Bids, Shaping & Lore Rework Preview

We have made some adjustments to our Shaping and Lore patterns so that the expectations of what players can get out of these skills are more in line with what we at staff can provide.

Bids

All Bids have updated wording so that it is clear that you must ask a question about the topic you are bidding to receive an answer from the marshal/staff.  We have seen that players would lores without questions, or ask very broad questions (Ex: “Bid Public Avian, what do I know about birds.”). We have found that such questions take up a lot of time for marshals to answer or result in unsatisfying answers. We want to encourage players to be thoughtful in asking questions so that we can give rewarding and pertinent answers.

We have updated the wording of Public and Scholarly lores to highlight the difference in quality of information. Public Lores will provide you only basic information about the topic while Scholarly Lores will provide you with more detailed information.

General Lores

We are adjusting the General Lores to work differently than the other lores.  Public General Lores will only allow you to bid that lore once per event (now referred to officially as Stormbreak). Scholarly General lores will have an additional benefit that provides further opportunities to interact within the field of expertise. (We are still finalizing the Scholarly benefits for each General Lore)

Because General Lores cover very wide topics that could be applied to almost every scenario, we have found that players tended to bid them exhaustively, no matter the situation.  We find that this burdens storytellers to answer questions that may not be relevant to the encounter. Restricting the use rate of these lores gives us a better framework to build scenes around them.

We are removing Warding Lore from the game. We found that it overlapped with Occultation and Construction Shaping to an extent that prevented any unique identity.  Any copies of this card will be fully refunded.

Shaping

The Shaping card lists three features; bidding for knowledge, shaping on the fly, and long term projects.

The [Bid] portion of Shaping works as it normally does, but have been adjusted to conform with the bid changes described earlier.

We are introducing two new keywords: [Shape] and [Shaping Power].  [Shape] is the act of taking Potentia and/or [Shaping Power] to create or manipulate something on the fly (we previously called this a bid, but we’re disambiguating the terms).  Whenever a player wishes to use Shape to create something they don’t have, say a bomb, they will provide the Marshal with the value of their Shaping Power and any resources they will contribute, which the Marshal will compare with the value of the challenge they are presenting.

Ex: Jessie wants to make a bomb using her {Public Chemistry Shaping} to blow open a door. The Marshal decides on a challenge rating of 10.  Jessie pays 10 Potentia and the Marshal describes her success in destroying the door. In this same scenario, if Jessie has {Public Igneous Lore}, which would be relevant for making a fiery explosive, she would have +10 [Shaping Power].  She could then use her [Shaping Power] instead of paying Potentia to make her bomb. If the challenge rating to make a bomb was 20, she could use her 10 [Shaping Power] and pay 10 Potentia to overcome the challenge.

Effectively, Shaping Power is a discount on all Shaping attempts related to your source of Shaping Power.

[Shaping Power] can be acquired through Essence Lores and other Wild Patterns.  Public Essence Lores will provide +10 [Shaping Power] while Scholarly will provide +20. Public Shaping will only allow you to gain the benefit of 20 [Shaping Power] while Scholarly will increase that maximum to 40.  You can still pay Potentia to make up the gap for challenging tasks, but there’s a limit on how many discounts you can possibly apply.

Finally, Shaping will allow you to build items and structures that are specific to that style of Shaping.

New/Removed Shaping Patterns

We are removing Botany Shaping.  We have found that a majority of the interactions with Botany Shaping can be replicated by combining other Shaping with Verdant lore/essences.  Other Shaping can combine with Verdant Essence to more fully take over this role, and we’re updating the wording on Construction to remove the “inorganic” clause.  If you want to grow a Farm, that’s now considered Verdant Construction. Walls of Flesh & Bone are also allowed through Mutagenic Construction, although perhaps not by common decency.

We are adding Medicine Shaping. This has been a long requested ability and we are glad to finally bring it to you!