It’s been a long Wiki Week! As noted before, the winner for Patreon was Sorcery. The winner for SubscriberStar was House Tan-Shai. I’ve been discussing Sorcery all week, but let me drop the major wiki week updates here and then discuss the design notes after the jump.
Sorcery isn’t a system of magic, it’s a framework of magic. It’s up to you as the GM to provide the details of the structure and details that turn it into a true magic mystem.
Enraged Eggplant
Previously, I introduced the basic essentials of Sorcery and its rules, but rules are just the basis for how the system will run. What makes magic genuinely interesting are the options it opens up, and how those options interact with one another. That is, the spells and the structure.
I’ve talked a lot about my disdain for flexible magic systems, because I tend to believe magic is as defined by its limitations as its options. If you can just up and murder your hated enemy instantly, most people will do just that. If we instead say that to kill an opponent requires knowing their name, or eye contact, and that every time you use magic to kill, there is some sort of “price” you must pay, some karmic scale that must be rebalanced, we start to get some of the interesting choices and “counterplay” that makes a game fun. Limits, thus, allow for interesting gameplay and problem solving.
Okay, but what sort of “gameplay” and “interesting choices” do we want? Since I’m working essentially with a blank slate, I can do whatever I want within the limits of what would be appropriate for the Psi-Wars setting. So, in this post, I’ll lay out some of my design goals and inspirations, so you’ll get a sense of what direction I went with my magic.
Continue reading “The Themes Of Psychic Sorcery”For wiki week, we have a pretty clear winner, though the Lithian Language came in close second, at least on the Patreon poll. Given the extent and difficulty of sorcery, though, I suspect putting it on the wiki will take up the whole week. This may surprise you, dear reader, if you’re not a backer, as I’ve been releasing it monthly for quite some time, which is why the Patrons voted for it.
This is a project I’ve been working on quietly for about half a year now, releasing one “college” of magic a month or so, with minor updates. We’re up to about 6 colleges now, and it’s coherent and settled enough that I feel confident releasing it. This will be a multi-part series. You can click the link below and jump straight through it, or keep reading to learn more about how it works and what I changed.
Link to Psi Wars Sorcery
Continue reading “Introducing: Psychic Sorcery”I should get better about posting to the blog when I update the wiki.
We’ve had two wiki weeks since the last update. I’ll just bundle up all the updates here in one spot:
Sidekicks won two months running on Patreon, so there are four more sidekicks for your very low-power Psi-Wars games, or as allies to your PCs.
Other than the doctor, this covers pretty much all the relatively generic sidekicks I have.
Subscribestar chose animal companions in February. This makes me happy, because we finally have some proper bestial allies on the wiki, and I feel like the template I’ve set up to handle this will work well. I’ve focused exclusive on Dog-like aliens, which have their own page now.
(My plan is to follow the Generic Space Bestiary template, and treat look-alike critters as the same animal handling specialty)
I have more. It’s just a matter of getting around to them.
Finally, Subscribestar tied for March, so I broke the tie in favor of psychokinesis, as I’ve been messing with it a lot. I’ve been updating the major psi pages to remove the pure references to the book and replace them with enough reference material to make your character from the wiki exclusively, if necessary, but not so much as to replace the book. That is, I’ve tried to make it more convenient and consistent without violating copyright (I still want you to buy the books, and you still ultimately need them to know how these abilities work).
I’ve also added much expanded pyro- and cryokinesis to psychokinesis.
I keep forgetting to drop these links. Most of my readers follow the Wiki RSS and so just know in advance when things drop.
So, I’ve done it a little differently this time. Before I would pick one or two of the top results and wikify them, but now I think I’m going to take the top Patreon choice and the top SubscribeStar choice and wikify both. Why the difference? Because Subscribers don’t vote as much because there’s few of them, they can’t see what the Patrons are voting on, and they get a sense that they don’t matter. So now, their voice is weighted equal to the Patrons. Not entirely fair, but it seems more workable that way. At least this way, everyone gets what they want (and they usually tend to align anyway).
The top choice for Patrons was Psychometabolism, and it’s up. I might change how I handle rare powers, because they seem rather difficult to find or navigate to, and so most people don’t even realize they exist. But I’ll leave that for another time.
The top SubscribeStar choice was Heavy Weapons, so the Special Weapons and Heavy Weapons have been added to the Weapons page. There’s some little changes that may still need to be made, but at least the core of the material is there.
Finally, as a bonus, I’ve added House Korenno. They’re not especially important, which is why they’re important. I wanted to have a house that highlighted what a minor house might look like, because I notice most people treat my houses as “important” but still want to add some minor house or two, and House Korenno will help guide them through that process.
That’s all the major updates for the wiki this month. See you again for wiki week next month!
Don’t forget to breathe
The Nameless Monk, Forbidden Kingdom
Alright, the Keleni Breathing post is out and available to all Fellow Travelers ($3+) on both Patreon and SubscribeStar. Thank you for your patience! I wanted to discuss some design notes and hype it up a bit. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed writing it up.
Some additional notes on the breathing styles. Most martial artists in the Psi-Wars setting will probably study “external” styles first and foremost, so I would treat Keleni styles as advanced topics. They are worked examples of what “Trained by a Master” looks like in Psi-Wars. Second, I wouldn’t treat these like a menu, where characters go through a kung fu brochure, pick out the one they want, and then trundle off to that specific mountain temple to learn that specific style. I would treat them as scattered pieces of lore. There may be many Keleni monks who know the Keleni Breathing foundation, but few who know any of the more advanced concepts. If a deeper tradition exists, it’s likely the only one on the world. Some of the styles might not be known, or may be in the process of being discovered, or perhaps there is a mixed tradition, such as one style as a more advanced option to another style. You can just toss it in as a one-off power up on a scary NPC (to quote one of my players from Dhim “That’s one pissed off gelgathim“), or you can make it central to a kung fu-oriented campaign. The styles are designed to interact and you can mix and match, though a character with a couple of martial arts styles and a deep study of two Keleni breathing styles will easily run you 500 to 700 points. These are advanced characters!
Deciding where and how to use such styles can say a lot about the setting and its traditions. In my campaigns, I have Rage-Breathing available in the Stygian Veil, taught by a captured Keleni masters to some fighters who have converted to True Communion in the Pit, including one Terahastro, an elite pitfighter and former gangster. The rebellion on Covenant is led by a Prophet and has all sorts of fun factors, but they almost certainly have a Keleni Breathing master somewhere, though probably not a member of the rebellion (yet?). They either know Mountain Breathing or Celestial Breathing, possibly both as a single tradition. Dream-Breathing is probably known to the Dark Vigil chapter on Samsara, which they use with the power granted to them by their psychoactive tattoos. But these are just suggestions. You can decide how and where you want to use them. They are, after all, powerful kung fu secrets. While I’ve not required any “secrets” perks, it might be valid to treat certain power-ups as rare enough to require a perk to learn them.
In any case, enjoy, and thank you as always for supporting this project.
Finally, we always gotta have an evil style, the one stolen from the heroes, the one the elders of the style never want to talk about, the forbidden dark side that the desperate hero embraces and doesn’t realize turns him into the villain until too late.
Or, at least, it’s how I originally conceived of Rage-Breathing. It evolved considerably, and became perhaps the most detailed and my personal favorite (though, man, the amount of work it took). It’s certainly a style that Ranathim (and Krokuta and even humans) can use better than Keleni, but it’s not that Keleni don’t have a lot of bottled rage. It’s not evil, really, it’s about tapping into something primal, instinctive, and dangerous to push ones body to the brink. If Celestial Breathing owes a debt to Dragon Ball Z and this entire thing to Demon Slayers, Rage Breathing draws from Kengan Ashura (though it does borrow one concept from Dragon Ball Super that we will touch on).
Rage Breathing is built around the heart chakra (probably more intensely than any other style is built around a chakra) and is inspired by the element of fire, hence my fire demon picture there. It’s also a rather involved style, so let’s dive in.
Continue reading “Keleni Breathing IV – Rage Breathing”We have our “martial” internal style, and our “psionic” internal style. We obviously need our Communion internal style. This was the last style I wrote, but not the last style I’ll present, and in a lot of ways, it was the easiest. It took a lot of work, but I think the strokes will look obvious to you after you’ve seen them, though there’s some sticking points we’ll get to later.
Celestial Breathing when it came to Chakras, I based it on the idea of the “Crown” chakra, though inspired by the idea of “air” element, I thought about connecting it to the throat chakra, and the singing of hymns and such, but I think in the end the crowning chakra makes the most sense, as that’s associated with ones connection to the universe, which neatly captures what Communion is.
Continue reading “Keleni Breathing III – Celestial Breathing”
This continues the breathing styles post from yesterday, a focus on four variants of Keleni internal martial arts. Today, we’ll look at the second, which was actually the first I ever created long before Keleni breathing was even a thing. It’s my least favorite of the styles, and the one I struggled the most to name. It’s not that it’s a bad style, it’s just “a worked example of psychometabolism” which is fine, and very valuable, but I’m not sure what makes it especially unique compared to any other style that teaches psychometabolism. It’s not a bad style, it’s just that I personally wish it had a little more sizzle.
Back when I first outlined the Templars, I described “Sacred Body Mastery” which was a study of psychometabolism. It was always something I wanted to explore and emphasize. Obviously, Templars would be able to study their psychic power, often at the feet of Keleni, and become faster, tougher, stronger and heal faster. And Ranathim, who also have access to psychometabolism, should be able to do the same. Sounds a lot like the premise behind Keleni Breathing styles, no? So there had to be a psychometablism in the breathing styles.
Symbolically, Dream Breathing integrates the “Third Eye” Chakra, of course. The other styles are “Earth, Air and Fire” based, so Dream Breathing probably gets Water by default, which does fit the sort of self-control aspect and the shifting of internal energies as well.
Continue reading “Keleni Breathing II – Dream Breathing”Okay, here we go.
I tend to believe that having a power structure adds a lot to a GURPS game. Players want to know what they can buy, and want to have goals to build their characters to. GURPS has these, but in more of a general sense: yes, you can buy Trained By a Master or Enhanced Time Sense or another level of Karate or Power-Blow, but players seek variety and things that feel exciting and grounded in the setting. Sometimes they want very unique elements, like DR that that requires focus to maintain, or super luck under very specific circumstances. Players can design this with their GM, but this can be a long drawn process; if the players design it themselves, they risk looking “twinky.” By having a pre-defined set of interesting powers, players can find inspiration in the power set, and freely take “twinky” powers that are GM approved and feel very clever when they build (GM-pre-approved) combos of interesting powers and explore the power sets you designed.
I’ve wanted a power-set like this for ages. When True Communion first dropped, it came with “Sacred Body Mastery,” a psychometabolism style designed to help Templars be generically better fighters, and was one of the special techniques of the Dark Vigil chapter. I’ve not done a lot of focus on these non-combat styles and, today, we’ll fix that.
I had intended for this post to be the release post, but it turned into a preview post instead, because this is taking forever to write. The full release will come once the previews are out.
Continue reading “Keleni Breathing Styles: Introduction and Mountain Breathing”
Mailanka's Musing 