 Amalgams are not like the rest of the listed exim both in their catalogs of powers and how their powers function. First, Their catalog of powers won’t be listed due to their innate affinity to learning the powers of the other classifications. It is rumored that some have exhibited powers from less known or uncategorized Exim. Second; unlike other Exims who can activate a power at different ranks up to their current maximum or even, in a number of cases, push themselves farther; Amalgams can not. Everytime their power activates it's at their current maximum, no more and no less. This post will explore the options that are open to the versatile Amalgams: True Flight & Mind Blast: While most are unsure if this combination is wielded by someone the absence of evidence is not “the evidence of absence”. Think of it, a person flying about untethered from the earth and able to wipe the memories of any that might catch sight of them. They could be out of sight and out of mind, quite LITERALLY! Natural Weaponry & Density Manipulation: This power mix is horror incarnate. Strands of living hair riggling through the pores of solid matter, taking the shape of lethal weapons and striking out at all in it’s reach. Worse, cutting the hair is near impossible, it’s like trying to cut animated tar. Radiation Control & Mind Control: When CJ agents mistook an Amalgam for an improperly released Kin asset, the agents had their minds warped by “Psychic” energies and their bodies warped, as well, by waves of unnatural radiation. They were then made to act out fan written Super Sentai episodes by their Amalgam puppet master! We will stop here because part of the fun is seeing these combinations that no other Exim can play with and how you can implement them in your game. Ethereal Deep Diver & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment Image by Joel Robison
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 Possible variants or an evolution of the Quarks, the Kin do not wield the forces of earthly energy but instead embrace their role as dominators of cosmic powers. With skin flushed by the radiation of solar flares, muscles pulled taut with gravitational pull and a mind rippling with magnetic waves from out in the void. Gravity, Kinetic, Magnetic, Radiation, Temperature and Vibration are the celestial toolkit of these exim. Not more than but certainly not less than their Quark contemporaries, the Kin are the other face to a powerful coin. Absorption: Turn a cell phone into an anabolic steroid, a microwave into a lifeline, the l000 degree temp from a fire into a zero calorie snack to stave off starvation, or a howitzer shell to the face to rude, albeit, harmless tap from metal. Density Manipulation: This is actually two powers that combine to become one greater than the sum of its parts. On one hand, you can increase your density till your skin is like steel and the city of towering steel and concrete feels like cardboard and paste. Or increase the density of your favorite item till it rivals some dwarven crafted alloy of adamantium and mithril. On the other hand, you can reduce density to the point where the space between molecules serves as a new doorway to you and a molecular cage to others. The body can flow like water, is as malleable as clay, and deadly attacks can harmlessly pass through. But What if we combine them…? Super Speed: As noted before, move like a blur, strike like a flash, escape like lightning greased in the blood of a cheetah...that was...struck by lightning. That’s SPEED-CEPTION! Native Element Control: Back at it again, this scoundrel two-timing power has been described before but instead of Fire, Electricity, water etc, you harness the harness of gravity, master magnetism, redirect radiation, drumbeat the world with vibration, temper heat and frost and even control kinetic output (I can’t make a kinetic pun or witticism) like a punch, a bullet or the freight train at the end of the tunnel coming your way. Dev-X & Ethereal Deep Diver | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 Commanding the primal forces of nature with an easy hand on the reins. Harnessing terrestrial energies to become Earth shapers, wind riders, weather witches, illuminaters and fire tamers; a Quark wields Earth, Electricity, Fire, Light, Water and Wind as a tangible item with which to change society and their place in it. Such a power would be enough to make them a match for other Exim but they can also improve the "vessel" that directs these energies. They can greatly improve themselves on the fly and show their enemies real "control": Absorption: Towering infernos, lightning storms, raging floods, rampaging twisters; these terrestrial death sentences for mortals serve as nothing more than fuel for you. Your body can absorb the damage that would destroy any normal person and convert that raw force into energy to boost your stats, powers and even heal wounds. Boost: The power to amplify any and everything about you past human limits. You want to lift Sis? Do you wanna lift Bro? Then you can ba- boost to lift a building off it's foundation! You want Hankeye levels of accuracy, ba- ba- BOOST! Bam bullseye every single time. Be warned, ba-ba- boosting your body well beyond it's limits comes at a steep price but hey "No Agony, No Bragony"! Super speed: Can you run fast, Yes. Can you run fast enough to sprint on walls and run the surface of water? Well it wouldn't be super speed if you couldn't. Can you move fast enough to cause a Vortex in your wake...? Perhaps~. Now for the Quarks Bread and Butter! Native Element Control aka NEC: Earlier we told you the elements but what does it mean to control them and what makes them different from one another? Each element has an identity, a quirk and path of power that is all its own. Facets of the elemental energy bent to a new end by the wielder. Focus on one element, specialize in it and use it to rise to greater heights. Why not go "Avatar" and throw a yolk over multiple elements? Use combinations to create a unique mix of element, quirk and energy that is all your own. Dev-X & Ethereal Deep Diver | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 Every word that I write, I think of first. It goes without saying doesn’t it? Everything I see, every sound I hear. It is all filters to my brain, imagine the monster that could rob control of it from you. No longer able to trust what you see, what you hear. Not to get lost in the existential but, no two people see the world the same way. No two people share the same experiences. The Cerbo can twist the minds of their victims, they can plug into the minds of others like a lesser being would plug their phone to charge. The ability to generate force with a thought, turning away strikes and danger. The power to ensnare the thoughts and hearts of others, pulling them like puppets on invisible strings. Read the thoughts of others as easily as you understand you’re own thoughts. These are just a sample of the mastery of mental abilities that a Cerbo can bring to bear. The puppetmaster, the psychic; these are the obvious choices but a detective, a bare-knuckle brawling bartender that is quick with “just the right words”; all of them are potential Cerbos ready to come to life in your hands. Force field: Invisible shield of protection, a see through cage to capture your enemies, metaphysical clay to shape into any desired shape. All of this and more is what this power promises. Mind Control: Your playgrounds are the minds of others commanding controlling, dominating. Their prom, you were the DJ, their 20th birthday your were that cool bouncer that let them in. Their significant other that they let get away because of their commitment issues, you were their dealer. Icing on the cake; none of this was their life but it is now. Mind Control. Telepathy: ALL MINDS ARE OPEN! YOU are the Ethereal NavigatOr swimming thrOUgh streams Of cOnsciOUs and UncOnsciOUs. SUrveying the minds aroUnd YOU; the raider, the Spy, THE ETHERNAUT. Telekinesis: You can play pool with Mountains and Molecules. This power is the physical manifestation of your mind's power. Can you agitate atoms to burst otherwise known as pyrokinesis, yeah. Can you coalesce your power to form a telekinetic golem, yeah. Can you move objects with your mind ...well Yeah ... and so much more. Dev-X & Ethereal Deep Diver | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 Would you like to spot someone in a crowd by the smell of their personalized shampoo care kit? Do you like the idea of having two sets of claws; one for tearing through fabricated material and the other for flesh. Do you have the desire to soar like an eagle over a target and then turn into an plated 6 ton bunker busting elephant? Then you might want to play a Proteán. Proteán Masters of adaptability and the living tool that is their bodies. Physically intimidating and dominating; they are the teeth in the darkness, the Talons in the Night, mermaids, centaurs myth made manifest, shapeshifter and body mixers. What follows is a small smattering of what they can do: Body Adaptation: This allows you to build a catalog of body mods that your character can switch between or mix and match. Picking from things like adhesive grip and extra arms; for expert wall crawling and a hellish grappler. Or Extra stomach and extra mouths for a very disturbing magic/smuggling trick. There's also fins and too much more to tlk about in a single paragraph. Natural Weaponry: It's exactly what it sounds like; access to the weapons of the animal kingdom. But not just access, the ability to combine these weapons in different and devastating ways. Like mixing a tentacle with plating and claws to make a living version of Ivy's(from Soul Calibur) whip sword! True Flight: Do I have to say more ... YES! It's the ability to fly and enter into what can only be called Aerial Kombat. Taking advantage of being able to move in three dimensions to pull off a whole set of maneuvers and gain a number of bonuses/boons. Last and way far from least- Animal Transformation: Its what it sounds like and sooooo much more. Yes, you can transform into different animals from a library of animals that your character has memorized. You choose which animals and all the animals have different natural boons that boils them down to their core (usually 2 to 4). You can customize your transformations to fit your play style; you can transform animal to animal, from frightening lion to slithering snake like Beastboy. Partial transform like equipping the eyes of an eagle or the pump of a gorilla arm. You can even go with the essence of the beast a la Vixen. Not enough for you? Good, because it wasn't enough for us either. We also built in the ability to mix the different animals in your libraries to make Chimeras! You can also transform into Were creatures and YES you can become WERE-CHIMERAS! Oh and all these powers can be used together ... just wanted to let you know that little fact. Ethereal Deep Diver "Sam" | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 We've finally done it; we've put together several practices for the prototype of the game. With these done we'll be able to test every inch of the game! We have Proto-Traits; what you roll to accomplish tasks and actions. Proto-Physical and Proto-Social combat styles; what you can get to make you better at combat and customize your characters fighting style. Proto-Practices; what shapes, hones and customizes your characters out of combat action like; crafting, medicine, investigating, profiling, sporting and more. PROTO-POWERS; Absorbing dangerous energies, Transforming into strange creature of your own making, Controlling the minds of the weak, bending the laws of physics and nature and uddles of Noddles More! As for this blog; we're going to shift slightly from our system development blog style to shed some focus on the setting. In the coming weeks we will post the names of the four Exims you'll be playing around with. As well as a small overview of the powers you'll be able to choose from as that specific Classification. We're also looking to finally building a "gen-you-ein, bone-ee-fide" project page, yay... Last; as you all may know we're doing this on a shoe string budget and we now have enough saved up for more art. We have a few artist in mind but we are open to suggestions. The four pictures will be for the aforementioned exim classifications and we'll be looking to nail down a overall art style for the game. Ethereal Deep Diver "Sam" | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 “The Future” as a term calls to mind images of great gleaming towers, lights and high tech toys that borderline on magical. Scientific breakthroughs that allow for exploration of what we in the present call “The Impossible”; be it the deepest seas, distant stars or different timelines. The technology of the future is the key to those wondrous notions because in “The Future”, people remain a toss up. In “The Future” we may envision utopian peace enveloping the globe and all of humanity under one united peaceful sky but that is not always the case. Dystopias mar the distant horizon just as often as their utopian counterparts and one such popular dystopian playground is the “Cyberpunk” setting. In Cyberpunk, many of the trademarks of “The Future” are there; the gleaming towers, bright flashing lights, wonders of technology at and within the fingertips of the common person. But while the world is high-tech, the people are low class. The people at the top are greedy and corrupt, the “good” people of the middle are embedded into a hivemind collective that dare not stand against blatant injustice for fear of how it will affect their status and those at the bottom are treated like a disease. The “heroes” of this world are disenfranchised; teetering just at the edge of falling into the lowest rungs of society. These dregs are offered an opportunity to use their impressive skills to “stick it” to the Corporate overlords that have taken over the world and pull their lives back from the brink. How does it get that far? How does the line from “Utopia” to “Dystopia” get crossed so easily and left so far behind that it can never be uncrossed? Choices; Shaking hands with the Devil one too many times, making the call that the “lesser of two evils” is the best choice time and again. This is where the world finds itself when the curtains rise on the “PowerPunk” setting. We refer to it as “The Day before Cyberpunk”. This time frame is a special place that we feel is under explored. This is a time when corporations are on the prowl, growing stronger, tying their economic leashes onto lesser nations and ascending to the would-be masters of the world (while greater nations are still capable of pushing against these plutocratic leviathans). Technologies that can and will revolutionize the lives of every person such as; augmented reality, automation and artificial intelligence have hit the market with full releases. Meanwhile those branches of technology that make us reexamine the human condition; cloning, genetic modification, cybernetics and cyber-augmentation are entering into open testing. Society though is waning; economic disparity is growing, legal opportunity for social growth is fading and criminal enterprises have become more attractive. More people think they can just make a few dirty dollars for a bit to make ends meet and then go back to being clean again. The pieces of the “Cyberpunk” puzzle are there and already fitting into place but with a great effort someone can change that puzzle into something else. If not for a special “X factor” or two, our future would seem set in stone and the Blade Running, silver handed, vaporwavers with subwoofer augments in their trench coats would be a bygone conclusion. But, as Rafael Huereca points out, in cyberpunk, it is the "power" of this wondrous tech that shapes the people of the era. Robotic limbs are used to interact with the all encompassing stimuli pumping data directly into intrusive data ports that carry information directly to the brain, milking serotonin and adrenaline with a thought. In this Dystopia, a person is barely recognizable as such; the technology is almost parasitic. In "PowerPunk", before those technologies can grow into their apex and take their more familiar role of ubiquitous enhancements that possibly dehumanize; it is superpowers that surface from within the disenfranchised. These powers do not shape them however, the powers serve only to amplify what is already there. A jerk becomes a villain when they are bulletproof, a patient person can become a Saint when even the worst emotional outburst is tangible and changeable. The nicest person can sometimes amplify their darker urges and become a real monster unfettered by conscience but it is not the power that makes it happen, it is the person. The question arises, are superpowers enough to make a utopia out of the gathered pieces of a dystopian cyberpunk tomorrow? Or do they fall short against the momentum of time, greed, fear and power in its myriad of forms. It all boils down to choices.  Yes, it's at a Library but beggars can't be choosers! Hell they made this Boss poster for us! We'll be teaching people how to RPG using our System and Setting. If you can make it, AWESOME! If not, don't fret, I'll be posting the best bits here on the site. Ethereal Deep Diver "Sam" | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 (Gulliver = Head, dva = two: Nadsat) I hate having to figure out how to say the same thing in another way over and over. It’s a strain on my mind and if I am lucky I can get it past you readers once or twice but then when you figure it out; you see I am just saying the same stuff with a twist. So, here is a rare straight shot; we used to have 6 guys at our best and now we are down to 2. It was not easy and it was not kind; I have gone through romantic breakups that have hurt less and healed faster. Some time last year we sat down and evaluated where were we going. What did this project mean to us and where did this project fit in our lives. For two of us it fit well enough that we could continue moving on, for everyone else; life has more pressing matters. It hurts to say- type those words; the guys that are no longer working alongside me aren’t just my friends, they were my new family. I suffered alongside these guys, lost sleep, shed sweat, tears and I had great experiences with them. I suffered through terrible experiences and they were the rocks that I turned to when I couldn’t let my actual family see how worn down I was. I wanted to make every concession in the world for them but in the end this project is nearly 10 years in development. If it takes anymore time; we wouldn’t even be an also-ran, we would be a never-was. The two of us that are left have to do the lion’s share of the work now. So all the rule clean up, fiction and setting clean up and expansion that we had to work on has to also be done alongside being the voices and faces of the company. We have to talk to artists, run playtests, look for places to test on the cheap, keep the lights on, set up commissions, basically design AND business. It was always supposed to be a growing experience, a shared learning experience and stumbling was expected but now we know there are no reinforcements. The woods are darker and scarier now, the path is twistier and every mistake seems more grave, every wasted opportunity seems more dire however we have less overhead, less gatekeepers to ideas and no seeking approval. We know who to blame for missing posts here and elsewhere and can rectify it appropriately so while there are no reinforcements, we are also focused entirely on what lies before us. I hope that we will find our groove quickly and that we will earn the patience and forgiveness of those of you who have stuck around have given, if you are new, pardon our dust and mess from our growing pains. Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment
 Good news everyone! We tested the demo, it proved everything we knew and everything we didn't know! Let's thank Chad from NYC Tabletop RPGs for letting us crash his wework gamer space. His crew runs tabletop games over in Brooklyn, New York and all are welcomed. If interests are peaked check them out on meetup, drop in on their comfy discord chat or if you're feeling frisky throw some coins at their Patreon. In spite of me leaving some important docs at home, forgetting everything I was going to do with the premade adventure; It went better than I thought it would. The system handled everything the players wanted to do. We were able to see physical combat and a number of powers "in action". Among the boys in the lab, there were worries, concerns one could say; if people would be confused by the wording, how fast people would pick up on the internal logic and the system, the concept of your powers being used through your normal stats in order to make them feel more like an extension of the character and of course the powers themselves. Now we know which were “shadows” and which were actual problems. I will now share with you all the shadows that loomed in the darkness, the terrors in the night, that this demo has dragged into the light. The first “shadow”, the learning speed and comprehension. What I mean is how long it takes to understand the system and how long until players start actively exploring out from the normal bounds of basic tabletop gaming. You can learn something but until you’re comfortable with it you won't venture deeper into it and we needed to know how long till they got comfortable. Answer, not long whatsoever. Once they knew their stats and they got a few tastes of how much they could actually do the floodgates opened. The taste came in the form of an out of combat medicine check that revealed a bullet wound was made by a large screw, not a bullet. The use of telepathy to skim the minds of the enemies, transforming into a tiger for stealth attacks, high density body blocks and face destroying super speed punches. Somewhere in between these points each player came to understand just what they could pull off and began to dive deeper. Fears dispelled, the”shadow” was just a jacket on the chair. Second “Shadow”, Basic combat and out of combat. Ease, Balance, and Versatility are the cornerstones of combat in any game. Now when I say combat I really should be saying conflict because any time you want something to go one way but circumstances say otherwise, there's conflict. Wanting to beat a villain, pick a lock, break into a place, pass by unseen, win a race, keep someone alive; all these things would have some form of opposition ... conflict. That's what we tested as well, normal strikes, weapon strikes, power strikes, out of combat tasks and challenges as well as power assisted tasks out of combat. Other than one problem-child among the powers(We'll probably talk about that in a different post) it all went awesome sauce. Basic combat works which means we can implement more advanced combat options in the form of “COMBAT STYLES” (also a future post). Combat styles will add a crunchy layer to combat that lets you flavor how your character throws down. Out of combat actions worked too which now allows us to bring in PRACTICES, all the things you know and know how to do outside of combat (Ha! Not a future post, we already touched on it in a previous post but since changes are being planned, well, we will get back on it. In a future post). Fears dispelled, this “shadow” was jus- CRAP WATER BUG! Could have been worse. Finally, the last “shadow” were things we knew before going in; Social Combat and the Demo. Full Disclosure, we actually started retooling Social Combat just after finishing the demo but the retool would take us a while to finish so we just went with the version that we knew wasn't going into the final version. You might ask "Et tu, Brutus!?!"; hear us out, since inflicting emotions is a large part of social combat in both versions and we wanted to see what people thought about the base idea we continued. The demo's layout was, to put it kindly, a little on the messy side, it was our first time making one but I don't think we did that bad. In the adventure we have easy, medium and hard options of running the encounters but they're right on top of each other which does add replayability but makes it difficult to read and the NPC list at the end of the adventure leaves much to be desired. It helped us learn though so we can say with confidence the next demo will be better. It'll have more focus on the setting, not just test the basic system and it will test some of the more advanced system options and who knows; maybe it'll even look good. Fear dispelled, it was the monster from the closet just hiding under the bed. Wait, what? Once again we cannot thank NYC Tabletop RPG and the people that helped us test this out enough. From right to left; D,M,K and J(Thumbs Up). Ethereal Deep Diver "Sam" | Stock & Bull Entertainment
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