User:Kurst: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:40, 28 September 2016

Hello there and welcome to my personal rant.

About Me

I'm from Germany and started with D6 Star Wars in the late 80s, as a player. Unfortunately I have not played it often and am actually just now beginning to play in a campaign (Yeah, I know - my loss). I have been improving and creating a few articles here and improved some more in the general (German) Wikipedia (general RPG articles and major work on articles for the Cthulhu Mythos and Steampunk) - under the same pseudonym: Kurst.

As I chose my new Star Wars charakter to also be the chronicler of the campaign, I'll record some things in this Wiki while also contributing what I can.

May the Force be with you

The Current Campaign: Retrieval

Character: UrYōma, of the empty hand, an UrRu mystic
Padawan: Codi Ita (a young and ambitious Twi'lek
Character's Main Background Events

The Great Division
When the race of the UrSkek shattered the Ur-Crystal, he was created from DarYōma. His counterpart became SkekDar, the weaponsmaster. The shattering of the crystal resulted in the shards being scattered around the galaxy and the remaining main body of the crystal to also be lost (but maybe the Skek have already recoved it)
The meeting with Shimura
When the Jedi Shimura came to Thra the long conversations with UrYōma convinced both that there must be a way of the Force beyond technology, wich is just the easy and quick way, like the dark side.

Character's Main Goals

Properly train and guide Codi in the way of the light side of the force
Find the lost shards of the Ur-Crystal and restore it.
Refine the ways of UrTek-Ná (a philosophy of thought, movement and combat, inspired by the Ka-Combat technique of the Monks of Shimura)

additional current goals

Tell the story of the group → Campaign Chronicle
Collect info on possible places for Ur-Shards
Find Kyra Danjapa, the renegade Jedi student who seems to have lost her mind when investigating an old holocron. The trail of the renegade led him from Tython to Ord Mantell. There, the Esseles was the only ship leaving the planet, so the trail actually led onward to Coruscant where she left the planet bound for Nar Shadda and the luxury liner "Queen of Nal Hutta". There she stole one of the ancient Ur-Shards and escaped to parts unknown...

→ meditate regularly on her location: use Concentration (Control: Easy) to boost Life Sense (Sense: Very Easy +12 (met once) +30 (anywhere in the Galaxy) => difficulty ca. 45

Devise a training regimen for Codi that is demanding, but not frustrating...
Also such a training has to somehow integrate well with the UrTek-Ná philosophy...

To Train a Padawn

Thoughts: Roleplaying the Master of a Padawan is not an easy task. Care must be taken to not force the student's studying and not to stifle it, but to encourage it to grow along the lines of the light side. Also the roleplaying aspect should spotlight the relationship between the two without taking away the fun for the other characters in the group. Fortunately the Master-Padawan relationship lends itself eaily for adventuring as it is a learning by example relationship. But it can be fun to explore the roleplaying aspects of training.

Litany of Focussed Light

A training execise for Lightsabre Combat

First Stanza of the Litany of Focussed Light	Game Infromation
Stage 1 Create a few tallow sticks (no wick necessary) and get a few 1mm steel balls (from unused bearings for example) Place a tallow stick in front of the student - ca. 1.5 to 2 meters away from him, so that the tip of his lightsaber would just touch it Task: Strike the steel ball with the lightsabre and evaporate it without affecting the tallow stick	Stage 1 Difficulties: Lightsabre: Heroic (35) or Sense (Moderate) → Lightsabre (Very Difficult) or Control (Moderate) → Lightsabre (Moderate) Success lowers the difficulty of a roll by one stage each. After succeeding at easy difficulty it is time for stage 2
Stage 2 Task 1: Have the student place the tallow stick with the steel ball and a second one exactly 10 degrees apart from the first.	Stage 2 Task 1 Difficulties: Dexterity or Perception (Very Difficult) or Control (Moderate) or Sense (Easy)
Task 2: Strike both steel balls with the lightsabre and evaporate them without affecting the tallow sticks	Stage 2 Task 2 Difficulties: Each one individually (4 rolls): Control (Easy) + Lightsabre (Easy) or Control once, keep up: Control (Easy) + twice: Lightsabre (Moderate) or All in one go: Control (Moderate) + Lightsabre (Moderate) Success lowers difficulties by one stage each (min Easy). After succeeding at easy difficulty, go to stage 3
Stage 3 Task 1: have the student place 19 tallow sticks with a steel ball on each in exactly 10 Degree to each other, forming a half circle around him Task 2: As before: strike each steel ball and evaporate it without affecting the tallow sticks Task 3: Do task 1 and taks 2 in a tie frame of 10 minutes	Stage 3 Difficulties: Sense (Easy), Control (Moderate) + Lightsabre (Moderate) Again, success lowers the difficulties by one stage each (min Easy). After succeeding at easy difficulty, stage 4 can be attempted.
Stage 4 Task 1: Start with 1 tallow stick and a ball, strike. Add another tallow stick and place a ball on each, strike both balls. Add a third tallow stick, place a ball on each, strike all three balls - and so on, each time adding a stick, placing a ball on each stick and striking each ball, until you complete the half circle with 19 sticks, 19 balls and 19 strikes. Task 2: do this all within one hour	Stage 4 Difficulties: Stamina (Easy), Willpower (Moderate)
When The student passes the test of Stamina and Willpower of the fourth stage he has mastered the first Stanza of the Litany of the Focussed Light

If the Student has any Darkside Points, each initial difficulty is raised by one level per point. This also affects the minimum difficulties after successes.

After the First Stanza has been mastered, the student can repeat it any time without making any rolls and he will succeed automatically, except if he has acquired any Darkside Points. In that case he needs to make the following rolls if he has acquired 1 Darkside Point:

Sense (Moderate)
Control (Difficult)
Ligthtsabre (Moderate)
Willpower (Difficult)

For each additional Darkside Point these difficulties are further increased by one level each.

To practice Lightsabre defense it is necessary to attack the student. Ideally the attacks should start with very regular patterns. Droid attacks would be good for this (simmple marksman drone). So: 1. stage:

a) program a simple, regular, stationary attack pattern into the drone and set intensity to very low and set voice commands for start & stop (1 pip damage)(Very Easy Droid Programming)

b) defend against the attacks using the lightsabre

Lightsabre (heroic) or

Control (Moderate) & Lightsabre (Difficult)

Sense (very easy) & Lightsabre (easy)

(→ success lowers difficulties by 1 level ???)

2. stage: random attack pattern, still stationary, 2 pip damage (easy Droid Programming)

Sense (easy) & Lightsabre (easy)

3. stage: random attack pattern, random movement (keep 2 meters distance to student), moderate skill (3d6), 1D6 damage (easy Droid Programming)

To Train Yourself

Thoughts: constant training is part of a Jedi's life, but roleplaying it, or bringing it into a session can be boring to the otherplayers and should be avoided. Although, I find it refershing if a player sometimes mentions non-adventuring activities of a charcter in order to make the other players a bit curious about wht that character might be up to...

Litany of the Empty Hand (UrTek-Ná)

Stage 1:

place a buring candle approximately at arm's length, just out of reach

strike at the flame, so it is extinguished without damaging or toppling the candle itself.

Difficulty:

Sense (Easy) & Brawling (Moderate)

Stage 2:

levitate a burning candle, as before at arm's length, just out of reach

start moving the candle in a stable orbit around yourself

strike at the flame to extinguish it without touching the candle -

Difficulty

Alter (Easy)

Sense (Easy) & Brawling (Moderate)

Stage 3:

levitate two burning candles in different directions around yourself

start moving them in different, but stable orbits around yourself

strike at the flames simultaneously to extinguish them without touching the candles

Difficulty to complete the full stage:

Alter (Easy)

Willpower (Easy)

Sense (Moderate) & Brawling (Difficult)

Force Path of the UrRu

The way of the Force that UrRu practice is based on their belief that everything in the universe goes in spirals. This means that whereever or however someone or something has ever been, he will be close to that situation again and again and again, but will never be the same. Like a point on the spiral, that when you move along it's bend will come very close to that point, but will never actually touch it. For the UrRu the spiral does not hold any information about the length of time involved for such a closeness, because beings and things move along the spiral in speeds that can even differ from moment to moment. Only the fact is certain, that a closeness will occur.

Thus lives of beings are seen: every spiral could touch every other spiral and they are thus connected in some way and could cross paths. Although it it not certain that the spiral of an individual is long enough to touch a specific other, when they touch, it is certain that they will touch again.

The pattern that is formed by the spirals of things and beings forms the tapestry of the force. A great pattern that connects everything to everything else and it is trhis pattern that the UrRu sense when they Sense the Force. And it it this pattern that they manipulate when the Control or Alter it.

Game Information:

The Path of the UrRu interprets the Force skills slightly differently, although the difference is very subtle.

Sense = sensing the pattern of spirals, especially their connection points

Control = affecting one's own spiral

Alter = affecting the spiral of other beings or objects

For example the UrRu interpretation of the Control Another's Pain power would be that the Pain of another being is taken away from from that being and moved to the UrRu (Alter). Then the UrRu "controls" this pain in himself (Control).

This also causes them to be very careful when using the Alter skill because any alteration is by itself starting a new spiral, so the effects of any alteration will also come back to the one who did it - over and over again.

There are two things that followers of this path avoid as much as possible:

To end another spiral - although sometimes it cannot be avoided to kill, it would end a spiral and thus damage the pattern.
To Alter the thought spiral of beings because the damge that can be done is too great. It can drive the affected being to the dark side and could even negatively afect more other beings that just the directly affected one.

Page Projects

Current Projects

Retrieval [ongoing]
Retrieval's Old Republic Sourcebook [ongoing]
User:Kurst/Campaign Chronicle
User:Kurst/Drafts
User:Kurst/Gallery of Races
User:Kurst/Crossover:Mekton
User:Kurst/Story Lines:Operation Rimfire
User:Kurst/DarkSpace Sector

Finished Projects