Any Witch Way You Can: Ghosts of Albion / Unisystem

So to follow up on my OVA post on Rachel and Ivy I thought I would post Rachel and Ivy in my favorite system, Cinematic Unisystem.  since Eden has gone back online and Ghosts is due out soon, this is a great choice! (ok, biased I know).

Actually stating up the characters for Unisystem worked out fantastic.  I might be biased but I am really pleased with how they worked out.   While I am very pleased with the OVA stats, I am thrilled with the Unisystem ones.

The world of Ghosts of Albion (or even Buffy/Angel) is a good fit for the world of Rachel and Ivy.  Demons, faeries, pixies, witches and vamps are all similar to those in Ghosts.  There are "living vampires" in The Hollows series, but I figure they have many of the same stats as regular vamps, only not as much.  So instead of +3 to Strength they only get +2 and +1 to all the other affected stats and skills.  They can move about in the daylight and are not affected by holy items, but are no more in a hurry to die than a human.  Plus they still need to feed.

Vamps in the Hollows can also "pull an aura" which is more of an Emotional Control than a full on Hypnotize.   I reflected this in Ivy's stats below.
Jenks of course is a Pixie and almost a by-the-book one.  Trent is an elf and can be built like the Royal Fae in the Ghosts core book.  Al is pretty much a demon out of the Angel book with some fae qualities like Glamour (only used as a spell).

Of course the big difference in Rachel and Ivy's world compared to say Willow and Tara's is magic is known to be real to everyone.  If Willow and Tara were in Rachel's world I would suspect that Tara would be an Earth Witch completely.  Willow of course would have started out as an Earth witch but moved to Ley Lines quickly.  Willow would almost certainly have some imbalance on her aura ("smut" in the books) and maybe a demon mark.

Rachel Morgan

Witch
Str: 3 Dex: 3 Con: 2 Int: 4 Per: 4 Wil: 5

Life Points: 36 Drama Points: 10

Qualities
Attractive 2, Contacts 3 (Weres, Demons, Witches, FIB), Hard to Kill 2, Heightened Senses (Witches in the world are more sensitive) 1, Magic 5, Magical Philosophy, Earth, Ley Line, Demonic (in Rachel's world you can have more than one), Nerves of Steel, Occult Library 2

Drawbacks
Addiction (Bad relationships) 1, Adversary 5 (nearly everyone wants her dead), Emotional Problems (hard for her to trust others) 1, Haunted (Pierce), Honorable 1, Obsession (Help Ivy), Reputation 3, Risk Taker, Secret (witches are really stunted demons, can do demon magic) 3

Skills
Acrobatics 3, Computer 2, Crime 2, Doctor 1, Driving 3, Engineering 1, Getting Medieval 2, Gun Fu 4, Influence 2, knowledge 4, Kung Fu 4, Languages 2 (English, Latin), Notice 3, Occultism 5, Science 1, Sports 2

Combat
by spell +15, special
Splat Gun +7, target falls asleep (paint balls filled with a sleeping potion)

(Image of Rachel found at http://valliantcreations.com/images/galleries/color.html)

Ivy Tamwood

Living Vampire

Str: 7 Dex: 7 Con: 5 Int: 3 Per: 5 Wil: 4

Life Points: 36 Drama Points: 10

Qualities

Attractive 3, Contacts 2 (Vamps, FIB), Emotional Influence ("pulling an aura"), Fast Reaction Time, Hard to Kill 3, Heightened Senses 2,  Iron Mind, Nerves of Steel, Regeneration (1 LP per hour), Resources 6, Vampire (Living).

Drawbacks

Adversary 2 (mostly other vampires), Fear (of dying and losing her soul) 1, Fear (of Rachel's magic) 1, Honorable 2, Love, Unrequited (Rachel), Obligation 1, Reputation 1 (living with Rachel has it's downside too)

Skills

Acrobatics 5, Art 2, Computer 4, Crime 4, Doctor 2, Driving 4, Engineering 2, Getting Medieval 6, Gun Fu 1, Influence 6, knowledge 4, Kung Fu 6, Languages 1, Notice 3, Occultism 2, Science 1, Sports 1

Combat
Sword +13
Hand to Hand +13

(image of Rachel and Ivy found at http://thwippersnapple.deviantart.com/art/rachel-morgan-and-ivy-tamwood-41669160)



All in all I really like these builds.  I think they capture the characters well.  I would love to add them to my Unisystem game, I just have not figured out how to bring them into the story yet.

I think I should put these two on the list of builds to try out for when I review Dresden Files.

Greyhawk Grognard: AD&D's Lost Second Edition

Here is a proper link-back for Blogger tracking.

Greyhawk Grognard: AD&D's Lost Second Edition

What if Gygax had done 2nd Ed?

Quick one for now. I am on my way to campus.

I have been following the OSR scene now for a while and have seen the attempts to do retellings of the most famous RPG in history. Associated with that is the wave of nostalgia for all things from the hands of the Old Masters (Gygax, Holmes, Arneson) and this had gotten me thinking.

What would 2nd Ed AD&D have looked like if Gygax had still been at TSR?

  

I suppose we should look at the variables.  What was TSR doing at the time (late 80s), what was Gygax doing (Mythus, Dangerous Journeys, and later Lejendary Adventures) and how would that have all blended into what could have been the 2nd Ed AD&D as written by Gary.

This is all speculation; I am not a Gygaxian scholar by any stretch of the imagination. But I am curious to know what you all think.

Would we have seen more classes? (I think so) More skills? (certainly) and I also think given the direction that TSR was headed and what Gygax did in DJ/Mythus that we would have seen more "world" books for different genres of play.  So instead of Spelljamer (D&D in space) we would have gotten a Space Opera game that used the AD&D 2ed rules.  Or not.

Thoughts?

EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to Herb and Jason Vey.  They uncovered this link for me.
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2009/02/ad-second-edition.html
I will have to read that in detail when I can.

Eden Studios back online

After many months Eden Studios is back online with a new website and new releases!

http://www.edenstudios.net/

And in the "Upcoming Releases" section a welcomed sight!

More as I learn more.

Play Ivy For Me: OVA

So according to the official OVA RPG blog there will be a 2nd edition of the OVA RPG.
I have liked what I have seen so far of OVA, so the second edition should be fun.  July 17 is the release date.

Until then though I wanted to bring out some characters I have been dying to stat up for any game.

I just finished reading the latest Rachel Morgan book, Black Magic Sanction.  Like all the others it was fun ride and great to see Rachel, Ivy and Jenks again.  Given the nature of the series I thought an anime roleplaying adaptation would be perfect. Plus I am wrapping up OVA and just finished the book so it fits; for me anyway.

So what do you need to know with out getting to spoilery? Well.  Rachel Morgan is a witch living in Cincinnati in a world where everyone knows about magic, witches (like Rachel), vampires (like her roommate Ivy) and even pixies (like their business partner Jenks).  Rachel has so problems keeping herself out of trouble and then problems about getting herself much deeper in trouble once she is there.  Ivy is a bad mood away from going total bloodlust psycho thanks to years of mental (and physical) abuse from Cincinnati's former Master Vampire. And Jenks...well Jenks is a pixie and that means a lot in this series.

It is a very cool set of books and if you have not read them and you like modern supernatural then these are a treat.  I have mentioned them before but had not got around to doing any stats.  That changes now.

Like my Witch Hunter Robin write-up I am using the rule of a power cap of 10.  I want Rachel and Ivy to be about the same league as Robin, but obviously more powerful due to their world, age and experience.

Rachel Morgan
Concept: Trouble prone witch with a deadly secret. or two.
"I'm a white witch damnit!"

Abilities & Weaknesses
Beautiful +2, Combat Skill, Splat-gun (a paint ball gun filled with potions) +2, Combat skill, Hand to hand +2, Magic, Arcane (Earth Magic in the book) +2, Magic, Witchcraft (Ley Line Magic in the book +3),  Magic, Demonic (combining Earth and Ley Line) +5, Occult Knowledge +3, Perceptive +2, Weapon, Splat-gun +2
Code of conduct -1, Guardian, Jenks and Family (though they are more often her guardian) -1, Impulse Control (Rachel often acts before she thinks) -2, Obsession, help Ivy -1, Rivals (Al, Moral and Ethical coven, Trent) -3, Secret (demon spawn) -2, Special Weakness, Jerk Magnet (Rachel has terrible taste in men) -1.

Attacks
Hand to hand, +2
Splat Gun +2, special damage. Hit target falls asleep.

Defense
Take down +2
Magic Circle +3, ley line based

Health 40, Endurance 40

Character Notes: Rachel is a 25 year old witch and former IS runner.  She is now an independent runner for Vampiric Charms and no that is not a escort service.  Rachel is tall with long red, red hair and green eyes.  She has a demon mark on her wrist from her personal demon, Algaliarept "Al".  She has discovered a great many things in her short time as an independent and maybe one day she will be able to live to talk about it all.
She awful taste in men given that they either leave, are secretly thieves or are really ghosts.
If nothing else Rachel is a survivor and she might be the secret to the survival of all the Interlander Races.  If they don't all kill her first.

Ivy Tamwood

Concept: Living vampire with issues.  lots of issues.

"Damnit Rachel, you are going to get me killed. Twice."

Abilities & Weaknesses

Agile +2, Beautiful +3, Combat Skill, Sword +3, Combat skill, Hand to hand +3, Filthy Rich +2, Occult Knowledge +2, Perceptive +2, Quick +2, Strong +2, Weapon, fangs +1, Weapon, Sword +3(extra damage), Special: Vampire*

Code of Honor/Conduct (friends) -1, Impulse Control  -2, Love Interest, Rachel (Ivy is in love with Rachel, even if Rachel isn't) -1, Needs Blood -2, Obligation (Master Vampire) -1, Obsession, Survive her 1st Death -3, Rivals (rival vampire clans) -1, Special Weakness, Afraid of Rachel's Magic (Ivy won't use any of Rachel's magic) -1.

Attacks

Sword +3, damage: 2

Hand to hand, +3

Fangs +1

Defense

Parry +3

Health 50, Endurance 50 

Character Notes: Ivy is a member of the Tamwood family of living vampires.  That means she is stinking rich but one day she will die and rise as a soulless monster, a dead vampire.  She will do anything to stop that and she thinks Rachel is the ticket.  Of course the fact that Ivy is also in love with the head strong witch has nothing to do with it.  Almost nothing.  Ivy suffered years of mental abuse from the Master Vampire Piscary to mold her into the type of Scion he wanted. In fact Piscary had been molding her whole family for centuries to get the qualities he wanted.  So Ivy, with her dark hair, husky voice and slightly Asian features, is a knock out.  Even supermodels think she is hot.  But most of the time Ivy is in a bad mood.  She tried to go of off blood and that made difficult to live with, then she went back on to the blood and that made things even weirder.

And there you go.
OVA does not have a vampire ability really, so I just combined things that made Ivy who she is; quick, strong, agile, needs blood to live.

I like the OVA versions of them and can't wait to try them out in Ghosts of Albion or Witch Girls Adventures. 

OVA Witch Hunter Robin

I spent some quality time with OVA this weekend.  I generated a few characters and it was one of the fastest character creation system I have played with in a long time.  Character creation was a snap.

To start with you work from your concepts and then basically figure out how much these concepts are worth.  What I liked about this game that abilities and weaknesses are roughly equal to qualities and drawbacks, so a +4 quality in Unisystem might give you a +4 ability in OVA.  I would also say that they are roughly equal to abilities in BESM 3.0.

What I like about this character creation is it does focus the player on what the character is all about.  Look at Kiki from "Kiki's Delivery Service", she is young, is looking for her place in world of witches, and can fly.  Not a lot really to be honest, but enough to build a story and a character concept around.  We know she can fly, can cook (sort of) and knows her way around the city.  She has a talking cat and a push broom.  OVA starts the same way.

Looking at Robin Sena we can do the same.  I have detailed Robin before both for BESM and Witch Girls Adventures.
What do we know about her?  Well she has secrets. Secrets about who she is ans what she is doing at STN-J. She is a witch, but rarely casts spells but instead uses something more like pyrokenisis. She knows a lot about the occult and can hunt.  We also know her Japanese is not great because she didn't grow up in Japan.  She also needs glasses in order to see to use her powers. She doesn't fly, but does have a Vespa scooter.

Using the rules I decide to set a power cap of 10.  Nice round number.
Finding the abilities and weaknesses I come up with this:

Robin Sena



Abilities & Weaknesses
Combat Skill (fire) +3, Magic, Witchcraft* +3, Occult Knowledge +3, Pyrokinesis (altered form of TK) +3: (Area Effect, Extra Damage),  Impared Sight -1, Secret -1, Haunted by Visions -1, Shy -1, Obsession (Discover the secret of her birth) -1, Code of Conduct -1.

That gives us a total of +6.  Just under the 10 I set.

Health: 30 (i reduced this to refelct her age)  Endurance: 40

Attack, Flame Strike +3
Defense, Magic Circle +3

I gave her "Magic, Witchcraft" instead of "Magic, Arcane" since I felt that it was better fit concept wise.  Though either would have worked fine.  I'll detail later the differences.

I like it.

I seems to be "missing" some crunch that I would normally like, but that could be partially my reading of the system and just the way the game is.   As an Anime game I think it works great.   Parts of it remind me of Cartoon Action Hour, which is cool.  I'll look into OVA again when I talk about Cartoon Action Hour.

Fudge and Fate

So I have some new (and some old) Fudge and Fate games I want to talk about.

But in general, what do you all think of Fudge and Fate?

I get the indy appeal, but something about them just never has jelled with me.  Maybe I don't get it.

I like numbers I guess.

Tell me.  What am I not getting here?  I'll have some reviews up soon, and I like the games that use it I just tend to like the games and convert them over to Unisystem.

More later in the week, or whenever I finish up Anime.