Mousy Mysterium librarian girl and member of the Book Club, sporty Arrow girl who beats up delinquents, the Silver Ladder girl is of course an Ojou-sama and the Student Council President, the Guardian is the head of the School Morals Commitee which have a terrible repution but aren't actually that bad.
I'm coming up short for the Free Council-girl and the secret route with the Seer of the Throne.
Seer of the Throne would obviously be either the Chairmen of the Board's spoiled daughter/grand-daughter who gets away with everything. Free Council? Hmm...not sure.
Honestly though, Changeling: The Lost could make a good regular video game if it's handled right.
Have a very 'two worlds' vibe, with parts of the Hedge having a natural level progression (at least normally the area a Freehold controlled is somewhat safer), and having all sorts of weird monsters and adventures on both ends. Tokens and Hedgespun create combat/out-of-combat granularity and builds where you have to use equipment to get the right effect, and Contracts would encourage eclectic answers to solutions.
The hunt for glamour could incentize exploration and interaction, including things like areas of high ambient glamour or the like. Such as exploring and finding an old graveyard where once a week a widow leaves flowers and she's a pretty good source of (sorrowful) glamour, but it's something where you have to EXPLORE and listen and watch to figure it out and you can talk to her and story a minor Quest-chain to find something the mugger who killed her husband stole from him or whatever.
The Hedge could have a slight randomized element to parts of it too, to represent how it's hard to map and fully understand, maybe a little Sunless Sea in that way (and few others.)
Have it be a very...not Skyrim because that sounds like I'm trying to insult people, but I more mean the open world main-adventure with Quests chains and etc, etc, involving a complex cast and a detailed world. Okay, which isn't entirely Skyrim, I know.
Just, a single city and tons of missions and story-lines, and then the Hedge to flesh out the weirdness.
Oneiromancy could be held off for a DLC that creates this whole Quest-line of a war in the dreams or whatever else.
Seer of the Throne would obviously be either the Chairmen of the Board's spoiled daughter/grand-daughter who gets away with everything. Free Council? Hmm...not sure.
Oh, Seer-chan could be the an older lady, maybe a teacher? Or the school nurse that's a huge tease the entire game, only to be revealed as the real antagonist in the True Route.
Honestly though, Changeling: The Lost could make a good regular video game if it's handled right.
Have a very 'two worlds' vibe, with parts of the Hedge having a natural level progression (at least normally the area a Freehold controlled is somewhat safer), and having all sorts of weird monsters and adventures on both ends. Tokens and Hedgespun create combat/out-of-combat granularity and builds where you have to use equipment to get the right effect, and Contracts would encourage eclectic answers to solutions.
The hunt for glamour could incentize exploration and interaction, including things like areas of high ambient glamour or the like. Such as exploring and finding an old graveyard where once a week a widow leaves flowers and she's a pretty good source of (sorrowful) glamour, but it's something where you have to EXPLORE and listen and watch to figure it out and you can talk to her and story a minor Quest-chain to find something the mugger who killed her husband stole from him or whatever.
The Hedge could have a slight randomized element to parts of it too, to represent how it's hard to map and fully understand, maybe a little Sunless Sea in that way (and few others.)
Have it be a very...not Skyrim because that sounds like I'm trying to insult people, but I more mean the open world main-adventure with Quests chains and etc, etc, involving a complex cast and a detailed world. Okay, which isn't entirely Skyrim, I know.
Just, a single city and tons of missions and story-lines, and then the Hedge to flesh out the weirdness.
Oneiromancy could be held off for a DLC that creates this whole Quest-line of a war in the dreams or whatever else.
This is a bit belated and sort of tangential and mostly just me musing aloud (so take however many truckloads of salt with it you'd like) but like...I find the "but x real world tragedies were totally organic" sort of strange in oWoD. Or, not to put too fine a point on it I guess, I find the self-imposed Hitler-line really strange. Like it makes sense in nWoD that not everything is the result of some conspiracy. Any given faction is badly fragmented and mostly just trying to keep their head down and out of the rain, owning a mayor of a significant city is close to the upper limits on temporal political control and shit.
Bbbbuuut in oWoD it really is Metal Gear-esque levels of Patriots bullshit. If it's not the Union or the Traditions interfering then it's vampires, if it's not vampires then it's even odds it was the Wyrm or the Wolves. Like I'm not saying that making Hitler secretly an Archmaster of Forces with the Spear of Destiny and a Wolfenstein-esque doom walker would necessarily be an improvement (okay kinda) but like...the pivot towards colder, harsher, realism comes as a bit misplaced in my mind I guess. My point isn't even that absolutely everything has to be Mages/Vampires/drop-where-appropriate but more-of that sometimes you can feel the setting's internal logic pulling some gymnastics imo when it goes "yeah but not our fault though, the mortals did all that on their own".
High-school kids using the power of their recently tamed Shadow/manifested Ego. This power allows them to fight the monsters of hidden Fisher King-esque dungeons with monsters powered by the unconscious desires of humanity. Said high-school kids also need to solve the mystery of the dungeons and eventually defeat the mastermind behind it, which usually results in the protagonist beating the shit out of a god using the power of love and friendship.
Very simple and reductionist explanation, but that's the gist of it.
This is a bit belated and sort of tangential and mostly just me musing aloud (so take however many truckloads of salt with it you'd like) but like...I find the "but x real world tragedies were totally organic" sort of strange in oWoD. Or, not to put too fine a point on it I guess, I find the self-imposed Hitler-line really strange. Like it makes sense in nWoD that not everything is the result of some conspiracy. Any given faction is badly fragmented and mostly just trying to keep their head down and out of the rain, owning a mayor of a significant city is close to the upper limits on temporal political control and shit.
Bbbbuuut in oWoD it really is Metal Gear-esque levels of Patriots bullshit. If it's not the Unions or the Traditions interfering then it's vampires, if it's not vampires then it's even odds it was the Wyrm or the Wolves. Like I'm not saying that making Hitler secretly an Archmaster of Forces with the Spear of Destiny and a Wolfenstein-esque doom walker would necessarily be an improvement (okay kinda) but like...the pivot towards colder, harsher, realism comes as a bit misplaced in my mind I guess. My point isn't even that absolutely everything has to be Mages/Vampires/drop-where-appropriate but more-of that sometimes you can feel the setting's internal logic pulling some gymnastics imo when it goes "yeah but not our fault though, the mortals did all that on their own".
But I think it's because they would like to remind us that humans matter. That for all that cosmic level bullshit and convoluted conspiracies, at the end of the day, them powered folks are forced to acknowledge the role of humanity has in shaping the world of darkness.
Oh geez, now that I think about it it really is - Spoilers, obviously!
So for starters, the main character in P3 is someone who, to be rather metaphorical, was horribly traumatized while young by a magical alien entity beyond comprehension and came back rather wrong.From that brilliant start, we have the contrast of Tartarus, the eternal dark tower full of mystic potential, fundamentally powered by the dark fantasies and nightmares of mankind, with the social links of the real world, where you gain power from making emotional contact with other humans and can forge those emotions into idiosyncratic powers through the intercession of who stands between this world and the next.
This is a bit belated and sort of tangential and mostly just me musing aloud (so take however many truckloads of salt with it you'd like) but like...I find the "but x real world tragedies were totally organic" sort of strange in oWoD. Or, not to put too fine a point on it I guess, I find the self-imposed Hitler-line really strange. Like it makes sense in nWoD that not everything is the result of some conspiracy. Any given faction is badly fragmented and mostly just trying to keep their head down and out of the rain, owning a mayor of a significant city is close to the upper limits on temporal political control and shit.
Bbbbuuut in oWoD it really is Metal Gear-esque levels of Patriots bullshit. If it's not the Union or the Traditions interfering then it's vampires, if it's not vampires then it's even odds it was the Wyrm or the Wolves. Like I'm not saying that making Hitler secretly an Archmaster of Forces with the Spear of Destiny and a Wolfenstein-esque doom walker would necessarily be an improvement (okay kinda) but like...the pivot towards colder, harsher, realism comes as a bit misplaced in my mind I guess. My point isn't even that absolutely everything has to be Mages/Vampires/drop-where-appropriate but more-of that sometimes you can feel the setting's internal logic pulling some gymnastics imo when it goes "yeah but not our fault though, the mortals did all that on their own".
Bbbbuuut in oWoD it really is Metal Gear-esque levels of Patriots bullshit. If it's not the Unions or the Traditions interfering then it's vampires, if it's not vampires then it's even odds it was the Wyrm or the Wolves. Like I'm not saying that making Hitler secretly an Archmaster of Forces with the Spear of Destiny and a Wolfenstein-esque doom walker would necessarily be an improvement (okay kinda) but like...the pivot towards colder, harsher, realism comes as a bit misplaced in my mind I guess. My point isn't even that absolutely everything has to be Mages/Vampires/drop-where-appropriate but more-of that sometimes you can feel the setting's internal logic pulling some gymnastics imo when it goes "yeah but not our fault though, the mortals did all that on their own".
Yeah I get what you're saying. And in fact the Technocracy were involved with the rise of Hitler but things got out of hand and the Nephandi got involved and the Union teamed up with the Traditions to deal with the Nephandi. But here's the thing, they had a valid, if somewhat messed up reason for backing Hitler in the beginning, namely that they experimenting with the ideal global government model but the Holocaust was not something they wanted.
But.. and this is a big but, it's the freaking Holocaust we're talking about. The systematic extermination of millions. There are some things you just should not pull that type of over the top conspiracies on.
Mousy Mysterium librarian girl and member of the Book Club, sporty Arrow girl who beats up delinquents, the Silver Ladder girl is of course an Ojou-sama and the Student Council President, the Guardian is the head of the School Morals Commitee which have a terrible repution but aren't actually that bad.
I'm coming up short for the Free Council-girl and the secret route with the Seer of the Throne.
Oh geez, now that I think about it it really is - Spoilers, obviously!
So for starters, the main character in P3 is someone who, to be rather metaphorical, was horribly traumatized while young by a magical alien entity beyond comprehension and came back rather wrong.From that brilliant start, we have the contrast of Tartarus, the eternal dark tower full of mystic potential, fundamentally powered by the dark fantasies and nightmares of mankind, with the social links of the real world, where you gain power from making emotional contact with other humans and can forge those emotions into idiosyncratic powers through the intercession of who stands between this world and the next.
And then comes the next game, which is about people getting kidnapped and thrown into a different otherworld full of magic and symbolism, from which they come back changed and empowered, with the root cause being a powerful magic entity with the motive of "eh, let's see what happens." And social links are still a thing.
Well, there is a webcomic;
"morphE" is about a group of five people that awakened under frankly terrifying conditions.
They are now the "students" of an ....eccentric Acanthus , whether they want to be or not.
Besides the lack of choices it honestly seems more like a visual novel than a comic.
Why would you say "probably not" if you've never played it?
The Persona 3+ games are pretty much exactly what you described. There's a central plot set in a single town, which progresses on a strict (albeit not a realtime) timeline, with an open world that you can explore while the plot progresses packed with lots of side-quests and plotlines and clues and character-relationship-options that change based on the day, time, place in the timeline, and your previous actions. You don't have space to actually complete all of these in a single playthrough, and you also need to make your way through otherworld dungeons for plot and exploration/grinding reasons. Yeah, I'd love a Changeling game like that.
Why would you say "probably not" if you've never played it?
The Persona 3+ games are pretty much exactly what you described. There's a central plot set in a single town, which progresses on a strict (albeit not a realtime) timeline, with an open world that you can explore while the plot progresses packed with lots of side-quests and plotlines and clues and character-relationship-options that change based on the day, time, place in the timeline, and your previous actions. You don't have space to actually complete all of these in a single playthrough, and you also need to make your way through otherworld dungeons for plot and exploration/grinding reasons. Yeah, I'd love a Changeling game like that.
I was mostly saying probably not because I vaguely thought/recalled something about High School, and also something about the meta-plot or whatnot. Eh, that's a good point, something like that could be pretty darn fun.
Honestly, I probably should get and play games like that sometime, but I've sorta not been playing video games in a long time.
The Persona 3+ games are pretty much exactly what you described. There's a central plot set in a single town, which progresses on a strict (albeit not a realtime) timeline, with an open world that you can explore while the plot progresses packed with lots of side-quests and plotlines and clues and character-relationship-options that change based on the day, time, place in the timeline, and your previous actions. You don't have space to actually complete all of these in a single playthrough,
That implies that one uses the Time Arcanum to go back in time with your NG+ stats. Or just go google some guides for the perfect completion in a single playthrough without using NG+.
Look...socially awkward nerd prone to doing crazy things to show off...who yet claims to be an everyman and just like the plebs despite having a tremendous hidden power.
It's the protagonist.
Who else would use their power for such a thing?
Doing so, by the way, requires you to be a complete asshole.
Like: "Hey you, I want to romance you to the point of maxing my social links. You're maxed? Fuck you I'm never talking to you again I'm maxing this girl over here. Kaithxbai."
Although it also makes me think that in the Mage universe someone must have made a videogame out of the Ancient Lands Pentalogy, the series of fantasy books that are basically Libertine self-wank.
Although it also makes me think that in the Mage universe someone must have made a videogame out of the Ancient Lands Pentalogy, the series of fantasy books that are basically Libertine self-wank.
God, the Ancient Lands Pentalogy pissed me off so much when I read about it.
It's also notably bad for...everything, since it portrays the Pentacle as being the *bad guys*.
Like, if I remember, it never talks about Seers or Banishers or anything else, just a series of people representing Arrow, Ladder, Guardians and Mysterium who are the *real enemy* that has to be beaten and brought along to...
Because @linkhyrule5 and I have had at least one multi-hour discussion about custom spheres in general and this sphere in particular, I figured I'd try my hand at a basic write-up for a Data sphere.
Data is the sphere of recorded or transmitted information. It thinks of the world in terms of webs of communication and knowledge. Paradigm permitting, it can interfere with memories, computers, the senses, footprints, language, books, rumours and histories, along with most anything which carries or stores information.
Data • - See Data, Copy Data
The basic digital voyeur's package lets you find information in a system, whether it's picking up a conversation in a crowded room, seeing the crucial hint in a crime scene, finding that text file or hooking your eye up to the security camera feed. Of course, Data being Data, seeing is possessing.
Data •• - Code Data, Erase Data, Send Data
If you want to read subtext, figure out the meaning behind an odd blood splatter or crack a cryptographic scheme, this is the level of Data you need. Of course, you can do much the opposite and encrypt something, rendering it meaningless. Similarly, if you want to hide your footprints - metaphorical or literal - or make someone forget something, this is your tool. This is the level of Data you need to transmit information and set up a tactical hivemind. Decode Data is also what you need to understand memories, which aren't nearly as convenient a storage solution as paper or circuitry, while Encode Data can make your memories impenetrable.
Note: Erase Data is only useful for relatively static data - you cannot blind someone. You can reduce them to an amnesiac with a great deal of effort, though.
Data ••• - Alter Data, Cut Feed
Finally, the real meat and potatoes. Your control over data has progressed to the point where you can alter it, though not to the point where you can introduce information out of whole cloth. Yet. While you cannot rewrite someone's memories so that you were always involved in their life, you can make it so their memories of the people they do know are different. Crueller, kinder, whatever, though a full alteration of their personal history would require either Master Data or a very long extended ritual. More practically, you can change your IFF status from 'foe' to 'friend' on an automated turret. Cut Feed is a specific, narrow use of Datastream which prevents communication between the terminal and the system, in or out, and is effectively Erase Data applied to non-static data - you can blind people, for instance, by erasing their sensory data, or prevent yourself from showing up on a camera feed.
Note: Much like Erase Data, Alter Data is restricted to relatively static data - memories, files, records, as opposed to more active data such as sensory inputs or current thought processes.
Data •••• - Datastream, Create Data
Let your imagination run rampant, as you are no longer chained to preexisting forms. Wish to seamlessly slip into someone's memory? Why not! Want to lay false trails for your trackers to follow? Sure! This is the domain of the false memory and baseless rumour. It is also the level at which one's mastery reaches the point that they are comfortable with altering data on the fly, allowing you to mess with running programs, twist a conversation, control others' senses and shape history as it happens.
Data ••••• - Master Data
If you can think of a major alteration of information that hasn't been listed, this is a safe, if not necessarily appropriate place for it. Master Data allows for alterations and erasures on a grand scale, allowing you to rewrite people's memory, a society's history or a digital presence far more easily and holistically than earlier. This is the domain of reprogramming, massive propaganda efforts, Descartes' Evil Demon and the flawless false identity.
Data is not a replacement for Correspondence. It can avoid the need of conjunction for what might be seen as effects beyond one's line of sight - as this is a sphere meant for hackers, it seems unfair to require them to pick up Correspondence 2 for the sake of altering data on a public facing website when they have a browser, for instance - but without access to a terminal of the system, Correspondence is required, whether the terminal is a member of the community in good standing, the librarian, or a computer with internet access. You cannot scry-and-die with Data.
If one must think of Data as an alternate sphere, Mind is the closest approximation. In a way, it can be thought of as a generalization of Mind to computers, societies and other information systems. It loses the ability to alter mental attributes, astral project and create minds, as well as some facility with manipulating emotions and other in-the-moment effects.
The clever and/or rule-abusive among you might note that under a sufficiently broad view of 'the system' or 'a terminal', one might cast effects over a tremendous scale or through a staggering number of intermediaries. While forbidding such contortions outright seems against the spirit of a game about hubris and power, allowing it to pass without consequence would be distorting. Storytellers are encouraged to up the difficulty of more tenuous links, such as erasing someone's memory through the internet because it's all a big system that connects your mind to theirs. This is to incentivise players to gain access to better terminals and/or correspondence. Similarly, STs are encouraged to consider an increase in the paradox cost of particularly large scale workings.
Systems are connected by consensual links, which Data takes advantage of to avoid the need for conjunctional Correspondence on the part of the Mage. The internet, the bureaucracies of public libraries and a tight-knit community's rumour mill count as systems. A doll's connection to its human counterpart is not consensual, and requires Correspondence to manifest without line of sight. Terminals are anything which can effect the greater system. A television is not a terminal, without Correspondence. A computer is.
This is a single sphere, not an entire paradigm.
logic is a lie used to chain our minds
free yourself from false limits
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