Muawijhe has arrived!

[Roland]

Sleepless nights and an insane burst of creativity have lead me to create:

THE MUAWIJHE SOURCEBOOK

This tome of 31 pages includes everything you need, to
* Create Heretic characters following the Lord of Visions
* Lead the Screaming Legions into battle
* Invoke the Dark Gifts of Insanity
* Use the tools of the Lord of Madness
* Play an adventure centered on one of Muawijhe's greatest followers

It can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/rogromes/Muawijhe.pdf

Any comments are welcome.

[Aldrien]

I will read it later, but it looks very good!

perhaps it should be hosted at mutantpedia?

cu´s

[Roland]

I guess I'll wait for some feedback, create a version 2.0 if necessary and then consider this

[Fetzenbankert]

Well, now after reading it, I have to say: wow, it really looks great! After several attempts to write some stuff on Imperial, I know what bunch of work such a sourcebook means and I really admire you for your enthusiasm and your ingenuity. 
But, well, I also have to admit, that, err, in some points I do have a different point of view. There are several and to work them all up will go beyond the scope of just one posting, so I will raise these topics in consecutive posts.
Ok, here is the first one (and its a minor one):
"Muawijhe and Semai are something like natural allies (that like to stab each other in the back)." For me, they are not allies, but rivals. Both like to corrupt human souls, but on a very different level. While Semai´s followers should be quite intelligent and capable of integrating and blending in human society, this is of no need for Muawijhe. Semai needs people, who can act without attracting attention and this needs a certain level on adaptiveness and flexibility - and this means sharp senses and the ability to judge how to behave in specific situations and to whom you can talk about what. But Muawijhe´s followers are completely nuts, they are madmen and they definitely lack this ability to find, understand and use the (fine) nuances of social interaction. So, whenever someone goes insane, he will be lost for Semai. For example Nero, one of the caesars in ancient rome: he was a real maniac, who burnt down his own hometown. And this (after a reign of terror) was finally the reason why he was killed. Or Hitler: nearly the same. In the end nearly the whole world was fighting him. Madness attracts attention. But this is not the way of Semai, its exactly the opposite. He has no need for lunatics, his way is more subtle, he needs humans who are more perceptive and of sound mind. This, in turn, is quite the opposite of Muawijhe´s requests, he has no use for people like e.g. Macchiavelli or Cardinal Richelieu, whose lives were strictly controlled by self-discipline and who were genial chessplayers on the stage of human politics. Cant he draw a mind into madness, it would be of no interest for him. So they both have the same goal (destroying mankind), but their ways couldnt be more contrary, for each soul one of them wins, the other one looses. And as Semai is avoiding conspicuity, Muawijhe is seeking it (or at least doesnt care)....

[Fetzenbankert]

Ideas, part II:
The special events table: IMHO it resembles the one of the Algeroth SB. Couldnt there be made something more out of it? I would like to see more specific stuff, that catches the essence of the the great Mindwarper, I want to avoid that the PC-creation goes too generic - in the end there would be no real difference between the heretics of all the five apostles and this would finally lead to boredom.
Ok, here are my suggestions:
change the dice results from 6 to 13 into:
6-7: Black hunger
8-13: Mental derangement: during play, whenever you are under great stress (GM´s discretion), roll against your current MST. If you fail, your derangement will take over your personality (for 1d10 hours).
Everytime you roll this result during character generation, roll again on the Mental derangement-Subtable (1D6):

• 1: Multiple personalities: you have at least a second personality (or a third or even more). Your character will still have the same stats, but you believe to be somebody else. Reroll on the Corporation- and the Social Standing-Subtable to determine, who you believe you are:
  Corporation-Subtable:
  1 Bauhaus
  2 Capitol
  3 Freelancer
  4 Imperial
  5 Mishima
  6 Cybertronic
  Social Standing-Subtable
  1-2 Low class/Worker
  3-4 Middle Class/Entrepreneur or Administrator
  5-6 High Class/Noble
• 2: Schizophrenia: you have strange and weird hallucinations. Either you (your face, your body) or your enviroment (persons, things) are changing into something bizarre.
• 3: Paranoia: everyone is against you. Your neighbors, the police, the corporation - even the supermarkt-employee is secretly trying to poison you. If someone is trying to subdue you, there will be no more arguing - you will either fight or flee.
• 4: Megalomania: You are the best. Or you are omnipotent. Or you are god. You believe to have extraordinary abilities: you can read peoples´minds. Or you create the weather. And so on. In play you will automatically try to become the leader of the group - at all costs.
• 5: Obsession: as it says - you are obsessed with someone or something. It can be a person, a specific group, you can either want to own, rule or kill them, but it can also be a thing or a ritual like a compulsive act.
• 6: Manic-Depression: you always swing between these two extreme moods. Either you will be full of energy, always ecxited, hyperkinetic and therefore unstopable, or you are sad, without impulse and close-mouthed (players option).

I know, this means a lot more of roleplaying by the players, but it is my opinion that this also means much more fun. Give your characters more depth, GMs, encourage your players to act and improvise (and not to play this well-known und dull chars), you all will see, this will lead to many funny moments in the game...

[Roland]

Wow - back from holidays and feedback. First of all, thank you for the detailed ideas! Since I wrote most of this stuff alone with little discussion I myself had the impression that it needed some more external input.
Now to get more specific:
1) My idea of Semai is a bit different then yours I guess. In my view Semai is infiltrating human society but his goals are rather short termed. His cells want to start distrust and revolts but do not so much plot for long term infiltration of society, which is more the way of Ilian. I guess that Semai actually even lies to most of his followers, promising them an easy way to power, wealth or whatever they want if they follow him and work against society but corrupts most of them to finally become mindless followers of his mob. Of course the most promising of his Heretics are great schemers and have much longer careers but the lower ranks are or get psychically unbalanced sooner or later, putting them closer to Muawijhes followers. But your point is definitely right insofar as all of Semai's schemes require secrecy in the beginning while for many of Muawijhe's actions this is not necessary at all. So I agree - this paragraph needs reworking.
2) I guess the main problem with madness in RPGs is that roleplaying it is very hard. Of course there are innumerable kinds of madness (or psychic traits that are considered "mad" by one or the other) so there is ample room for creativity. I wanted to create a rule-frame to create a character where the player would define in how far he is "mad" but then again, I might have been to abstract. Actually knowing a bit more than one would like about psychic disorders can make a scientist look at these things too rational to describe Muawijhe's type of madness. But I really like the ideas you presented. Maybe an even expanded system for mental derangements as a roleplaying guide would make sense - i.e. not as strict rules but as guidelines how to resemble the path to madness.

[Fetzenbankert]

1) I have never seen Semai as being so shallow. Yes, Semai is even lying to his own followers, but that they all get sooner or later mentally unstable? Hmm. Well. Ahhhm, no. Maybe some of them, but the majority.... hey, this could be the start for an interesting discussion about a sourcebook to Semai. Wanna do this together?
Lets talk in examples (they can make my point of view more specific): I have seen the followers of Ilian always as Black Sorcerers, like Saruman (from LotR) or Rasputin or Darth Vader (from Star Wars). Yes, they are also schemeing and intriguing, but they work more through their demonic capabilities rather than through fiddeling and influencing. On the other hand Semai: representatives of his way could be Gríma Wormtongue (from LotR) or politicans of (right or left) extreme parties, who want to infect peoples mind with their strange and dangerous world view or like Charles Manson, who never killed somebody with his own hands, but managed to influence and manipulate his followers (the "Family"), so that THEY killed other people (e.g. Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of Roman Polanski). Yes, I know, Manson was a psychotic, but IMO not in the way of Muawijhe.
2) Maybe I have missed something, but I havent seen this rule-frame. This was the reason why I mentioned:

IMHO it resembles the one of the Algeroth SB.

I had the feeling that your rules were mere copies than new ideas (I know this sounds quite rude, my apologies, believe me, its not meant in this way ). What I do would like to see are more suggestions to bring more roleplaying into MC and get away from these mindless and endless shootouts. And I would like to see more differences between the followers of the 5 apostles. I know, roleplaying madness is quite hard, but on the other hand... nobody forces you to play a follower of Muawijhe. And that its possible to play a mentally deranged person you can see in the successful story of the Clan Malkavian (in Vampire-the Masquerade) - so many people preferred this clan explicitly.
Ahh, yes, one last thing: guidelines are always better than strict rules.

[Roland]

Right, I sticked quite to the special events table of Algeroth. This was mainly due to the intention to create something that made it easy to roll up the background of the character as with the other special events tables. I thought that players who are only interested in the stats (sadly there are...) could easily roll up something and the others would have their picture in mind anyhow and just need the rule-wise background. But the I guess there actually is a large shade of grey inbetween...
Oh, and I'd really love to do Semai! I guess I'll just open a new thread for this. And I guess for reasons of lazyness I'll chose German.

[Fetzenbankert]

This was mainly due to the intention to create something that made it easy to roll up the background of the character as with the other special events tables. I thought that players who are only interested in the stats (sadly there are...) could easily roll up something and the others would have their picture in mind anyhow and just need the rule-wise background.

Yes, you are definitely right. The problem is, that the MC-rules for the character creation are very strongly regulated. This gives the players the opportunity to concentrate more on the final product (the character) than on the process to create one - for most of the gamers this works quite well (I suspect that most of them dont want to waste too much time in creating their chars), for the imaginative players this is maybe to much control and to less freedom. Well, IMO the system is quite ok - its a difficult balance act between presettings and free choice. All I wanted to say was, that if we stay with this system we have to be quite careful not to repeat the same stats and defaults in upcoming sourcebooks. Otherwise character creation will become really dull quite easily, there will be no real differences between the several heretics and this is IMHO boring. We dont have to reinvent the wheel: the system is ok, we just have to adept and adjust some points and the game will remain colourful and with a high bandwith.

Oh, and I'd really love to do Semai! I guess I'll just open a new thread for this. And I guess for reasons of lazyness I'll chose German.

Fine to hear that . I had some ideas a few years before, I hope I can find these papers again. And yes, I am lazy too - so lets change to the german part of the forum. Since there seems to be nobody else interested to write something to Muawijhe I will also start a new thread in german for your SB, I still have some points which I want to discuss (but was too idle to translate them to english ).