Topic: TROS Highlander Immortals
Started by: Ace
Started on: 7/1/2002
Board: The Riddle of Steel
On 7/1/2002 at 9:07pm, Ace wrote:
TROS Highlander Immortals
Anyone though how cool using TROS for a Highlander style game would be?
Since the focus of Highlander is relationships (aka Spiritual attributes) and swordplay what system would fit better?
I would do quickening could be done as a special spiritual attribute replacing Destiny.
You would start with one and would x% (10-20% maybe) of each immortal you killed.
You might also allow quickening to get stronger, say 1 point every 50-100 years.
Quickening like any SA could be added to any roll for any physical skill.
However unlike a normal SA there is no upper limit and you don't spend it for IP
Other SA's would work normally of course.
To get that "look I missed and cut through the stone wall" effect you could either allow quickening to add one damage level per point along with its big shower effects and assume that any energized blade is unbreakable
One other thing you might want to do is discourage a steady string of nothing but head shots
I would use some kind of "bonus to the defense" rule if the characters continuously attack that area.
For the healing thing,
just assume an Immortal is immune to disease, hunger, thirst, suffocation and aging. They regenerate 1 wound level per hour.
If killed by a non head shot after they fully regenerate they wake up.
If a limb is removed I would allow any Immortal to regenerate the limb as long as he has at least 1 point in concience.
Thats not exactly cannonical but other than Eitiene St. Cloud (on the TV version, played by Roland Gift) none of Immortals had missing limbs.
I figure since the St. Cloud charcter had no concience at all, his maiming in combat was tied to it.
To preserve the Highlander "Won't fight on holy ground" bit just tell players that if you have any concience SA you won't do it, period
Or you could just tell them really bad stuff happens when they do (like Mt. Vesuvius errupting) and if they are maimed they won't regenerate missing limbsand they won't get any quickening from kills
Finally to simulate that "stun" effect from quickening the victorious immortal takes his foes SA's + quickening - WP in pain dice for 15- 1d10 rounds or whatever.
What do you all think?
On 7/1/2002 at 9:43pm, Furious D wrote:
Re: TROS Highlander Immortals
Ace wrote: Anyone though how cool using TROS for a Highlander style game would be?
Scary, I was just thinking the same thing last weekend. It really is well suited, isn't it? Your mechanics are just about what I was thinking of, except for a couple things:
If a limb is removed I would allow any Immortal to regenerate the limb as long as he has at least 1 point in concience.
Thats not exactly cannonical but other than Eitiene St. Cloud (on the TV version, played by Roland Gift) none of Immortals had missing limbs.
I figure since the St. Cloud charcter had no concience at all, his maiming in combat was tied to it.
I would just allow them to spend SAs to buy it off just like any other flaw (10 pts for a minor, 10 pts for a major, was it?). Thus if you have a conscience, it would be easier (because you have more SAs to buy with). Just justify that with the St. Cloud character not spending the SAs.
To preserve the Highlander "Won't fight on holy ground" bit just tell players that if you have any concience SA you won't do it, period
Even the Kurgan wouldn't fight on Holy Ground, so my thought would be to make it even stronger than just a matter of conscience (I don't think he had any). I didn't catch many of the TV episodes after the second or third season, so I don't know if how it might have been handled later. Immortals just didn't do it, as far as I know. My thought would just be to out and out not allow them to do it at all. Alternately, you can have the Seneschal use SA dice (maybe even quickening) in reverse (as penalty dice) if they try.
It would definately be a game where you would have to keep a very close watch on what SAs your players try to choose, like:
Destiny: Be the One! (not a problem if you replace Destiny, like you suggested)
About the aiming for the head, just give immortals a +2 CP for defending against blows to the head when aware of it (so a fient to a slash could catch them off guard, but remember to apply modifiers if they try that move too often).
To get that "look I missed and cut through the stone wall" effect you could either allow quickening to add one damage level per point along with its big shower effects and assume that any energized blade is unbreakable
Just let them add quickening dice to their CP as they wish (if they have more dice, they can get more successes, and thus they do more damage, simple that way). This also allows them to keep on fighting when their wounds should have dropped their CP to unusable levels, like if they get their throat slashed open by Sean Connery (just keep fighting on quickening dice alone). Or maybe allow them to use them to effectively raise their WP for the purposes of calculating pain and shock on one particular wound (effectively raise WP by 1 pt per dice spent). They probably get to ignore blood loss as well.
The quickening pool might work best if used in a similar fashion to luck (refresh every session), or refresh at a set time rate.
I would allow them to spend it for insight, if they really wanted to. The rules would make it obvious that this is a generally bad idea, however. But if they really, really wanted to...
On 7/1/2002 at 10:21pm, Brian Leybourne wrote:
RE: TROS Highlander Immortals
Maybe immortals are nothing but those who have discovered the answer to the question "What is the Riddle of Steel?" :-)
Seriously though, yes, Highlander via tRoS has occured to many of us I suspect, ditto Star Wars (with lightsabres).
The problem with Highlander though, hasn't changed from any of the other Highlander RPG's out there and it's this - the concept of a group of Highlander-style immortals travelling together just doesn't gel. By definition immortals are basically loners. You could run a game like the TV show, where one character is an immortal and he has mortal friends who hang around him, but that's pretty boring for the PC's who get stuck with non-immortals.
One thing that might work would be a group of (mortal) hunters though, with immortals as the ones they are hunting (because maybe the escaping quickening gives them a rush, or whatever).
If you were going to have immortal characters, I think you would need to define quickening as more than just an SA though - maybe through an adaption of the vagary system. It's just too important to be a single SA, and that also makes it hard to model all the various things they seemed to be able to do with it, such as Connor "Feeling the Stag" and the blatant precognition such as when he kept finding exactly what he needed to find in Brenda's apartment. Yes, I guess you could argue that dice in a Quickening SA could just be added to all those rolls, but I'm sure we could come up wth something better than that! Remember also that the quickening itself that an immortal received was changed/tainted by the immortal he got it from. One of the bad guys in the TV series killed a good immortal and the quickening he got softened him into more of a good guy, or so I'm told (the TV show never aired much down here in NZ), so maybe there are different types of quickening (each it's own "vagary" perhaps) giving you different pools - one for precognition type stuff, one for combat, one for empathy (like feeling the stag), etc etc. When you kill another immortal, you never know quite what you're going to get.
Now IMO that sounds pretty cool, if I do say so myself.
Brian.
On 7/2/2002 at 1:59am, Rattlehead wrote:
The Riddle of Immortality?
BrianL wrote: If you were going to have immortal characters, I think you would need to define quickening as more than just an SA though - maybe through an adaption of the vagary system. It's just too important to be a single SA, and that also makes it hard to model all the various things they seemed to be able to do with it, such as Connor "Feeling the Stag" and the blatant precognition such as when he kept finding exactly what he needed to find in Brenda's apartment. Yes, I guess you could argue that dice in a Quickening SA could just be added to all those rolls, but I'm sure we could come up wth something better than that! Remember also that the quickening itself that an immortal received was changed/tainted by the immortal he got it from. One of the bad guys in the TV series killed a good immortal and the quickening he got softened him into more of a good guy, or so I'm told (the TV show never aired much down here in NZ), so maybe there are different types of quickening (each it's own "vagary" perhaps) giving you different pools - one for precognition type stuff, one for combat, one for empathy (like feeling the stag), etc etc. When you kill another immortal, you never know quite what you're going to get.
For starters, let me say that I think this is a great way to look at it. But, I have a different take on your examples.
First, "feeling the stag" indicates to me that the Quickening is sort of like "the Force". It's a flowing current of energy (lifeforce?) that is in every living thing. Immortals are "in tune" with this energy, that's why he could feel the stag. He felt it's effect on the currents of the Quickening around him.
Second, I think the fact that Connor knew where the gun was in Brenda's apartment, and all the other "precognitive" abilities he displayed, were simply a reflection of the fact that he is very old and therefore quite wise. One of the things that made Connor such a cool character in the story was the fact that he had this wisdom. Not just the fact that he was a bad ass. He knew a lot about her before he ever arrived at her apartment (no doubt researched beforehand). After a few hundred years, you get to be a pretty good judge of people. Heck, I would have expected her to have a gun somewhere nearby, although, I probably would have taken longer to find it....
Still, viewing the quickening as more than one aspect of this "Force" and therefore using different "Quickening Vagaries" sounds good to me. Although, I think I myself would imagine it more generic than that. You have a certain amound of "Quickening Points" or what have you, and you can use them for lots of different things.
Another suggestion, rewarding players for doing things that make the game more like the movies and TV shows. Quickening points or whatever for making combat cinematic, or upholding some ideal put forth by the Highlander canon.
Just my take on it...
Brandon
PS: I also agree with Brian's mention of the effect of taking another's head. Remember the "Dark Quickening"? Maybe this could be reflected in some sort of scale, swinging between good and evil.. or some other such method...
On 7/2/2002 at 2:42am, Brian Leybourne wrote:
Re: The Riddle of Immortality?
Rattlehead wrote: PS: I also agree with Brian's mention of the effect of taking another's head. Remember the "Dark Quickening"? Maybe this could be reflected in some sort of scale, swinging between good and evil.. or some other such method...
What about if you defined a new SA which was basically the opposite of conscience. The two are mutually exclusive, so you either have conscience (you're a "good guy"), or the other one (you're a "baddie"). Even with a score of zero, you're still one siode or the other of the coin. You can gain or lose conscience or the other one depending on the immortals you kill. Of course, you can spend points yourself as well, but you can't spend below zero and flip "to the other side" without the benefit of behedding an immortal who was strongly the other way inclined.
The anti-conscience SA works exactly like the opposite of conscience, by the way. You earn points and can use the SA when you're doing what you *really* shouldn't be. Not just an absence of being nice, but when you're actively trying to be a bastard.
Might need some work, but it's a thought.
Brian.
On 7/2/2002 at 2:47am, Ace wrote:
RE: TROS Highlander Immortals
As for the Dark quickening bit, maybe if your enemy has a Spirtual attribute larger than yours you gain the difference as a new SA
Lets say Dranier kills some evil bad guy and takes his quickening.
The bad guy has a passion SA (some dark and nasty thing) of 5
Dranier has a passion of 3.DRanier "gains" the difference between his and the bad guys bad guys SA-- 2 points of whatever Dark passion he had
If you like you can allow Flaws to count as virtual SA's as well.
Maybe a major flaw, Bloodlust counts as 2 SAs for purposes of gaining tainted quickening.