[Stealing Heaven] basic mechanics, themes, and such'n'junk

[Bailywolf]

These are some more mature thoughts on the concepts I riffed off in this previous thread about Stealing Heaven.

The basic rundown is in that thread, but to summarize- Stealing Heaven is a modern occult game about people initiated into occult realities and driven by their own flaws, sins, inadequacies, and egos to seek enlightenment without purging themselves of their weaknesses and flaws- to Steal Heaven.  Where mortal magicians work their rituals and seek subtle influence, Initiates are beyond this- they warp the sway in their favor with a thought where a magician might slave for hours over ritual paraphernalia in intense concentration to get a fraction of the benefit.  They cheat at life.  And they want more.  They want it all. 

It's a game about human limitations and overcoming them- without losing what it is to be human.  In a sense, it isn't so much about 'what would you do for power?' because that question's been answered from GO- you'll do just about anything.  The question is, "can you overcome your own hesitation, and tear the power from the cosmos regardless of the price and the pain?"

Right from the start, Initiates have some impressive innate abilities.  They are more or less immortal- time seems to pass them by, as do lethal gunshot wounds, car wrecks, and tainted chicken marsala.  They can get hurt, and really messed up, but coincidences conspire to keep them alive.  They are lucky- remarkably lucky.  Money comes easily to them, and as a result, has little power to sway them.  In a fight, they're going to kick you ass (unless you're also an Initiate... things get interesting then).  The know the score.  They get the chicks.  If they want it enough.

Initiates are defined by a few scores and traits.

Initiation- a description of how they became partial enlightened.  Initiation has a number as well, which starts at 1.  This puts them well beyond the mortal ken.  They walk like men, they talk like men, they eat, screw, and fight light men... but they've had a taste of what it is to be a God, and there's no going back.  With an Initiation trait of 1, there isn't much need for things like Strength or Dexterity of Firearms +4.  An initiate can be as good at mundane tasks as he can bring himself to be.

Malice- a measure of how quickly the initiate can take things hard and fast to a bad place, how much they can hurt others, how much they can make people bleed, and beg, and cry.  Malice is ranked from 2 to 9, and with a d10 you roll UNDER Malice to do violence, win through force, or break stuff.  But you roll OVER Malice to use your Empathy to deal with people socially and genuinely, to read emotions and intentions, and to understand people.

Roll UNDER malice to beat someone unconscious.
Roll OVER malice to figure out why he was attacking you.

Guile- a measure of how able the initiate is at manipulating people, lying to them, and taking away their power without them realizing it.  It is ranked the same as Malice.  Roll UNDER Guile to manipulate, lie, and deceive.  Roll OVER Guile to charm, persuade, and convince.  While Guile lets you force your will over someone, it limits your ability to form real relationships with people.

Roll UNDER Guile to break into an enemy's house and plant evidence of child porn.
Roll OVER Guile to convince an enemy to become an alley. 

Madness a measure of how the terrible wonders the Initiate has seen and done have disrupted his perceptions and warped his ability to judge reality.  Roll UNDER madness to warp reality to your will.  Roll OVER madness to perceive and understand reality as it is.   

Roll UNDER Madness to use a Trick (a specific personal supernatural ability) to summon spiny dream horrors to stalk the man who broke into your apartment and left kiddy porn after the cops knock on your door.
Roll OVER Madness to detect signs of the break-in before the cops get there.

Traits- if you can bring one of your Traits into a scene, you get a free re-roll from it, but the Ripples will involve the Trait somehow.  Each Trait can be used at most once per story. 
Sin- what made you embrace the path of the Initiate?
Drive- what keeps you going, keeps you fighting?
Hope- what do you wish for, secretly, in your heart of hearts?
Fear- of all the horrors you've seen and done, what terrifies you?
Hate- what's the one thing sure to trigger your anger and wrath?

Sway- a pool of points representing how plugged into the cosmic mojo you are at a given time.  You build up your Sway through working Designs, and burn it for rerolls, some Tricks, and to boost your level of Initiation in dramatic jumps of power.



Scenes are framed, stakes are set, and actions are chosen.  1d10 is rolled, and if the degree of success (the # by which the die is lower or greater than the Trait number) meets the Difficulty, the winner gets his Stakes and gets to describe the outcome.  A reroll can be bought for 1 Sway and this allows the success from the second (or third or fourth) rolls to be added to the first.  Each reroll, however, creates Ripples- story hooks, consequences, etc.  If you don't want to spend the Sway or bring in a Trait, then you have to eat the failure. 


Coming next... Designs 

[Spooky Fanboy]

Ye Gods, it's like the marriage of Kult and Trollbabe, with Sorcerer presiding and assiting in the nuptials.

Okay, since the core attributes are filled (with a trade-off between power vs. finesse), the only form of character advancement I can see is the possibility of improving Initiation (which I'd like to know more about), and the possibility of adjusting your core attributes up or down. (Most importantly , what does increased Initiation get you? Tricks? More powerful rituals?)

Either way, as you have it set up, the characters are inded bad-ass. Either they're empathetic enough to defuse most situations before they go out of control, or they're vicious enough to make those who cross them truly regret it.

Also, who opposes them? Simply other Initiates? Angels? Is it possible to be an Initiate and be a "good guy?"

[Spooky Fanboy]

If I may...

If you're looking for a slightly different setting than just "right here, right now", may I recommend the late 1960's until 1980? That covers the Manson-analogs, the screaming-nightmare underside of the 1960's/early 1970's drug culture, Hammer horror films and blaxploitation, The Omen and the devil in modern cinema, porn as respected art, the return of conservativism in America, the slasher/grindhouse films (which contributed to that classic piece of cinema, The Devil's Rejects), and so on. Not to mention, the horror that is 1970's art and fashion, and Three's Company. (Brrr!)

[Bailywolf]

Ye Gods, it's like the marriage of Kult and Trollbabe, with Sorcerer presiding and assiting in the nuptials.

Okay, since the core attributes are filled (with a trade-off between power vs. finesse), the only form of character advancement I can see is the possibility of improving Initiation (which I'd like to know more about), and the possibility of adjusting your core attributes up or down. (Most importantly , what does increased Initiation get you? Tricks? More powerful rituals?)

Either way, as you have it set up, the characters are inded bad-ass. Either they're empathetic enough to defuse most situations before they go out of control, or they're vicious enough to make those who cross them truly regret it.

Also, who opposes them? Simply other Initiates? Angels? Is it possible to be an Initiate and be a "good guy?"

The Scores can shift through play, as a consequence (or reward) for certain actions.  The system for Designs is weighted to favor bastards though, as it involves mostly UNDER rolls- you're manipulating people to further your occult ends, and damn the consequences for them.  Tweaking the scores is one way a character can meaningfully change.

As for advancement- that's mostly done with increasing your Initiation... the main upshot of this is you can carry more Sway without causing all kinds of chaos and trouble (too much sway in one mind warps reality, tears it, lets things leak through, and lights you up like Time Square for everyone with a farts worth of psychic awareness to see).

Initiates gain Sway through Designs (in addition to making really big 'spells')- and they can can mad crazy Sway by tricking other Initiates into being part of their Designs (or steal another Initiate's store of Sway in the process).  Higher order Initiates like to do this to lower order initiates because they're such assholes, so low-order Initiates form Cabals to counter this as much as they can. 

So, Initiates fight each other's Designs if they seem to be hostile, and sometimes team up to do this better.

Higher Initiation gives you access to more Tricks, and increases the size of the Circle you can draw- the "range" and "area" you can work your magic in, and the scope of the effects you can produce.  With Iniation 1 you can work with a Circle about the size of a small company, a neighborhood, a sports team.  With Sway 5 you can work on the scale of nations.  The effects of a Design kick in at one-scale higher, so by manipulating the employees and customers of the Mean Bean Coffee Shop, you can impose your will over the whole town.  By manipulating the shape of US politics, you can impose your will on the entire world.  By manipulating the entire world, you can control Heaven and Hell.

 

If I may...

If you're looking for a slightly different setting than just "right here, right now", may I recommend the late 1960's until 1980? That covers the Manson-analogs, the screaming-nightmare underside of the 1960's/early 1970's drug culture, Hammer horror films and blaxploitation, The Omen and the devil in modern cinema, porn as respected art, the return of conservativism in America, the slasher/grindhouse films (which contributed to that classic piece of cinema, The Devil's Rejects), and so on. Not to mention, the horror that is 1970's art and fashion, and Three's Company. (Brrr!)

Dig it.

You also get the hipness of Satanism during the 60's and 70's.  You get Mansfield and LeVey.  You get Samy Davis Junior joining the Church of Satan. 

Initiates curise these waters like sharks among goldfish- they're the real deal.  They are what Charlie Manson wanted to be when he grew up. 

Could my genre be Hexsploitation?

Awesome idea...

-B

[Bailywolf]

Some more on the Opposition...

Initiates are opposed not only by other Initiates, but by two main categories of foes.  Mundane crazies and cultists and religious nuts and would-be heroes sometimes trouble and complicate Initiates' lives, but generally don't pose any kind of real threat.

The most actively opposed to the Initiates are the Angels (or Hands of Fate, or Messengers, or Voices of the Throne, or Fucking Meddling Assholes).  They are people imbued by something- Heaven, God, Nirvana- whatever.  They attempt to foil the machinations of Initiates to preserve Heaven.  They are generally fairly clueless, but get 'guidance' in whatever form they'll accept it, and so end up in the wrong place (for initiates) at the wrong time, looking to pull a knight's move on an Initiate's King.  Sniffing them out, and putting a .45 slug in their brains works pretty well.  Suckering them into participating in a Design works even better, but it is hard and risky because they can sometimes figure it out, and hose the thing from inside.  If you pull it off though, you get to eat their soul, and you get a taste of Heaven- that little spark they were imbued with- that you can shape into a new Trick.  If they get the better of you though, it'll cost you big time. 

The more subtle foe are the Agents of the Enemy.  The Enemy loathes humanity.  It wants to drag the universe down into shit and chaos and insanity and horror forever.  And by kicking down the Pearly Gates, Initiates offer a pretty good way to break things down, to fracture the world.  So the Enemy actively aids Initiates while at the same time complicating things for them.  It makes life harder, pushes them to the edge, and then offers help.  While the Angels threaten an Initiates plans, the Enemy threatens his precious identity- it wants to hollow him out, and use him to sneak into heaven.  Once you have the taint of the Enemy, you're never really yourself anymore (unless you can somehow cut the infected stuff lose, gouge out the pulsing malevolence nesting in your soul).  If you openly defy the Enemy, sometimes you might get a person visit from an Agent, the dark counterparts to the Angles, and they're more likely to try and kill you and eat your face off than to save you.  Still, if you've got some big old balls, and the moxie to beat the Devil at checkers, you can work an Agent into your Designs, and rip a chunk of the Enemy off and make it your own. 

-B

[Spooky Fanboy]

Okay, please explain what a Design is and how someone would go about it.

It appears to be a ritual that doesn't look like a traditional ritual, but making it fit together will cause some cosmic gears to shift, thus giving the Initiate what he wants. I recall you mentioning films getting made to trigger a nationwide or international incident. I'd really like to see a worked example, as most characters are going to be devoting their screen-time to doing these.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Also, would you roll over Madness to sense whether or not a Design was happening, or had been triggered? That seems appropriate to me.

[Bailywolf]

Okay, please explain what a Design is and how someone would go about it.

It appears to be a ritual that doesn't look like a traditional ritual, but making it fit together will cause some cosmic gears to shift, thus giving the Initiate what he wants. I recall you mentioning films getting made to trigger a nationwide or international incident. I'd really like to see a worked example, as most characters are going to be devoting their screen-time to doing these.

A Design is something like a magic ritual but played out with people and places and things in the real world rather than ritual elements in sacred ritual spaces.  Each Design has five components, which can be arranged in different ways.  Setting up each Element requires at least one scene and one conflict.  The elements...

Circle- how large the ritual space is defined as... this is limited by level of Initiation, but high order Initiates can use smaller circles than they could draw.  Effects take place at one step larger.  On the small end, the Circle encompasses something like a small business, a few city blocks, a sport's team, an extended family at Thanksgiving, and the effects would spread out from the Circle to cover a small town, cooperation, or a sport's team and the fans in the stadium at their homecoming game. 

Star- the raw material from which the Design draws its substance and power... the Star might be contained in the Circle, Directed by the Wand, Incubated in the Cup, and birthed by the Sword. 

Sword- the element of the Design which cuts, cleanses, destroys, severs, purges, or if inverted, preserves, maintains, or defends..  A Sword can clear the Circle of outside influences, or it can smite an Initiate's enemies. 

Wand- the element of the Design which directs, controls, dominates, or if inverted, frees of control and influence. 

Cup- the element of the Design from which creation or transformation springs, the Cup is a womb of possibility, but if inverted brings stasis or prevents change.

Designs can be intended to produce some kind of specific effect- like a Divination which will give you information, or a Transform which will alter reality outside the Circle to your will.  Or it can serve to further your pursuits of power and the Great Work- basically paying off in Sway.

Lets say that you're new to a town- a place you were drawn to because of some kind of occult nexus of synchronicity.  You want to establish a network of feelers and sensors to taste the occult currents of the town, a mystical early warning system which will warn you if and event of occult import goes down.  It's a pretty simple effect- you don't want much information, just the mystical equivalent of a burglar alarm.  The GM Sets the difficulty of the Design at 5 (you need a total of 5 successes from the five elements when aligning the Elements)- this is an easy threshold to meet, and without opposition or especially ambitious goals, shouldn't be hard to manage at all.

You chose the local newspaper as your Circle, and in order to Draw the Circle, you get a job at the paper (a scene) using the expediency of your 'Crazy Charlie Manson Eyes' Trick which allows you to use an UNDER Madness roll with a bonus success equal to your Initiation level to charm and persuade rather than an OVER Guile roll.  You play out the scene, with the GM running the Editor interviewing you, and roll a 3 under your Madness of 5.  That's a 2 point Success, plus 1 for the Trick you used for a current total of 3, and the Circle for your Design is now drawn.

You decide to make the Advertising Editor your Wand- the element of the Design which directs your will to be done.  She picks and chooses the ads which will be printed in the paper, and solicits new ads.  You'll check your sensors by looking at the ads in the paper every day, and based on the products and services advertised and their relative placement, read information about local occult activity.  This means the paper's pool of advertisers is your Star- the source of your raw material- and the Cup is the printing press.  Your Sword is the Editor in Chief who will kill any ad or story that doesn't fit the paper's image or charter- and in the event someone tries to trace you through your sensor network, he'll fire the Advertising Editor, and destroy the Design before they can find you. 

You point the Wand when you seduce the Advertising Editor, filling her head with your opinions on local businesses, and which ones are worth using (and which ones should thus get more ad copy).  You raise the Sword when you plant rumors that the Advertising Editor is sleeping with a member of the paper's staff, something the Editor in Chief would fire her for if it came to light.  You fill the Cup when you see the first print run completed and distributed. 

Once complete, you make it a point to read the paper every morning, looking over the ads to see what they have to tell you.

Establishing control over each of these Elements would be an additional scene, each total building towards the required total for the Design.  If you fail to generate any success in a given element, you can still complete the Design, but it will have flaws which will create Ripples for you when it activates. 

There are some complexities when working Designs- especially when opposed- but that's the basic shape of it right now.

-B

[Spooky Fanboy]

Okay, so we're still going with Wands, Swords, Cups, Circles, and Stars.

Will there be further explanations for how to determine which is which in play? Because I imagine that's going to get confusing.

Also, when you burn an Angel or Agent, is that when you level up in Initiation?

[Bailywolf]

Okay, so we're still going with Wands, Swords, Cups, Circles, and Stars.

Will there be further explanations for how to determine which is which in play? Because I imagine that's going to get confusing.

Also, when you burn an Angel or Agent, is that when you level up in Initiation?

Sort of a sideways powerup- you can get an extra Trick from them or a burst of Sway which might put you over the top.

I very much will need copious examples and clarity on the elements less they weight things down.

-B

[Spooky Fanboy]

Yes, and I think it needs to be clarified that (unless I'm misreading your intent) Design Follows Function. If you're trying to, say, put a particularly powerful business out of business, you need to make a Design tied to that business. If you're fucking with Wal-Mart, you need a Design that includes the local Wal-Mart in it, for example. If you're trying to get rid of AIDS, you need to find a Design that incorporates AIDS into it in some way. (And I imagine doing the latter would require a high-level Initiate with a lot of savvy, as I suspect both Angels and Agents will be coming out of the woodwork to stop that Design. Then again, a high-level Initiate would be hoping for that, to get the necesary power-ups to push the Design to completion and to come out on the other end with more power than before, to deal with the inevitalbe backlash.)

[Spooky Fanboy]

Out of curiosity: are there ways to do magic that don't require a Design? Simple "spells", so to speak? Are those handled by Tricks, or are they basically another open path to accomplish something that can't be done through Malice or Guile? 

[Bailywolf]

Yes, and I think it needs to be clarified that (unless I'm misreading your intent) Design Follows Function. If you're trying to, say, put a particularly powerful business out of business, you need to make a Design tied to that business. If you're fucking with Wal-Mart, you need a Design that includes the local Wal-Mart in it, for example. If you're trying to get rid of AIDS, you need to find a Design that incorporates AIDS into it in some way. (And I imagine doing the latter would require a high-level Initiate with a lot of savvy, as I suspect both Angels and Agents will be coming out of the woodwork to stop that Design. Then again, a high-level Initiate would be hoping for that, to get the necesary power-ups to push the Design to completion and to come out on the other end with more power than before, to deal with the inevitalbe backlash.)

Indeed- and there is the whole pomo occult symbolism thing to consider as well.  Generally, the bigger you draw your Circle, the more chance you'll have of attracting foes of one stripe or another- but the better able you'll be at putting the hammer down on them too.  Really crazy powerful initiates use smaller Designs as elements in true Grand Designs- the stuff that lets them really crack open the celestial egg and lick up the sweet yolk of divinity. 

Out of curiosity: are there ways to do magic that don't require a Design? Simple "spells", so to speak? Are those handled by Tricks, or are they basically another open path to accomplish something that can't be done through Malice or Guile? 

Yeah- Tricks are an Initiates overt supernatural rule-bending powers.  An Initiate, by his very nature, can do everything a mortal ritual magus can manage, but he does it with a thought, a whisper, a shrug.  Right off, Initiates are- compared to mortals- insanely lucky, charming, smart, and clever.  Circumstances conspire in their favors.

This is part of the reason players can freely write their characters into any scene they like if there is even a minute chance they could stumble into it for some or any reason- "I happened to be walking my dog when I see Joe beating the crap out of those cops."

Tricks are different.  They are kinks of warped reality- they overtly do the impossible- conjuring ghosts from your breath, or letting you shed your skin to change your face, or animating the inanimate, or striking foes dead with a look.  Mortal magicians simply can't manage anything like this, anything which so overtly breaks the laws of phsyics and reality.  Tricks are violations of the natural order, and are symptomatic of an Initiate's hazy state between the profane and the divine.  More details on what tricks are and how they work coming up.

-B

[Spooky Fanboy]

Okay, so: an Initiate can do minor magician's tricks, and they can bend shit with Tricks. Also, a "real" Initiate is a person who can do Designs that can be Stars, Wands Cups, etc. for Grand Designs, and really reshape the world. *This* is the kind of thing players should be striving for. Got it.

Two quick things:

1) Is it possible to "save" a failed roll (specifically where you meant to roll over but rolled under instead), and have that be declared a win as long as you negotiate the fallout? Ie. You wanted to negotiate peacefully with someone, but rolled under Malice. Can yougo with Malice to temporarily get your way, but in the long term, you know you've fucke dup and it's only a matter of time before revenge is sought?

2) The only thing that bothers me so far is "Madness." I see what you're going for, but I think it's important to distinguish it from normal insanity. (Cuts out the "fishMalk" stupidity, and it doesn't make sense to me that an Initiate would get his luck jacked up without getting his body or brains unscrambled by Initiation also.) I'd almost prefer it to be called "Maddening Vision", because it indicates that the reason the Initiate acts so fucked-up in comparison to normal people is that he/she can see things that other people cannot. Those things exist, even though humans aren't supposed to see them. And while 'madness' might be a side-effect, it's crippling effects are limited to a point. I see it acting as the most effective hybrid between paranoid schizophrenia (you see shit that others can't, and you see the patterns behind everything) and sociopathy (it dulls your connection to humanity, making people seem less real to you.) What it does not do is make you lose control: you do that to yourself. Like the Freaks in your game, these Initiates seem to be processing other, inhuman senses that their bodies and brains weren't designed for, but it's not making them go off the deep end. For Initiates, full-blown lunacy should be a choice, or a risk from a backfired Design.

[Danny_K]

This looks even more interesting than it did the first time 'round.  I find it rather hard to keep the whole thing in my head at this point, though -- there are 4 stats (plus Sway), 5 traits, and five elements that must be put together for each Design, and it seems like there may be many Designs and partial Designs around.  I'm imagining having several character sheets in front of me at once. 

So here's my question: does all this complexity resolve into some higher level of symmetry in actual play?  Polaris, for example,  has lots of tricky bits to get right in chargen, but once you've figured out how to do conflicts, everything on the character sheet works pretty much the same way.

Dogs, the same thing -- lots of different places that the stuff on the character sheet comes from, but it all turns into different kinds of dice for Sees and Raises when you're playing. 

Do you expect the SH mechanics to do anything similar? 

Additional setting notes: I like the Agents and the Enemy, and I like their assymmetry (individual antagonistic clueless agents versus a unified, sophisticated and seductive Enemy.  I'd like them even better if they were really divorced from Heaven and Hell -- they could just as easily emanate from the two poles of the Jungian oversoul, or whatever. 

Finally, a question that's probably coming from my excessive exposure to WoD games: The higher you get your Initiation stat, the more Sway you can handle without getting burned and the bigger Designs you can build, and that gives you a crack at even more power.  So what about all the Perfect Masters out there in the setting?  Is there an uneasy hierarchy of Initiates trying to move up the ladder, or one big Guru every so often running a spiritual protection racket on the little guys and getting paid in Sway, or what?  Are there burned-out areas where a certain Master has turned cannibal and "eaten" all the less powerful Initiates? 

I don't actually expect canonical answers or a well-developed world, but how do you want it to work in the game?  Obviously, there's got to be rival Initiates, because the clash of Designs seems like a big part of the fun.