Minor/Anomalous Clan: Shiryo, the Spectres

[Stupid Loserman]

I wrote this clan up for a game taking place in a modified form of the Tokyo setting in Blood & Smoke, and I think it came out well enough to share in case it helps anyone else out.

Design Notes:
I like my exception cases and anomalies. The Shiryo are a clan of vampires who cannot Embrace. At some point in history, the vampires of Tokyo discovered, or developed, an ability to "uplift" revenants and other forms of "lesser" undead (left to Storyteller judgment) into more Shiryo, but they may not always have been capable of this, and they remain unable to Embrace the living or the properly dead. They cannot even produce proper revenants themselves. Instead, they demonstrate an unusual rate of spontaneous generation. The circumstances necessary are ambiguous, but seem to involve unclean or unresolved deaths. Dead men and women who never had any contact with vampires in their living days find themselves risen as blood-drinking Spectres.
I like crossover and exploration. The Shiryo are intentionally a step away from the "core" experience of Requiem, in that they live with one step in the spirit world. Their signature Discipline, Musubi (in addition to denoting tasty sushi, it also refers to binding, connecting or concluding, and specifically the ropes bound around natural objects in which kami reside in Shinto belief), revolves around spiritual influences and becoming a ghostly predator. Vampires remain limited in their dalliances away from this world, and so Musubi has a boundary that ends in Twilight rather than moving into the Shadow or the Underworld, but the presence of the Shiryo in any significant quantity is disadvised for chronicles not wishing to brush against the outer reaches. For chronicles that are friendly to exploring these reaches, consider Musubi a potential substitute for the Blood Tenebrous Discipline - of course, you'll need a taste of Shiryo blood to learn it...
Hints without answers. The Hungry Ghost power at five dots of Musubi results in an entity that could be mistaken for, though it is not, an Owl. Why? You decide. The Shiryo clan is written as most populous in Japan and Eastern China, but the information suggesting Shiryo proliferation beyond these areas verges on outright contradiction. Intentional. Adjust to taste. And what deal exactly did Qin Shihuangdi strike in exchange for the power to unite the Middle Kingdom?

Download the short PDF here.

[PenDragon]

This is magnificent. I've got a game based in Japan brewing and was looking for some Kindred presence. Appears I've found it.

Adding this to the homebrew thread. Fantastic job.

[Stupid Loserman]

I'm very pleased that you liked it! And you're welcome to add it to the homebrew thread, thank you.

[Tatterdemalion King]

I like the ideas in there quite a bit. A couple things niggle me though (but luckily very little).

The usage of the term Middle Kingdom; I know old KotE and cWoD used it a lot but... does this have any common RL usage or nWoD usage? Who actually refers to a portion of Asia under this term?

Other than that I'm iffy on is the level 5; why does a full track of Lethal Damage using Musubi outright destroy the individual using it? Even the Sta-Au devotion that allows them to walk as a Ghost for an hour doesn't suffer that sort of vulnerability (though re-materializing in Torpor isn't exactly a much better situation to be in).

For a group that deals heavily with ephemeral entities, miraculously learning the power with no explanation, 5 new Numina that don't have ties back to other things, getting a swatch of influences, adding a portion of your BP to your highest appropriate attribute listings seems a bit arbitrary (though the BP bit does help put them more on par with the trait caps of spiritual entities instead of punked, so I can get that).

Personal opinion of course, but I think these would be better served having a reason to barter with ephemeral entities down the road earlier down in the Discipline listing, and to give the level 5 some reasons for why they get what they do without tutelage. Once again, looking at the Sta-Au, if you want to figure out Numina, you learn them and purchase them past your basic abilities; giving the Musubi user 1 to start, more to learn might work out while keeping the other facets intact. There's much more story incentive for a higher level Musubi user to go out and do what's in their clan write-up with that consideration in place that way.

I see Influence coming naturally, but there could be clearer guidelines for what Influences would be most appropriate, what the levels of it are capped at and distributed and what, if you just get 5 Numina, would make the most sense beyond a free grab-bag. Examples would be good here beyond ST-Fiat of witchy darkness related things. It should relate -heavily- as to who the Shiryo is as an individual rather than another grab bag of spookiness given the power is a manifestation of The Beast and The Blood.

Otherwise what you get is basically a level 5 that gives you 5 more new powers on top of the existing benefits and powers it has that can mitigate the need of learning out of clans Disciplines; emotional influencing, driving people made, terrorizing and so on? I could learn Majesty or Nightmare, or Dominate... or I could just grab a Numina that does something like that and justify it as "spooky ghost power". Speaking from experience on this, having a loose guideline will help here, or giving incentives to purchase them. The ST can say no; but there should be a clearer presentation on what's appropriate, and what the ST should look at as making sense to work with the player.

Given Anchors in B&S there may be some additional traction for giving a nod to the Jiang-Shi with these guys (who have some loose similarities conceptually); what about the idea of Lethal/Torpor in that state tying to that somehow? Reappearing near an achor, or an ability to travel from achor to anchor quickly like a ghost in that form? Perhaps as a Devotion/alternate level? The whole odd travelling bit about them in the writeup could be reinforced via this above and beyond the Twilight power, and reinforce the notion that they're more half-ghost-like in a way. This way you can actually have this Clan as something of a bridge between the two as a nod; anomalous and not embracing because they aren't -quite- standard Kindred. Yet. Almost, but not quite yet...

These are all just suggestions, but the level 5 got me thinking quite a bit; overall I think the write up is pretty solid but it definitely gets me brainstorming a bit.

[Gnomish American]

I really like this!

[Stupid Loserman]

In English, "Middle Kingdom" is an anachronism when speaking of modern China, and I wouldn't have used it when speaking of the current state. It remains in current usage in other languages, however; written in hanzi, the country's name remains 中国, literally "middle country" or "middle nation." The traditional Chinese view of the world considered China to be at the center of the world, and even Japan, or 日本 ("the sun's origin"), received its name from Chinese correspondence referring to it as where the sun rises — east of the middle kingdom.

I understand Hungry Ghost is a bit of a kludgy power in comparison, and I feel pretty satisfied with Musubi that it's just the final power that gave you the majority of pause. I hadn't looked at the Sta-Au devotion in some time, and I might consider that alternative; the goal was to counterbalance the Hungry Ghost with benefits and weaknesses, however. You gain some appropriate versatility, and you're pretty beefy in terms of Attributes, but you don't scale up as well as higher Rank spirits, and you're more physically vulnerable against an enemy who can exploit your bane or otherwise reach twilight beings than when you don't have it up. It's very much intended to give you reasons not to be a hungry ghost all the time. That said, I'm still thinking on it, and there may be better ways to balance it. You might try having the resulting spirit keep its normal Attributes and Skills, substituting appropriate dice pools for Numina.

It's already a beast of word-count, pretty much the size of the rest of the Discipline, so I figured Storytellers and players could use common sense in adjudicating what Numina and Influences are appropriate for a hungry ghost, rather than assuming players would take random Numina. General domains I considered appropriate include things like darkness, smoke, cold, predatory and scavenger animals, general physical and social influence in the form of Numina — really, I wouldn't want to limit the player's choice too much by implying a complete list of appropriate themes. Does it feel like a spooky ghost story? Does it fit with the themes of Blood & Smoke? Roll like that.

Thank you for your thoughts! I appreciate that you liked it enough that these details stood out so much to you in contrast.

[Stupid Loserman]

Taking Tatterdemalion's comments into consideration, I've changed the PDF with an updated version of the Hungry Ghost power. I've laid out the information about the power in a little more orderly fashion (vampire traits applicable, spirit traits applicable, powers and activation), altered the destruction and Attributes/Skills, reduced the number of Numina by a couple, and added a paragraph of rough guidance on selecting Numina and Influences, though they remain very broad. I like this version better, being a little more balanced and more importantly, more play-friendly, because you continue to use the dot ratings you already have on your sheet. Thanks for your input, man.

I also edited the reference to vampires using Twilight Projection, as upon consideration, vampires in astral form are not actually tangible to other entities in twilight. So that example is just ghosts, spirits and angels now.

[NeoTiamat]

*whistles* Very impressive indeed! I have a ghostly necromancer Kindred in my campaign for whom this would be perfect.

[PenDragon]

A few minor notes on Musubi.

• Shadewalker should probably be a reflexive action. Also, what's it's duration? One scene? One night? Indefinite? (having a "Duration" field for each discipline helps clear this up)
• The dice pool on Cull the Mystic Herd is pointless, the penalty will almost never be enough to make the power fail. And when it does fail it will feel like the player went through a bunch of hard work (feeding off a high Rank being) for nothing. With the restriction that the vampire has to feed on the target first I think it's safe to make it unrolled.

That's about all. Again, excellent work.

[Stupid Loserman]

Happily noted. The intent behind Shade Walker was that it enhances the functionality of Psychopomp, so it goes through that power's mechanics - that is to say, it's reflexive and lasts for up to a scene, though you can shut Shade Walker off and leave Psychopomp on. I think I might as well just set the latter to indefinite, though, as since there is no roll and no cost, there is nothing stopping you from activating it every scene. So: Shade Walker one scene, Psychopomp indefinite.

I'll update the PDF again fairly soon; it's expanding into a brief historical supplement for the Tokyo setting prior to World War II, for the purpose of assembling the histories of older Kindred.

[Yossarian]

I really like this. I might throw them in (along with the Jiang Shi) into the game I'm planning. Players won't know what the hell's going on.

Makes me want a whole "Clan Weirdo" book.

[FallenEco]

The only problem I have with it, (and I do mean only, it's quite good), is that now Obsfuscate is the most common clan discipline.

I'll try to to keep that in mind when I give the lost clans a stab.

[Baaldam]

Nice to see people tinkering with the idea of lost clans here and there - i have one of my own created as a sort of answer/revenge for a Player's insistence in a sire from roman times in what was intended as a mostly city-locked modern game set in Brazil. So i gave him Victrix, or at least my almost-khaibit seeming variant, Valeria.

Might take some time to put it on a topic of my own when i'm back home, or before, if i have something in my flash drive.

[Yossarian]

I've been running a Requiem for Rome game where one of the players is a Vrykolakas, from the most literal reading of Greek legends possible. He's a bloated corpse who can fly and has to sleep on Saturdays. I should write them up in more detail.

[Baaldam]

I've been running a Requiem for Rome game where one of the players is a Vrykolakas, from the most literal reading of Greek legends possible. He's a bloated corpse who can fly and has to sleep on Saturdays. I should write them up in more detail.

Would be interesting to see - how did you make him up in your game?