Setting Changes: Clans, Roads, Disciplines

While I'd like to keep the many of the rule and setting changes minimal, I have a couple problems with some disciplines and how Dark Ages: Vampire presents some of the clans. The major one on the list though, is Serpentis and the Setites.

Obviously the Followers of Set (or Typhon-Set as the case might be), are going to be one of the potential factions in Alexandria, but their write up and discipline are a little lacking. Looking at the discipline, it isn't really clear how it might augment an influence, unlike just about every other discipline (barring the physical trio of fortitude, celerity, and potence and also Quietus from the Dark Ages: Vampire book). I think the Setites also suffer a little from their earlier incarnation where they were given this strange Serpentis discipline, and the later interpretations which didn't change the fact that their most powerful discipline level is a bizarre ritual which can only be preformed once a month.

The fix? Obviously a few key thing setting elements will need a slight update, so I'm going to do a bit of a rewrite to fit some other setting material about the Setites a bit better and not portray them as one-dimensional manipulators. A couple other clans might need a little attention too, but I'm not sure if a simple paragraph is best or to do a cut-and-paste job with some alterations from the book. A couple of the roads might need a little work too (Heaven seems clearly Abrahamic and I want it to include Neoplatonism, the Cult of Isis, and other Greco-Roman and Egyptian pagan cults).

Randomness and the Great Augment Swap

The influence rules presented in Dark Epics presents a static system. Each level of influence can be used once, and the the one who spends the most wins. This means two characters with influence 5 cannot attack one another without an assist from another.

The type of modifications usually made by Larp groups is to make each influence provide progressively more points towards actions. A level one influence is one point, a level two influence is three points (2+1), a level three influence is 9 points (3+2+1), up to a level 5 influence being worth 15 points. These sets of rules also allow abilities to be spent as levels of influence, so you can use your 1-5 levels of the politics ability as levels of Political influence. The catch here is that those levels then aren't useful anymore in the game, and those Larp rules have you spend levels of ability for some related bonus in the game. Also, this isn't actually random, but does help to equalize characters in terms of natural ability vs amount of influence.

This leave a dearth of randomness in the rules, which is a staple of RPGs. Dice dice dice.So I wanted to bring that back for our Toulouse game. The obvious thing would be to use disciplines rather than abilities since characters aren't going to be running around doing all sorts of narrative things (so I thought initially). Each dot of a discipline gives you an augment die which can be used for certain actions, and your disciplines can never contribute more than one level towards an action. So now a smaller influence has a chance of defeating a larger influence at some things.