Dead But Not Gone: Ghosts

[Kyeudo]

Back during Second Edition, I did a revision of the ghost rules presented in Roll of Glorious Divinity II to make them more player friendly. A bit after Third Edition was released, I started work on creating an updated version to hopefully release alongside the "Year In Black". Despite taking far longer than expected, my project has finished. The Year In Black is still distant on the horizon, but quality takes time, but in the meantime you can try to satisfy your urge for Underworld content with what I've put together.

Dead But Not Gone: Ghosts is 200 pages of setting material, Grave Goods, Hearthstones, Evocations, Arcanoi, and antagonists for anyone wanting to run a game involving ghosts or the Underworld. Even if you don't want to use my rules as given, it's also a gold mine for ideas, from setting elements to Artifacts.

I hope you all enjoy the book and I'd love to hear what you think of it.

[Nemastoncito]

i'm curious about the decisión to make the essence pool ([essencex20]+15) instead of the value of 50+(10 x essece) given to most spirits in 3e so far.

[Kyeudo]

I'd love to tell you it was for some important reason, but I honestly can't remember why I did that.

[Nemastoncito]

Oh okay, i'been reading the arcanoi and they're really cool in concept. I will make use of them for my campaing in the underworld. Thanks!

[Darkfoxdev]

I really love the selection of Grave Goods you have listed here, I suspect I'll be consulting it long after the Abyssals/Underworld book drops.

[Kyeudo]

i'm curious about the decisión to make the essence pool ([essencex20]+15) instead of the value of 50+(10 x essece) given to most spirits in 3e so far.

I finally remembered why I decided to change it. I didn't like the progression from 60 motes to 100 motes as the range for ghost Essence pools. I felt it made more sense for ghosts to be initially very limited in terms of how much gas they had in the tank.

I really love the selection of Grave Goods you have listed here, I suspect I'll be consulting it long after the Abyssals/Underworld book drops.

Glad you like them. Any particular favorites?

[Darkfoxdev]

Glad you like them. Any particular favorites?

In terms of the basic grave goods:

The night mother dolls are hands down my favourite.
The compass of desire seems like an excellent tool for narratives.
Everwarm cloak, it just seems very wholesome.
Effigy building makes me very amused, like death is just the start of an RTS game.


And of those with evocations:

The lantern of fireflies would be a lot of fun to use and will almost certainly turn up in a game I run.
Carrion crow is a delight and I fully intend to reskin this as a soulsteel artifact for an abyssal if I have a chance to play one.
Jetabi is lovely, I love every artifact made with esoteric materials.

[Kyeudo]

Anyone else with comments? Is everyone interested still reading through or did this project just fall in the gap between good enough and great?

[Beans]

The Arcanos trees mixing and matching Abilities is interesting, but part of me wonders if it could get a little awkward in practice. Vaguely wondering if variable Ability requirements could work there (i.e. requiring 4 dots of Presence or Performance, etc).

Overall it's a neat resource!

[NewK]

It's very, very nice. I like the description of the Underworld and that's what I'm going to go with in the future.

[Moss Reynholm]

Anyone else with comments? Is everyone interested still reading through or did this project just fall in the gap between good enough and great?

Sorry, been meaning to say – I've only skimmed this thus far but thoroughly enjoyed what I've seen. Will be keen to try and work some of it into our game. Thanks for sharing it.

[Kyeudo]

The Arcanos trees mixing and matching Abilities is interesting, but part of me wonders if it could get a little awkward in practice. Vaguely wondering if variable Ability requirements could work there (i.e. requiring 4 dots of Presence or Performance, etc).

Most of the Arcanoi keep the number of Abilities used a lot down to three in most cases and most are thematically linked. Chains of the Ancient Monarchs has a lot of Brawl and Athletics, Scholarly Ways is mostly Lore, Investigation, and Occult, Heatless Flame Art is mostly Presence and Performance, etc.

While variable Ability requirements would be something to experiment with, I actually did want ghosts to be somewhat awkward. Their advancement was meant to be less fluid and direct than the Exalted, where a 5 in an Ability at Character Creation won't necessarily carry you all the way to the end of the tree or get you all the goodies along the way.

[Lioness]

Mixed feelings.

I'm not really a fan of how Arcanoi worked in previous editions, so this is broadly speaking a little too faithful to that for my tastes.
However, I do really like some of the Grave Goods and their Evocations. The Broken Blade especially jumps out as evocative if I was going to present a ghostly antagonist.

Additional thoughts:
Burning Betrayal fits better as the grave goods of the guard (maybe he didn't make it out in time?) rather than the murder weapons of the wife and her lover yet manifesting the power to punish people like them.

[Sith_Happens]

Dead But Not Gone: Threads

[pcontop]

About the grave goods, I saw that the example evocation goods had stats like artifacts. So, there should be artifact-like goods with similar point costs (instead of just exceptional bonuses)? If they can have the same stats and evocations, would there be any benefit of a soulsteel weapon over a grave good?