The Cardinal Emotions

[dindenver]

TM,
  I have went to post to this and stopped like 3 or 4 times, lol
  I think the setting for this is great. Don't relegate the setting to fluff and make it part of the mechanics/design, please.
  I feel like you are approaching the castes from the wrong angle.
  We are talking about Angelic beings, right? So,it is not clear if they even experience genuine human emotions. And in fact, they are manufactured to fulfill a specific purpose, like the Khokmah were created to server Inspiration or other sparks of creativity that fall under divine providence, no? See how that doesn;t effectively map to human emotion?
  But if you approached it from the angle of these beings were created for a specific purpose, then you can match each caste to a "Duty" or Personality type. Like maybe all Khokmah are mad scientists and are only useful when teaming up with a Binah.
  Maybe something like that might help you with your approach?
Dave M

[TempvsMortis]

I know, I thought of that before the emotions thing. The only problem is that you really can't translate "Majesty" or "Adornment" into gameplay. In the sephirot the higher up you go the closer you are to god, so hence 1 is "Kingdom" (the kingdom of god, the world of men) and at the top is wisdom, understanding, and whatnot. See, I want them to be unique in what they can do, which justifies a caste system more. As for the emotions thing, I thought of pretty easy ways you could utilize them, and i'm a sucker for open-ended magic systems, so i thought it was pretty cool. Plus it sort of ties into this whole idea that the universe is made up not of rules, but of emotions, and that God is emotion (which is really more of a new testament thing, but it's still cool for the setting), plus it incorporates a whole other level of acting into the characters, so if your sephirah is Anguish your character's personality has to manifest it some way, and if you're rage your angry, etc.

There are actually commandments, and that's the penalty system for everything, so instead of mana you just have to obey the commandments (which is hard when using the powers of god), and if you don't then you're punished (which isn't always damage, frequently its just that your relationships fall apart, or someone/something comes to hunt you down). Each caste is a steward of one of the commandments, which if they break the punishment is twice as bad.

10 – Da'at – Thou Shalt ...?

9 – Khokmah – Thou Shalt Not Break Thy Ordinance (use an emotion not assigned to your caste)

8 – Binah – Thou Shalt Not Record Thy Nature (don't record anything having to do with your true knowledge of angels, god, or the higher realms)

7 – Khesed – Thou Shalt Love Only God (this is why their relationships are always terrible, with humans and each other)

6 – Geburah – Thou Shalt Not Separate God and Man (don't kill people, and more importantly don't forge their souls; that's a big, big no-no, soul-forging people)

5 – Tiph'eret – Thou Shalt Recompense For Any Transgression (basically, you or the universe will punish you for breaking any of the commandments, and since this is in itself a commandment you may postpone your retributions, but they will come back ten-fold to haunt you)

4 – Netzakh – Thou Shalt Not Bear Children (i won't go into the details, but it's pretty gruesome)

3 – Hod – Thou Shalt Not Pierce the Veil (don't allow a human to see your angelic form or powers, which is probably the easiest one to avoid because their are ways to hide your powers)

2 – Yesod – Thou Shalt Not Speak God's True Name (all angels know the true name of god, the word that means everything, and if they speak it they can do some epic stuff, but its retributions are the worst by far)

1 – Malkut – Thou Shalt Not Slay Another of Thy Kind (just what it says, though soul-forging other grigori isn't so forbidden as doing it to humans)

So on this ground they are clearly different. I just want to keep their powers different too. It's fine and all to say "oh, his thing is Duty" but what the hell does that mean? How would that transfer into gameplay? If you have Anguish, you know what you can do: you can cause people physical, mental, or emotional pain, or make the world physically, mentally, or emotionally painful. If you have rage you can hurt people, make them hurt people, or make the world hurt people (a little overlap with anguish, but that's okay, i think i'll tone down what you can do as far as physical pain when calling upon Anguish). If you have passion you can make people love you, each other, the world, and object, you can make things come alive in certain circumstances (though all emotions have this to a degree). You get the picture. See, these are clear, definable things. If you have Passion or Fear, you know what you can do.

I just wish I had one for all 8 or 9 of them, or had something similar to sephirot that had a lower count so I could reduce the number of castes.

[TempvsMortis]

Also, as far as the commandments and things are concerned, I'm skimming over this. It's all fairly detailed, what you actually can do to break or not break a commandment, and what kinds of things happen to you if you do.

[TempvsMortis]

Well, okay, so you *can* kill people, but you can't kill their souls, hence "separate God and Man". You can shoot em dead all you like, just don't rip their souls apart.

[TempvsMortis]

The Tree of Life according to Qabalah:



(This site needs an Edit button. You can't expect people to know everything they'll want to say from now until tomorrow the instant they post.)

[Mickey]

(This site needs an Edit button. You can't expect people to know everything they'll want to say from now until tomorrow the instant they post.)

(I know, that's what I said)

6 – Geburah – Thou Shalt Not Separate God and Man (don't kill people, and more importantly don't forge their souls; that's a big, big no-no, soul-forging people)

Oh damn I was just charging my soul-forger

2 – Yesod – Thou Shalt Not Speak God's True Name (all angels know the true name of god, the word that means everything, and if they speak it they can do some epic stuff, but its retributions are the worst by far)

Is that the Tetragrammaton or something?
I think I should read into the Hebrew bible and Kabbalah -sounds quite interesting!

5 – Tiph'eret – Thou Shalt Recompense For Any Transgression (basically, you or the universe will punish you for breaking any of the commandments, and since this is in itself a commandment you may postpone your retributions, but they will come back ten-fold to haunt you)

This one is interesting because perhaps it will allow the player to avoid punishment from the GM/NPCs etc by punishing themselves. For instance, when a player breaks a commandment he may choose to sacrifice part of his essence/health/whatever as punishment for his sins.

Is this where flagellation comes in? If it does then the whole process of mutilating oneself over committing original sin becomes a lot more understandable! Hahaha...

Personally I think that part of the fun of the game would come from actually breaking the commandments, as well as abiding by them.

Perhaps each of the castes may be understood better (in terms of game play) by their 'stewardship'.
So with Victory, for example, the abilities of the caste are not evident from the name alone (unless you can cast the 'Victory' spell, which makes you win the game xP), but the commandment, which is that you cannot produce offspring, brings a lot more things to mind!
This caste for example, could be the Kabbalah equivalent of 'summoning' -be it demons, snakes or whatever. The primary difference here is that it would require a human host (or perhaps merely a 'living' host, like an animal).
Doing so would also break the commandment, requiring you to punish yourself through some means or receive retribution from the universe itself.
And, unless you belonged to that caste, you could also break the 9th commandment (using an emotion not assigned to your caste).
Furthermore, if your 'summoning' involved a human who died in the process (or was soul-forged), you would also break the 6th commandment.
FURTHERMORE, if a human witnessed your deed, you would also break the 3rd commandment!
FURTHERMORE! If you killed another sephirot in the process, you would also break the 1st commandment!!!

Haahaha...

I like the 9th commandment in particular because it enforces specialization among the different castes.

A note on retribution from the universe. Perhaps this could be dealt with using a sort of 'reputation' system, whereby if you break a commandment and don't punish yourself for it you would lose 'reputation' with the universe or something? This would make it much easier to quantify the effects of ones commandment-breaking/abiding activities.

Evidently I know very little about Kabbalah, but I'm thinking about game play more than anything.

[TempvsMortis]

Jeeze, this is getting a off track. I hadn't been planning to explain the *whole thing*...

Okay, basically, I read this article on rpg.net about the idea of a stack system. Basically, there's a blank list on the character sheet where you write your "retributions". Whenever you gain a new retribution you must roll for all of your stored retributions, and if you succeed then the new one goes on top of the list. Of course, the more retributions on the stack the harder the roll, so really you're just postponing the inevitable. (You can also choose to fail, which is good when there's nothing on your stack so that you can deal with them as they come instead of all at once.) Once you fail a roll, you start a retribution chain reaction. The retribution that triggered the test activates then, and then over time each retribution activates, in an order that makes the most logical sense.

Example:

1) My wife leaves me
2) My wife gives birth to a demon (okay, so basically the Grigori are at war with the souls of their dead children, the nephilim, who haunt them with monstrosities that only they can see... it's complicated. Oh, and the birth will probably kill her.)
3)My flesh lights on fire

Then you break commandment 8 and the retribution is: My career (both human and grigori) will be destroyed. You fail the roll. So now what happens is that the newest one activates, and quickly or slowly (up to the discretion of your Antagonist; oh yeah, should probably mention that: this is a GM-less game) your career will fall apart, as a Grigori intellectual or whatever. This leads to the next one, since your tenuous relationship with your wife now collapses, and she leaves you, even though she's baring your child and never told you (because if you had known you would probably have gotten an abortion for the monstrosity, or option b) gone insane and carved it out of her...). Months later you get a call saying she's giving birth, your worst nightmare. You rush to the hospital to fine the lights flickering and people dropping unconscious, and the thing that sprung from your wife passes through the wall and into the night, to torment you later for the rest of your life. When you get to the emergency room they tell you she died in childbirth, and that the child was still born. (Of course, you know that the still-born fetus was just a vessel.) Then, just to top it all off, good ol' fashioned old testament wrath: right as you hear the news you spontaneously combust, they put you out, and you're confined to the emergency room for a month as that thing goes around destroyed the last shreds of your life.

As you can see, frequent and blatant disregard for the commandments is not encourages. I think your whole idea of self-punishment is really awesome. Maybe that way players can work off pending retributions. I don't want it to be easy though, because you're pretty much supposed to fear retributions.

Now, back to the primary powers please! Am I just going to be stuck with these six and mixing and matching them to the nine castes? At this rate it looks like it. Oh well. At least it was fun for you guys, huh?

[TempvsMortis]

And if you broke all the ones you said, you'd be screwed. No way a whip's gunna blunt that blow, 'cause at that point the universe is just gunna hafta prove a point, make an example of ya'.

And soul forging is like wraith: the oblivion, to a degree. Basically you can attack people's souls, not just their bodies, but you can also remove their souls when you kill them, and capture them. If you take the soul to someone who knows the art, you can make something from their soul that is embodies with their properties and will resurrect with you every incarnation. So, it's not too uncommon for a Watcher to awaken and discover he has a scythe made from his brother of a past life, which causes moral regret in everyone it strikes. The only soul-forging that's free is monstrosities. They're neither people, nor grigori, so you can just do what you like with em, though they're tough to bind.

[Mickey]

it's not too uncommon for a Watcher to awaken and discover he has a scythe made from his brother of a past life, which causes moral regret in everyone it strikes.

That's gold.

Yeah I've basically been milking you for info on the project the whole time -its' been a gas

I don't really have anything more to elaborate on concerning the 6 primary powers/emotions at this time (I think that I'd need to know more about the backstory/setting to really comment on them), but with all that you've shared so far I'm confident that you'll eventually come to some conclusion that satisfies you.

[Mickey]

Also:

the only limitation on what you can do is if it applies to your emotion, and the difficulty the gm determines

I thought you said the game was GM-less?

[TempvsMortis]

yeah, but i wrote that before i decided to tell you guys it was gm-less, so what I really meant was the antagonist, who plays your nephila. Basically, each grigori has a nephila child from the ancient days, whose souls are trapped in Sheol so they cannot resurrect or join god (remember, in Judaism there is no hell, only distance from God), but their festering flesh spawns demonic entities (think like Sin in FFX) that haunt their fathers. Each grigori has a player who represents their nephila, and this player is the one who controls the demons and such, who is the antagonist. Everything else is with the help of spectators and whatnot, but like in most gm-less games there are one or two players who represent most of the gm's power, so in this case it's the antagonist, who plays the player's nephila (literally their own personal demon who's been haunting and torturing them since the beginning of time, and some think it's out of anger because the grigori refuse to love them, other's think that their souls have become symbols of nothingness and they are agents of Armageddon, trying to reduce everything to nothingness [think Nobilis] ).

[Vulpinoid]

I'm intrigued that you used Da'at as one of the 10 sephirot and omitted Keter.

This says a lot.

How intentional was this?

V

[TempvsMortis]

Very intentional. Also, notice that many who espouse Da'at see it as sort of a nega-sephirah, representing emptiness, which fits in well with the whole idea of them being gone. See, the whole idea of the sephirot came around during the renaissance, so the whole implication here is that qabalah actually came from a breach of the commandments by the Grigori and some humans found out. Also, Da'at represents a unification of the lower sephirot, which I thought was appropriate for a de facto leader caste. But the thing is, keter isn't gone. I didn't mention is, but they're there. Basically, there are these beings that the grigori think are the angels who still have gods favor, and like almost every being, they exist on the plains lower than their optimal ones (the grigori only operate on Asiyah and  Yetzirah, and humans only operate on Asiyah). On the lowest plane they are just natural objects, like mountain peaks, but to the grigori who can see the plane of Yetzirah, they look like beings of blinding white light. They call them Keter(Katarim) [Crown], and they frequently make pilgrimages to them to ask them questions, which they rarely answer, and almost always cryptically. I chose them to be the karatim because since keter is the representation of knowledge that is closest to God, I thought it would be more appropriate that they be the true angels, and that da'ot be the tenth caste of the grigori.