Deviant: the Renegades

[Omegaphallic]

I put this up, not just because we kniw the subtitle now, but because 860+ posts is alot to wade through for someone new to the topic.

[Second Chances]

So, then. In no particular order, this is what came out at the panel and the booth.

Deviants, also called Remade, are people who've been tranformed into supernatural beings through the action of humans - sometimes even themselves. Unlike, say, being embraced as a vampire or Awakening as a mage, their transformation doesn't have anything guiding it. Their souls crack open under the strain.

Spiritually, Remade lack the ability of normal humans and most supernatural beings to define their own selfhood, and instinctively overcompensate by defining themselves through others; in game mechanics, Deviants have no Virtue/Vice traits, and use something kinda like vampire's touchstones instead. Their two Integrity traits - Loyalty and Conviction - come with touchstones that serve as both virtue/vice, and aspiration.

Deviants' powers are called Variations, and are bought in an unusual manner compared to most splat powers. Each is rolled with an Attribute + Variation's rating + Power trait (well, for the ones that are voluntary, anyway; Deviant also has involuntary and always-on Variations). So far, so standard, except the Variation rating is not determined by how many xp you spend on it; they have a flat cost, but the strength is decided by the player, balanced by both every Variation being linked to a Scar, downsides to the Deviant's transformation, and to the conspiracy that made the Deviant. Remade who are virtually human will have low-impact Scars and opponents who lack much reach.

If a Deviant goes too long without engaging her touchstone-equivalents, though, her Scars worsen. When they get bad enough, the Variations they're linked to also increase (or she manifests new ones, or both) but it's a poor consolation for permenantly becoming less and less human.

For Renegades, the player character Remade, Conviction is like a Vice (easy to fulfil, doesn't stave off further mutation for very long) and Loyalty is like a Virtue (much harder, lasts longer, can even reverse the course of transformation in extreme circumstances). Deviants either harrass their creators or find someone or something worth protecting. If they settle, isolate themselves completely, or lose all touchstones, they go the way of The Fly until - after a short, horrific period of high power - their own Scars kill them.

(Remade who are still working for the conspiracies reverse the effects of Conviction and Loyalty, and will - we plan - be the subject of a sourcebook early on in Deviant's gameline.)

A few more scattershot things:

The power trait mentioned in Variations? Deviants don't start with any dots in it, it can only be bought at major story milestones, and it only goes up to 5. Deviants use their highest-powered Variation plus it as their supernatural tolerance.

The splat axes are Origin and Clade. Origin is how you came to be transformed (volunteered, in vitro, etc), Clade is broadly what kind of thing (cyborg, psychic, etc) you are now. The Storyteller creates your Conspiracy using choices you make in character creation.

We're still in early prototyping stages, but that explains what we're thinking; the interaction of traits and play producing things like the clones sucumbing to their inbuilt disease in Orphan Black, spawn protecting the rough sleepers behind his church, Tetsuo, brindlefly, and many many more cronenburgey protagonists mutating as a parallel to their isolation.

Something I said about it being possible to reenact the end of Akira as a Deviant blows out got picked up by readers as possibly meaning something like Demon's Going Loud, but to be clear - going backward is very, very hard in Deviant. You want to turn into a cathedral of flesh and consume neo-tokyo? the game will let you, but your character won't survive the experience.

Accordingly, we will be devoting much design time and wordcount to how the game will handle replacing members of the chronicle's cast.

For convenience, here's what Dave has spoiled.

[ArcaneArts]

Excellent.

[Omegaphallic]

Thanks second chances.

[atamajakki]

So with the scant information we have now, are there any character concepts you're already cooking up? I really want to make someone who was supposed to be ritually sacrificed as a vessel for a cult's patron, only to survive the rite and steal a fragment of otherworldly power. Now the cult is trying to hunt them down, possibly because they've lost contact with their master and think the death of the vessel will restore it. Possible Mummy crossover?

[JulianMoon]

I hope they include examples of Conspiracies.

[LostLight]

I must say I'm kinda amused that I somehow predicted the subtitle (my nickname for a deviant focused hunter group was "Renegade Chasers"). Anyway, I think I like what I see- the mechanics really seem to support the "unstable template" concept, and the fact that Deviants are not locked into pre-made conspiracies is a really good decision IMO (although I do expect for a number of example conspiracies in the book). The two Morality stats is an interesting concept, and it really reinforce the fact that where most people in the CofD take their sense of self for granted, for the Remade it requires a lot of hard work just to understand who they are. The way Variations and Scar work also seem interesting, although I'll wait for more information for a finale judgement.

as for a character concept- I think I'll go somewhere close to deep sci-fi with lovecraftian horror in the background. Perhaps a Deviant created using technology based on forsaken grimoire, or dreams given by a being from outside existence, or research of a DNA sample found in the depth of the sea of a unknown horror.. heck, if I were to chose the first option, I may go away from the Mythos and use the Book of Raziel the Angel as the grimoire simply because it is already a feature of my chronicles and if I my Deviant can be a reverse engineered Nephilim with synthetic angel blood, then why not?

[atamajakki]

With a little bit of working, Deviant may well fill the niche that the long dead Outsider: the Calling fangame was supposed to.

I hope they include examples of Conspiracies.

A handful of example Conspiracies would be great; I remember at one point the idea of the Cheiron Group and the Ordo Dracul both sneaking into the book was considered, and new organizations are always fun too.

[Aiden]

The concept I keep coming back to is Godtech cyborgs built from the remains of angels and demons by some cult, or the Deva Corporation.

[atamajakki]

The concept I keep coming back to is Godtech cyborgs built from the remains of angels and demons by some cult, or the Deva Corporation.

Don't forget about Utopia Now, who literally scrap and rebuild things with pieces of Infrastructure, Angels, and Demons!

(Godtech is such a good catch-all term for God-Machine stuff, I need to remember that.)

[nofather]

Ivory Claw attempts to genetically engineer moon-proof wolf-blooded.

[ZealousChristian24]

So with the scant information we have now, are there any character concepts you're already cooking up? I really want to make someone who was supposed to be ritually sacrificed as a vessel for a cult's patron, only to survive the rite and steal a fragment of otherworldly power. Now the cult is trying to hunt them down, possibly because they've lost contact with their master and think the death of the vessel will restore it. Possible Mummy crossover?

Somewhat similarly to yours, I had an idea of a scholar kidnaped by a Seer-led Mystery Cult who hoped to sacrifice him in order to call forth an Ochema, only to be "saved" when one of the Seers, secfetly in service to the Gate, deliberately botched the ritual in the hopes of summoning an avatar of their patron. In reality, it just made him, and now he has to flee to keep them from ripping him apart.

Other ideas is a poisonous assasin raised by a rogue scorpion cult who escaped in the course of his intended first kill and a Hunter who was captured by Daeva Corp and escaped, but only after being turned into a telepathic shapeshifting Lizard Man.

[Omegaphallic]

Given Cheron is one of the example conspiracies (most likely), I think hybrids as a Clade are a given. So Deviants with vampire and werewolf grafts, a manikin changelings steam punk eyes, infused with pyros, and other ways of adding in parts, DNA, spiritual essence ect..., from other beings would be ways of going about creating hybrids.

Of course Deviants would be different from Cheron Hunters by the virtue that the hunters are stable and do not scar, the implants have taken properly, and mutating out of control, Deviants are the failed unstable experiments.

[LostLight]

Oh- just thought about another inspiration for a Deviant character: the third exorcists from D.Gray Man. Having the DNA of mechanical demons transplanted into you by an ancient conspiracy through occult technology with the purpose of you eventually becoming a mindless womb to spawn more of your kind is a great concept for a character- and how bad that plan went is truly Deviant-like

[Omegaphallic]

An Alchemist tries to infuse Pyros directly into a stem cell in the hopes of creating an organ that can produce and storage vitroil, and instead the cell mutates and turns into a warped clone of the Alchemist.

A deseperate would is convinced to offer up her unborn child to strange gods by a cult who preforms a ritual "blessing the child", its born different.

A man is bitten by a disease bearing zombie, so he volunteers to let a corporation try an experimental antidote on him and something goes wrong.

A women ends up getting pregnate on a strange plane of existance like the Shadow or the Hedge and ends up "Planetouched".

An Igadim whispers the secrets of unnatural sciences into a Surgeons ears, just before the Doctor preforms surgury on a patient with bone cancer.

So many ideas and its not out yet. I hope it comes with an anthology and/or novels.