Deviant Kickstarter

[Eric Zawadzki]

Just a few hours left of the Kickstarter, now. If you were planning to back, now is the time. Thank you to everyone who has already backed Deviant. It's been a really successful Kickstarter.

[xiongrey]

I'm pretty excited. On a secondary note, what's the ETA for the DtR sub-forum?
Apologies if this has been asked before.


EDIT: WOOO! Kickstarter completed and all went well!

[lnodiv]

I'm pretty excited. On a secondary note, what's the ETA for the DtR sub-forum?

Hoping it's soon - the game might not be 'released' for a while still, but given that the manuscript is out and it's playable...
The sooner the better.

[BrilliantRain]

Also, at least as far as the Sixth Number goes, they’re probably going to focus more on trying to find Number 6 (hint: check a small cove up the British Coast) than they are working on their doomsday code, since they think they need six people before they can ascend properly. They wouldn’t want to accidentally trigger the apocalypse before they can survive it.

[BrilliantRain]

Congratulations on funding btw!

The book looks pretty interesting. Thank you for your work!

[branford]

Time to open the Deviant Sub-Forum!

[Eric Zawadzki]

Thanks for the support, everyone. I don't have good access to the forums when I'm at work, so I had to wait until I got home to post here. :-)

[Deinos]

The Divergence is unpredictable and unruly, even for the mightiest conspiracies, and some lack the secret knowledge to induce it at all, but creating or recruiting a Deviant is a Complexity 1 project. As a result, whether or not a Conspiracy can get Deviants is basically ST fiat, as if the system didn't exist, but with numbers...

The Surveillance roll is presented in such a way that it doesn'treally care what the PCs do.

Yeah I agree. Its weird for it to suggest that a conspiracy that is good at it to kill or fail 24 out of 25 times, and then to have a large group of progenitors at a college that make people into deviants every year or even semester. It would be challenging for the US Federal Government to disappear 24 people a year, let alone multitudes of people associated with one college.

The surveillance thing also has a few issues about there being no guidelines for how private-only uses of obvious powers can defer the penalties, or how variations like face stealer and memory theft can hinder the conspiracy.

[muon]

Also, at least as far as the Sixth Number goes, they’re probably going to focus more on trying to find Number 6 (hint: check a small cove up the British Coast) than they are working on their doomsday code, since they think they need six people before they can ascend properly. They wouldn’t want to accidentally trigger the apocalypse before they can survive it.

How is the cohort supposed to interact with them? They don't appear to have any interest in making or capturing Deviants.

[Satchel]

Yeah I agree. Its weird for it to suggest that a conspiracy that is good at it to kill or fail 24 out of 25 times, and then to have a large group of progenitors at a college that make people into deviants every year or even semester.

The DuPont Guest Lecturer Series is a conspiracy that calls upon multiple different Progenitors that have their own methods of inducing Divergence that are at least consistent enough to show results multiple times, and it gives them the resources for one of those results to plausibly be produced annually.

Like, I remember reading the statistic you're alluding to early on in the book, but I can no longer find it and the nearest equivalent I'm finding is the statement that even repeatable processes for inducing Divergence come with unanticipated complications that don't necessarily mean the Divergence doesn't happen.

The surveillance thing also has a few issues about there being no guidelines for how private-only uses of obvious powers can defer the penalties, or how variations like face stealer and memory theft can hinder the conspiracy.

People talk and a conspiracy is by definition composed of more than one person. Cameras and supernatural powers are on the playing field. The whole point of the Web of Pain is that the people that made you what you are are only the barest fraction of an entire ocean of secret manipulators that themselves are plugged into the vast weave of humanity that Deviants mostly have to stay connected to to keep stable.

The only other component of the core surveillance roll besides the highest Overt rating is the conspiracy's Standing — the only "penalty" Overt Scars and Variations apply is that the conspiracy has more dice to roll while it is the spotlight organization in a position to meddle with the cohort during this story. If you don't want to risk any word at all getting back to the conspiracies about you, you don't use obvious powers and you stay off the grid.

How is the cohort supposed to interact with them? They don't appear to have any interest in making or capturing Deviants.

What do you think Six could possibly be?

[Deinos]

Like, I remember reading the statistic you're alluding to early on in the book, but I can no longer find it and the nearest equivalent I'm finding is the statement that even repeatable processes for inducing Divergence come with unanticipated complications that don't necessarily mean the Divergence doesn't happen.

...If you don't want to risk any word at all getting back to the conspiracies about you, you don't use obvious powers and you stay off the grid.

Mmm, yeah, I think I like that interpretation better.

"Even Progenitors who achieve repeat Divergence and have the means to assemble a production line process face failures, irregularities, and complications that they will struggle to predict or understand. These failures come with a body count, either during Divergence or shortly thereafter, as individuals fail to survive Divergence or cannot cope with the enormity of what has happened to them. The greatest variables are always the human beings involved — Progenitors and victims alike."

Hmm yeah, the tone usually strikes me as not requiring like, every conspiracy to require big fat corpse stacks to make deviants (that comes later).

[xiongrey]

Not entirely sure if this should be it's own topic, but now that we have the organization creation rules for both Conspiracies and Krewes, is there going to be an official release that shows off the generic version of this? Both Conspiracies and Krewes have elements that are pretty specific to each but it's obviously built on top of a generic form so hoping that something will be released for that. It would be pretty helpful regardless of the gameline.

[Custos Tenebrarum]

Not entirely sure if this should be it's own topic, but now that we have the organization creation rules for both Conspiracies and Krewes, is there going to be an official release that shows off the generic version of this? Both Conspiracies and Krewes have elements that are pretty specific to each but it's obviously built on top of a generic form so hoping that something will be released for that. It would be pretty helpful regardless of the gameline.

I would buy a Chronicles of Darkness book that's all about organizations (cults, conspiracies, clubs, gangs, etc). With rules for creating them, running them in game as antagonists, PCs working for them, PCs controlling them, etc.

[xiongrey]

I would buy a Chronicles of Darkness book that's all about organizations (cults, conspiracies, clubs, gangs, etc). With rules for creating them, running them in game as antagonists, PCs working for them, PCs controlling them, etc.

Yeah! Something along the same lines as the recent "Companion" books of different lines. That'd be pretty awesome for a blue book!

[Eric Zawadzki]

I'm making another go at Relentless Variation. Feedback appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: Hold off on this, for now. I'm pretty sure I messed up some language ("higher of" and "lower of" are the same thing, right?), but I need to come back to this when I'm not simultaneously listening to Minecraft let's play videos and nursery rhymes.