First, a hello to all the lovely people in this lovely G+ Community. But beyond that I need to ask for input and some opinions on two questions that relate to a game of blades that I’m running.
The first relates to a player of mine who is playing a Hull (They gave me a pretty good back story and reasons why they should let them play as a Hull at start, so I didn’t shoot them down.) Their long term goal, (Currently set at 12 slices, but I might make it more?) Is to build their own body that they can possess. Mind you that this isn’t the standard possession that the rules allow for, I.E a ghost taking over a body and becoming a vampire. The player in question essentially wants to Frankenstein together a body that is identical to a standard person, then slip into it as a permanent meatsuit. My first Idea is to just have them make a hollow for themselves, but I honestly want your opinions on all of this as well. Should I make it a longer series of clocks? Discover the theory, find the parts, make the body, etc? Or something else entirely?
The second question has to deal with another one of my players wanting to make an advanced ability/permission that’s in the veins of the Abhorsen bells from some oldish book series. Issue is they’d give the character in mention (A whisper) control to guide and control the dead. I’ve already slated it up that they need the Key Lense and the Song Folios from the Print and Play deck, but as to what the caveat to it all is, I have no clue. Stress or Trauma per use?
Thank you again for you time and imput! keep being awesome and have a good day/night!
Hey, James! I personally find clocks over ten slices to be unwieldy – why not break up the ‘Building the Perfect Beast’, I mean, ‘Body’ clock into multiple steps and assign some smaller clocks to add up to twelve, or even more slices, given that it’s their Epic Quest.
Another nice thing about breaking up into multiple clocks is that you don’t have to specify the length of each clock up-front. You can speed up or slow down the processes to suit the pacing you want every time the PC begins a new phase of the project.
For the second question: This sounds exactly like a use of the Ritual ability. When a Whisper acquires the Ritual ability, they start with one free ritual (already learned), so it can be that one. No special permission needed!
As for the consequence: I’d make it something that gets vaguely worse over time. This way if it becomes abusive you have a good excuse to make it more difficult; if it’s not abusive at all, then the eventual doom is more of a role-playing thing. Personally, I’d go with a story angle that the character using this ability gets somehow drawn into the ghost field, becoming MORE vulnerable to ghosts and possession over time. That’s nice and hand-wavy, but should provide some really awesome complication opportunities!
Not that old a book series. Garth Nix (a local) just published the latest in the series – Golden hand 😀