House Rules/Custom Contracts

Treatment of Custom Contracts

Perks of being a Creator

Fame. It takes a monumental amount of effort, skill and dedication to forge a new Contract with reality and the Wyrd. That you put that effort out is a major distinction and enough to get your name into the libraries of any occultist. Mechanically, you gain the right to purchase up to 2 dots in Fame (Contract Creator). Your mien is permanently changed. If you created a Contract with Light, you might always glow faintly, or light might always strike you from your best angles. If you created a Contract with Reflections, your clothing might always be reflective, or your reflections might always show up more cleanly than they should, even if the surface were dingy. These effects are always beneficial. You have a permanent lesser alliance with that aspect of reality. In the example above, any attempts to use the "Light" against you will forever suffer a -1. This includes uses of the Contract itself, or trying to blind you with light, etc. See ER p.30 sidebar "Side-Effects" for more details. NOTE: this does take up, forever, one of your Vow slots. You get a permanent +1 to all clauses. As a little perk for all of your hard work, the aspect of reality is always slightly more willing to work with you than it is to work with others.

Players are welcome to work with staff to create new, custom Contracts.

As a general rule, if you want YOUR character to be the one who forged the Contract, YOU are the one who is going to have to go through months of RP to build it.

If you just want a Contract added to the game, we can say a generic NPC created it. You don't personally have to do any specific RP related to it, and you have no IC or OOC rights to dictate who may/may not purchase it.

Submitting a Contract

Follow the steps in the Getting Started section below BEFORE you send up a +req/pitch to suggest the inclusion of your custom Contract. For convenience's sake, I am putting examples from the Contracts of Smoke, clause 2, in small, italicized text. Once your Contract has been approved by staff, you are free to start the IC process of creating it, outlined in the What Does My Character Need To Do? section at the bottom of this page.

Contracts take a lot of time to review and check for balance, so please respect that. Google Docs (or their equivalent) are a godsend for working together with players on submissions, in our experience. :) Much easier than trying to smoosh all the fluff into a +job.

Staff will expect EVERY Contract submission to have the following:

• The name of the Contract.

Contracts of Smoke

• A description of the entire Contract, what it does, why it exists. Basically, the fluff summary you'd see in the book before it started going into details of the clauses.

Stealth, invisibility and soundlessness are the purviews of Contracts of Smoke. Many myths and legends attribute unwitnessed travel to the fae, and changelings themselves are no strangers to the benefits of moving without the notice of those who might wish to keep them under supervision. What better way to escape a promise than to have simply slipped away unnoticed when the promise needs to be redeemed? After all, if the changeling can't be there when the individual invokes it, how is the changeling supposed to fulfill it?

For each clause:

• The clause's dot level and its name.

2 - Nevertread

• A brief description of its powers. In +ref/contract <name>/<#>, this is the part which is listed after the Contract's name.

When the changeling invokes this clause, all traces of his passing vanish. He leaves no footprints in mud, sand, snow or any other surface that would normally hold a mark. Likewise, his wet feet leave no prints on dry ground. Even grass trampled underfoot or flour scattered on the ground leaves no evidence of the changeling's movements. Note that if the changeling remains present at the site of his Nevertread attempts, he may still be discovered by other means. This power does not render him invisible, it just obscures the signs left by his movements.

• Glamour cost.

1 Glamour

• Dice pool.

Wyrd + Intelligence

• Action (Instant, Reflexive, Extended). Staff will look very closely at reflexive clauses for potential abuse.

Instant

• Catch.

The changeling must have spent at least an hour barefoot within the past day.

• Dramatic Failure results.

Instead of becoming more difficult to detect, the changeling makes a botch of the procedure, dragging mud or river-reeds or clumps of snow across his trail. Attempts to track the changeling suffering a dramatic failure on the attempt to invoke Nevertread occur at a +2 dice bonus, by whatever method they occur.

• Failure results.

The changeling is unable to obscure marks of his passage.

• Success results.

The changeling erases all traces of his passing. This may simply make it impossible to witness where the character has gone, or it may inflict a -2 dice penalty to attempts to track him, at the Storyteller's discretion, based on the situation's circumstances.

• Exceptional Success results.

For all intents and purposes, the character was never there. He's impossible to track by the method of determining where he may have moved.

• Suggested (or mandatory) modifiers.

The environment is especially susceptible to retaining marks of passage, such as sticky mud, a new snowdrift or wet cement (-2); The environment is notably resistant to holding marks of passage, as with deep water, Astroturf or hardwood floors (+2).

Getting Started

Our rules for forging new Contracts are based on those found in the Equinox Road book, p.30 onward. This page is a summary, and the book has much fleshier writeups. Please read the book! Do NOT just build a Contract based on this wiki page. :)

Step #1

Decide what the Contract will control.

Contracts must be focused on a single, specific aspect of reality. Time, dreams, darkness, light, etc.

Step #2

Create five clauses.

Effects can be physical or metaphorical, but they must be easily recognized as being connected to that aspect of reality.

Abilities you create must, additionally, fit the theme of Faerie. Symbolism is important. Look at fairy tales and see the sorts of things which are possible there for inspiration. Changelings don't cast spells from dusty books or runes; they ask reality to change for them, according to pledges written into Fate. They don't fire balls of stone from their hands -- instead, a stone rises up from the earth and flings itself.

Clauses should never render previous clauses pointless. If you have the third clause, you should still have reasons to use the first.

See the book, ER p.32, for more details and a clear explanation of what sorts of limitations are reasonable.

Step #3

Determine affinity.

Who gets to use this Contract at affinity cost, and who doesn't?

By default, the Contract's creator always has affinity, but it is up to creator and staff to determine what is otherwise logical.

You may NOT dictate that only your motley has access to the Contract, or a narrow group of your friends, etc. Affinity must tie into a particular Seeming (typically your own) or Court, be Universal, or be non-affinity to everyone except you yourself.

What Does My Character Need To Do?

The process of forging a Contract with an aspect of reality is not an easy one, and it is not a quick one.

Step #1

Make a lesser alliance pledge with the aspect.

• (I.e. send up a +req/pledge and staff will set it up.)

This will assure the aspect that you mean it no harm, and that you will not actively work against it. If your Contract is with Darkness, for example, perhaps your alliance could be demonstrated by never bringing light into a room. Your friends can be very confused about why you have taken out the lightbulbs in your appliances, and why you always wait for THEM to flip the light switches when you walk into a darkened room.

(HR) This pledge must be at least a moon in duration.

• During that month, log at least 1 PrP demonstrating that you have upheld your side of the alliance.

Step #2

Pledge to perform a single greater endeavour for the aspect, and sacrifice 1 permanent dot of Willpower (you may purchase this back for 8xp).

This endeavour may take many forms, but it must involve creating one or more new or particularly large methods of benefiting the aspect, or be something which causes a large number of people to pay attention to the aspect.

(HR) This pledge must be at least a season in duration.

• During the season, log at least 5 PrPs demonstrating that you have upheld your end of the bargain. What massive undertaking to promote that aspect of reality does your character do? How? If you were, per the book's example, building a massive art project of mirrors to reflect thousands of people going down a street every day to promote Reflections, these scenes would include things like searching out glassmakers/mirrormakers, going out to get the materials, earning the money to DO that, building the project, setting it up, etc.

The Greater Endeavour may be multiple smaller projects or one big project -- it's up to you, but staff will need to sign off on whether or not you have done what qualifies as a Greater Endeavour. Your character is proving him/herself to an aspect of reality. This should not be easy for you to do. :D Flinging money at something and having a peon build it would not qualify, for example. You need to be the one to do it, yourself.

Step #3

Bind the Contract into reality by going into the Hedge and sacrificing something of great value. This will bind you into a permanent lesser alliance with the aspect of reality with which you have forged your new Contract.

Options:

• A dot of an appropriate Attribute.

May be re-purchased after one (1) month of ICly working yourself back into shape.

• A 5-dot token.

The token is destroyed beyond repair.

• Convincing a True Fae to bind it into reality for you.

Good luck...