Embers Rules - Character Badges
Embers, a live-action role-playing game, by Embers Productions
Copyright 1999, Embers Productions. All rights reserved.
Smells like...
Inevitably, players will want to determine just where other characters fall in terms of the Triad (Wyrm, Weaver, or Wyld) and how mighty they appear. Such information can be critical in making up the distances between fictional appearances and their players' out-of-game limitations.
To facilitate speedier results and reduce the load on the GMs, each Embers player will wear a badge indicating his ambient place in the Triad spectrum and their outwardly apparent strength. A sample badge for a character called Night's Promise would appear as such:
The badge system has 3 main elements:
Triad/Power Diagram
The Triad is represented by the multicolor triangle. As you can see, the colors become more saturated and pure at the corners or poles of the triangle. The colors represent the Triad thusly:
A player's value in the triangle is indicated by a black dot on the triangle, revealing to what level a character is ambiently aligned with the three supernal components. It is important to note that very few beings in the omniverse are pure in any aspect of the Triad (and if they are, then they are not characters that players should expect to interact with in a wholly productive manner) and that one can be tilted towards unwanted poles and not be considered "evil", although certainly extremes of this example (those closer to poles) are certainly easily judged accordingly.
In the exmaple of Night's Promise, we derive that he is aligned like most rural Garou, mostly Wyld, but with elements of the Wyrm and Weaver in equal but lesser value. By another character who can understand the diagram, Night's Promise would not appear (on this basis alone) to be inherently suspect.
Humans tend to be more aligned with the Weaver than most Garou and some (increasingly common these twilight days) are aligned more with the Wyrm:
Within the Garou themselves, characters will find variety. Glass Walkers, for instance,will almost certainly lean more than the average human into the Weaver pole:
Red Talons, a tribe of entirely natively lupine Garou, and the Wendigo will most certainly lean more towards the Wyld than most:
And accordingly, the Shadow Lords will gravitate slightly toward that suspiciously red zone...
If you look at any of the diagrams, you'll also see an arrow marker underneath the grayscale bar below the triad which indicates apparent strength. As you go from left to right, the indicator reveals an increasing power level, meaning lighter colors are not as powerful as darker ones. The strongest Garou at their most fearsome Crinos form will rate only about 50% towards the darkest end while the weakest Garou will appear to be as strong as any human.
Appearances can be deceptive, however. In Embers, vampires by and large do not appear to be very powerful creatures and yet they are often more powerful individually than their Garou counterparts. Of course, there are some that just seem to radiate strength such that their indicator will point very far down the dark end (in modern Garou experience, nearly 75% in extreme cases). Sometimes these creatures are indeed as powerful as they seem, other times they aren't. That's the trouble with betting upon this value to save your life. But, it's something to gauge a situation upon in the absence of other metrics.
Higher Levels of Sense Triad
- Sense Triad
Some Garou seem to be gifted at sensing the Triad not only upon others, but upon their touched/posessed objects or dwellings as well. In terms of system This works just like the triad diagrams - successful use of the ability will yield ambient Triad information (although the GMs may or may not have a diagram actually printed up, they can narrate it).
- Sense <secret>
For those players who have a deeper, almost mystical perception of the Triad, there will be a means to discern accordingly deeper levels of information. Such information is acquired exclusively through the GMs. In this case, the less said publicly, the better. We ask those players who have the ability (and you'll know who you are) to not demystify it to other players. It is a seriously powerful ability and we'd like it not to become pedestrian.
Tribe/Auspice/Rank Pictograms
For commonly-known characters, each badge will contain pictograms indicating his tribe, auspice and rank. A key to these pictograms can be found on the Embers pictograms page. In the example above, Night's Promise is Athro (rank 4).
Temporary Taint Indicators (Stickers)
If something happens to character in the course of the game sessions to temporarily skew their taint, The GMs will stick on removable red/green/blue stickers to the plastic outside of their badge. This signals other characters that this character has been "slimed" and tilts more in a particular direction than his normal ambient level. In this fashion, it is an easy effort on the GMs part to change someone's taint levels when it seems likely that it will probably change back soon enough anyway with the help of other special abilities (such as cleansing rites and the like).
For example, a character that gets waste deep in Wyrm Ichor may have one red sticker affixed to their badge. This is indicative of Wyrm taint that can be removed (with special abilities). If left on too long, any taint may become permanent! In this situation, we'll issue a new badge to the character with the appropriate values and recommend some role-playing changes to reflect their new outlook on life. Woe to those who let the stench of the Wyrm or Weaver linger about them for too long...