Tag: Ben Liepis

Will the final draft of S&V be bookmarked? That’s all. 🙂

Scum & Villainy: A small bit of confusion concerning “Play Both Sides”.

“Mind you that not every bounty hunter captures a bounty, so the GM will (or won’t) adjust faction status as fictionally required at the end of such a job.”

This sentence trips me up. Stras (or anyone who understands it), might you unpack it a bit?

Edit: After some thought I realized I actually dislike this ability. For one, you’re not playing both sides because you aren’t getting paid by the bounty poster and letting the bounty go. Perhaps Cut ‘em Loose or Catch and Release would fit better?

A bigger issue is that it’s simply not worth it. You risk pissing off bounty posters and wrecking your reputation, so how often will you want to use the ability? You gain a contact (which you can do in other, easier ways. Plus, the Speaker can do it a ton of times with no penalty), sure, but also Heat. And it’s a contact who’s actively in danger. They give you contracts and tips, but isn’t that what every contact does? Aren’t you looking for contracts? Otherwise, the game halts.

So, let’s look at it again:

-You gain an endangered contact

-You risk angering factions

-You gain Heat

How is that worth not only the potential problems but also a precious crew upgrade? It really doesn’t seem to be. But, it’s wrong to criticize without possible solutions. My ideas aren’t necessarily the answer, but I do hope to get a discussion flowing. So, I was thinking that maybe your new contact could give you +1 Effect to gathering information or acquiring an asset. Maybe you choose one time from a list of options, such as “Get paid” or “Do not lose faction status”. Perhaps you get a new crew XP trigger of “Get XP when you decide to show mercy and help the bounty go to ground”.

I dunno the right answer and maybe the slickness of this ability is eluding me. If so, please chime in and sell it.

A thing in our Blades game crossed over into S&V…

So, in our game of “Scum & Villainy”, the Nightspeakers believe that true potential resides in mastering the Night (the void realm where hyperspace resides). Crucial to this is staring into the Black Mirror, which is the spiritual barrier between the Light (real-space) and the Night (void-space). It is within the Black Mirror that one must face the deepest darkness by calling to their Night-touched soul, bringing it into reflection. This reflection is the avatar a Nightspeaker uses to delve into the Night and through which dark powers can be learned.

One such power is the Night Voice. The initiate learns this by studying their reflection deeply, coaxing the Night into it until its black eyes and dissonant voice both cross the Black Mirror and take root in their flesh. After this, they are truly Nightspeakers.

As a Nightspeaker studies their reflection more, they draw closer to the Night. They must be careful however, for they can lose control and draw too much of the darkness, snuffing out their Light. At best, they are brain-dead husks whose minds are lost to the Night. At worst, they’re possessed by a darkling creature of the void and create ruin in the Light.

It struck me that perhaps a Weird vice of powerful, Nightspeakers is to drain the void energies roiling within through rituals that create liquid shadow or a living, inky blood. Perhaps these can be used in stronger rituals, some requiring the “Night Blood” of several Nightspeakers as well as other esoteric components.

It also spurned me to imagine renaming “Ghost Veil” into “The Night Veil”, which feels appropriate. Another idea I particularly like is to rename “Venomous” as “The Night Kiss”. These would both be veteran advances of high-ranking cultists.

We also have a rare ritual called “Pilgrim of the Night Roads” which creates shadow-gates in secluded places and allows a Nightspeaker to traverse the Night Roads (i.e.-use the hyperspace lanes) without a vessel. Needless to say, knowledge of this ritual is jealousy guarded and legends say that the Raiment of Night allows its bonded master to walk the Night Roads at will…

Anyhoo…stuff. (can you tell I love The Nightspeakers?) 😀

I had an idea for a new Mystic ability!

“Warrior’s Way”

You may push yourself in order to attune to conflict instead of scrapping, letting the Way guide your actions in battle (you still gain the benefits of pushing yourself such as +1d or increased effect.)

I’m still tinkering with the wording but overall, we dig it. It’s going to be an advanced ability but I’m not sure if I want it to be tied to a particular faction (the Vigilance?) or not.

So, my wonderful wife surprised me with the early Christmas present of “Glow in the Dark”! We’re both reading through the PDF (the physical copy is en route) and absolutely LOVE it! It took less than ten minutes for us to decide tribe and playbooks and cook up some ideas.

Adam, fantastic job, sir! To others, if you don’t have it but are interested, I can confidently suggest it. If you’re not interested in it then you are both dirty and wrong and I am now sad for you. 😉 Again, thanks for this one, Adam.

Hyperspace confusion!

I’m a wee confused as to how hyperspace lanes and gates are laid out in Scum & Villainy. At first I thought it was like Fading Suns with a gate per system, but the hopping in and out of lanes in-system threw me off. Are there multiple in-system gates/lanes and foolhardy and skilled crews can “off road” onto a lane?I Googled about such things as they pertain to Cowboy Bebop, but it didn’t really help.

Yes, I know I need to watch that anime! 🙂

S&V: Who are the Cult of the Sun?

They’re mentioned in Job 3 for the Cerberus. Did I completely space (ha!) them?