Ruins of Khazan - A Rumbles RPG - Sign Up/System Test

[Sharpandpointies]

I see. Not a big Souls player besides ER

Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with the Souls game. Tried one, wasn't my thing. I know they're pretty popular, though.

As mentioned elsewhere it's personally funny to hear y'all talk about Codex because I'm like 90% sure I was also in the game and remember absolutely nothing. I've tried to think of who it was a couple times now. Not a name, not a concept, not even the powerset. Goes to show how different my thought process was for characters back then I think lol, I mostly viewed the rpgs here more as a powerset exercise then anything consistently character based.

Okay, I have Sharker as Tlazolteotl and you undecided between Kali, Hela and Isis (your character name was Gayathri Verma). That's the first thing I find while looking through the old files, anyway. I doubt you stuck it out with this character or at least with the Kali idea - when I finally got around to joining, nobody was using Kali or Durga (or I wouldn't have gone for that).

Whoops! Later on, you post a new character: Laurence Creed, who is actually Apollo. That sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe you stuck with that one?

Probably! I actually ended up running the numbers for fun yesterday and in system it'd be tough to really be effective in both mind and body without me doing some drastic allowances with her traits i.e, trying to set a trait to allow one stat to be used in lieu of another, which would definitely be a tossup if it would be allowed.

Sometimes character concepts CAN be tricky to stat up in a system...one reason ports into new systems don't always work (it's hard to get something that satisfactorily matches the old character - most of the time, it's better to rebuild them from the ground up with a similar concept).

That is a good point yeah. I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned but it does stretch beyond the fantasy characters as well. Obviously someone like Black Widow falls victim to some of this sort of seductress and to some extent waif-fu type stuff but then there's also just off the top of my head Juri from street fighter (introduced with a sort of psychosexual bent, gets technically better over time in costuming and personality and such but still has that past to her) and Sadira (who I like in that she at least her character is moreso just "lethal assassin who wants to be the best" without the other baggage but still looks like *that*. There's definitely a type.

Absolutely. Fantasy and comics in general haven't been great to women, though we're getting some better representation.

I still recall CJ Cherryh's irritation at the first edition of Gate of Ivrel (starring an actually well-written woman in a fantasy/sci-fi series, no surprise there) that features Morgaine in a fur bikini. It's awful, and scratch-zero like what the character actually wears. *sighs*

Whereas with the spider paladin character my main interest from both seeing the image that inspired her and because of a thought for a character I'd already been pondering that could be cool was "how do I make a paladin that's dark, but isn't just a completely fallen paladin (which is kind of totally different in my eyes)".

Again, absolutely. Art kind of showed you weren't getting into the same creepy ideas.

Which in practice means she fights and acts more like the dark paladin mirror than the spider types I can think of. She either punches things real hard or cuts them in half with her sword, takes blows on her armor, or sets up a social manipulation or mental attack win. Although granted she'll be more likely to do the punching and slashing from behind than a more stereotypical paladin too. I think in my mind I just decided to angle away from that sort of fighting because, well, that's Jane's thing (especially when she really starts to unleash her techniques) ^_^

Hey, armored warriors fight like armored warriors. No surprise there, and very realistic. ^_^ Zero issues with attacking from behind, myself, so...

The seductress thing also isn't really her bag even with the whole manipulation aspect either. It'd be a bit more complicated.

Good - there's quite enough of that already, floating around in the ethers. ^_^

For example I recently thought up a story for her that she could tell as a sort of an establishing moment. It involved a third person narrative of an enforcer and brilliant criminal being interrogated over the course of weeks. She'd go to great lengths to play up the criminal's intelligence and calculated attacks as the criminal works to undermine the investigator and looks to be getting free slowly, sounding somewhat admiring, until the listener would think she was describing herself. Then as the story wraps up she reveals that, of course, she was the enforcer, and the attacks by the criminal, both psychological and as a form of actual psychic contagion having physical effects, were all actually ineffective/baited out by her. She had played the role to examine the full capacities of her target and established for months beforehand an elaborate false persona to be targeted in very particular ways (as she would have done herself) and was now finished with her task. She would speak her approval of the criminal's capabilities, who would then be taken to be given to her goddess as worthy prey/sacrifice.

Nice, and good twist. Wish I could have seen this character in play, would definitely have been fun to play opposite them. ^_^

Thanks! Quite possibly, although she wasn't as far along as some.

Ah Tasha. She was certainly a handful, iirc.

A handful of something, anyway. I don't often play homicidal monsters, but when I do...I like to make sure they can at least work with the group while rearranging peoples' bodies in interesting and lethal ways.

[Nik Hasta]

I see. Not a big Souls player besides ER yet but this Bone Keeper is also inspired by a Souls guy right? The big guy in Souls 1.

Assuming you mean Gravelord Nito? Not really to be honest. While I kind of ended up with something that wouldn't be a million miles away in terms of visual design (bones, many skeletal arms and dark robes), the idea was more centred on the concept of "benevolent stalking presence," and "no one gets to kill you apart from me," rather than cribbing from the bone daddy himself.

An earlier version didn't have the bone collecting mechanic and was more akin to like Kraven the Hunter kind of vibes. I then felt it would stretch credulity to have an ostensibly regular guy just following the party through all the crazy stuff they go through without being noticed so I came up with the idea of putting the guy in a PC's shadow. That probably came from me reading Solo Levelling which has a lot of shadow-beast stuff in it, at the time.

So, then it was like a shadow creature, not dissimilar to the shadow cat enemies from Devil May Cry or Rakshas from Berserk



(Always loved Rakshas' design)

So then I wanted the threat of what it would do to the player to be a bit more emphatic beyond a the threat of being hunted or killed. That felt a bit too toothless to me. So, around the time I came up with Debilitating Strike as a condition in-game (formally Bone Breaking) I thought "What if this character doesn't necessarily want to kill the player but wants to takeaway away some of their bones permanently?"

My loose plan was that if the PC chooses to social link well with the Bone Keeper and doesn't choose to activate the boss-fight, he would satisfy himself with maybe a single rib and a few fingers and leave them in peace. If the relationship worsens, he would whisper about taking their skull or spine or both legs. Freaky kind of stuff for a PC to hear in the quiet moments where they are by themselves. ^_^

So while ended up being Nito adjacent visually, for once I didn't crib from Souls for this one haha.

At very least since Jane has no bones she would probably be alright

I was thinking it would be likely Kinu would get the attention of the Keeper. Good strong bones in her.

[Sharpandpointies]

End of (full, not part) first post.

I will never forget you. And I will find you.

Somehow.

End of final post.

“There you are.”

...I didn't even plan that. O_o

[Beadle]

*looks in*

So… it’s all over, is it?

I’m really sorry I didn’t get to bring my messed up creation into the campaign. Life has been consistently 200mph since the start of the year.

Did everyone have fun?

Did you get the playtest feedback you needed, Nik?

[Sharpandpointies]

*looks in*

So… it’s all over, is it?

I’m really sorry I didn’t get to bring my messed up creation into the campaign. Life has been consistently 200mph since the start of the year.

Very sorry to hear about the 200mph life.

That makes two of us being sad you couldn't continue. Number one, I was hoping to play with you again, as you're always a good PbPer. Number two, your character looked crazy interesting, which is completely unsurprising (see number one). ^_^

Number three is admittedly a tad selfish: had we but one more player, Nik might not have cancelled the game.

Did everyone have fun?

Had a good time - some really good RP'ers and characters. Would have liked to continue.

[Nik Hasta]

*looks in*

So… it’s all over, is it?

I’m really sorry I didn’t get to bring my messed up creation into the campaign. Life has been consistently 200mph since the start of the year.

Did everyone have fun?

Did you get the playtest feedback you needed, Nik?

No need to apologise, life happens and takes precedence.

Yeah, I definitely got a lot of useful feedback and, for the first actually serious RPG system that I've built, I'm pretty happy with the results.

The next one, which might not end up here tbh, will be better.

I'm going to maybe one more post in here, just generally reflecting on the game, the system and the process of it all.

[Postmania]

Y'know, it did make me think of the Golden Compass. One of the kids in that series has some kind of dimension-cutting knife, so I was expecting it was going to turn out Trevor had something like that.

Hmm, maybe that's why the kid with a knife idea felt familiar to me

Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with the Souls game. Tried one, wasn't my thing. I know they're pretty popular, though.

I'm more open to them now after putting hundreds of hours into Elden Ring, but the older games definitely have things that drop my interest on first glance on top of any difficulty, such as item durability or just being generally a bit slower.

Okay, I have Sharker as Tlazolteotl and you undecided between Kali, Hela and Isis (your character name was Gayathri Verma). That's the first thing I find while looking through the old files, anyway. I doubt you stuck it out with this character or at least with the Kali idea - when I finally got around to joining, nobody was using Kali or Durga (or I wouldn't have gone for that).

Whoops! Later on, you post a new character: Laurence Creed, who is actually Apollo. That sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe you stuck with that one?

Huh. I don't recall those earlier ones, but Creed definitely was me I think. I'm going to take a guess Past Me picked him to use some sort of light construct/manipulation, and it was vague exactly what he could do. This is so he could do almost anything if he wanted to?

Absolutely. Fantasy and comics in general haven't been great to women, though we're getting some better representation.

I still recall CJ Cherryh's irritation at the first edition of Gate of Ivrel (starring an actually well-written woman in a fantasy/sci-fi series, no surprise there) that features Morgaine in a fur bikini. It's awful, and scratch-zero like what the character actually wears. *sighs*

Ah, fantasy cover art is probably another thing as well. Not as bad as some but the Wheel of Time art I recall being panned in parts for being rather cheesy.

Nice, and good twist. Wish I could have seen this character in play, would definitely have been fun to play opposite them. ^_^

Indeed. Being in the game would have been interesting too

A handful of something, anyway. I don't often play homicidal monsters, but when I do...I like to make sure they can at least work with the group while rearranging peoples' bodies in interesting and lethal ways.

From what I recall she wasn't always homicidal, but maybe I'm only remembering her seeming not always homicidal to the characters

Assuming you mean Gravelord Nito? Not really to be honest. While I kind of ended up with something that wouldn't be a million miles away in terms of visual design (bones, many skeletal arms and dark robes), the idea was more centred on the concept of "benevolent stalking presence," and "no one gets to kill you apart from me," rather than cribbing from the bone daddy himself.
I was thinking it would be likely Kinu would get the attention of the Keeper. Good strong bones in her.

Ah, that does sound pretty creepy to have around. Also reminds me of No-face from Spirited Away for some reason.

End of (full, not part) first post.


End of final post.


...I didn't even plan that. O_o

Ha, I think I subconsciously expected that. It felt right.

*looks in*

So… it’s all over, is it?

I’m really sorry I didn’t get to bring my messed up creation into the campaign. Life has been consistently 200mph since the start of the year.

Did everyone have fun?

Did you get the playtest feedback you needed, Nik?

Well I had a blast. Definitely would have been neat to have you here too, both for character stuff and setting stuff if you see what Nik wrote about plans for us

But yeah, totally get life stuff getting in the way, it happens.

No need to apologise, life happens and takes precedence.

Yeah, I definitely got a lot of useful feedback and, for the first actually serious RPG system that I've built, I'm pretty happy with the results.

The next one, which might not end up here tbh, will be better.

I'm going to maybe one more post in here, just generally reflecting on the game, the system and the process of it all.

Feel free to mention it here, I'm def up to at least checking out any future ideas from ya

[Sharpandpointies]

I'm more open to them now after putting hundreds of hours into Elden Ring, but the older games definitely have things that drop my interest on first glance on top of any difficulty, such as item durability or just being generally a bit slower.

Totally understood. Older games decided, often, to get exceedingly granular in odd ways. Ie, rather than put all of that focus into interesting stuff like a HIGHLY detailed skill system or the like, they'd focus less on that and more on 'item durability', as you note.

Huh. I don't recall those earlier ones, but Creed definitely was me I think. I'm going to take a guess Past Me picked him to use some sort of light construct/manipulation, and it was vague exactly what he could do. This is so he could do almost anything if he wanted to?

Probably? I could page through the gazillion Codex pages...actually, no, I'm not doing that. ^_^

Ah, fantasy cover art is probably another thing as well. Not as bad as some but the Wheel of Time art I recall being panned in parts for being rather cheesy.

Oh, man...Wheel of Time. It wasn't massively poor with regards to being sexist (edit: on the covers!), but the cover art for all the books was so riddled with inaccuracies that I recall (like, waaaaay back, early 2000's) reading a post on some geocities website about all of the problems with each of the covers to that point and just convulsing in my chair with laughter, it was so well-written. ^_^

From what I recall she wasn't always homicidal, but maybe I'm only remembering her seeming not always homicidal to the characters

Probably. Tasha had Orochi blood, the Orochi being the dark Aeon of destruction and all manner of awful things. She constantly had the urge to basically kill everything around her, and her mind compensated for that by disassociating to the point where she often-times could barely function - she called it the White Space, but it was basically an inability to think clearly and a huge distance from her feelings. Without it, she would have been killed years ago, when she was still a child, so...it kept her alive. Which is why her mind went that route. ^_^

Foggy-Tasha appreciated her friends - she'd never had any - and would have cheerfully murdered anyone for them (and sometimes did) because even for Foggy-Tasha, the idea of killing was 'hey, this feels good.'

I mean, she knew people didn't DO that, but that knowledge didn't change what she was at her core.

And when some of that fog would burn away - in combat - she would enter a state of homicidal rage (which brutally burned away her life points, but c'est la vie!).

If certain criteria were reached (friends badly injured, she takes a critical, she faces someone else with Orochi blood, etc) there would be a chance she would go into a blind, berserk fury and kill everything until she bled out (life point loss increased) or was killed herself.

Tasha was a monster - it was a fact of what she was, she accepted that, and just wanted to stay with her friends and keep them safe.

As she's originally a partly-player controlled character in one of my tabletop games (now a full-npc with that group), Tasha is still around.

Edit: that was excessively long, and didn't even encapsulate the whole of it. Sorry.

Ha, I think I subconsciously expected that. It felt right.

It did! I wish I'd planned it that way (probably had when I wrote the first post!). ^_^

[Nik Hasta]

Overall Reflections - System Design and Campaign Management: Successes and Failures

As some of you will be aware, I am known to be a GM with commitment issues. I have started many games in the past and simply not been able to maintain the world, the system or the interest in keeping the games going. Ruins was a bit of different beast from those previous efforts because my interest was in the in-depth design of the game system itself and iterating on and improving that.

Additionally, that interest in the core mechanics really helped hold my attention on my responsibilities as a GM and so I think I did a lot better than I usually do in terms of commitment, thought and effort. However, this game has come to a close - though on better terms than previous ones - so I'm going to run through a few thoughts on what went well and what didn't go well across three key areas.

- System Design
- Campaign Design
- GM Style

- System Design -

Overall, I am pretty happy with the system that underpins Ruins. The combat is quite open-ended and expressive, the character creator and Technique systems are both flexible enough to accommodate a variety of build-types and playstyles. I wanted things to feel quite explosive and a little broken because that's been the sort of vibe of poster-personae that the previous iterations of "the Rumbles RPG" has been built on in the past.

However, I have identified several shortcomings that I'll be taking into consideration with future game systems.

- Publicly building the engine was a two-edged sword: I am eternally grateful to the contributions of all players who tested the system and experimented with builds and provided me with a ton of things to think about. The system would not be where it is now without those contributions.

However, this meant that engine was near constantly in a fluid state and it made on-boarding new players a lot harder because they would have not only a pretty complex system to learn but also constantly ran the risk that their character might need to be adjusted significantly when a new Patch dropped. This became less of an issue as the engine matured and gained stability but, by then, we had lost an awful lot of players to confusion and apathy and had created a pretty large wall of knowledge new players had to clear to get on board.

LESSON: Do more behind-the-scenes testing and debut the engine in a much more complete state.

- RPGs often have to facilitate combat, utility and social options in their systems: The Ruins engine is built with combat in mind from the outset and, eventually, came to do that side of things pretty well. However, players often like to have game mechanics underpinning their social interactions, allowing a player to build a diplomatic or charming character rather than focusing on combat exclusively.

I made a pretty botched attempt to cover this desire in the player-base with the introduction of the Social Matrix, which ended up causing more problems than it solved as what was meant to be a system for deferral of decision-making for me as GM became something players were playing close attention to in their decision-making as players. This is not to castigate those players for doing this, my communication on this was very messy and I didn't really know what I wanted to do it with it at the time. But it made for a mess where players didn't know what they could or couldn't do and I didn't have a grasp on the system enough to help refine those ideas.

The introduction of Skills created the option for more non-combat options in a given situation but this system is still somewhat underdeveloped and comes at the expense of making ENR almost too valuable in my eyes. Cantrips don't cost anything in D&D but, because I felt I didn't have the time or energy at that phase of development to properly balance the Skills system, I opted to tie the Magnitude system to ENR usage to put the onus of regulation on players rather than on me. This made Skills feel a bit more important and weighty than they actually were and made players feel more nervous about using them for fear of being caught short of ENR later on.

All-in-all, these aspects are probably the most messy part of development and remain the weakest parts of the game.

LESSON: Decide how you are going to weight social/utility/combat interactions in the gameplay of the campaign, stick to that design and better communicate to players the kinds of gameplay they can expect.

- Combat feel and the fun factor: While I think the combat overall ended up in a good place, I do think it could be tightened up further and balanced in ways that feel better. At this point, the game is over and the engine has served its purpose as a first effort by me, I'm not going to go back and rejig things again. But, in no particular order, things I have considered that need tweaking imo:

- The ENR economy could likely do with an overhaul. Both in and outside of combat situations.
- Technique cooldown being a more pronounced thing may have been beneficial.
- HP/ENR recovery should be more specialised or alternatively just unified into universal systems to prevent players from having to, almost mandatorily, burn slots on recovery Techniques.
- HP values should go down a fair bit.
- Damage values should come up a little.
- Ranged combat needs reworking. I never got the Sniper-type character to work exactly how I wanted.

All that said, I am broadly happy with where we ended up and running combat encounters was very enjoyable for me, but I do think that we're like a version or two away from the game actually being its best self.

LESSON: Do more beta testing with more people who are not me ahead of the actual campaign kicking off.

- Campaign Design -

The campaign was something that came together a little easier than previous RPGs. One of my weak spots as a GM is I tend to overdesign settings and NPCs because, usually, I find them to be the most interesting and engaging part of the process. This version of Khazan was designed to be very open both conceptually but also mechanically to accommodate the wide variety of player backgrounds and playstyles I was cultivating.

This open-ness was fun for me because if I wanted to add something in, no matter how outlandish, I could work it in somewhere. From dinosaurs, talking statues, killer micro techno-organic planets, ancient kings, ghosts, space fascists, demons, whatever. I could just slap it together. However, this design approach presented a number of obstacles that could have been avoided;

- Lack of player cohesion: As the players are, almost definitionally, from completely unconnected realities, this makes the whole formation period of the party a little harder to manage. No one has any shared history, not even to world events and, in many cases, have no common-ground beyond being trapped in the same situation. This made forging connections and establishing the party unit a little harder than I would have liked. I feel like there was more I could have done to drive the players to be allies to each other and establish rapport but this was a challenge I don't have a great answer for with this particular multi-versal setting.

LESSON: Less of a broad lesson but more just a confirmation that my next setting won't be the nexus of all realities. We'll shoot for something more grounded that allows for PCs to be more part of the world.

- Variance in tone: With the setting being so open and flexible, I did find that it was a little tricky to prepare players for the kind of game and tone of game that I was planning to run. I think all players brought interesting and thoughtful characters to the table but I think I could have done more to assist and prepare them. There was, in retrospect, obvious dissonance of messaging between me being, on the one hand "bring anything you want," and on the other being "this is the specific type of game we're playing,"

I think some more in-depth session zero work with players, likely done by via PM in this context, would have been quite beneficial. The players would have had a better idea of what to expect and I would have had a clearer idea about what they wanted out of the game with their characters and could have prepared accordingly.

LESSON: Have session zero and communicate with your players more. Also a narrower focus and a more concise description of what the game is going to be from the off will help.

EDIT: Had to split this in half.

[Nik Hasta]

- GM Style -

Probably the hardest part of this game (or any game) for me is the responsibility of GM-ing and doing the necessary work to facilitate the players having a good time and keeping the world running. While I think I have achieved a personal best in a number of respects with this game, I definitely have a lot of room to grow.

- Commitment to running a world: I like worldbuilding, I like system building but maintaining those systems and managing players is something that I have struggled with. Ruins was born of my desire to build and execute a system and, while the setting and campaign came together easily enough, I did struggle with maintaining my focus on the players.

And that's a problem because the point of the game is the players. If you're building stuff and putting it out into the world, it's not really fair to build stuff and then refuse to actually put it into practice so others can enjoy it. While I did do better on this game than perhaps any other I have run in the past, I think I need to refine my workflow to have a more players-centric attitude.

LESSON: Focus on building your world and system for players, not just for yourself.

- Player/GM Communication: This refers to both the micro single player interactions and the macro conceptual party-based communications.

To address the latter of those, I wanted to keep some of my cards very close to my chest because this game was, to some extent, going to centre on the mystery of what has happened/is happening in Khazan. Ergo, this prompted me to not get too in-depth with the players about what I had planned for them because I wanted the experience of figuring stuff out to be organic. This was... well-intentioned but I think I could have assisted with the onboarding experience and helped refine characters in some areas that would have made play feel more cohesive.

The other side of this is exemplified by the regrettable end of granpagen's participation with Kinu. The nub of it is that if I, as GM, felt that a player character was expressing themselves in a way that would be perceived by NPCs as especially problematic, my first response should have been to talk to the player directly and say to them "This comes off in this way, is this what you're going for or do you want to refine this?"

Rather than doing that, I took the view that my responsibility was to provide a realistic representation of the world, reacting to PC actions in a way that felt authentic and pushed back on Kinu's actions in a way that came across as hurtful to Gen. I deeply regret not having a conversation about it privately and still feel it was a real shame that a fine player left the game in such circumstances.

Should Gen be in this thread at any point in the future, I do apologise for how I handled the situation and I hope to do better in the future.

LESSON: Talk to players more. The GM's responsibility is to the player experience first, verisimilitude of the game world second. Having conversations about the first can reinforce the second.

Overall, I look back on Ruins with a lot of fondness. I gained a ton of experience and this project has really opened up game design as something I enjoy and take lot more seriously than I once did. I intend to make a couple more games in the future, though they might be explored in other places than CBR (no disrespect to the players but our population is a bit low).

Once again, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to any and all players who contributed to the game in any capacity. I hope you all had fun, I did though it was a lot of work.

I think that's about all I have left to say on the game. If anyone has any questions, I'll happily answer them but otherwise this will likely be my final thoughts in the thread.

[Sharpandpointies]

An interesting analysis, Nik. Good to read.

Thank you for that, and the opportunity to play in this game. Very much enjoyed it, as hopefully has been clear.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Liked reading your writing, Sharp, Sharker, and Post. Real good stuff.

[Sharpandpointies]

Liked reading your writing, Sharp, Sharker, and Post. Real good stuff.

Thanks! Very much appreciated! ^_^

[Postmania]

Probably? I could page through the gazillion Codex pages...actually, no, I'm not doing that. ^_^

Ha, I get it. I was just speculating based on how I liked to make characters back then (which incidentally was what I wanted to steer away from with Jane, i.e., making her attacks/power feel more material/specific.) Progress I guess

Oh, man...Wheel of Time. It wasn't massively poor with regards to being sexist (edit: on the covers!), but the cover art for all the books was so riddled with inaccuracies that I recall (like, waaaaay back, early 2000's) reading a post on some geocities website about all of the problems with each of the covers to that point and just convulsing in my chair with laughter, it was so well-written. ^_^

Yeah I wasn't exactly super on top of descriptions but I know there were things that I thought just looked either silly or off even then. Of course, I do think now there's a charm to some of those types of covers which doesn't always come across in some more modern abstract/symbolic covers now.

Probably. Tasha had Orochi blood, the Orochi being the dark Aeon of destruction and all manner of awful things. She constantly had the urge to basically kill everything around her, and her mind compensated for that by disassociating to the point where she often-times could barely function - she called it the White Space, but it was basically an inability to think clearly and a huge distance from her feelings. Without it, she would have been killed years ago, when she was still a child, so...it kept her alive. Which is why her mind went that route. ^_^

Foggy-Tasha appreciated her friends - she'd never had any - and would have cheerfully murdered anyone for them (and sometimes did) because even for Foggy-Tasha, the idea of killing was 'hey, this feels good.'

I mean, she knew people didn't DO that, but that knowledge didn't change what she was at her core.

And when some of that fog would burn away - in combat - she would enter a state of homicidal rage (which brutally burned away her life points, but c'est la vie!).

If certain criteria were reached (friends badly injured, she takes a critical, she faces someone else with Orochi blood, etc) there would be a chance she would go into a blind, berserk fury and kill everything until she bled out (life point loss increased) or was killed herself.

Tasha was a monster - it was a fact of what she was, she accepted that, and just wanted to stay with her friends and keep them safe.

As she's originally a partly-player controlled character in one of my tabletop games (now a full-npc with that group), Tasha is still around.

Edit: that was excessively long, and didn't even encapsulate the whole of it. Sorry.

No worries, I think it helped give the idea of her, which was cool

Liked reading your writing, Sharp, Sharker, and Post. Real good stuff.

Thanks! I think everyone did a neat job.

All of your points make sense to me Nik, was a pretty intriguing and fun time playing!

[Sharpandpointies]

Ha, I get it. I was just speculating based on how I liked to make characters back then (which incidentally was what I wanted to steer away from with Jane, i.e., making her attacks/power feel more material/specific.) Progress I guess

We all go through phases with our character building.

.....

I went through one where I made my characters as weak (in terms of overall capacity) as possible. ^_^ Fun, but whooo, did not go over well with some people, so I stopped.

Yeah I wasn't exactly super on top of descriptions but I know there were things that I thought just looked either silly or off even then. Of course, I do think now there's a charm to some of those types of covers which doesn't always come across in some more modern abstract/symbolic covers now.

I get that...

.....

...just realizing I don't pay a lot of attention to book covers. O_o Thanks for helping me grasp that.

No worries, I think it helped give the idea of her, which was cool

Good, good. Didn't want to bore. ^_^