Dice rolls are 1d10 + Stat + Proficiency + any applicable bonuses, such as Boons.
You may spend 3 Tension to Overdrive for a retroactive +5 to your roll (a Determination Overdrive), or +3 to an ally's roll (a Teamwork Overdrive). I will also automatically overdrive to avoid exhaustion or unconsciousness.
It is possible to critically succeed (on +5 on skill checks and +10 on combat rolls) or critically fail (by the same margins), but rolling a 1 or a 10 does not automatically crit in either case. It is possible to crit retroactively by Overdriving.
Your stat bonuses have names:
Vigor grants a Strength bonus.
Agility grants a Dexterity bonus.
Spirit grants an Aura bonus.
Mind grants an Intuition bonus.
Resolve grants a Guts bonus.
Dice are rolled on a first come, first serve bonus. You only roll for Deedee.
Ah... I probably should have realized that vote structure would break the vote tally. I have seen that happen before. Oops.
Well, I commend you for doing some manual vote counting.
But, yeah. Counting by "Line" is unable to resolve identical votes under separate parent votes, such as having an -[] Ace for spending free time and an identical -[] Ace for gender talk. All lines need to be at least slightly different or the tally starts counting weird.
Counting by "Block" takes the entire block indented from its parent as a single entity, which means different combinations of options are separated from each other in the tally.
Like if the vote is
[] Apple
-[] Eat
-[] Save
-[] Discard
and someone votes for
[*] Apple
-[*] Eat
and then someone votes for
[*] Apple
-[*] Eat
-[*] Save
they get counted as separate things, and the two -[] Eat votes aren't added together. Every combination voted for is a different vote.
Like GrayGriffin said, "Task" categories (keywords in square brackets) are the way to go, if you want an approval-style vote which also has duplicate lines in it. You can brute force through the problem by just making sure every single line is different and counting by "Line", but if you offer dozens (or hundreds (yes, really)) of options to vote for, counting it in the Tally can become an ordeal, to say the least. Counting by "Task" is basically the same as by "Line", but easier to read because it has an interface.
There's a vote going right now in Divided Loyalties (link to latest threadmark) if you want a look at how Task brackets organize "in the wild". The vote looks like this by default
Library Purchases
Budget: 600gc for this turn. Anything not spent will not accumulate.
[ ] [LIBRARY] No purchase.
[ ] [LIBRARY] Write-in.
Dwarf Favour Purchases
Aethyric Vitae can be spent instead of favour at an exchange rate of 3 favour per gallon; for Rune-related purchases, this will also guarantee the cooperation of Runelords who may otherwise be disinterested. To use this, simply add 'paid by Vitae' or similar to an item you are voting for.
[ ] [DWARF] No purchase.
[ ] [DWARF] Write-in.
College Favour Purchases
[ ] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[ ] [COLLEGE] Write-in.
Other Purchases
[ ] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
[ ] [PURCHASE] Write-in.
and you can check the ongoing tally under Thread Tools to see how the categories and the interface are organized.
Ah... I probably should have realized that vote structure would break the vote tally. I have seen that happen before. Oops.
Like GrayGriffin said, "Task" categories (keywords in square brackets) are the way to go, if you want an approval-style vote which also has duplicate lines in it. You can brute force through the problem by just making sure every single line is different and counting by "Line", but if you offer dozens (or hundreds (yes, really)) of options to vote for, counting it in the Tally can become an ordeal, to say the least. Counting by "Task" is basically the same as by "Line", but easier to read because it has an interface.
Flamma The Black Cat of the Cauldron
Child of Scherzo and Eranda
Sister of Sylphan, Thorne, Delvar and Meredar
Goddess of Fire, Creativity, Passion, Brewing, Witchcraft and Love
Face of Ubasdjet
Patron of the Ubastim
Flamma, patron of the Ubastim, champions the transformation of things through fire - putting her chosen through the cauldron and the crucible, so the survivors may drink and make merry. She commands her followers to burn away impurity and dishonesty, seeking truth through passion and sensation, and fighting those who would relieve us of our intellects and our senses to lead us astray from that which does not burn in our hearts.
- Character Creation Blurb
SUMMARY
Flamma is a fire goddess and alchemist with a particular hatred for creatures who control minds or hijack bodies, and whose Boons offer many ways to more effectively fight undead or eldritch foes. Her Mind or Spirit based abilities synergize extremely well with Alchemists, Rogues, Scouts and Exorcists, while her Sacred Classes are adept at fighting fire with fire and shutting down Charm-happy opponents.
GAMEPLAY Least Boon:
Know The Heart - This boon adds +3 to your Intuition+Empathy rolls, which gives you more time to react to drawing aggro and some defense against charm or SEP effects. While not exciting mechanically, this Boon is one of the unusual ones - like Sylphan's or Eranda's - that help unlock expanded lore and story options, tipping you off to the ulterior motives of NPCs early. Some of these ulterior motives are "has an extremely bad crush on you," which is amusing as hell, and these almost always unlock extremely blunt dialog options. While this is seldom the best choice mechanically, it may well be worth taking just to see the alternative dialog even if your character isn't a Flammite.
Valuable Boons:
The Immolator Tree - Optimized specifically for fighting predatory, mind controlling undead. Ardent Purification lets you negate most of the more obnoxious tricks in vampire or lich's arsenal while dealing some Damage Increments in the process. Intoxicating Strike is a support ability that applies the Drunken state on foes you hit in melee, leading to a whole world of tricks you can use that exploit poison effects - not great on undead, but excellent on cultists, thralls, and eldritch forces. Wicked Hangover allows you to purge status effects from anyone - and dealing damage for each stack so purged. The capstone here is the extremely good Master of Passions, which converts all other mind-altering effects to the easily-curable Drunken - in a pinch, you can cure that with Wicked Hangover!
The Firedancer Tree - A more well-rounded support tree. Ignite Passion is a powerful tension-fueled buff to spell DPS. You can add fuel to that fire with Liquid Courage, which converts any potion you have into a better version of it that also increases Tension. Tongue Lashing is just fun, giving you a source of Psychic damage in the form of weaponized Shakespearian insults, for when you absolutely need to tell an orc that you greatly desire to be a better stranger to them. Coal-Stepping allows you to bypass hazardous terrain and traps, handy if there's no Rogue or Smithy available to disable them. Smouldering Look is just a Provoke, but it's also an amusing provoke. You can hit large groups of enemies with Stir the Pot to get them fighting each other, and of course there's the apex skill Firedancing, a powerful damage reflection stance - it doesn't reflect all damage, but it is significant mitigation...
...Technique Considerations: The greatest weakness of a Flammite sacred class is that they don't add much to non-potion forms of healing, focusing on more offensive options. Flammites aren't as good at control battles as they are at winning damage races and disrupting enemy control; Key to this is Ardent Purification, one of the best Negate effects in the game. Fire and Poison are sharply limited in who they effect, but don't forget that Flammites also have some Psychic damage to make up for this weakness. Your main strength is in multiplying the DPS of your party; buff early and buff often...
...DIVINE BEAST: Salamander
First off, Salamander has Ardent Purification, so debuff-heavy strategies are disincentivized. Due to a quirk in how Immobile is handled, this doesn't apply to Freeze effects - combined with Sal's water weakness, if you have sources of Ice damage, use them! Your biggest problem is that Salamander sets fires quickly enough that the old wisdom of Don't Stand In The Mechanics quickly becomes untenable... with how rapidly Salamander eats Boosts and Weakens, you will want to fight fire with fire, going for a damage race rather than trying mitigation-heavy strategies. Time is your enemy - don't give Sal enough to light the whole arena ablaze...
LORE NOTES: We knew from the start that the five elemental siblings were going to each represent one of the non-human people of Mundus, but it took a while to figure out which we would pair together. With Flamma, our free association went something like this: 'Fire... Passion? ... Madness! ... Drink! ... Brewing... Witches... Cats!' So she's a little bit Dionysus and a little bit Hecate—sort of the lovechild of Bacchus and Baba Yaga in furry form. And she's a bit of a hoarder. She gets that from me.
- Claire Wheeler, OWTB Founder, AI Programmer and Awakener, OtherWorldCon 2044 panel
One of the Five Elemental Siblings, with parentage solely from the Pastoralist side of the family and a close friendship with Sylphan, the wind god and trickster. They often psych each other up to do terrible pranks - usually on rich and spoiled people who deserve it, or on bad people using magic they don't understand. The attic cap of her mushroom house is full of carefully catalogued artifacts stolen from those who used them irresponsibly, and woe betide anyone who takes one of her treasures without permission - for they will soon find it will turn on them, and you're lucky if all that happens is that you become a slimy little frog (for three days)...
...she is kind but capricious, and will take gifts of milk, fish, herbs, mushrooms or honey - and return these as cheeses, potions and libations, as she lights her brazier with her tail and sets forth to brew...
...Her hat is actually, like most witch hats, a common design worn by NPC brewers; she is the first and greatest brewer, who gifted the world with the Six Drinks - earthy beer, deep red wine, sweet sparkling mead, hearty yogurt, dark coffee, and crisp cider. It is said that when Jae-Eun presented her with gifts of cha, cocoa and rice, and with them the power to brew the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth drinks - tea, chocolatl and huangjiu - Flamma giggled like a little girl and presented her a gift of equal worth: the Carmine Rouge Jae-Eun used to kiss Delvar and make him hers...
...her temples are frequently also breweries that sell unique libations and potions that nonmembers of the cult can only buy at inflated prices. These sometimes serve as taverns and festhalls, especially when no others are available; some of these reference sacred prostitution and courtesan-priests who offer romantic advice, with deniable double entendre language. This led to the playerbase meme of calling temples to Flamma "cathouses..."
I wanted to get this out more than I wanted to add a bunch of fake hyperlinks. I might add them later if I feel like it, especially if there's popular demand; but for now, a lorepost.
Special thanks to Folklore for correcting an oversight. Thanks to their reminder I removed vodka (which is distilled grain or potato alcohol, and derived from other drinks) and added in the much more relevant and fire-themed tea.
Ruka is amazingly good. They also drew the image my forum icon is cropped from:
A couple years back, Ruka had a sale for Tarot Card themed art, which I decided to take advantage of for one of my original characters, who'd first began life as a Vampire the Masquerade PC, a Malkavian nerd by the name of Charlene Durante who had been going by her long-time screen name of 'Thorne' with her coterie... and who eventually ended up becoming Dr Durante in I/O, actually. Talia had already decided that she wanted to call the nature goddess 'Thorne' a year and a half ago and she was telling me about it and I said that obviously Charley Durante was part of the AWO devteam and had snuck her old screen name in as a goddess just because she could... and things kind of spiraled from there. And then I ended up as a writer for the I/O devteam and Charley being a founder of OWTB delightfully ended up canon.
Anyway, this is Charley circa 2014-2015, so a good thirty-plus years before her interlude! There's def a bit of resemblance between her and the nature god, Thorne, which ICly and OOCly is entirely on purpose.
Yeah, I imagine proper alchemy probably has some good solutions for that. Although, even if it didn't, I can't imagine the Flammite alchemists wouldn't have at minimum discovered the ancient Mediterranean recipes by now (c.f. Ovid writing about Scythians brewing premarin and chewing licorice root and so forth).
I tried to apply the actual accretion process of meaning and metaphors that actual gods go through - the genius locus of a warlike and philosophical city becoming Wisdom and Olives and Science and eventually Athena. That this parallels the process of, say, Botnik coming up with themes until a bot called ERZATZ-AK9 starts ranting about cats because it associated "a canine" with itself is just a bit of serendipity.
...Her hat is actually, like most witch hats, a common design worn by NPC brewers; she is the first and greatest brewer, who gifted the world with the Six Drinks - earthy beer, deep red wine, sweet sparkling mead, hearty yogurt, dark coffee, and crisp cider. It is said that when Jae-Eun presented her with gifts of potatoes, cocoa and rice, and with them the power to brew the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth drinks - vodka, chocolatl and huangjiu - Flamma giggled like a little girl and presented her a gift of equal worth: the Carmine Rouge Jae-Eun used to kiss Delvar and make him hers...
Wait, if Flemma uses the same witch hat design as everyone else, does that mean that there's some mythic-rare relic witch hat drop item that looks like a normal NPC brewer hat, with the backstory that she just leaves her hat lying around sometimes?
Wait, if Flemma uses the same witch hat design as everyone else, does that mean that there's some mythic-rare relic witch hat drop item that looks like a normal NPC brewer hat, with the backstory that she just leaves her hat lying around sometimes?
I feel like if there wasn't one before there needs to be now. And there's certainly precedent—Delvar's shed tail is already a mythic-rare drop. (He has a tendency to lose it when shocked or upset. It grows back like a lizard.)
Morgan Zhu woke up on a morning like any other- That is to say, she was only starting to stir, dimly aware of the weight on her stomach… until that weight suddenly kicked her, as hard as it could, bringing her to full wakefulness.
"Oof- Damn it, Gremlin." Her normal morning greetings, as the cat that had just decided to use her stomach as a springboard ran out of her room and down the hall, towards the kitchen. He must have heard the sounds of activity… Of course he did. That meant he would either steal scraps off the counter, or just get a can of wet food, if he didn't manage to do both.
In retrospect, Morgan considered, this was probably her own fault. When you name a cat 'Stinky Gremlin Bastard Man, Esquire', you probably should be prepared for when it's constantly up to mischief. In her defense, however, the furball did constantly look like he had crawled out of the trash, so the moniker fit. So clearly, it wasn't her fault, right? Right.
After a few moments of futilely trying to drift back to sleep, she finally yawned, sat up, and reached out to her bedside. Narrowly avoiding knocking over a couple of bottles of pills in her sleepy state, she finally managed to grab her cane, pressing her weight on it to help lift her up, until she finally managed to stand, limping out to the kitchen.
"Mmf… Morning, Ma." Morgan managed to get out, before suppressing another yawn. "What are you making?"
"Pancakes, though if a certain someone doesn't stop pestering me, it may instead be cat soup." Morgan's mother was staring at the matted furball on the counter, who was staring at her right back. "Gremlin, we've told you to keep off the counter how many times… Your food is over there, go on, shoo!"
Gremlin, naturally, only meowed in response, continuing to stare.
"Good grief…" She sighed, though Morgan didn't miss the slight smile.
It was only a few years ago that Morgan had gotten Gremlin, after all… Not long after her accident. No longer able to move out as she had planned, all her dreams had been crushed in one swoop. And her parents weren't able to be at home with her, or else they'd never be able to afford the bills the hospital was charging.
And so, rather than leave her alone, they'd brought home a companion for her one day… A wide-eyed little bastard cat who always looked, and smelled, like he'd just crawled out of the garbage. Usually, because somehow, he had. No lids or locks could seem to keep Gremlin out of there, and no one was quite sure how.
At Morgan's beckoning, at least, Gremlin was finally coaxed away, letting her mother cook. And over breakfast…
"What are you planning for today?" Her mother asked conversationally.
"Oh, just practicing…" Morgan said around a mouthful of pancake. "There's a Classic tournament coming up soon, so I'm just gonna practice all afternoon."
"I see…" Her mother nodded, as if she understood, though Morgan knew well enough that she didn't. It was okay, though, since she was supportive anyway. Her mother had never been much of one for gaming, after all- She knew what Tetris was, but things like 'Classic' or 'Speed' categories were totally lost on her. Her dad wasn't much better, and he was off at work on an early shift anyway.
Still, an hour later, Morgan was settling down at her computer, a purring furball in her lap, and a controller in her hand. But as she was loading up her game to practice, a notification caught her eye.
From Felix.
"No pressure." Felix grinned. "It's 2-2, almost no time left, but their defense is exhausted and we've got the two of us."
"You saw the scouts, right?" Morgan grinned back. "If we make a good impression here…"
"Hell yeah." Felix clapped Morgan's hand. "The two of us are off to the pro teams."
"Just two of you?" Midge grabbed Felix in a headlock out of nowhere, sneaking up on Morgan's helpless partner.
"Hey, what about us?!" Dennis was suddenly on Morgan's back, delivering a painful noogie.
"Yeah, yeah…" Morgan laughed it off. "Come on, you two showed your stuff already! It's time for us two aces to show what we're made out of."
"Hey, don't give me that." Felix escaped Midge's clutches, only to grab Morgan himself. "You're the real ace here."
"Yeah, yeah… Come on. Let's break a leg out there!"
Searing pain.
Morgan couldn't even scream at first, unable to comprehend what was there. That couldn't be Morgan's leg. Morgan's leg was straight, strong. It wasn't… broken. Bleeding. You couldn't see the bone poking through the knee. That couldn't be Morgan.
Morgan screamed.
Morgan shook her head, snapping back to reality. Gremlin was staring at her, mewling in concern. She wiped the cold sweat from her brow- At least the scream hadn't happened again for real.
You were looking for fun soccer games for your stream, right? There's a big VRMMO that's been getting a lot of attention, with a full-blown soccer minigame, if you wanna check it out. It's got a huge expac coming tonight, and you can get a two-week free trial with it. Why not check it out?
Felix
Morgan grinned. Felix had always been the team nerd, despite being the other forward. It always seemed at odds with his position, but ever since Morgan broke her leg, he'd been trying to send her ways to cheer up. Even when it became clear she'd never be able to walk normally again, much less play, Felix, Midge, and Dennis had stuck by her as her friends. Even when she came out, they were with her all the way.
Well, hell. Why not give it a shot, then? 'Another World Online'... Felix had sent the link… A cash shop?
Oh, Morgan knew what to do. If Felix would be watching her stream, as soon as the expac went live… She registered an account quickly, going through character creation… And the cash shop.
Perfect. She could practically imagine Felix's eyes bugging out of his head at this stupid character she'd made. The ultimate tittymonster, the cheesecakiest cheesecake. She was never fond of these kinds of VRMMOs, but she could at least play the free trial to drag her weeb-ass friend into the dirt over it.
Character Name: Ace Striker
Race: Vulpecian
Class: Warrior
Morgan Zhu woke up on a morning like any other- That is to say, she was only starting to stir, dimly aware of the weight on her stomach… until that weight suddenly kicked her, as hard as it could, bringing her to full wakefulness.
