somewhat like the standard Strands of Fate character sheet but possibly two sided. A long time ago I had designed a Tribe 8 character sheet that was exactly like that. It was meant to be folded in half like a pamphlet. The exterior front held "fluff" information that the player would likely already know about their character. The interior held the game information that players would need during a session, while the back held some space for extras like equipment and quick reference information. I'm thinking of doing something similar for the DFS sheet. I just need to find a good tool to do the job...I remember I did the T8 sheet using PhotoShop and that was a hassle. This one I started in Word, and it's proving to be a pain as well. I'm looking into some dedicated form creation software, so while I experiment and find something that I like it might take a little while longer to get the sheet done.

Some Art

Here’s some art that I’ve collected. Unfortunately I can’t properly credit the artists, because the images were recovered from a hard drive that failed and I was lucky to recover the images, but not the files I had with the addresses of where I downloaded them from. Some of them do have watermarks. You can see the images after the jump.

Sample Physical Consequences

Silhouette uses wound levels, so a number of years ago Edwyn Kumar came up with a list of descriptions for various wounds. I’ve resurrected the list and split them into suggested categories for physical Consequences.

Minor

• Bit Tongue
• Blood In Eyes
• Foot Stomped On
• Headache
• Loose Teeth
• Ringing Ears
• Ripped Fingernail
• Skinned Knee
• Stiff Neck
• Watering Eyes

Major

• Broken Nose
• Broken Ribs
• Broken Toe
• Dislocated Finger
• Dislocated Jaw
• Hernia
• Ripped Tendons
• Twisted Knee

Severe(P)

• Detached Muscle
• Lost An Ear
• Major Bleeding
• Severed Nerve
• Shattered Kneecap

Extreme(P)

• Collapsed Lung
• Internal Bleeding
• Lost an Eye
• Uncontrollable Bleeding

Character creation example

For this example, I’m going to choose Max – an Agnite Herite that I played in a Tribe 8 PBEM many, many moons ago.

Define character concept

Max’s concept is an Agnite Herite who is convinced that Joshua was killed simply for being the only guy amongst a bunch of girls. He doesn’t hate women, only the matriarchal society that has grown up under the Fatimas. He’s seen men get the short end of the stick too many times in Tribal society, and deep down just wants everyone to be equal.

For this, I will give Max a defining aspect of A Man Living in a Woman’s World.

Choose Kin Package

Max’s Kin Package is Fallen and costs 2 AP. His Kin Aspect is Fallen Agnite Herite with a Specialty Aspect of Banished From the Tribes (Empathy). He has the Synthesis (Eminence only) advantage to start with the Eminences Inspiration and Freedom.

Choose Character Aspects

I’m going to use the Aspect ABCs to choose Max’s Aspects.

Ambition: Prove Why Joshua Was Murdered

Max is convinced that Joshua was murdered simply because he was male, and his goal is to prove his belief.

Background: Failed as a Breeder

Once Max reached puberty, he was unable to…perform…as a Breeder. He knows Agnes controls who can become Breeders and that she caused him to get thrown in with the Barrens. That event prompted him to lash out, kill another Agnite, and escape Playground.

Convictions: Everyone Should Be Equal, Boobs Or Not.

This one is easy…Max believes that everyone should be equal, and that the matriarchal society perpetuated by the Fatimas needs to be destroyed.

Disadvantages: Too Mouthy For My Own Good

Max just sometimes doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.

Choose Abiities

Max has 25 points to spend on abiltiies. He is a young (roughly 16 years old), fit and wiry – definitely not fullback material. He also isn’t full of a lot of social grace. Because of this, I’ll divide his abiltiies this way:

Physical

• Agility 3
• Endurance 3
• Perception 2
• Strength 2

Mental

• Craft 2
• Knowledge 2
• Reasoning 2
• Willpower 2

Social

• Deception 1
• Empathy 2
• Persuasion 2
• Resources 2

Choose Specialty Aspects

Exceptional Skill: Joshuan Lore (Knowledge)

Max’s drive to learn exactly why Joshua was killed has given him an indepth knowledge about the Fatima and His Tribe.

Foes: Troy Fenys Has It Out For Me (Persuasion)

Max’s conviction that the Fatimas need to be eliminated doesn’t extend to killing Tribals. This puts him at odds with more extremist Herites, particularly Troy Fenys who goes out of her way to target Max during rants. Other actions have jeopardized some of Max’s efforts.

Gear: Custom Keeper-Made Wrist Crossbow

Max’s Keeper friend Go’nan has crafted a custom wrist crossbow for him.

Help: Go’nan the Keeper

Max has formed a friendship with a Keeper that lives on Hom, who enjoys Max’s youthful enthusiasm.

Inferior Skill: “Girls…who understands them anyway?” (Persuasion)

Max has a knack for saying the wrong thing around girls, a problem that is made worse around pretty girls or girls he likes.

Choose Advantages

Max already has the Synthesis Power (Eminence only) from his Kin Package, but has 4 more AP to spend. He is not really the type to use Conjunctional Synthesis, and in some ways feels that doing so risks strengthening the Fatimas somehow so we’re not going to buy the power up.  Max is lithe and very agile, as well as fearless, and his fighting style has a childlike quality (such as slipping between between an enemy’s legs). To represent this, he gets the advantages:

• Fearless (1 AP)
• Free Runner (1 AP)
• Slippery Combatant (2 AP)

Choose Starting Equipment

Besides his wrist crossbow, Max needs a few things. Go’nan is able to provide Max with some higher TL equipment, so this enables Max to get a unit of penetrator ammo. Next he needs some way to defend himself when things get too close and personal. A short sword looks good for this purpose. To keep him from getting too banged up, a set of patchwork leather and hide armor works well. These are rounded out by a pair of good quality relic goggles and a Joshuan talisman that he’s found.

A little bit of sad news…

So I was going through the backup I made of my old domain when I took it down, and I realized something important was missing. The databases. See, because I was using a content management system/blog, the actual content was stored in MySQL databases. I always figured that I would figure out some way of getting that the content, either by setting up an Apache server or figuring out a way to extract the data into a SQL Server database and recreate it myself (which sounds crazy, but for me would be easier than trying to get a web server up and running).

Apparently, the dbs weren’t backed up.

That means the entirety of my website – years of content for Tribe 8 and Jovian Chronicles – are gone. This includes the SilCore Wiki. For some reason, the Internet Archive has only one entry for the site and that contains no real content. I think it’s because I was using a CMS, which many crawlers won’t index because the URLs aren’t static. Fortunately, they do have entries for my original Tribe 8 site – luckily that was plain HTML. I should be able to get much of the Tribe 8 content back that way, or at least the content that I care about. Unless I luck out and stumble on the database files, however, the SilCore wiki is lost forever.

Oh well…live and learn I guess…

Just a little something to get us started…

This song always has, and always will, embody Tribe 8 for me. I’m going to try to post a video every couple of days as I find them. In the meantime, if you’ve never heard KMFDM or listened to this song…enjoy!

Wiki is now (mostly) active

I've established a wiki for the rules on Wikia. That is going to be the primary repository for the rules...as such the blog is going to get a "reboot" of sorts. I'm mostly going to be posting thoughts, concepts, short fiction, converted material, scenarios, resources, etc. here on the blog.

Tribe 8 and Strands of Fate

Probably a year and a half ago, I discovered the FATE rpg through discussions onRPG.NET and thought that it would a great system to adapt Tribe 8 to. I love the Silhouette system, but it always seemed like an afterthought, tacked on to the Tribe setting and hammered to fit.

I worked on a document for a while but because of SoTC's structure I lost interest. It seemed like a lot more work than it should be for what would ultimately be a much lighter game than Silhouette.

Then I found Strands of Fate - and it looks like a perfect fit. It's a bit more "traditional" than SoTC but retains all of the things I loved about FATE. A lot of the elements in place work really well. So I've started working on my adaptation, this time renamed from Spirit of Vimary to Dreams of Flesh and Spirit (hence the name of this blog, and coincidentally was the name of my Tribe 8 website that recently went defunct). I'm really digging what I'm coming up with so far, and will be sharing the pieces with the world as I hammer them out.