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Roleplaying Games List - Entanglements

The next few weeks, I will be publishing lists of the roleplaying games I have bought from DrivethruRPG, along with some sort of brief comment. Possibly a review, once I have used it a few times.

I will start with today, and the short indie book Entanglements from Yaruki Zero Games.

Entanglements
Entanglements is a story-mapping tool for use with most any role-playing game. Over the course of a few hours you will build up a complex relationship map that can enrich and inform a campaign. The PDF includes a reference sheet and tips for using Entanglements with D&D, Fate, Fudge, GURPS, Apocalypse World, and more.

A nice, basic system, useful for solo play or group play. Available as a Pay What You Want title from DriveThru.

The Introduction states:-

This is a set of rules for use with most any role-playing game to help you build up a deeply interconnected set of characters. It is essentially instructions for making a “story map” that shows relationships between characters, places, events, and objects that will hopefully help provide the basis of an exciting campaign. It doesn’t replace the character creation system of whatever game you’re playing, but it will definitely influence the choices players make in creating their characters. Using Entanglements is fairly time-consuming, and it’s best to set aside an entire session for it, possibly with character creation included. This in turn means it’s best for when you’re intending to commit to a long-term campaign.

As usual, I only buy a thing from DriveThruRPG if I have a feeling that I will be needing it - and by the look of the preview, this is an item that I very much need.

Mongoose Traveller - Watch This Space!

Tune in here tomorrow for a major announcement from Mongoose Publishing about this.

Shadownessence Returns

Is there a plan for re-growth of my old haunt, Shadownessence?
There is now - at least a plan to restart the forum and bring the population back.
It starts with publicising the site wherever we all have accounts: Facebook, G+, tumblr, my blogs. Anywhere and everywhere.
And this is what the forumites of SnE will be doing this weekend.
Starting here.
Are you a fan of the Old World of Darkness (oWoD), the reboot World of Darkness from 2004 and any of the games old and new? In times gone by, SnE was THE place to go to air your views and share your delight at these shared worlds of Storytelling horror.
Now, after a prolonged absence, Shadownessence has returned - and the forum is eager for fresh blood.
So if you want to know what is going on with the WoD 20th Anniversary Edition games, or the 10th Anniversary release of the new WoD in the form of WoD Second Edition, why not join us at Shadownessence - or renew your old, dusty accounts and come back to restoke the old Balefire again?
Our long Winter now is over. Spring is coming for Shadownessence. Join us and watch our long-awaited reawakening.

The Blood Path on DriveThruRPG (Christmas In July 2014)

As part of their annual "Christmas In July" promotion, DriveThruRPG offer a selection of games at knockdown prices.

This year, Abbott & Greene join them by offering The Blood Path at $0.99.

The Blood Path

The Blood Path

Of all the enemies player characters love to engage in roleplaying games, no more popular enemy exists than orcs. A default enemy, an excuse to have the characters make use of their combat moves, orcs are a staple monster in many tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.

Modern MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft have begun to challenge this attitude, making orcs over as the honourable Klingons of fantasy roleplaying games; but the Monsters of Legend and Cities of Legend: Skarr, City of Orcs sourcebooks still cast them in the same old light – as monsters.

All that changes here.

A chance encounter by the roadside involves the adventurers with a party of orcs on The Blood Path, a sacred quest for vengeance. But things are never quite what they seem...

Will the orcs prove friend or foe?

Can the adventurers thwart an evil that if released has the potential to claim thousands of lives – orc and human alike?

Follow The Blood Path and forge your Legend.

What I Learn From The Cult of Ecstasy

The Cult of Ecstasy.

Back in 1993, a roleplaying game emerged from White Wolf (now Onyx Path). Mage: the Ascension was a Storytelling game of reality and philosophy. Gifted with the power of Awakened souls, mages carry on the traditions of the Wise and the Subtle in a world which had ceased to believe in magic.

The good guys in this War for Reality were the Nine Traditions - Akashic Brotherhood, Celestial Chorus, Dreamspeakers, Euthanatos, Order of Hermes, Verbena, Sons of Ether, Virtual Adepts ... and, of course, the Cult of Ecstasy.

Founded in Asia, spreading throughout the world, using Sanskrit terminology like its cousins, the Euthanatos death mages, the Cult of Ecstasy represent the sex pole of the sex/death dichotomy; the libido, the life force, unfettered.

Sahaja - The Passions

Passion is the key to Cult of Ecstasy magic. The Nine Sacred Passions are most particularly revered by the Cult; The Nine Sacred Passions is a book written by a Cultist, Tali Eos, outlining these Passions as:-

Joy/Wonder
Empathy/Sympathy
Lust/Ambition
Grief/Sadness
Fear
Jealousy/Envy
Hate
Rage

Through these Passions, Cultists transcend the limitations of body and soul and reach the eternal Moment, that sacred unifying point in Time where all moments meet. Or something to that effect. Most other mages just see the Cultists as nothing but a bunch of hedonists, all stoner hippies in tie dyes taking drugs and having sex and generally wasting their lives.

However, beneath all that apparent rampant hedonism and debauchery there lies a deep ethical code, called The Code of Ananda. The ten tenets of this Code can be summarised as follows.

1. Life is a miracle. Your life is a miracle.

2. Your friends are not to be used.

3. Generosity reaps a sweeter reward than parsimony.

4. Some people can't handle too much reality. Leave those minds be.

5. Don't be shackled by prophecies and premonitions. Not all of them come true - or deserve to come true.

6. Rape and violence, are violations, and those who rape deserve pain in return.

7. Be responsible for your own deeds and actions, or suffer the consequences.

8. Humour defuses situations that would otherwise explode to wrath.

9. Everything, no matter how damaged, can grow again.

10. Fear can be mastered. Understand it, transcend it but don't give in to it.

Some things have a moral lesson to impart to the reader; a message which readers can take away from the fiction and find to be true in life. The Cult of Ecstasy teaches responsibility, passion and honour. The Cult teaches one that it doesn't matter how one lives one's life, as long as it is lived, deeply, passionately, without forcing one's values on others; living fully in the present moment, because that is the only time one truly has.