Rules/Arts System

Arts Creation System (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

Our Arts Creation system depends heavily upon a basic understanding of the crafting and extended rolling systems found in the World of Darkness Core Book and the Hurt Locker. We cannot reproduce much of those systems here, so if you find yourself unable to follow along you may want to do some refresher reading.

Attribute and Skill Choice

What attribute and skill you will be using will depend a great deal on the piece you are creating and how. Most physical arts use dex and crafts or expression. More conception ones often use wits or intelligence. Your attribute and skill value plus any valid specialties tell you the maximum number of rolls you may make in your extended action of creation. Intelligence based art will be clean and analytical. Wits art will be more fluid and inspired. This isn't a question about 'what skills are used to make art', in this post-modernist age it is about 'what the heck is art even anyway?'

With that said, let's explore what we know art is.

Themes, Moods, Meanings, Mediums

Art makes the viewer experience something. It does so through its use of themes and moods to conceal meanings within various media.

An artist may have as many themes, moods, and meanings in their piece as they like. This is limited only by their applicable skill value. A musician with expression 3 can create a two mood song with an underlying theme.

The media options are limited by the skill specialties of the artist. An artist with 'sketch' and 'watercolor' specialties could create breathtaking mixed media compositions tagging both specialties in the work. So, no. Your expression 5 character with a specialty in violin is not in fact also exceptionally talented at origami. But she sure would pick it up quick if you bought the specialty. (Note: 1/2/2023; If players need some time to make XP happen for concept validating specialties, just let me know and maybe we can put people in XP debt a bit. Nobody is going to fun jail.)

Theme, Mood, and Meaning Ratings

Once you have selected your themes, you can begin an extended roll using the system laid out in Chronicles of Darkness. Exceptionals do lower your target successes as per normal. You must select your initial and subsequent targets in increments of 5. Every additional 5 target threshold you tack on to this roll, you will get a single +1 to apply to one of your theme, mood, or meaning categories.

For example: Mila has a dex of 4 and an expression (happy dancing) of 4.

She has a total of 9 dice which she may roll 9 times. Doing some quick math, she decides to set a conservative target of 15. With 4 rolls left she hits 17 of 15 successes and decides to up her target to 25. Two rolls further and she's at 21/25 and getting nervous. So for her last two rolls she spends willpower and rolls 12 dice, getting her an exceptional success which lowers her threshold to 22, and sends her total successes to 26/22 with one roll remaining. With one roll left she considers whether to push her new threshold to 27 and try for that last successes or walk away with 26 of 22 successes and a completed piece of art. What would you do?

In the end, she succeeds. She added a total of 25 threshold to her goal, giving her 5 bonuses to apply to her work.

Being a good dog, she danced the best happiest dance. Its themes were 'Daddy's Home'. Its mood was 'OMG YAY!'

It was a hard decision on where to put the last dot, so she errs on the side of caution and ends her work with 'Theme: Daddy's Home: +3' and 'Mood: OMG! YAY!: +2'.

Perhaps not her best work, but familiar and certainly tone setting.

Art Analysis

'Who even buys Taste, anyway?' People who want to use this system, that's who! With sufficient taste a viewer may discern a work's themes, moods, and hidden meanings. It may take a good deal of viewing. Hours of study have been spent before the hand of the masters.

The system for this is a bit like the crafting system above, only in reverse. A character with an applicable specialty in all valid media within the piece may begin rolling. It is almost always an Int or Wits based roll and that choice should depend upon the nature of the piece not the viewer. The skill is always the skill that was used to create the work. For every 5 threshold added to your target, you reveal one of the bonus +1s on the work. It is therefore entirely possible for a shallow art critic to correctly identify the themes and meanings of the work and then fail to truly expound on their deeper meanings in a meaningful way. So it's both a great way to signal refinement, but also a really great way to prove yourself a bit of a heel.

One notable difference is that the bonus rating of each mood, theme, or meaning is taken as a bonus to the viewer's rolls to uncover it. A meaning, mood, or theme with a rating of 0 is not, counter-intuitively, 'bad art'. It is 'subtle art'. It cannot be uncovered until all other facets of the piece are understood. How can you see what isn't there until you understand everything that is? This is often used to pass hidden messages in mystery cults, and even in Guardian Labyrinths.

The Benefits of Taste

Okay, so what's the point. Why? Because works of art's themes, meanings, and moods are taggable equipment bonuses! How does that work? IF a character has taste and IF they have uncovered a bonus in the art and IF that piece directly applies to the ongoing scene it is taggable. It cannot be a held prop. If it's a book, you're quoting from it. If it's a painting, you're standing with it as a backdrop. If it's slam poetry, you're reciting it. But because you know the true meaning behind the piece, you can invest it with far more weight than another performer who doesn't.

So the havens of the Daeva and the portraits in the Consilium hall and the Topiaries of the Lost's Gardens are. You know. Potentially sinister chekov's props. Have fun with that!