Assassin's Creed Setting

By Seam, in Genesys

Posted at

Hello all!

Here is a link for my Asassin's Creed setting:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gftqx6h6m3kre1y/The Brotherhood.docx?dl=0

Please bear with me as it is a work in progress, and I know that the tables are horrible to read.

Nevertheless I'd appreciate it if a native speaking player would give it a once over, and/or knowledgeable players give advice regarding the rules. If someone wants to become a partner in crime, I'd appreciate it also.

Thanks

Posted at

So, first and foremost, I may be wrong about this - apologies if I am, but it appears you've created a god-stat in "the Brotherhood" skill. Am I understanding that correctly?

Is the intent that when you use a Brotherhood Talent, you use the Brotherhood skill (and Willpower Characteristic?)? Basically replacing everything from Stealth, to Perception, to Vigilance, to Coordination, to Athletics, to Knowledge skills, etc. without using an aggressive Strain cost-dynamic of "normal" magic, and thereby completely destroying any potential need for different character builds and play styles and party interdependency? Why would anyone do anything besides stack Will and Brotherhood?

Is that what the Brotherhood skill does? Again, apologies if I've misinterpreted.

Also, it's very odd to me, very un-Genesys-like, how you've keyed Talent requirements off of the number of Ranks possessed in a skill, specifically of course "the Brotherhood" skill.

I could easily have missed it, but it doesn't seem like this is something that has any precedent in the Genesys system (would be happy to be proven wrong here), and is something that is normally instead handled by the Tier system and, a "Basic", "Improved", and "Supreme" Talent progression.

As implemented, it seems like the Brotherhood skills is, if not a god-stat, at least most definitely an "XP-tax" that would then serve no other purpose than to implement a mechanical restriction, where a narrative one would do.

Your game is about PCs who are Assassin's right? Why not just say, "These talents are only accessible to Brotherhood members." Done. Key the Brotherhood Talents off of the logical, normal Skills and Characteristics that they could obviously be associated with. Done. And use a normal Tier, Basic>Imp>Sup progression to control PC power-level/access to them. Done. All looks like Genesys. All plays like Genesys. Why force everything into this new, super-skill thing?

Also, if you use an XP-tax like this, where everyone needs the same thing, and everyone just has to therefore pay for the same thing, and so you just have to award more XP to advance players to the same point than had the XP-tax not been there. What have you gained?

Just seems like all of this could easily have been done without the Brotherhood skill, as Genesys already is designed to handle these types of things, and it would flow and feel much more natural, much more in line with the Genesys approach that everyone knows and expects.

Posted at
10 hours ago, Seam said:

and/or knowledgeable players give advice regarding the rules.

i would rename the "brotherhood skill" to "Lore, Brotherhood".

Posted at
7 hours ago, emsquared said:

Just seems like all of this could easily have been done without the Brotherhood skill,

the brotherhood skill serves as the "power" activator for this setting as much as Magic/Arcane servers for fantasy settings

7 hours ago, emsquared said:

Your game is about PCs who are Assassin's right? Why not just say, "These talents are only accessible to Brotherhood members."

because Templar may also learn about the brotherhood and some of its powers ...

also rouge assassins may continue to learn about their former brotherhood ...

7 hours ago, emsquared said:

Is the intent that when you use a Brotherhood Talent, you use the Brotherhood skill (and Willpower Characteristic?)? Basically replacing everything from Stealth, to Perception, to Vigilance, to Coordination, to Athletics, to Knowledge skills, etc

as i read it you still have to roll all those skills and not substitute the brotherhood skill

7 hours ago, emsquared said:

I could easily have missed it, but it doesn't seem like this is something that has any precedent in the Genesys system (would be happy to be proven wrong here), and is something that is normally instead handled by the Tier system and, a "Basic", "Improved", and "Supreme" Talent progression.

an alternative would be to have a simple dependency of the brotherhood skill and tiers of Basic/Improved/Supreme.

on the other side having the availability of greater power (talents) tied to your understanding of brotherhood lore is an understandable limitation.

Posted at
10 hours ago, Seam said:

Hello all!

Here is a link for my Asassin's Creed setting:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gftqx6h6m3kre1y/The Brotherhood.docx?dl=0

Please bear with me as it is a work in progress, and I know that the tables are horrible to read.

Nevertheless I'd appreciate it if a native speaking player would give it a once over, and/or knowledgeable players give advice regarding the rules. If someone wants to become a partner in crime, I'd appreciate it also.

Thanks

please continue by improving it, this is quite interesting.

Posted at

@emsquared No, the brotherhood skill was never ment to be a substitution for the other skills you mentioned but a support skill as @ Terefang said. I'll recheck what I have written and see where I used misleading phrases. You are right in that the brotherhood skill has no cost. It should cost two strain as usual. That was an oversight by me, and I'll correct that.

Thanks for the critic both of you.

Posted at

Wow, just wow. I am quite busy at the moment but will get to the file soon (I hope). Thank you!

Posted at

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the more supernatural abilities of the assassins and in some cases Templars a byproduct of their relation to the precursors and exposure to their technology? So maybe keep brotherhood as faction rating of sorts that perhaps reduces the talent costs or their rarity but add a ancestry type rating for governing abilities like Altiar's eagle vision or Evie's camouflage. This could even allow for more mythical abilities if you want to bring in the thing Alexios and Kassandra can do in Odyssey.