The Chrome Riders - Session 0

Introduction

“Peace, Love, and Glamour” is about the days prior to and after the Resurgence, leading into the Accordance War. These words may not mean very much to you, but I would prefer for you to not know very much about them going into this game. However, if your curiosity is too much, then feel free to satisfy it.
There is a consent checklist that has been provided for this game, and I’ve looked over it - here are the results.
The X Card will also be available. If a scene ever makes you uncomfortable, simply raise your hand and say you’re using the X Card, or type in voice chat.
I would like everyone to have their cameras on, if possible. Obviously, exemptions can be made, but I feel that it really helps the table dynamic. Eating, drinking, and using vapes are fine, but I would prefer not to have any alcohol or drug use.
Note taking is important to me - I'm not expecting chapters full, but please make use of paper notebooks or your personal channels to keep track of important information to your characters.
How do you all feel about character death? This will determine if they are, in fact, invited to the Beltaine Ball.
This is a two and a half hour long game - do you all want a break baked into it?
Making it to every session can be difficult, but I will not run the game if I have half the group or fewer. That means that you need to really make an effort to be at every session!

Willpower, Glamour, and Banality (Tempers)

Characters may never have more temporary Glamour or Willpower points than their permanent ratings. Think of your permanent score as a cap on the total points that character may have in that rating. This is not true for Banality; its pool can rise as high as 10.
If the character has lost or used all his temporary points in Glamour or Willpower, he may choose to convert a dot into a number of points equal to his new rating. If he has 5 dots of Glamour and his pool falls to zero, he may convert one of his Glamour dots into four new temporary points, and now has a Glamour rating of 4. This usually isn’t very efficient, as raising Glamour and Willpower with experience points is expensive and recovering points is easy enough to do in play, but in a life-or-death situation the character might have little choice.
Banality works differently. If the character exceeds 10 points of Banality, a reverse conversion takes place. When the character gains what would be an 11th point of Banality, her pool empties and the Banality rating rises by one dot. A character’s Banality rating may never rise more than one dot at a time, regardless of how many temporary points are gained to push the character’s rating above 10. If a character has Banality 3 and nine points, and then gains two more points, she now has Banality 4 and an empty pool.
Make sure to mark down your antithesis. Give the link to the Banality page.

Using Willpower

• A Willpower point purchases a single success on a dice roll. You may only spend one point per roll, but that guarantees a single automatic success (which also reduces the chance of a botch). The Storyteller may prohibit this use in certain situations.
• The player can spend a point of Willpower to let a character avoid an instinctive reaction, allowing her to overcome phobias, control her emotions, or counter imposed commands or suggestions for a short time (i.e., enough to apply to the situation at hand). The player spends a point to ignore the compulsion and do as she pleases. This can be a long, drawn out, and difficult contest, but sooner or later the character’s Willpower will give out. Note that Willpower may not be used to counteract a magical compulsion.
• Willpower can sometimes either contain or control the effects of Bedlam. Spending a Willpower point lets the changeling ignore Bedlam’s irrationality and weird perceptions. It cannot cure Bedlam but can lessen the effects and allow the changeling to regain some modicum of sanity for a short time.

Recovering Willpower

Willpower dots may only be purchased with experience points. Refreshing the Willpower pool, on the other hand, can be effected in a number of ways:

• When a story ends, all the characters refill their Willpower pools.
• After a good night’s sleep in which the character dreamed peacefully and without interruption, the character feels invigorated. When that happens, he regains a Willpower point. If his sleep is disturbed — by bad dreams or by an interruption — he might not gain the point, at the Storyteller’s discretion. Unless this is a planned part of the story, Storytellers should usually let the characters sleep well. Otherwise, it becomes too hard for characters to replace lost Willpower.
• The Storyteller may award Willpower points for the character’s accomplishment of a goal related either to the current story or quest or by fulfilling her primary Legacy. The Storyteller may award from one to five points (depending on how grand the task).
• I would like to play into Legacies, so please ask me if you can take your Willpower refresh whenever appropriate.

Glamour

Glamour is that scintillating magical stuff of dreams that whisks disbelief away and replaces it with awe and wonder. It provides the means to see the true, fantastic, and amazing world glimmering just behind the mundane scrim that calls itself the “real” world. Anyone can create Glamour, but only fae can use it by giving it form.
Raw Glamour appears as beautiful, multi-hued, radiant flashes and flickers that caress and wind through both beings and objects. It is always moving and changing, never still.
Changelings can not only perceive Glamour, but bathe in it and use it to create physical forms and magical effects. This means that when a fae uses Glamour both the changeling and the target of a cantrip are enwreathed with the flame-like tentacles of Glamour. This makes it very difficult to hide the use of Glamour from other changelings.
Once infused into an item or being, Glamour is more rigid, yet still maintains a certain ethereal luster that makes itself plain. A chimerical sword leaves trails of color and movement in its wake when used.

Uses for Glamour

Characters must maintain Glamour to continue being what they are. Otherwise, they succumb to Banality and forget themselves. Aside from this self-preservation, changelings use Glamour to control various aspects of the Dreaming, including casting cantrips and forming chimera.
The list below details other uses for the elusive essence:

• You must spend a point of Glamour each time your character casts a Wyrd cantrip.
• The character can spend Glamour to enchant a mortal, either temporarily or permanently.

Gaining Glamour

As Glamour is the single most defining element allowing changelings to live and function as part of the Dreaming, its acquisition and maintenance are of utmost importance. Accordingly, several methods exist that allow changelings to regain temporary Glamour. On extremely rare occasions a changeling might be able to gain Glamour dots.

• Epiphany: A changeling may take Glamour from mortals or other changelings. Epiphanies happen due to Ravaging, Rapture, Reverie, Revelry, and Rhapsody. Make sure you've marked your Musing thresholds.
• Sanctuary: Sleeping in a freehold, in the light of a balefire, allows a changeling to regain a number of Glamour points equal to the freehold’s rating. If multiple changelings attempt this, they split the Glamour among them evenly, but no matter how many Kithain attempt this, all of them gain at least one point. The changeling must dream; if his sleep is disturbed or troubled the Storyteller may choose not to award the points.
• Dross: This does not restore Glamour, per se, but can be spent in place of Glamour (see dross, p. 320).
• Imbalance: Marking an Imbalanced point of Willpower replenishes a point of Glamour.

Losing Glamour

Characters spend Glamour to power cantrips and other special abilities. Optionally, the Storyteller may require the expenditure of temporary Glamour to overcome or offset an unexpected entry into an especially Banal location. In that case, the sacrifice of a point of Glamour shields the changeling for a scene or two until she can escape that location.

Nightmare

In addition to the three Temper Traits, players also track a character’s Nightmare rating. Nightmare represents the Dreaming pulling the character toward the inhuman madness of the Dreaming; the loss of control and perspective functions as a warning of the changeling’s path to Bedlam. Whenever the player rolls the character’s Glamour or casts a cantrip, she replaces dice in the pool with Nightmare dice equal to her Nightmare rating, not to exceed the original dice pool.
Nightmare dice replacing normal dice will never increase the total number of dice in the pool, except when a character Unleashes an Art. Nightmare appears below the character’s Willpower on the character sheet, and is only tracked as a pool from 0 to 10. Players mark Nightmare from left to right, and incur Nightmare when they botch a Glamour or cantrip roll (adds one Nightmare), Unleash an Art (add one Nightmare before rolling to Unleash), and by rolling 10s on Nightmare dice (+1 Nightmare for each 10 rolled).
Players can reduce the difficulty of a cantrip roll by 1 by replacing another three dice in the pool with Nightmare dice.
The character must have three non-Nightmare dice in the pool to gain this benefit. Doing so does not increase the character’s Nightmare pool past that one roll (unless the player rolls some 10s, of course).
Nightmare dice function like normal dice for the roll, except that when the player rolls a 10 on a Nightmare die, she immediately adds another point to the character’s Nightmare pool. The character can accumulate multiple Nightmare points during a single roll, but the Nightmare rating never exceeds 10.

Imbalance

When a character’s Nightmare rating reaches 10, the player removes all the Nightmare points from the character sheet and then marks an imbalance by circling the character’s rightmost Willpower box (underneath the last dot of Willpower, reading left to right). The Willpower point represented by that box functions normally, except that the character suffers a Bedlam Threshold if she spends the Imbalanced point of Willpower. If all of a character’s Willpower becomes Imbalanced, she is lost to Bedlam. Marking an Imbalanced Willpower also regains one point of Glamour.

Let's Talk About Characters

Here are some requirements:

• No Arcadian Sidhe
• No dots in Title can be taken by anyone but the Autumn Sidhe, and you can only join Houses Liam and Scathach

I would like all characters to already know each other and it would be especially helpful to the story for the motley to own a freehold together (e.g. pooling backgrounds), but ultimately this is up to you.
Now, let's talk about the characters you all have come up with.
What borough do you guys want to play in? I would like Manhattan (Harlem), but I'll let you guys make the decision.

Relationship Map

• What does each character think of the other?
• Have each person introduce one location in the city, and one SPC in that location, and talk about their relationship with that SPC.
• Have each person introduce an SPC at a location they did NOT create. Talk about the relationship that they have with the PC associated with that location (e.g. if a library was introduced by JR, Wex will make up a librarian and talk about JR's relationship with that SPC).
• Finally, introduce one changeling SPC each.
• I would also like you to come up with a name for the motley, so I don't have to keep calling you "Motley 2."

Wishlist

Please tell me one thing you'd like to have happen to your character during the game.