#optional rule

/I’ve noticed a lot of people feel uncomfortable with messaging OOC, they also are afraid of nudging people if they don’t answer the RP.\

including, among other things, expansion of the Alternate Identity rules

The Replay Value AU universe is much larger than just the PCs; RV Classic often had as many as a dozen characters in the memo at one time, and had a regular cast of 40 or more. I’m not going to expect the HG to play that many characters, so here are some rules to let handlers play NPCs or extra characters.

Troupe Play and Disposable NPCs

Trope play is where, if your character is not on screen, you can play a different character who is on-screen. This different character usually an NPC (unless it’s an Alternate Identity; see below). Sometimes, the HG will ask you for a specific NPC; other times, you’ll be playing a small herd of unimportant NPCs (such as Consorts); yet others, you can come up with one yourself and play them as background color. These characters exist to react to whatever the other PCs say, to give the HG less work in coming up with and playing bystanders, and to give you something to do when your PC isn’t on-screen.

You are never obligated to play an NPC - you are always allowed to sit out a scene entirely. You are also always allowed to remove anyone (not just an NPC) from play midscene. Try to come up with at least a flimsy excuse for it. For example, a Sburb player’s dreamself might suddenly wake up, making them go to sleep; or a Consort/Carapace could be accosted and summoned by a messenger. (You’re not required to have an excuse, though.)

These NPCs are generally considered disposable. They do not have wound levels. If someone else does something objectionable to them, you should play the negative effects straight. (You are allowed to drop the character, optionally fob them off on the HG for the rest of the scene, and then never play them thereafter. This being said, that’s an “allowed” and not an “expected”.)

If the HG really likes your NPC, sometimes they will overrule you and have the NPC “take a wound” instead of going along with the effects. This probably shouldn’t happen regularly.

If you want more plot armor for a side character, you can convert them into an Alternate Identity by taking the Alternate Identity perk. Let’s talk about that...

Alternate Identities

The Alternate Identity perk is a perk you can earn from certain quests (especially those on a Storyteller arc). It lets you play a second character, with their own character sheet, alongside or alternating with your first. Many people in Replay Value AU played multiple characters. I had two primary PCs, and for some time I was playing both of them at once (until I could come up with a good-ish ending for one’s story, at least).

Health Levels are shared between the two sheets; the justification is that they are a player-level resource, which is to say it would be unfair for people who only played one character versus people who played two. You can tweak what each wound refers to depending on which sheet you’re on, though.

Quests are also player-level. You still only have the four (or five, in RV Chuubo’s) quest slots, no matter how many characters you play. You can reserve XP earned when using one character for using on character-specific quests. You can also swap out basic quests, alternate between basic quests, or leave one character without a basic quest.

You must keep the Alternate Identity perk active in a perk slot on both sheets in order to continue using it.

Alts and Defeat

As noted previously, Health Levels are common across sheets. However, if you have an alternate character, and they weren’t taken out by the specific thing that Defeated the original one, you can continue playing them - but you can’t earn or use anything besides emotion XP and quest bonus XP until you’ve talked with the HG to establish what happens next.

Similarly, Illusion 5 autodefeats your character. Usually, you relinquish your character to the HG, and the only thing you can earn in the meantime is emotion XP and quest bonus XP. This is still true even if you have an alternate character available, but an alt means that it makes more sense for your primary character to be off-screen.

This is partly an extension from the genre-based rules that "you can take [Isolation, Illusion, Hollow] if you meet certain criteria with your XP actions" and partly something I borrowed from Microbloggers of the Lost Island.

Basically, instead of having the HG control handing out the issues, the players can give themselves 1 point in any Issue(s) per chapter. Opening an Issue requires an XP action of matching color, such as a (Suffer) Corruption scene for taking Sickness, or a Shared Action scene for taking Calling. Raising an issue requires at least one sentence of justification, even if the sentence is "I feel like my character's been very quiet recently." (Mind you, I would prefer if you went on talking about it for a bit longer than that, but I don't want to penalize people for happening to not have any inspiration at any given moment.)

On the other hand this means that Issues only give you 2 XP when they close out. (The HG, however, can kick you a bit of extra if they think you did it well. I mean they could kick you XP either way, but I explicitly want to say: HGs, if an Issue storyline under these rules was especially cool, give them 4 XP instead of 2!)

an optional rule for CMWGE and most CMWGE-based stuff

Basic quests are a critical part of characterizing Chuubo’s characters; they generally don’t change for the lifetime of the character. But sometimes you might want to! For example, if a character recognizes that their basic quest is self-destructive and puts work into overcoming it, it should be possible to change it to something less destructive. Alternately, if it just doesn’t fit your character concept, you should be able to change the basic quest to something you find more interesting to play.

Note: this is a big deal. Basic quests are one of your character's core motivations at all times! (Like, me going overboard in talking about things I like, and in replicating bits of them in my real life, is my basic quest. This is also known as the tendency for "special interests" - which, yes, is an autistic thing because I'm also autistic.)

In general, this is a thing you’re going to need to argue with the HG, moreso than anything you might do in-character. There aren’t really firm rules for this – I’m mostly discussing examples and possibilities here. If you’re changing it early on because it just doesn’t fit your character concept or later on because the HG's decided to change something you based your character on, it might be a matter of a short anytime quest, take effect at the resolution of an Issue, or even your HG just letting you swap it out without mechanical penalty. But in general, I think this replaces a quest reward near or at the end of an Arc, for a longer quest (35+ XP).

[an optional rule]

In your first session, you may discover a slot where you can specify a custom ability. It'll be a very small ability based off your Classpect thematics, and you can name it whatever you want.

The problem is that you won't be able to change that name, or that ability, ever again. It'll retheme itself, as far as is plausible, to your current Classpect thematics. I've heard a few people that could even invoke it in presession. Just another effect of Sburb's bad data-storage habits: this is something that should be stored as part of game data, not as part of one's Shiny.

Mechanically, the Custom Ability is treated as an inherent, small 1/chapter miraculous ability or inherent level 0 Affliction. It can thus be opposed by any Bond, Affliction, Auctoritas, or any ability that costs MP. (Or you can just bid 1MP to stop it.)

However, you can't add MP to the Custom Ability for any reason (you cannot give it more Strike or use it more often than 1/chapter).

Here are some examples of Affliction-based Custom Abilities:

[WD-40] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Dust player is pretty much walking lubricant; mechanical things just don't get stuck around them.)

[Dapper Duelling] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Time player always appears relaxed and put-together. This ability is very much like, and can be superseded by, Creature of Fable's Iconic.)

[Pointed Questions] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Law player's knives and swords do not dull.)

[Eternal Blue Sky] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Stars player does not panic when faced with the possibility of their own death.)

[Pushing Envelope] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Fate player always knows where the Parcel Mistress is.)

[Artemis] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Thief can always reclaim the arrows they've already shot; the points don't break and the feathers stay on.)

[Vegetable Drawer] (Level 0 Affliction: a native Doom player will always know how close food is to spoilage.)

And here are some examples of 1/chapter abilities:

[Representation] (1/chapter: a native Sight player can manifest a flipchart/diagram of something they know and want to explain to other people out of... well, basically nowhere.)

[The Spinner] (1/chapter: a native Life player can repair and preserve clothes made of natural fibers with a touch.)

[Line Feed Carriage Return] (1/chapter: a native Heart player can decide that they want the conversation to start over again, and thus resets everyone's mental state to "how they were feeling before we started talking".)

[Windows to the Soul] (1/chapter: a native Seer can look into someone's eyes and know what their most recent emote was.)

[Spark] (1/chapter: a native Flow player can start a fire just by snapping their fingers and pointing.)

Link to the full article: Dune - Betrayal Deck

Converted from the Fantasy Flight Games Rex, the Betrayal cards add yet more ways to screw your friends over. Not that there are enough ways to screw with your friends in the Dune board game. These are easy to make up and fit in with the Ilya 77 theme, there are cards on Arts Cow, however I...