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Josef bugman posted:Never heard of it... would you mind giving a two minute run down? The whole game book is here: https://archive.4plebs.org/dl/tg/image/1389/13/1389137565537.pdf WARNING: PRETENTIOUS
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Feb 14, 2017 00:35
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Josef bugman posted:Quick question guys, but are there any truly hopeless settings in games? Well, if you're talking about RPGs, I'd hopelessness is always contrived by definition. That's not to say that's not necessarily a bad thing (though it often can be) but that at heart you're already writing an ending of sorts, and I'm struggling to think of how that wouldn't feel contrived.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:37
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It seems like, as far as demographics are concerned, Mages should rarely ever run into other Mages to conflict with, Seer or otherwise. From MtAw 2nd ed: (Regarding Toyko, a city with 13.62 million people) "...or a majority vote from the Consilium at large. This means getting over 100 Awakened to both congregate, and agree on a single agenda. (This also assumes a unanimous vote, since over 200 Awakened reside in the metropolitan area.)" Let's assume there are 250 Diamonders. Since the Free Council is larger than any one diamond Order, 40% of that is 100. If there were an equal amount of Seers, that brings the Mage total to 600. Adding some Selesti, Tremere and other Nameless orders we'll estimate the total to be 675 since the Free Council is supposed to be the largest of any Nameless Order. That makes Mages 0.00004955947% of the population, with that estimate. Keeping that number, there are: 192 Awakened in LA. 417 Awakened in NYC. 26 Awakened in Tuscon Arizona. That seems a bit low to me, but it that roughly how it is (or should be) in the World of Darkness?
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Feb 14, 2017 00:39
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Spector29 posted:It seems like, as far as demographics are concerned, Mages should rarely ever run into other Mages to conflict with, Seer or otherwise. Demographics in the World of Darkness games have always been weird, but you're quoting from the Tokyo writeups, which are all bad, so you can ignore those numbers. The real answer is generally "whatever helps the game be most interesting."
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Feb 14, 2017 00:52
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I've always thought that between 0.5%-1% of the population being in some way supernatural (mages, werewolves, vamps, etc.) was a good starting point.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:00
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Joe Slowboat posted:I get your point, but aren't the Free Council approximately the size of the Diamond and the Seers put together? Or at least, I seem to remember Dave Brookshaw saying something like that when asked about how he sees the setting's demographics. No. Okay, so - Mage Demographics. The smallest Order is the Tremere The smallest Pentacle Order is the Guardians The largest Pentacle Order is the Free Council The Seers are approximately the size of two of the middle-sized Diamond Orders put together So it's vague whether the Free Council or the Seers are bigger, and which way around the three non-Guardian Diamonds are. Global membership doesn't particularly matter to a game, though, as local Caucus size swings wildly, but in general, the Guardians are the least numerous PC-types and the Free Council are the most, with the Seers on the "populous" end and the Tremere on the "very rare" end.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:02
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Spector29 posted:It seems like, as far as demographics are concerned, Mages should rarely ever run into other Mages to conflict with, Seer or otherwise. I have no interest in giving a percentage rate of the population. It only ever makes sense for vampires (in how many the human population can support) and only then if you assume they all act as rational actors and not like, you know, vampires. Also, mags congregate where there's long-term Mysteries to obsess over, ratios be damned.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:04
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LordAbaddon posted:I've always thought that between 0.5%-1% of the population being in some way supernatural (mages, werewolves, vamps, etc.) was a good starting point. That seems really high. That's basically "you and everyone you know has a supernatural for a classmate or co-worker," even if you assume a modest amount of clustering.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:05
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Spector29 posted:That seems a bit low to me, but it that roughly how it is (or should be) in the World of Darkness? You can have whatever proportion of the population be whatever kind of supernatural you want. Even if you find the numbers listed there reasonable you don't have to turn them into averages that extrapolate out evenly. You can have people congregate in population centers, weirdly high spikes of supernatural activity around places of power without a corresponding urban center, strange dead zones (I ran a couple games in a version of the WoD where there were no mages at all in Chicago, for instance)... variation, asymmetry, things that don't belong or things that belong not being there are what plot hooks and novel chronicle premises are made of.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:06
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That seems really high. That's basically "you and everyone you know has a supernatural for a classmate or co-worker," even if you assume a modest amount of clustering. Given the high frequency of weird poo poo people encounter and chose to actively ignore or rationalize that reasonable.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:21
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That seems really high. That's basically "you and everyone you know has a supernatural for a classmate or co-worker," even if you assume a modest amount of clustering. "Okay, guys, there's a ghost inhabiting my computer. I know statistically that at least one of you is a werewolf, or a mage, or a vampire, so I'm going to close my eyes and count to fifteen. I don't care how it gets gone I just want it gone."
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Feb 14, 2017 01:24
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The general feeling with the World of Darkness is that there's a shitpot full of supernatural critters wherever your game is set and the rest doesn't really matter. That and mages in MtAw tend to congregate where there's weird poo poo going on. Whether that's in Tokyo or using rune-walking as an excuse in London to go on a pubcrawl.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:27
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My character in the nDemon game I'm in has committed another atrocity against common sense yesterday. I made a lambda that combined an exploited gadget for Terrible Avatar and some sort of gadget that did a costume change (I forget the exact embed). Basically I gave one of the NPCs a demon form mech suit that they summon with a wristwatch.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:28
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Obligatum VII posted:My character in the nDemon game I'm in has committed another atrocity against common sense yesterday. I made a lambda that combined an exploited gadget for Terrible Avatar and some sort of gadget that did a costume change (I forget the exact embed). Basically I gave one of the NPCs a demon form mech suit that they summon with a wristwatch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kafn6jzS3PQ
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Feb 14, 2017 01:29
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Kurieg posted:I would suggest keeping this on hand. We used this, actually! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLCWCPyxByg
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Feb 14, 2017 01:31
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VanSandman posted:How would you make a self-replicating pizza anyhow? Pizza is Matter unless you wave your hands really hard at what the Arcana mean. If you argue that eating a silce pizza is a form of damage to the pizza's structure and that Pizza is a machine (designed to feed people) then it would be a Self Repairing Machine spell.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:50
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Gerund posted:Pizza is Matter unless you wave your hands really hard at what the Arcana mean. The sliced pizza would be damage too, so wouldn't the slice regenerate into a whole pizza? That's my ruling if my players try that, anyway.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:53
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Gerund posted:Pizza is Matter unless you wave your hands really hard at what the Arcana mean.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:56
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Yawgmoth posted:Throw in Forces 1 so it's always at perfect eating temp. Throw in Life 5 (or is it 6) to get Pizza the Hutt.
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Feb 14, 2017 02:00
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Senior Scarybagels posted:Throw in Life 5 (or is it 6) to get Pizza the Hutt. Add Mind 5/6 to make Pizza the Hutt the greatest crime boss in the galaxy.
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Feb 14, 2017 02:22
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Spector29 posted:Add Mind 5/6 to make Pizza the Hutt the greatest crime boss in the galaxy. So...I got my next character concept now, a mage with an army of Pizza the Hutts
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Feb 14, 2017 02:48
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Spector29 posted:It seems like, as far as demographics are concerned, Mages should rarely ever run into other Mages to conflict with, Seer or otherwise.
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Feb 14, 2017 03:02
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Brother Entropy posted:
Speaking of Jojo, would replicating hamon be possible? What would something like making noodles stand on end and become hard enough to pierce glass fall under?
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Feb 14, 2017 03:12
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xanthan posted:Speaking of Jojo, would replicating hamon be possible? What would something like making noodles stand on end and become hard enough to pierce glass fall under?
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Feb 14, 2017 03:14
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A Hamon practitioner is pretty much an Obrimos splashing into Matter, yeah.
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Feb 14, 2017 03:20
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Obligatum VII posted:My character in the nDemon game I'm in has committed another atrocity against common sense yesterday. I made a lambda that combined an exploited gadget for Terrible Avatar and some sort of gadget that did a costume change (I forget the exact embed). Basically I gave one of the NPCs a demon form mech suit that they summon with a wristwatch. Specifically it was Quick Change.
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Feb 14, 2017 03:55
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It makes total sense that Tokyo would have barely any mages - as I suggested earlier in the thread, salaryman culture means that much less of the population is in a position to grasp at enlightment.
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Feb 14, 2017 04:55
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Daeren posted:We used this, actually! My favorite MMO since Asheron's Call.
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Feb 14, 2017 05:36
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On the topic of the presence of the supernatural, say what you will about Mike Mignola, Hellboy was fantastic about projecting a sense of mystical atmosphere. Magic is always strange and wondrous and bizarre in it, and the average person seems to have at least a somewhat general sense of its existence, but most doubt its existence because they have no regular contact with it.
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Feb 14, 2017 05:51
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I know this is waaay back but I feel responsible for 'death to mages' because it was my (boyfriend's) question about soul harvesting that kicked it off. Mages would be totally murder worthy in our universe, absolutely. They are simultaneously the greatest heroes of the WoD. The World of Darkness for Mage is pretty much gnostic. The world as the average everyday person understands it is flawed and evil, created to imprison human souls. The average everyday person would perceive the Thyrsus next door as the threat only because they are fundamentally ignorant of the nature of the world they inhabit. In the reality of the game world, Awakened mages using magic at all is always at least slightly positive, no matter what evil thing they're doing, because at least it resists the Lie. Mages at their best are hell bent on saving humanity from the world, because the world itself is needlessly flawed. We accept our reality as it is because in our world there's no alternative, but in Mage perfection is (theoretically) attainable, and every action that brings people closer to that perfect truth is good. At their worst, mages want to cage everyone else, and are utterly evil, so they Join the Seers. At their most neutral, Bob Thyrsus next door who only cares about getting high on sweet wizard weed and making a self replicating pizza...every time Bob does magic or interacts with magic poo poo he reminds reality that the Lie can be challenged. He's not some great guy, but at least he's contributing even by accident. How moral that is or how comfortable people are with it is a whole other thing. Obviously if your neighbour's spirit dog eats your face your suffering has just increased for no good reason, and if you personally decide all wizards should die you are completely right to have that opinion from your perspective. There are a lot of interesting questions about utilitarianism and moral primacy to make about the constant struggle to save humanity as a whole vs. the real time consequences of mages for the people around them who suffer without the benefit of knowing why. But objectively, mages are Right About the Universe. Killing them all would doom everyone in the WoD to eternal and pointless suffering until they died without ever getting to be sweet all powerful god-wizards themselves. Also, I'm pretty sure if every mage died the world would end the week after.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:20
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I own the first edition MtAwakening book, but it never really grabbed me the way other lines (Hunter & Changeling in particular) did. If I was interested in maybe giving it a shot, is it worth getting the updated 2nd Edition (and any other recommended books), or just going through the 1st edition stuff?
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Feb 14, 2017 06:25
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Cinnamon Bear posted:Is it worth getting the updated 2nd Edition? Absolutely.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:40
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Tiny Deer posted:At their most neutral, Bob Thyrsus next door who only cares about getting high on sweet wizard weed and making a self replicating pizza...every time Bob does magic or interacts with magic poo poo he reminds reality that the Lie can be challenged. He's not some great guy, but at least he's contributing even by accident. I want to play in the campaign about being a crew of drug-mages, ripping off the Ascended Ones and Cheiron for new substances and slowly working your way into the drug channels of your city to start enlightening the underclasses through extreme chemical consumption. But you're still drug-mages, so you also work on infinite pizza and a refilling bowl of really good salsa.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:42
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Cinnamon Bear posted:If I was interested in maybe giving it a shot, is it worth getting the updated 2nd Edition (and any other recommended books), or just going through the 1st edition stuff? Is the corebook the only book from first edition you already have? The second edition of Awakening is the most impressively well executed of the second edition corebooks, and a respectable contender for best of the second edition gamelines beside Demon. The thing is, the improvements are maybe evenly split between structural improvements made on the first edition rules to better fit Awakening's identity, and a second go at laying the book's contents out and explaining the Pentacle and the Realms Supernal and all that, benefitting from a lot of solid work laid down in the supplement books that followed the first edition core. The second edition's magely orders are vibrant and bring their own discrete philosophies of magic and arguments for why a sorcerer would join them, but it didn't need to knit them from whole cloth. They are (with the exception of the Free Council, whose first edition book kind of had one foot in the past) basically the same orders that were presented in the 1e order supplements, which heavily fleshed them out from their 1e corebook presentation. In other words, is the corebook the only first edition book you have? If so, get the second edition core and read that. The first edition corebook did a pretty bad job presenting the game that Awakening would become in an engaging and digestible manner. If you have access to first edition supplements like the Diamond and Seer books, Tome of the Mysteries, Left-Hand Path, Astral Realms or so on, and you'd rather save the money a new book would cost rather than the time reading only one book would save, skim the 1e core for basic introductory material and lean on the supplements for flavor and identity.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:42
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Okay, yeah, I only owned the core. There was a period of time about ten years ago where I was really into nWoD and had the core book for every line and then a bunch of vampire/changeling/hunter books. It does sound like I should give the 2E core book a try.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:48
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Mage 2e significantly benefited from a theme refocusing, since the Theme or Mood or whatever of 1e was 'Ancient Mystery'. This was roughly as exciting as being told that the theme/mood of DnD was 'careful encumbrance management'.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:51
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RandallODim posted:I want to play in the campaign about being a crew of drug-mages, ripping off the Ascended Ones and Cheiron for new substances and slowly working your way into the drug channels of your city to start enlightening the underclasses through extreme chemical consumption. I think I just found the hook for the next campaign I write. Thanks!
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Feb 14, 2017 06:56
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Include that Bowl of Infinite Pasta fetish from that one Apocalypse book and I'm in.
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Feb 14, 2017 06:57
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Tiny Deer posted:Mages at their best are hell bent on saving humanity from the world, because the world itself is needlessly flawed. We accept our reality as it is because in our world there's no alternative, but in Mage perfection is (theoretically) attainable, and every action that brings people closer to that perfect truth is good. What makes you think "perfect truth" exists? It's certainly not in the Supernal. Even a bunch of the people that wander the Supernal wonder if it's actually the highest truth, or if there is something even more basic and true beyond it. No human, no human, has ever perceived the Supernal. Even the Exarchs became Supernal thought forms, expressions of ideas. They aren't really people anymore. No Mage fundamentally knows what the hell they are talking about when it comes to the Supernal because they lack the capacity to even perceive it as it is. The guy oppressing humanity isn't Bob Exarch, rando evil douche in his Supernal palace getting his rocks off on keeping people down. He's literally Oppression. He *is* The Strong Over The Weak. And to some extent that's all he is. Not much different from an incredibly powerful spirit of oppression from the Shadow, just coming at it from a different supernatural angle. Calling it the Supernal and saying it's a higher reality is as human and arbitrary as saying the "East" Coast is on the "Right" side of the United States. I could just as easily call it the Firmament and say it's the soil the roots of more developed reality grows from. That'd be just as true. Even the Astral journey there works as well backwards. You start out in your dream state, then diffuse yourself into the wider dream state of all humanity, then further still to touch the dreams of the whole planet, then truly let go and open yourself to the wider 'Firmament' underneath it all. Nothing mechanically changes thinking of it that way, going down rather than up. And yet Mages always talk about it as an Ascent, climbing a Ladder, of a higher truth. The entire discussion of the nature of the Supernal is predicated on Mage supremacy. That is to say everything about it's described nature comes from the belief that it's the best because Mages can manipulate it and this makes Mages awesome. So what if we say that the Supernal is just powerful. Like an atom bomb, with exactly as much deeper metaphysical meaning. If I set off a bomb and destroy a city, kill millions, I've certainly had a great influence on the world around me.....but why would you pretend I have any deeper theological worth than you?. There's plenty of magic hoodoo in the world Mages inhabit, and while Mages are broadly more powerful than other groups in their reach plenty of other peoples can do certain things a lot easier than Mages. Some few actually *can* do a few things Mages can't. There is power out there that isn't particularly about manipulating the Supernal, and it can have just as much influence on Fate or souls or life or whatever. What if Mages are just some random assholes with one type of magical ability and no greater metaphysical or theological importance? Who cares if we kill them all then? Brought to you by the Banishers For A Better Tomorrow
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Feb 14, 2017 07:08
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All I know is that my SL Mastigos banker is basically Gordon Gekko-ing his way through the Fallen world in the faint hope of clawing his way to the Temenos and ritualistically slaying both Greed and Capitalism as concepts to usher in a socialist Utopia. Unrelated to that: VtM advice needed. How the hell do I make combat in this godforsaken system actually have meat and heft behind it without stalling out for what feels like forever? My players are finally at the point, politically, where they're no longer simple annoyances to the Sabbat MRA-activist Bishop trying to play puppet master and I want to start throwing Blood Brothers and other poo poo at them. There's an Assamite Vizier, Ventrue, Nosferatu (who has "Beast Mode Activated" as his strength specialty), and Giovanni. I want to design an encounter or two where they have an actual fight on their hands but that they can, hopefully, win.
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Feb 14, 2017 07:27
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