Ranged weapons do 100% damage if within 15 units of their optimal range.
Ranged weapons do 66% damage between 16-40 units away from optimal range.
Ranged weapons do 66% damage and have a 50% chance to miss if further than 40
units away from optimal range.
Ranged weapons do 150% damage if hitting at exactly optimal range.

Anything beyond 120 distance is always counted as not within the 100% damage
zone.

Ranged attacks do 40% less damage in a round after being hit by melee.
+ or – affects from specials.

Armored and undead PCs generally cannot take more than 25% max HP + 20 defense
per round. Damage in excess of that will be turned into stagger instead at a
rate of 3 to 1.

Shifters do not benefit from these defenses, but bypass them when attacking
others.

While inside the dreamscape characters do not realise that they are
dreaming, or that the world they’re in is not real. Drives, desires and
situations from the real world frequently do manifest into their dreams, but
not as something external.

For instance if you go into the dreamscape wishing to be a bird, you will
probably dream about being a bird and flying around, but you won’t be aware
that you’re not a real bird and this isn’t a real world, at least not until
you wake up. Or if you fall asleep in the bathtub, you may well end up in a
swamp or other damp locale in your dream.

Similarly, if you go into the dreamscape with the intention of delivering a
message about yourself or someone else being held captive you might dream
about being a soldier sent to deliver their commanding officer intelligence
about someone being held captive by the Nazis, or yourself be a recently
released POW.

People can sometimes use this to piece together events in real life, if
someone has a single theme of captivity running through all their dreams
when others encounter them frequently they might guess in the waking world
that that person is a captive, they might also be able to guess who they are
by other recurring themes in their dream identities. They wouldn’t of
course realise this in the dream however, since they also wouldn’t know it
was a dream until they awoke.

Characters have much sharper memories of the dreams they have in the
dreamscape after they awake, compared to normal dreams.

The creation of dreamworlds is a conscious, psychic exercise generally done
while awake or in a semi-sleeping state. Characters are aware they’ve built
a psychic realm and have consciously chosen each of its features. Characters
can while awake plan who they will be in a certain world when they fall
asleep, and focus on that desire in order to make it manifest. It
doesn’t always work; sometimes their subconscious works against their wishes
to choose a different identity for them.

The details around how someone came to be in that place in the dream world
or whatever other parts of their backstory that are difficult to explain
will be fuzzy and hard for the dreamer to recall. If a dreamer does somehow
realise they are dreaming, they will immediately wake back up.

Syntax: healthtimer
Toggles health break reminders on or off.
When enabled, you will receive periodic reminders to take
screen breaks.

There’s a few things it’s important to keep in mind when playing
Angelborn. Angelborn are to some extent natural victims, the fact that they
can be more powerfully hypnotized and in general more easy to coerced often
leads to them being an ideal choice if someone’s looking for a victim or
sidekick etc. You shouldn’t play a character like this if you’re too
worried about bad things happening to them. Also though, and probably more
importantly, angelborn are particularly resistant to angst. Even if one is
captured and tortured while the torture is going on they want it a little
bit, not enough to be ok with it, but it is not as bad as for others, and
afterwards they’re surrounded by people who want them to get over it.
Either because they’re their friends and want them to feel better, or
because they find it irritating. Which through their empathy causes them to
rebound fairly quickly. This is important because it means Angelborn are an
extremely poor choice of character if you’re seeking to RP the aftermath or
seek sympathy.

Good roleplaying is an art, it can take years to master and some people
never seem to be able to get a good grip on it. Mostly it’s similar to
writing fiction, the big differences are that you’re writing in real time
with no chance to edit, and that you’re writing for the other authors.

It’s impossible to learn how to RP very well from just one guide, it is an
endless pursuit, and you can be sure that the best RPers get to be that way
because they are constantly working on and refining their art. Those that
feel their RP is already ‘good enough’ are doomed to never improve beyond
the mediocre.

Good roleplaying breaks down to two areas, good characterization and good RP
writing.

RP writing is the art of using says, emotes, descriptions etc to convey what
your character is doing. This is almost exactly the same as the qualities
of what makes a good fiction writer with one exception. In a story it’s
perfectly ok even considered normal to describe your characters emotions and
thoughts, in RP it often isn’t. Although there’s some debate on the issue
the difference comes about because when writing a novel you want people to
identify with your character, when RPing you want to identify with your
character, other people identify with theirs.

The other reason for this is that few people are perfect at keeping IC and
OOC knowledge separate, it’s very common for someone to react differently if
you emote that you fancy them, even though their character shouldn’t know
that and therefore shouldn’t act any differently.

Generally it’s better to follow the same rule that teachers of fiction
writing beat their students over the head with ‘show, don’t tell.’ Don’t
tell people what your character is thinking or feeling, show them. Use your
emotes and the way they speak to convey that they fancy that person or
dislike this person.

The other keys to good RP writing are:

Write something that’s easy to read and flows nicely, paying attention to
spelling and grammar etc as much as possible. Include all relevant details,
the devil is in the details as they say and a few words to describe the way
in which someone does something can add a lot to the RP.

Brevity, good writing isn’t longer than it has to be, the shorter your
emotes and says the less work you’re requiring your reader to do. Any
reader would prefer a 200 page book, to a 500 page book with all the same
stuff in it but 300 more pages of furniture descriptions.

Speed, people don’t like waiting around longer than they have to, the
quicker you can RP the more RP they’re getting for their time.

Language,just like in fiction writing the use of certain words or phrases are
much
more likely to strike a chord in people and get your meaning across than
others. Try to use words and phrases that create vivid imagery and convey
things strongly without being overly flowery or convoluted.

Some of these do work a little at cross purposes, trying to include detail
and spell check your RP while also trying to be quick and brief is a
challenge, each person needs to strike their own balance of what works for
them.

The only way to really improve your RP writing is with practice, get out
there and RP and learn from others as well as seek out positive and negative
criticisms. If most people think your emotes are too long and needlessly
wordy maybe think about working on making them shorter. Ultimately it is up
to you, but the other players are your readers, if they don’t want to read
your work, what is the point?

Good characterization is the other half to good RP. It refers to being able
to create a character who’s interesting and realistic.

Creating an interesting character is really about creating a character
that’s good for the story, you might be able to make an extremely realistic
tax clerk character but nobody is going to care about him. An interesting
character is measured by their ability to create RP and their ability to
join to and add to the RP of others.

It’s important to note that RP is a collaborative effort, your character can
never be the star, they are one member of an ensemble cast. Sometimes the
storyline might thrust you center stage but other times it might thrust
someone else. People get very sick very quickly of playing with someone who
tries to make all RP be about them.

A good and very common example of this is characters with traumatic
pasts/lives. When a character goes through something traumatic in game,
this naturally pushes them more center stage, with a lot of the RP revolving
around the sympathy they get, possibly plans for revenge or ways to help
them deal with it. Every other character around who has a more traumatic
past steals from this attention, nobody else can ever get sympathy because
what they went through is so much worse.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have traumatic incidents in your character’s
past, but it’s very important for you to think about other people when you
make your character, how your character can add to RP that isn’t about them,
and if they’re likely to detract from that RP maybe you need to re-evaluate
them.

Being a good side character is about both adding constructive and
destructively to RP. A character who’s always nice all the time is boring,
a character who’s always a jerk similarly. Interesting character conflicts
and situations arise from those characters who sometimes are supportive and
sometimes cause conflict. If your character can do both of these, and avoid
any spotlight stealing, then you probably have a really good side character.

Being a good main character is mostly about not being selfish. If the
bounty hunters are after you, yes that might be your problem but if your
character is really set on dealing with it all on their own it gives nobody
else anything to do. When you find yourself in the spotlight is when it’s
more important to be gracious, involve other people in the story in
important ways. In return they’re more likely to do the same to you when
it’s their turn.

Sometimes RP isn’t really about you or someone else mostly, but communal.
This often happens in social RP for instance. What makes a good communal
character is mostly the same things that make a good side or main character.
Don’t spotlight steal, get other people involved, add to the RP in
interesting and not always predictable ways. Adding to the RP is important,
you might think it’s cool to be gruff and silent, but nobody is going to
want to play with you much.

The other thing that makes a really great interesting character is the
ability to make RP happen in the first place! A character with reasons to
RP with a lot of people, get them involved in things, make various other
types of RP happen is crucial to a fun game. Examples might be characters
who throw parties, a journalist who seeks out lots of other PCs to interview
etc.

If you have a character who has the qualities of both a good main character,
a good side character, a good communal character, and creates RP then you
have a really good and interesting character!

The other half of the battle is realism.

Realism is very important and often overlooked, it doesn’t matter if your
character is a vampire or sorcerer. Stories must have internal validity,
they must be believable within that world, even if they’re fantasy stories,
some would say especially if they are. The second your character starts
feeling fake and not like a real person people will stop caring about them,
and it’s very hard to get them to care again. Very good, realistic characters
can
make people in real life cry when they’re hurt, cheer when they’re
triumphant and swoon when they kiss, and that’s what you should be aiming
for.

Making a realistic character can be very hard, there’s a lot of different
opinions on the ways to go about it. A lot of people like to model
characters on themselves or people they know very well, and this is
generally a solid and reliable way to make your character quite realistic.
The old writer’s adage of ‘write what you know’. Unfortunately it’s often
the case that you want to play something quite different from yourself or
anybody you know. In these situations information is your friend, spend a
little time on the internet researching the areas you want to look at and
the people you’re trying to emulate.

The more you learn the better your character is likely to be, but for most
characters a few pages of Wikipedia is probably sufficient. This does refer
to all areas of your character, lots of people are good at doing a bit of
research if they want their character to be say a doctor. But it’s a lot
rarer to see people do research before involving a character in a same sex
relationship or making a model or musician.

So that’s characterization, it’s also largely about practice, taking criticism
and learning from others, but it’s also very much about putting the work in
before you make the character and about really being able to take a step
back and thinking about the other players, who are your audience, and how
you can deliver a realistic and interesting character for them.

Once you have mastered both RP writing and characterization, the RP world
will be your proverbial oyster.

Society positions define the political and philosophical positions of
societies.
Societies without any real goals, or with goals that would be pursued by
people even if the group did not exist, have a hard time attracting backing
from the wider supernatural community, similar to how a political party
might not get many donations if they had no manifesto or their manifesto was
for people to shower regularly.

Pro-Supernatural:

These societies want to make things better for supernatural people compared
to mundanes. It might be that they believe supernaturals currently have
things worse and their efforts are to try and balance things out, but
especially at higher levels of belief, is more often about wanting to make
mundanes more of a second class citizen. They may encourage shadow
supernatural governments that manipulate the mundane government, or endorse
supernatural laws that make using powers against mundanes legal.

Anti-Supernatural:

The inverse of the pro-supernatural groups these want to make things better
for mundanes compared to supernaturals. Sometimes because they think
they’re worse off, other times because they just want humans to be better
off. They typically try to endorse supernatural laws that strictly prohibit
the use of supernatural abilities on normal people, and may even want to
keep watch lists of supernaturals and treat them as criminals.

Spiritual:

These groups typically want to see technology play a smaller role in
people’s lives compared to more traditional or spiritual activities. They
are generally opposed to dense urban centers and want significant
restrictions or oversight on new technological development. They are also
often opposed to free market capitalism and industrial development.

Material:

These groups usually want more technological and industrial development.
They are usually for free market capitalism and want less hurdles in the way
of scientific and financial progress. While they are not necessarily
anti-environment they usually promote more planned, scientific approaches to
environmental problems.

Combative:

These groups want to see combat or direct conflict resolve differences.
This usually means less complicated laws with people having more
responsibility to protect themselves as well as not prohibiting violence as
a means of conflict resolution in the supernatural world. Combatively
powerful individuals are usually given more important positions within the
shadow governments they form. Their shadow governments are also usually
very martial in design.

Manipulative:

These groups want to see combat used less for conflict resolution and
instead have legal procedures, diplomacy or social manipulation used. They
tend to have harsher rules against open violence, but more evolved
procedures for dealing with problems or attacking enemies with legal, social
or diplomatic measures. Clever and cunning individuals are usually given
more important positions within the shadow governments they form.

Autocratic:

These groups support inequality in government, generally supporting
dictatorships, oligarchies, aristocracies and similar systems of
determination in which a few decide for the many.

Democratic:

These groups support equality in decision making, generally supporting
various types of democracy both in their own organizations and in the
territories they control.

Anarchistic:

These groups tend to support very little law, both in the supernatural world
and the territories they control. Usually very anti-regulation and
supporting of smaller governments with more individual freedom and
determination.

Lawful:

These groups tend to support very robust legal systems and regulations both
in the supernatural world and in territories they control. This might still
mean that in a corrupt society mundanes and weaker individuals have no
rights or legal protections, but it will mean those that do have legal
protections will have very stringent and robust forms.

Neutral:

When a society is neutral on a particular position that means they wish
things to stay as they are. They will generally fight against efforts to
change things by either other side and will work to establish infrastructure
that makes that change more difficult.

Haven is a modern, paranormal horror game set in the city of New Haven, a city
that exists in the liminial space between worlds with an unclear origin.

Haven is a horror setting in which the foundational principle is that power
equals corruption. It is not just a saying that power corrupts in this world it
is an unbreakable metaphysical law. All the most powerful individuals are
corrupt and so are most of the more powerful organizations.

The two primary themes of the game are `1Heroic Horror and `1Gothic Horror.

Heroic Horror is a term that refers to horror settings in which heroism is
still possible and, at least somewhat, effective. Unlike in some horror genres
where characters can only hope to survive their antagonists in heroic horror
it is possible to defeat them and improve the state of the world. It differs
from standard heroic fantasy in that the victories characters achieve are
small scale and the overall state of the world is never meaningfully moved to
a just or orderly standard. In heroic fantasy characters generally protect
a basically just and moral world from being corrupted, in heroic horror they
are just trying to stop an immoral and corrupt world from getting worse. The
aesthetic of heroes in heroic horror is much closer to resistance fighters than
soldiers or police.

Gothic Horror is a term that refers to a genre of horror in which supernatural
elements function as metaphors for real world psychological or social conflicts.
It also has a heavy emphasis on conveying a general feeling of unease or haunting.
In Haven all the Demons, Gods, Fae etc used to be human, and many supernatural
elements function as exaggerations of real human traits or what-ifs that can
function as the basis for psychological exploration.

It’s important to keep these themes in mind while playing, as all the mechanics
and lore are written with this in mind and you will find your play experience
frustrating if you are constantly trying to fight against the design of the
game.

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