ctrlsaltdel

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

@XxFellsingxX that damn crow looks great, consider them approved. i do have to ask what this bird's pronouns are tho =O

so I'm open to a fifth player but 4 seems like plenty to get started with. if everyone agrees, what other business do we need to take care of? does anyone have a recommendation for how often everyone should try to post? i'm thinking roughly every three days but i'll defer to anyone who has a preference.

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

Current Players/Characters

@rush99999 as Luka Durand, the Conductor
@Guardian Angel Haruki as Emily Sanderson, the Virtuoso
@Digmata as Ashley Whitlock, the Navigator
@XxFellsingxX as TBD

[One open slot, no waitlist]

Game Stats

Paranormal: The Awakening

Name: Titus Tafani
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 29 February 1916
Job: Soldier of the Bonnano crime family

Appearance:



Titus is on the short and slight side; his hair and eyes are both dark, and his high cheekbones give him a gaunt, hungry look. Despite his less than impressive stature, he usually carries himself with a confident swagger. His typical outfit is a cheaply made but well-tailed brown plaid suit, which hides his Colt Cobra .38 and a large knife.

Personality:

Outwardly, Titus is an extremely outgoing type, glad-handing everyone he meets. He's often found in the middle of a crowd of people, spreading gossip and asking questions and exchanging favors, always with an eye towards opportunity. Despite often making out like a bandit, he has a reputation for generosity.

Inwardly, Titus is a fairly lonely soul. He has no living family, and though he knows many people by name, he lives alone and rarely drinks with the same person two nights in a row. He sees other people mostly as tools for his own advantage, while at the same time constantly seeking out their company.

Strengths:

- Well-connected in NYC; is a made man of one of the Five Families and has many contacts throughout the city
- Fast talker; good at selling people a bad deal
- Experienced pickpocket/minor thief

Abilities:

- Surprisingly good in a knife fight
- Fast and spry

Backstory:

Titus was born in the Bronx, in 1916; his parents had immigrated only a year before from Sicily, fleeing the oncoming war. His father was a dock worker; his mother took care of him, while also doing other small jobs for their neighbors in order to help put food on the table. As young as five, Titus was enlisted to help, and began working a series of odd jobs--newspaper boy, messenger, waiter, and so on. He learned early on that he had a knack for people, and inevitably started putting that to use fleecing them for their money.

At the age of 14, he had his first encounter with what was still known then as the Marazano crime family when he tried to take the wallet of one of their soldiers. Luckily for him, the man was more impressed than angry, and promised to forgive Titus if he did some work for him. Titus took to being a mob runner like a duck to water, but his parents didn't approve.

Forced to choose between the approval of his parents and his newfound line of work, Titus left home and took up residence in a boarding house.

He spent the next fifteen years working his way up the ranks--selling numbers, convincing local shopkeepers to pay protection fees, running shakedowns, and so on. At some point he became a made man of what had since become to Bonnano family, and has spent his time since thriving in the cracks of New York City.

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

@rush99999 thanks for catching that! (honestly Guardian Angel Haruki's was close enough that I wasn't gonna say anything lol)

@Digmata looks good! only thing i see is that you get one advanced move at character creation, so go ahead and pick one from the list to mark off.

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

@rush99999, looks great! I'm assuming that's the appearance of your player character--have you thought about the appearance of your Eidolon? If you'd prefer to wait to reveal that, that's fine too.

@Guardian Angel Haruki, yours looks good too--the only thing I see is that your Resonant and Dissonant cards need be picked from the neutral cards =)

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

So I would prefer that everyone play a different playbook, just because I think it will be more fun if everyone is working with a different toolbox (so to speak), but if two people really have their hearts set on the same playbook and the powers are different enough then I'm willing to be talked around.

In any case, that power sounds good to me, and Scheherazade is a very appropriate name =D

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self 2E (Interest Check)

OOC is up: roleplayerguild.com/topics/194587-eid…

(now time for me to get back to work =X )

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

Eidolon: Conspiracy Theory

Mario's is a small diner in downtown Buffalo, New York. The furnishings make up for their cheapness with gaudy red and white coloring; even if the chrome fittings could do with a polish they still shine in the dawn sunlight. The hour is early, and the restaurant is almost empty, but the smell of cooking grease and strong coffee hang heavy in the air as the staff prepare for the coming breakfast rush. A waitress behind the counter watches the few patrons for empty coffee cups, while they in turn tend to their meals with various levels of lethargy. Viewed without context, the scene could be set in any of a hundred thousand diners throughout the country.

Each of our heroes finds themselves in this place, at this time. Yet it is not quite right to call them heroes, for at this moment they are common, ordinary people, much like the diner itself. They are picking at their eggs, sipping their coffees, preparing for work or bed as their circumstances may be, as they presumably have many times before.

Suddenly the door flies open, apparently of its own accord. It hits a rack of classifieds, which are sent scattering. Objects on the bar and tables start exploding, following a path down the lobby. Salt shakers and ketchup bottles send fragments of glass flying everywhere. Near the end of the bar, a plastic display case full of pie tumbles off its perch, and a waiter standing stunned in the back of house entryway is pushed over by an invisible force.

From the kitchen can be heard the sounds of falling pots and pans, as if a wild animal were wreaking havoc, but for a few moments the dining room is quiet. A patron might have enough time to catch their breath and check themselves for cuts. They might even have enough time to look out the front windows and see a man in a cheap suit standing on the sidewalk out front, with a look of concentration on his face.

Then the diner erupts into flame, killing everyone inside.

-----

You wake up with a start. The plastic of the barstool creaks below you; you are sitting at a black plywood bar in what seems to be a dance club of some kind. With the house lights up, the whole place looks cheap and dirty. Overflowing trash cans stand near the walls, bits of lank streamers hang from the exposed rafters, and sticky spots on the bar and floor where drinks were spilled the night before have yet to be wiped up.

A slightly-built man stands behind the bar, grabbing the edge with both hands. He looks to be pushing fifty; his over-tanned skin makes it hard to tell one way or the other, and contrasts sharply with his ice-blue eyes. He's wearing a tassled black leather vest with nothing underneath, and a pair of tight leather pants the same color. His mouth is open in a toothy grin, and his teeth are the same gaudy gold of the massive lightbulb-studded sign above the liquor, which reads "EDEN". In front of you on the bar is a card--different in size and shape from a normal playing card--which has been placed face down. As you look back and forth, you see that the other barstools are occupied by other people from the diner you were just in; like you, they seem to be unharmed, and they also have cards placed in front of them.

"Well, hello." The man's voice is deep, melodic, and ripe with the affected charm of a used car salesman. "I've been expecting you." He gestures widely, with both hands, to the cards sitting in front of you. "You're all dead. But, if you're interested, I may have a deal to offer you."

General Notes

The system we will be using is Eidolon: Become Your Best Self, inspired by Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Persona. I'm planning to run with 3-5 players.

I'll be providing the character sheets and cheat sheets publicly for reference. I'd like to recommend that you purchase the full rules from itch.io to support the creators, but if you can't do that for whatever reason and want to join, PM me and I can get you a copy.

The setting is present day USA; the world is like real life unless otherwise stated. Per the blurb, we'll be starting in New York state, but I expect travel to be a significant part of the campaign.

As far as content goes, swearing, sexual references, violence, etc are all fine, but I'd like any sexual content past first base to fade to black. (Naturally, this is in addition to whatever lines the players have; if there's something you just don't want brought up or even mentioned in the game, let me know, whether that's particularly graphic violence, mentions of suicide, spiders, etc.)

Content warnings for the story as planned include police brutality, conspiracy thought, and general violence and mayhem, including in crowded areas.

For full disclosure, this is my first time DMing this system, as well as my first time DMing play-by-post. Please don't hesitate to tell me if there's something I'm doing which isn't working for you so we can talk it out!

Character Creation

- Your character should be an ordinary person, who has not previously had contact with the Undertow or anything else explicitly supernatural (unless you want to play the Veteran and we discuss it, see below)

- I'm interested in seeing complex characters--people who don't see themselves as heroes, people who are in it just to save their own skin, people who can't live up to their own ideals, all great. What I don't particularly want to see are out-and-out villains--characters who harm others just for the hell of it.

- As far as playbooks go:
- The Wildcard is off limits for this game
- If you want to run the Veteran, Beast, or Inhuman, check in with me first so we can discuss your concept
- I'd prefer if each person had a different playbook, but I won't make it an absolute requirement so long as their powers don't end up being too similar

- I'm going to start this just a little railroad-y, with a pre-planned encounter; until that's done, don't feel like you need to worry about ties. That said, if you want to discuss among yourselves and do some ahead of then, that's fine with me.

- If you want to come to me with a completed character sheet, that's great; if you'd rather draw up a rough character idea and talk it over first, that's great too!

How I Run Things

- I'm definitely interested in this being a more collaborative experience. Eidolon 2E includes several explicit mechanisms for allowing the players to wrest control of the game world away from the GM, and I think in general games are more interesting when the players aren't afraid to confidently say things that make sense about the world. I'd rather you do something and we maybe have to backtrack on it than I would everyone waiting on me for everything. I've found that some of the best plot moments in games I've run have come from ideas tossed off by the players.

- This is in the rulebook, but it bears repeating because my priorities are the same. Rule 1 is: do everything you can to ensure that everyone at the table is having a good time. Rule 2 is: Always play in service of telling a good, interesting, exciting story. Nothing should get in the way of Rule 1, and only Rule 1 should get in the way of Rule 2. If at any point you aren't having fun, please let me know immediately so we can work out how to move forward. By the same token, if you have an idea for something you think would make a good story and want to talk it out with me or with the group as a whole, don't hesitate to bring it up!

- I've GM'd TTRPGS and done PBP RP before, but never both at the same time, and I've never done PBP in a GM/player format. To some degree, I'll be looking to the rest of you for cues on how best to handle things like time limits for posting, etc, so please be patient with me. That said, I'll do my best to practice basic courtesy, e.g. letting y'all know when I'll be absent, and I ask that you do the same.

Links

Playbooks
Cheat Sheet

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self 2E (Interest Check)

Nice, three is the minimum number of ppl I wanted so I'll start working on an OOC post =D

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self 2E (Interest Check)

From the blurb: Eidolon: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop RPG for 2-6 players. Look deep inside yourself to find the power lying dormant within, nourish that power through the bonds you build with others, and use the reality-bending abilities it grants you to fight for your ideals, fighting against the pull of the Undertow, the psychic tides that dictate the collective unconscious!

From me: Eidolon is a game that draws from influences such as Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Persona. Players take on the role of otherwise ordinary people who have--either through internal struggle or external influence--manifested the force of their personality into an entity called an Eidolon, and thereby gained extraordinary powers. With these powers, they must fight against those who seek to manipulate the collective unconscious of humanity for their own gain--both to preserve their own lives and to prevent the eventual subjugation and ruin of mankind. Along the way, they can draw upon the strength of their bonds with their teammates and NPCs to achieve greater feats than they are capable of alone, and--eventually--will have to face down their own fears and shortcomings in order to proceed.

The system started out as a Powered by the Apocalypse hack in its first edition, and the second edition keeps some of those bones, but it replaces the dice-based resolution mechanic with one based on drawing Tarot cards.

The game deck is made up of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana; each of them is assigned a polarity which determines what level of success the "roll" has, and a forecast which the GM can use as a prompt for describing the outcome.

When a player character takes an action that has a chance of failure, they draw a number of cards from the deck indicated by the relevant character stat, and choose one from the spread; its polarity and forecast determine the results of their action.

Cards that are used are discarded until the deck is exhausted and reshuffled; that means that each positive card you use makes a negative result more likely down the road, so with each choice it's necessary to think about how important success really is.

Example: A player draws to break into a secure location. Their ELEgance stat is 2, so they draw two cards: The Emperor and The Moon. The player selects The Emperor. That card has a neutral polarity, so the player succeeds, but their success is qualified or incomplete. The forecast of the Emperor is "You break something", so the GM declares that they manage to gain access, but the lock they tried to force is broken, and the next guard to come along will notice.

(I can share the full rules upon request via DM)

Full disclosure: This is not my first time GMing, but it would be my first time GMing play-by-post, as well as my first time running this particular system. I have concerns about how the resolution mechanic will translate to play-by-post, since it requires a back-and-forth between the GM and the player rather than just a straight dice roll, but I'm excited enough about this system to try working that out.

Other Notes: Though the sourcebook does make it clear that you can run other settings, I'm planning to go with the default "present day, present time", likely set in a medium-sized US city (TBD). I'm also leaning towards something with more of an action focus rather than something slower-paced and cerebral, but I'm happy to let the players choose a direction for that in the moment. As far as group size and level, I'm looking for 3-5 players who can post at least one or two well-written paragraphs at a time.

(Side note: If you're curious about seeing the system in action, the makers have a playtest podcast under the name "Eidolon Playtest"; the 2E rules are in use from the 3rd season on.)