Skull and Xbones - Voodoo?

[enrious]

Hey, a quick request for any of the Skull and Crossbones people:

Can you elaborate any (i.e. talk a bit) about the voodoo rules?

I've been looking for a D20 voodoo system for some time and would like to know if you guys had any press release type material that could tell me a little about what S&B has to offer.

I"m not looking for any top-secret info, just want to hear a sales pitch.

 

[TSL]

Skull & BONES

Please, please, PLEASE it's Skull & BONES. Skull and Crossbones is an old game by FGU and a present die game from a company whose name escapes me.

That said, don't be mad, I'm happy your interested, regardless of what you call it.

I'm also happy you understand the difference between "press release" and "top secret". I'll do my best to stroll the razor.

First off, their is a sharp distinction between Vodun, the religion that exists to this day and "Voodoo" the S&B version. I'd like to think that most will find my version of Voodoo to be a fairly accurate "fantasy" version of real world beliefs as I designed the Voodoo system for S&B based off real-world practices and a whole hell of a lot of research. It was a fairly tricky undertaking considering that Skull & Bones' timeline is the somewhat nebulous, "Golden Era of Piracy" roughly 1690 to the 1720s and Vodun wasn't regarded as a "formalized" religion until 1768.

Any look at Vodun today inevitably includes the heavy influence of Catholicism, which has greatly effected the religion. Every other RPG that I know of with Voodoo (GURPS Voodoo comes surging to mind - which I enjoyed by the way) includes the Catholic influence. I didn't and extracting it was a b****. During the Golden Era of Piracy, Catholic priests were not exactly "welcome" in the circles where Voodoo was being practiced.

{"Welcome" - You can read that as "got their heads chopped off" or "regarded slaves as less than human".}

So what does d20 Voodoo look like? There is a core class in S&B called Hougans (if female - Mambos) that are the priests of the Loa. Their faith is split, roughly, into "Old World" and "New World" which dictates the groups of Loa that they deal with regularly. They have an extremely active interaction with their gods which is the basis of the "Favors" that they are granted. All power in S&B, regardless of where it comes from, has a price and the assistance of the Loa is no exception.

Now that said, their is another core class, the Bokor, who are effectively the "arcane" spell users of S&B. They interact with the Loa as well, though on a completely different basis than a faithful hougan and while they occasionally use the trappings of voodoo it is mostly only to further their own, often highly questionable, ends.

And then of course, there's a section on role-playing the various Loa, for both GMs and players 'cause sooner or later, you hang out with a hougan/mambo, you will get possessed.

Hope that serves as a decent press answer.

TS
Mighty Horse for Adamant
Fluid Horse for Green Ronin
http://adamant.rpg.net

 

[kenjib]

It will be interesting to compare the treatments here and in Nyambe, since they cover the same area but from a different perspective.

 

[enrious]

TSL -

Thanks for the response. I live less than an hour's drive from New Orleans, so you can perhaps understand my desire to see a D20 Voodoo system.

Regarding Skull and Crossbones - I think I must have a had a flashback when typing that.

One question springs to mind that I hope you can answer, again press releaseish.

Would it be fair to say that the system is a new way of using magic, in the same manner that ritual magic (from Relics and Rituals) was a new way of using magic than that of the magic presented in the PH?

 

[HellHound]

Two words regarding your descriptions of those classes (Hougans, Mambos and Bokor)

KICK

and

ASS

We have a Bokor and a Hougan prestige class in Librum Equitis vol 2 and 3 respectively that are still going through playtesting (the problem with using real world sources is that you end up being one of many doing work based on it). But the work you are putting into this looks SIGNIFICANTLY deeper in detail than our preliminary playtest classes.

 

[TSL]

Coments and Historical Material

kenjib - I'm totally looking forward to Nyambe. In fact, I told Chris as much some time ago. From what I've read Chris' material blends very well with what I did, with minimal overlaps. I fully intend to recommend Nyambe to anyone that wants their S&B campaign to be a bit more "mystical" then the mostly- real world Caribbean default setting. Ivory hunting expeditions become real interesting if you throw in some of Chris' material. I actually wanted to do a fantasy Africa myself before I heard about Nyambe. [No problem, more time for UnderWorld 2nd ]

enrious - Ahh, the Big Easy. Definitely a big Catholic influence there on the vodun. Shows how Hollywood screws with the truth though. Perfect example: Voodoo dolls. Stick a pin in 'em, somebody that they are modeled on gets hurt, right? Absolute total b.s. Not even vaguely a part of vodun other than an implication of sympathetic magic. But vodun is nothing if not syncretic, so what do they do? They start making vodun dolls for luck. Hah! If I wasn't a Taoist, I'd be a Vodunist, it's a great religion.

As to the question- there are Voodoo Rituals in Skull & Bones, though they don't work like those presented in R&R. "Acquiring magic" in S&B is very different than standard D&D. Low level prayers are identical to the Player's Handbook. Favors, on the other hand, are a whole new way of looking at 'magic'. So your answer is: Sort of. I'm sorry if that's vague mate, but I'm dancing on a very small pin.

Amusing historical sidenote: The term "charge" implying the build up of magical forces within an object comes from vodun. Nifty, huh?

Hellhound - There is pretty much nobody that understands the pain of having multiple groups work on similar projects like I do. I think the history of the 'sea books' is well documented elsewhere and I'll leave it at that. I really don't have any problems at all with multiple interpretations of a class. In this case your Librum classes will inevitably be very different than what I did for S&B. First off, you say their prestige classes? Right off the bat, that's a major difference as both the Hougan and the Bokor are new core classes for Skull & Bones. Which directly leads to my next point - they were designed for Skull & Bones. Yes, they are d20. Yes they can be lifted for other d20 campaigns, but they were designed for S&B where magic is fading from the world. One of the biggest headaches I had was coming up with "magic users" that weren't Wizards / Sorcerers yet would stack up level wise against Fighters and such. This is greatly aided by the fact that in S&B high level Fighters don't have magic armor, magic weapons, rings and items akimbo. I think I did a good job, my fellow designers and playtesters say I did a great job and so did Green Ronin, so I must have done something right.

 

[kenjib]

Re: Coments and Historical Material

kenjib - I'm totally looking forward to Nyambe. In fact, I told Chris as much some time ago. From what I've read Chris' material blends very well with what I did, with minimal overlaps. I fully intend to recommend Nyambe to anyone that wants their S&B campaign to be a bit more "mystical" then the mostly- real world Caribbean default setting. Ivory hunting expeditions become real interesting if you throw in some of Chris' material. I actually wanted to do a fantasy Africa myself before I heard about Nyambe. [No problem, more time for UnderWorld 2nd ]

Ooooh! Madagascar! What an awesome crossover if these two products play nicely together.

 

[enrious]

Hey sweet, this thread made the front page news!

TSL, that was exactly what I was looking for; I wanted to know if S&B made some changes to the magic system just as SSS made changes for their product. Not to suggest that S&B would utilize Ritual magic, just that you modified the magic. Sounds very neat.

It sounds very intersting and I'm looking forward to picking it up, both for the flavor and the rules. Thanks for revealing what you did.

Hellhound, I can't wait to see LE v.2 as I already have 1 and the Librum with a very long and strangely speeled )) title. I mean really, would it hurt an undead lord to learn phonetics?
Very nice quality work.

Regarding Nyambe - even with the announced price tag of $38, I plan on picking this up for a few reasons. First, it has voodoo. Secondly, it deals with a setting I really haven't seen covered before, in D20 or previous versions of D&D. Thirdly, the Players Lorebook really looked well done.

I'm thinking mixing Nyambe with some of the ideas presented in the Primal Codex could make for a very neat setting.

 

[TSL]

Wow - we're newsworthy!

Front page news no less.

[I suspect Piratecat's influence but one never knows.]

I'm glad your question was answered to your satisfaction, enrious. It's a little tricky trying to be helpful, revealing and obfuscatory at the same time.

I suspect Pramas will have more to say on this subject next week at the chat, but if anyone has any other Skull & Bones questions fire away and I'll answer in as vague a way as I can manage while still being entertaining.

 

[Moto Jojo]

Skull and Bones sounds really cool. I'd heard the name peripherally, but somehow managed to not think about it much until this thread.

Green Ronin's site is a bit vague with their mention of the release date. When the press release says "look for Skull & Bones this winter", do they mean December 2002 or later, or do they mean very-soon-now?