Fenris
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 3:17:12 GMT -5
I doubt anybody on this Forum is so easily offended as all that. Having said that, I do advise a bit of caution on mixing Historical Grimoires with your RPGs. I doubt your group would object (you know them better than I do after all), but even so: 1) RPGs have had a reputation for being a "gateway to the Occult". Nonsense of course-but if some idiot with a camera-phone happened to peer into a window whilst on his way elsewhere, Jack Chick would get plenty of new ammo... Me too, but this is a really great place and I love it here, so I figured, eh, what the heck, you can never be too careful. Despite your own disclaimer (not repeated here) you sound pretty knowledgeable to me! Jack Chick would roll over in his grave (yeah, I know) if he watched my group/groups/playstyle. Although my "default" game world doesn't apply, a lot of my gaming uses some pretty dark stuff, freely mixing the "real" with fantasy. This is especially true of my horror games, but certainly not only. If you really wanna see the Chickmeister run off screaming into the night, you only need to send him to my house during a Vampire: Dark Ages game. Ditto on some of the MSPE stuff: one fairly long-running campaign (on and off for about seven years) dealt with a couple of "occult investigators" (and a dead Crowley-inspired character who, although dead, continued to be a thorn in the side of our heroes!). The campaign theme was basically, "X-Files Meets Friday the 13th: The Series." Speaking of which, long ago, I ran a Friday the 13th: The Series campaign for a whole summer using the T&T rules in a modern setting (this was before I knew about MSPE). I also used to run Kult and, briefly, a home-brewed Hellraiser rpg (!). Once, or maybe twice, upon a time, I knew what I was talking about. I used to be a practicing mystic, and since I loved both Mysticism and Roleplaying (and other stuff), I always thought they were "two great tastes that taste great together." Unfortunately, I fell out of (some say "grew out of" but I disagree) mysticism, and despite attempts to find my way back, I can never seem to enjoy it with the same fervor as before. That said, I still think it adds a spice to gaming stories that makes it too tasty to ignore. "Modern day Mysticism" is virtually a contradiction in terms, but older stuff can really get a game going like nothing else. Right now, in fact, my Arabic study is leading me into areas of mystical knowledge with which I was previously unaware, and with every new learned thing, the T&T world I'm mentally building, based in either a pre-Christian Arabic land or a newly Christianized Europe, with a strong historical background and "correctly" tied-in magic system, is becoming more and more cohesive. Now I just need to find some peoples to play it with!
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order99
7th Level Troll
Coffee-fueled Carrion That Walks Like a Man
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Post by order99 on Feb 5, 2008 4:25:13 GMT -5
Oh, well if you've run KULT with no side effects... ;D And a home-brewed Hellraiser RPG? Details, please-if only so I know whether your players were the Victims or the Cenobites. I know which side MY group would run, and i'm not going to be thier GM Enabler on that one. I'd be the first to agree that History, Philosophy and Religion are too good to ignore-I mean, the entire premise of Kult is simply that the Gnostics(and later the Alchemists) were right about Base Matter being Humanity's prison. There's a novelist by the name of Tim Powers (The Drawing of the Dark, Declare, Last Call, The Anubis Gates et.al.) who does with the Novel what you like to do in your RPGs-he mixes History, Fiction and the Occult into true works of art, I think he'd be right up your alley. Just in passing, I envy your facility with languages...it's a well-known fact a language both shapes and limits the thoughts of the speaker, and with just a command of one (and enough French to make a real speaker laugh and point) I am limited indeed. The very fact that the most famous Book on earth was written in several different languages: Hebrew, written by native speakers of Hebrew, Arabic, or Babylonian Galilean Syriac, an Arabic Polyglot dialect Koine Greek or Tradesman's Greek and then translated into: Upper & Lower Boharic (Egypt) Coptic Greek Ethiopic Armenian Vulgate Latin During the lifetime of the last of its Authors (Paul & John)...THEN translated into Church Latin, German, Spanish, French, Dutch and English during the Early Reformation,given chapter and verse by Steven, with each sampled again for the King James, then translated into a Geneva Edition for the Puritans.... (deep breath) And Then a discovery of the Chester-Beady Papyrii, then the Dead Sea Scrolls followed by Forty years of argument throughout the World by Linguists... So, how do I know the difference between Works and Works in Ephesians? What is the Difference between Pneuma(Greek) and Nephesh(Hebrew)? If there weren't a host of scholarly studies alreadt prepared on the subject, i'd have to learn ancient Greek Verb tenses!!! And then there's the deliberate wordplay by Paul that you have to be a Historian to grasp-GAHHHH!!!! Yeah, i'd settle for even being bi-lingual at this point... (finally notices the strange nature of the planet beneath his feet and the unnatural constellations above) I'll say this-when we go Off Topic, we REALLY go Off-Topic around here!!!! I'm gonna chalk it up to lack of sleep and trundle off to bed now...
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Post by mahrundl on Feb 5, 2008 5:13:48 GMT -5
The very fact that the most famous Book on earth was written in several different languages: English Sindarin Quenya ValinoreanFixed that for you. Apparently, The Lord of the Rings was the second biggest selling book of the 20th Century. Considering that it wasn't even available until the second half of the century, that's an impressive feat! No prize for guessing which book sold the most copies.
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uburoi
4th Level Troll
Rarr 'n' stuff.
Posts: 486
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Post by uburoi on Feb 5, 2008 8:24:35 GMT -5
The "winner and still champeen" goes to a little board game called Demons which actually uses sigils from the Key of Solomon as playing pieces! Yeah! One of my favorite games, and the various powers of the Demons are also taken directly from the Goetia. Back when SPI was still in existence you could write to them and get a description of the summoning rituals from the (sp?) Lemegeton. Ah, the halcyon days of gaming before Pat Pulling and her ilk...
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Fenris
5th Level Troll
Weapon Hand Severed!
Posts: 614
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 8:46:25 GMT -5
Yeah! One of my favorite games, and the various powers of the Demons are also taken directly from the Goetia. Back when SPI was still in existence you could write to them and get a description of the summoning rituals from the (sp?) Lemegeton. Ah, the halcyon days of gaming before Pat Pulling and her ilk... My copy has the crap beat out of it from playing it too much... my local used gaming shop has a copy in excellent condition, but his price was a bit steep (I can't remember how much, but I remember it was a lot more than I'm willing to pay, no matter how cool it is). Kraig didn't actually mention the game by name in his book, but when I read the paragraph I thought it might be that one, so I wrote him and asked. He wrote back that he's "pretty sure" that was it, but not positive. He then went on a bit more that made it pretty clear that we were talking the same game. So, did you write SPI and get the complete calls? Alas, I must admit that the game was already old and SPI was no more when I first got the game. Frankly, it was just that awesome Chaykin cover that first compelled me....
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Fenris
5th Level Troll
Weapon Hand Severed!
Posts: 614
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 8:58:12 GMT -5
Fixed that for you. LMAO over here, Mahrundl. You know, the sad thing is, is that there probably really is a copy written in "Elvish." Even sadder is, there are probably more than a few of us that have actually read it that way. You know, if Jack really wanted to destroy the hobby, pointing out that we can speak, read and write in totally fictional made-up languages better than we can in our own real language, would probably go a lot further than saying we're all occultists, which doesn't even raise an eyebrow anymore in today's "do what you wilt" world.
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Fenris
5th Level Troll
Weapon Hand Severed!
Posts: 614
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 9:43:15 GMT -5
Oh, well if you've run KULT with no side effects... ;D I'll say this-when we go Off Topic, we REALLY go Off-Topic around here!!!! I'm gonna chalk it up to lack of sleep and trundle off to bed now... You were expecting maybe Demon hands to reach out of the book and drag me down into the bowels of hell? Nope, no such luck. Never seen anything like that happen in the real world... and trust me, buddy, I've tried. ;D I really don't think we're too off-topic. The topic is handling horror, ostensibly in T&T, but we always use other points of reference to improve our T&T games. This is, admittedly, a bit darker than your standard Cthulu-style horror, but that's why I'm a fan of gothic and not Lovecraft... to me, this stuff is just scarier. And if the OP is looking for more and other ways to introduce horror into his campaign (both mechanically and story-wise), I think we've got a pretty good thread going here. I'll PM replies to some of the more personal stuff later (no I'm not ignoring it!). 1) RPGs have had a reputation for being a "gateway to the Occult". Nonsense of course-but if some idiot with a camera-phone happened to peer into a window whilst on his way elsewhere, Jack Chick would get plenty of new ammo... BTW, if "some idiot with a camera phone" happened to peer into my window, regardless of what I'm playing and with whom, he is going to find himself having to deal with something a helluva lot scarier than just a demon! On that point, I'm sure we can all agree! Fear the Prarie Dog!
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uburoi
4th Level Troll
Rarr 'n' stuff.
Posts: 486
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Post by uburoi on Feb 5, 2008 12:30:30 GMT -5
Know what? Based on this thread I'm going to have to work the demons from the Legemeton into T&T somehow. Variant of the standard Summoning spell to call one up. Yep, 100 WIZ, 8500 GP and IQ 44/DEX 25 to call up a demon to make women take their clothes off or warm your bathwater. Wheee! And need a list of suitable components for spells or potions? No further than a handy copy of Crowley's 777!
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uburoi
4th Level Troll
Rarr 'n' stuff.
Posts: 486
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Post by uburoi on Feb 5, 2008 12:33:51 GMT -5
Fixed that for you. LMAO over here, Mahrundl. You know, the sad thing is, is that there probably really is a copy written in "Elvish." The only thing scarier would be the inevitable copy in Klingon. (And you know d**n well there's one out there on the Internets somewhere!)
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Fenris
5th Level Troll
Weapon Hand Severed!
Posts: 614
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 12:54:36 GMT -5
Know what? Based on this thread I'm going to have to work the demons from the Legemeton into T&T somehow. Variant of the standard Summoning spell to call one up. Yep, 100 WIZ, 8500 GP and IQ 44/DEX 25 to call up a demon to make women take their clothes off or warm your bathwater. Wheee! And need a list of suitable components for spells or potions? No further than a handy copy of Crowley's 777! You're a man after my own black heart, uburoi.
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Fenris
5th Level Troll
Weapon Hand Severed!
Posts: 614
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Post by Fenris on Feb 5, 2008 13:02:05 GMT -5
The only thing scarier would be the inevitable copy in Klingon. (And you know d**n well there's one out there on the Internets somewhere!) My first reply actually referenced a Klingon version, uburoi, but I modified the post to remove it later. Besides confusing the issue, I was afraid that someone might request a copy written in Tekumelian!
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uburoi
4th Level Troll
Rarr 'n' stuff.
Posts: 486
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Post by uburoi on Feb 5, 2008 13:27:16 GMT -5
You're a man after my own black heart, uburoi. Why, thank you!
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uburoi
4th Level Troll
Rarr 'n' stuff.
Posts: 486
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Post by uburoi on Feb 5, 2008 16:58:31 GMT -5
Hey, Fenris - check out T&T 4th. Summoning is only a 7th Level spell in that edition - only 25 STR and 3000 GP necessary for your warm bathwater and nekkid chixxors!! Ooh, I LIKE T&T 4th.
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Post by apeloverage on Feb 6, 2008 2:43:45 GMT -5
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order99
7th Level Troll
Coffee-fueled Carrion That Walks Like a Man
Posts: 1,040
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Post by order99 on Feb 6, 2008 4:00:32 GMT -5
Klingon...Bible...Project. Yeah, because trying to figure out what a Greek author means in Elizabetian English isn't taxing my brain hard enough. I'm beginning to see the need for a SAN stat after all-perhaps in EVERY game! And Real Life. Luckily I have Guatemalan Medium Roast at hand to ease the pain! ;D
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