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[Harry Baldman]

I presume we're magic hitmen. Or we pick our own adversary for our characters.

Picking our own adversary is lazy as hell. It's important to have a more unified threat or set of threats that serve to set up the entire situation.

Most likely there'd be a number of factions/characters that react to what the players do in different ways. Most plot-inducing could be one flavor or other or extremists/supremacists, but I have a few more interesting ideas in mind should BBEG be needed.

Question: why did the spirits appear now? Is it because of a problem, an opportunity, or because they felt like it?

Also, extremists and supremacists in what way, exactly? Communists aided by the Spirit of Communism?

[WillowLuman]

If they did only appear recently, that could be what causes the plot in the first place. Though, they'd have to have been around long enough for there to be a small cadre of people that know about them, and for whatever animosity exists to develop. They could still have been there for far longer, unnoticed. As for why the spirits showed up in the first place, presumably some kind of pathway between planes/facets opened up at some point, and at first they came through out of curiosity.

[hops]

PTW

[Andres]

There should definitely be some drawbacks to fusing together. For the human, it can be a very painful experience which is reflected in a loss of HP. (The first time would be so painful it would make the human unconscious.) It also permanently shortens the human's lifespan. The pain and the penalties to lifespan eventually decrease with repeated possessions. For the spirit, the more it inhabits a human body the more difficult it becomes to actually leave the human, especially if they become more friendly towards the human. Moreover, if the human were to die while possessed by the spirit, the spirit would die too. (This gives a reason as to why the spirit doesn't just inhabit its enemies to death.)

[WillowLuman]

What I've got in the OP is, if the human hosts the spirit in their body for too long at once, they both burn out and die. And repeated hostings eventually result in long-term effects. Forceful possession might also be possible but should be less powerful and even more dangerous.

The getting killed while hosting kills both of them sounds good, though. In any case, they wouldn't be hosting the spirit all the time: more often, they'd just be near each other.

[Andres]

Ok, so right now we have short-term benefits (POWAH) and penalties (burning out) and we have long-term penalties for the human (decreased lifespan). We're missing long-term benefits and long-term penalties for the spirit. I can't think of any penalties the spirit might suffer, but I have thought of some benefits.

If the human were to die (while not being possessed), the spirit could resurrect the body and keep it as its own. The human would slowly resurrect as a spirit, using its body as an anchor to grow. From this point on, the body will become unaging (but otherwise entirely functional) and both spirits can remain inside the body for an unlimited amount of time with no penalty. If the body gets killed with both spirits inside, however, they would both still die.

EDIT: I guess instead of having long-term penalties for the spirit and human you can just balance out the long-term benefits. Maybe kill the body's ability to reproduce or reset the burn-out effects after resurrection.

[WillowLuman]

I think humans (and probably spirits) should stay dead when killed. One side of a partnership getting killed off is likely a big deal for the other, too.

[Andres]

Perhaps some long-term benefits include a decrease to the lifespan penalty so heavily that it instead starts increasing it? Maybe lifespan can be traded for temporary power boosts?

If you want something extreme, maybe the differences between the two will start breaking down and they both become something that transcends humans and spirits?

[Detoxicated]

Maybe the spirits would become semi-corporeal over time, making it easier to attack them at all.

[Harry Baldman]

If they did only appear recently, that could be what causes the plot in the first place. Though, they'd have to have been around long enough for there to be a small cadre of people that know about them, and for whatever animosity exists to develop. They could still have been there for far longer, unnoticed. As for why the spirits showed up in the first place, presumably some kind of pathway between planes/facets opened up at some point, and at first they came through out of curiosity.

Okay. Where did they come from? A single place, or multiple different ones?

And why did the pathway open? What future ramifications does this have? Did some other entity construct the pathway, or did it naturally develop on its own? In both cases, there is a cause to the pathway that may provide an overarching hook - for the entity it's what game they seem to be playing at, while for natural development it's what the appearance of the pathway heralds for the future.

It would be best to envision this setting with a clear beginning and a clear end, and what would logically happen in either.

[Andres]

Remember to make a good end possible. So many games already do the downer/bittersweet ending and it would certainly be a breath of fresh air.

[kj1225]

I still disagree with having the possession thing mess with the human's life span. If you're going to complain about overused plot devices then why would you use an overused drawback?

Anyways, I really don't think that it should have a fixed end point, that would just cause problems for people who wanted a different end point.

[Harry Baldman]

I still disagree with having the possession thing mess with the human's life span. If you're going to complain about overused plot devices then why would you use an overused drawback?

Anyways, I really don't think that it should have a fixed end point, that would just cause problems for people who wanted a different end point.

It's an overused drawback because it really does make sense most of the time. Could remix into something more fun, like mutations caused by smokeless ionizing fire. Possession causes infertility, or profoundly negative consequences in children. Symptoms of epilepsy, other sorts of seizures. It elevates blood pressure. Increases risk of schizophrenia. May cause sudden, inexplicable death or liver scarring. May create spiritually empowered pathogens or subvert the gut microflora. Increased rate of apoptosis, whether due to degeneration of genetic information or in spite of the lack thereof. Myopathies due to mitochondrial damage. Could make your RNA/DNA go rogue and form new and interesting viruses. Could undo histone methylation and fuck up the epigenetics of your children, atavisms all up in their grill. Could make your kidney wander off. Give it a whole list of potential negative side effects like any untested congress with powers unknown should have.

Also, perhaps not a fixed end point, but rather a fixed end event, an ending situation would be a better to put it. Spirits coming to the world is an inherently unstable arrangement, especially if they just keep flooding in. This ending situation would be useful to work out, as it lets all other events be tied into it to one degree or another.

[kj1225]

Why does it even need to be negative beyond what's already put out by Hugo? (Burning out) Why not give benefits and make it exciting for the people who are wanting to do something other than learn about spirits and shit? I know if I had the ability to become badass then I'd do it all the time.

And that brings me to a second point, why does the end point even relate to spirits entering the world, they aren't the focus, they're side plot. The focus is the players, I know that if I get in I'm going to be doing cool stuff like fighting mobsters and shit.

[Harry Baldman]

The benefit is the spirit, and honestly burning out doesn't sound very exciting as a drawback, given that it either kills you or it doesn't. It's not an imaginative drawback, shall we say, given the sheer scope of strange things that could possibly arise from allowing oneself to be possessed by spirits.

And the spirits aren't a side plot, they're the core magical element of the setting. To have them just be there with no real bearing on the world aside from providing wish fulfillment is somewhat illogical, I would say.

Or to put it another way, spirits wouldn't have anything against you not even bothering to question their presence, why they're helping you, where they came from, what the existence of their realm implies and what bearing it has on the future of civilization as we know it, and might let you mess around with whatever you like to your heart's desire. Maybe they don't question any of this, either. But that doesn't mean the implications aren't there, either. It doesn't have to affect gameplay, but as a part of the setting, it needs to be worked out. Otherwise it makes too little sense to work.

An important thing to decide is how the world of the spirits differs from the world of humanity. Are they mirrors of one another, different worlds, entirely different states of existence?