Shadow World and HQ

[Der_Renegat]

I know there are a few people here, who are interested in running Shadow World with HQ, so i thought it would be a nice idea to start a thread on that topic.
I myself have never played Shadow World but i like to read it.
The Cloudlords of Tanara was something i bought in 1987 and it fascinates me till today. I did a little conversion of some of the main characters just for the fun of it.
I know its not really important for a conversion but there was very little information what levels in RM actually mean. The only thing i could find was, that level 20 is a ,,lord". A level 20 fighter has the highest OB of 165.

Whats funny about Shadow World is that a lot of books have detailed races and nations with complex political situations but also lots of buildingmaps with traps and treasure stuff that simply screams: dungenonadventure!!! at you.....

Something else i really find strange is how magic is part of the characters.
One of the leaders of the Duranaki (a kind of punkrock/new wave-look nocturnal woodland nation), T´revor Arain, who looks like Billy Idol, is a silver merchant but also a mystic. So his spells deal with illusion, stealth, suggestions. A mixture of jedi, ninja, illusionist, psionic.
But there is barely a hint how he actually uses his magic in everday life. It seems as if that was just added because thats his RM class.
This was better done with the Duranaki´s slave race, the Myri, who are conditioned to be a 100% perfect servant by a magical machine.
I think the whole ritual/machine magic makes much more sense in a magically rich world than: everybody is a magicuser and can toss a fireball.

There is also a race of Aztec-like people called Yinka, ruled by corrupt priests. Their god Yugal demands human sacrifices. The book speaks of him as an unforgiving god who demands much from his servants and returns little more than impatient wrath at their failures.....
Channeling (theistic magic) in RM is explained as getting magical energy (spells) from the god himself, although that doesnt need his approval most of the time. The channeling magic is not very god specific, more a type of broad clerical magic, like healing and turning undead creatures.
Mateshe, the Yinka high priest rules his people by stating that every order is a holy message he received from his god (which is a lie). At the same time he has very ,,evil" spells: death spells, curses, absolution.
I think this would be problematic in HQ terms because the theistic magic demands a very close relationship between god and magicuser.

Whats also interesting about SW characters is how much they lack in HQ terms. If you read the description there is very little that can be used as personality traits. They have professions, magic, classes, weapons, and very often magic items (mostly combat orientated) with X uses a day (something i find hard to adapt to HQ). So i think here HQ could add a lot to SW!

[Mike Holmes]

I know there are a few people here, who are interested in running Shadow World with HQ, so i thought it would be a nice idea to start a thread on that topic.
I myself have never played Shadow World but i like to read it.

You are aware, Christian, that I run my HQ game in Shadow World, and have now for a few years? And that I've done tons and tons of conversion work?

Which you can find here: http://random.average-bear.com/ShadowWorld/HomePage

The Cloudlords of Tanara was something i bought in 1987 and it fascinates me till today. I did a little conversion of some of the main characters just for the fun of it.

I'd love to see the conversions. Do you have them posted somewhere? If not, I could post them on the wiki, if you'd like. If not, but if you have them in another electronic format, would you be amenable to sending me a copy?

I know its not really important for a conversion but there was very little information what levels in RM actually mean. The only thing i could find was, that level 20 is a ,,lord". A level 20 fighter has the highest OB of 165.

Yeah, I use this as a benchmark as well. BTW, this is equivalent to 10th level in D&D, where the "lord" levels begin (at least they did in AD&D1E, which is where RM comes from). RM being a two for one conversion of D&D. Anyhow, I figure this is the point where the character is a "master" of his thing, so I rate them at 5W2 or so at this level. As a benchmark, again.

Whats funny about Shadow World is that a lot of books have detailed races and nations with complex political situations but also lots of buildingmaps with traps and treasure stuff that simply screams: dungenonadventure!!! at you.....

Yep, I mostly ignore all of that stuff. Which leaves very little. Which is what I want.

Something else i really find strange is how magic is part of the characters.
One of the leaders of the Duranaki (a kind of punkrock/new wave-look nocturnal woodland nation), T´revor Arain, who looks like Billy Idol, is a silver merchant but also a mystic. So his spells deal with illusion, stealth, suggestions. A mixture of jedi, ninja, illusionist, psionic.
But there is barely a hint how he actually uses his magic in everday life. It seems as if that was just added because thats his RM class.

I'm sure that's how the RM logic worked, yes. "Profession" in RM comes down to "Role in adventuring party." Oh, sure, there's a "Craftsman" profession, too, but they don't get as many hit points. What I mean is that it's a D&D holdover as it exists, and not really about what people do professionally. I mean, just what does an element wielding "Magician" do for work?

What's interesting, however, is how in having a ton of magic "professions" and "semi-spell user" professions, and Terry's idea that magic is pervasive in Shadow World... that it ends up being quite like Glorantha in terms of most everyone having access to magic. So what you do is to separate out the underlying belief system that allows the magic in the character. Suddenly you have the magic keywords for the character, and Arain becomes a merchant again for occupation.

BTW, I'm pretty sure that the picture in question was a scan of Billy Idol that somebody went over with a computer, and/or ink. Terry does art that way a lot in later work. :-)

This was better done with the Duranaki´s slave race, the Myri, who are conditioned to be a 100% perfect servant by a magical machine.
I think the whole ritual/machine magic makes much more sense in a magically rich world than: everybody is a magicuser and can toss a fireball.

Well, what you get is a magic tradition that can produce said machine. In coming up with how the Duranaki mysticism is transmitted and all the rest of the keyword, you'll get sometinign really interesting. I know, because when I do it with other cultures, it always ends up fascinating.

There is also a race of Aztec-like people called Yinka, ruled by corrupt priests. Their god Yugal demands human sacrifices. The book speaks of him as an unforgiving god who demands much from his servants and returns little more than impatient wrath at their failures.....
Channeling (theistic magic) in RM is explained as getting magical energy (spells) from the god himself, although that doesnt need his approval most of the time. The channeling magic is not very god specific, more a type of broad clerical magic, like healing and turning undead creatures.

Yeah, this is a perfect case of why I like applying HQ to SW. It's interesting that in the RM literature there are often articles about how to tailor a cleric character by doing things like making certain spell lists "Base" for that cleric (trading out ones from the original spell list). So a god of fire might give his follower the Fire Law spell list.

Well, all they're doing is taking tiny tentative steps to where HQ is squarely standing. That is, HQ is right where everybody feels that magic ought to be. Or, at least that's been my experience.

I think this would be problematic in HQ terms because the theistic magic demands a very close relationship between god and magicuser.

A couple of options to deal with this. Either he actually does have a closer relationship with Yugal, or he knows some other form of magic. Either is pretty interesting to contemplate.

Actually the character could "know" is god well enough to get magic, but some gods are just sorta impersonal. That's another rout that'd work.

Whats also interesting about SW characters is how much they lack in HQ terms. If you read the description there is very little that can be used as personality traits. They have professions, magic, classes, weapons, and very often magic items (mostly combat orientated) with X uses a day (something i find hard to adapt to HQ).

Yep, I agree that in translation, suddenly these characters really do come to life.

So i think here HQ could add a lot to SW!

That's what I've found, certainly.

Mike

[Der_Renegat]

Hi Mike,

You are aware, Christian, that I run my HQ game in Shadow World, and have now for a few years? And that I've done tons and tons of conversion work?

Which you can find here: http://random.average-bear.com/ShadowWorld/HomePage

Yes i know and i followed every piece of information that you posted.
The wiki is a cool thing, unfortunately there isnt much happening at the moment Shadow World wise.....

I'd love to see the conversions. Do you have them posted somewhere? If not, I could post them on the wiki, if you'd like. If not, but if you have them in another electronic format, would you be amenable to sending me a copy?

I have to translate them into english first, but no problem, i will do it !

Quote
I know its not really important for a conversion but there was very little information what levels in RM actually mean. The only thing i could find was, that level 20 is a ,,lord". A level 20 fighter has the highest OB of 165.
Yeah, I use this as a benchmark as well......*snip*
I figure this is the point where the character is a "master" of his thing, so I rate them at 5W2 or so at this level. As a benchmark, again.

Its probably debatable but im not sure if i agree.
I think RM level 20 should be at least 15M2, perhaps higher and level 25 (a VERY capable being) something like 5M3....

Character Law says:

Characters of 20th level and above, however, are generally classified as "Lords" and are usually identifiable amongst a collection of lesser beings by their bearing and the deference shown them by others knowledgeable of their status.

In the adapting Character Law chapter the book says:

These factors lead to normal combat bonuses of -50 - +165 (plus any racial or special bonus). Any system being used  can be examined for its normal minimum and normal maximum "to hit" bonuses. A simple table can then be easily constructed to relate the range -50 - +165 to the range of bonuses in the system being used.
(Note: a 20th level fighter has an OB of 160)

If you take that for granted a bonus of 165 would be in the M3 range, perhaps even 20M3 i guess.....not sure if that really works......



About Mateshe the Yinka high priest:

Quote
I think this would be problematic in HQ terms because the theistic magic demands a very close relationship between god and magicuser.

A couple of options to deal with this. Either he actually does have a closer relationship with Yugal, or he knows some other form of magic. Either is pretty interesting to contemplate.

In regard of him being quite evil, betraying his god and still being able to channel spells i think its an obvious idea that he gets his power from the Unlife.
Maybe an Unlife demon "hacked" his channel......
He gets his power points from the Unlife, but maybe he doesnt know yet....reminds me a lot of the sith and the dark side of the force.....


I would like to hear from you how you handle all the magic items.
Do you use them at all ?
How do you convert all the x times a day stuff ??

best

Christian

[Fredrik S]

Hmm.. this brings back memories.

I began running MERP/RM in 1992 or -93 and kept going through various modules until  95 or 96, when I picked up Jaiman:Land of Twilight. Shadow World has been my main fantasy setting since then. I've made several attempts to run the Sea Drake saga, none of them getting close to the conclusion before evaporating.
My most successful campaign was a very freewheeling one featuring two adventurers called Tarkan and Arman, a big Saralian warrior and a sneaky bastard of unknown origin. They basically wandered from place to place and got into trouble, and it was a lot of fun.
I have used a mix of published setting material and my own stuff, but only a very few of the many highly detailed 'adventure sites' prevalent in the sourcebooks. Part of that may be because a lot places are exceedingly dangerous, but also beause I'm not very interested in running dungeon crawls. Well.. dungeon crawls.. there aren't actually a lot of dungeoncrawling missions in the SW books, as I remember. There are adventures which require you to infiltrate various strongholds, but in a lot of cases the maps are just .. there, in case you might need them. Very similar, in fact, to the excessively detailed maps in many of the MERP books.

Anyway, it is as Mike said; after you've removed the back, most of what you're left with is potential. Shadow World can be seen as Middle Earth with a space opera backstory, various evil illuminati conspiracies with conflicting interests and a lot of fascinating cultural tidbits from around the world. (And Dragonlords. Dragonlords rock) But you had to fill in the blanks yourself, which has led to a a lot of people having widely diverging interpretations of what kind of setting Shadow World is. For instance, my vision of Kulthea, and especially Jaiman, is considerably more modern than the setting as written; closer to the 18th than the 13th century. Somewhat ironic since the original Jaiman setting is most purely 'high fantasy' part of of Shadow World.

One of the things I've struggled with is how to interpret the Unlife, both in terms of game mechanics and metaphysics. What is it? How does it work? What does it give you.
The source material has been contradictory on what it is; it's a Evil! it's Anti-Essæence! It's a force of pure order that seeks to eradicate all change! (This last explanation actually fits nicely with an text in Rolemaster Companion I, in which Lorgalis explains that the goal of Unlife is to eliminate the concept of death)

And then it's the question of how this is exploited as a source of power. My best explanation is that it's a less turbulent parallell to the Essæence, and thus easier to handle, but with side effects. Like drinking from a stagnant pool rather than a waterfall. Far from healthy.
The book on Powers may have more insight on this. Have any of you read it?

Anyway; the motivations are contradictory. That doesn't matter, I prefer my games without a singular great evil to oppose. However, if I am to use the Unlife at all, I need a good way to handle it in game mechanics. The default method in RoleMaster is to tie the Unlife to the Evil spell lists and give the character an extra set of Power points. That allways felt like clunky solution to me, but I never got anything better cobbled together. I have a feeling though, that this is another area where HeroQuest will give better service.

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for the write-ups. Nice work.

The wiki is a cool thing, unfortunately there isnt much happening at the moment Shadow World wise.....

You mean in terms of Terry writing more? There is supposed to be a D20 conversion, FWIW.

Its probably debatable but im not sure if i agree.
I think RM level 20 should be at least 15M2, perhaps higher and level 25 (a VERY capable being) something like 5M3....

I see your point, but I'm trying to create a scale here converting all sorts of characters from Shadow World. In RM, you get diminishing returns at higher levels until each level is really giving you very little bonus other than those things that are rated off of level directly (mainly magic resistance). So Terry has rated beings with very high levels. Andraax, putatively mortal, is 120th level, for instance. The big bad guys tend to be from about 45th level to 70th level (Jerak Arhenreth and Dragonlords, etc).

Interestingly I had another person saying that I tended to rate these characters too high. That is, at this point in power, I consider these beings to be demigods. Like Sauron was a demigod, or like the kings of Egypt were demigods (to their people at least). So I want to put these beings in the 5 to 6 mastery range. That means condensing down the lower levels a bit. There are lots of characters who are at that "lord" level of ability in the game. Though I do understand your argument that these characters are probably famous and should therefore be at or closer to 3 masteries. Here's a fluid conversion that hits most of the benchmarks that I have:

Code Select Expand

RM LVL    HQ BM
       1      13     (Newb - I think this is accurate, because starting RM characters are very weak)
       5      17     (Yep, I think that even a "starting character" in HQ is equal to a 5th level RM character)
      10     7W     (Journeyman level right in the middle)
      15    17W     (Experienced Journeyman)
      20    6W2     (Like I said, Master here)
      25   15W2
      30    4W3     (Loremasters are often around this level)
      35   13W3
      40    1W4
      45    9W4
      50   17W4     (50th level still mortal - barely. High Priests of Arnak.)
      55    5W5
      60   12W5
      65   19W5     (Dragonlords are around here or a little higher)
      70    6W6     (A'kesh, Lorgalis, etc)
      75   13W6
      80   20W6
      85    6W7
      90   12W7    (Ondoval - add a mastery or two for the Shadowstone).
      95   18W7
     100    4W8     (Minor gods)
     105   10W8
     110   15W8
     115   20W8
     120    5W9     (Andraax, as mentioned)
     125   10W9
     130   15W9
     135   20W9
     140   5W10
     145   9W10
     150  13W10
     155  17W10
     160   1W11
     165   5W11
     170   9W11
     175  13W11
     180  17W11
     185   1W12
     190   4W12
     195   7W12
     200  10W12  (Kuor, King of the Orhanian Pantheon)


These factors lead to normal combat bonuses of -50 - +165

Thing is that this level keeps going up linearly after a certain point, and never becomes zero. Slowly, but linearly. Also, people tend to think of HQ progression as somehow exponential or geometric at least. So a character one mastery higher than another seems roughly twice as powerful. So that means that you have to continue to curve down the return value per RM level converted to HQ level, even though the RM levels have become flat in their return. So that's factored into the curve above.

If you take that for granted a bonus of 165 would be in the M3 range, perhaps even 20M3 i guess.....not sure if that really works......

Adjusting for this we get a curve really heavily weighted at the bottomo like...

Code Select Expand

RM LVL    HQ BM
       1      13
       5      17
      10     7W
      15    1W2
      20   19W2
      25   17W3
      30   13W4
      35    8W5
      40    1W6
      45   13W6
      50    4W7
      55   14W7
      60    3W8
      65   11W8
      70   19W8
      75    6W9
      80   12W9
      85   18W9
      90   3W10
      95   8W10
     100  12W10
     105  16W10
     110  20W10
     115   3W11
     120   6W11
     125   9W11
     130  11W11
     135  13W11
     140  15W11
     145  17W11
     150  19W11
     155   1W12
     160   2W12
     165   3W12
     170   4W12
     175   5W12
     180   6W12
     185   7W12
     190   8W12
     195   9W12
     200  10W12

Actually it's worse than this because you're making demigods of the 35th level characters, and that seems far too low to do that.

So we have to push out even further like...

Code Select Expand

RM LVL    HQ BM
       1      13
       5      17
      10     7W
      15    1W2
      20   19W2
      25   17W3
      30    6W4
      35   10W4
      40   14W4
      45   18W4
      50    2W5
      55    7W5
      60   12W5
      65   17W5
      70    2W6
      75    7W6
      80   12W6
      85   17W6
      90    2W7
      95    7W7
     100   12W7
     105   17W7
     110    2W8
     115    7W8
     120   12W8
     125   17W8
     130    2W9
     135    7W9
     140   12W9
     145   17W9
     150   2W10
     155   7W10
     160  12W10
     165  17W10
     170   2W11
     175   7W11
     180  12W11
     185  17W11
     190   2W12
     195   7W12
     200  12W12

And now we've become completely flat on the high end.

In regard of him being quite evil, betraying his god and still being able to channel spells i think its an obvious idea that he gets his power from the Unlife.

See, this I don't get, I don't think he's betraying his god at all. I think that Yugal just doesn't care what he does, as long as he throws people into his maw once in a while. I have to read the text again before I can understand what you're trying to say about him.

In any case, I'm sure he's using the Unlife. I think Yugal is very likely an expression of the Unlife.  

He gets his power points from the Unlife, but maybe he doesnt know yet....reminds me a lot of the sith and the dark side of the force.....

I'm a bit more philosophical about it. That is, I think he thinks he gets power from his god, and does. The fact that it's destructive power...well, I'm sure he understands that. Yes, the attraction of the Unlife is like the "Dark Side," in that eventually it leaves one without any will of their own, but just the desire to destroy.

I would like to hear from you how you handle all the magic items.
Do you use them at all ?
How do you convert all the x times a day stuff ??

I haven't used many published items yet, but would without hesitation. We make up magic items all the time. But what I don't do, again, is to try to immitate Rolemaster. The x times a day limit is a completely gamey limit put on such things by RM in order to control the power level of the item in question (and it doesn't do a very good job at all, unless you are playing dungeon crawl). Again, my suggestion is not that one should play Rolemaster with HQ, but to play Shadow World with HQ.

That is, I honestly don't believe that there's any cosmological fact about Shadow World that makes magic items neccessarily have to work X times per day, but that this is only an artifact of the system. That, had Terry written the game using HQ, that he wouldn't have tried to figure out some mechanic that would simulate such a trend in magic items. In fact, this is a hold-over from D&D.

So, OK, the book says that Mateshe has an amulet that let's her cast Yugal's Ire thee times a day. Just ignore the three times a day limitation. These limits are terrible, because they're "use it or lose it" limits. Meaning that if you don't use the ability from sunup to sunup, that you've wasted those uses. So characters have an incentive to use them every day. Now, by other interpretations of the x times a day rule, it means that you can only use it thrice in a 24 hour period. That's a bit better, since there's an incentive to at least go slower since you don't know how many times you may need it soon. But still not great. The fact that the rules don't make this clear in RM, and that the better version requires record-keeping...it's just a bad rule. Even for RM.

So just ignore it in HQ. Does this mean that a character can cast the spell ad infinitum? Well, yes, in theory, just like any other magic ability now not limited by spell points. So why doesn't the character do so? Because, unlike RM with it's 4% chance to fumble, each time you cast a spell or use magic in HQ, you have a pretty significant chance to fail with substantial consequences (unlike in RM where a fumble might be "lose a round" or somesuch). Put another way, you don't fling around magic haphazardly for the same reason you don't get into fights constantly. Sure, failure is fun in HQ, but you don't have a character going around seeking it. Enough comes without doing that. :-)

The HQ system, basically, provides better limits already. Instead of magic items being constantly reliable, their magic is as prone to problems as the next. So you only use them when you need to use them, a decision made each time.

What I have done in some cases, however, is to treat a magic item like a follower. I do this when an item has multiple abilities, for instance. A sword made out of some magic metal, as an example, might have several properties like resisting rust, being relatively hard to break, etc. These can all go under a keyword for the magic item.

What's cool is that this matches the concept of "attunement" in that the character then has a relationship with this "sidekick." This relationship can be improved, as can the abilities of the thing.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

I'm posting this right after another post I've made. Don't miss the one above.

I prefer to leave the philosophy of the Unlife to the characters in the game. I just say that it's "Anti-essence" and leave it at that. Mechanically, however, what I do is allow players to take "Unlife" as a flaw. At any level. To get Unlife characters have to study it and learn it just like any other form of magic - so it's available to, for example, priests of most dark gods (Arnak, especially). But once they're into it, they can simply reach down into the Unlife reserves and get as much as they want.

What this allows them to do, is to augment with this ability. It's a bit like "attuning essences." Potentially quite powerful. But I also will penalize a player on contests where things like compassion are invoved, for instance.

This doesn't force a player to do bad things, but, basically it encourages it, and creates a slippery slope to the dark side. Because, like any other flaw, they have to pay one HP per level to buy the flaw off.

Mike

[Der_Renegat]

One of the things I've struggled with is how to interpret the Unlife, both in terms of game mechanics and metaphysics. What is it? How does it work? What does it give you.

I think the Unlife is the old yin yang thing.
Life nurtures and let things evolve and grow, while the Unlife destroys, limits and brings things to an end.
I think naturally beings dont tend to have an urge to selfdestruct but hate and frustration can lead to self-destruction.
There is something called reactive hate - its when you are so frustrated that you cant change a certain thing, that you want to destroy it.

In the cloudlords book there is Teleus aka The Implementor. An undead servant of the Unlife.
The story goes as follows:
the people of the Cult of Ezran are trapped in Tanara. A struggle occurs and some people become outcasts.
The book says:

Aid they received, but from a source which would in the end corrupt and enslave them totally: the Unlife.
He said his name was Teleus, and he came, fair-seeming, to the pitiful huts of the cult where the Ezranans huddled against the bitter winter. Ways of sorcery he learned them, and they were eager students, desperate with the need to survive - and the desire to have revenge....

The Unlife exploits the desire to have power for corrupting until the corrupted become a slave of the Unlife itself.

So Teleus ends up as a mindless undead, riding on a demon steed, slaying every living thing with his intelligent sword that enslaved him to the Unlife.

Teleus was an elf who lost his immortality because he used sorcery, so his next goal was to extend his life with the help of this mighty sword. He used the outcasts of the people of the Cult of Ezran exploiting their hate to defeat the guardians of this sword. And when he finally gained the sword he became immortal once again - unfortunately not quite the way he wished, but becoming an undead (and slave of th Unlife) forever.

Mechanically the Unlife might just give you "evil" power points, but really its about power reaching your goals. Beside the usual spells, the Unlife might give you abilities like:
Feel no pity
Feel no empathy
not feeling guilty
consuming passion
obsession with goal
blind with hate
unbearable soul wound
reactive hate
etc
Every ability augments your actions, so even game mechanically the player gains power.

If you have a look at the SW stats for Teleus aka the Implementor he just seems to be a boring evil undead monster. A killer machine and a total rpg stereotype.
But maybe this could be changed in HQ if you give Teleus a personality and the ability for opponents to interact with this personality.....

[Der_Renegat]

Something very important about the Unlife is, that in comparison to StarWars or The Lord of the Rings, people dont KNOW with what they are dealing with until its too late.
The Unlife works from within, in secrecy ! Its not known as the EVIL. Some people know, like the Loremasters.
So when you gain power from the Unlife its not like: ah lets deal with the dark side of the force, i know its dangerous, but i can handle it....
Its more like, that you get more and more power until you realize you are becoming totaly consumed by it. And when its too late, you understand what that power really is, you are dealing with. But maybe you will never know its name.
I think thats really cool for the players too. Players always want power. They want powerful weapons, magic and big augments from lots of abilities.
But the more abilities you get from the Unlife, the more these abilites demand from the player acting in certain ways. So corruption is something the player is REALLY experiencing.

If you view the Unlife more like a yin/yang thing, instead of good vs.evil, you understand how one side needs the other. How the "Unlife" is just one side of the coin.
Smacking somebody doesnt makes you evil. Not if you do it once.
You my be called evil if you do it all the time. Then you are consumed by a feeling of being superior and violent.

[Der_Renegat]

Hi Mike,

im afraid im not a great math person, so all your charts really confused me a bit but i think i get what you try to proove.
Your first chart feels right to me.

Another point is that a RM level is an indication how powerful a character is.
Saying a Lvl20 is 6M2 doesnt really help that much. 6M2 what ? Sword fighting ? All abilities ? A few ? Some ?
In gameplay the story dictates what the ratings are, so it doesnt matter really anyway i guess.

This leads to the question what is important at all for a conversion ?
A lot of SW characters are described as being impressively tall (for their race) or have unusual eyes, etc.
Which seems to me being a sign of them being very charismatic.

I guess most of the time these ratings would act as augments.
T´revor Arain has two different coloured eyes, which gives him a "probing unnerving gaze" which is more an ability in itself, probably augmented by the the first.

I think it was soviet who said in another thread that abilities are more about characterization rather than measurement.

Quote
In regard of him being quite evil, betraying his god and still being able to channel spells i think its an obvious idea that he gets his power from the Unlife.

See, this I don't get, I don't think he's betraying his god at all. I think that Yugal just doesn't care what he does, as long as he throws people into his maw once in a while. I have to read the text again before I can understand what you're trying to say about him.

Well we dont know what Yugal is really all about. That is something that is really weak in SW, religion isnt very detailed or important except for flavour it seems.

I find it strange that a god doesnt care about his high priest, but thats just me....

The reason why i think Mateshe is betraying his god is:

The ruling hierarchy of this people is the church, administering the commands of the god Yugal. In truth however, Mateshe rule the land and merely claims to be receiving messages from Yugal.

For once Mateshe is sincerely asking Yugal for visons to guide him. No visons have come however....

[Fredrik S]

Mechanically, however, what I do is allow players to take "Unlife" as a flaw. At any level. (..)
What this allows them to do, is to augment with this ability. It's a bit like "attuning essences." Potentially quite powerful. But I also will penalize a player on contests where things like compassion are invoved, for instance.

Aha; a Flaw! That's the missing piece. Very good. It's simple, elegant. I like it.

Something very important about the Unlife is, that in comparison to StarWars or The Lord of the Rings, people dont KNOW with what they are dealing with until its too late. (..)
Its more like, that you get more and more power until you realize you are becoming totally consumed by it. And when its too late, you understand what that power really is, you are dealing with. But maybe you will never know its name.

An excellent point. The Unlife as an unknown force, that gives power, but which eventually drives people to acts of madness and destruction. Perhaps like a cult of Azatoth: the blind idiot god that may one day awaken to eat the universe, to draw in a bit of Lovecraftian horror. Specifically, there is no driving motivation behind it, and different Unlife cults thus can have wildly diverging goals.  Btw, this also touches upon your obersations on Yugal. I find entirely plausible that a god be uncaring about the actions of his followers. Especially where such followers provide sacrifices to nourish him. For good fictional examples of this, read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree that the Unlife doesn't have an agenda, but I don't think that the dark side of the Force does either. And I also agree that in many cases people don't know about the Unlife or that they've come across it until it's too late. But I don't see this as different than, say, Bilbo and the One Ring. Moreover, like Isuldur, I believe that many people in Shadow World do know about the Unlife. The Loremasters certainly do. There's even a flavor text in the opening section describing the Unlife in which there's a wizard class at some university in one of the larger cities at which some professor is describing the Unlife. I think it well-educated areas, the Unlife is understood, and dealt with something like a plague. At least that's the impression that I've always gotten.

Hardly matters. The key is that wizards and such will always delude themselves that they can handle such forces, whether they think they understand them or not. In fact, the books say that the dragonlords and such play with the Unlife and get away with it. So it does seem like it's not absolutely inevitable that one will slide down the road to being mad and destroying things if one uses the Unlife. But I think this merely serves to make it more tempting. "Hmmm, I won't be corrupted by it like those people were!"

Heck, you can sense Vader thinking he's still in control after all of those years when he asks Luke to rule at his side. Luke, to his credit, sees that his father is too far gone and really can't recover. Gandalf and Galadriel are both tempted by the One Ring. Saruman uses the Palantir and is seduced. He knows precisely what he's getting into, and does it just the same  - for which Gandalf chastises him, "The Dark Lord does not share power!" Of course what's really going on is that Saruman thinks he can defeat Sauron himself. That's what the dark power does, is tell you that all you have to do is embrace it, and you'll have the power to obtain your goals, and then, once you've done so, you can go back to everything being just fine. You can rule as an enlightened dictator. But the cognative dissonance between this notion, and the actual acts performed in pursuit of the power, in using it to obtain goals, alter the character, and make them more likely to behave that way again. Eventually, with enough goals achieved, the character starts believing that he's beyond morals, and can simply do whatever he wants.

As the man said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." From one POV, it's not that this is a "Dark" power, but simply that it's power that comes free from moral constraints of it's use. In that way, all of these things are thematically identical.

Call this the "Lucifer Effect." A light character thinks that he knows what's best for the world, and uses his power in defiance of moral codes to enforce this view as the character succumbs to the draw of the power used this way. Inevitably this leads to a fall from grace, and becoming a power for darkness.

Mike