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In Need of Some Examples and Recommendations


Scott Ruggels

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1 hour ago, mallet said:

I'm not sure of the earlier editions, but I know with 5th they had the name "Package Deal" but there was not actual savings involved. It was just a hold over naming convention I assume. In 6th they fixed that and just called them templates, again, with no point savings, just suggestions on what the races/careers/cultures would have. 

 

I think-- I am not certain, as I don't use a lot of the stuff after 2e other than skills, powers, etc--

 

but I _think_ that 3e was the only edition that gave price breaks.  As always, I am probably extremely wrong. ;)
 

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Did 4e continue with the package bonus?

 

And why do I always forget that Espionage existed?

 

Never mind that last; I know the answer: it never landed at my local hobby shop.  We we straight from Justice Inc to Danger, International, and were happy enough with Justice, Inc that we never actually picked up DI.

 

(Thanks to the BOH, though, I finally have DI _and_ Espionage.  I should probably get around to reading them)

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, archer said:

 

IMO, if you are going to have racial package deals for various fantasy races, don't forget to write up a human package deal so humans can get a break on the cost for being human just as an elf gets a break on the cost for being an elf..

 

They Learn Quickly - and Forget Quickly:  (Total: 5 Active Cost, 5 Real Cost) Cramming  (Real Cost: 5)

Humans like to Trade:  (Total: 2 Active Cost, 2 Real Cost) +1 with Trading (Real Cost: 2)

The Gods Seem to Love Them.....:  (Total: 17 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Luck 1d6 (Real Cost: 5) <b>plus</b> +1 Overall (12 Active Points); 3 Charges (-1 1/4) (Real Cost: 5)

Harder to Kill than you Think:  (Total: 6 Active Cost, 6 Real Cost) Combat Luck (3 PD/3 ED) (Real Cost: 6)

Package Deal Bonus:  (Total: -1 Active Cost, -1 Real Cost)  (-1 Active Points) (Real Cost: -1)

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedary Rider Package Deal

 

 

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That's a nice package,  thank you. That does kind of highlight some of the differences between Humans and Lupines.  One of the things we did in old 3e days what that the disadvantagess for Package deals didn't figure into the halving of disad values for similar types, because the acquisition and use of skills and local color were encouraged.  That was part of the discount of Package deals, and it made character creation easier (especially for me in the pre-internet days. I am still very much math-tarded.) I think that was a house rule, but if seemed to be a  common house rule up and down the San Francisco peninsula, at the time.

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First: Thank you, Your Dukeness!

 

The next writing sample omes from my last paid work for Exalted, in Chapter Two of the supplement Masters of Jade. That book dealt with the Guild, a worldwide trading network whose chief businesses are slaves, mercenaries, hard drugs and PURE, UNADULTERATED CAPITALIST EVIL. Put together the East India Company, the Triangle Trade and the Opium Wars, and that's the Guild. One could perhaps suspect that White Wolf is showing a hint of a political viewpoint here.

 

So in a chapter describing Guild activities in various parts of the Exalted setting, I gave 'em what they wanted. Word count was extremely tight, and I and my partner for the chapter were told to give brief sketches of characters who exemplified the Guild's activities. No character sheets; just a paragraph of description that had to be as concise and evocative as possible. Here's the Guild officer who oversees a region of slave-run sugar and rubber plantations:



CHAING-DAV

 

The Guild’s regional hub is the river port of Chaing-Dav. A few moldering stone temples, their sculpted spires blurred by time, are the only remains of a First Age city. Ranks of slave pens and brick warehouses form the new Chaing-Dav. People live in shacks of scrap lumber, canvas and bamboo — all but the reigning factor, Odom Sagami, who lives in a newly-built, domed manse a mile from the river.

 

Odom Sagami’s coffee-and-cream skin, almond eyes and long, straight hair mark him as a member of the Izhalvi tribe of Harborhead. As an adolescent, he was taken in a slave-raid and sold north. At Great Forks he worked his way from field hand to overseer, and then to free member of the Guild. He entered the slave trade, then the sugar trade, then every trade the Southeast offered. Now in his fifties and immensely rich, Sagami bleaches his hair to look older and wiser. His concubines give him many children: He sells them when they reach 14. If they cannot work their way to freedom as he did, they deserve nothing better. It pleases him when Guildsmen call him Uncle Sugar.

 

Dean Shomshak

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Moving along: Since I, ah, do not quite share the particular historical/political filters of the people who devised the Guild for Exalted, I also lobbied to include a few sample characters who enage in trade without being horribly evil. This bit, in which I attempted to give the Guild a little more complexity and nuance, came from a little section on voyageurs, solitary merchant-explorers inspired by fur trappers and such ilk.

 

Raksha, btw, are Exalted's answer to elves. They are beautiful humanoid masks for soul-sucking Lovecraftian entities from the Outer Chaos. And they love to play with their food.

 



<3>Trading Posts


Instead of hunting rare plants and animals directly, some voyageurs prefer to befriend the natives and pay them to do the work. The catch is that the intrepid trader must visit the natives where they live. In the far East, that often means up mile-high trees. The Tree Folk and other Eastern tribes feel comfortable in trading posts that resemble bird’s nests or spider webs of living vines, but visitors from civilized lands find it takes some getting used to. With so much money at stake, they make the effort.


Jinru Rose-of-Dawn became one of Doctor Alethia’s best suppliers of Eastern herbs by making that extra effort. A raksha preyed upon the tribes in the region where she collected gudgeon-root, solar mistletoe and other medicinal herbs. Rose-of-Dawn tricked the raksha into drinking a fatal toast of iron bush juice (see p. 156 of The Books of sorcery, Vol. III — Oadenol’s Codex). Then she picked a handsome and impressionable young hunter, introduced him to big city sex, and married into his Tree Folk tribe. Fifteen years later, her husband is second-chief. The tribe flaunts its wealth through gifts to local spirits and other tribes. The spirits love the tribe, and the tribe loves the Guild. Rose-of-Dawn wonders, though, how her green-skinned, half-breed children will adjust to the school in Nathir she has planned for them. She wants them to follow her into the Guild, not to grow up as barbarians.

 

Dean Shomshak

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So. I'm not sure how useful these examples may be to Scott (or anyone else). All I can say is that back when I frequented White Wolf's Exalted forum, I never saw anyone demand more information on the parliamentary procedures of the Scarlet Empire Deliberative, or the differences in family structure among the five tribes of Harborhead. What got positive response was the cool image, character or story hook that people could drop into their games. Whatever you're designing, present that as quickly as possible. Once you've hooked the reader, maybe they'll stick around for the explanations that make sense of it all.

 

Dean Shomshak

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9 hours ago, DShomshak said:

So. I'm not sure how useful these examples may be to Scott (or anyone else). All I can say is that back when I frequented White Wolf's Exalted forum, I never saw anyone demand more information on the parliamentary procedures of the Scarlet Empire Deliberative, or the differences in family structure among the five tribes of Harborhead. What got positive response was the cool image, character or story hook that people could drop into their games. Whatever you're designing, present that as quickly as possible. Once you've hooked the reader, maybe they'll stick around for the explanations that make sense of it all.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 

Actually. these are very useful, in how to approach the Example Characters in the book (There are 6... so far),  and these give a good direction to take in using them as adventure seeds as well as exemplars of some standard tropes in Fantasy but with a twist.  Also making the hook in he first paragraph seems to be important. This is very helpful. Thank you. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/29/2018 at 2:28 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

So, I am steadily working through the art pieces on my Multi-system race book. art is going very smoothly (I will have something to show in the other thread, soon,)  Well I went through some of the written material, and while the writing of my collaborators is very good. Looking back at my own, well, after a year away from looking at it, my is it awful.  Why use 5 words when 20 will do, seemed to have been my guiding principle back then. I winced reading it.  So, knowing that this board is full of some very strong opinions, I decided to ask here. 

What Fantasy Race materials for HERO, or any other system, do you feel were well written?

 

How much, or how little background, should be provided?  

 

Of HERO "Fantasy Race Package Deals, Which ones do you think work  well? 

 

Which one's do you think worked poorly?

 

What I am looking for are good examples of Clarity, or Brevity, or evocative writing wit in the limited formats.  Generally, this is going to end up as an art portfolio piece, but I also wanted to share something that has been a lot of fun for our group of players.

 

Any recommendations?

 

Even though the races within were mostly unused in my Dnd campaign the Mythic races book were both informative and interesting to read. 

Fantasy race package deals are something I dont use because I think people should pay for their races powers and abilities without getting any bonuses for it. Much more important is the information about the race. Rules are something I think everybody change around anyway. 

 

On 12/3/2018 at 12:55 AM, archer said:

The problem with Tolkein, his elves, and his setting are that they are tied to the English idea of aristocracy and that having a "good" bloodline means something along the lines of "you are better than others".

 

His elves were thinly-disguised aristocrats, the hobbits were the Welsh folk muddling along doing their own thing, humans were the common English folk who needed to be led by an aristocracy, and the dwarves were Scottish miner/engineer types who were either good or evil (in the books) as the mood took them. If that kind of thing grates on you, perhaps because you didn't grow up in a society which values an aristocracy, Tolkein might not be your thing because even the elites of the other groups aren't going to measure up to the people who have the "right" blood.

 

 

 

Elves were certainly not having a "good" bloodline since after learning about industrialization of both warfare and exploiting the land of resources it turns them into orcs. 

Maybe this is something you have read in Dragonlance or something?

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On 12/25/2018 at 4:47 PM, Trencher said:

 

Even though the races within were mostly unused in my Dnd campaign the Mythic races book were both informative and interesting to read. 

Fantasy race package deals are something I dont use because I think people should pay for their races powers and abilities without getting any bonuses for it. Much more important is the information about the race. Rules are something I think everybody change around anyway. 

 

I will have to find a copy of Mythic Raced, your get a feeling it’s n how they write thing up. As for the package bonus,I disagree. For me, they serve as a template, giving members of that race a common baseline, and the bonus works well for a mathtarded GM like me.  

 

 

 

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On 12/25/2018 at 6:47 PM, Trencher said:

 

Even though the races within were mostly unused in my Dnd campaign the Mythic races book were both informative and interesting to read. 

Fantasy race package deals are something I dont use because I think people should pay for their races powers and abilities without getting any bonuses for it. Much more important is the information about the race. Rules are something I think everybody change around anyway. 

 

Package Deals (Templates in 6E) aren't free, you pay points for them so there is no "bonus" that isn't being paid for.

Unless this product is for a REALLY old edition.

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On 12/28/2018 at 8:44 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

I will have to find a copy of Mythic Raced, your get a feeling it’s n how they write thing up. As for the package bonus,I disagree. For me, they serve as a template, giving members of that race a common baseline, and the bonus works well for a mathtarded GM like me.  

 

 

 

Nothing wrong with being mathematically inclined. And you are right the campain material is well written but the races themselves with rules and stats not so much. Kinda underpowerd I guess..

 

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On 12/31/2018 at 7:45 PM, bigbywolfe said:

Package Deals (Templates in 6E) aren't free, you pay points for them so there is no "bonus" that isn't being paid for.

Unless this product is for a REALLY old edition.

Its an old edition true but stat bonuses still count against normal characteristic maxima correct? So if you play an orc you will be better at fighting?

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9 hours ago, Trencher said:

Its an old edition true but stat bonuses still count against normal characteristic maxima correct? So if you play an orc you will be better at fighting?

What edition are you playing? You can still use the package deal as a Template for characters of a certain race and just not give them things for free...

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Oh I expect some package deals to cost something, depending, but some may be nearly zero points and paid for by disads and stat modifications, I am defiantly breaking out anatomical packages, from cultural and professional packages. In my opinion, of being a human is free, then beings something else is mostly free as well, but I have to get into actually constructing the packages to see what the costs actually are. Unlike drawing, character building in Hero was never my strong suit. (And if 6ed is a requirement, I will definitely need outside assistance, as I do not Know it. )

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On 1/7/2019 at 6:03 PM, bigbywolfe said:

What edition are you playing? You can still use the package deal as a Template for characters of a certain race and just not give them things for free...

Thats true but I just have not bothered. Maybe I should make some packages with unique stuff that can only be taken as a deal.

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