Re: When Worlds Devolve

From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_pa0Db-dVNzPD_y3DDSqLE7IwC_eEVaFXYtcVlI08PzVWH5nyN9CeWWU9ZamS8dw_>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:56:31 -0800 (PST)

Julian says something that sounds exactly like an RQ PC in our current campaign:

> All that you would really need from there onwards in my opinion is for say describe your character Liu Kong

> as being a mystic student of the school of the Seven Dragons and the Nine Tea Merchants, and to define the
> tenets and goals of their mysticism, such as the Way to Enlightenment is the Path of Fruitful And Pleasant
> Exchange with Foreigners and Questing to Understand and Share in their Lives and their Religions. Give him
> some sort of day job, like merchant, travelling martial artist, door-to-door religious nut, whatever, to get him
> involved in the world, and some magic of some sorts, let's say some natural magic and some wacky pop culture
> reference that he can hear the secrets of the grasshoppers when they chirp at night to him, secrets of how to
> develop his player-defined powers and magic abilities. Part of his Life Journey is to travel around to various
> places where the foreign grasshoppers live, so he can go and listen to them there...

Rich's character is a mystic. When he started out, he knew that his school prohibited him from attacking intelligent creatures without either first being attacked or offering a chance to surrender (which really hurt us once). And he is supposed to be gathering a compendium of intelligent creatures from across the world. We really have no idea how that hooks into the philosophy of his school; maybe it's something like the world mind being parcelled out in small pieces.

By way of background, we use Sandy's mysticism rules, which allow you to do cool things by making your normal skills "mystic." Rich's character has some martial arts that are handy (in HQ terms: embed chain whip in forehead 15W2; ignore attack 15W2). He also has mystic flute playing ability, allowing him to cast any common sorcery spell that has duration (the spell lasts as long as he plays the flute, which had the predictable consequence when he was playing the levitate tune and got impaled with an arrow to the head). In any case, most of what he does gets made up as he goes along. That would probably be easier with HQ, but it easy enough with RQ if you don't take the rules too seriously. Interestingly, just like in HQ, the effects of mysticism all get expressed either through the use of mundane skills for extraordinary effects or through some spirit, divine, or sorcerous magic.

Chris Lemens

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