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View Full Version : Night Watch-Help wanted! (Possible Spoilers)



Ethrael
2008-04-06, 02:18 AM
Ok, so I've decided to try and D&Dify the World of Watches. For those of you who haven't read them, they are a trilogy (now turning quartet) by Sergei Lukyanenko about Others. Because I'm lazy, I'll just quote from the blurb about Others.

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population are Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light.

My aim with this thread is to be able to put together a few things which might make being an Other playable, or just to see what we will come up with.

The first thing I'd like to find out is what everyone thinks about a Base Class of Magician/Enchantress. I have been thinking about this greatly after finishing The Twilight Watch in terms of Power grades. Perhaps, the more levels you get in Other the stronger you become in Power, although that isn't what really happens in the books...

About Power levels, I was thinking that there would be a natural Power level, as described by the witches in Fuaran: Fantasy or Fiction, and then there was the 0 Power level (Which Nadya and Kostya achieve). Then, in between all that are other Others who have different natural amounts of Power, and the closer to 0 and further from 36.5 they are, the more powerful they are. The distance between this natural Power level of the Other and the natural Power level in nature is the amount of Power they can use. I would also like some help as to assign different Power amounts required for different spells/abilities the Others get, sort of like Mana in computer games: some spells take up 150 mana, some 20...

Please post any suggestion on anything to do with the World, not necessarily to do with making Others.

Bhu
2008-04-06, 02:23 AM
Twilight Watch is out?

Ethrael
2008-04-06, 03:29 AM
Yeh, it has been for a while, The Last Watch is coming out soon...

Bhu
2008-04-06, 07:42 PM
Is it available in the states yet?

Flickerdart
2008-04-06, 08:59 PM
Hah, I've read all the books and seen the first movie. There's also apparently a mediocre strategy game.

And you could have plenty of base classes. Remember though that alignment affects their powers a lot...plus the Night Watch's battle-weres, witches and whatever other huge amount of fighting styles could work for bases as well. For PrCs, there's always the Inquisition (I think that's what they were called, the Grays, anyways), plus Master Vampire. I've read them all ages ago so I don't remember a lot of the stuff.

Ethrael
2008-04-07, 02:38 AM
I think it is available in the States, it's been out for a long time and if it's available in the UK it should be there too...

Yeah, there are loads of creatures in it, but I'm gonna try to go through them one at a time, plus Vampires and Higher Vampires are quite similar to the DnD version of them.

I've just realized, that Others can't go above their grade's limit of Power, the 36.5 degrees. If they're empowering themselves with temporary Power, like from human emotions or other magicians pumping them with Power, they can only take up a certain amount or it'll overflow out of them back into nature. Soooo, instead, maybe, Others have their minimum amount (0 degrees), they have their natural amount (Anton 20 degrees, Svetlana 10) and then there's the natural amount which humans are above (36.5 degrees). Others can use the Power in between 0 and their natural amount, and can fill up with other Power up to 36.5 degrees. That is how Nadya is so powerful, she's at 0, and has all 36.5 to fill up with Power.

I think that's what it's like, I'll draw a diagram to help maybe. If there are any suggestions for this please do tell...

Ethrael
2008-04-08, 04:33 AM
Here's the diagram and the link. (http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj38/Ethrael/OtherPowerlevel.jpg)

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj38/Ethrael/OtherPowerlevel.jpg

Bhu
2008-04-10, 12:24 AM
I'd luv to help but I've only seen the 1st 2 films. I've never been able to find the books anywhere. Darn local bookstores....

Ethrael
2008-04-10, 01:22 AM
What about Amazon?

Oh and as I can see that I'm not going to get much help from many people, I'll just use this thread to put stuff up related to the World and let people comment.

The Other Base Class will be up soon.

mabriss lethe
2008-04-15, 03:23 PM
It'll be tough to do, and I'm not sure D20 is the best system to base it on.

There's just too much that doesn't mesh with the way D20 is designed. Sure, you could mimic most of it, but the abilities of Others vs the power scale in D20 aren't really close enough to make them especially compatible.(even the weakest other is severely front loaded compared to d20)

A Random Me
2008-04-27, 05:59 PM
Oddly enough I was looking at doing a similar thing, but also think that D20 might be pushing it to capture the spirit of the books. I also picked up the computer game on the cheap to see how they'd chosen to interpet it.

My train of thought was that perhaps the vitality system from Star Wars and use of force powers might offer an option - since you're using skills and draining vitality (The Gloom/Twilight would have a similar drain each round) and if someone actually connects with a weapon it really hurts. Come to think of it a skill-heavy system like Call of Cthulhu might lend itself to it too.

Another possibility is to cannibalise from a superhero system - customise a list of powers into a package and you have a shapeshifter/mage/enchanter etc, the advantage with some of this is that as you use powers you might improve with them but a character tends to broadly stay within a similar power scope.

Although there are some moments of characters going up the power grades they don't increase too much, it's more reaching your potential as you learn new abilities and so on.

Of course, that's just me batting some ideas about in my head. Hope they help.

Ethrael
2008-05-29, 11:25 AM
OK, here's the truth. I spent quite a few days trying to make the Other, couldn't and since then haven't tried. It's seemed possible, but just I needed more experience. I don't think I'm gonna try again. I might post a few items or artifacts from the world of watches. But I don't think I'll be focusing on this project anymore, I'll go back to taking requests. :smallsmile:

John.Kjeken
2008-05-31, 11:41 AM
Great project!

I'm only aquainted with the universe through the films, but seeing as I will be living in Moscow for another few weeks, and have come to both know and love the city, I could easily contribute locations, information, language etc.

It might be too early at the moment to consider adventure ideas etc. But a few language stubs for quotes, general info etc is pretty much (imo) required to get the gritty moscow feel of the movies. (For example, the players will never take a taxi, they'll hail a car (Usually an old Volga or Lada) by sticking out their hand in hitchhiker fashion. You'll have a ride on any moderately busy street within half a minute)

Kizara
2008-05-31, 03:16 PM
This thread fails for not being about Babylon 5.