I feel very un-coordinated.
Last Friday night I took up tai-chi with afriend of mine. Now while I enjoyed it imensly and got a nice work out from it (sore legs), I have discovered that my coordination seems to have atrophied over the last few years of inactivitey (I sit at my desk and study, alot). I have, of course, forgotten most of the class already, but I'm looking forward to the next one. You wanna come along let me know.
Well since I said I would, I'm gonna talk a little about some different game sytems. I decided I'd start with one of the games I'm currently running. Mage the Awakening (I don't know why there's a second capital!!). I've always enjoyed the white wolf system, Just d10's no other dice required. Nice and easy. Well now they've gone and made it even wimpler with the nWoD system (n stands for new!!), roll all the dice, 8's or better and you succed, other wise get onboard the failboat. at first this seems kinda harsh, 30% chance of success per die (singular of dice, look your learning), seems very unlikely that anyone will ever get anything done.
Wrong!
Characters are only supposed to roll when the task is difficult or contested. Dice pool's are usually around 7 or 8 for mortals using the right equipment and only one success is required to get anything done. If your playing a supernatural your dice pool usually hit double digets for your niche roll, ie Uratha (thats werewolves) usually roll about 10 - 11 dice in combat, in human form.
And this brings me to the major improvment in the current mage compared with its predecessor. Dice pools. Origionally a mage player was doing well if his/her standard dice pool was 3 dice.
3!!
I mean seriously what was the point of playing a supposedly all powerful magi, if it never actually worked? The new mage system uses rotes radically differently to the previous. They expand your dice pool, dramatically. Most rotes will have between 6 - 8 dice while those that are really specialised in can go up to about 10 - 11 (seeing a patern here?). Of course if you don't know the rote your still stuck with a crap dice pool, but always at least 2 even for your worst arcana. Of course not using a rote also increases your chances of suffering from...
!!!Paradox!!!
I hated the old systems paradox rules. It was so all over the place that unless you were fighting another supernatural creature using magic was more likely to kill you than the them. Now the number of sleeper witnesses to a spell is meaningless, be it 1 or 100 it increases the paradox dice pool by 2. However succesive vulgar magic increses the likelyhood of paradox, which I like. Best of all though is the effects of paradox. Much more nailed down far less random. Usually the spell just retargets itself or reverses its purpose. Both of which can be fun even when its a non-killy spell.
Well I'm done for now. Next time will be Mutants and masterminds (does the title make sense now?)
I'm gonna go make lunch now or Shiv will kill me.
Bu-bye.
College paper due on Friday, brain melting. Aghhhhh.
Right for those o you who don't know (as if anyone actually reads this) I am currently studying engineering with the open university (look it up). As such I have papers to right and at the moment I'm writing one about the conversion of natural gas and coal into liquid fuel. Amazingly blenders haven't come up yet, go figure.
Is it jus me or are these blog things addictive.
