The day after tomorrow I'll be streaming an ALL TRANSWOMEN game of Buried Without Ceremony's story game exploring the dissatisfaction that arises from trying to build a relationship both people's needs are only precariously met, A Place to Fuck Each Other, on Show Us Your Crits's adult stream. Written by ex-lovers Avery Alder and An Sheep, A Place to Fuck Each Other is a game about processing disillusionment, about seeing queer communities as they are and not as we fantasize they might be, about having three-quarters of your needs met.* You can check it out for yourself at https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/aplacetofuckeachother
Though we are a NSFW stream, that is a reflection of the stories that we tell, the characters we build, and the worlds we construct for them to live in. Everything NSFW, in other words, is in our fiction, not our behavior on camera.
The game will air on Thursday, July 30th, at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern on Plexstorm: https://www.plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits
And the video, like those of all of our games, will be archived at https://www.youtube.com/c/ShowusyourCrits/ Please subscribe! Every 100 subscribers, we will be giving away a piece of role-playing game memorabilia to a random follower! We're only 32 subscribers away from our next giveaway!
* Both summaries of what the game is about are almost verbatim from the rulebook, so as to allow the authors to define their work themselves.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Thursday, July 23, 2020
A Place to Fuck Each Other
I'm so EXCITE!
A week from now I'll be streaming an ALL TRANSWOMEN game of Buried Without Ceremony's story game exploring the dissatisfaction that arises from trying to build a relationship both people's needs are only precariously met, A Place to Fuck Each Other, on Show Us Your Crits's adult stream. Written by ex-lovers Avery Alder and An Sheep, A Place to Fuck Each Other is a game about processing disillusionment, about seeing queer communities as they are and not as we fantasize they might be, about having three-quarters of your needs met.* You can check it out for yourself at https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/aplacetofuckeachother
The game will air on Thursday, July 30th, at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern on Plexstorm: https://www.plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits
And the video, like those of all of our games, will be archived at https://www.youtube.com/c/ShowusyourCrits/ Please subscribe! Every 100 subscribers, we will be giving away a piece of role-playing game memorabilia to a random follower! We're only 34 subscribers away from our next giveaway!
* Both summaries of what the game is about are almost verbatim from the rulebook, so as to allow the authors to define their work themselves.
A week from now I'll be streaming an ALL TRANSWOMEN game of Buried Without Ceremony's story game exploring the dissatisfaction that arises from trying to build a relationship both people's needs are only precariously met, A Place to Fuck Each Other, on Show Us Your Crits's adult stream. Written by ex-lovers Avery Alder and An Sheep, A Place to Fuck Each Other is a game about processing disillusionment, about seeing queer communities as they are and not as we fantasize they might be, about having three-quarters of your needs met.* You can check it out for yourself at https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/aplacetofuckeachother
The game will air on Thursday, July 30th, at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern on Plexstorm: https://www.plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits
And the video, like those of all of our games, will be archived at https://www.youtube.com/c/ShowusyourCrits/ Please subscribe! Every 100 subscribers, we will be giving away a piece of role-playing game memorabilia to a random follower! We're only 34 subscribers away from our next giveaway!
* Both summaries of what the game is about are almost verbatim from the rulebook, so as to allow the authors to define their work themselves.
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Upcoming RPG streams I'm in
With the Sky-Realms of Mar'Thul taking a hiatus, what does the future hold for the adult stream of Show Us Your Crits?
July 30th: I will be playing Avery Alder's game of lesbians trying to find connection in a world that gives them only about 75% of the agency they need to do so, A Place to Fuck Each Other. And I will be doing it with a group of ALL TRANSWOMEN! I'm super excited about this one.
August 13th: Most of the regular cast of the adult stream wil be playing Hot Guys Making Out, the classic RPG about male lovers during the Spanish Civil War. Gay love while anarchists fight fascists in the background? What more could you possibly want?
August 27th: The regular cast will play a one-shot of Tales of Gor, the RPG based on John Norman's (in)famous planetary romance series that spawned an entire kinky subculture!
September 10th: Now is the time to join in with the cast as we host a Geeky Trivia Night. Think you know more about something geeky than (for example) I do? Well, you're probably right, so come on over and school my ass!
September 24th, October 8th, October 22nd, November 5th (remember remember!), November 19th, and December 3rd: I will be running a six-episode mini-season of Neurally Ambiguous: Gepetto Must Die. A Shadowrun game (so cyberpunk, but with elfs and dragons and magic and things), Neurally Ambiguous follows the lives, dreams, and drama of a streetgang-run house of bunraku prostitutes. This will star the regular cast, and possibly my favorite erotic hypnosis content creator, too!
I don't know what we'll be doing after that, but if we make this a pattern, Dec 27th, Jan 10th, Jan 24th, and Feb 7th will all be one-offs as well!
July 30th: I will be playing Avery Alder's game of lesbians trying to find connection in a world that gives them only about 75% of the agency they need to do so, A Place to Fuck Each Other. And I will be doing it with a group of ALL TRANSWOMEN! I'm super excited about this one.
August 13th: Most of the regular cast of the adult stream wil be playing Hot Guys Making Out, the classic RPG about male lovers during the Spanish Civil War. Gay love while anarchists fight fascists in the background? What more could you possibly want?
August 27th: The regular cast will play a one-shot of Tales of Gor, the RPG based on John Norman's (in)famous planetary romance series that spawned an entire kinky subculture!
September 10th: Now is the time to join in with the cast as we host a Geeky Trivia Night. Think you know more about something geeky than (for example) I do? Well, you're probably right, so come on over and school my ass!
September 24th, October 8th, October 22nd, November 5th (remember remember!), November 19th, and December 3rd: I will be running a six-episode mini-season of Neurally Ambiguous: Gepetto Must Die. A Shadowrun game (so cyberpunk, but with elfs and dragons and magic and things), Neurally Ambiguous follows the lives, dreams, and drama of a streetgang-run house of bunraku prostitutes. This will star the regular cast, and possibly my favorite erotic hypnosis content creator, too!
I don't know what we'll be doing after that, but if we make this a pattern, Dec 27th, Jan 10th, Jan 24th, and Feb 7th will all be one-offs as well!
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Show Us Your Crits heads to a brothel!
Show Us Your Crits Episode 6 streams LIVE tomorrow night, July 2nd at 5pm PDT / 8 pm EDT! The NSFW mature-audiences D&D streaming show is about to seriously heat up! Join the soft-butch genderqueer neko-dwarf submissive duelist Yasath Lasl, the male courtesan eldritch knight Damon Fanny, Zara the half-orc dominatrix priestess of the Holy Warrior, Aster Rowan the proselytizer of the genderfluid god of sex, and our DM Blackraven (the mind behind the geek+kink culture Alternative Play Podcast as we explore a brothel floating in the void in search of more information about the strange technomagical items we found in the Rat Queen's lair!
You'll be able to find us at https://www.plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits ~ join the chat! Influence the story by giving us tips (everything from kicking a PC a gold piece to introducing NPCs of your own design)!
But if you can't watch us live, you'll always be able to watch our video archive on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ShowusyourCrits/ or read write-ups of our adventures on RPGnet at https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/show-us-your-crits-a-d-d-5e-campaign-for-mature-audiences-as-sfw-as-i-can-make-it.863028/ or my blog at https://luciferssubcreations.blogspot.com/search/label/Show%20Us%20Your%20Crits%21
PLEASE subscribe to our YouTube channel! For every 100 subscribers we gain (until we get to 1000), Blackraven will be gifting a random subscriber with an RPG book or piece of memorabilia from his collection!
You can also donate to our Patreon, if you wanna help support us improving the stream, at https://www.patreon.com/Grindhaus_Media?fan_landing=true
I play Yasath Lasl on the show and will be releasing a personal Patreon soon as well (message me if you're interested! Charmscale, author of the Erotic Adventures sourcebook for D&D 5e and player of Aster Rowan, also has a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/charmscale
You'll be able to find us at https://www.plexstorm.com/stream/showusyourcrits ~ join the chat! Influence the story by giving us tips (everything from kicking a PC a gold piece to introducing NPCs of your own design)!
But if you can't watch us live, you'll always be able to watch our video archive on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ShowusyourCrits/ or read write-ups of our adventures on RPGnet at https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/show-us-your-crits-a-d-d-5e-campaign-for-mature-audiences-as-sfw-as-i-can-make-it.863028/ or my blog at https://luciferssubcreations.blogspot.com/search/label/Show%20Us%20Your%20Crits%21
PLEASE subscribe to our YouTube channel! For every 100 subscribers we gain (until we get to 1000), Blackraven will be gifting a random subscriber with an RPG book or piece of memorabilia from his collection!
You can also donate to our Patreon, if you wanna help support us improving the stream, at https://www.patreon.com/Grindhaus_Media?fan_landing=true
I play Yasath Lasl on the show and will be releasing a personal Patreon soon as well (message me if you're interested! Charmscale, author of the Erotic Adventures sourcebook for D&D 5e and player of Aster Rowan, also has a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/charmscale
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Alokhosiel, kuriotes vassal of Animals under Bloodsuckers under Insects, angel of Bedbugs
The concerns of Jordi, archangel of Animals, rarely coincide with those of Blandine, archangel of Dreams. Jordi still views her with some slight suspicion, dating back 27 millennia to Heaven’s discovery that the human imagination could create sentient beings in the ethereal realm. It took Michael himself, archangel of War, firstborn of Heaven, Guardian of the Watchtower of the South, and one of the Four Horsemen, and his words to save humanity from Jordi’s rage at their distracting abstraction. The ethereal realm is Blandine’s domain, and she is much more fond of Homo sapiens than Jordi is.
Nonetheless, they disagree with the same archangels and, for the most part, the two just plain rarely think about the other and their works. Rimu, the angel of Unicorns, malak of Animals in service to Dreams, is well-known among the Host as one of the rare exceptions to this detente. A former djinn of Lust whose Redemption was sponsored by the archangel of Animals, his wings almost immediately turned black in the Light of Heaven. Alokhosiel, however, is an even rarer example, in that they work with Blandine’s servitors and has even been rewarded by her for that work, but Alokhosiel remains firmly in the service of Jordi.
They are an old angel, serving for many millions of years beneath Atalef, the ofan angel of Bats, often possessing a species of parasites that used the winged mammals as hosts. When human effects on the ethereal realm were discovered, Jordi sponsored Alokhosiel for the Word of Bedbugs, a 5-10 million year old branch of those parasites’ evolution that had come to haunt the beds of early humans. Yves, archangel of Destiny, with his constant smile that is somehow both devious and indulgent, was the first to vote in favor. The archangel of Animals tasked his choirmate with the mission of keeping humans awake and thereby limiting their ability to effect the ethereal realm by their dreams. A mission Jordi never officially rescinded, though only a couple millennia later everything changed when the Eden Experiment failed and Lucifer rebelled. That was 22,625 p.e.v.
Lilith threw open the gates of Hell in 15,000 p.e.v., kicking off the War with her undeniable statement that Freedom is to be first among all values. Alokhosiel took it upon themself to reinterpret Jordi’s wishes into the fight against this new enemy. They learned the Songs of Dreams and began to protect the sentient apes for whom they had begun to develop a fondness from the demons who would harm them while they slept, in either the corporeal realm where their regenerative rest left them vulnerable or the ethereal realm where human thought and belief were the prize to be won as angels and demons fought.
This is the work Alokhosiel continues to do to this day, and Blandine herself has noticed. She considered approaching Jordi to bring the kuriotes into her service, but as the inventor of love and once the embodiment of Hope, she didn’t need to consult with Lang (mercurian of Destiny and angel of Foresight) to know that such an ask would not go over well. Nonetheless, she has rewarded Alokhosiel with a rite and a couple of attunements, even as Jordi has promoted them to the rank of Vassal. As a Vassal, they are in loose command of eight or so unranked angels, mostly other kuriotes. An ofan by the name of Cimex serves to keep Alokhosiel in contact with their old friend Atelef, and Pishpesh (a malak) has seized the chance to ambush demons unexpectedly by serving the angel of Bedbugs. A mercurian of Dreams in service to Animals who is known as Vants ferries messages between Blandine and Alokhosiel.
Corporeal 2 // Strength 6 Agility 2 // 18 Body Hits
Ethereal 4 // Intelligence 10 Precision 6 // 40 Mind Hits
Celestial 3 // Will 6 Perception 2 // 18 Soul Hits
Word-Forces 4
Skills: Climbing/2=4, Escape/2=8, Fighting/1=7 or 11 or 7, Move Silently/4=6
Songs: Banishing (Corporeal/3=5), Draining (Corporeal/3=5), Dreams (Corporeal/3=5, Ethereal/2=6, Celestial/1=4), Entropy (Ethereal/1=5), Form (Ethereal/2=6), Numinous Corpus (Fangs/1=3, Plates/3=5), Revulsion (Ethereal/3=7), Sleep (Corporeal/4=6)
Attunements: Angel of Bedbugs*, Angel of Bloodsuckers**, Angel of Insects***, Call of the Wild, Dream Joining, Kuriotes of Animals, Kuriotes of Dreams, Ofan of Animals, Vassal of Animals
Rites: Drink a pint of blood; Rescue an animal endangered by man's works or man's carelessness; Spend 1 hour among a crowd of at least 300 beings who are all aware of each other; Spend 2 hours in a place where you are actively not desired; Spend 8 hours successfully protecting a sleeper from active forces of danger (+2 Essence); Spend 8 hours with no trace of civilization in sight; Live in a city for one full day as an animal, without spending Essence
Dissonance: Being swayed by the concerns of human society, its rules, or its expectations; Value human life over animal life; Kill sloppily or with torture.
* Angel of Bedbugs: Whenever someone with this attunement spends Essence to improve a Move Silently roll, they also reduce their shortest dimension (depth for most humans) by one-half per point of Essence spent. For example, if Alokhosiel (inhabiting a human body measuring 10 inches from nose to back of head) spent 3 Essence to raise the target of their Move Silently roll to 9, the body of the human they're possessing would be reduced by 7/8 to 1.25 inches, allowing them to squeeze into much smaller cracks.
** Angel of Bloodsuckers: If someone with this attunement successfully hits with a melee attack without being noticed, they reduce the amount of disturbance caused by the number of ranks they have in the Move Silently skill (but at least by 1).
*** Angel of Insects: Someone with this attunement may add their Corporeal Forces to any Climbing roll or roll to hold onto, hang from, or balance on a surface. Including things like hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Converting Alokhosiel to GURPS In Nomine require some diversion from strictly following the procedure given in GIN, because GIN has a mechanical tool that In Nomine itself does not: the Extra Mind Hits advantage. That direct conversion method from the book resulted in Alokhosiel being smarter than any mortal human alive, possibly ever (IQ 22), which was over-the-top on its own, but that also resulted in them having virtuoso levels of ability in every Song they possessed. My solution was to start from that strict conversion and then to reduce Alokhosiel's IQ to reasonable levels while increasing their levels of Extra Mind Hits to compensate. After all, the reason I gave them such a high Intelligence in IN was to model that famous bedbug hardiness in their realm of focus.
ST 14 [0]; DX 6 [-70]; IQ 16 [20]; HT 14 [0]
Advantages: Angel of Bedbugs* [60]; Angel of Bloodsuckers** [20]; Angel of Insects*** [10]; Call of the Wild [20]; Celestial Racial Template [390]; Dream Joining☧ [15]; Extra Mind Hits +9 [22.5]; Kuriotes [175]; Kuriotes of Animals [75]; Kuriotes of Dreams [5]; Ofan of Animals [47]; Power Investiture (Celestial) 3 [0]; Power Investiture (Corporeal) 2 [0]; Power Investiture (Ethereal) 4 [0]; Power Investiture (Word)🔯 4 [12]; Rite: Drink a pint of blood [2]; Rite: Spend 1 hour among a crowd of at least 300 beings who are all aware of each other [2]; Rite: Spend 2 hours in a place where you are actively not desired [2]; Rite: Spend 8 hours successfully protecting a sleeper from active forces of danger (+2 Essence) [4]; Vassal of Animals [15]
Disadvantages: Distractible [-1]; Reduced Alertness -16 [-80]; Reduced Manual Dexterity -4 [-12]; Servitor of Jordi [-16]; Short Attention Span [-10]; Weak Will -8 [-64]
Skills: Brawling (P/E) DX-1 [1/2]-5; Climbing (P/A) DX-1 [1]-5; Escape (P/H) DX+2 [16]-8; Stealth (P/A) DX+1 [4]-7
Songs: Banishing (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Draining (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Dreams (Celestial) (M/VH) IQ+Cel-2 [1]-13 or 18; Dreams (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Dreams (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-1 [2]-14 or 19; Entropy (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-2 [1]-13 or 18; Form (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-1 [2]-14 or 19; Numinous Corpus (Fangs) (M/VH) IQ+Corp-2 [1]-11 or 16; Numinous Corpus (Plates) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Revulsion (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth [4]-15 or 20; Sleep (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp+1 [8]-14 or 19
Attributes -50 + Advantages 876.5 + Disadvantages -183 + Skills 21.5 + Songs 35 = 700 points
* As a relatively quick and rough conversion of the attunement described above, treat this as the Shrinking advantage, with the -60% limitation that it only affects the one dimension, the -15% limitation that it costs a variable amount of Essence, and the +30% enhancement that the user retains their usual hit points. That's a total of -45% to the cost of Shrinking. Technically, 9 levels should be purchased, which would cost 225 points, but it is highly unlikely that Alokhosiel would ever want to spend 5 Essence to shrink a human to a depth of 0.5 mm. While that would still be possible, I've set the cost to the equivalent of 5 levels, plus 5 points to cover the permanent link between this power and spending Essence on Stealth rolls.
** If someone with this attunement successfully hits with a melee attack without being noticed, they reduce the amount of disturbance caused by the amount by which their Stealth skill is larger than their DX-3 (so in Alokhosiel's case, by 4).
*** Someone with this attunement adds their Corporeal Power to any Climbing roll or roll to hold onto, hang from, or balance on a surface. Including hanging upside down from the ceiling.
☧ This attunement is used to merge the dreamscapes of two separate dreamers, so that they “meet” one another in their dreams. It requires 2 Essence. Both dreamscapes must be active and occupied, and in the same part of the Marches (within what passes for “line of sight” in the ethereal realm). Once two dreamers are joined, the dreams also join, and support one another. If one of the dreamers fails a skill roll by 6 or more, the dream will not automatically slide into the realm of Nightmare unless the other dreamer does so, too. And if the first dreamer makes any successful skill roll before that happens, the “nightmare slip” is nullified entirely, and both dreamers once again have “clean slates” until another skill roll fails by 6 or more. However, it is equally difficult to slip out of Beleth’s grasp once in it . . . if a merged dreamscape passes into the darker side of the Marches, it takes two successes, both by 6 or more, for an automatic journey back. A merged dreamscape contains elements of the psyche of both dreamers, and the dreamers are both “along for the ride” together. If either dreamer wakes up, the merge is gently broken, and the two dreamscapes drift apart again.
🔯 3 points/level: Every level of this advantage allows you to store and spend one extra point of Essence; this can allow you to exceed the usual 2/3 HT limit. It also grants a +1 bonus on aging rolls made as a result of your Soul Hits going to 0 or less.
In In Nomine, Alokhosiel is relatively weak. Without their Word and the rites and attunements of their intermediate superiors (the angels of Bloodsuckers and Insects), they're really not much more powerful than a starting angelic PC. They thus lends themself both to serving as the immediate superior or mentor of an appropriate PC (probably one of Animals or of Dreams, obviously), as well as to storylines emphasizing one of my favoritestest themes in all of In Nomine ~ that the existence of the Divine elevates every tiniest bit of the world, no matter how small, to the greatest level of significance, and that the struggle between Fate and Destiny draws attention to that significance where otherwise it can easily be forgot.
GURPS, on the other hand, as it always will with kuriotates, stresses just how ungodly (ha!) powerful they are. I mean seriously, the absolute minimum point total for a kuriotes is 693 points, and for a kuriotes of Animals its 698. This puts them, by default, at significantly higher than the standard GURPS Supers starting level and about equal to a black op from GURPS Black Ops. Here, the theme might be that even the weakest of angels stands far superior to humanity and that danger can come from any crack or crevasse. It can be an object lesson in human pride and arrogance, if the spirit behind such seemingly miniscule, weak beings as bedbugs stands equal to the most ridiculously talented, highly trained ubermenschen that the human species can produce. Alokhosiel, thus, works well as either an ally or an enemy of a black ops team getting involved in matters way over even their elevated heads. It's a little grittier than I think most GURPS Black Ops games would play, but I think it fits strongly into the setting from all three of GURPS Black Ops's genre inspirations: neo-noir, cosmic espionage, and Men in Black.
Nonetheless, they disagree with the same archangels and, for the most part, the two just plain rarely think about the other and their works. Rimu, the angel of Unicorns, malak of Animals in service to Dreams, is well-known among the Host as one of the rare exceptions to this detente. A former djinn of Lust whose Redemption was sponsored by the archangel of Animals, his wings almost immediately turned black in the Light of Heaven. Alokhosiel, however, is an even rarer example, in that they work with Blandine’s servitors and has even been rewarded by her for that work, but Alokhosiel remains firmly in the service of Jordi.
They are an old angel, serving for many millions of years beneath Atalef, the ofan angel of Bats, often possessing a species of parasites that used the winged mammals as hosts. When human effects on the ethereal realm were discovered, Jordi sponsored Alokhosiel for the Word of Bedbugs, a 5-10 million year old branch of those parasites’ evolution that had come to haunt the beds of early humans. Yves, archangel of Destiny, with his constant smile that is somehow both devious and indulgent, was the first to vote in favor. The archangel of Animals tasked his choirmate with the mission of keeping humans awake and thereby limiting their ability to effect the ethereal realm by their dreams. A mission Jordi never officially rescinded, though only a couple millennia later everything changed when the Eden Experiment failed and Lucifer rebelled. That was 22,625 p.e.v.
Lilith threw open the gates of Hell in 15,000 p.e.v., kicking off the War with her undeniable statement that Freedom is to be first among all values. Alokhosiel took it upon themself to reinterpret Jordi’s wishes into the fight against this new enemy. They learned the Songs of Dreams and began to protect the sentient apes for whom they had begun to develop a fondness from the demons who would harm them while they slept, in either the corporeal realm where their regenerative rest left them vulnerable or the ethereal realm where human thought and belief were the prize to be won as angels and demons fought.
This is the work Alokhosiel continues to do to this day, and Blandine herself has noticed. She considered approaching Jordi to bring the kuriotes into her service, but as the inventor of love and once the embodiment of Hope, she didn’t need to consult with Lang (mercurian of Destiny and angel of Foresight) to know that such an ask would not go over well. Nonetheless, she has rewarded Alokhosiel with a rite and a couple of attunements, even as Jordi has promoted them to the rank of Vassal. As a Vassal, they are in loose command of eight or so unranked angels, mostly other kuriotes. An ofan by the name of Cimex serves to keep Alokhosiel in contact with their old friend Atelef, and Pishpesh (a malak) has seized the chance to ambush demons unexpectedly by serving the angel of Bedbugs. A mercurian of Dreams in service to Animals who is known as Vants ferries messages between Blandine and Alokhosiel.
Ethereal 4 // Intelligence 10 Precision 6 // 40 Mind Hits
Celestial 3 // Will 6 Perception 2 // 18 Soul Hits
Word-Forces 4
Skills: Climbing/2=4, Escape/2=8, Fighting/1=7 or 11 or 7, Move Silently/4=6
Songs: Banishing (Corporeal/3=5), Draining (Corporeal/3=5), Dreams (Corporeal/3=5, Ethereal/2=6, Celestial/1=4), Entropy (Ethereal/1=5), Form (Ethereal/2=6), Numinous Corpus (Fangs/1=3, Plates/3=5), Revulsion (Ethereal/3=7), Sleep (Corporeal/4=6)
Attunements: Angel of Bedbugs*, Angel of Bloodsuckers**, Angel of Insects***, Call of the Wild, Dream Joining, Kuriotes of Animals, Kuriotes of Dreams, Ofan of Animals, Vassal of Animals
Rites: Drink a pint of blood; Rescue an animal endangered by man's works or man's carelessness; Spend 1 hour among a crowd of at least 300 beings who are all aware of each other; Spend 2 hours in a place where you are actively not desired; Spend 8 hours successfully protecting a sleeper from active forces of danger (+2 Essence); Spend 8 hours with no trace of civilization in sight; Live in a city for one full day as an animal, without spending Essence
Dissonance: Being swayed by the concerns of human society, its rules, or its expectations; Value human life over animal life; Kill sloppily or with torture.
* Angel of Bedbugs: Whenever someone with this attunement spends Essence to improve a Move Silently roll, they also reduce their shortest dimension (depth for most humans) by one-half per point of Essence spent. For example, if Alokhosiel (inhabiting a human body measuring 10 inches from nose to back of head) spent 3 Essence to raise the target of their Move Silently roll to 9, the body of the human they're possessing would be reduced by 7/8 to 1.25 inches, allowing them to squeeze into much smaller cracks.
** Angel of Bloodsuckers: If someone with this attunement successfully hits with a melee attack without being noticed, they reduce the amount of disturbance caused by the number of ranks they have in the Move Silently skill (but at least by 1).
*** Angel of Insects: Someone with this attunement may add their Corporeal Forces to any Climbing roll or roll to hold onto, hang from, or balance on a surface. Including things like hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Converting Alokhosiel to GURPS In Nomine require some diversion from strictly following the procedure given in GIN, because GIN has a mechanical tool that In Nomine itself does not: the Extra Mind Hits advantage. That direct conversion method from the book resulted in Alokhosiel being smarter than any mortal human alive, possibly ever (IQ 22), which was over-the-top on its own, but that also resulted in them having virtuoso levels of ability in every Song they possessed. My solution was to start from that strict conversion and then to reduce Alokhosiel's IQ to reasonable levels while increasing their levels of Extra Mind Hits to compensate. After all, the reason I gave them such a high Intelligence in IN was to model that famous bedbug hardiness in their realm of focus.
ST 14 [0]; DX 6 [-70]; IQ 16 [20]; HT 14 [0]
Advantages: Angel of Bedbugs* [60]; Angel of Bloodsuckers** [20]; Angel of Insects*** [10]; Call of the Wild [20]; Celestial Racial Template [390]; Dream Joining☧ [15]; Extra Mind Hits +9 [22.5]; Kuriotes [175]; Kuriotes of Animals [75]; Kuriotes of Dreams [5]; Ofan of Animals [47]; Power Investiture (Celestial) 3 [0]; Power Investiture (Corporeal) 2 [0]; Power Investiture (Ethereal) 4 [0]; Power Investiture (Word)🔯 4 [12]; Rite: Drink a pint of blood [2]; Rite: Spend 1 hour among a crowd of at least 300 beings who are all aware of each other [2]; Rite: Spend 2 hours in a place where you are actively not desired [2]; Rite: Spend 8 hours successfully protecting a sleeper from active forces of danger (+2 Essence) [4]; Vassal of Animals [15]
Disadvantages: Distractible [-1]; Reduced Alertness -16 [-80]; Reduced Manual Dexterity -4 [-12]; Servitor of Jordi [-16]; Short Attention Span [-10]; Weak Will -8 [-64]
Skills: Brawling (P/E) DX-1 [1/2]-5; Climbing (P/A) DX-1 [1]-5; Escape (P/H) DX+2 [16]-8; Stealth (P/A) DX+1 [4]-7
Songs: Banishing (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Draining (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Dreams (Celestial) (M/VH) IQ+Cel-2 [1]-13 or 18; Dreams (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Dreams (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-1 [2]-14 or 19; Entropy (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-2 [1]-13 or 18; Form (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth-1 [2]-14 or 19; Numinous Corpus (Fangs) (M/VH) IQ+Corp-2 [1]-11 or 16; Numinous Corpus (Plates) (M/VH) IQ+Corp [4]-13 or 18; Revulsion (Ethereal) (M/VH) IQ+Eth [4]-15 or 20; Sleep (Corporeal) (M/VH) IQ+Corp+1 [8]-14 or 19
Attributes -50 + Advantages 876.5 + Disadvantages -183 + Skills 21.5 + Songs 35 = 700 points
* As a relatively quick and rough conversion of the attunement described above, treat this as the Shrinking advantage, with the -60% limitation that it only affects the one dimension, the -15% limitation that it costs a variable amount of Essence, and the +30% enhancement that the user retains their usual hit points. That's a total of -45% to the cost of Shrinking. Technically, 9 levels should be purchased, which would cost 225 points, but it is highly unlikely that Alokhosiel would ever want to spend 5 Essence to shrink a human to a depth of 0.5 mm. While that would still be possible, I've set the cost to the equivalent of 5 levels, plus 5 points to cover the permanent link between this power and spending Essence on Stealth rolls.
** If someone with this attunement successfully hits with a melee attack without being noticed, they reduce the amount of disturbance caused by the amount by which their Stealth skill is larger than their DX-3 (so in Alokhosiel's case, by 4).
*** Someone with this attunement adds their Corporeal Power to any Climbing roll or roll to hold onto, hang from, or balance on a surface. Including hanging upside down from the ceiling.
☧ This attunement is used to merge the dreamscapes of two separate dreamers, so that they “meet” one another in their dreams. It requires 2 Essence. Both dreamscapes must be active and occupied, and in the same part of the Marches (within what passes for “line of sight” in the ethereal realm). Once two dreamers are joined, the dreams also join, and support one another. If one of the dreamers fails a skill roll by 6 or more, the dream will not automatically slide into the realm of Nightmare unless the other dreamer does so, too. And if the first dreamer makes any successful skill roll before that happens, the “nightmare slip” is nullified entirely, and both dreamers once again have “clean slates” until another skill roll fails by 6 or more. However, it is equally difficult to slip out of Beleth’s grasp once in it . . . if a merged dreamscape passes into the darker side of the Marches, it takes two successes, both by 6 or more, for an automatic journey back. A merged dreamscape contains elements of the psyche of both dreamers, and the dreamers are both “along for the ride” together. If either dreamer wakes up, the merge is gently broken, and the two dreamscapes drift apart again.
🔯 3 points/level: Every level of this advantage allows you to store and spend one extra point of Essence; this can allow you to exceed the usual 2/3 HT limit. It also grants a +1 bonus on aging rolls made as a result of your Soul Hits going to 0 or less.
In In Nomine, Alokhosiel is relatively weak. Without their Word and the rites and attunements of their intermediate superiors (the angels of Bloodsuckers and Insects), they're really not much more powerful than a starting angelic PC. They thus lends themself both to serving as the immediate superior or mentor of an appropriate PC (probably one of Animals or of Dreams, obviously), as well as to storylines emphasizing one of my favoritestest themes in all of In Nomine ~ that the existence of the Divine elevates every tiniest bit of the world, no matter how small, to the greatest level of significance, and that the struggle between Fate and Destiny draws attention to that significance where otherwise it can easily be forgot.
GURPS, on the other hand, as it always will with kuriotates, stresses just how ungodly (ha!) powerful they are. I mean seriously, the absolute minimum point total for a kuriotes is 693 points, and for a kuriotes of Animals its 698. This puts them, by default, at significantly higher than the standard GURPS Supers starting level and about equal to a black op from GURPS Black Ops. Here, the theme might be that even the weakest of angels stands far superior to humanity and that danger can come from any crack or crevasse. It can be an object lesson in human pride and arrogance, if the spirit behind such seemingly miniscule, weak beings as bedbugs stands equal to the most ridiculously talented, highly trained ubermenschen that the human species can produce. Alokhosiel, thus, works well as either an ally or an enemy of a black ops team getting involved in matters way over even their elevated heads. It's a little grittier than I think most GURPS Black Ops games would play, but I think it fits strongly into the setting from all three of GURPS Black Ops's genre inspirations: neo-noir, cosmic espionage, and Men in Black.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Monday, June 22, 2020
Video of Show Us Your Crits Episode 5 ~ Demise of the Rat Queen
If you missed Show Us Your Crits, the NSFW D&D streaming show I'm in on Thursday, you can watch it now on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9VADvZNXeM !! The next episode will see the addition of a new adventurer to our party so make sure to get nice and caught up!
And do please subscribe to our YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OSkuS0p1KitB9P4gzjftg ). Whenever we get nice round 100s of subscribers, Alternative Play Podcast will randomly give away a piece of RPG memorabilia, including old books! We have about 85 to go until our first giveaway at 200 subscribers, so please help us get there!
And do please subscribe to our YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OSkuS0p1KitB9P4gzjftg ). Whenever we get nice round 100s of subscribers, Alternative Play Podcast will randomly give away a piece of RPG memorabilia, including old books! We have about 85 to go until our first giveaway at 200 subscribers, so please help us get there!
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