Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- roleplay:campaign:shadow:index [2021-10-04 17:32] – eli
+++ roleplay:campaign:shadow:index [2024-09-23 00:04] (current) – eli
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ======Descent into Shadow======
+[[.:genesys]]
-=====Our world=====
+[[.:magic]]
-We live in a huge megacity, which extends for hundreds of miles in every direction, as well as down below the surface, up into the sky and beyond. The rest of the world, as far as we know, is nothing but strip mines and toxic wasteland, with immense, solar-powered farming towers peppering (and polluting) the landscape. We come from Apex, an endless, sprawling suburban utopia that floats a mile above the ground. There are places even higher up, but we don’t pay them much mind, except when their light-bending technology glitches and we lose our sunlight for an hour. About ten million people live in Apex. The wealthy have large homes with yards and swimming pools or flying pools. The even wealthier live in skyscrapers with ceilings made of imported light-bending material, so that every floor feels like the penthouse. There are no poor in Apex (that we know about), and everyone takes on the profession they want.
-The magic-infested land on the ground is called Shadow. We don’t talk much about that, but there are rumors (which we’ll decide during the first session).
+=====The City=====
+We live in a huge megacity, which extends for hundreds of miles in every direction, as well as down below the surface, up into the sky and beyond. The rest of the world, as far as we know, is nothing but strip mines and toxic wasteland, with immense, solar-powered farming towers peppering (and polluting) the landscape.
-We’ll establish more of the world in session 1 by playing!
+====Apex====
+We come from Apex, an endless, sprawling suburban utopia that floats three miles above the ground. There are places even higher up, but we don’t pay them much mind, except when their light-bending technology glitches and we lose our sunlight for ten minutes. Then you can hear the screams of outrage for miles. About ten million people live in Apex. The wealthy have large homes with yards and swimming pools or flying pools. The even wealthier live in skyscrapers with ceilings made of imported light-bending material, so that every floor feels like the penthouse. There are no poor in Apex (that we know about), and everyone takes on the profession they want.
+==Facts about Apex==
-=====Character Creation=====
+  * The rumor mill is wild. There's strong social jockeying.
+  * The music scene is about adding more and more complexity. Everyone seems to like it, but that could be because they think everyone else likes it.
-Genesys is as heavy-weight as D&D. Read the rules and create a character if you want, or create a partial character ([[https://genesysemporium.com/|this online character sheet could help]]), or I’ll build one for you based on what you’re interested in playing.
+==The Drop==
+Near the center of Apex, there is an iris hatch in the ground which reveals an elevator, supported by both levitation and ropes. The ropes take over about half a mile from the ground, when Shadow interferes. It takes about an hour to descend on the Drop, and an Operator supervises the process, as well as being there to give a short lecture on Shadow, and answer questions. Criminals banished to Shadow use the Drop.
+====The Pen====
+Apex is a giant chunk of earth, rock and metal floating in the sky. The structure is maintained by those who live in the Pen, which hangs from the underside of Apex, and occupies up to a hundred stories inside. The service class is imported from the Pen. Whenever something goes wrong, they take the blame.
-==The usual stuff==
+Apex is theoretically supposed to supply Shadow with light using the giant floodlights attached to the underside, but many of these are broken or in poor repair.
-Appearance, personality, background.
-==What’s your deal?==
+====Zephyr / The Floating Cities====
-The system encourages generating new careers and archetypes (classes), so it’s pretty easy to build one around a character concept.
+There are numerous floating communities below Apex, typically using huge dirigibles to hold themselves up rather than whatever sort of levitation supports Apex. In Apex, these are collectively known as Zephyr. In Shadow, they're known as the Floating Cities. They get their light by interposing themselves between Apex's floodlights and the ground.
-==What are your motivations?==
+====Shadow====
-Include a strength, a flaw, a desire and a fear. These sometimes matter mechanically. Examples start on page 46 of the rule book.
+The magic-infested land on the ground is called Shadow. It's not spoken of much in Apex.
-==Characteristics (like D&D attributes)==
+==Rumors==
-Brawn, Agility, Intellect, Cunning, Willpower and Presence.
+  * Old skyscrapers.
+  * There are mutants -- people who aren't quite Human.
+  * The Singulon believe that Dark Information, an unknown but valuable knowledge, is somewhere in Shadow.
+  * Their closeness to the earth gives them more strength/physicality. Spending time down there makes you brutish.
+  * Sometimes, they try to reach higher than their city would support — teetering towers that try to reach Apex, but fall or get knocked down.
-You generally start with one at 1, one at 3 and the rest at 2. You can raise these with your starting XP (play around in the online character sheet). They’re extraordinarily difficult to raise after character creation, so the game recommends you spend most of your starting XP on these.
+[[.:shadow|More about Shadow]]
-==Skills==
-List 8 things things your character is good at (relevant to your career/archetype), and choose 4 out of those 8 to be a little better at. I’ll turn these into your skills (skills are cheaper to advance than non-skills). You can find a generic list in the online character sheet, but feel free to make up new ones. If you want to be really good at a skill or two, let me know that too.
-Special notes:
+====The City Below====
-  * If you want magic skills, I’d like to use a more specialized system than the built-in one. To keep the learning curve down, let’s say that all the D&D wizard schools and cleric types are skills.
+Below shadow is a network of old subway and monorail tunnels, with what used to be stations expanded into small cities. These communities have populations in the thousands to tens of thousands, and trade along the empty and dangerous tunnels between them.
-  * There’s a skill called “Knowledge.” Instead of taking that, choose a very broad category of knowledge (for example, “science” or “the world we live on”). Each broad category is a skill.
-==Talents==
+====The Depths====
-If you want talents (kind of weak feats), you can pick them from the book. There’s no need to start with talents. They’re easy to get later.
+Below the subway tunnels are the Depths, said to be the source of magic. Little is known about them.
-=====A very brief overview of Genesys=====
-====Narrative Dice====
-Whenever you have to roll (which isn’t all that often), you create a dice pool based on a characteristic, a relevant skill, the difficulty of the check and any circumstantial factors. Once you figure out what you rolled, you’ll have some combination of:
-  * Success and failure: These cancel each other out. If you get no successes, the action you’re attempting fails. However, a failure isn’t always all good, and a success isn’t always all bad, because of advantages and threats.
-  * Advantage and threat: These cancel each other out. You can use these to get mechanical benefits (like critical hits) and drawbacks (like some advantage for the enemy), or they can be used for storytelling. Maybe you miss in your attack, but you maneuver your enemy closer to the edge of a cliff. Maybe you can’t persuade someone to your way of thinking, but you learn something important about them. Players and GMs describe advantages and disadvantages collaboratively.
-  * Triumph and Despair: These rare rolls give you some major benefit or drawback. They also count as a success or failure (so you get both a triumph and a success).
-==Here’s how to build a dice pool==
+====Paradise====
-Take the higher of your relevant characteristic and skill. That’s how many green dice you start with. The lower number is how many greens get upgraded to yellows. The GM gives you other dice based on the circumstances.
+The "sky" of Apex is the floor of Paradise, which extends another two miles, its own ceiling held up by enormous pillars. The people of Paradise are controlled when needed by chips implanted in their brains, but most of the time, they have some semblance of free will. Paradise maintains the light-bending technology of Apex which gives them the illusion of night and day, and keeps Apex running when any intervention is needed. In turn, Paradise is watched over by Control.
-Here’s a pretty good online dice roller: https://rpg-dice-roller.herokuapp.com/
+====Control====
+Nothing is known yet about the level above Paradise.
-====Story Points====
-Each session, the players get one story point between them, and the GM gets one story point. If you use one, you pass it across the table. Story points can be used to upgrade a die, or to add a narrative element. For example, you’re backed up against the cliff, but fortunately (pass a story point over), you remembered to pack some sturdy rope!
-====Encounters====
-I can explain the details the first time it happens, but basically, you describe what you want to do (which doesn’t have to be an attack), and then roll a dice pool both to determine success, and to advance the story. There can be both combat and social encounters.
+====== Flashbacks ======
+[[.:flashbacks]]
-==Defenses==
-  * Wounds – These are your HP. If you run out, you receive an injury, and you’re incapacitated (but probably not dead).
-  * Soak – This reduces the amount of damage you take.
-  * Defense – This makes you harder to hit.
-  * Injuries – A critical hit can give you an injury, which can have a lasting effect until it’s dealt with.
-  * Strain – This is your mental or psychological health. If it gets to 0, you’re incapacitated. In a social encounter, getting to 0 means you’re out of the encounter, having not achieved your goal.
-====Death====
-This system was originally modeled after Star Wars, where no one dies unless it’s important to the plot, or they’re storm troopers. It is very difficult to die. You have to get several critical injuries, and each one increases your chance of death, but you need something like five injuries before death is even on the table. Defeating an important NPC generally means they are captured or chased away, not killed. So lots of recurring villains.

Search

Roleplaying Resources

Descent into Shadow

Differences