Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse by The Chairman

Setting

posted by The Chairman Original SA post

I think I'm going to take a shot at summarizing Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse by Rev. Michael E. Driscoll (DJ Mdknight).

Book available here

Probably one of the least necessary fan-made supplements for Old World of Darkness, Dolls is a game where you play a toy living in a house full of other toys. In the author's words,

The prelude -- a pack of interchangable, ISO 9001 standard werewolves looking for a missing pack member investigate the house where the dolls live -- is a couple paragraphs of "theurges see spirits and philodoxes love balance and ahrouns are bossy!", then a few lines of "this house sure has a lot of creepy dolls!", then the big reveal:


Spooooooky!

The book goes straight into character creation from the prelude, so I'm going to jump ahead to the sections on "Social Structure", "Physiology of Dolls" and "The House":

All the dolls live in a four-story Victorian mansion -- represented in the book by a picture of a three -story mansion -- ruled over by a pair of venerable rag dolls named "Mother" and "Grandmother". The mansion is basically a giant boarding-house, with three floors of tiny bedrooms; among other amenities, it also features a jacuzzi (?) and a basement full of bones (!).

New dolls are "reborn" from the souls of mortals and supernaturals, but nowhere in this supplement does it actually describe the rebirth process. However, it does spend a paragraph describing how newly reborn dolls are given a special marble that gives them magic, bottomless pockets!

Dolls can be anywhere from 9 inches to 9 feet tall and made from a variety of materials (which determines their type), but the one thing all dolls have in common, and the author is firm on this point, is that each and every doll is anatomically correct. However, the description goes on to say that dolls are "sterile, among themselves"; the implications are thankfully not explored further.

Like every group of WoD supernaturals, dolls have a code, or "a few major rules that must be fallowed (sic)":

1. respect your elders.
   
2. do not hurt another doll.
   
3. do not kill another of your own kind.
   
4. do not kill humans unless your life is in jeopardy.
   
5. do not leave the family.

The difference between rules 2 and 3 is not elucidated. If you break rule 3 or 4, you die by having your face torn off and your body destroyed. If you break rule 5 and somehow you manage to escape and become un-reborn, you're hauled back to the house, "skinned, then stripped of all flesh" and re-reborn, "all this while you are awake". You then roll a d10 to determine how many new derangements you have to take, because why the hell not.

Next: character creation!

Character Creation

posted by The Chairman Original SA post

Anyway, Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse : The Kinds, Backgrounds, Merits & Flaws

The general character creation process has been covered above, so I'm just going to do a run down of the Dolls Greatest Hits.

Kinds are this supplement's breeds/clans/whatevers; they're determined by the material your doll is made of.

• Stuffies are stuffed animals and are "the most common" but also "the most diverse". Their drawback is that "interaction with the flesh world is rough", but it's okay if you're wearing a big cloak, a trenchcoat and a mask, because those aren't suspicious.
  
• Nocios are made of wood, which somehow makes them "very life like" to the point where they "can be mistaken for flesh beings", but their drawback is that "they are hard to repair" and they have "plus one difficulty to stealth rolls" if they're barefoot on hard surfaces.
  
• Tinklers have cloth bodies but porcelain heads, hands and feet; they're so beautiful that they get an automatic base Appearance 3, but they also take a penalty to stealth rolls because they constantly "tinkle". (No, not that.) Despite having porcelain hands, they favor firearms.
  
• Porcels just have porcelain heads; they only get a base of Appearance 2, and their drawback is that their heads are super fragile. Why is the type with less porcelain pieces more fragile? Tinklers hate them for having less porcelain parts. They can only use "non-impact and non-recoil type weapons", because I guess you fire a gun with your face.
  
• Tickers are either wind-up toys or pendulum-driven toys; wind-up toys need to be wound up once a year, because that's a huge imposition, and pendulum toys (I'm imagining a sexy evil drinky bird) go Incapacitated if they take 4 points of bashing, because obviously hitting a pendulum really hard will make it stop.
  
• Plasties are realistic plastic dolls with "the biggest sex drive of all"! Their drawback is that they are too trusting ! I hate myself for reading this!
  
• Steelers or Steelests (the author can't decide) are dolls made of metal; they get an extra two soak dice for free, but are super noisy ("plus three to stealth rolls") and the hardest to repair.
  
• The Unnamed Children of Grandmother are evil ventriloquist dummies who are "amazingly cruel and crafty"; they're locked up somewhere in the house, but sometimes escape and go "running amuck killing people". Everybody hates them and wonders why they even exist. The author is adamant you not play one:

Incidentally, the author encourages you to give your doll attributes up to 7, because of reasons. They are bad reasons; for example, "Dolls are given new eyes, ears, etc. thus now they are capable of exceeding normal bounds. Intelligence and wits no longer confide to the limitations of a physical organic brain. They can become very smart."

Some of the Backgrounds are directly pasted in from the original OWoD books (Allies, Contacts, Mentor, Influence, Resources), none of which make much sense considering you're a child's toy locked in a mansion with no contact of the outside world. You can be a millionaire with important government buddies and the ear of every CEO on Wall Street, and also a teddy bear who was grounded by doll-mommy for misbehaving.

There are custom backgrounds as well, such as "Toy Box", which gives you one extra wildly overpowered weapon per dot, and Destiny, which lets you "once per story (not each game session), if something threatens her with a bad end, she may roll her Destiny rating against difficulty 8. Each success she scores allows her to regain one spent Willpower point. She may use theses points to avert a cheap death." Also, if you want to be able to leave grandma's house once in a while, you have to take dots in "Doll Pass". Also also, dolls can take the Mage background "Dream" because the author said so, that's why.

And now, a selection of some of the wonderful merits and flaws made available to dolls:

• Child (3 point flaw): you're either a child, or an adult in a child doll body.
  
• Beans (4 point flaw): You're stuffed with beans or pellets, and if you take damage, you automatically die in four rounds unless you manage to repair yourself.
  
• Wada Scoop! (6 point flaw): A reporter found out you exist and wants to show you off to the world. "This will make life hard for you in any way your Storyteller can think of."
  
• Crush (2 point flaw): Another doll in the house wants to have sex with you, or you want to have sex with another doll in the house. Either or.
  
• All American Hero (7 point merit): Before you were turned into a doll, you were a member of an elite, secret military organization. You get Contacts (Military) 3, Allies (Military) 3 and Allies (Military) 4, even though you're a fucking doll locked away in grandma's house .
  
• Good Cloth (3 point merit): Take half damage from any source of damage, no matter what. What's balance?
  
• Mage (8 point merit), Werewolf (6 point), Vampire (6 point), Other supernatural (6 point): As well as being a doll, you are also a Mage, a Werewolf, a Vampire, or another supernatural creature, with all the benefits and abilities that entails. Why not?

Finally, some random text gems:

• "Dolls are under most circumstances immortal unless she is killed."
  
• "Once all of your temporary Life Force is gone you fall in to a kind of comma."
  
• From the lexicon, "Wolf-man: Werewolf."

Next up: the feature characters.

Character disaster

posted by Halloween Jack Original SA post

From this terrible, horrible, no good, very hilarious thread

Stereotypes/Signature Characters

posted by The Chairman Original SA post

Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse : Stereotypes, and Signature Characters

First, the usual Stereotypes section, revealing the nuanced, mature opinions the average supernatural has about Dolls and vice versa. Three of the stereotype blurbs are worth quoting in full.




So who is Rasshaka ? He's one of the wonderful Signature Characters that can be found in grandma's dollhouse. He is a 15,000 year old tiger plush doll, the fourth one ever made, in a smoking jacket and fez, usually "smoking his pipe and drinking Brandy from his sifter"; the thread on RPG.net about Dolls reveals that this is the writer's personal PC, which he would include as a party member in the long-running campaigns he GMed. He carries a special flintlock pistol toy with difficulty 5 and 40 damage dice . (For reference, a standard pistol in stock CWoD has difficulty 6 and 5 damage dice, and PCs generally have 7 health levels.) Since Dolls can spend a point of Manna to double their weapon's damage and reduce the difficulty by 1, Rasshaka can get a nice grind-the-game-to-a-halt 80 damage dice . I've seen shitty homebrew rules, but why even bother if you're going to give your personal Tigerry Stu the ability to negate basically anything thrown at it?

In the "creatively-named" department, we also have a 16,000-year-old wooden ship captain doll named The Captain , doll number 3, and a 19,000-year-old tin General Patton doll named The General , number 2. No explanation is given for how a doll of a WWII general could have been made 19 millenia ago. The Captain has a background of "Relics 10", when Relic 5 already implies "a legendary relic the likes of which are rarely ever seen". However, his pistol toy is only a piddly diff. 5 damage 18, compared to Rasshaka's Relic 0 and his fuck-you gun. The General has backgrounds "Solders 10", which I will imagine means he is a double-legendary electrician.

Next is "Jonathan Parks AKA Johnny Football Hero Johnny Foot Ball All-Star (sic)". He's a teenager who wandered into the dollhouse in 1999, found a silver pendant there, left the house, got involved with the mob (!?), came back, put the pendant on "the oldest looking doll there", then decided to live there for some unspecified reason. He isn't a doll, but thinks he is one. His age is listed as "18/957".

One of Jonny Foot Ball All-Star's friends was named Alice, who also went to the house. Her soul was split into two plush rabbits, one named Alice , and the other one named Malice . GET IT???? Also, Alice has a watch that can stop time for multiple rounds. Malice's interests are "making liquors" and "waiting for her one true love to find her", and "will kill or torture any one she preserves is interferes with her relationships (sic)".

Finally, there's Jock-O the Great , an Unnamed Child of Grandmother (despite having a name, I guess); it has 7 in every attribute except Charisma and Appearance, 5 in every combat-related ability, and "Medicine 5 (sweet spots)" (?). The author suggests he looks like "The ugliest, craziest, No! Think Carrot Top made of wood!", which is probably legitimately the scariest thing this book has offered so far.

The first doll ever made is not described in this supplement. The author hints that the return of the first doll will be the beginning of Gehenna/the Apocalypse. Big friggin whoop.

That's pretty much it for Dolls . I have a feeling I've spent more time thinking about the implications of this supplement than the author ever did.