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electricpaladin) wrote2008-09-09 03:14 pm
electricpaladin) wrote2008-09-09 03:14 pm
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The Game: Promethean: the Created
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Moderate-high. I’ve read every book released, made a couple of characters for my personal enjoyment, and planned a one-on-one game that never got off the ground. I want to run and play this game only marginally less than I want to breathe, but I’m not sure if it’s ever going to happen.
Promethean: the Created is without a doubt the most beautiful roleplaying game I have ever seen. It’s not the best, it’s not the most flexible, and it’s certainly not the most playable, but it is beautiful.
In Promethean you play a monster made out of a corpse by another monster, a sort of self-perpetuating Frankenstein situation. Your goal is to achieve humanity through a long process of trial and error and alchemical transformation. Promethean is about life: learning to grow, accept, and love. And in the end, your character becomes a human being, loses all his magical powers and special abilities, and gets to embark on the most magical journey of all: being a human being. In a setting dominated by monsters and weirdos (hell, a hobby dominated by monsters and weirdos), Promethean is about the beauty of being a person.
Up till now, I’ve played nice. Sure, my characters have been cool, unique people, but they’ve also been fairly normal for the settings they inhabit. They all only use material from the basic sourcebooks, stuff that’s clearly meant for the players to use.
Today the kid gloves come off.
Partly it’s because I have a specific idea, and he’s a weirdo, and partly it’s the nature of Promethean. More than any other game in the World of Darkness, Promethean epitomizes the sheer weirdness and mystery of the setting. I mean, come on: zombie alchemists seeking the golden dawn of mortality, plagued by the cast-off parts of their failed efforts to reproduce? This is a game that thrives on strangeness and uncertainty.
I’m gonna make one of the Unfleshed.
You see, in Promethean you can pick one of several Lineages, the various lines of created monsters that have existed, unseen, among humanity for years. You can be a Frankenstein, descended from Mary Shelly’s monster (who was apparently real in the World of Darkness), a Galateid, descended from the original Galatea of Greek myth, an Ulgan descended from the rent-and-reassembled shamans of Alaskan mythology, and so on. The Unfleshed are the newest Lineage, machines given life by the Divine Fire. The character generation process is similar, but slightly different. Bear with me.
Step One: Character Concept
Promethean character concepts are odd, because instead of making a person and then adding the supernatural template to reflect whatever transformation took place, you really are just making your monster out of whole cloth. You see, Prometheans are (often) made of dead people, but they don’t have that (or those) person’s (or people’s) memories (usually). In any case, they aren’t that person in any meaningful sense; rather, that person’s baggage is just something they are going to have to overcome.
Anyway, this guy is the final result of the Project Paladin, an initiative within a secret U.S. government organization called Task Force: Valkyrie to save human lives by creating combat-capable, semi-autonomous war machines that can be deployed in the field. Something went wrong in the final stages of program initiative, and Paladin Alpha went rogue. He escaped from the Death Valley research facility and hasn’t been seen since, but Task Force: Valkyrie is certainly after him.
So here we have a creature made to save lives… by murdering. Made to hunt and kill, but he doesn’t know what. His mind fizzes with the inconsistencies of his programming. He doesn’t know what he is, but he knows he needs to find out. And when he understands… well, he’ll be perfect. Whole. At last.
When his true form is visible, this being is a tall, lanky, humanoid figure made out of gunmetal black steel. He isn’t finished yet, and while his grabbing pincers have been traded for human-like hands (actually expensive prosthetics he stole from the lab where he was made) and he wears something like a stiff, immobile human face (actually a manikin’s face he stole from a department store), his torso is an open rib cage, full of wires and blinking lights. His eyes go from bland blue to intense, piercing red lights.
The rest of the time, he looks like a tall, lanky, athletic human with blandly attractive features and hair that looks like he’s used too much gel. His hands are strangely stiff and cold to the touch, but you wouldn’t think he was a monster.
Name’s are hard for Prometheans, and this guy goes by a couple. His full designation is Paladin Alpha Zero Point Seven. Certain names from history and popular culture are strangely comforting to him: Arthas, Arthur, Durendal, Lance, Orlando, Roland.
Mostly, though, he goes by Alexander. He just likes the sound of it.
Step Two: Select Attributes
This step works just like it does for normal Prometheans, and everything else in the World of Darkness.
Alex’s Physical Attributes are definitely Primary. He’s a hunting, killing machine, after all. Given the modern military’s focus on speed and accuracy, I’ll make Strength and Stamina average and give him a high Dexterity: 4 dots. The finished Paladin would probably have higher Strength and Stamina, but Alex is an escaped prototype, without a lot of the shielding that would go into later models.
Next up is Mental at Secondary. With my four points, I’ll give Alexander Wits and Resolve of 3 and leave Intelligence at 1. The Paladin was only meant to be semi-autonomous, after all. Alexander certainly has room to grow in his ability to think critically. Tactical thinking, though (Wits), he does just fine.
Finally, Alex’s Social Attributes are tertiary. He was never meant to be a social creature. Here, I’m going to go all out and give Alex Presence 1, Manipulation 1, and Composure 4. He’s socially awkward, but inhumanly cool.
Step Three: Select Abilities
Physical Abilities are likewise Primary, which means I have 11 points to spend on them: Athletics 3 (running and jumping after prey), Brawl 2 (for close combat), Firearms 4, and Stealth 2.
Mental Abilities are also Secondary, which gives me 7 points: Computer 1 (he is one), Crafts 4 (he is also a machine), and Medicine 1 (the Paladin is programmed with basic first aid procedures to aid wounded human handlers).
Social skills are Tertiary. I have no idea what I’m going to spend my 4 points, but I’ll give it my best shot. How about Empathy 1 (some talent for picking out the emotions of humans) and Intimidation 3 (he’s a war-bot!)?
Step Four: Select Skill Specialties
Ok, Skill Specialties should reflect the Paladin’s intended capabilities. How about Crafts (Repair) and Stealth (Stalking)? Also, for Empathy, I’ll take Emotions. Alex is fascinated by this human trait and has gotten good at watching it.
Step Five: Select Unfleshed Features
Let’s see. Here’s where it gets weird.
The Unfleshed are allowed to cherry-pick from the standard Lineages to reflect the traits that drive and empower them. Effectively, each Unfleshed is the first of a new Lineage.
Alex’s Azoth begins at 1, like any Promethean. He gets to pick any Bestowment, an inherent power stemming from his Lineage, or any one or two-dot Transmutation (or higher, if I spend Transmutation points on it) as a Bestowment. For Alex, I will take the Frankenstein Bestowment from Strange Alchemies, Spare Parts. Spare Parts lets Alex swap out his body parts with the parts of other machines, which is how he got his human hands and human face. He hasn’t tried it with organic parts yet, though one day he might.
I’d also ask a kind Storyteller to let me use Crafts rather than Medicine to power the Bestowment. Because he is a machine. Just saying.
Next, I get to pick any Disquiet I like. Disquiet is the way Prometheans tend to drive the humans around them a little crazy with the unsettling power of their internal divine fires. For Alex, I’ll take the Tammuz Disquiet. This means that mortals can sense that Alex is meant to do something, and they subconsciously try to enslave him, and react with resentment and anger when Alex resists.
I also get to pick a Torment, which is what happens when Alex’s unbalanced, unfinished personality finally snaps. Alex’s Torment is the Torment of the Nepri. His logic rises up and strangles his emotions, and he finds himself acting out his programming without thinking.
Step Five: Select Refinement
Refinements are the chosen splat, a Promethean’s current approach to the journey towards humanity. This trait changes a lot over the course of a character’s career, but it’s important to note where the character begins.
Refinement is hard for Alex. He’s a war machine who doesn’t want to fight anymore, but he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He certainly isn’t on the Refinement of Iron, but I don’t think he’s ready for the Refinement of Gold just yet. I’m going to place Alex on Cuprum, the Refinement of Copper, the Refinement of the Self. This Refinement focuses on meditation and self-understanding. Before he can perfect his nature as a war machine (to transcend it), begin practicing for humanity, or focus on something else altogether, Alex needs to know what he is
Step Seven: Select Transmutations
I get three points to spend on Alex’s Transmutations, one of which must come from either Metamorphosis or Sensorium, the two Transmutations associated with his Refinement.
Alex has Aura Sight. He strongly suspects that he was built with this capability, because it came so naturally to him. He also has Autonomic Control, a kind of self-mastery, the ability to regulate his internal functions.
Step Eight: Select Merits
I have 7 points to spend on Merits.
First of all, I’m going to take many dots of the Device Merit, to reflect some of Alex’s interior toys. For 4 points, Alex can have a large SMG implanted in his body (it folds out of his right forearm)! Ok, ok, that’s a little crazy. A small SMG. Alex had more (and possibly larger) guns originally, but he took a lot of them out to make room for his human appendages. Also, they… bothered him.
Similarly, I’m going to take the Quick Draw Merit, because Alex can deploy and stow his machine gun with lightning speed.
Finally, I’ll take two dots of Repute and a dot of Residual Memory. Repute is like Status among Prometheans. It means other Prometheans have heard of you, which seems likely, given Alex’s strange background. Alex’s Residual Memory means that he can access an Ability, but at the risk of developing a Derangement. Alex has some information about the Occult Ability buried in his hard drives (I wonder why that might be…), but focusing on his programming rather than his Divine Fire-granted mind breaks him a little, causing him to behave as though he has severe OCD.
Step Nine: Determine Advantages
And the rest is just like a normal Promethean, and a lot of that is just the same as any other World of Darkness character.
I’m going to reduce Alex’s Humanity to 5. Between using his Bestowment to grow hands and a face and the people he killed during his escape, he hasn’t started his pilgrimage on the right foot, exactly. With those ten freebie points I will buy two more versions of the Device Merit: an computer interface (Ethernet port and a firewire port) and a high-powered radio.
Also, I’ll need to hash one thing out with my Storyteller. Normally the Unfleshed can’t add new Devices after character creation, but with his Spare Parts Bestowment, is Alexander an exception to that rule?
And finally, I need to choose Alex’s Virtue and Vice. These are giving me headaches. For Vice, I think I have to go with Wrath. It isn’t that Alex gets angry – actually, he’s pretty much a cold fish – it’s that violence is what he’s programmed to resort to whenever he feels threatened. Solving his problems by killing things is just so rewarding for him. It lets him fall back on his “base nature,” on what it feels like he was meant to do.
His Virtue, though… that’s a rough one. I’m going to go with Hope. Alex feels human when he shares strength with another. In that moment, he forgets what he is and tastes a little of what it will be like to be whole.
So… what next? Any requests?
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Moderate-high. I’ve read every book released, made a couple of characters for my personal enjoyment, and planned a one-on-one game that never got off the ground. I want to run and play this game only marginally less than I want to breathe, but I’m not sure if it’s ever going to happen.
Promethean: the Created is without a doubt the most beautiful roleplaying game I have ever seen. It’s not the best, it’s not the most flexible, and it’s certainly not the most playable, but it is beautiful.
In Promethean you play a monster made out of a corpse by another monster, a sort of self-perpetuating Frankenstein situation. Your goal is to achieve humanity through a long process of trial and error and alchemical transformation. Promethean is about life: learning to grow, accept, and love. And in the end, your character becomes a human being, loses all his magical powers and special abilities, and gets to embark on the most magical journey of all: being a human being. In a setting dominated by monsters and weirdos (hell, a hobby dominated by monsters and weirdos), Promethean is about the beauty of being a person.
Up till now, I’ve played nice. Sure, my characters have been cool, unique people, but they’ve also been fairly normal for the settings they inhabit. They all only use material from the basic sourcebooks, stuff that’s clearly meant for the players to use.
Today the kid gloves come off.
Partly it’s because I have a specific idea, and he’s a weirdo, and partly it’s the nature of Promethean. More than any other game in the World of Darkness, Promethean epitomizes the sheer weirdness and mystery of the setting. I mean, come on: zombie alchemists seeking the golden dawn of mortality, plagued by the cast-off parts of their failed efforts to reproduce? This is a game that thrives on strangeness and uncertainty.
I’m gonna make one of the Unfleshed.
You see, in Promethean you can pick one of several Lineages, the various lines of created monsters that have existed, unseen, among humanity for years. You can be a Frankenstein, descended from Mary Shelly’s monster (who was apparently real in the World of Darkness), a Galateid, descended from the original Galatea of Greek myth, an Ulgan descended from the rent-and-reassembled shamans of Alaskan mythology, and so on. The Unfleshed are the newest Lineage, machines given life by the Divine Fire. The character generation process is similar, but slightly different. Bear with me.
Step One: Character Concept
Promethean character concepts are odd, because instead of making a person and then adding the supernatural template to reflect whatever transformation took place, you really are just making your monster out of whole cloth. You see, Prometheans are (often) made of dead people, but they don’t have that (or those) person’s (or people’s) memories (usually). In any case, they aren’t that person in any meaningful sense; rather, that person’s baggage is just something they are going to have to overcome.
Anyway, this guy is the final result of the Project Paladin, an initiative within a secret U.S. government organization called Task Force: Valkyrie to save human lives by creating combat-capable, semi-autonomous war machines that can be deployed in the field. Something went wrong in the final stages of program initiative, and Paladin Alpha went rogue. He escaped from the Death Valley research facility and hasn’t been seen since, but Task Force: Valkyrie is certainly after him.
So here we have a creature made to save lives… by murdering. Made to hunt and kill, but he doesn’t know what. His mind fizzes with the inconsistencies of his programming. He doesn’t know what he is, but he knows he needs to find out. And when he understands… well, he’ll be perfect. Whole. At last.
When his true form is visible, this being is a tall, lanky, humanoid figure made out of gunmetal black steel. He isn’t finished yet, and while his grabbing pincers have been traded for human-like hands (actually expensive prosthetics he stole from the lab where he was made) and he wears something like a stiff, immobile human face (actually a manikin’s face he stole from a department store), his torso is an open rib cage, full of wires and blinking lights. His eyes go from bland blue to intense, piercing red lights.
The rest of the time, he looks like a tall, lanky, athletic human with blandly attractive features and hair that looks like he’s used too much gel. His hands are strangely stiff and cold to the touch, but you wouldn’t think he was a monster.
Name’s are hard for Prometheans, and this guy goes by a couple. His full designation is Paladin Alpha Zero Point Seven. Certain names from history and popular culture are strangely comforting to him: Arthas, Arthur, Durendal, Lance, Orlando, Roland.
Mostly, though, he goes by Alexander. He just likes the sound of it.
Step Two: Select Attributes
This step works just like it does for normal Prometheans, and everything else in the World of Darkness.
Alex’s Physical Attributes are definitely Primary. He’s a hunting, killing machine, after all. Given the modern military’s focus on speed and accuracy, I’ll make Strength and Stamina average and give him a high Dexterity: 4 dots. The finished Paladin would probably have higher Strength and Stamina, but Alex is an escaped prototype, without a lot of the shielding that would go into later models.
Next up is Mental at Secondary. With my four points, I’ll give Alexander Wits and Resolve of 3 and leave Intelligence at 1. The Paladin was only meant to be semi-autonomous, after all. Alexander certainly has room to grow in his ability to think critically. Tactical thinking, though (Wits), he does just fine.
Finally, Alex’s Social Attributes are tertiary. He was never meant to be a social creature. Here, I’m going to go all out and give Alex Presence 1, Manipulation 1, and Composure 4. He’s socially awkward, but inhumanly cool.
Step Three: Select Abilities
Physical Abilities are likewise Primary, which means I have 11 points to spend on them: Athletics 3 (running and jumping after prey), Brawl 2 (for close combat), Firearms 4, and Stealth 2.
Mental Abilities are also Secondary, which gives me 7 points: Computer 1 (he is one), Crafts 4 (he is also a machine), and Medicine 1 (the Paladin is programmed with basic first aid procedures to aid wounded human handlers).
Social skills are Tertiary. I have no idea what I’m going to spend my 4 points, but I’ll give it my best shot. How about Empathy 1 (some talent for picking out the emotions of humans) and Intimidation 3 (he’s a war-bot!)?
Step Four: Select Skill Specialties
Ok, Skill Specialties should reflect the Paladin’s intended capabilities. How about Crafts (Repair) and Stealth (Stalking)? Also, for Empathy, I’ll take Emotions. Alex is fascinated by this human trait and has gotten good at watching it.
Step Five: Select Unfleshed Features
Let’s see. Here’s where it gets weird.
The Unfleshed are allowed to cherry-pick from the standard Lineages to reflect the traits that drive and empower them. Effectively, each Unfleshed is the first of a new Lineage.
Alex’s Azoth begins at 1, like any Promethean. He gets to pick any Bestowment, an inherent power stemming from his Lineage, or any one or two-dot Transmutation (or higher, if I spend Transmutation points on it) as a Bestowment. For Alex, I will take the Frankenstein Bestowment from Strange Alchemies, Spare Parts. Spare Parts lets Alex swap out his body parts with the parts of other machines, which is how he got his human hands and human face. He hasn’t tried it with organic parts yet, though one day he might.
I’d also ask a kind Storyteller to let me use Crafts rather than Medicine to power the Bestowment. Because he is a machine. Just saying.
Next, I get to pick any Disquiet I like. Disquiet is the way Prometheans tend to drive the humans around them a little crazy with the unsettling power of their internal divine fires. For Alex, I’ll take the Tammuz Disquiet. This means that mortals can sense that Alex is meant to do something, and they subconsciously try to enslave him, and react with resentment and anger when Alex resists.
I also get to pick a Torment, which is what happens when Alex’s unbalanced, unfinished personality finally snaps. Alex’s Torment is the Torment of the Nepri. His logic rises up and strangles his emotions, and he finds himself acting out his programming without thinking.
Step Five: Select Refinement
Refinements are the chosen splat, a Promethean’s current approach to the journey towards humanity. This trait changes a lot over the course of a character’s career, but it’s important to note where the character begins.
Refinement is hard for Alex. He’s a war machine who doesn’t want to fight anymore, but he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He certainly isn’t on the Refinement of Iron, but I don’t think he’s ready for the Refinement of Gold just yet. I’m going to place Alex on Cuprum, the Refinement of Copper, the Refinement of the Self. This Refinement focuses on meditation and self-understanding. Before he can perfect his nature as a war machine (to transcend it), begin practicing for humanity, or focus on something else altogether, Alex needs to know what he is
Step Seven: Select Transmutations
I get three points to spend on Alex’s Transmutations, one of which must come from either Metamorphosis or Sensorium, the two Transmutations associated with his Refinement.
Alex has Aura Sight. He strongly suspects that he was built with this capability, because it came so naturally to him. He also has Autonomic Control, a kind of self-mastery, the ability to regulate his internal functions.
Step Eight: Select Merits
I have 7 points to spend on Merits.
First of all, I’m going to take many dots of the Device Merit, to reflect some of Alex’s interior toys. For 4 points, Alex can have a large SMG implanted in his body (it folds out of his right forearm)! Ok, ok, that’s a little crazy. A small SMG. Alex had more (and possibly larger) guns originally, but he took a lot of them out to make room for his human appendages. Also, they… bothered him.
Similarly, I’m going to take the Quick Draw Merit, because Alex can deploy and stow his machine gun with lightning speed.
Finally, I’ll take two dots of Repute and a dot of Residual Memory. Repute is like Status among Prometheans. It means other Prometheans have heard of you, which seems likely, given Alex’s strange background. Alex’s Residual Memory means that he can access an Ability, but at the risk of developing a Derangement. Alex has some information about the Occult Ability buried in his hard drives (I wonder why that might be…), but focusing on his programming rather than his Divine Fire-granted mind breaks him a little, causing him to behave as though he has severe OCD.
Step Nine: Determine Advantages
And the rest is just like a normal Promethean, and a lot of that is just the same as any other World of Darkness character.
I’m going to reduce Alex’s Humanity to 5. Between using his Bestowment to grow hands and a face and the people he killed during his escape, he hasn’t started his pilgrimage on the right foot, exactly. With those ten freebie points I will buy two more versions of the Device Merit: an computer interface (Ethernet port and a firewire port) and a high-powered radio.
Also, I’ll need to hash one thing out with my Storyteller. Normally the Unfleshed can’t add new Devices after character creation, but with his Spare Parts Bestowment, is Alexander an exception to that rule?
And finally, I need to choose Alex’s Virtue and Vice. These are giving me headaches. For Vice, I think I have to go with Wrath. It isn’t that Alex gets angry – actually, he’s pretty much a cold fish – it’s that violence is what he’s programmed to resort to whenever he feels threatened. Solving his problems by killing things is just so rewarding for him. It lets him fall back on his “base nature,” on what it feels like he was meant to do.
His Virtue, though… that’s a rough one. I’m going to go with Hope. Alex feels human when he shares strength with another. In that moment, he forgets what he is and tastes a little of what it will be like to be whole.
So… what next? Any requests?
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