The World of Darkness Megathread pt.IV: Mo' Mummy Mo' Problems

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Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Halloween Jack posted:

Promethean, Mage, Hunter, and their baby-killing retainer with Vigor and Celerity and Fighting Style: Boxing.

What the christ!? You ask? Good question! Welcome to the...

What?

Step into the World of Darkness; a reflection of our own modern world...and yet...subtly darker. Shadows deeper, nights longer, the howls and whispers from alleys and streets more forlorn. A game of Modern Horrors.

How it works
The new WoD rules are much more streamlined than the previous system. The Failure rules have changed and the "10-again" rule has been added, in that a "10" indicates a re-roll and the "10" still counts as a success. If another "10" is rolled, this step is repeated until anything but a "10" is rolled. Exceptional Successes are indicated by having five or more successes on the action, and can be regulated by the Storyteller. Dramatic Failures are now only possible on "chance" die rolls; when a dice pool is reduced by penalties to zero or less, a single chance die is rolled. If a 10 is rolled, it is a success (and as before, rerolled), if the result is less than 10 but not 1, then it is a simple failure. On a chance die, if the roll is a 1, then it is a Dramatic Failure, which is usually worse than a normal failure of the action, and is regulated by the Storyteller (although examples of Dramatic Failures in certain situations are occasionally given).

The game also features a much simplified combat system. In the old system each attack made during a combat scene could easily involve 4 separate rolls ( :suicide:

) and in many cases required more due to supernatural abilities possessed by the characters. Combat scenes involving large numbers of combatants could take a very long time to resolve. The new system requires only one roll which is adjusted by the defensive abilities of the person being attacked and represents both the success and failure of the attack and the damage inflicted because of it, (indicated by number of successes).

Why it's awesome

World of Darkness is split up into several gamelines, they take a modular, toolbox approach to gaming.
You can include some, or all of the splats into one giant clusterfuck of awesome. Or just use the core rules and gameline of your choice. It boils down to basically:

World of Darkness Core:
you can play just normal people dealing with and fighting hosed up monsters. The core book is required for all the other gamelines because it explains 90% of the mechanics every character needs. But they also have a huge number of other books to go with it like

Armory, and Armory reloaded, Dogs of War, Precinct 13, etc.- stat blocks and alternate mechanic ideas for pretty much any kind of weapon, vehicle, or other you might use to kick some rear end. As well as books about how different professions like the military or police might handle the WoD.

Antagonists, second sight, etc. - I won't list them all, but they basically expand on ideas that you can use in your games, they can be pretty hit or miss, but just post a question and you'll get everyone telling you their favorites. Demons, ghosts, monsters that don;t fit the other games, weird poo poo you read in a folklore or mythology book; it all goes here. If it doesn't exist it's easy as pie to stat it up for your own games.

:siren:

The Gamelines :siren:

Vampire: The Requiem � you are a vampire, go forth and be emo, stab your friends in the back (or front) and drink blood.

Werewolf: The Forsaken � you can turn into a wolfy killing machine, but you must find a balance between your humanity and animal sides. While at the same time being border patrol for the spirit world to keep them out of ours.

Mage: The Awakening � You're a wizard 'arry! Seriously though, you are an heir to the magic of atlantis, you can reshape reality to your will, but reality hates you and will try to kill you for it. Join the Seers.

Promethean: The Created You are a Golem, or a Frankenstein. Reality hates you more than it hates Mages, but you just soldier on and try to become a real boy.

Hunter: The Vigil saddle up and kill you some monsters, try not to become when while you're staring into the abyss. You're basically a normal dude.

Changeling: The Lost You used to be Human until a Fae snatched you and took you to arcadia to be a slave, you escaped back to the world, but you're different, the world is different, and you're terrified daddy is gonna show up and take you back.

Geist: The Sin-Eaters You died, and made a deal with a ghosty to come back, but you have to do what the ghosty says. You're basically The Crow.

Mummy: The Curse See pg. XX :v:

Wondering which books are worth it to pick up? Wondering which books are safe to skip? Well you're in luck! Here's the opinions of some random rear end in a top hat!

Etherwind posted:

Running Mage? You'll want to read...

In order of importance:

Required
Mage: the Awakening
Tome of the Mysteries
Sanctum and Sigil

Recommended
Astral Realms
Summoners
Seers of the Throne
The Adamantine Arrow / The Free Council / The Guardians of the Veil / The Mysterium / The Silver Ladder

Potentially Worthwhile
Secrets of the Ruined Temple
Tome of the Watchtowers
Keys to the Supernal Tarot
Magical Traditions
Legacies: the Sublime / Legacies: the Ancient / Grimoire of Grimoires
Banishers

Finally, if you want to rewrite the game, maybe the Mage Chronicler's Guide.

Edit: To explain the recommended list, the Astral Realms and Summoners book vastly expand the playground for Mages, the Seers of the Throne actually gives form to the poorly sketched write-up in the other books to the point that they become interesting antagonists, and the order books expand on what's written in the core book in a big way without revolutionising them in the same way that the Seers of the Throne book does.

The worthwhile books are all useful, in their own way, but your mileage may vary.

It's also worth reading Appendix I in Werewolf: the Forsaken, since it explains the Shadow Realm really well.

Etherwind posted:

Ages ago I said I'd do a "must read" list for each of the game lines. Truth is, I totally forgot about it. Let's go some way toward fixing that, and start with Changeling:

quote:
Running Changeling? You'll want to read...

In order of importance:

Required
Changeling: the Lost

Recommended
Winter Masques / Rites of Spring
Dancers in the Dusk / Swords at Dawn / Equinox Road
Lords of Summer
Goblin Markets

Potentially Worthwhile
Night Horrors: Grim Fears
Autumn Nightmares

I can't stress enough that the entire game line is really loving good, so you won't go wrong reading everything on the recommended reading list. The reason "Lords of Summer" and "Goblin Markets" are bottom of that list is because their contents aren't really revolutionary, but they're still solid. Both books on the "Potentially Worthwhile" list are supplements full of antagonists, so your mileage may vary.

Then Promethean:

quote:
Running Promethean? Of course not, nobody runs Promethean; it's the best game you'll never play. Still, you'll want to read...

In order of importance:

Required
Promethean: the Created

Recommended
Strange Alchemies
Magnum Opus (Special note: has legitimately excellent fiction throughout)
Pandora's Book

Potentially Worthwhile
Saturnine Night

Promethean is fantastic, but suffers from the fact that it's very difficult to tell compelling stories with more than one player character. It's fundamentally a game about personal journeys, and even the fiction in the books reflects this.

And Hunter:

quote:

Running Hunter? You'll want to read...

In order of importance:

Required
Hunter: the Vigil

Recommended
Night Stalkers
Witch Finders
Slasher
The Horror Recognition Guide (Special note: book of pure fiction, but it brilliantly sets the tone)

Potentially Worthwhile
Compacts and Conspiracies
Spirit Slayers
Any other World of Darkness game line.

Hunter is probably the easiest game to run, and each of the supplements basically serves as a toolbox for creating games based around certain types of monster. The two books on the "Potentially Worthwhile" list are still good, with the former expanding the compacts and conspiracies in the core line and the latter dealing with spirits and werewolves, but neither of them is particularly inspired, and some of the ideas in compacts and conspiracies are pretty underwhelming.

If Error 404 ends up putting these in the opening posts, please point out that they're just my opinion, and not the consensus of the thread. I wouldn't like people to read these and think they're anything other than the thoughts of some random rear end in a top hat.

Volume posted:

Couldn't help but notice that the OP is lacking a "Must Read" list for Werewolf so I thought I'd try my hands at making one. Yes this is the whole werewolf line but seeing how they ended the line, I might as well list them.

Not really in order of importance beyond the Required/Recommended/Potentially Worthwhile:

Required

Werewolf: The Forsaken - Obvious reason

The Rage - The first chapter does a great job of explaining how the different tribes think, operate, and judge renown. Each tribe section also has little blurbs of each auspice and how they fill their role in the tribe along, The next chapter has a list of gifts, fetishes, and merits that are rather neat. The third chapter is a look at werewolves in different parts of the world. Not that needed but still kind of cool

Lore of the Forsaken - Takes a much more in depth look at the spiritual side of Werewolf. How they deal with spirits, how they interact with their totems and tribe totems. What Luna means to different werewolves.

Recommended
The Pure - If you can find it and are planning on a Pure heavy game, this book will be your bible. Fully expands the three Pure tribes into living, breathing, motivated characters along with brand new gifts, fetishes, and rites to wreck your players poo poo up.

Predators - This book is really more of a bestiary than anything else. Spirits, Ridden, Hosts, and some rather unique monsters. The reason I include it is because when I first started playing werewolf, spirits confused the ever lasting gently caress out of me. Book of Spirits just made that even worse. This book however cleared everything right the gently caress up.

Tribes of the Moon - A more in depth look at the tribes, customs, and histories. Sadly a lot of the information is redundant if you've already read The Rage but it should help you better grasp your favorite tribe.

Potentially Worthwhile

Signs of the Moon - A mostly fluff book that takes a closer look at the Auspices. The main selling point is new player options like Aspects. However since Lore of the Forsaken, The Rage,and Tribes of the Moon all cover the Auspices in some form or another, this book also feels rather redundant.

Blood of the Wolf - A very neat book that takes a close look at a werewolves biology. Ever wonder where food a werewolf has eaten goes when he shifts? No of course not but this book tells you. This book also goes into the problems wolves will encounter living in the city, dealing with humanity, and struggles of day to day life. New rules for Wolf-blooded as well

Territories - Player options for territories along with rules as to how to represent them sheet and story wise.

War Against the Pure - Tactics, battle plans, and story hooks for fighting the pure. Also has rules for engaging in huge wars against the Pure.

Lodges: The Faithful/Lodges: The Splintered- Simple player options for Lodges

Blasphemies - Like the Lodge books but more for antagonists. Takes a closer look at Bale Hounds and their powers.

Night Horrors: Wolfsbane - Nothing to really say here. Just a list of antagonists and story plots to torment your players with.

And now some words about how World of Darkness owns:

Werewolf

�Liberal L33T� posted:

Here's my Werewolf-Fight Club spergathon, since someone requested it

quote:
Anyway, one movie that occurs to me as being good for representing Werewolf without explicitly being about werewolves is Fight Club. It centers around a man who has a certain primal savagery beating within him that makes him incapable of living a docile life of consumerism. There's something deeply, fundamentally unsatisfying about modern capitalist existence to Jack, and it tears him apart until he learns that what he's been missing is raw physical and emotional struggle. When he gets into a fight, it's the first time he's ever really felt alive; he bounces back quickly from injury, encouraging him to push his own limits further and further as he founds an underground society, a pack of savage brawlers that society does not, cannot understand. He's guided by an anthropomorphic embodiment of all his frustration and post-modern existential claustrophobia, a being that is genius in its own way yet utterly alien in its motivations, seemingly made of pure untamed emotion. Jack sees himself as being dragged along for the ride most of the way and only belatedly realizes that he's become a monster; he finally banishes his insane guide by making peace with his own savage nature but refusing to let it control him.
Really, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

It's the only movie not explicitly about werewolves that I can compare to W:tF, but I think it's a good one.

edit: Oh yeah, and don't forget that the way that others are initiated into the savage warrior society is by having a symbolic injury inflicted on them by the leader, suddenly revealing their true nature in a rush of pain and unrestrained emotion, transforming the new recruit forever... yeah, I'll stop now.

Mage:

�CharlieFoxtrot� posted:

Most representations of magic anywhere you see -- other games, books, movies -- are very, very narrow. And they have to be, because if you take things to their logical conclusions, you'd be experiencing stories about utterly frightening and incomprehensible alien entities. You can create energy from oblivion? Of course you're going to use it to sling fireballs and nothing else. Gravity is just a slider setting that you can bend to your will, and you're going to use it to play a loving sport? You and the others around you can step outside of time, render distance meaningless, and end life with the speaking of a single word, and somehow your psychology and society is organized no differently than the mundane world? Bullshit.

Mage lets you go beyond that. It has many interlocking themes, but one is the hope and potential for limitless growth. We all start life as babies, mewling and crying, barely sensate and driven by unformed instincts. Some of those babies grow into scientists who are on the bleeding edge of discerning the building blocks of the universe, into artists who can channel raw passion and longing and emotion into artefacts that make the souls of the masses ache and leap and laugh, into leaders who galvanize the multitudes into action in service of a higher and intangible ideal.

To Mages they are all still babies.

For a Mage, each new discovery is paradigm shift upon paradigm shift, changing the way she views the world utterly and irrevocably. And each step along that path of power draws her away from not only other Sleepers, but other Mages as well. (As an aside, I think that's one of the key advantages Awakening has over Ascension, in that progression leads to isolation and differentiation. Whereas in Ascension as you grow in power you learn that everything agglomerates together. So you're murdering and rending reality... over cosmetics?)

The House of Ariadne knows that the city, that glorious jumble of stone and electricity and flesh, has its own soul -- and it's singing to us. The Blank Badges know that identity is a function of others' perceptions, and seize control of it in service of a permanent revolution beyond mundane ken. The Imagineers have perceived that we are all made of thoughts, and try to isolate that to the point of transcendence.

But the world that would be the Mages' playground is governed by unknowable and insidious entities that shackle souls with an omnipresent Lie, and they are bound by a system that pushes back as they probe the frontiers of the mind and reality. They are constantly reminded that power and knowledge comes with limits and costs. And they perceive that they are trapped in a system that threatens to plunge everything they know into Abyss after Abyss.

For example, there exists a book, incomplete. It exists in snippets and fragments, in intrusive thoughts that appear ex nihilo in random people. If they were ever to be collected and completed, they would be an Abyssal entity that exists as an entire universe, erasing all of history and rewriting it into a demonic, tormented hellscape.

Confronted with this friction and with this forbidden knowledge, some Mages go mad. Some forsake all semblance of human morality. Some search for a way out. And some choose to fight.

Honestly, sometimes I think that Awakening leans so heavily on Atlantis because leading off with Gravity's Rainbow isn't the best way to move product.

tl;dr: Doctor Manhattan is an Archmage

Etherwind posted:

No. If your adventure can be broken like that, you aren't running a proper game of Mage. Consequentially, you can't just take an adventure for something like Vampire or Werewolf, increase the difficulty and then make it a Mage adventure.

Mage requires you to actually ask "What are the themes and ideas the party will be tackling?" and then set up a series of actors and influences that will be playing them out, with the right flexibility to respond to player improvisation. If it's a high powered game and your players are going for it, you should be prepared for them to venture into the Anima Mundi beyond the Collective Unconsciousness of mankind and wrestle with the concept of Electricty in order to convince it to cause a cost-length blackout, even if you just expected them to cut the power to an apartment block using a pair of pliers.

Promethean:

�Mikan� posted:

Problem with Promethean is that to play it well, get a lot out of the setting and have an enjoyable game you need The Perfect RPG Group.
You need players who are confident and comfortable exploring potentially offensive concepts without being creepy assholes. You need players who enjoy philosophy and psychology and religion without being pretentious. Players who can do the whole childlike wonder thing without coming off as cheesy and pathetic. People who can get immersed in a depressing world without getting too caught up in it, who don't let it affect them outside of the game.
And the Storyteller needs to be twice as good.

A lot of that is true for all the nWoD games but I think it applies most to Promethean. It's a well written line with awesome potential but it seems like it demands a lot more from the group than other games.
Promethean owns, is what I'm saiyan

Changeling:

Etherwind posted:

Changeling is a game about surviving abuse. When you strip away all the magic and myth and get to the root of the game's metaphor, you essentially play as people who have been broken by abuse and are trying to pick up the pieces and carry on. Some people find this idea a bit strange for escapist gaming, but it's got a lot of potential: in Changeling, more than I think any other game line, who your character is and how they see themselves matters on a very fundamental level, and the primary source of drama is their life and their problems rather than an external force.

The fact that their life now includes all the weirdness and wonder of Grimm's Fairy Tales only adds to the fun. Changelings were ordinary people, at least until they attracted the attention of one of the Gentry: also known as the Fair Folk, the True Fae, the Lords and Ladies of Arcadia. Having been snatched away by the True Fae, they were subjected to terrific traumas in a land of dreams - mostly nightmares - that defied any logic or reason, and in order to survive they gave up part of themselves to its Wyrd. In doing this they changed, becoming more like the madness of the Fairies, more like the creatures that stole them away and kept them captive. Most Changelings never escape, but some do, and fewer still manage to make it all the way back to the world they left behind, there to discover that an imposter - some magical Fetch - has been living their life for them. Worse, some Changelings arrive to find that time in the real world has not matched Arcadia, and they are either far too old or far too young for the lives they lost.

Understandably, Changelings are a bit mad. The trauma is world-shattering in the purest sense, and represents a clear break with the life they had before. A core theme of Changeling is that the abused can never return to the way things were, and the game's ideas enforce this, forcing the characters to confront their abuse in one way or another. Paranoia is another major theme of Changeling, with the perpetual threat of the Lords and Ladies looming large over the escapees, along with the suspicion that many of their fellow Changelings are still in league with their captors, granted freedom for the express purpose of capturing and returning escaped slaves. To combat this paranoia - and these real dangers - Changelings in a local area band together in loose-knit support groups called Freeholds, partly to defend against the Gentry and more actively to help keep each other sane. These have political factions and dramas that are as much spun from fairytale stories as they are from personal antagonism and ego, very much like the old Irish legends of heroes and their foibles. In any given Freehold, there are usually four factions:

The Spring Court, the Court of Desire, allied with the season of birth; a bunch of hedonists that try to party to forget the pain, and also to deny the effects that their trauma has had on them.

The Summer Court, the Court of Wrath, allied with the season of warmth; a group of very angry men and women who want to fight and hurt and kill the things that hurt them, and defend others from their predations.

The Autumn Court, the Court of Fear, allied with the season of death; mystics and magicians who recognise that, for all their time in Arcadia hurt them, there is wonder to be found in the magic of Fae, and power in their secrets.

The Winter Court, the Court of Sorrow, allied with the season of cold; fearful and afraid, they seek to hide from the terrible things that stole them away, and to mourn the loss of the life they once led.

These factions are more than political groups or ideologies, but represent actual pacts with the very concept of the seasons, from which their adherents derive mystical power, foremost among which is occlusion that helps hide them from the Gentry. In maintaining this pact, the Changelings agree that the rulership of their Freehold must follow the progression of the seasons, with each Seasonal Court reigning over the Freehold as their associated season waxes and wanes (other, foreign lands have similar traditions and contracts, such as with the cardinal directions).

This, in a nutshell, describes the weird, schizophrenic life of Changelings. Part human, they band together in support groups and try to pick up the pieces of their life and carry on; partly fae, they must adhere to strange rituals and contracts that empower them and defend them from the supernatural. Their society reflects this, and openly shows the discord, confusion and contradiction that goes to the heart of every Changeling.

Life isn't fair, for Changelings, but it is magical. Maddeningly, terrifyingly magical.

Hunter:

Maddman posted:

Gonna make an effort at explaining why Hunter owns so much.

The World of Darkness is a scary, violent place. Vampires lurk in the cities, werewolves roam the countryside, and stranger things lurk in dark corners of the world. Humanity remains ignorant of these threats and willfully so. The truth that we are an irrelevancy at best and cattle at worst to beings far more powerful that we dare to imagine is just too depressing and terrifying for most people to deal with. The vampires don't really need their Masquerade that they're so worried about, most of humanity hides in the darkness, hoping no monster takes notice of them.

You are a candle in that darkness. You aren't willing to be food or victim any more, and load up your trunk with shotguns and talismans you aren't sure even work. You look through newspapers for stories of strange murders or unusual sightings, track down the beasts preying on the innocent, and give them a face full of double-ought buckshot. Maybe its just you and a couple of friends, doing what you can. Maybe you have a network - you're in The Union and the boys from the rail yard figured out where a vampire is hiding out and you're going to go take care of it. Or you're part of Network Zero, and plan to film a guy who can transform into a snake and upload it to YouTube.

Other Hunters are in larger organizations. Task Force Valkyrie are the military monster hunters, using big guns and black op tactics to take out the supernatural. Or you work for The Cheiron Group, a pharmaceutical corporation that pays top dollar for certain body parts or fluids from these creatures. Or you're one of the Lucifuge, a human descended from Satan himself, who has chosen to turn his demonic power against the creatures of the night.

There is a downside. You know that Nietzsche quote about staring into the Abyss? Yeah, that's you. After hunting awhile, you'll find yourself having to consider whether to burn an old lady's house down because she looked at you funny. You'll have gallons of blood on your hands, and you can tell yourself that they weren't human, but the truth is they were a little bit human, or were once human. Many of them will certainly beg for mercy like a human would.

The other downside is that you live in the real world. You have to eat, and unless you're in one of the large scale organizations, hunting doesn't pay the bills. You also don't get powers to heal you, so a fight that goes bad could mean the hospital. What you do isn't exactly legal either. The cops aren't going to care that the guy you shot in the face was possessed by a demon, and the FBI isn't going to believe your story that you needed those explosives to take out a vampire nest. A hunter's career will likely end in some monster's stomach, in prison, or in an insane asylum.

But you do these things, because unlike the majority of humanity you aren't willing to lie there and take it. You're going to take back the night for humanity, one shotgun blast at a time.

Hunter is awesome.

Demon the Fallen:

Baby Broomer posted:

A friend and I have been trying to work out, by the corebook, why a demon would be motivated to do anything besides just pretending to be Saul, manager of the Subway on 12th st. We're both stupid method actors when it comes to RPGs ("I need my character's emotions to matter!" - either one of us when playing) so we were trying to find ones besides It's A Game So Just loving Play It. This is what we've thought of so far.

Fear The Machine - As a spy game at heart DtD wants you to be paranoid of when Big G's gonna come knockin' at your door. While I don't think the God-Machine itself should ever be presented as the BBEG, the angels it creates can. So the players always have to watch where they step and how loudly they get the job done since the GM, which can be anywhere, creates the biggest source of woe and worry for the Unchained. The fear of what angels will do to you when they find you is the reason why demons want to get rid of them and the infrastructure that lets them exist.

An Experience Totally Alien - John Byrne once said "Robots can't feel love!!!" and then used his manchild rage to ruin, at the time, one of Marvel's most popular characters. Onyx Path have made a game that can be added to the list of things that make Byrne look like a doofus. Whether it's a killbot learning how to create art or that stupid story about the angel Falling because of the couple grinding on each other in a club, demons are supposed to enjoy their newfound freedom to experience all that life can offer. How does a brain originally designed for cold logic react when the blinders are taken off? The World of Darkness is scary, sure, but it's also Earth, just seen through a spooky filter. What happens after blind obedience is gone and you hug a friend? Get drunk for the first time? Feel bored? Demons have the ability to go and find out.

Hellfire, Darkfire! - Hell, the philosophy that every demon sets for themselves, is obviously important. The book won't stop talking about it. So if Hell is a goal every Rebel wants to some degree or other then the quest for Hell is more than enough to get a demon out the door. Your personal paradise won't been found listening to Stan Getz forever, you have to earn it.

Alone each of these are okay as character motivation for doing things and being in danger. But, to me, they all shine because they're supposed to bounce off each other. Fear what the angels will do, because they will take away your chance to be free. See how the new way you live your life colors how you feel about Hell. Three of the Hells in the core agree that angels won't be there, so might as well clean the place up now. And all of these can be spun around each other any which way as to why your character does what he/she does.

If haven't read Flowers of Hell yet so I don't know if it touches on any of these ideas, but just looking at corebook DtD this is what I've found. Heirs to Hell reinforces being human as enough of a reason since an angel has to Fall to be able to create new life.

Thoughts? My friend agrees with all these points but doesn't quite feel they add up to a satisfying reason for how storygaming scumbags can have fun with Demon, but I think they're just as good as how, say, VtR 2E or CtL presents themselves.

Error 404 fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Sep 1, 2014

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:23

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 18:43

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Appendix XX: Errata

YithianHistorian posted:

I'm pretty sure this thread moves faster than all of the white wolf forums combined, actually.

GETTING STARTED

The easiest way to begin is to download the free Demos.
Vampire Demo

Werewolf Demo

Mage demos
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Changeling Demo

Promethean Demo

Geist Demo

Hunter Demos
The Hunt
One Year Later

Grim posted:

So I don't know when the Onyx Path site updated their Schedule but I am super pumped about it:

November 2012 - MTAs � Convention Book: New World Order: As promised, this book is one of those in the Convention Book series that wasn�t finished when cWoD ended, and which has been clamored for ever since. 84 pages. PDF/PoD.

(plus the other three in March/June/July 2013)

May 2013 - MTAw/MTAs � Mage Translation Guide: Provides the ability to translate characters from Mage: The Ascension to Mage: The Awakening and vice versa. 50 pages. PDF/PoD.

July 2013 - DTF/DT? � Demon Translation Guide: Provides the ability to translate characters from Demon: The Fallen to Demon: The ??? and vice versa. 50 pages. PDF/PoD.

August 2013 - DT? � Demon: The ???: A new game line, answering many fan requests; a new look at those creatures of fire and darkness: fallen angels, nightmares from the nether realms, servants of the God Machine or something else entirely? Includes codified rule sets of those rules developed over the last few years including: Shards, SASs, Tiers as well as a rich background for players to immerse themselves in. 320 pages. PDF/PoD Hardcover/ Deluxe Kickstarter

quote:

CHARACTER SHEETS ARE GOOD HERE ARE SOME CHARACTER SHEETS AND STUFF:

http://sheetgen.dalines.net/wiki/WikiStart
This one is my favorite for online play. You can set up an account and save all the sheets you make, and edit them when you need to. easy to link to, and pretty good looking.

Mr.Gone's character sheets.
Bad site design with Good custom WoD character sheets in easy to print pdf format, also home to varying levels of homebrew.

infinite personae
This looks like a general sheet, I've never used it but somebody said it was cool.

quote:

Etherwind rose from his tomb to say:
XP-Based Character Generation for World of Darkness

The XP values here are derived from the equivalent value of the highest XP allotment of dots at character generation. Unused XP from each category is saved and may later be spent in conjunction with XP earned during the game to increase the relevant category (or may be totalled and spent freely, at Storyteller discretion). Unlike in standard character creation, the cost of the fifth dot is not increased.

Begin with one dot in each Attribute (this is in addition to the XP listed below):

70 XP for primary Attributes.
(�� 45 + �� 25)
55 XP for secondary Attributes.
(�� 45 + �� 10)
45 XP for tertiary Attributes.
(�� 45)

Note: Mummies buy Attributes at discount, and so instead gain 56 XP for primary Attributes (�� 36 + �� 20), 44 XP for secondary Attributes (�� 36 + �� 8) and 36 XP for tertiary Attributes (�� 36).

Begin with no dots in any Skills:

78 XP for primary Skills.
(�� 30 + �� 30 + �� 18)
48 XP for secondary Skills.
(�� 30 + �� 18)
30 XP for tertiary Skills.
(�� 30)

9 XP for 3 Skill Specialities.
(Flat cost of 3*3)

Begin with one dot in an appropriate Supernatural Ability (this is in addition to the XP listed below):

42 XP for Merits and increasing Supernatural Ability (Wyrd, Psyche, Gnosis, Azoth, Blood Potency or Primal Urge).
(Supernatural Ability �� 40 + Merit � 2)

Note: Mummies cannot increase Sekhem using Merit dots, but they can spend them to increase Pillars, which works out at an even exchange of XP under optimum conditions (Merit �� 12 = fourth dot of Other Pillar 12).

If the Storyteller wishes, they may reduce the XP Mummies gain from this stage to 32 XP (Merit �� 20 + Merit �� 12) and permit it to be spent on Pillars.

Templates and XP

Changeling
3 XP for a Skill Speciality in Athletics, Brawl or Stealth.
(Flat cost of 3)
2 XP for one dot in the Mantle appropriate to the character's Court.
(Mantle � 2)
48 XP on Contracts, at least 8 XP of which must be spent on Affinity Contracts.
(Affinity �� 12 + Non-Affinity �� 36)

Geist
36 XP on any Manifestations.
(Manifestation �� 36)
20 XP on two Keys, one of which must correspond to the Keys available to your Threshold.
(Flat cost of 10*2)

Mage
25 XP to increase Favoured Resistance Attribute.
(Attribute ��)
72 XP divided among three or four Arcana, two of which must be Ruling Arcana, with no single Arcanum higher than three dots.
(Ruling � 6 + Ruling �� 18 + Inferior �� 48)
12 XP for Rotes, none of which may be higher than their associated Arcanum.
(Flat cost of 2*6)

Mummy
20 XP for Favoured Attribute of Decree.
(Attribute �� 20)
Either:

44 XP for Pillars (only one of which may be zero dots).
(Defining Pillar �� 20 + Other Pillar �� 18 + Other Pillar � 3 + Other Pillar � 3)

Or

39 XP for Pillars (each of which must have at least one dot) and 15 XP for a bonus Utterance.
(Defining Pillar �� 12 + Other Pillar �� 18 + Other Pillar � 3 + Other Pillar � 3 + Other Pillar � 3 & Utterance 15)

In either case, no Other Pillar may be higher than the Defining Pillar.
15 XP for Soul Affinity; gain 2 XP if selection made by Storyteller.
(Affinity Favoured by decree, guild, or Judge 15)
15 XP for Guild Affinity; gain 2 XP if selection made by Storyteller.
(Affinity Favoured by decree, guild, or Judge 15)
17 XP for Affinity; gain 2 XP if selection made by Storyteller.
(Other Affinity 17)
15 XP for Utterance.
(Flat cost of 15)
20 XP to spend freely.

Promethean
22 XP on Transmutations, at least 5 XP of which must be spent on Affinity Transmutations.
(Affinity Transmutation � 5 + Non-Affinity Transmutation �� 17)

Vampire
25 XP to increase Favoured Attribute.
(Attribute ��)
30 XP, at least 10 XP of which must be spent on Clan Disciplines.
(Clan Discipline �� 30)

Werewolf
36 XP divided among Renown, with at least one dot in each of your Primary Renown types.
(Primary Renown �� 36, such as when Auspice and Tribe share Primary Renown)
51 XP divided among Gifts, with at least one gift from a list associated with Auspice, one gift from a list associated with Tribe, and no gift worth more dots than highest Primary Renown.
(Auspice �� 15 + Tribe �� 15 + Other �� 21)

Error 404 fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Feb 27, 2013

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:24

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

I've heard it gets really creepy, and/or stupid. C/D? :frogsiren:

Daeren posted:

Rule number one, kids: you have to learn to laugh at the horrible stuff, because there's so much that pretending it doesn't exist isn't gonna work.

Aw gently caress it here's the highlights reel:

Inferno, page 137 posted:

Mother May I: It is a sickening thing, the succubus,
a demon driven by Lust, yes, but often for a
very damning purpose: to have a child. By stealing the
semen of sleeping men, the succubus could impregnate
herself with a child born of true sin. Here, the Possessed
with this Vestment gains +3 Social rolls when
dealing with children. They find the character very...
parental. A dark irony, indeed.

quote:

orchiectomy; do a crime

Strontosaurus posted:

It's not that awful, guys. Stop being so dramatic. Just a little BvD.

Daeren posted:

The TV Guide now has a Blessed rating and my demonic familiar is utterly terrified of Mr. Agent.

Error 404 posted:

Mage:The Universe Is hosed And So Are You. That poo poo You Imagined On Acid?
It's Real, And It's Going To Kill You, Everything You've Ever Known,
Everything You'll Never Know, And Then The Universe is Going To Kill Itself While
You're Screaming Inside Of It II: Electric Boogaloo

quote:

The World of Darkness Megathread pt.IV: nHunters don't have time for no sissy self reflection on the grim gothic horror of your delicate skin condition, sunshine. Death to Morality scores, up with The Code.

quote:
The World of Darkness Megathread pt.IV: White Wolf seriously is like one long on-again off-again telling of The Aristocrats.

Daeren posted:

Here's a fun diversion

Count up the number of references to sex or sexuality in Changing Breeds. This includes depictions or implications of genetalia in the art

Actually don't because you'll go gibberingly insane

A_Raving_Loon posted:

All the kine down in N'Orleans like Christmas a lot,
but the Nos, who lived deep under N'Orleans, did not.
The Nos hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
And in long torpid nights, he'd forgotten the reason.
It could be perhaps that his soul felt no glee
Or perhaps side effects of old Diablaries
But I think the root cause of this terrible sin,
May have been that his blood was two ages too thin.

But, whatever the reason, his blood or his soul,
He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating N.O.
Staring up from the sewers with cold lifeless eyes,
As the kine swarmed about, as would so many flies.
For he knew every human who scrambled above
Still harboured some semblance of brotherly love.

Error 404 posted:

I'm The Nemean irl.

Etherwind posted:

Isn't XX one of the Appendices?

liesmith posted:

grown fat on the blood of a thousand dogs the unbaby strikes without mercy

MonsterUnderYourBed posted:

The World of Mage MegaMage pt. Mage: A dark mage indeed.

�Clanbook Gangrel � posted:

Undead Menses (��)
Effect: A woman�s menstruation has in some primal societies
or traditions been tied to the lunar cycles, to the tides, to magic
as a sacrifice of blood. It represents a woman at the height of her
power: she is fertile and capable of the creation of life, symbolized
by the seemingly supernatural ability to bleed without being weakened
or dying. It�s also a grave taboo in many cultures, particularly
those that are male-dominated. The blood is seen as threatening.
It is indicated as shameful, arguably because men seek to repress
(or simply not admit to) a woman�s power. It is blood that an
infant does not feed upon; it is blood that leaves the body and
does not create life. For some, that is frightening.

Some Savages still bleed like this regardless of (or more appropriately,
in spite of) their unliving state. The blood that flows
is black, thick, a musky elixir. It does not come once a month as
it does with humans, but instead flows whenever the vampire
wills it: by expending a point of Vitae, she may expunge this
undead menses from her body.

The blood expelled in such a way has a few different functions: if
used in the blood magic of Cr�ac, it grants the Savage a +1 bonus
to the roll to empower the ritual. If fed to a mortal being, it acts as a
mild hallucinogen (-1 to all relevant dice pools) in addition to providing
the other effects intrinsic to Vitae. Finally, the blood itself acts
as a potent marker for other Savages or those with Auspex. Marking
an area with the blood gives off a heady aroma long after the blood
dries or is washed away (for a number of weeks equal to the marking
vampire�s Resolve score). If a Gangrel vampire or a vampire possessing
any dots in Auspex comes across that mark during this time, the
vampire�s player may roll Wits + Survival to sense the mark and its
nature. Some Gangrel use their undead menses to write messages
in this way (symbols or short words) to their brethren.

Drawback: The vampire can only access this undead menses
once per day for �free.� Gaining the blood (i.e. more than a single
point of Vitae expelled) more than once per day is possible, but
the vampire feels her insides twist up and cinch, as if something
has been damaged. And it has; she takes one point of aggravated
damage per point of Vitae menses expelled beyond the first.

Daeren posted:

So one of my friends I talk about my games to commissioned someone to draw the ghouled corgi mutt with celerity in one of them, because she loved the concept so much.

Just wanted to share that.

Vermain posted:

world of darkness is about having cool powers and hulking out while trying to not go insane basically

Nicolae Carpathia posted:

and then going insane anyway

Nicolae Carpathia posted:

if it doesn't involve taking shotguns and a forces master and heading into a hipster bar owned by vampires to save a friend who's tied up in the sub-sub-sub-basement who got himself into this mess and may or may not be there involuntarily then who gives a poo poo what the nemean would do.

let's do this

Attorney at Funk posted:

sorry my necromancer is actually Your Cool Grandpa (it says so on my sheet)

Sega See D posted:

Have you ever hosed a man who can fly?

Benagain posted:

Obrimos Merit: Played by Error 404

You're a self-righteous prick with a penchant for solving all problems with fire and lasers. Your confidence in your own abilities and the rightness of your cause gives you a +1 to any roll made as a result of one of your snap judgements about good and evil.

The personification of posted:

My group currently plays a oWoD mixed group(I dont know how it works but my ST is awesome and makes it happen).

We all work at the Maltese Detective agency, resolving various paranormal investigations.

I play as Bann, an unseelie pooka changeling that spends as much time terrorizing the party with pranks as he does using them to help his goals along and tossing them a bone every once in awhile.

He's five foot even, has a pot belley, horribly crooked, yellow teeth and wears a very dirty Victorian dress suit. More or less the Mad Hatter from Alice.

Despite doing horrible things to the party such as
1) Beating the Khan PC in a bamboo sword duel by super charging my strike with a Gimmix spell, shattering the Khans ribs in doing so.
2) Throwing on of the Mage PCs through a third story window to see how/if a magic artifact worked(it did).
3) Won a foot race up ten flight of stairs against a life mage PC by using Chicanery to alter his perception so that the stair case seemed to go on forever
4) Made two PCs who hated each other in character to gently caress the poo poo out of each other by erasing their memories.
5) Made the Spirit Mage stay up for three days straight, missing out on work and utterly exhausting himself so we could find a node that I could build a freehold in

The list goes on. The greatest prank I ever pulled was when one of the Mages wantef to retire his character and make another. As a goodbye my character made a pie for him.

To start I barged into the PCs office, hoped on his desk , looked him in the eye and said "I'm going to miss our time together".

I then promptly dropped my pants and took a huge steaming poo poo in said desk. I combined fae magic to make it invisible and erase the memory immediately( for those not in the know, the memory loss is only temporary). The office is huge and has its own kitchen so I scooped the invisible turd into a pot and made the pie.

I then invited everyone in the agency up to share in the moment, though as soon as people arrived they started gagging on the rank smell of baked poo poo( the mage PC could only, smell see and taste blueberries due to more of my magic).

I presented the still warm pie to the PC and everyone watched in horror as he gobbled up his feces(Haunted Heart urge hunger----pie). There were even pictures. The memory spell wore off after day, at which point the scream unleashed from him could be heard through out the building.

I love my Pooka

tl/dr : I play a OwoD changeling prankster and hate my friends so I made one of them eat a poo poo pie.

quote:

New Merit:
Dog Fucker (�)
Effect: You may now take the Skill Specialty: loving the dog.
Drawbacks: You are now a Dogfucker.

Gravy Train Robber posted:
A frightening new addition to Ashwood Abbey

The Dogfuckers are a compact of the Ashwood Abbey Conspiracy devoted to hunting down Uratha. They have a real "hard on" () for the forsaken...a dark irony indeed.

New Profession:
Dog Fucker
Effect: You may now take the Skill Specialty: loving the dog.
Drawback: You are now a Dogfucker.

� Poodle Puffer
�� Shar-pei Stuffer
�� Dachshund Diddler
�� Rottweiler Rutter
�� Mastiff Molestor

New Endowment:

The Bad Touch
In their experiences with hunting the Uratha, many Dogfuckers have run afoul of the Uratha's spiritual attacks and totem guardians. The Bad Touch is a set of rituals developed to ward off all spiritual influences and numina in an area with a single touch or whispered word.

oh god.

Nicolae Carpathia posted:
why, why are you people doing this?

Because B vs D jokes are getting stale?

Daeren posted:

I am literally vomiting blood that is turning into bees made of blood and hate

Ferrinus posted:

[supernatural creatures] think they [possess trait], but no one is more [trait] than Mages. With this power, all Mages can

Doug Lombardi posted:

Witches get Bitches.

Reene posted:

this classic right here

quote:

MalcolmSheppard, an actual WW writer posted:
Hah! You know, the extended-roll combat system in Mirrors was partly inspired by watching 10 episodes of Grappler Baki in a row. That show is so decompressed that Baki uses maybe 1-2 moves per episode. I think there was a three ep. run entirely devoted to him applying a single standing triangle choke.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Etherwind posted:

If that was the reaction (I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume not), they'd be missing the point entirely.

Slight derail ahead, but this is relevant to the tone of the World of Darkness books, so I figure it's worth going into.

I've mentioned before on here that I'm part of a gaming society in the UK. Without going into a long explanation of what this means, we're a primarily student/post-graduate club focused on gaming, and we're affiliated to a certain University via our Student Union. The Student Union maintains its own building on campus - complete with bars and cafeteria and pool tables - and so we have access to its facilities for the purposes of booking space. Twice weekly we take up the largest space to meet and play games of various sorts (whether RPGS, board games or card games).

The membership of this society has grown over the time I've been a member, from thirty or so when I first joined to an average attendance somewhere around 120 or so gamers on a good night. We have a much larger attendance each week than the LAN and Console Gaming society has once per month, though attendance fluctuates throughout the year and can go as low as fifty or so during the summer when the University is in recess.

I'm proud to say that I've played a somewhat significant part in expanding the society, and as hard as some people might find it to believe, one of the major ways I've managed it over the past few years is by pushing against the unspoken but prevalent bullshit that festers in a lot of established gaming groups. Primarily, I'm talking about misogynistic attitudes and assumptions that make traditional, male-dominated gaming venues hostile to women.

It's not just about poo poo like outright sexual harassment (which happens way more frequently than people realise: for an extreme example, there have been multiple allegations of rape brought to the society's committee this year... more on this later). It's also sexual attitudes, and the way gaming is approached. Sexual politics matter in gaming as it is a social activity, and if that sounds ridiculous, let me run through an example of why.

(Needless to say, what follows is just my experience, so regard me as just another rear end in a top hat with an opinion.)

When a guy hears the phrase "sexmurder", he usually has a very different implicit reaction to it than a woman. Forget about all the secondary processing that happens when you think about it for a moment and then contextualise the meaning: the actual term has an immediate emotional impact based on the connotations of those words in context. For men, it's generally either neutral or (without putting value judgements on the person) positive, since sex and murder can be construed as high-testosterone, action-movie-esque subjects in our culture. Even together they aren't inherently alarming to men.

Without wishing to overly generalise, I'd suggest that most women will have a different reaction to those words in concert, one of initial alarm or even, possibly, fear. The reason for this is that we can say, just by looking at crime reports, when men are involved in scenarios comprising both sex and murder, they are usually the aggressors: women are usually the victims. To draw on an old adage, the most a [straight] man has to fear from a sexual encounter is rejection and derision, while the most a [straight] women has to fear is rape and violence.

It's much easier to be cavalier about sexual violence when you're male, as you're coming at it from the perspective that is implied to have most of the power in that type of scenario.

Now, no, I'm not suggesting that women in general are going to hear that sort of language and run for the hills. The reactions from most I've seen exposed to it in person have been a pause, followed by either incredulous laughter or a subdued shake of the head. What becomes a problem is when lots of these incidents build up, especially if it's exasperated by other people going "Oh, it's not a big deal: what's the problem? Can't you deal with it?" The sort of atmosphere fostered by those sorts of sentiment can and does put them off. It's wearying. It's bullshit they have to filter out when they're just wanting to play a game.

This is the low-level, pernicious poo poo that you have to watch for. For the record, I've not always been aware about it or taken it seriously, especially when I was new to the society.

This stuff is problematic because, when it goes uncontested, it allows more serious poo poo to be disregarded. To give an example, in previous years we had a female member who was harassed by a male member every time they met, harassed in that he'd be extremely friendly to her and expect a hug, and if he didn't receive a positive response he'd publicly guilt-trip her and make things socially awkward, to the point that she usually just complied to avoid a fuss. This stopped when another female member complained and pointed out what was actually happening: she gave him a public dressing down, called him out for being a creep. If she hadn't both a) wanted to stay and participate in the society and b) been unwilling to permit that kind of poo poo, it would likely have gone unnoticed, since nobody paid particular attention to the relationship between said creepy dude and the long-suffering woman.

Why didn't the harassed woman say anything? Because she felt that she'd be seen as a bitch, stuck-up, or a prude for complaining. The rhetoric circulating in the society had normalised that sort of imposition. And yeah, the relatively trivial poo poo like sexualised violence had contributed to that normalisation.

(A few of you might be thinking "Well, she should have spoken up, it's her own fault." Others might think "Hey, I know women who are cool with all that banter, therefore it's fine." The key to both lies in selection bias: the only women who're going to hang around are the women who're either willing to put up with it or who have no problem with it... for whatever reasons.)

These sort of low-level problems do not happen as much today (I cannot say for sure that they've stopped entirely). Our membership has increased dramatically, and become a much better community to game in, after a push back against the sort of atmosphere I've outlined above. We've more than quadrupled our active membership, and key to this has been the fact that an increasing percentage of our members have been women, who increasingly feel like the society is a comfortable place to be.

This year, our new membership sign-ups were dominated by women for the first time. Before signing on existing members, our intake took 60 women to 50 men. While maybe only twenty or so of those total new sign-ups have started attending regularly, about a third of those have been women. To make the difference clear, we started with around thirty members, of which maybe three were women; active membership is now roughly a quarter to a third female, out of 120 or so, depending on time of year.

So, coming toward the end of this ramble: I mentioned earlier that multiple accusations of rape have been brought to the society this year, and you're probably wondering how what I've said can possibly square with that.

To clarify, the accusations have been that certain male members of the society have, outside the society, sexually assaulted some of the female members. The female members have brought the matter to the attention of the society's committee because they feel the society is not a safe space while the alleged rapists remain (this has been matched by them taking the matter to the police). They've petitioned the society to remove the members in question, and so the accused have been suspended pending the outcome of criminal proceedings.

Here's the really eye-opening part. It turns out that the reason they brought this to the committee is that they felt comfortable knowing that their allegations would be treated seriously. This is a direct product of both the increase in female membership and also the change it atmosphere regarding how gender politics are regarded. This led to other female members, who have been part of the society for longer, privately confiding that they've known similar incidents happening in the past and not being reported or dealt with, precisely because of anticipation of a hostile reception.

This leaves me in the (admittedly subjective) position of seeing a chain between creepy/misogynistic content in game materials > normalisation of those attitudes in player discourse > normalisation of the underlying attitudes in player culture > marginalisation of female membership > low-level harassment going unreported > sex crimes going unreported.

No, I'm not laying this all at the feet of poo poo like "sexmurder"... but in aggregate, it's an issue. Given that it really doesn't take much effort to cut that creepy poo poo out, I find it really hard to take that in stride, especially since every terrible thing I have to explain or rationalise away is another opportunity for a good, nice, friendly person to go "This poo poo is terrible, I'm out."

So yeah, it's not about my personal sensibilities. I personally don't find the term bothersome, and the reason I dislike it is because I've seen the wider implications, one terrible "joke" at a time.

Golly mister! This sounds like the greatest game of all time...

Homebrew

The Wondersaurus posted:

We're just one thread that prefers to bullshit back and forth instead of compile our rules fixes/explanations/hacks/whatever into an easily referenced document and do the actually hard and thankless work of fixing nWoD.

WoD is fun and all, but I'm always blabbering on about how the toolboxy, DIY stuff makes the ST system into the new GURPs (In a good way).
With a little work you can run ANYTHING in this system.

So this section is for links to cool homebrew settings/games/campaign stuff. So what sort of homebrewing (aside from mechanics adjustments and rules hacks) have all of you folks been doing?

Even on the forums, Mugrim has run at least one really loving awesome homebrew in ST. (thread in archive)

Ferrinus and VoxPVoxD have done an almost complete rewrite of Mage from base principles. It fuckin owns and anyone who likes Mage needs to loving read this ASAP.
CLICK THIS, MOTHERFUCKER.

Error 404 fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 6, 2014

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:24

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

I thought you'd have more quotes from Malcolm in there.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:36

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Kavak posted:

I thought you'd have more quotes from Malcolm in there.

Malcolm's a cool dude, I don't want us to be a total dick to him, so I just grabbed one I thought was really funny.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:39

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Error 404 posted:

Malcolm's a cool dude,

We have very different ideas of what constitutes a cool dude, but I'm hoping that we can avoid starting this thread off on a lovely foot and talk about what makes this system great, rather than who/what makes it actively less fun.

Error 404 posted:

Last thread, I very briefly mentioned how I made a Homebrew D&D setting for my group (yes Yawgmoth, I'll get you the WoD&D stuff ASAP)

Yeeeeeeessssssssssssss

# ? Sep 1, 2012 18:52

Ride The Gravitron: May 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Ah another thread, another 200 pages of mage talk.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:06

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Does anybody else really hate the name "Classic World of Darkness" and "cWoD"? We've been saying OWOD for nearly a decade, that's the name of it.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:15

Magil of Shadow: Dec 28, 2009; Proposal: Form a friendly relationship immediately.

"You have GOT to be kidding me"

Volume posted:

Ah another thread, another 200 pages of mage talk.

And about ten of Vampire. The rest will be people wanting to set up a Changeling or Promethium game, but nothing comes of it.

Pope Guilty posted:

Does anybody else really hate the name "Classic World of Darkness" and "cWoD"? We've been saying OWOD for nearly a decade, that's the name of it.

Isn't oWoD the official term for it as well? This isn't like Classic/New Coke, so why do people insist on treating it like it?

Magil of Shadow fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Sep 1, 2012

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:15

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Volume posted:

Ah another thread, another 200 pages of mage talk.

Well Mummy is coming out soon, so maybe we can talk about that for a couple of pages?

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:15

InfiniteJesters: Jan 26, 2012

I paid little attention to WOD before I noticed this thread.

After reading the first two posts in this thread I want to play the poo poo out of Hunter. I also want to remove my eyes. I'm not sure which order to do this in.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:27

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

InfiniteJesters posted:

I paid little attention to WOD before I noticed this thread.

After reading the first two posts in this thread I want to play the poo poo out of Hunter. I also want to remove my eyes. I'm not sure which order to do this in.

This right here, best compliment I think I could have expected.
Also, remove one eye, and then play hunter forever.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:29

InfiniteJesters: Jan 26, 2012

Error 404 posted:

This right here, best compliment I think I could have expected.
Also, remove one eye, and then play hunter forever.

You're welcome! :haw:

Also, best idea: Turn the cast of Scooby Doo into Hunter characters.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 19:43

Baby Babbeh: Aug 2, 2005; It's hard to soar with the eagles when you work with Turkeys!!

InfiniteJesters posted:

You're welcome!

Also, best idea: Turn the cast of Scooby Doo into Hunter characters.

Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr4Ek08FEFs

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:00

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Pope Guilty posted:

Does anybody else really hate the name "Classic World of Darkness" and "cWoD"? We've been saying OWOD for nearly a decade, that's the name of it.

YES. It really feels like someone said "okay everyone calls it old world of darkness, so of course we can't officially call it that." Annoys the piss out of me doubly so because there's an IRC channel I hang out in that has a guy who plays dumb and then goes "oh, you mean cWoD? :smug:

" whenever I mention anything oWoD. He also throws a loving tantrum whenever anyone does anything that isn't "allowed by canon" in a nWoD game, which is anything not expressly presented as an option in a nWoD book, to give an idea of what kind of person he is.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:02

InfiniteJesters: Jan 26, 2012

Baby Babbeh posted:

Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr4Ek08FEFs

...

Be right back, flogging myself not having watched Venture Bros. yet.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:08

crime fighting hog: Jun 29, 2006; I only pray, Heaven knows when to lift you out

Hooray new thread!

I'm currently reading the VTR book and rolling up a Mekhet who was a corrupt prohibition agent in life and a enforcer in death. Would the Mekhet clanbook be worth reading? I assume there is one. Or the Invictus book?

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:25

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

crime fighting hog posted:

Hooray new thread!

I'm currently reading the VTR book and rolling up a Mekhet who was a corrupt prohibition agent in life and a enforcer in death. Would the Mekhet clanbook be worth reading? I assume there is one. Or the Invictus book?

Yes, the Mekhet clanbook is pretty good. I've never read the Invictus book though.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:28

Fuzz: Jun 2, 2003; Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Any reason the oWoD stuff is completely omitted from the OPs? Not saying it needs to be covered in detail, but since the 20th Anniversary Editions are out/coming out, they should probably be briefly summarized, maybe with an explanation for what changes are made and such.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:51

TheManFromFOXHOUND: Nov 5, 2011

I'm currently running the Changeling demo for my group but I'm not so sure how to take the story after that. Does anyone have any suggestions or examples for continuing the game? For reference we are using the example characters provided in the demo and all of my players are new to WoD/RPGs in general.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 20:53

Angry Guacamole: Dec 2, 2007; Oh God run away

Well, seeing the new thread has inspired me to try getting back in to this in earnest. I need to roll up my arsonist biker chick hunter again and find myself a game. Also, thanks for posting about the Celerity Corgi in the op, I needed something to give to the Toreador primogen in a thing I'm doing as a pet.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 21:07

Dave Brookshaw: Jun 27, 2012; No Regrets

Hello folks.

Those of you with WW Forum accounts might have seen this already, but early kinda-open playtest versions of the Vampire Physical Disciplines (Celerity, Potence and Vigor) are up there, for people to look over, try out and comment as you will.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66276

GentlyCaressMurder: Buy This! is the current working title for what's on the release schedule as "Strix Chronicles", by the way.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 22:08

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Please, please, please make Vigor and Resilience reflexive actions, even to use their amped-up damage conversion effects. Vampires should never visibly have to "power up" before they can be amazingly strong or tough.

The "interrupt" thing is probably too strong, especially in combination with the grapple rules. I'd put Celerity's initiative bonus under the "always" column and let you activate it with vitae for a 1/turn speed boost. Or maybe, like, you can use it to force a successful attack on you to be immediately rerolled, or similar.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 22:48

crime fighting hog: Jun 29, 2006; I only pray, Heaven knows when to lift you out

I agree, even on the face of it, out of turn actions that could crush an opponent's turn sounds like it can easily be broken.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 22:58

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Also, I realize that commenting on this is premature given that I haven't seen the rest of the system, but turning a weapon's equipment bonus into extra damage instead of extra dice really fucks with anyone who doesn't want to carry Battle Ax (+5, 9-again) around, unless you give people some way to buy themselves a fake "weapon bonus" that doesn't actually stem from their having a weapon.

Is Resilience's active effect supposed to be "Ignore Resilience damage per scene" or "Ignore the first Resilience damage from any source of damage"?

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Sep 1, 2012

# ? Sep 1, 2012 23:11

Ride The Gravitron: May 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Dave Brookshaw posted:

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66276

GentlyCaressMurder: Buy This! is the current working title for what's on the release schedule as "Strix Chronicles", by the way.

Why is it called Sexmurder? Oh right, cause every White Wolf writer is a creepy gently caress.

If we're gonna be linking to fun projects on the White Wolf forums, there's some dude going around re-writing Werewolf Gifts so they don't suck.

Werewolf: The Forsaken

The Rage

Personally I'm liking a lot of the changes made.

# ? Sep 1, 2012 23:21

Dave Brookshaw: Jun 27, 2012; No Regrets

Because it won't actually be called that, and it's not meant as a joke? The rewrite is meant to get Vampire back to it's core of.. Vampire-ness. And yes, that means assaulting people on a nightly basis to go on existing. The codename (which I think is wearing thin by now) was meant to remind us of that.

I've seen LOOK's stuff for Werewolf (breaking my no-homebrew rule, as I'm fairly certain to never work on a Werewolf book). It's pretty drat good. Only the core WoD rulebook and Vampire are getting rules-and-chronicle books on the current schedule.

But there's always next year, and if God Machine and Whateverthevampireoneiscalled do well...

# ? Sep 2, 2012 00:01

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

I'm really excited about anything that proposes to get Vampire back to its core of Vampire-ness and/or streamline the combat system, but oh my god I want to help so bad I've thought so much about this.

Also, you folks know I'm the one who actually came up with the XP chargen system first, right

Edit: I forgot to mention this. Celerity as an interrupt is broken because in the core combat rules you can elect to attack, then move. You could stab someone and then bounce away each and every time they try to close.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Sep 2, 2012

# ? Sep 2, 2012 00:03

Fuzz: Jun 2, 2003; Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

So I got my V20 Companion... wow, short. Thing is, what's in it is all good, without a pile of canon garbage, which is what I was expecting.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 04:02

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

But Fuzz, it's all garbage mechanics we already had in various forms.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 04:20

particle409: Jan 15, 2008; Thou bootless clapper-clawed varlot!

I may have asked this in the old thread, but never followed up. I have a shitton of the old Vampire and Werewolf books. The core stuff, the clans (Lasombra, Ventrue, Werebears, etc). What's a good way to get myself updated on what's changed? Should I just be starting from scratch?

# ? Sep 2, 2012 05:51

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

Start from scratch, as everything changed.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 05:52

gtrmp: Sep 29, 2008; Oba-Ma... Oba-Ma! Oba-Ma, aasha deh!

particle409 posted:

I may have asked this in the old thread, but never followed up. I have a shitton of the old Vampire and Werewolf books. The core stuff, the clans (Lasombra, Ventrue, Werebears, etc). What's a good way to get myself updated on what's changed? Should I just be starting from scratch?

If you're talking about going from oWoD to nWoD, everything's different in nWoD. If you're just talking about the oWoD revival/20th Anniversary stuff, very little has actually changed in terms of both setting and mechanics, at least in what's seen print thus far.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 06:05

particle409: Jan 15, 2008; Thou bootless clapper-clawed varlot!

gtrmp posted:

If you're talking about going from oWoD to nWoD, everything's different in nWoD. If you're just talking about the oWoD revival/20th Anniversary stuff, very little has actually changed in terms of both setting and mechanics, at least in what's seen print thus far.

I have the original books. Guess I have to start from scratch, thanks for the info.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 07:13

Daeren: Aug 18, 2009; YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Y'all best not be implying that Eddie the Ghouled Corgi is a creepy and/or stupid idea by putting him in that third post 404 :colbert:

And let it be known that the last thread my first post was scoffing at the idea of them remaking oWoD products, and now we're in the ground floor of a thread about to celebrate nMummy and the 20th anniversary stuff for Werewolf and Mage. Every day in every way I retroactively own myself more

# ? Sep 2, 2012 07:38

Simian_Prime: Nov 6, 2011; When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

Dave Brookshaw posted:

Hello folks.

Those of you with WW Forum accounts might have seen this already, but early kinda-open playtest versions of the Vampire Physical Disciplines (Celerity, Potence and Vigor) are up there, for people to look over, try out and comment as you will.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66276

GentlyCaressMurder: Buy This! is the current working title for what's on the release schedule as "Strix Chronicles", by the way.

All good stuff. Since we're reworking Disciplines, can we please find a reworking for Protean 1? It's more of a handicap than a benefit as it is, and it outlines just how badly the Predator's Taint mechanic needs to be reworked.

I vote for Ferrinus's idea of allowing Protean 1 to grant wallcrawling abilities. It's an ability we've seen in everything from Dracula to Anne Rice, yet it never appears in Vampire unless it's a special Devotion or something. It's thematic enough that we should change it. At least just make Protean 1 somewhat useful.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 07:44

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

God, you really don't see how big the WoD was until you write it all out. Just for 1994 I still have to go through:
Clanbooks: Tremere, Ventrue, Toreador
VTES: Jyhad cards
Tribe Book: Shadow Lords
Rage Across Australia
Who's Who among Werewolves
The Apocalypse MET book
Monkeywrench Pentex
Tradition Books: Verbena, Virtual Adepts, Akashic Brotherhood
The Book of Madness
Wraith 1st Edition
Wraith Player's Kit
Face of Death
Midnight Express
Haunts
Necropolis Atlanta

And that's only Year 3/13.

EDIT;
poo poo, did any of the novels come out in 1994?

# ? Sep 2, 2012 09:50

Punting: Sep 9, 2007; I am very witty: nit-witty, dim-witty, and half-witty.

Loomer posted:

God, you really don't see how big the WoD was until you write it all out. Just for 1994 I still have to go through:
Clanbooks: Tremere, Ventrue, Toreador
VTES: Jyhad cards
Tribe Book: Shadow Lords
Rage Across Australia
Who's Who among Werewolves
The Apocalypse MET book
Monkeywrench Pentex
Tradition Books: Verbena, Virtual Adepts, Akashic Brotherhood
The Book of Madness
Wraith 1st Edition
Wraith Player's Kit
Face of Death
Midnight Express
Haunts
Necropolis Atlanta

And that's only Year 3/13.

EDIT;
poo poo, did any of the novels come out in 1994?

When you finish this, you need to publish it somehow, so us mortals can stare slack-jawed in amazement.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 10:36

Tolth: Mar 16, 2008; PÃDOPHILIE MACHT FREI

Ferrinus posted:

Please, please, please make Vigor and Resilience reflexive actions, even to use their amped-up damage conversion effects. Vampires should never visibly have to "power up" before they can be amazingly strong or tough.

The "interrupt" thing is probably too strong, especially in combination with the grapple rules. I'd put Celerity's initiative bonus under the "always" column and let you activate it with vitae for a 1/turn speed boost. Or maybe, like, you can use it to force a successful attack on you to be immediately rerolled, or similar.

They're reflexive actions in my game and it makes a lot more sense. It doesn't really work for them to require a turn of expenditure, because nWoD combat tends to last like 3 rounds most of the time and it's debatable if it's even worth spending a couple of turns buffing yourself if you're suddenly thrown into combat because you can probably get more dice worth of damage in if you just attack instead. It's also really silly for vampire fights to have a round or two of dragonball-z style powering up before combat begins.

Dave Brookshaw posted:

Hello folks.

Those of you with WW Forum accounts might have seen this already, but early kinda-open playtest versions of the Vampire Physical Disciplines (Celerity, Potence and Vigor) are up there, for people to look over, try out and comment as you will.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66276

GentlyCaressMurder: Buy This! is the current working title for what's on the release schedule as "Strix Chronicles", by the way.

Gonna give this a try in my game.

Tolth fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 2, 2012

# ? Sep 2, 2012 11:29

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 18:43

Dave Brookshaw: Jun 27, 2012; No Regrets

Simian_Prime posted:

All good stuff. Since we're reworking Disciplines, can we please find a reworking for Protean 1? It's more of a handicap than a benefit as it is, and it outlines just how badly the Predator's Taint mechanic needs to be reworked.

Protean 1 was first against the wall when the Revolution came.

We'll be redoing all of the Disciplines - it's just that Russell's asked for opinion on the 3 Physical ones first.

# ? Sep 2, 2012 12:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The World of Darkness Megathread pt.IV: Mo' Mummy Mo' Problems

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