Ep 68 of The Letters Page: Behind the Scenes Episode

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain as we get our first glimpse behind the scenes of story creation.

Audio is available HERE.

Or if you'd prefer the (uncut) video, that's available HERE.

Confirmed that there will be a Dark Watch source book for the RPG.

Book will cover the Dark Watch team, Night Hunter, other street-level heroes plus villains.  It'll deal with martial arts, magic, guns, and that sort of thing.

Be still, my heart!  

I know I've made this offer before, C & A, but if you're looking for freelancers...

I haven’t finished the episode so I don’t k ow I’d its suggested but What if the future hero is an Oni who has to control his rage so he doesn’t kill himself. It would need to be explained how they get control of themselves though. I foresee a lot of meditating and training with mr fixer to help with this.

At the end of the episode they talk about The Harpy casting a spell on a mask to keep the souls separate but they also say that the person would need to control their anger so your right about Me Fixed teaching meditation

Sweet, now I must finish the episode!!! It’s been really cool to listen to.

This was really cool, and I love how they started out with something in mind and ended up taking a completely unexpected path to it.

Looking forward to more of these later on, but watch the spoilers in the filename, guys! ;D

I really liked listening to the sausage get made. 

And now I kinda want to play an Oni.

So, regarding the name checking, at about 1:28:00

Fun fact, Barron Blade is a WWE wrestler. (The comic Baron Blade, which I was sure I had seen, I can’t find anywhere. So maybe it was a dream? Idk)

I'm hoping one day in the future they will release that Zhu Long villain deck they discussed! Maybe even to coincide with the release of the source book..

I'm amused how they say they went through so much trouble to make sure they never use names that other properties for similar heroes, but Tempest is their aquatic hero, and both Marvel and DC have aquatic heroes named Tempest!  To be fair, they did also suggest in passing that names that are so common as to have entered the public domain are also OK.

I'm also amused how they initially wanted to create something that came out of the early 00's, then got sidetracked and wanted to create a Dark Watch Zhu Long-based alchemist (blood mage, really, the way they were describing it), and then ended up with a monster and a bruiser instead.  I kept trying to second-guess where they'd end up and got it wrong every time.

That said, since they never quite finished, here's where I'd go with it:

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In Zhu Long's earliest days, even he made mistakes.  His first attempts at the Oni masks involved simply killing people and performing the ritual on them.  Usually this worked--violent deaths at the hands of Zhu Long's assassins are usually sufficient cause for a spirit to become vengeful--but some of the masks simply failed to work when used.  Unfortunately, Zhu Long didn't keep close track of which of his masks were early efforts and which are later ones after he worked the kinks out, so every once in a while, one of his assassins tries to turn themselves into an Oni and the mask just doesn't do anything.

Until....

The comic opens from the perspective of an elderly Asian man wearing the outfit of a Zhu Long ninja.  He reminisces about his heyday as one of Zhu Long's most favored agents, first a simple foot soldier, then a poisoner and alchemist, later a competent blood mage.  But he's not immortal, and he lost his edge as he aged, eventually being demoted back down to assassin.  He was never really evil, but he had his own reasons for being loyal to Zhu Long and would stick to those reasons on principle.  This mission would be his last hurrah, and he's at peace with that.  He'll attack the heroes, put on the mask, and be at peace at last.

Or so he thinks.

The mask actually contains the spirit of an ancient Tibetan lama, who also died at peace with his beliefs and his death, violent as it was.  As this trapped spirit is compatible with the spirit and mindset of the elderly assassin, they merge in the same way as an Oni would, but the result, though monstrous (it still has an Oni's face, after all), is calm, wise, and learned.  He still has the assassin's willingness to let the ends justify the means, but he also has the lama's sense of goodness and justice.  A powerful magician and a skilled martial artist, he named himself Hakutaku, after a legendary beast that feeds on nightmares and bad memories, known for teaching heroes about the nature of monsters.

I like it. Sounds neat!

That was a lot of fun, I could listen to a lot more of these kinds of episodes.

Pretty sure I caught a Avengers: Infinity War reference in there.

Yes, that was definitely there. :D

And I feel like there's enough framework laid out for that Zhu Long deck that the fandom could probably throw one together. Getting art for it would of course be a challenge...

Its simple we wait for their schedule to free up so it doesn't impact other important things and kidnap Adam.

I like how you are concerned enough with their schedules to take that into account (can't stop OblivAeon!), but then are not concerned enough with themselves that you want to kidnap him

Clearly the solution is just to borrow existing card art.  But, the key will be to use old card art, and then mark sure that Adam somehow sees the deck.  His dislike of his old art will combine with his love of the game, and he'll feel compelled to make all-new art for the deck!

Hey the art for OblivAeon is all finished…

I thought this episode was really fun. There are a lot of cool directions the Oni could go. And, of course, now we know why a stone Oni is something the Dreamer would fear!

Man, I realize that I was biased, but at the beginning, when they were saying, "Hmm, we need some kind of monster that's captured by Zhu Long, and maybe he's harvesting it..." I was just basically shouting YETI HERO YETI HERO YETI HERO at my podcast app as loudly as possible.

What we got was pretty cool, though.

But I think I have my Sentinels RPG first hero, and it will be my namesake. 

I was thinking Yeti, too.  Or Penanggalan.

Oh my god this was literally the awesomest episode ever.

Very fun and interesting episode. I would enjoy hearing more of this kind of episode, and a Gen Con live ep would be a blast!

I have to add: I understand their point about a teleporter in SotM, but I still disagree. (And as a lover of teleporters, I created a home-brew hero to prove it to myself – as one does.

So they had me completely sold on this idea, right until the very end. I hope they do not stay fixated in using magic to ward/change the mask when they create the hero. To be honest, warding the mask both feels extremely limiting, and does not leave enough reasons for why the person that put the mask on to have become a hero. Or at least, it invovles a lot more dancing and maneuvering to make it happen, and makes so that a hero comes about out of painfully contrived circumstances.

On the other hand, there is a much easier way to do this. Instead of warding the mask, ward the person. I can think of a handul of ideas just off-hand to explain how a person could have been warded ahead of time. Several of those options involve that person having been a fundamentally good person, the kind likely to actually become a hero after being horribly warped. It also opens up the possibilities for how that person comes into contact with the mask, some of which are farily dark and fitting for this kind of thing, and for the setting the book seems like it will have.

Just some food for thought.

Personally, I think it would be interesting if someone tried to make an Oni mask with a good soul instead of a vengeful one.

What if one of Zhu Long's lieutenants puts on his mask and transforms, only to find that he has somehow retained his self-control? With his new powers he manages to escape and later finds out he could even remove his mask.

Flashback time reveals that he was rescued from a young age by Zhu Long as his home was consumed by magical fire. The facial scars from the eldritch flames made him a pariah to society and thus he grew up the only way he could - under the tutelage of Zhu Long. It turns out the mask could not completely overwhelm him as a combination of the magic in his scars and his in doing what he does: out of love of Zhu Long, never out of selfishness or even self-protection.

Later he finds out the fire was started by you-guessed-who, starting his road to redemption. Now having lost his love for his former master, he has to find it in himself to love the world that shunned him lest the mask overwhelms him.

Kinda corny and even cliche, but I kinda like how he has to put on the mask and transform into a monster, which hides the monster society thinks he is.

voldemort?

The Mummy.

who the heck is the mummy?

In the late 90s there was a mummy referred to as he-who-shall-not-be-named.

Of course I wasn't actually referring to the mummy.

this joke took a wildly different direction than I thoight it would.

It happens around here.

And now, a wild attempt to derail it in another direction!

Yeah, I agree, I think there must be ways to handle positional stuff like a teleporter character. The first thing that comes to my mind is a hero with cards that do various special effects that change the game state based on positions of things on the table - like taking a target in play and putting it under the top card of the Environment deck, maybe, or Chastise-like things. And, of course, there's always reaction/redirection effects similar to the Synaptic Interruption. (I get the feeling that Stuntman maybe feels like this?)

But the more I think about it, the more I think this isn't going far enough. If I were to start building a portal character, I'd start from the idea that the hero's power is "Search your deck for a Portal card. Put it into play." and then fill the deck with these:

Portal

Ongoing

Play this card in front of a deck or target.

The first time each turn that deck plays a card or that target deals damage, you may use a power.

The rest of the hero's deck would consist of cards that do things between decks/targets tied together by portals. For example, selecting two targets with Portals in from of them, and redirect all their damage to each other. Or selecting two decks with Portals in front of them, and swapping their top cards. Or swapping the play areas of two Equipment or Device cards, and having them affect their new areas. Man, that would be fun! It would also capture some of the positional aspects of the character.

I could imagine redoing Mad Bomber Blade somewhat similarly…maybe something like shuffling his Device cards into the Environment and Hero decks, and having those "bombs" go off when they are played, revealed, or drawn. The heroes would have to actually find them all to win, through the normal game or some search mechanic on his rule card. That might capture the idea of searching the city better than the "bombs" just popping out of his deck and all cycling to the same place (under his card). That feels more like searching different locations, too. It might not be the most exciting game, though - it should be fun first of all!

I wonder how you did it, Rabit. 

I like it! 

I wonder how you did it, Rabit. 
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To avoid derailing us any more, short version here and full version here.  (I really need to update the version on BGG, though, as it’s an older one…)

Oh, yeah, we had this discussion already!

I thought of a better story for how we get an Oni hero. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Harpy is visiting her sister Tachyon at the house of Tachyon and Dana Bertrand. Ninjas burst in, with orders to leave no witnesses. One of the ninjas manages to deliver a blow to Tachyon which looks fatal. Dana sees her beloved Meredith “die”, and in a moment of grieving hatred, she grabs the mask off a Ninja’s belt and puts it on (a ninja has been seen to do this earlier in the fight, so Dana knows mask equals power boost but not any further details. Harpy does know those details, so intuitively casts an emergency spell to arrest Dana’s transformation halfway. Tachyon recovers from the seeming death and is horrified at what Dana has done; Tachyon and Harpy begin trying to reverse the effect, but all Dana wants to do is hunt down Zhu Long and every ninja in his service and kill them with her bare hands. The characters can be swapped out, but I think that’s the story.