How Useful is your Skill: Tier list

"We haven't much time, 'friends'! You're going to help me test out my latest and greatest creation.

Now. Before you change your minds."


I fucking hate tier lists. Like BMI, it's a basic collection of information that people go fucking overboard with. In a fighting game, theorists will gauge which characters have an advantage over other characters, and the ones with the most advantages will be put higher in the tier list. It's simple, and it's not always saying there's a huge difference between two characters. For example, King Dedede is a bottom tier character in Smash 4, but that doesn't mean you can pick Diddy Kong(who's top tier) and just automatically win. It doesn't mean you're "stupid" for picking Dedede. The list creators aren't even saying that themselves.

But that's how they're taken, all of the time. To use Smash as our example again, there are people who will look at the S tier and refuse to play anyone but Bayonetta, Cloud, Shiek and Diddy. It's stupid, especially if you're doing this in casual play and you're never going to touch a real tournament. I mean, you're surrounded by your friends who are all picking their favorite characters and you're "eyes on the prize" focused on winning.

I said all that so you'd have context for what I'm doing. I'm going to talk about Pathfinder's core skill set and how valuable the skills are. It doesn't mean you're stupid for taking a low tier skill, and like I always say, every class can spare a few skill points to support a cool backstory. I'm simply discussing trends I've noticed along with basic theorycrafting, to give people an idea of how to prioritize skills. A few ground rules first.


I'm only discussing the core Pathfinder skills. I haven't read the PF update to the Psionics guide so we won't be going over autohypnosis or any of the other skills it updates.

I'm factoring in skill unlocks as well as new uses for skills, such as in the Occult Guide. They're not going to sway my opinion very often, though.

Obviously, things shuffle around based on the kind of game you're playing in. I go into that in the lists, but in general you're going to have to "read the room" or pay attention to what your GM is telling you about the game. Obviously Swim is more important in an aquatic game, and the social skills are flat out necessary in a socially focused game. This kind of thing is always going to happen, and I'm just trying to provide general information and guidance.

I'm not factoring in what class you're playing. Yeah, this is going to change what skills you take, but it's so obvious that I don't feel the need to discuss it. So when Perform is low on our tier list, don't come at me with "But Bard!". I know. I know Bard.

I didn't take optional rules into account, even though Expanded Craft and Expanded Profession are how those skills should have been designed in the first fucking place.

So with that out of the way, here we go.


Hyper Rainbow Tier
Skills in this tier are always useful, no matter what the game is or who's running it. It will probably still come up even if the GM is making an effort to squash it. It's something everyone can justify putting points into regardless of class or concept.

Perception - Yeah, there's only one skill here. It will be a very strange game if your GM isn't calling for a perception check several times in the night. Knowing what's going on and getting key information and hints from the GM is super important to figuring out mysteries, or even just who's about to attack you. In addition to just passively knowing what's going on, it counters stealth and finds traps. Perception will almost always be your most-rolled skill.


Gold Tier
Skills in this tier are useful very often and in most games. They will almost always come up, and hardly ever need players putting in an effort to make them useful.

Diplomacy - Diplomacy covers getting people to help you, which you're either going to end up doing a lot, either by necessity or by it simply being easier than the alternative. It also covers gathering information, which you absolutely will end up doing. This is the prime social interaction skill.

Knowledge(Arcana) - Arcana covers Constructs, Magical Beasts, and Dragons, which you'll fight reasonably often. It also covers magical traditions and symbols, which are bound to come up. Most importantly, however... it covers Weird Magical Shit. Weird Magical Shit will come up in every game you play. Hands down. Even the "low magic" games. Especially those games. As a small bonus, the psychic skill unlock for this is Phrenology, which lets you get some "speak with dead" style information about a corpse(or sleeping person) without having to cast anything. Nice considering that most people who will be using that unlock won't have that spell on their spell list.

Stealth - A lot of skills are dedicated to gathering information, and Stealth is no different. Even if you never steal anything(which, let's face it, is almost always the easy way) it also covers things like scouting and reconnaissance. It also facilitates killing by coup de gras or simple ambush, which can pretty often make an upcoming combat easier. This is technically a skill that requires the player to be proactive about it's use, but it's useful so often and in so many different games that I've made an exception.

Spellcraft - Spellcraft is how you identify magic items and spells as they're being cast. I could stop explaining why this is a great skill right there. Your group will be rolling this constantly for their loot, OR end up paying someone to do it. That aside, knowing what spells are being cast is very important, and people are going to be casting spells in your presence constantly.  Even if you're not a spellcaster, you still might be able to justify ranks in Spellcraft.

Use Magic Device - This skill almost got into Hyper Rainbow Tier, but I'm assuming your game is sticking to its book listed uses and not letting players fudge what it can do. Being able to emulate another type of character so you can use a magic item is great. Being able to activate things without knowing their command words is even better. Both of these combined means you can get past standing magical structures like magic doors or portals with a skill check and not having to somehow research or identify how it works.


Silver Tier
Skills in this tier are still pretty useful, but may require some effort on the player to fully realize their worth. They may only come up in certain situations or require the player to be proactive or inventive about their application.

Acrobatics - I fucking love acrobatics, but the fact is that a lot of its uses can be mitigated in some way. Being able to jump doesn't matter as much when you've got wings of flight or a fly spell, and plenty of classes get big bonuses to jumping which preclude you taking acrobatics if you're not one of them. However, it's still really useful for moving around, and it is the ONLY way to avoid Attacks of Opportunity on the battlefield. You may not always need to do that, but it's VERY nice to be able when you do.

Bluff - So yeah, this is only in Silver Tier because, generally, you have to choose to lie to people. Bluff will sometimes get you into an amount of trouble that Diplomacy never will. However, in the hands of the right character, bluff is fucking great and will be very useful in the hands of someone aiming to make it so. Feint is just icing.

Disable Device - There's traps and locks. We all know that. getting past them is a fucking STAPLE of the genre, so instead of going on and on about that, let me share the ONLY reason this isn't in Gold Tier. It very nearly was, but IDENTIFYING that a trap is there is the most important part. Getting past a trap or lock can be accomplished by Disable Device...or, a lot of the time, by hitting it very hard. It's a sad fact, but breaking things works a lot of the time. Still, Disable Device is intensely useful. There will be traps you can't break. There will be chests you won't want to RISK breaking. There will be locks you CAN'T break without making noise. Disable Device is the more elegant and careful solution.

Handle Animal - This is a disused skill I feel like shouldn't be. Training animals for some sort of use can be really helpful. They don't need high skill ranks to roll to assist you in something, and they don't need a high amount of HD. There's a ton of different useful tricks, and even if you only stick to the core book, guard animals will, at the very least, wake you up or alert you to danger. You can also train flanking buddies, or assist pals. Yeah, they only have a few HD. Sure, they might not always succeed at that DC 10, but it's a solid bonus that's not very expensive to replace.

Intimidate - Intimidate can cause Shaken in combat and has some pretty useful feat applications like the Boar Style tree or Dazzling Display. Without that, it can even get you something socially, but it's temporary and not likely to win you any friends. Carefully applied and with a feat or two, though, and this is one of the best debuffs in the game.

Knowledge(Local) - Another useful skill I feel is disused. This time, I know it's because it used to be tied to particular areas, forcing you to spend skill points for a very minor, fiddly amount of knowledge. Now that it's not, this skill is great for making your way, fitting in without looking like an outsider, or simply navigating an area or city. Most PCs are constantly traveling and this skill gets you everything you need to know about where you are.

Knowledge(Nature) - Per the book, knowledge of animals, fey, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, and vermin. All things you're likely to be fighting a lot in your game. Wilderness is often a staple of the fantasy genre. This is no substitute for survival, but it can still prove pretty valuable when you're in the middle of nowhere. Like I just said, the players will likely be in the middle of nowhere a lot.

Knowledge(Planes) - Knowing things about the planes themselves is useful, but knowing things about outsiders is better. The mid to high CR monster lists are dominated by outsiders and undead.

Knowledge(Religion) - In addition to knowledge about undead, which are often a staple enemy, this is everything you need to know about gods and religious traditions, both things that are very likely to come up.

Linguistics - Let's face it, you're going to be traipsing through ruins looking at ancient scrolls and warnings scrawled onto the walls. If you're not doing that, by some miracle, you're still encountering a billion different races and a billion different languages. The psychic skill unlock, Automatic Writing, is also a semi-reliable casting of Augury or Divination, which can be a help, especially at later levels.

Sense Motive - Another skill that was almost gold. People are GOING to lie to you, but even if they don't, this skill lets you read situations, give hunches, or gauge someone's general trustworthiness. This skill is great for when you've got a hunch about a situation already and you'd like to confirm it with a roll.

Sleight of Hand - A somewhat good money maker and a skill that can potentially make your life a lot easier by lifting keys or important macguffins off people without having to kill them. In stealthy or subtle situations this skill can see a lot of use, but it's one of the skills that requires your inventive application.

Survival - Wilderness is a staple of the fantasy genre, and most games are going to be in it a lot. It's nice to be able to hand-wave things like path finding or gathering food by having decent ranks in this skill.


Bronze Tier
Skills in this tier probably won't come up even if the player puts effort into making them useful. They may simply be concepts unlikely to come up in an average game, or there is something in the game that makes putting ranks into them less useful, such as spells or magic items.

Appraise - It's nice to know what your treasure is worth, and a decent GM will always throw you a curveball or two like rare gems or works of art. However, this skill is really only for maximizing your profits, which not everyone is going to care about. Thiefy types can use Skill Unlocks to get some decent uses out of this, but with so many decent unlocks to take and so few you actually get, it feels like a waste.

Climb - Being able to climb is great, and it's probably going to come up, but here's the problem. Things like slippers of spider climb, wings of flying, or racial climb scores preclude you ever having to roll this skill. It's rare that you'll want to put more than 5 ranks in this.

Craft - The mechanics of the craft system as presented in the core book are straight up broken. The times it gives to make things make no sense at all. You'd never use this for actually making mundane items unless you're literally naked in the wilderness and using the new forage system... which is pretty cool, to be fair. A GM using expanded crafting skill from Pathfinder Unchained could potentially bump this a lot closer to silver, but as it is, it's just not going to come up much. This skill is propped up by saving you money on gunpowder and alchemical materials, but also the new Trophy system, which lets you get some extra money out of monsters.

Disguise - Disguise can be pretty useful for gathering information, hiding your identity and such, but Hat of Disguise and polymorph subschool spells give a pretty big bonus to this skill. You can see some nice use out of ranks sometimes, but at some point given a greater hat of disguise and a few ranks and nobody's going to beat your number ANYWAY.

Escape Artist - It can get you out of a grapple. That's nice. It can get you through tight spaces. That, however, isn't as useful as it seems. You can sometimes break your way into something, or even use reduce person or other polymorph spells to preclude having to put much into this skill.

Knowledge(Dungeoneering) - Abberations, Oozes, Caverns and Spelunking. So, two seldom-used monster types and two concepts I can't think of how to roll for. I mean, you're going to be in caves and underground a lot, but I can't think of why you'd need to roll this.

Knowledge(Geography) - Lands, Terrain, Climates and People. Most of this skill's usefulness can also be provided by Knowledge(Local). The reason you'd take this is for knowledge of places you can't find maps for. That might come up once or twice, but probably not often.

Knowledge(History) - I really want this skill to be useful, but frankly it's REALLY nice in specialized games and...otherwise, probably won't come up. The average game is only going to have maybe five places where you can even roll this and come up with something useful.

Perform - If you're not a bard, all Perform does is earn you a decent amount of money for your time. It can be helpful for improving someone's mood or for providing a cover story for your identity, but those are kind of at the GM's discretion.

Ride - This is only for riding in combat and stressful situations, which holds it back. Everyone's gonna ride horses, but riding one in combat can be nice bonuses. If nothing else, you can usually get that nice little +1 for advantageous position. This is in bronze simply because...well, you're either a Mounted Combat guy or you're not. I can't see a lot of people just putting ranks in ride and not backing it up with feats or lances or special mounts.

Swim - Oh boy, this one. Swim is useless until it's not. Nobody wants to fucking drown, but there's two problems. One is a lot of characters are going to be wearing so much weight in gear and armor that no amount of ranks is gonna save them from sinking straight the fuck down. The other is that Water Breathing basically precludes this skill. Add in that most games aren't going to strongly feature water or boats.


Kevin Costner in Waterworld Tier
Skills in this category never come up. There are few, if any, ways to make them useful, no matter how hard you try. If you're rolling these skills a lot, you're either in a very specialized game, or your GM is messing with you. Maybe both.

Fly - I guess Paizo felt this skill had to exist to curb people flying in combat. Fair, I guess...but the DC for falling when getting hit is only ever DC10, it never goes up. You roll it for fancy maneuvers, which most flying combatants aren't going to bother with. If you plan on flying in combat a lot, you took Hover. Like, period. Even then, most of flight's benefits are out of combat anyway. Pathfinder really overvalues flight.

Heal - I did a whole post on this. Just so I'm not repeating myself, I'll be brief. Heal doesn't do anything that curative magic doesn't do, and even with the heal skill unlock, it's not very useful even if you don't have a cleric.

Knowledge(Engineering) - Nobody's ever actually rolled this skill in my presence and had it make a difference. It only ever comes up in terms of being able to effectively destroy a building. There are so many destructive spells like earthquake or even fucking fireball that I don't see the point. As for its other uses? ... Are there any? The book says it handles bridges, aqueducts, buildings and fortifications. Have you ever had to roll a knowledge skill about an aqueduct? Seriously think to yourself, have you ever even been in a game that had an aqueduct in it?

Knowledge(Nobility) - You can't even justify this skill in a social game, because everything you'd ever use it for would be covered by Knowledge(Local). I can't even imagine most actual nobles have this skill. They gather information on relevant allies or enemies and ignore the ones that aren't. This is another one I haven't seen anyone roll in my presence and have it make a difference in the game.

Profession - Profession doesn't actually do anything. Go read the book if you don't believe me. All it does is make a piddly amount of money. There's no reason to ever take this skill unless your GM is using the expanded profession, alternate profession or downtime rules from Pathfinder Unchained. If you are, Profession bumps solidly into bronze, maybe even silver...but in all other games, it remains here underneath the waves.

Saying Yes(and the problem with Vampire: The Masquerade)

"You wake up again. What do you do?"

"I read for 300 years."


I fucking love White Wolf. I have a lot of great memories of LARP despite how much really stupid stuff happened and really awful people I met. White Wolf has a way of injecting lore and feeling into their books and even systems that I don't think many other games can match. I was going to talk about one of our hobby's most controversial opinions, and using VtM as an example fits this so well that we're gonna talk about both of them. Today's topics are design problems prevalent to White Wolf games, and also the art of saying Yes.

You know, we have a pretty weird hobby where saying Yes is a controversial topic.

It starts, obviously, with the GM being an arbiter. Even though I've repeatedly told you that trying to delicately arbitrate balance is a fool's errand, he still has to make decisions constantly. Sometimes you have to say 'no' to things or add conditions for purposes of story, mechanics or even fitting something into the game world. Gunslinger in Pathfinder isn't even a very good class, and guns aren't even very good, but they're both frequently banned simply due to how they feel. I don't like doing that, but it just happens sometimes. From here, a lot of GMs start to think that "No" is their default answer and that "Yes" should be used sparingly.

I find a lot of people get overly obsessed, hung up on some problems that may or may not be very important in reality. Here the obsession is the idea that you should never spoil the players. This is true (and decent advice), since getting everything they want is gonna lead to growing disinterested in the game. For some reason, though, worry of this is bloated so far in their perception that it ends up getting applied to aspects of the game it absolutely doesn't apply to. Whole games end up being played with less than 1/2 of the source available because the GM is hyper-concerned with putting things into his game.

Other times game balance is the concern. You see this a lot in games like World of Darkness or Deadlands where not everything is intended to be played but everything feels like it can be. This is another fair point that a lot of people take to extremes. The only direct advice I have here(before we get to our mission statement) is to not mistake utility or variance of options for raw power. Sometimes playing a weird race, class, clan or whatever might feel very powerful because they get something nobody else gets. This doesn't automatically make it better, and VtM shows this in spades with its rare vampire bloodlines.

It is vitally important for you to understand that something is not powerful simply because it's rare or unique. 

That's good advice for White Wolf's games in general, but let's continue.  I want you to say "Yes" in the following two scenarios: When it's a primarily creative situation, and when it doesn't matter. In specific, I want to present the following method.

Whenever you get faced with allowing or disallowing something, seriously ask yourself what's going to happen if you say yes. Thoughtfully answer that question. 

This means you are gonna hit some "no"s, obviously, but a lot of the time you can easily allow something your first impulse says you shouldn't. A great example is the Lasombra Antitribu. Imagine someone asking to play one. Immediately, a lot of people would think to say "no" because they're rare. But let's go over the answers to our question above. What's going to happen if we let him?

He might get picked on or schemed against by people who don't understand his history.

He'll have to blow points on generation.

He will have a discipline nobody else has, Obtenebration.

He will not be able to use many of Obtenebration's powers without breaking the Masquerade.

You will likely have to use his sire in your plot some how, or at least have him and his machinations affect the player.

So basically our phantom player is gonna have a nice bargaining chip with offering to teach people Obtenebration, assuming it won't piss off his sire to do so(it probably will). He'll have utility that nobody else in the Camarilla has, but is a nice but balanced power in any other game. His sire will probably have to factor in to the game somehow. Really,  now that we've laid it out, this sounds a lot more playable than before we did this. He'll probably end up in a lot of trouble or have to be careful just for choosing this clan, so if you really think Obtenebration is that powerful in this instance, someone could argue that it's more than mitigated.

Other times you may have the impulse to say "no" to something simply because the book says it's rare. This is a LARP mentality creeping in: Obviously in a game with 20-50 people in it, you can't have like eight Harbingers of Skulls, ten Samedi, five Kiasyd, et cetera. In a tabletop game with 3 to 8 players, though? I don't see the point of adhering strictly to the world information the books put forth. You have no reason to be inflexible, especially when it's not going to matter mechanically(as is the case with most of VtM's rare clans). An individual pack or coterie doesn't need to adhere to some sort of standard of averages.

This is where I segue into talking about the problem I mentioned before. Simply put, the WoD games foster this rigid mentality in how they're presented. White Wolf relies on stereotypes in many of their books, to the point where it's filled with "All X are Y" statements. The fact that clans DO have trends because of who they seek out, and DO have flaws they ALL carry doesn't help. The games almost feel like they're set up so you don't have to worry about your character's personality if you don't want to, with Werewolf: The Apocalypse being especially egregious with this. You have three intersecting things to define your character with(Breed, birth moon and clan) which can serve as a character defining set of traits if you want, even worse than alignment.

Back to Vampire. I went flipping through the Sabbat Guide yesterday for some object lessons I could use in this topic. I remembered the misguided notes placed on several of the rare clans in this book. Let's look at three of them: One piece of play advice that's totally fair, and two that are absurd.

First, the Blood Brothers. They are a created, artificial clan, a sect of loyal servants with very little individuality. Their clan-mates are their life and they frequently form exclusive packs. They even frequently look identical to the other members of their pack. So, let's go through our questions! What's gonna happen if we let someone play a blood brother?

The player won't be able to use any of the powers of his unique discipline Sanguinis, because they require other blood brothers.

He'll either be beholden to a bunch of NPCs, be playing very contrary to the clan, or end up playing basically the same character as someone else.

He'll have fewer roleplay opportunities because they're bred for no personal drive.

Holy shit, those sound like a lot of reasons to say no. The book primarily cautions against allowing Blood Brothers because of their low opportunties for RP and rigid concept. While it may be possible to bend and give the character roleplay opportunities or personal drive, there's no fixing how Sanguinis works: It's a discipline only known to Blood Brothers that requires you to know Sanguinis to benefit from it. It's also atypical to see a lone Blood Brother, even if the player is okay with only having two disciplines. The entire core of the clan is their camaraderie and bond with their brothers.

Let's move on to the Harbingers of Skulls. Formerly the Cappadocians, this ancient clan was betrayed and their progenitor was killed and diablerized by Giovanni, making that clan the world's premiere necromancers and the Cappadocians a distant memory. They have recently returned to the world stage and joined the Sabbat, craving revenge. They're all decayed and hideous, with a similar disadvantage to Nosferatu. They have necromancy in-clan and a path of it unique to them. So before I yell the loud funny words about what the book SAYS about Harbingers, let's ask our question. What happens if we let someone play a Harbinger?

He'll have access to Necromancy beginning with the Mortuus path, which is of middling usefulness until later levels.

He'll have to blow freebie points on being around 8th generation.

His sire is probably going to be a powerful, important figure.

He might catch shit for being rare or have Giovanni gunning for him.

Basically the same answers as Lasombra Antitribu. Generation is frequently restricted in LARP games, but in tabletop this isn't really an issue: tabletop GMs don't have to worry as much about direct player versus player stuff, and other backgrounds are generally more useful than in LARP. He'll have necromancy, but must buy Mortuus up to 3 before taking anything else, and Mortuus isn't really that useful. It has a nice debuff, some good but situational powers, and a quite powerful 5th dot. Please note that I don't consider a very nice 5th dot to be a mitigating factor to a shitty discipline. More on THAT later with Mytherceria. Anyway, really, there's...not a lot of reasons here other than our phantom boogeyman "They're rare".

So let's talk about why the BOOK says you shouldn't allow them and where the problem with this reasoning is. The book claims it's impossible to create a Harbinger of Skulls under a normal character generation system because they're all very powerful, very old and very low generation. They have "More disciplines than many starting packs" and predate the Sabbat. Okay, first off, that's all fair, but the implication that you can't possibly contrive a reason for a new character to exist is absurd. This is more of the "All X are Y" thinking the White Wolf books are guilty of. The short passage then goes on to say that a Harbinger of Skulls isn't likely to "pick people off the street and turn them into vampires". This is literally a false equivalence. I don't think anyone is implying a Cappadocian is going to pull someone off the fucking street to embrace them. It's stupid to even bring that up. It then goes on to say that they're "better off" being used for you to "weave your elaborate plotlines" than as "powerhouse players' characters". This part reads like a direct insult. It might even be one. It also implies if you want to play a munchkin that it's okay to just pick another clan. By saying this one ISN'T good for it, they're saying other clans ARE. Fuckin' go make an Assamite Antitribu. GO WILD, CELERITY FIVE!

Anyway, our final one, Kiasyd. They're fey blooded researchers and intellectuals who rarely interact with others. That's fucking it, here's our questions.

The character would have Obtenebration, a basic option available to him if he were to just play a lasombra.

He'd have a second unique discipline, Mytherceria, which deals primarily with fey, meaning it sucks and won't hardly ever come up. It is potentially the worst discipline in the game.

Brujah Antitribu will call him a nerd and dump his books.

If you'll notice, I even had to come up with a third reason on my own. The Kiasyd is literally at a disadvantage because of Mytherceria's niche uses, most of which won't EVER come up in a normal game. Fey in the classic World of Darkness generally want nothing to do with vampires due to their high banality. In terms of strict effectiveness, Kiasyd is behind many character options that are inarguably basic like Lasombra.

So why does the book say you shouldn't allow them? Because they're content to spend all of their time researching and contemplating. That's basically it, they even contrive the stupid-as-hell exchange I used as today's quote above. All X are Y, remember? The question "What if I want to play someone who's not like that?" goes completely unanswered. It reads like White Wolf has never heard of field researchers.

Do you see the difference between the Blood Brothers and our other two clans? First off, the Blood Brothers having no personal drive is inherent to the clan, like an insane Malkavian or a Ventrue with a feeding restriction. It's not something the book is just telling us about the clan, it's something they are, enforced by their blood. Second, even if that weren't true, their powers create problems: In this case, the fact that he's not likely to be able to use an ENTIRE discipline without teaching it to everyone(which is slow and likely to get him in trouble) or with other people playing Blood Brothers, which would mean they're essentially playing the same character. That's not as fun as it sounds. It's not the same as the Harbingers of Skulls or Kiasyd descriptions telling us they all act a certain way.

I'm not saying you can always flex. Some concepts are integral to a race or clan and can't be flexed much, and some are enforced by mechanics. In general, try to be permissive of people trying to develop a story contrary to something's concepts if they can come up with a great reason for it, and be harder on things that are mechanically integral to something or VERY important concepts. Can you play a Malkavian who's completely sane or a Brujah who never flips out? Really, no. Those things are enforced by their blood and there's not many reasonable stories that will get you around a clan weakness. I'm not saying you can never get around that with a decent story, but most of the time it's going to come off as hacky or lame. These clan disadvantages are important to the game's theming.  Can you play a Gangrel who hates the wilderness, though? Sure! In fact, I believe that's the conceit of the Gangrel Anarchs.

Like Spoony said when he was talking about reacting to other people's concepts, don't say "You can't", come up with a reason why it'll work. He was speaking in terms of being a player and being permissive of other players, but there's wisdom in that thinking in general. It's very easy to bend to allow someone to play something cool, and in a PNP game(not a LARP) that's usually all they want. A lot of the time, there's really no reason to deny them. I mean, I could go on. The book says there's only fourteen Nagaraja left and they're all under the protection of powerful Kuei-jin, right? So obviously, you can't play one. However, what's it matter to bend the details of the world a little bit to let someone play one? Say you alter it so that the Nagaraja are vampires living primarily in India and South Asian countries and have only a minor presence in the United States. What does that REALLY fuck up to say that?

Brief sidenote, but why the fuck do they get a full write-up if there's only fourteen of them left? The fuck is the point of that? It's not like we got rules on the Bunyip or the Wereboars in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. If we're counting, btw, that's one whole thing WtA got right. I mean, with Salubri I get it, they're a HUGE part of the Tremere and Sabbat stories and they're fairly playable too. Nagaraja aren't mentioned again past their write-up.

Anyway. It doesn't matter one bit to the world, really. Information on Asian countries is thin to begin with, the Nagaraja are independent and weird shit is tucked into every inch of the World of Darkness. Really, it's the whole point. It's why we like the world. What's REALLY the difference between a Pizzaria secretly run by incestuous Italian necromancers and a Korean Restaurant run by South Chinese cannibal necromancers? One would sell calzones and one would have bulgogi. That's really it, they're BOTH putting people into the food. There's no way they're not.You could even have a subplot where the Giovanni feel threatened and start a turf war to try and muscle them out of the city. We've CREATED plot!

Edit time. Nagaraja are printed in the Storyteller's Guide, which is where I know them from, but apparently their first printing is Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. If you don't know what this book is, it's something that blows the lid off a secret organization in VtM called the Black Hand, old vampires and master manipulators playing the Camarilla and Sabbat off each other. So that's why they got printed: they're a clan so old they're almost extinct. This book was widely regarded as a mistake to define so much about the Black Hand and a poor book in general. It's entirely full of things players can't use and won't likely ever even see, putting it on par with the SWD20 Guide to the Sith. I don't feel this invalidates my point. In fact, I feel it supports it. The Black Hand are such a mysterious and important concept that a GM should be taking their plots and details into his own hand in the first place. The GM shouldn't rely on the books for this. So essentially, the Nagaraja matter to a metaplot I'd advise a GM to never use.

What happens if you ignore me and strictly adhere to the metaplot, though? Well, someone gets mildly to moderately upset and plays a less interesting character. I guess you...get to feel good that you kept everything in line? I mean, I guess some people get satisfaction from being really inflexible. But really, nothing happens. Your game isn't enriched by it, a White Wolf rep doesn't show up to give you the Golden Stickler Award for Metaplot Safety. Hell, even the books constantly give you the advice to flex if you don't and everyone seems to completely gloss over it.

Go reading the old VtM books if you don't believe me. There's a wealth of information out there that says "Hey, if you don't like our metaplot, change it". People frequently miss the forest for the trees when they're talking about the World of Darkness, though. A lot of people miss the fact that you can bend world ideas to allow someone to play a concept, or even come up with strange circumstances for it. The real world is full of absurd, nonsensical circumstances and coincidences, I assure you.

The obvious counter to "What does it matter to say Yes" is "What does it matter to say No", I think. I imagine I'm going to hear that at least once. My answer is that it matters because someone could be having more fun and play a really memorable character because you allowed them to play something "Rare". It's nothing to you as the GM, but it's a really good feeling to them. Enjoying ourselves and creating good memories are why we do this. Some of our most memorable concepts, like Rosemary and Kamuati who are undead, Doctor Gatter and his aggressively amoral approach to science, Jumpin' Joe who's a cyberzombie with a fucking chainsaw or Joe Beautiful, the only wraith in a game of vampires...they're all something someone might've(maybe even should have) said "no" to. They're also all memorable characters we're going to treasure forever.

New Races: Alternate Continuity II, Feltouched Kender

"Stealing? I wasn't stealing his soul, honest Mister. I was just borrowing it."


The Burning Crusade raged across the known universe, and while its story begins(and ends) in Azeroth, Sargeras and his influence have touched a near countless number of worlds. There exists, somewhere, a version of Krynn locked in battle with an infinite army of demons. For the task of conquering Krynn, Sargeras appointed his right hand Kil'jaeden, the deceiver.

Kil'jaeden was an Eredar once, a race of people known for foresight and wisdom. Kil'jaeden himself was a master manipulator who weaved plans within plans, so his assault upon Krynn began not with violence, but with deception and subterfuge. He observed the people of Krynn for a long time without acting, slowly replacing nobles, advisors and kings with his hidden dreadlord agents. In every city, every town and countryside, he noticed a presence that intrigued him.

The Kender's fearlessness and endless curiosity intrigued him, but their ever-wandering presence and habit of being overlooked or ignored convinced him of their usefulness. In a way, it was painfully easy to corrupt them and bend them to his will: many Kender willingly drank demon blood simply to see what would happen, and many more were convinced by Kil'jaeden's hidden agents, posing as kender themselves.

The Feltouched Kender would prove invaluable at first as spies and assassins, with their natural abilities bent toward Kil'jaeden's evil. Once Kil'jaeden struck and his armies assaulted the world of Krynn in full force, however, the diminuitive, often underestimated Kender proved to be his eventual downfall. The majority of them abruptly switched sides and disabled many of his ships. With several of his ships and portals disabled and one of them, the Paraxis, under Kender control, Kil'jaeden was forced to retreat.

After all, nobody can really control a Kender.


Physical Description: Feltouched Kender all share some similarities: like their uncorrupted brethren, they're small, slight and agile. They favor topknot hairstyles and have youthful, expressive faces. However, this is where similarities end. Their corruption manifests inconsistently, granting a wide array of demonic traits. While this could mean anything from horns and cloven feet to piranha-like teeth and an ever-present brimstone smell, there are a few traits which are very common. Glowing eyes and jagged tattoo-like marks of bright greens, purples or reds are a common trait, as are dusky red, deep blackish purple or green skin. Kil'jaeden's corruptive influence follows no mortal laws, so feltouched kender range anywhere from strangely beautiful to unnatural and monstrous.

Society: Feltouched Kender share much with normal Kender who never agreed to Kil'jaedens bargain. Family and friends are still strikingly important to them, and they are often fiercely loyal and protective. They still have no concept of property ownership as well and will often borrow things without asking, seeing no wrong in it. However, unlike normal Kender, the Feltouched are more aware of the concept of theft and will use it to their advantage, if they can. They also still have a love of jokes, riddles, stories and pranks, but they have a sadistic streak that sometimes turns their pranks harmful or even deadly. Feltouched Kender assassins are known for toying with their targets first, toying with them and playing tricks on them until one prank abruptly ends their life. Their boundless curiosity can drive them to these "taken too far" jokes as well as a host of mean or sadistic pursuits, simply to see what would happen.

Relations: While Kender are mostly tolerated, the Feltouched are divisive. Some see them as corrupted monsters, while others see them as heroes who saved Krynn from the brink of destruction. Mistrust is often well warranted, however, and even societies who tolerate them watch them closely. Kender often see the feltouched as tragic and corrupted, but most try to be as welcoming as possible, trying to guide their "brothers". Tieflings, obviously, see the Feltouched as brothers. After all, they have both been through very similar circumstances in their lives.

Alignment: Feltouched Kender are often evil, falling to their sadistic curiosity. However, they can be of any alignment, and the vast majority of them are some form of neutral. Many Feltouched steadfastly reject their heritage and its influences, reigning in their impulse for sadism and sick curiosity.

Adventurers: Feltouched Kender find it hard to integrate into society, often feeling unwanted and scrutinized even in Kender societies. This combined with their natural Kender wanderlust means an overwhelming number of Feltouched Kender have turned to adventuring to make their way. In addition to this, those that indulge their demonic heritage often become valued members of thieves' guilds.


Feltouched Kender Racial Traits

+2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence: Feltouched Kender are agile in both body and mind.

Native Outsider: Feltouched Kender are outsiders with the native subtype.

Small: Feltouched Kender are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.

Normal Speed: Feltouched Kender have a base speed of 30 feet.

Darkvision: Feltouched Kender see in the dark for up to 60 feet.

Lucky: Feltouched Kender gain a +1 bonus to all saves.

Fearless: Feltouched Kender are immune to all fear effects.

Light Fingers: Feltouched Kender possess a light touch, gaining a +2 racial bonus to sleight of hand checks.

Soul-Borrow: Kender can 'borrow' a minor amount of life force from any being with the humanoid, monstrous humanoid, giant or outsider types as a standard action. This touch range ability heals them for 1d8 plus their INT mod. A subject does not have to be willing, but to target an unwilling subject, the feltouched must succeed at a sleight of hand check vs. the target's perception check. If the feltouched succeeds, the target does not know anything happened. If he fails, the target catches the feltouched in the act and will likely mistake the attempt for pickpocketing. If he succeeds, he can also choose to give the target a -2 to INT and WIS-based skill checks for one hour as they are muddled and confused.  The Feltouched can only successfully 'borrow' from an individual person once a day.


Alternate Racial Traits


Fiendish Resistance: The Feltouched Kender gains Resistance 5 to Fire, Cold and Acid. However, this extended exposure to fel energy has obliterated their immunity to fear. They lose the fearless quality.

Razor Teeth: The Feltouched Kender gains a bite attack dealing 1D4 points of damage. This replaces Soul-Borrow.

Adaptable Luck: As the Halfling ability of the same name. This replaces Lucky.

Saboteur: The Feltouched Kender's experience with Eredar technology has granted them a +2 racial bonus to Disable Device. In addition, when taking the Sabotage action with Disable Device, the Feltouched can choose to reduce or increase the amount of time for the item to break by one round or one minute, as appropriate. This replaces Light Fingers.

Demon Killer: The Feltouched Kender abruptly betraying Kil'jaeden taught them a lot about fighting demons in a very short amount of time. The Feltouched Kender gains a +2 dodge bonus to AC vs outsiders with the evil subtype as well as +1 to attack rolls against them. This replaces Soul-Borrow.

Little Liars: The Feltouched understand the kender's penchant for stories and tall tales can be a useful skill. They gain a +4 bonus to Bluff checks made to convince someone what they are saying is true. This replaces Light Fingers.


@}-,-'--


Inspirations


Okay, first off you need to know how hard this was to put together. That's why this caused me to skip a week. This is essentially a bash-together of Tiefling and Halfling(kind of, Kender are close enough) and it was very hard giving them unique abilities that would also not override the other two races. The whole time I had to be mindful of the question "Would I play Halfling or Tiefling over this?" and lemme tell you, it wasn't easy. Halfling's not a very good race. So if you have issues with this race once you've read my notes and justifications below, talk with your group about poking them up or down a little, as appropriate.

Anyway. Fluff first. This came from an idle idea I shared with Mat once I had the idea for the Mannekin. Like most of my ideas, it was really stupid. Mat jokingly gave me the quote above and it inspired me to put a whole thing together. I love the Burning Crusade, and I love that they corrupt what they touch: You drink the fel flavor-aide and you turn into a monster with great powers. The orcs, some of the Tauren in Highmountain, and even MURLOCS. Once I saw fel corrupted Murlocs I knew my idea wasn't very far off in terms of believability.

After all, Kil'jaeden is a crafty motherfucker, and the kender are crafty motherfuckers. I really had the feeling he'd see them as useful tools, a perfect little spy army provided to him on a silver platter. This is why I swung this way instead of the more ridiculous(but vastly funnier) idea of Illidan training Kender as Demon Hunters out of sheer necessity.

In the end, they betray Kil'jaeden. This is for two reasons: The first is to express that they're still Kender. They might be sadistic little sneaky bastards now, but they still have that core to them. They're not all evil. The other reason is that I found it really funny, that Kil'jaeden kinda hoists his own petard by underestimating the Kender: Something a lot, a LOT of villains in Krynn have done.

Alright, let's discuss mechanics. The goal is still to put races between 12 and 15 points, and Feltouched sit at around 13. This was pretty difficult, as I said above, but I think I succeeded at having them split the difference between Tiefling and Halfling, giving them a BIT of skill utility but keeping their stuff mostly toward being a mix. I tried not to invent any alternate racial traits that push them closer to specializing and stepping on another race's toes. I also left out some of their classic disadvantages like the penalty to concentration checks or the constant mechanics-enforced "borrowing". Concentration's no longer a skill so that'd be a much bigger penalty than it needs to be...and the borrowing really should just be a RP thing anyway. It's a great way to get the Kender character killed to mechanically enforce stealing from the party. That crap is one of the reasons so many people hate Kender.

Fearless is probably the first controversial bit. I ballparked it at three points because an elemental immunity, something a LOT more useful, is four points. I thought about just giving them a flat +4 to save vs. fear, but that's not fair to the spirit of the Kender. they're fearless. Literally, they do not understand the concept. If this bothers you or if you're just trying to emulate a fel-touched halfling, knock it down to +4, but try not to go further down than that.

And lastly, here's the bit where I defend soul-borrow. It probably sounds a lot more powerful than it really is. First I'd like to say the skill penalty is largely there as a token, because I think it's weird that a thing like soul borrow wouldn't actually affect the person he's borrowing from. It also lets the feltouched feel like he's setting something up, to pop soul-borrow on someone in preparation for bluffing them or sneaking past.

Next...INFINITE HEALING! Well, not really. He's not going to be doing it in combat unless he's desperate due to the standard action and the non-scaling amount of HP. In most adventuring games, it basically means he's gonna get 4-5 uses from his fellow party members in a day. This means he heals up real fast in cities and towns, but it also puts him at risk for doing it, assuming most people who don't know him are gonna say "no" to having their life energy borrowed. Even then, asking people would probably be a diplomacy or bluff check anyway, so it'd be rare for the player to really get around some kind of check.

All in all, I consider it a conditional fast healing rating, something that's going to be great for downtime healing(something a lot of parties handwave anyway) and mildly useful any other time. If it still bothers you, consider restricting it to three times a day. I wouldn't go lower than that. You could also enforce they replace it with Demon Killer, which is a nice but conditional bonus.

Just as with Mannekin, I probably will do a supplementary post on these guys in the future with equipment, spells, and feats. The fun stuff.

New Races: Alternate Continuity I, The Mannekin

I love alternate continuity stuff. "Elseworlds" or "What If" stories, talk of alternate dimensions, that sort of thing. I even have an alternate history of Azeroth I might use some day for a game setting. With one of the characters from our most recent Pathfinder game being a dimensional traveler, I thought I'd drum up some races inspired by alternate continuity themselves. These can easily be inserted into a game as dimensional travelers, or even altered to be a similar circumstance in your own world. I tried not to go too off the rails with these, hopefully they're something you can include in a game without some sort of massive rewrite. I tried to stick close to how Pathfinder writes its racial fluff, but frankly sometimes a category will feel pretty irrelevant, so when that happens I'll be leaving it out. In this case, it was relations.

Mechanics-wise, I'm going as close to the advanced race guide as possible, but you'll see a place or two I needed to fudge it. I've tried not to go over 15 race points, but in the future I may need a little leeway with that as well.

I was going to include several races in this post, but frankly? It's either post one full, well developed race or skimp to include more. This is longer than I expected it'd be. Expect more in the future.

@}-,-'--

Mannekin


There exists a version of Eberron where the Warforged were never created. House Cannith was not in a position to create living constructs until after the Last War had ended, and thus their plan was wildly different: Instead of constructs bent toward war, a race of servants, craftsmen and entertainers were created.

The Mannekin were wildly popular at first, filling a vacuum of manpower created by the Last War. It became popular with the aristocracy to use Mannekin for as many things as possible, from entertainment to nannies to simply including them in your entourage as a status symbol. Cannith also created and used many of them on their own in manufactories. After all, they don't eat, sleep, or complain.

Rumors of the Mannekin being spies abounded. It was an obvious concern. Sinister plots would only come to light years later when adventurers hired by House Kundarak would uncover the Mannekin's true purpose: Not as spies, but as secret sleeper agents. Once House Cannith gave the signal, the Mannekin would go berserk, killing their owners and destabilizing the five kingdoms.

The threat was solved without much violence. The ritual magic needed to 'activate' the Mannekin and turn them to violence was never performed. Cannith simply was not ready, and unable to perform the ritual even as retaliation. In the Treaty of Hidden Knives, Cannith was sanctioned severely and all Mannekin were declared free persons. House Cannith was also prevented from making any more.

Now that their former position as sleeper assassins was a well known fact, Mannekin were turned out onto the streets in droves. They live as gypsies would, being viewed with suspicion and distrust. They remain gregarious, friendly, and ingratiating, their history as servants and entertainers never truly forgotten.

Physical Description:  Mannekin are usually between five and six feet tall, and while their frames vary, most are slender and elegant. They are a clockwork race, made of varying metals but usually lacquered steel plates hiding complex brass internals. These external shaped plates shift and slide against one another to provide a full range of movement and facial expressions.

Mannekin usually have outlandish and varied appearances, with some of them even appearing as anthropomorphic animals such as foxes or cats. They are normally painted white, but other colors are not unheard of, with light pastels being most popular. Synthetic hair of wildly varying or bright colors is sometimes used, but it's just as common to see a mannekin with steel molding meant to look like a hairdo, or even a permanently attached hat or other head covering. In terms of clothing, Mannequin frequently wear bright colors to contrast with their white paint, and most Mannequin today are dressed as outlandishly as possible, attracted to the dramatic and gaudy. Still, sometimes you will still see Mannequin dressed in the simple black craftsmen's outfits they were sold in.

Mannekin normally have an agile, erudite elegance to their movements and actions. Mannekin who have gone berserk due to magical interference or emotional trauma are wildly different. They shudder and twitch, they hang like marionettes and switch randomly between lurching and moving with amazing speed. Their normally beautiful appearance distends and distorts as their internals go haywire. Commonly their mouths distend into a gaping jaw full of razor teeth or grinding gears. Just as often claws or blades are also seen. A berserk Mannekin can be calmed down and repaired, but just as often they're seen as monsters and destroyed.

Society: Being constructs, Mannekin have no real society. They do share a sense of camaraderie in being outcast, however, and frequently band together to protect each other. Mistrusted at best in many areas, they get by on temporary work and entertainment. Most of the land's theater troupes and bands have one or several Mannekin in them. Many have also bitterly turned to crime, working for thieves guilds or acting as freelance assassins. Mannekin are largely seen as mechanical gypsies, marginalized and pushed to the fringes of society.

Alignment and Religion: Simply put, most Mannekin are not religious. Being effectively immortal, they do not have strong thoughts about an afterlife. In addition, their mechanical nature leads them to being rather pragmatic about their roles or "purpose". You would be hard pressed to convince the average Mannekin that any God had smiled upon them. Morality-wise, they often adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy which guides them toward true neutral in alignment. Being put-upon and mistrusted wears on many of them, however, and they sometimes turn to selfishness and crime to get by.


Mannekin Racial Traits


+2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, -2 Strength: Mannekin are nimble, gregarious and self-sure, but their construction does not lend itself to physical labor.

Living Construct: While Mannekin are constructs, they are powered by strong life magics that give them several distinct differences to traditional constructs.

- Mannekin have a CON score and do not possess darkvision or low-light vision.

- Mannekin are NOT immune to mind-affecting spells and abilities.

- Mannekin are immune to poison, disease, sleep effects, paralysis, bleed, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion, sickened, and energy drain.

- Mannekin do not heal naturally. A DC 20 Craft(Mechanical) or other appropriate craft skill will repair 1D6 damage, plus 1D6 for every 5 points of the check result above 20.

- Unlike other constructs, Mannekin are NOT immune to critical hits, non-lethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, death effects and necromancy.

- As living constructs, Mannekin can be affected by spells that target living creatures as well as those that target constructs.

- A Mannekin takes damage from spells such as Heat Metal or Shocking Grasp as if they were wearing metal armor.

- Mannekin do not need to eat, sleep or breathe but can still benefit from consumable items.

- Mannekin can be resurrected or raised. The mannekin's corpse does not decay, and can be repaired to count as a whole and intact body. Raise Dead's time limit still applies.


Built to Serve: Mannekin receive a +2 racial bonus to all Craft and Perform checks.


Elegant Armor:  A Mannekin's tough construction and steel plates provide a +1 natural armor bonus.


Alternate Racial Traits


Liars and Thieves: Some Mannekin embrace the stereotype they have been saddled with. They receive a +2 racial bonus to Bluff and Stealth checks. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Elegance of Learning: Some Mannekin were employed as sages or library helpers and developed a thirst for knowledge. They receive a +2 racial bonus to Linguistics and a single Knowledge skill of their choice. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Berserk: Mannekin will often teach themselves how to activate their latent defenses, using anger or other severe emotions. These mannekin can choose either a bite attack which deals 1D6 damage or two claw attacks which deal 1D4. These modifications are only visible when the Mannekin is using them. This modification ruins the placement and arrangement of their protective plates, however, and they lose the Elegant Armor trait.

Consummate Entertainer: Mannekin were sometimes further enchanted for entertaining children. These Mannekin are able to use Prestidigitation at will, as well as Silent Image and Ventriloquism once a day. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Luck of the Downtrodden: Many Mannekin rely on luck more than pragmatism. These Mannekin gain a +1 luck bonus to all saving throws. This trait replaces Elegant Armor.


@}-,-'--

Inspirations

OKAY, OKAY before we go any further, YES they were somewhat inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, more specifically Circus Baby and Ballora. Don't sidle up to me grinning and poking me like you figured out some big secret. Anyway, there are several other places this came from. I used to always joke about a hippy Warforged Druid who called himself a Peaceforged, but I decided to take that idea in a more logical direction and ask what Warforged would be like if they weren't made for war.

They're clockwork because I've always had a soft spot for clockwork beings like Orianna from League of Legends or those evil aristocratic French robots in Doctor Who. I also wanted to draw a clear line between them and Warforged: Warforged were made from hearty materials to be as tough as possible, because they were soldiers. Mannekin are built to be elegant and pretty, and not to get in a fight. Even if the ritual to 'activate' them as sleeper agents would have been performed, it would've been a lot of attacking from ambush or killing sleeping aristocrats.

As for their position as untrusted former sleeper agents, there's two major reasons. One is that there needed to be a reason private individuals were giving up their property because I didn't really want heavy themes of slavery here. This way, I could draw a parallel to Gypsy stereotypes without being offensive. I also love the idea of a dangerously broken machine, lurching and hanging like a broken puppet, flailing dangerously. Like I presume Warforged are treated, Mannekin are too because of this, mistrusted because of the potential for violence. The fact that some of them DO flip out and bite you probably doesn't help.

Mechanics wise, you'll see I had to do some fudging. Mannekin are probably somewhere between 12 and 16 race points, depending on how many points you feel Living Construct is worth. I would say it costs ten points for similarities to the Plant type, but I admit it could be lower due to the drawbacks inherent to it. I also quietly put aside some of the drawbacks of the traditional warforged such as not being able to wear armor. After all, the whole point of buying a Mannekin would be to dress it in fine clothing, so they're built with that in mind. I also backed off on the Warforged penalty to healing, because the Repair Construct spells don't exist in Pathfinder and not everyone would appreciate porting a whole line of spells into their game just for a single race. They also lack the inability to resurrect the Warforged, because that's pointless and dumb. I had to alter the Berserk trait a bit from what the book recommends, since for some reason it severely overvalues bite attacks. I made it work identically to Maw or Claw for Tieflings, which is also a 2 RP trait since it replaces a spell ability. I did want to give them a few racial feats, but frankly I couldn't think of any, and a lot of the Warforged feats simply don't apply. Maybe in a future post.

Oh yeah, and the name is a really obvious pun. I hope you enjoyed that. See you next week with another race.

The Ninja Problem

"Are you watching, Neji? I was saving this ace-in-the-hole to use against you. See what you have to look forward to?"


You know, I really didn't expect to have so many of these. Hell, after I wrote about Paladins I sort of thought that was the end of it. It turns out that there are a lot of classes or character concepts out there that bring baggage along, though. I don't think any of them are bad, really. As you've seen, a lot of this stuff comes from misunderstanding, or even poor writing on the part of game designers. With Paladin, most of the problem is that we carry around a lot of notions about what a Paladin is supposed to be. If there's a single concept that has this problem even worse, it's the Ninja. forgive today's funky format a little, because we're talking about a character concept that not only spans game editions, but even game settings and rulesets. Ninjas exist in a metric ton of games, including ones like Legend of the Five Rings which are all ABOUT the concept.

Our big trumped-up and "false" ideas of ninjas actually come from a long fucking time ago. The eighteenth century, to be exact. Mercenaries and spies became popular in Japan during a period of unrest in the 15th century. By the time Japan was unified by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century, most of these "Shinobi" had faded into obscurity. However, the legend was so compelling that it stuck around, embellished with stories of superhuman abilities like invisibility or walking on water. Just like most "Medieval torture devices" like the Iron Maiden were invented in the Victorian age to shock people and not for real use, the concept of Ninja were largely invented after the fact too.

You can see why. Ninja survive as a concept because they're so fucking cool. Agile dudes with hidden weapons and neat tricks, fighting with shadow and magic. Even the whole black pajama look is kinda cool. So naturally, we want to play them. Developers want to include them. Here's...sort of where our first problem lies.

When something is included in a game, it's largely because that concept can't easily be emulated somewhere else. Take PF's Swashbuckler for instance. Without that class, how would you be able to play a charismatic fighter who uses agility and a single weapon? You could play a bard or rogue and not use several of your abilities. You could play fighter and give up the benefit of your off hand. You could multiclass. None of those options are exactly good ones, so Swashbuckler exists, with special abilities themed toward the concept.

Everything we know of ninjas, from reasonable, realistic abilities to the fantastical magic ones can be emulated by classes that already existed in 3e. However, people expect cool ninja shit beyond simple equipment and feats, so 3e added several. The first was a bizarre and arguably overpowered prestige class in Oriental Adventures called Ninja Spy. It wasn't hard to get into and sought to cram as many iconic abilities as possible into ten levels. It gave you a ton of utility but slowed down your sneak attack progression. The same book also has Shadow Scout, which is another version of Ninja expressed as a prestige class. The kindest thing I can say about this class is that it exists. There's virtually nothing it provides that you can't get easier somewhere else. Oriental Adventures also has ninja weapons and  several iconic pieces of ninja gear like flash paper and eggshell grenades.

You'd expect that from a book called Oriental Adventures so I'm going to forgive that. Then later, there's even more of it in Complete Adventurer, including a Ninja base class which reads like an alternate rogue. Their version of Sneak Attack, called Sudden Strike, even removes sneak attack's ability to use while flanking, cementing their position as ambush strikers and also incidentally making the class completely worthless when compared to rogue. Finally, in Book of Nine Swords, one of the (blessedly wider-themed) classes includes Shadow Hand techniques, which are even more ninja crap.

You probably see where I'm going with this, but in case you don't, another problem is that a big pile of weird ninja shit is immediately included in every game which has even the barest hint of Asian content. You want to play a ninja, and immediately you're drowning in crap you feel like you should take even when you could play a ninja quite well just taking bard, rogue, or even wizard.

It guides us toward ridiculousness and silly behavior in a lot of ways, two things that are ironically quite against actual ninjitsu. There's a lot of very silly stuff out there themed toward ninjas, like the Mamukigama in Rokugan D20's Way of the Ninja splat. In case you didn't know, that's a long chain with a Kama attached to one end, and a live snake tied to the other. You whip it at people and it bites them. Normally I forgive Rokugan since it's a setting where ninja and ninjitsu are extremely important, but I'm never gonna forget that one.

So you want to play a ninja without being an absurd cartoon character whose antics annoy the rest of the group. All you need is a healthy understanding of what a ninja is supposed to be at its core, which you can then embellish with all the fantastic magic or cool gear you can find. I thought what I'd do is go over the four major things Ninja were used for in the 16th century and give play advice based on that. Yes, I'm using wikipedia. If someone can find me a copy of the Bansenshukai I'd totally use that instead, but wikipedia says it was written in 1676 so I'm not holding my breath.

Espionage and Sabotage. This is going to be 90% of your ninja, just like playing a rogue. A ninja's bread and butter is deception and information, even moreso than a rogue. They were mercenaries, meaning the theme of your character shies away from your typical party rogue, even if you can fill that role just fine. Costumes and cover identities will always be a part of a ninja, since to have been noticed is to have failed, even if you did your job. A rogue wearing black leather armor will probably never have the information gathering ability of someone wearing a secretly armored kimono or artisan's outfit and saying they're a simple painter. You can get into and out of a lot of places simply by looking like you're not important, and ninja thrive on this.

Assassination. Being mercenaries during a time of unrest, they were called upon to do things a military would need. Not much to say here, other than your average ninja is going to be a little more hardlined than a thieves' guild style rogue and willing to do whatever it takes.

Countermeasures. This is another interesting paramilitary thing they were called on to do, one that I don't think a typical fantasy thieves' guild gets into. They were hired out to counter other ninjas, so you could easily work a perceptive, defensive nature into a character as well.


With that out of the way, let's get down to the root. There's one major problem with ninja: The silly shit. The silly weapons, the silly equipment, the silly black pajamas and the silly notions about how you should be acting. I'm gonna try to solve this with an analogy to much-maligned Anime, Naruto.

I bet a lot of people left like, right after that line.

Anyway, first off we have to sort of forgive the show for being mostly about fighting, because it's a shonen anime. However, if you actually watch some of the show, you can see the seeds of how ninja should be acting everywhere. The winners in a fight frequently use deception or secrets to their advantage. During the Chuunin exams, Naruto wins against Neji(a much better fighter than him, let's be real) by repeatedly faking him out, ending in a "wounded gazelle" gambit with a shadow clone that knocks Neji out cold. When Rock Lee fights Gaara, Rock Lee nearly triumphs over an essentially invincible opponent because he knows secret, forbidden techniques he's only allowed to use in defense of his personal philosophy.

Before I make my point, let's move momentarily over to Ruroni Kenshin and the character Hannya. Through the entire anime, he uses disguises and subterfuge to manipulate events. When forced to fight, his final secret is that the tattoos along his arms are an optical illusion, making it seem like his arms are bending and stretching. He nearly wins against Kenshin until the samurai thinks to use his sword to measure Hannya's arms.


What am I getting at? What's the key to all of these ninja I discussed? You sure can get away with a lot of silly shit if you remember the core of the character: Deception. Be subtle with motives and actions, use deception and cleverness to get ahead and the rest basically doesn't matter. You can approach this concept from so many places and use so many classes or builds: that's why it's so compelling. All you need to do to turn an eyerolling concept into a cool one is to be subtle and wield deception as your weapon. This works great in a group willing to let the rogue do planning. Hell, I never advocate deceiving your friends OOCly, but you don't HAVE to tell them you're a ninja. See how far you can go describing and playing your character before they get it.

The semi-arrogant reveal of your plan is a really fun one, and subtlety, preplanning and deception let you pull that out a lot. If you want another example of this, I'll paraphrase the story of where the black ninja outfit came from. I'm not entirely sure if it's truly where the concept came from, but it's such a neat story that I'll believe it anyway.

If you don't know what Noh theater is, it's a kind of traditional Japanese stage play. It often has helpers wearing all black against a black background who are assisting with the visuals of the play: like stage hands but in plain sight. There was a Noh play once where a character was killed in the final act by one of these stage hands: Or rather, someone the audience THOUGHT was a stage hand. They saw him and dismissed him. They didn't believe he was part of the play until he acted.


I think I'll leave you with that as today's best piece of advice. A ninja's victims only know the truth when it's far too late. Keep that in mind and you can probably use all the eggshell pepper grenades, poison blow-pipes and floating shoes you want.

Self-Sacrifice and Roleplay

"It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Aw, what the heck, I'll laugh anyway."


I was totally working on another post right after Ivory Tower Design, something unrelated that's been bumping around in my head a lot. Well, my buddy Chris suggested a topic that dovetails really nicely with last week's post. I looked down at the one I was working on, all 3/4ths finished, and I was completely ready to just blow him off. This one's almost done! I'd already talked about his suggestion a little, even. It could wait! But then, it came up three or four more times when talking about the post. Chris is right, this really does bear discussing right now.

There's a certain attitude among a certain type of roleplayer. They firmly believe that being willing to sacrifice their character's effectiveness for "roleplay" or theming makes them a better roleplayer than someone who built a mechanically effective character. This can infect the way the people around them think, because if they really believe this, they'll probably go out of their way to point it out when they've done it. They might even try to advise others to do the same or berate people who haven't.

Before I go any further...We're gonna talk about the Paizo forums a bit today. If you're coming from there? Sorry, but I mean everything I'm about to say. Try to take it as constructive criticism and look inside yourself to see if you need to improve how you play Pathfinder. Don't look to others to tell you how to feel or to validate your opinion. Think for yourself.

Ahem. Paizo's official forums are, in general, a preposterous little echo chamber full of bad ideas. Forums in general can easily fall prey to this, because people tend to collect where they all agree and push others out. Nobody on the internet really ever seems to want intelligent discourse. So, Paizo's forums and other similar places are why this otherwise preposterous idea still has legs.

I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm going to try and explain why people think this way before going over why it's wrong. Basically, a lot of RPers see themselves as superior because they're willing to make a sacrifice and the "power gamers" aren't. Basically, they see a willingness to play a substandard character such as an orc wizard or dwarf sorcerer as meaning they care more about roleplay than someone who played a powerful combo, like an orc barbarian or dwarf cleric.


I want to be super clear here.


This wildly prevalent attitude is one of the worst ideas in modern gaming.


This is an awful way to think and will only serve to cause strife in your group.


Period.


Ahem. Now that I'm done being dramatic, let's talk about it. We'll start with the whys first. After all, I need to back up my statement with facts, so here we go. I'm sure this concept has a technical term, but I'm calling it false sacrifice. Yes, false. A lot of the people I've met insist that the mechanics are less important than the roleplaying and character building of the game, then try to insist they're a better RPer for making this sacrifice. This is a minor contradiction. Essentially, they've sacrificed something they don't care about and are insisting that's significant.

People do this a lot in real life too. They want someone to sweat about something so they'll trump up how big a deal it is. It's because they want something, even if it's attention. Even if it's to demean someone else. That's precisely what's happening here. Whether these people are jealous of the skill someone has with a system or of their effort, whether they have a false notion of how the game "should be played" or whether they just want attention, it's always the same. Throw away something that doesn't matter to you, and then crow about how you threw it away.

No, something that might legitimately set people apart as roleplayers would be to accept a challenge. Playing out of type, or playing someone with a mental or physical disability. Playing someone who's mute has no bearing on your effectiveness (most of the time, sorry casters) but it sure as hell is challenging to play. Being willing to accept a challenge sure would set people apart, but how often do you think I've seen these self-sacrificing RPers do that?

If you guessed never, you win the golden banana award. Just don't eat it, that gold metallic paint is toxic.

But I'm not done debunking this. I've proved that it's still stupid even if you take it to be true that a mechanical sacrifice would mean something, but the problem is...this is a very faulty premise. Let me ask you something to get you thinking about it: How much does your stats have to do with your character's background, personality, or in-game facts?

It's certainly not NOTHING. I mean, you can play someone who's a scientist, but without ranks in a science skill, you'd have to justify how he's just plain-ass not good at the job or something. You can't play a famous singer without some Perform...even people legendarily bad at performing have some skill they worked at or even learned along the way. In general you need to justify what your character HAS done with what he's ABLE to do. However, other than that? The two are fairly removed. There's a lot you can justify regardless of your stats, and even more you can justify after even four ranks of something, or one feat.

So imagine writing down your character: their personality, their physical description, their background, everything. Imagine taking that to someone who's never heard of pen and paper gaming and asking them to judge your character. To compare them to another, or several characters. Obviously they'd judge them based on what their given, they'd tell you maybe the idea of an orc bard is neat. Maybe they think it's dumb.

Okay. Now imagine trying to explain your point of view to them. Imagine telling them "I built my character with the personality in mind first and his mechanical effectiveness second." Imagine telling them "No, my character sucks and that means he's better."

Imagine the response you'd get. If you were doing this with my mom, you'd get something between a blank stare, a "so what" and a vague insult for being an idiot. Most people wouldn't care.

Was that a fair scenario? Nope! But why do you think a non-player would need to know how your mechanics work to judge your character? The rest is easily understood and judged. That's because mechanics and character are judged separately. They always will be, and insisting otherwise is a deliberate attempt to unnaturally support your point of view.

No, we know what this is about, don't we? They have a grudge against "power gamers" and are casting about for a way to put themselves above these people. In other words, it's arrogant, rude, and pointless. It's an obvious coping mechanism. What's worse, they'll declare anyone who cares about the game's mechanics is a power gamer. Anyone who put care into their character is a munchkin. And THOSE are BAD.

I already talked about Socialist Gaming. This intersects. Everyone should build the best character they possibly can, and deliberately building a bad one makes things worse on the GM. That makes things worse on everyone else, and the proud peacock preening about your shitty character isn't helping either.

Maybe I should try to clear up a misconception about "power gaming" even though I already did. It's not a fucking crime to enjoy the mechanics and systems of pen and paper gaming. It's half of the fucking game. Insisting we need to turn away and never mention its name reminds me of, at best, Voldemort.

And for the record, the fact that the adults in the series didn't like it when you said his name was an indication they didn't want to solve the problem, they wanted it to just go away and be forgotten. So, when I make that comparison, don't you ever go telling me his name had some sort of power.

Ahem. When people carefully craft their character mechanically, it's because they enjoy doing it. It's like tuning a car to get as much horsepower as you can out of it, and not necessarily about being the big man on the block. No, if someone has THAT sort of attitude, I promise you it'll come out over anything, not just a game's mechanics. Most of us simply enjoy doing it, and telling us that it's "backwards" or "not as important" is just as wrong as the reverse argument, telling someone that RP is for people who suck at the game. And yes, I HAVE heard that one.

This is maybe something you didn't know. We don't go into a system trying to make the most powerful character possible. What we do is that we take a concept and try to make it work as well as possible. We're not worried about being mega-strong, we want to take a cool concept and make it as good as possible. If your game has a "power gamer" and he's always coming up with weird concepts or wacky ways to build his character, maybe you don't really have a power gamer. Watch for people who are always building the same shit, or using build guides they found on the internet. If his concepts are always arcanist, magus, magus, arcanist, magus you might have a problem.

Being interested in the mechanics of PNP gaming and building interesting characters doesn't say anything bad about someone...and even if it did, Pen and Paper games are all about getting together with friends and collaborating. Everyone enjoying each other's company and building a story together. Telling someone they're playing wrong over something as trivial as being concerned with their character's effectiveness is against the spirit of the hobby.

So don't tell people how to enjoy things. In fact, don't EVER do that, not just in the context of gaming. If you really want to test your limits as a roleplayer, there are so many better things you can do instead of building a shitty character on purpose. Play against type by crafting a personality you would normally never play. Make someone with a mental disorder, whether or not you're getting bonus points for doing it. Pick a race or class you hate, play a physical deformity, or play a quirk you know is going to make your character look foolish. There's millions of ways you can test your limits and "prove" you're a good RPer that don't involve shitting on someone else or making the GM's job harder.

Ivory Tower Design

I've told you time and time again that the difference between "power players" and regular gamers is smaller than you think. We don't sit around reading RPG books all day. I personally haven't done that without cause in fifteen years or more. Any time I open a book, it's because I'm working on a game, a character, or a post. It's not a question of IQ or schooling either. For everyone dedicated to PNP games that has a BS or Masters in something, there's probably ten more like me who have no higher education. Dedication and experience help, but what they guide you toward is recognizing concepts and synergies. A healthy background with math and an understanding of how an "average" game is likely to go helps too.

We're talking about one of those recognized concepts today. People who like this sort of thing call it "System Mastery", its more accurate name is Ivory Tower Design. Basically, it's a design choice that places substandard or even bad choices in a system alongside good ones. There's a lot of reasons this would happen. Sometimes(as you'll see below) it's a little necessary and sometimes it's due to simple poor balance in the system, but most popular games that do this do it for a really stupid, minorly insulting reason: to make you feel good when you figure it out. Yes, there is seriously a model of thinking in PNP design that thinks this little of your intelligence.

We're using 3.5e D&D and Pathfinder for examples today. 3.5e is the worst for Ivory Tower Design by far, and Pathfinder still has plenty of this stuff. A small amount of it is a side effect of games with individual stats for weapons and armor. Here, we're gonna do something. I want you to open up a PHB. You can get the same idea from 3.5e but I'm using Pathfinder since it's my gold standard.

Remember, today we're putting roleplay and fluff entirely aside. We're just looking at mechanical effectiveness. I should probably make a whole post about this, but the gist is that using a better weapon doesn't make you a worse RPer.

So open up the equipment section of that book I made you go get. Pathfinder vastly improved weapon selection and now most of them have some sort of reason you'd wield them over others. In the one-handed section, Longsword is better base damage. Rapier and Scimitar are more frequent critical hits. Battleaxe and Warhammer are better crits. Et Cetera. However, there's plenty of weapons on this list that you'd only wield because you didn't have another option. Quarterstaff, Heavy Mace, et cetera. Now look at two handed martial weapons. Greatclub is 1d10 damage, a x2 crit, and bludgeoning damage. Right under it is the heavy flail, which is 1d10 damage, 19-20/x2 crit, bludgeoning damage, and the disarm and trip flags. Even if you're never going to disarm or trip someone, what reason would you have to ever wield a greatclub?

Before we answer, flip to armor, where this is even more obvious. Look at the various armor types and add together its armor and max dex. This isn't perfect, but it'll give you a ballpark of their effective protection value. Breastplate is 6/3 with -4 ACP. Chainmail is 6/2 with -5 ACP. Even if you only had a dex of 14, the breastplate is still better. This happens again in heavy armor with splint mail, banded mail and half-plate.

In terms of equipment? Ivory Tower Design exists partially because not everyone is going to have the best gear. Some things are way cheaper. Sometimes people have shitty equipment because they're poor or part of an organization. Mechanically, this lets a GM shave a few points of AC off or a few points of damage without cheating. This is the only place Ivory Tower Design is acceptable, in my opinion. Even then, you have to be aware of the fact that some choices are substandard.

Because yes, it does get worse. This sort of thing, these examples of choices that are bad on purpose repeat themselves in places where they absolutely don't belong, like feats and spells. 3.Xe even has whole classes and PrCs that are false choices. It sucks when you can't trust a game to play fair, but sometimes this is deliberately introduced to make people feel good about "mastering" a system. If you don't believe me, think about all the times the feats Run or Endurance came up in your game. Or even better, tell me about all the times they would have been handy to have. Chances are, it's very few.

There are more traps than that, and to be fair some of them are caused by developers losing sight of how much something is worth or how often it'll happen in an average game. With Run, it's a terrible feat, true, but that's made worse by the fact that the average game just isn't going to have many people taking the run action at all. Even then, it's possible the extra speed doesn't matter. A normal fighter with run still isn't going to catch a normal monk without it if they both take the run action, even if he's in light armor. You can sometimes see this in how expensive something is versus its usefulness as well. The biggest examples here in D20 games are darkvision and water breathing. With darkvision, the expense is solely because a light source, even a hands free one, will alert people with its shine. How often will that really happen in your game? I'm guessing it'd happen to the rogue a hell of a lot and to anyone else approximately never.

Other times, there are feats, powers or prestige classes which are very good but require you to plan your character very, very far ahead. Most people do build like this in some way, picking out a PrC or far away feat, but I don't think anyone wants to have to plan as far ahead as 3.x D&D sometimes asked you to. The "Higher tier" PrCs like archmage required a lot of strangely specific choices...and then there's the epic level handbook, which makes your choices at levels as low as 5 matter to when you're 21 or higher.

So you can see why Pathfinder made some of the decisions they did. They moved away from prestige classes in favor of base classes and archtypes. They gave you more feats overall and less feats with a laundry list of requirements. It has less instances of Ivory Tower Design and introduces an alternate rule to eliminate its impact entirely.

Yes, it's pretty easy to remove this dumb crap from your game. Simply put, let people retrain. This is a core rule in many games, and an alternate rule in our two biggest culprits, D&D 3e and Pathfinder. Just use that rule. Let people spend gold or time to revise their choices. Even if they end up choosing a different class entirely, which you shouldn't need to do in Pathfinder, I think. Eliminating the fear of making a bad, "trap" choice eliminates Ivory Tower Design's control over your game.

You probably shouldn't assume every bad choice in a game is because of Ivory Tower Design. It's unhealthy. However, it doesn't matter, really, why it's bad. Identifying that a system is inequal or unbalanced is often enough. It puts your guard up. Ivory Tower Design is a ridiculous attempt at making people feel accomplished that only ends up "Gatekeeping" the hobby. My final piece of advice is to help each other out and don't make people wallow in bad choices. That's all you need to do, give new players a leg-up and let even older players revise their choices a bit if they notice they fell into a trap.

Cyberpunk, the Dying Genre

"No wonder you have demons. Everything you ever did is coming back around."


I've wanted to do this topic for a while, and I came across a pretty decent object lesson this week to illustrate what I mean...so here we go. I fucking love cyberpunk. We fucking love cyberpunk. I grew up on Shadowrun, and yes, I love Johnny Mnemonic even though it's one of the stupidest movies known to mankind. I saw that movie and I was stunned with how accurate to Shadowrun it was, even though it was based on SR's grand-daddy, Cyberpunk 2020. Everything was grimy and dirty. Cables ran everywhere. Technology had serious, literal weight to it. There was a guy with a monowhip! Hell, the Black Shakes? You could just call that VITAS.

But there's a bit of a problem. I assume you read the title. Cyberpunk as we know it isn't going to be around forever, unlike other genres. Younger generations simply aren't going to understand it. Today I'm gonna go into why, and I'm going to use two bands to help get my point across. I'm not making any commentary on their music at all: I love them both. I'm also not making any commentary on who "works harder". That's ridiculous, they both put their heart and soul into their music. No, we're just looking at the technology they use. Side note? If you use thematic music in your games, both of these bands need to be on your Shadowrun playlist.


Before we begin, I'm gonna give you a little giggle warning. Yes, our first band is seriously named Fartbarf. No, they're not a joke band. Yes, I'm serious. I suggest a few minutes getting over their name before you go any further. Lord knows I needed it.


Fartbarf - Double Click Me


So, there's no need to watch that whole song. Really, a few good looks will give you the point I'm trying to make. Fartbarf is an analogue synthesizer band, and I want you to look at their setup. Pause if you need to. Nothing they use is fancy or modern. they've got a real set of drums, sure, but look at the rest of their instruments. Big, heavy keyboards. a massive control box with wires all the fuck over it. Some kind of switcher that looks like a 1920s phone board. Dials and big clicky buttons everywhere. Yes, your author is super technical with his descriptions.


The Glitch Mob's Musical Playtime Takeover


Here's our second example, The Glitch Mob. No need to watch the whole video, but in this they actually describe their instruments and kit, please watch that whole segment. The Glitch Mob is, well they make Adventure Dance music, he says it in the clip. Not that I know what that means. Pay attention to what they use to put everything together. Everyone's got those sleek touch-screen displays with hundreds of customizable "buttons" on them. They've got that MIDI controller, which is probably the only piece of tech that looks like it fits in with the stuff Fartbarf uses. They have a laptop controlling everything and piecing it together. Even their DRUMS are some kind of digital.


You probably already know where I'm going with this. In fact, how well illustrated my point is by these two bands is why we're finally having this conversation. The difference is that The Glitch Mob use all the modern technology available, and Fartbarf is (according to their website) resisting a touchscreen future. They are a throwback band using older styles of technology. The sort of things you'd see in the 80s. Fartbarf fits right in to Shadowrun, you can easily picture them playing in some club surrounded by people with mohawks and cyberlimbs. Even down to, and this is a side note, what they're wearing. I could describe that in a Shadowrun game and you wouldn't even blink. Men wearing ape-like masks and NASA jumpsuits. Sure. Glitch Mob, on the other hand? While the music certainly fits the genre, you'd be hard pressed to fit those sleek touchscreens and laptops into the world.

Cyberpunk is speculative fiction stemming from the technology of the 80s. It chooses to cast aside the idea that technology always gets smaller and more friendly. Just like the world has progressed past the technology Fartbarf uses, the world has also progressed far past the level, the pastiche of technology that cyberpunk is built on. It's become harder to understand the limitations of the system and its gear. It's even caused common problems in my own gaming experiences: the book says rather specifically that a Pocket Secretary can't jack into the Matrix, but we're so used to looking up websites on our phones that it's near impossible to remember this fact. Literally, a modern smartphone has a far greater amount of capabilities than a pocket secretary.

Imagine a child who's very young today, 2 or 3 years old. They're going to grow up understanding most technology is wireless. He's going to grow up with touch-screens and the insane convenience of apps like GPSes, Uber, Grubhub and that app that has people going to the grocery store for you. Simply put, they aren't going to understand how cyberpunk is intended to work. The restrictions aren't going to line up with their notions of how things work, and it might be very hard for them to get it. For (most of) us, it's easy. We grew up with 80s technology.

4th edition and 5th edition of Shadowrun do try to re-contextualize and update portions of the genre to combat this. This is positive, because we do have some wiggle room. 5th edition Shadowrun also alters some of the themes of the world to discuss concepts such as omnipresent advertising and digital clutter. Wireless technology is a strong theme, mechanically as well as lore-wise. 5th edition is a pretty good game that still manages to feel like Cyberpunk in a lot of ways.

But something is lost. Obviously. Technology isn't heavy and cumbersome. Twisting cables and wires aren't as ever-present. If Cyberpunk is the future of the 80s, Shadowrun 5e's version is the future of the 2000s. That's okay. This iteration still feels pretty close, and it's easier for us to contextualize. That child we talked about earlier will have no problem fitting right into 5e. But will 6e still feel the same? 7e? As we progress, it's going to get harder and harder to justify and keep Cyberpunk feeling like Cyberpunk. Part of the genre is tied heavily into how its technology feels.

Is there hope? Maybe. Fallout can easily be described as the future of the 50s. We all easily understand how it's intended to work. Maybe our children will be able to look at Cyberpunk that way. Technology-based heroes who have been portrayed over decades have altered to fit a new era without feeling much different. Iron Man has gone from a guy wearing big fuckoff metal plates, rocket boots and the equivalent of a laser gun to a technological marvel packed with everything you can think of, all with awesome holographic displays. So maybe the people of the future will be more able to understand the genre than I think.

I guess I'll tell you in 20 years. I'll keep a DVD of Johnny Mnemonic handy.