One thousand years ago, Superstition and the sword ruled...

I am a raving Gargoyles fanboy.  I loved the cartoon, enjoyed the Gargoyles Saga fan-fiction project (which I should probably look in on again one of these days.  I'm a fickle raving fanboy), and am really enjoying the new comic.  Freed from the bounds of a kid's show, Gargoyles is really coming into its own.

I am also a raving Unisystem fanboy.

I think you see where this is going.

Tweaking the Unisystem rules so they'll work for the Gargoyles universe isn't going to be all that big a job, but it'll give me something to post about for a few weeks.  I'm going to do it piecemeal here, and maybe at the end I'll write it all up nice and put it in a PDF.

First off, let's look at what we're doing.  While you /could/ just write up a Gargoyle Quality and call it good, you wouldn't really have done everything right.  Sorcery needs some work, as does Superscience, and the Gargoyels setting has some slightly different underpinnings than the Buffyverse.  Getting that extra bit of harmony is what will make this take longer than a few paragraphs.

Here's what I have in mind:

Magic - Magicians in the Gargoyles universe need spellbooks - not just for learning spells, but for casting them.  On the other hand, they can improvise spells very rapidly.  The Occult Library Quality and the Sorcery rules are in for a change.  Beyond that, there are some rules about magic in Gargoyles that I want to get right.

Enchanting - Nobody in the Gargoyles universe seems to produce magic items except the Faeries.  Assemblages seem to be okay, though.  So Enchanting is probably going to be limited to 1 level - or perhaps just folded into whatever Sorcery turns into.

Superscience - Giant floating factories, robots, battle armor, black-market blasters... the Gargoyles universe has a lot of high technology that people don't really bat an eye at.  It's going to take some work to get all that right.

Organizations - Private armies and secret societies are a big part of the Gargoyles setting.  The Organization rules in Angel are an okay start, but they don't really make any provision for characters like Xanatos or the higher-ups in the Illuminati (whoever they are).  I'll probably do something with the Rank and Wealth Qualities, and possibly build a new Organization Quality that will let characters buy Organization points.

New Qualities - Obviously, there's going to be a Gargoyle racial package.  Cyborgs, Mutates, and other strangeness will also make appearances.  An outright Faerie is possibly too powerful for a PC, but half-fey like Fox will be within reasonable limits.  And I'll give lesser Faeries a try, too.  But no player is going to get to play Thor.  Just don't ask.

Archetypes - Particularly if I decide to wrap this all up in a shiny PDF wrapper, I'll want to do some archetypes.  Gargoyles is a setting that runs to Champions more than Investigators.  The less competent characters are generally bit players.  That doesn't mean you have to play your game that way, though, so I may throw in some lower-end characters, too.

I'm trying to do one Blog post per week, more or less, so you'll see something here soon.