Awkward rituals

Overview

The Ritual Caster user interface should make handling rituals really simple, displaying everything you need to tell the players and checking magnitudes. This leaves you free to concentrate on taking their mana crystals and traumatizing them.

Of course, "should" is a lovely word, almost synonymous with "doesn't". This page should help with working out what to do in a few cases where the ritual caster can't help.

Visions

By default, visions are handled by giving the players a slip with the vision on it. They can read it as many times as they like, but they can't take notes or confer with each other. Take the slip back when they're done. You should have a small bag of the event's Signs and Portents responses in your ref gear, particularly on Friday night.

Curses

Most curses at Empire are handled by the "hot potato" method. One of the ritual contributors gets 15 minutes to deliver the curse, or it hits them. So, right after the ritual, start a timer and follow them until they either find a target or their 15 minutes is up. Giving them a minute or so's notice that they're running out of time is probably polite; some characters will shove the curse on an innocent bystander rather than take it themselves, and that's good game. Delivery is by pointing at the target and monologuing.

Currently we're handling curse effects by direct Matt action, so once you've briefed the target on their immediate effects, take the character name and CID of the target (to insure against typos) and the name of the curse, and get this to Matt. You can radio this through to the ref desk, or leave a sheet of paper on Matt's desk; there's no great urgency, so you don't need to get hold of Matt directly.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Scrivener's Bloodmark lets the users curse the targets at some point in the next season, if they feel like it. The delivery mechanism is the same, but you don't have a hot potato to hurry them up. Use social pressure instead.

Divinations

Divinations are awkward, because the information's often scattered all over the place; usually it's somewhere on the plot wiki. Plot support probably have a good idea where to look, but you might well not need to bother them.

Territory divination

The Eye of the High Places and Eyes of the Sun and Moon have responses already written up by the campaign team for all legal targets. They should be somewhere in the ref hive mind, and hopefully you'll get told where at the event.

Items

If an item's having divination done on it, it should have a ribbon. Check the ref notes for that ribbon; if they're not informative, search the plot wiki for the ribbon ID. Failing that, ask plot support. If it doesn't have a ribbon then something's gone wrong; either the PCs have picked up some tat and become convinced it's important, or a plot item has gone out without a ribbon. It's probably the former, but telling the difference is challenging.

Characters

Most characters already know all the effects they're under, so the quickest way to sort this out is often to ask the target. The main exception is divination which finds out how to cure a curse; an NPC target probably already knows the answer, but for PCs you'll need to ask plot support how to cure the curse.

Wards

Hold Back Frozen Hunger and friends ward an area. In Anvil, get some AoE lammies made up and tell Plot. On a battle, let the monsters know and tell battle management: players shouldn't be casting this on a battle without letting us know in advance.

Rituals which get an NPC

EmpireWiki:Whispers through the Black Gate and Challenge the Iron Duke both need plot to send out NPCs or sometimes dead PCs. Challenge the Iron Duke includes a written request; you can just fee that to Plot and they'll deal with it.

By the time someone's casting Whispers, everything should be in place to run it. The awkward part of this ritual is how to handle someone giving you notice they intend to cast it. If you're really, really lucky, the target will be nearby, physrepping their corpse; ask them to be at GOD about half an hour before sunset, in that character's kit. If not, and the target is a dead PC, find their player (you don't have to do this yourself, egregores might be helpful here) and ask them to be at GOD etc. If the target is a dead NPC, ask Plot for help.