No.11630
Write down your intial awakening and planned future growth.
____________________________
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No.11631
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No.11632
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No.11633
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No.11634
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No.11635
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No.11636
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No.11639
>>11636
Tupilak might seem kind of underpowered, but it's actually one of the most powerful worlds.
The ability to change the culture of a civilization via its stories gives a great amount of power over that civilization.
Awakening is a setting where many dozens of conduits other than yourself are mentioned, and tupilak is one powerset where you can do your dealings under the radar of those others, quietly rewriting memories.
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No.11648
>>11639
So it's the fanfiction world of the author. Hope those conduits enjoy getting absolutely destroyed infinitely, like those who favor the prison. Gives the wardens someone to antagonize, at least. Also of all fanfiction worlds they could have added they picked that and not Mu? Ridiculous!
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No.11649
>>11648
Tupilak is a world Thrallherd developed but never realized. He has made several posts about it over on halfchan.
Things we knew about it:
>It's a snow world
>Stories are important
>There are magic tattoos
The entire world was extrapolated from only those bullet points. So it might as well be a fanworld. Still, there's a reason why it was made and not any other fan creation.
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No.11650
>>11630
I actually think the presence of wardens is good and desireable, but I don't want to be one.
Let's see if I can dig up my old afterlife refugee center.
I used to have a build where I used Memory of Flesh as much as possible and let people live in my sand palace in the Glass Desert. I have been told Uthuli made a better paradise, but that has tropical storms and djinn powers fix most of what's wrong with the desert.
With more starting points I think I can remake my build a bit more comfortably.
>Primary World: Bleak Fields
>Additional World: Glass Desert (23)
>Scrying (22)
>Calling (21)
I'm going to use this instead of gateway. Speccing into gateway is too optimistic about the scale of my operations. I need to personally use Memory of Flesh on each subject after all.
>Guide (20)
Just a useful power to have.
>Bridge Building (19)
I'm not relying on chance to grant me a bridge in an appropiate location.
>Sands of time (18)
<growing old
<ishygddt
I should spare some points from my build and go back to the obligations and intrinsics section on this page after I see what they entail. If they're not that bad I'll spend them on flushing my abilities a bit more.
>>11631
I'm okay with the intrinsice changes and I wouldn't mind the obligations if it weren't for the first one. I think compassion and understanding are vital virtues to have.
>Damned Shades (16)
>Memory of Flesh (15)
I'd like to have a death cheat, but it's on a whole other branch than I'm going for. I'll pick the cheap one from Earth, I can build bridges so I can escape a bridgeless timeline.
>Lethe (14)
>Eternal Promise (12)
Eternal promise is perfect for what I'm going for. It even says 'by my side', so it doesn't have to be in the Bleak Fields.
I won't be going for elysium. I don't need the unsavory zombie afterlife if I can craft my own arabian nights afterlife.
And now I only have to take deferred obligations once for the Bleak fields.
>Deferred Obligations (10)
>>11633
I'm okay with these changes and obligations. I still want to go back to the Earth page so I won't be making it to the 10 point obligation.
>Circle of Sand (8)
>Palace (7)
>Bind Water Jinn (6)
>Object of Power (5)
Object of power is much preferrable to dealing with Jinn, especially if I combine it with:
>Craft Glass (4)
>Binding Glass (3)
I realize now that the possible size of palaces has been nerfed (or maybe it was limited in the original and I missed it) and you need a special perk to make a city. Maybe I'll make it a bunch of small towers.
>>11631
Back to Earth.
I know I want the cheap immortality.
>Second chance (2)
But I'm wondering what to spend the remainder on. If I had enough for soft contact I'd take that, but maybe just directed contact is still a good idea.
>Tongues (1)
>Directed Contact (0)
I'll be able to converse with the dead from any country and I'll keep my Earth bridge effect on while in my secret desert city.
For the future I'm interested in filling out my Earth perks more and also take another world, perhaps the Rim.
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No.11651
>>11650
>>11639
I played this under the presumption that I'd be myself, just with powers. So I wasn't too sure about finding a character portrait.
But I choose a figure that sort of looks like he has Bleak Fields changes and dresses for living in the desert. So I do think I would look more like him than I do now.
The home base is the city of towers. There's multiple towers, not too far from each other that house former shades.
My other great works are the great recognizable monoliths I leave at my bridges in the Bleak Fields for unsaved shades to seek out and the various exposes on different worlds I organize all over the world with various physical proofs so people understand that the bleak fields afterlife is real and follow my burial rites.
In the city of towers I give my most trusted followers special items that give them the power to create water and make life possible there. In the bleak fields I have agents tasked with proseletyzing for my afterlife and guiding people to the monolith.
Now that I think about it. Maybe my homebase would more be the studio in which I bind Jinn and the city of towers would be one of my great works. Well, I'm not changing it now.
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No.11698
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No.11795
I normally don't post builds but what the hell, why not. Essentially I was going for a "otherworldly deity" type deal, in which I've got minions and I've got land and servants and all that. A huge horrible citadel with structures that don't have to be constantly blasted with light, big luxurious areas in which to enjoy yourself, brood, or whatever. For minions there's quite a lot of options because of the fleshcrafter perks for Bleak Fields so this is just a small sample but I fully intend to push the limits of what's "physically possible". Of course you need people that people don't mind looking at too, so there's always going to be minions who are unearthly but not too hard on the eyes. The goal is to keep growing and to bring in as many "souls" as possible for the purposes of eating their memories and growing more intelligent and skilled, and also building up minions and perhaps myself physically. This will be achieved through the use of contracts brokered by either myself or by my minions. The two portraits are because I figure sometimes less is more and it'd be better to just sort of act incognito and other times it's cool to be a horrible thing-that-should-not-be.
I do have some parting thoughts. Bleak Fields, the Prison and the Sunless Sea are a bit too similar for my liking. The former is "you are a devil who wants to tempt people and punish them if they do bad things", the prison is "you are a slenderman who wants to punish people who break rules" and the latter is "you are a skeleton kang who wants to punish people because it gives you a fucking boner". I don't want to seem to trivialize their differences because they aren't exactly the same but I think they could do with some more uniqueness. I've never liked this 'obligations' nonsense and it doesn't act in any way to dispel the notion that these three plains are merely different shades of sadism and domination, though I suppose if they lacked that quality they may also not interest me in the slightest.
Normally I like Bevin, the Rim, the Bleak Fields, the Crystal Spire, Kuiper, The Prison, the Sunless Sea and the Void. Not that I take things from all of them, obviously, usually I sort of gravitate around Bevin and the Rim but in this I don't see anything I can grab in either without going 100% which makes them a lot less fun. A mastered Bevin seems pretty useless but I'd want to benefit from libraries, link books and the technological interfaces. The Void seems to lock you out of having any fun at all if you grab more than a trifle of perks and the Crystal Spire just didn't seem to work with what I was doing. Because of all that I just stacked on generic perks and Earth perks. At first I hated Earth but the more I read everything the more it grew on me, I think it's a neat idea and the concept of it being the "Conduit Home" so people who are earthier are more likely to be kind and useful to other conduits is great. No need to fuck over other superior beings, at least not generally. A fraternity of wizards is definitely superior to a constant paranoia war and this CYOA is definitely more thought out than a lot of garbage that gets posted here.
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No.11798
>>11698
>>11650
>>11795
Is the Bleak Fields too popular?
Should it be nerfed?
I see the similarity between the three "hell" worlds. There's a definite tendency to follow a "minions, home, superpower" format.
The later, less purely elemental, worlds take more risks. The Crystal Spire is ALL superpowers, Bevin is ALL home.
The obligations are flavourful but so prohibitative that they're basically just a point drain via Defferred Obligations. I like to think that it's meant as a prompt for what kind of rival conduits you'll find in your preferred world. The intro to this one makes it explicit that it wants you to build with other conduits existing in mind.
I'm saving these build templates btw. I think it's really cool to have a compendium of my fellow conduits.
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No.11857
>>11798
The Bleak Fields is popular (probably) because it's one of the few worlds that doesn't absolutely fuck you in the ass for choosing to invest a lot of points in it, while also having a lot of nice attributes. You get labor, minions, fleshcrafting, neat thematic contract stuff, summoning teleports and a bonus of added eye lasers. Most of it is also useful independent of the plane. Many other planes have abilities that absolutely fizzle when you leave and/or give you terrible vampire-like penalties. The notable examples may be The Rim for its focus on the infrastructure of the place and for the Elves fucking up if they leave, The Void for the necessity of colors for living, and The Bevin for literally just being a house plane, but it applies to pretty much everything.
Also the Spire has 2 minions. It's got the brain crystals which you can parley into man crystals which can then be connected to a big computer-man-brain-spire virtual world.
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No.11873
>>11857
All worlds should have equally discouraging drawbacks. If bleak fields' is too mild it should be changed.
I remember people saying thrallherd's prototype being overly harsh, saying you had to think the worst of everyone and keep trying to prove it
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No.11875
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No.11898
>>11873
If all worlds equally fuck you in the ass then it's something that's going to be overlooked, either that one mechanic or the entire CYOA. "You must" is something that has no place in a CYOA. "You feel an inclination towards" is something that should be avoided but is far more acceptable. It's a big deal in GMing an RPG, you don't tell the player what to feel. You don't say "you are super scared" you paint a super scary picture and you let the player act it out, maybe they're feeling extra stoic, maybe extra spooked (fright checks being a special case and representing something other than the 'feeling'). The game says "You must use your powers in this way" or "You are now the kind of person who think this way or does thing thing" which are both needlessly restrictive and annoying.
The idea of uniformal unpleasantness sounds like some kind of insane "balancing" decision. If everyone is miserable than the difference in misery doesn't exist so somehow that means everyone is okay? No, everyone is miserable, equally and uniformally. It doesn't even make sense in context, who says conduits are supposed to be miserable assholes who have brain problems? Take Bevin for example, a plane engineered by conduits for the use of conduits, why should that fuck a conduit in any way? It was made specifically NOT to fuck conduits, hell even to unfuck them. Players should be enjoying the CYOA not begrudgingly, grumblingly accepting loads of garbage for their powers. Is it fun to have your arms amputated but in return get a million dollars? No. Might someone choose to do that? Surely. But it's not fun, losing the use of your arms isn't fun, doesn't matter how you're compensated (replacement arms notwithstanding).
Players don't like this kind of unfreedom and these penalties for simply playing the game. The only choice in that kind of sadomasochistic self-injury is whether to suffer and play or not play at all. That's not a choice anyone should have their game offer. It works if your audience is entirely comprised of submissive masochists but fails for any other group.
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No.11899
>>11898
I disagree.
The scenario in a cyoa shouldn't be compared and contrasted to your real life.
If cyoas only existed as wish fulfillment then everything would just be an arms race towards "you becom god".
There is definitely room for cyoas with unpleasant scenarios, as long as it allows for interesting builds.
On the topic of 'not telling the players what they feel' I agree a bit more. But even in roleplaying games there are still themes relying on affiliation and alignment.
Perhaps it would be better if conduit took a page out of their playbook and included it a bit differently.
Not "you become lawful good when choosing this class" but "you can only choose this class if you're lawful good".
In the same vein you're only allowed to take 5 or more points in the sunless if you're a bit sadistic, unless you've taken defferred obligations of course.
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No.11902
>>11899
Not true at all. For starters, "become god" isn't necessarily everyone's ideal condition. Beyond that, providing limitations while still moving the player in a positive direction is how you create a breadth of potential experiences to explore. In short, CYOAs should always be wish fulfillment to some degree but they shouldn't fulfill every possible wish simultainiously, because that's too boring.
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No.11917
>>11899
I can't understand where you're coming from. CYOAs are definitively only about wish fulfillment. The player gets his (generally) metaphorical rocks off and then if he feels like it he can share that with the voyeurs who lurk. They're not useful in any other capacity so I cannot understand what you mean by that. An unpleasant game is a game left unplayed.
Furthermore Gygax' insane boner for alignments was one of the most horrible things to happen to roleplaying. They exist for the express purpose of moving a story along and enriching combat, they serve no purpose in any other capacity. There can be nothing subtle when people are infused with evil or light to such a degree that you can literally detect it. There can be no diplomacy or conversation with creatures that are literally evil, and killing them is nothing short of good. It's a misunderstanding of this black-and-white pure system that leads to all kinds of confusion, it's not meant to be used in any other way. There are evil creatures who exist only to cause mayhem and do evil and there are good creatures who exist only to cause joy and peace. There are likewise lawful creatures who exist only to create and enforce order, and chaotic ones who do the opposite. This was created only so that lawful good paladins could instantly have the motivation and justification for slaying all manner of spider monsters, goblins and demons who simply existed, because their existence itself was a death warrant (due to their alignments). No annoying things like who what where when and why to get in your way. "Evil man make evil army, you good man you kill evil man so no evil army hurt people." But I digress. Themes and stuff, sure. Alignments are a crock, though, all the best systems don't have anything resembling alignments. At worst they have "motivations" which are just roleplaying points written down.
Attuning/aligning with a foreign plane of alien magic is bound to affect you in all sorts of ways. Mutation due to contact with the weird is something I can get behind, I like it conceptually. My issue is penalizing the player for playing the game.
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No.11918
>>11917
Als cyoa, just like An rpg, is a game. We don't play games solely for imaginary worlds in which our lives are better. We have fun with the rules.
The best cyoas don't just give us everything and tell us to have fun, they give us trade-offs, to show what kind of people we are. We create a build or character that we think is interesting and makes clever use of the rules, that's why we optimize for the best possible choices, as a challenge to ourselves. Als cyoa is good when everybody can make something unique that fits them, not when the scenario is enough of a fantasy.
Some of the most popular cyoas put you in harm's way in a society with a lower living standard, but they're appreciated because their are sorry many different ways to tackle the problem and you can show of your ingenuity or preferences by making a build.
Alignment is a tool for roleplay. You can more easily fall into character if you have a few lines on your character sheet that tell you what they're like.
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No.11919
>>11902
But in this particular case you still get free superpowers, even if you spent points removing the drawbacks. So it's a strict improvement over your current life, with the choice to trade in sanity for more powers on top of that.
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No.11920
>>11919
I never said otherwise and I wasn't the first anon you were talking to. I simply believe that ALL CYOAs should be "wish fullfillment" to some degree. Specifically, every CYOA should put YOU the reader into some kind of situation that at least SOME readers consider to be a net-gain over their current existence. You can't please everyone, but if you can't please SOMEONE you've definitely failed.
As for Conduit Awakening, I just think it's a downgrade over the classic.
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No.12676
>>11630
Conduit of the Rim
>Scrying (24)
>Calling (23)
>Guide (22)
>Create Least Conduit (18)
>Gateway [Rim] (16)
>Sands of Time (15)
>Tethered X2 (17)
>>11635
>Binding (16)
>Preaching (15)
>Beauty (14)
>Settlements (13)
>Fire (12)
>Art (11)
>Writing (10)
>Society (8)
>Exploration (7)
>Modernism (5)
>Overseer Fortress (3)
>Overser Beacons (2)
>Mass Gateways (0)
I need to be smart about this. The awakening premise means that there are going to be rival Tribunes about. I want to uplift my serfs, for that I'm aiming to work closely with world governments.
I figure that by the time I have a good gateway up my civ is already going to be big enough to be taken seriously by the UN as its own nation.
What can I do to protect myself against other conduits, ones that might spec a bit more into other world to supply their serfs with supernatural boons?
With the diluted time my ability to create least conduits will help me create many vassals, who can monitor my civilization. This will include experts from Earth, who will bring their knowledge and culture to the Rim. A long charging mass gateway will give me the ability to call in military support from Earth in an emergency. I might even give them their own military bases in my territory, along with the embassies of course.
If my rival tribunes aren't in league with humanity, they're going to be technolgically outclassed, if they are there's some diplomatic ties to prevent war.
That's my plan for a straight Rim build, what'd you think?
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No.12677
>>11795
If I encountered you in a story I'd think of you as an intentionally unrealistic campy final boss. I get the feeling you have a strong sense of what your esthetics would be like, did you spend a long time searching for images?
Definitely villain tier.
The setting needs a way for mortals to fight back.
>>11650
See? You don't need to be a devil to be into the hellish worlds. It can be used for good too. Just remember to take your Deffered Obligation pills.
I, for one, am glad to know the shade I leave behind, who will have all my memories, will have a chance at finding a decent home.
Also a good suggestion for an afterlife paradise: the Aether. They get fluffy cloud heaven, you get more worshippers, it's win-win.
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No.12692
>>12676
>planned future growth
Well, it'd depend on how well my plan works out, innit?
If my civ can survive with help from Earth I have more room for personal perks.
First, I'd want immortality
>Rebirth Tank (1)
Then some Earth perks
>Inheritance (3)
>Tongues (4)
>Authority (6)
>Easy Passage (8)
>Navigation (9)
>Directed Contact (10)
>Soft Contact (11)
In that order.
The last point I'd spend on fleshing out the Rim.
>Deferred Obligations [Rim] (13)
>Biome Adaption (14)
>Mimicry (15)
>Scorched Earth (18)
>Tectonics (21)
>Friend to Nature (23)
>Domestication (25)
I'd probably chase domestication before more overseeer abilities.
However, if I'm having trouble defending my serfs I'll multiworld in order to make them more powerful.
>Extra world [Crystal Spire] (2)
>Crystal Hallways (3)
>Bismuthic Allegiance (4)
>Lesser Spire (5)
>Deep Spire (7)
That should help them develop technology.
>Tesla Charge (8)
>Technopathy (10)
>Cultivation (12)
As a demi-god of technology I can disrupt enemy movements, I can also bypass the need for an industrial revolution and have my serfs grow their technology from the earth.
>Deferred Obligations [Crystal Spired] X2 (16)
>Take to the Sky (18)
>Voltaic Current (20)
>Voltaic Being (21)
>Voltaic Rebirth (23)
Because I still want immortality.
>Ghost in the Machine (25)
Naturally, I'll still be making Least Conduits, so my growth will be slower.
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No.13056
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