[WoD] Emperor of the Fading Suns: Cloak & Dagger

[Xildur]

When armies are deployed, usually they could not bring their personal stuff, except a lucky charm or two.
The standardized equipment is given to soldiers according to their rank and position in the field.

Are you use this condition or we can freely brings our personal stuff?

BTW, I haven't given Appearance Score to Thereux

[Roastbeef]

Xildur: To answer your question on equipment / weapons / personal items of your characters... The Imperial Eye is a paramilitary - clandestine organization and not a military organization. There is the same difference between the Eye and the Phoenix Legion that there is between the CIA and the US Army or the now defunct KGB and the Red Army. The two groups may work closely together at times, but their command structures, raison d'etre, ranking systems and equipment varies greatly.

As Imperial Eye agents, you are not soldiers in the strict sense of the word. You do not wear uniforms or carry standard issued equipment. Imperial Eye agents in the field adapt, adopt and use the equipment / forms of dress that they can find and usually no two agents have exactly the same equipment. It all depends on the personal tastes of your character and what they can get their hands on at the moment. Also, it`s all about blending in to the local population and trying as much as possible to not look like agents.

The Imperial Eye has it`s own military branch (Black File *This is not canon, but has been created by myself) that is compromised of commandos and special forces types. If the Eye needs to use a hammer, they call in these folks to mix it up. The PC group will be able to call in these forces if the need arises to help them on a mission or anything else that might merit their attention.
As agents, you are the scalpel or the eyes on the ground. You will have to get your own hands dirty at times, but your primary job is to maintain your cover and try to be as discrete as possible in doing your tasks. The cowboy assaulting stuff is for the Black File.

I mentioned in my last post that your characters will be given the coordinates of a weapons / equipment cache that can be used by the group. You are free to take items from that cache, however some thought should be put into not looking suspicious with hauling around serious weaponry out in public view. As players, you can do whatever you want, but there could be consequences (other intelligence organizations might notice you, etc). Usually, if your group is going on a serious mission (kidnapping, assassinating someone... breaking into a fortified building etc) then you can suit up as need be.

Thanks for the update on your character sheet regarding the social attributes!

[bgfnjk]

Hey, I'm behind on a lot of stuff, so i'm going to pull out of this game. Have fun with it guys

[Roastbeef]

bgfnjk: Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Fair enough, I respect your decision. We may once again cross paths again here on the site someday. I wish you all the best in your gaming endeavors. Take care!

So far, we are left with the following pool of players:

Xildur. Done and done.
Beez. Almost done. Just missing the finishing touches with regards to the physical description and personality.
The Rogue Trader. Almost done. Just a few minor things to go over.
sageheart. Work in progress.
Scarabus Almost done. Just needs to add the extra allotted points or re-work the character sheet with more points.

Wolesz. Work in progress. Early stages. ???
Wineballs. Work in progress. Early stages. ???

So, if everything clears out, we should have at least 4-5 players to go forward with this game.

[Sageheart]

Finishing app today. Just getting coffee first


APP IS FINISHED
just no sheet. Never played this system, so would like to build the sheet with you if that is alright.

[Roastbeef]

Great news Sageheart! That's good to know. I gave your character outline a read and I like it very much. You are all good to go for the character sheet.

Sure, I can give you a helping hand with regards to throwing together your actual stats. I would suggest first doing a rough draft (try allotting your points on your own first) and then send it my way via a PM or by secret text. I will then look it over and make any corrections.

[Sageheart]

Sounds good to me. I'll read it over tonight, and try to get something posted today or tomorrow. Going to see the new Hobbit movie with the girlfriend now, so perhaps not tonight.

Happy you like the character so far, I do too! Let me know if any feedback or things don't work out so I can edit accordingly.

[Roastbeef]

The hardest part is putting together a concept and fleshing out a character history / personality / profession wise. You've already done a bang up job on that section. Filling up the stats after is probably the easiest stage of the character creation. We got some time to hash it out. I'll give you any pointers that you may need.

I saw the new Hobbit movie last weekend. Meh, my whole LOTR interest was exhausted long ago over the original three movies. The new Hobbit installment just feels like the same thing over and over again. They took a small book as source material and stretched it out over three movies to make some more cash. I did like Smaug though. He was a cool mother trucker.

[Beez]

I don't think it was for more cash. They were able to show what the book only told, which explains the length discrepancy. I thought it was pretty great.

Trying to finish these apps is difficult. I always have trouble actually sitting down and doing it right at the end.

[Xildur]

[Sageheart]

Smaug was cool, so was some of the combat. Liked seeing the dwarf army fight. Overall fun movie. I have up on it being what I want a hobbit movie to be so I can enjoy it for what it is. Seeing saruman fight was nice too.

Did the many dots! Didn't do specialities yet mostly since I'm tired. Ill try to get them tomorrow. All other stuff is complete.

[Roastbeef]

I enjoyed the first three LOTR films because they were big budget high fantasy movies in a genre that hasn't had any fresh air (in terms of cinema and film) in a very long time. Visually, they were very engrossing and amazing... especially the big battles. However, I felt as though that these new Hobbit movies were just giving us the same thing. They really didn't bring anything new to the table in terms of storytelling, plot, character development or anything meaty like that. Visually, (besides Smaug) there wasn't anything new there either. I even felt as though the battle in the last installment (Battle of the 5 Armies) was quite underwhelming (both visually and in terms of size) compared to the battles in the first three LOTR movies. You felt as though these were maybe a few hundred soldiers mixing it up in a skirmish as opposed to the dramatic, huge battles with higher stakes of the other Ring films.

I'm not a huge fan of CGI in general either. I'd much rather see stop motion, scale models, people in costumes than animated characters / monsters. The first three LOTR films had a sizeable chunk of CGI, but it hardly hit me because the entire visual experience was just that good.

Also, I know that LOTR lore has it that wizards like Gandalf are not allowed to let loose and use all their power, but quite frankly these wizards are kind of a bore. All they do is hit people with their staffs and fight like common grunts... no fireballs, no lightning bolts, no show of power? What? Gandalf telling the Balrog creature to go take a walk was amazing, but there are very few moments where you feel like these wizards are super powerful beings.

Anyways, I digress...I digress a lot even... lol

Sageheart: I gave your first draft (for your character sheet) a look over and so far your first attempt isn't the disaster of grand proportions that we thought that it would be... :-) Looks pretty solid my man. Yes, you have your specialties to add. Also, you might be interested in looking into adding some merits / flaws to just give your character that unique feel. That's entirely optional of course, but personally I love sifting through all the merits and flaws and choosing them.

As always, you can always bend my ear if you need to!

Beez: From what I can gather, you only need to put a bit of work into your character's history and sketch out his personality. You're almost there my friend.

Xildur: You brought up a point that I should probably cover with everyone here in general. Your characters can bring personal effects on this mission and at the start of the campaign (items, cash on hand, etc). You can even have a melee / firearms / weapons. Even a digging expedition team would be expected to have some means of self defense after all while out there in the badlands of Pandemonium.

You can carry as much equipment as logically you could be able to lug around on your own (determined by your Strengh attribute). WOD doesn't specifically deal with carrying capacity for characters as does D&D and other such games because generally it is strictly modern urban fantasy and as such characters don't usually go out on long adventures on foot where they need to keep all kinds of supplies for a crazy voyage. They stay in a city, have cars or they keep the bulk of their stuff in their havens / apartments or whatever. So, use your Strength attribute to determine what you can haul around... if you have a 5, you can haul up to 600 pounds of stuff etc. However, being realistic, if you are loaded out to maximum capacity, there will be Stamina checks made to see how long your character can lug that stuff around comfortably before it starts to take a toil on his energy... especially if he gets into a brawl or has to haul ass and run away. Environmental factors (like the extreme heat of Pandemonium) will also boost up the difficulty rating for passing these Stamina checks.

The current WOD equipment / armor / weapons lists deal with 20th century stuff. As you imagine, this is a sci-fi game with sci-fi weapons / equipment / armor and all kinds of fun stuff (energy shields that do not exist in WOD as equipment... unless you are apart of the Technocracy or are a smart Mage perhaps). Now, for the normal and basic slug guns (bullet firing guns) you can pick out weapons of that nature already available on the WOD lists. Same thing for grenades and conventional explosives. The rules remain the same. You can seek out WOD equipment lists on the internet. If you can't find any, I can supply a few links to help you guys out.

For the higher end stuff (blasters, lasers, plasma etc), the stats and rules will be the same but with higher damage rates and aggravated damage. Also, as mentioned before, they eat shielding power when your character takes a direct hit (even when successfully soaked by your personal shields). Your character also cannot use your constitution rating to soak this or even lethal damage (swords, bullets). However, your constitution attributes helps your character heal lethal damage faster after the battle or incident. So, someone with a bullet wound will be up and walking faster than someone with a lower constitution rating.

Remember as well that you need the 'ENERGY WEAPONS' ability to use plasma, laser or blaster weapons. The 'FIREARMS' ability only covers slug guns and bullet firing guns. Be warned that bullets can be soaked by shielding and do not eat up shielding power as opposed to energy weapons. So, if you come up against a ready enemy with activated shielding, your machine gun or hand gun may not be of much use.

If anyone here desires to start out with an energy weapon (or when your characters eventually access the weapon's cache), stats will be given to you with the weapon or item. It will be a case by case basis.

[The Rogue Trader]

Am I wrong or energy weapons are halal for the technophobic church? I chose to go for slugs because an energy pistol sounded like something that can draw a lot of attention.

Also, I'm sorry I haven't worked a lot on my character lately... I still have to flesh out backstory and personality and write down allies and contacts (I already have an idea for one of them, but there still are a couple left).
I'll try to be more active next year

p.s.
don't even get me started on LOTR movies. Suffice to say that I didn't even watch the new trilogy... like for Star Wars XD

[Roastbeef]

The Rogue Trader: No, energy weapons are fine with the Church (as can be imagined, their own troops and Brother Battle Order use these types of weapons quite extensively). It's more complex forms of technology that the Church has openly proscribed: serious cyber-bio augmentations, cloning, advanced artificial intelligences, androids or robots that are too smart for their own good, etc. Even the Church realizes that you cannot outlaw everything, especially when the jump gates and other useful technology have a distinct alien origin (Annunaki alien race that for some mysterious reason disappeared from the human corner of the universe).

With regards to your character, you don't have to get too crazy when it comes to describing contacts / allies. Just a sentence or two will do in this case.

I can say for a fact that you're not missing anything when it comes to the Star Wars prequels. The third one (Revenge of the Sith) is probably the best out of the three... three turds all the same. I like that one a bit more because Palpatine has a larger role and he is the only character that is done justice. I'm a tad skeptical about this new JJ Abrams film... however, the bar is now set so low with Lucas' prequels disaster that this new director can't go wrong.

[Xildur]

Very well, I will look into it right away.
Thank you, Roastbeef.