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Halloween Jack posted:Several. The Belgians, the Dutch, I could go on. Those are just strains of one epidemic honestly.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:15
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open_sketchbook posted:all i'm really hearing here is that after im done the tanks i need to make a flying circus expansion where i really take the limiters off and go Full Horny You absolutely should. Maybe put in some kind of auto-pilot system and a way for planes to dock/link so pilots can join the mile-high club. Maybe let there some kind of super-Zepplin dedicated to that which is named The Mile-High Club.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:23
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A mile long dirigible! Nice and phallic.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:26
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By popular demand posted:A mile long dirigible! Nice and phallic.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:35
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joylessdivision posted:I've knocked out two of em. What am I reading next Goons? I vote Vampire or Werewolf, because those 1e cores are wild. I love the increasingly unhinged ST sections as each line came out.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:40
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Kavak posted:Were there big African plagues besides Ebola and AIDS? Yellow fever is a big one, it's one of the most widespread and lethal diseases in the world today. Malaria is associated with the tropics in general, so it does crop up a lot in Africa.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:45
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Malaria is common anywhere there's a robust mosquito population. It was extremely common in Europe until large scale swamp drainage became the norm.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:59
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There's a few hemorrhagic fevers that had famous outbreaks in the 70s-90s.
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Jul 8, 2022 18:03
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Was yellow fever in the news during the 1990's? Why am I spending this much thought on something Brucato wrote anyway, I should be doing something more uplifting like taking out garbage.
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Jul 8, 2022 18:06
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joylessdivision posted:I regret to admit I am the worst goth as I do not like Absinthe. The taste is bad (never liked black licorice) and it gives me a migraine after a sip or two. I learned this the hardway in my mid 20s when my dumb goth and goth adjacent friends got into it. You gotta do Woof, hoss. You just gotta.
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Jul 8, 2022 18:34
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I'm voting for Changeling BTW
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Jul 8, 2022 18:36
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Changeling and then the changeling storyteller secrets
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Jul 8, 2022 21:03
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Well that's 2 for Apocalypse and 3 I believe for Changeling.
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Jul 8, 2022 21:06
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Africa has a lot of generally miserable tropical diseases. Sleeping sickness, river blindness, schistosomiasis, etc and so forth. Best way to think of it, albeit very crudely, is that humans are native to Africa, so the local microbes and fauna evolved with us and to deal with us. Everywhere else, we’re an invasive species that runs rampant all over the place. Tropical areas in general are pretty nasty places to be a human without first world sanitation and medical care, but Africa has done more than it’s share of human suffering throughout history.
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Jul 8, 2022 22:33
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Soulbound: Champions of Destruction Break Fast, Move Things A pure Destruction Binding is likely to be driven by pretty simple goals. They were brought together by a god, given a very simple task to complete, and set loose to manage it however they saw fit. The trick is that a "simple" task does not mean an "easy" task. If something could easily be taken care of by a small group of random orruks, it wouldn't need a Binding to handle it, after all. Bindings take effort and power to create. Thus, while a task is theoretically quite simple - find guy, kill guy, for example - there's often quite a number of problems in the way of completing it. Someone the Spider God wants to eat may have been transformed into a Stormcast in the interim, perhaps, or a fortress that Gorkamorka wants to see explode is on top of a traveling, navy-eating island in a storm-tossed sea. The trick is not figuring out what needs to be done - Destruction Bindings rarely solve mysteries - but rather figuring out how to actually do the thing you know you want. Destruction Bindings also tend to spend a lot of time on survival. They are rarely welcome in cities, except for Ogor members, and they lack the structural support available to the forces of Order or Death. They live in the wild, having to find their own food and shelter in primal, dangerous places that are often redolent with raw magic. Just managing to find a place to sleep and enough to feed the party may well be a challenge, and there are rarely any safe home bases to retreat to when things go south. Supplies are hard to come by and infirmaries rare - one of the biggest challenges faced by a Destruction Binding is dealing with the aftermath of their actions and finding ways to mitigate any consequences to them personally. Just getting to your destination might be an entire adventure, especially given the fact that the places Destruction peoples tend to live in are often full of wild monsters, quasi-sentient landscapes looking to eat people, Chaos warbands or even just other Destruction groups that want a scrap. This isn't to say downtime is impossible, though - these Bindings are likely to spend a lot more time interacting with the warbands, tribes and collections of grots, orruks, ogors and troggs when it comes to social stuff, and their downtime periods are likely to be focused around gathering the supplies and support they'll need immediately after. Often, the individual alliances and friendships made with other people are even more important to Destruction Bindings than any other, because those can be key to survival in a hostile wilderness. But on the other hand, you might run some Destruction PCs in a mixed party, likely one of Order. In the Age of Myth, Sigmar befriended his ancient enemy, Gorkamorka, and the two worked together to make the Realms safe for the Free Peoples. Sure, it involved brawling with each other, and the fighting was what Gorkamorka enjoyed out of it, but that's still cooperation...for a time, anyway. Gorkamorka worked alongside the Pantheon of Order, hunting godbeasts and protecting cities, but eventually he grew bored and decided he wanted to fight his allies, as well. Even so, legends of that ancient alliance remain today, and some believe that under the right conditions, the peoples of Destruction are potent if unpredictable friends - or at least weapons that can be wielded against enemies. It isn't especially rare for orruks to be hired on to help the Freeguild defend a place, though these alliances rarely last more than a battle, and likewise, it is not unknown for the gods of Order to make deals with the mighty heroes of Destruction in an effort to channel their vast strength to useful ends. (Or they're Morathi-Khaine, and they may decide to bind a troggoth into a group solely to make life more annoying for her wayward Daughter in the Binding.) It is usually a sign that things are desperate, mind, because even the gods cannot easily convince a mighty orruk warlord or ogor champion not to fight if they have a mind to. Destruction PCs in such a Binding are often allowed into cities - or at least specific parts of them - but will be watched carefully no matter where they go, and likely will need the escort of their Order allies to move freely, especially non-Ogors. (Some, especially ogor mercenaries, play up their own dangerousness to get better pay from mercenary contracts.) Many of the people they deal with will likely have been harmed by the actions of Destruction peoples - it is a rare person in the Cities of Sigmar who has not known the death of a friend or family member at the hands of the grots or orruks. Dealing with prejudices, grudges and mistrust can be a fun plotline - as long as everyone is on board for it. Likewise, it's probably important to consider how the Destruction PCs feel about Order and the civilizations around them. Many will find the rules and restrictions imposed on life by city people to be annoying at best, especially if there is no clear reason for them and they are enforced by those who lack brutality and cunning enough to respect. Most Destruction PCs will have little respect for authority figures or the niceties of high society, and it may require other members of the party rephrasing orders to get them to be accepted. That's fine - it emphasizes that Destruction characters are people of action, unbound by the laws of others. Many will feel uncomfortable in city walls, and may spend downtime periods exploring the wilds outside the city, where they don't feel so confined or controlled. Alternatively, they may start to enjoy the finer things of the Free Peoples. Ogors often are deeply appreciative of art, and not just culinary art, while grots often adore the chance to take power in systems that do not require raw physical strength. A grot that obtains social power will rarely want to give it up. We also get mass combat...rules, I guess you could call them? Options? Advice? Mass combat is something more likely to come up with Destruction Bindings because raising and leading a Waaaagh! is often a character goal, and armies of the Destruction peoples tend to form pretty organically around charismatic and powerful figures anyway. Many problems can be solved by a Destruction Binding deciding they don't feel like sneaking or infiltrating today and will instead gather an army to go crush the defenses they might have trouble with alone. That's fine and should be encouraged - just fit how army-gathering is done to the narrative you're using. Armies can grow and shrink over a campaign as they win and gather recruits or lose and are decimated, or even split due to infighting. As for how to run mass combat, the game offers three suggestions. First: play Age of Sigmar. Just run a narrative battle with the wargame. This is probably impractical. Second, use opposed group cooperation rolls to resolve clashes between military units, with whoever wins taking losses based on the difference in successes between the sides. Rough and not super easy to adjudicate, with no real guidelines. Third, just leave the actual mass combat results to whatever makes narrative sense based on the personal-scale combat the party does. If they win, their army probably wins. If they lose or are forced to back off, their army probably did badly. Focus on how the character deal with the results of battles in accordance with the plot rather than the clash itself. This is fine for what it is, but I think the lack of system at all here is not great. The book suggests that giant army battles may be fun spectacle, but in general the game benefits more from having its focus on the party and their personal deeds and individual efforts in the midst of battle, like duels with enemy champions, targeted attacks on siege weapons or other ways they can personally turn the tide, with Hazards used to represent the battle around them. The game also notes that Waaagh! Energy works on all allied Destruction characters in range, not just the Binding, so leading groups into battle actually is an intended design here where you can buff them all for a big narrative moment by spending your points. I'm not a huge fan of essentially shrugging and leaving it all to the GM to figure out on their own, but I suspect that this may have been a GW mandate, especially with suggestion 1 being 'play Age of Sigmar.' I'd guess that Games Workshop doesn't want the RPG to have its own robust army rules on the basis that they already sell a game meant for robust army combat. We do at least get a sidebar on how armies may have their own pool of Waaagh! energy - which can apply to enemy armies. This works identically to Binding rules Waaagh! Energy, except in two ways. First, the group has +1 max Energy per 10 Warriors, Champions or Chosen in the group, and second, Champions and Chosen can spend Waaagh! Energy of their own will even if the PCs are benefitting from this. Next time: squigs
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Jul 8, 2022 22:50
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Apocalypse 1e was once described me as "clearly written by someone who had to either write this or go and and do everything in his power to beat the CEO of an oil company to death or die trying."
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Jul 8, 2022 22:51
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Rand Brittain posted:Apocalypse 1e was once described me as "clearly written by someone who had to either write this or go and and do everything in his power to beat the CEO of an oil company to death or die trying." I will accept this as a 2nd vote for Werewolf 
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Jul 9, 2022 00:06
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I like the idea of giving enemies Waagh Energy. For powerful groups this could let the enemy put up more of a fight.
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Jul 9, 2022 00:14
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Welcome to Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness https://imgur.com/fLGGX82 Authors note: As this review is presented chapter by chapter, if a term or idea is introduced in a chapter and not explained until a later chapter, I will leave the explanation to the chapter where the definition is provided. Mage: The Ascension 1st edition Core Rulebook The year is 1993, Vampire the Masquerade has been on store shelves for about 3 years now, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse came out the prior year (August according to the ad in the previously reviewed A World of Darkness: The Promised Lands) and now, the World of Darkness is about to be rocked. BY MAGICK. Okay let me get this out of the way right up front. I personally loathe the term Magick spelled with a K at the end, it’s just one of those things that annoys me and causes me to roll my eyes when I come across it. This book is full of the use of the word Magick. For the sake of my own sanity, I will only be using the spelling with a K when it is related specifically to a chapter title or a segment heading. Otherwise I’m spelling it without the K.  https://imgur.com/gallery/AraUnPC  First, I absolutely love the color choice/cover of this book. Yes, it’s basically just the Masquerade cover design with a few changes, but laying all five of the original 1st edition cores together I noticed that there is a distinctive difference between the very minimalist designs of Masquerade and Mage and even Wraith, with the background being dedicated to a color and texture and a single item or element to draw the viewer's attention vs Werewolf with its muddy/bloody reddish brown cover with claw marks punched out of the cover, revealing a forest beneath, and the stained glass look of Changeling. Further down this aside, I have to say I don’t love the covers of Demon or Hunter as they feel rather uninspired. At least Orpheus has a distinct style to its cover. So, 5 points to the design department this time around. I really like the Mage cover and the purple background with the bold golden title dominating the top of the cover, and the tarot card on the cover is very eye-catching but subdued, much like Masquerades cover. We need to talk about this tarot card for a second holy poo poo. The tarot card on the cover presents us with so much stuff to look at and puzzle over. There are symbols that are likely occult in someway, there’s a gun, three tarot cards and a key sitting on a table that also features an early 90’s PC with a glowing green screen displaying another occult symbol and a Fax Machine oh my gaaaaaaaawd. The Mage on the card is depicted as having some kind of either robot hand or maybe it's a gauntlet(?), dressed in a trenchcoat (a running theme in this game) headphones and Vegeta’s power reader eyepiece. I don’t even like Dragonball and that's the reference I pull? This is going to be interesting. Listed price is $25.00, which adjusted for 2022 inflation would make this book $49.61. That is entirely too much to pay for this schlock, but moving on. To quote the back cover: "A Storytelling Game of Modern Magic. The Closing of a millennium is at hand. We have been crushed in a vice, Trapped between rigid law and black chaos. All we have wrought with magick is forgotten. The Technocracy, Rational Resolute Ruthless It rules the crystalline earth And suffocates us in webs of steel The Marauders, Unknowable Unpredictable Unholy They rule the outcast realms The Nephandi, Damned Diabolic Destructive They rule the nethermost voids And constrict us with the Wrym’s coils. We have failed to heal the growing paradox Our timid tinkering has won us little ground But perhaps you will not fear to strike firmly To wield the full force of your fury, Perhaps you will battle them as we could not…. Perhaps the time has come." Okay, so right off this sounds pretty cool, and gets a lot about the setting across in a couple of paragraphs or stanzas. The opening paragraph gives us a firm time and place, calling out the coming end of the millennium that we were all so obsessed with in the 90’s. The next three paragraphs/stanzas introduce the three main antagonist groups of the setting, before finally ending with a call to arms to the player to wield the full force of your fury. At this point you’ve probably got all kinds of ideas racing through your mind, who are these Technocracy guys? Outcast realms? What kind of cool powers can I unleash on these evil assholes? Settle down Beavis, because there’s one word slipped into that back cover copy that you will soon understand to be the bane of your existence and easily one of the most frustrating aspects of this game if taken read as written. Paradox. Oh yes, we’ll get to Paradox soon enough friends, soon enough. The title page tells us that this is a “Storytelling Game of Modern Magick”. Lead credit goes to Stewart Wieck, with Chris Earley and Stephan Wieck. We are also given the games tagline “Truth Until Paradox” It’s not quite as evocative as something like “When will you Rage” and it's definitely less wordy than “Beast I am lest Beast I become”, but it doesn’t particularly grab me as taglines go. Lead Design is credited to the above mentioned trio, with Additional Design credited to Mark Rein-Hagen and Chris Hind. Words are credited to Sam Chupp, Christopher Earley, Robert Hatch, Chris Hind, MR-H, Kathleen Ryan, the Brothers Wieck, Travis Williams and Keith Winkler. Noticeably absent from the credits is one Phil Brucatto. I guess I was spared his particular brand of weirdness this time, but I know I won’t be so lucky in the future. Our table of contents breaks down into 9 Chapters (because there are 9 spheres of magic  ) along with a prologue and an appendix of antagonists.Prologue: The Awakening What is a White Wolf book without some introductory fiction? Our opening story here follows a young man named Raphael who wears a trenchcoat and carries a katana because it is the 90’s and Highlander was cool and SHUT UP MOM YOU DON’T, UNDERSTAND ME! Anyway, Raph is a big old weeaboo who claims to be a master with his deadly hanzo steel and is going to meet a Madame Wo who placed an ad in the newspaper claiming to be a practitioner of the magical arts, offering her services. What unfolds is the typical “Apprentice meets master and is told they are not worthy, master shows true power” plot that also sprinkles in the basics of the game's setting. Unfortunately the way Wo is written here she gives off some extreme Dragon Lady vibes, and while I’d be willing to assume the best, that it wasn’t intended to come across that way, it does and then proceeds to get about as on the nose with it as possible when Wo shows her power to Raph by turning into a “Oriental Dragon”. Sigh. Lets go ahead and put that down on the board for “Racist nonsense in a White Wolf book” Wo’s show of power has caused a Paradox creature to appear. She explains that while those who have been Awakened can do magic, reality doesn’t like it when the rules are broken, and so Paradox spirits tend to show up to correct the perceived flaw in reality. Wo snags the creature and tosses it into a fish tank full of other paradox spirits, which Raph points out is probably not the best idea and that she is writing magical checks her rear end can't cash. Wo tells him it’s totally fine and under control. It is in fact, not fine or under control, as the fresh paradox spirit she threw in the tank ate all the others and broke free, capturing Wo and dragging her off into another dimension. She drops an enchanted jewel that Raph picks up after another mage, Dante (fitting the description of the mage on the cover) appears on Wo’s computer screen in the 1993 version of a magical Zoom call and tells him to find the most important item Wo left lying around. Touching the jewel “Awakens” Raph to the truth of magic, he uses his new powers to gather a few powerful trinkets from Wo’s attic, including a new katana (Wo melted Raph’s original at one point during the whole “You’re not ready” bit). Raph leaves with his goodies and notices as he's walking that someone is following him. He snaps his fingers and thinks “If only I could find a cab!” and ta-da as if by Magick a cab pulls up and Raph is headed to La Guardia. Not too long after hopping in the cab, another Mage begins to work their own magic on the vehicle, and a gas begins to seep out of the air condition, knocking the driver unconscious while the vehicle picks up speed. Raph bails out, and climbs a fire escape to the top of a building. He leaps from one roof to another and is greeted by the Technocracy being assholes and using a digital sign to taunt him saying “RAPHAEL YOU SHOULD JUST GIVE UP. JOIN US. WE WILL RULE THE WORLD FOREVER. WE ALREADY CONTROL YOUR MIND, YOUR IDEAS. IT IS FUTILE TO RESIST. TRY AN I.R.A. AND SAVE” Raph is having none of that, and in his anger causes several of the bulbs to explode. However his minor temper tantrum was enough time for a gaggle of seemingly normal folks who have been possessed like Agents from The Matrix to climb up to the roof to capture Raph, including the cabbie, a homeless person, a mugger, a wino and a security guard. The Technocracy is not sending their best. The security guard takes a shot at Raph but he dodges it, and then the mugger goes in for the kill with a switchblade but Raph and his Magickal Hanzo Steel are too much for the mugger and his head is separated from his body. This grosses Raph out but he makes his escape down another fire ladder to the street where he steals a car, and sends a bolt of electricity into a pursuing van, causing it to blow up and giving himself a healthy dose of Paradox in the process. Raph makes it to La Guardia, has a little trouble at the ticket counter that Dante resolves for him using his magical hacking skills and Raph is then on his plane, safely heading for San Francisco to meet with Dante and continue his adventures as a weeaboo wizard with a katana in his trenchcoat. I can’t hate on this story too much to be honest. It’s silly as hell, and Raphael with his trenchcoat and katana is just so delightfully silly 90’s schlock that I can’t help but be charmed by it. Aside from the previously mentioned yikes moment when Wo turns into a dragon, I really dug the way the random sleepers were just showing up with glowing eyes and coming after Raph, and gave me serious Matrix vibes. Now that I think about it a little bit, the Matrix films are Ascension as hell, or at least could be watched through that lens for inspiration. Book One I know we just spent 13 pages on an introductory fiction piece, but we get part one of an ongoing tale of awakening starting with a one page snippet about an assassin at a charity ball who is thwarted from killing her target by a Mage who has come to awaken her. Chapter One: Introduction The chapter properly begins with an explanation of what storytelling is a concept, and what a role-playing game is, and how role-playing games are just the next evolution of storytelling, etc. It’s not terrible, and it’s considerably less fart-huffing than the same segment in Masquerade 1e (I know I haven’t reviewed it yet but I did read that bit and it’s hilariously up its own rear end). We have the terms Storyteller, Players, Characters and Cabals explained to us, the first three being self explanatory to anyone who has ever picked up a White Wolf game, and the even removing that, it's obvious to literally anyone who has played an RPG ever. But to pedantic about it, The Storyteller is the fancy White Wolf name for the Game Master (Dungeon Master, etc, every game has a slightly different title for The Poor Bastard Running the Monkey Farm) The Players are the people who have decided that the best way to spend their afternoon is sitting around a table rolling dice and playing this game. Characters are the people in the story/game that the players control. Cabals are the name given to describe a group of Mages, like the players! Winners and Losers kicks off a segment detailing the use of play aids, like moody lighting, music or props to help enhance the game experience for the player, and we also get LARP rules because White Wolf loves LARPers and suggests using The Masquerade Mind's Eye Theater book for rules on LARP combat for more details. An official Ascension larp book was released eventually. Go ahead and start keeping track of how often other White Wolf products get mentioned throughout this book. It’ll be fun! The Meaning of Mage We get a short paragraph about how Mages obviously can do magic because it would be a boring game without that, but their magic is more about philosophical truths than just parlor tricks. Sure, if you say so. I’d just like to fling some fireballs around, but I have a feeling that’s not how this is going to shake out despite the back of the book telling me I should fight back. Belief and Paradigms Here we go, now we’re getting into some information about what the hell this game is about. Every human soul (or Avatar) allows a person to use their force of will to alter reality. “Sleepers” (mortals unaware of magic) are also able to do this to a degree, but Mages actively alter reality through their will. Your beliefs about how life, the universe and everything works is your “Paradigm”, however the unconscious consensus among humanity about humanity is what has created the world the game takes place in. Mages of course see beyond the consensus reality, and can use their will to impose their paradigm on reality, which is how magic works. Confused yet? Static Reality: A grain of sand represents a singular element of reality, and together with other grains of sand, form a beach. To accept a particular world-view, or a single handful of sand, and take it as absolute fact is ignoring the rest of the beach. It’s a bit of an overly complicated metaphor to explain that basically the world is hosed because the technomages have turned rationality and SCIENCE into a weapon of control, so that Magic shouldn’t be possible. Mages as Dynamic Forces Mages by their existence are attempting to strike a new balance of changing the rigid reality the technomages created while not going buck-wild, because that leads to capital c Chaos and Marauders. The Marauders are Mages who have fully embraced the aforementioned Chaos and while they too are fighting the Technocracy, they’re doing it because they just want to watch the world burn. The Nephandi Corrupt Mages or extradimensional nightmares? Yes. They don’t give a poo poo about control, they’re here to destroy everything and are also allied/controlled by the Wrym. Ascension Mages are trying to achieve “Ascension”, essentially a journey of enlightenment that will change reality. The bad guys are doing the same thing in their own hosed up ways, so maybe be careful with that whole attempting to ascend thing? Quintessence The literal stuff that the universe is made of. gently caress atoms, Quintessence bitch! Paradox is reality violently reacting to a Mage doing blatant magic. For example, throwing a fireball at a door would trigger a Paradox spirit to come and kick my rear end because according to the rules of reality as set by the Technocracy and SCIENCE, I can not throw a fireball from my hand. However, I’m a goddamn wizard, so if I could somehow coincidentally cause the aforementioned door to burst into flames, like a beam of sunlight coming through a window hit a flammable cleaning product that was used on the door and caused it to ignite, then no paradox would occur, even if a Sleeper was present because it was a Coincidence. Paradox bad, eventually Paradox comes for us all because we’re lovely idiot wizards. The chapter closes out with a lexicon of terms, many of which will be mentioned in the coming chapters without further elaboration on how they affect gameplay or with notes saying that more information about the term is available in a later chapter. I realize I should have read over this section more carefully when originally taking my notes, but there are really only so many White Wolf Proper Nouns that I can cram into my brain in one sitting before I start to lose it. And that covers chapter one, a fairly broad overview of the game's setting and ideas. Now let's spend the next 8 chapters of the book going over these same concepts again and again and again because apparently we really need to have all of this hammered into our skulls every chapter. joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Jul 9, 2022 |
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Jul 9, 2022 01:53
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Edit: Nvm.
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Jul 9, 2022 01:57
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Cooked Auto posted:
I fixed it on mobile because the imgur links I had were being stupid
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Jul 9, 2022 01:58
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Yeah, in some cases it will just give you the page when you want the direct image link.
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Jul 9, 2022 02:10
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Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness presents Chapter Two: Setting We’re given the familiar explanation of the “Gothic-Punk Milieu”, that the World of Darkness setting is not so different from our own world, only it’s way worse and everything is awful and there are literal monsters running around controlling everything, but also everyone is cool and goth and everything looks like The Crow or Dark City. Mages don’t really know where they come from, but the theory is that back in ye olden days reality was unified by the force of Prime. This force led to the creation of the Pure Ones, a race that presided over reality until reality was torn asunder and the Pure Ones were shattered into Shards or souls. The shards are in everyone (because Souls are A Thing in the WoD), and Mages call souls Avatars. Awakening is when someone realizes they have an avatar and then can learn magic. Mages also believe that the other supernatural creatures have awakened avatars because of course they would believe that. Once a sleeper has awakened(Maudib! Maudib!), they are driven by their Avatars towards a quest for Ascension, which is all well and good, but when a bunch of different wizards are all trying to ascend and change reality to fit their particular view, it turns into a clusterfuck, giving rise to the Ascension Wars, the driving conflict of the game. And who are these wizards fighting for Ascension you ask? Well first up is The Technocracy, and they’re bad okay. They use science as their form of magic and they’re really a bunch of big assholes who enjoy murdering other Mages to keep control of reality and reach ascension through their method of repression or something. While I like the general idea of the Technocracy, I loving hate the entire “Science vs Magick” thing that is at the core of this conflict. Hate it a whole bunch, but I’ll get into it more later. The Maraudersare the crazy chaos Mages of the setting who hang out in the Near Umbra, the realm just outside of earth. The Technocracy hates them, and Marauders show up and cause all kinds of hate and discontent because they want complete control of reality to achieve ascension. So they’re like the Technocracy, but more chaotic evil than just evil. The Nephandi are Mages and beings that have wholly embraced evil. So just to make sure we’re all keeping track here, that’s Three factions and flavors of Evil running around this setting so far, but the Technocracy are supposed to be the main villains. The Traditions are the PC groups, who have their own views of achieving ascension but all agree that Technocracy/Nephandi/Marauders are bad and should be stopped. They are outnumbered but they can fight back because that’s the point of the game after all. Magick comes in two flavors, “Dynamic” or vulgar magic and “Static” or coincidental magic. Magic is built on 9 spheres which were briefly mentioned in the opening fiction, and are described as being essentially a wheel where each form of magic is an extension of the previous sphere, and to control Time, one would have to master the Time Sphere. Conjunctional Magic is what you call a spell that requires more than one sphere of magic to achieve the desired effect. “Disciple” is used to refer to someone first learning a sphere, while a “Master” is one who has naturally mastered a sphere. There might also be a 10th sphere but they haven’t figured out what it is yet. Mages who become masters of a sphere often try to become “Oracles”, a special group of Mages who hang out in the Deep Umbra and are super powerful. If you can find them, you might be welcomed into the club, or you might not. Some say a new oracle is only allowed to take on the role after another has died/ascended. Paradox is explained again, as is Quintessence, expanding on the previous chapter mentioning it, letting us know that Quinessence is only produced on Earth because of course the Earth is the literal center of the universe in the WoD, and Mages frequently fight over possession of locations that are rich with Quintessence that they call Nodes. Nodes have a different name as well, Carens which for the Apocalypse players among us, will recognize as the sites that werewolves tend to protect. Surely this doesn’t ever lead to conflict right? Talismans and Foci are exactly what they sound like, objects of power a Mage has infused with quintessence to use for a magical effect, or items used to focus (ahhhhh?) their power. Talismans can be activated by sleepers but that doesn’t generally end well for them. Once a talisman has been tapped of its reserve of power, it has to be refueled with more quintessence. Foci are literally any object the mage uses to focus their magical spells like a ring, a staff or a computer, Hitachi wand. Oh yeah, computers are magic as gently caress ya’ll. Hark, what is that sound on the horizon? Is it…..WORLD BUILDING?! The Telluriandescribes all of reality, including the spirit realms that mirror earth. Within the Tellurian, we have The Near Umbra or spirit realm, a mirror of the earth but in spirit form.Realms are parts of the Tellurian. Earth is at the center of the Tellurian because if we’re going to claim that heliocentrism is the cause of Magick going away, might as well go all in on that idea I guess? Mages believe that the Earth’s moon known as Arcadia also exists in the near umbra and is where changelings are from. Changelings are from the moon, sure why not. Humanity has also through force of will and the telling of stories, created beings that exist in the realms of the tellurian. We’ll come back to this idea a little later. Horizon Realms are realms that sit on the edge of the earth’s near umbra and work as a spiritual ozone layer. Mages typically create these realms, but they take a great deal of power and require being linked to a quintessence node on earth to power them. Shard Realms correspond to the planets and represent the 9 spheres of magic. Mages don’t know much about these realms because they are huge. Shade Realms are a sort of transitional spaces on the edge of the near umbra that connect to the Shard realms and have features of both Earth and the shard realm they lead to. Dream Realms are formed by the dreams of mortals in the near umbra. Nehpahndi use the dream realms to cause trouble and nightmares for their enemies. There is also a group known as the Oneira or Dream Lords who create dream realms out of the bits and pieces of severed dreams. Which is pretty cool. Paradox Realms are the corner that bad Mages get put by paradox monsters for loving around too much with reality. Paradox realms are outside the near umbra because you’ve been a very naughty wizard! Next up is The Deep Umbra, basically the vacuum of space. It’s inhospitable and difficult to travel the deep umbra, and there be monsters and other horrible gribblies floating around in it so probably for the best not to go traveling there. The Technocracy maintains The Gauntletwhich is a magical wall that separates Earth from the near umbra, as well as The Horizon, which is the barrier between the Near Umbra and the Deep Umbra, because again, Marauders and Nehphandi and other gribblies be lurking out there. The traditions agree this is a good thing because not being invade by horrors from beyond the stars is good, but also bad because it’s just Technoncracy xenophobia. Which…..I’m sorry, the book has made it abundantly clear so far that Marauders and the Nephandi are a major threat to all existence. But keeping them out is just the Technocracy being xenophobic? Anyway, because of the gauntlet, the wonders of the near umbra can’t shine onto the Earth, thus robbing it of the natural creativity and vitality that would make the world a lot better and not…well the World of Darkness. It’s an explanation for the setting being the way it is, and it’s not terrible, as it's obviously leaning into the heavily spiritual aspect of the WoD, but then doesn’t this contradict Masquerade's cosmology of Yaweh being real and creating the universe, or Demon and Apocalypse’s cosmologies as well? If you’re saying “But they’re separate games, who cares?” I regret to inform you that Mage not only leans heavily into referencing Apocalypse, in a much later chapter the book outright suggests doing a mixed PC party with a Mage, a Werewolf and a Vampire. Because that won’t be a loving nightmare for the ST to handle mechanically at all The Tapestry refers to the Tellurian as well, but ignores the division of realms and looks at it as a whole. Quintessence nodes spread their power via ley lines, and as mentioned previously, werewolves tend to protect nodes. Spirits! They exist in the near umbra, Mages think werewolves are a type of spirit made flesh and that’s why they travel via the near umbra from caern to caern. Spirits are formed by the belief of humanity and thus mythological and fictional creations can exist as spirits in the near umbra because humanity dreamed them up. So your imaginary friend from your childhood is real and hanging out somewhere in the near umbra. As is your imaginary girlfriend in high school who totally existed and just went to a different school, in a different city, you guys wouldn’t know her shut up! Is also totes real. The Technocracyare again discussed in more detail, we learn they had a good idea at first and have been corrupted by their view of how to reach ascension, which as previously noted involves blocking the outer realms from interacting with humanity, enforcing consumerism and attempting to destroy dreams. Copernicus was a technomancer and the traditions still hate him for figuring out that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and thus kicking off the reign of science. Basically the Technocracy is making everything suck so everyone is equal so ascension can be achieved. So they’re just a Republican’s idea of Communists. Or the rational debate bros of the internet today. Whichever, the point is the Technocracy are big jerks who are oppressing humanity and keeping magic from the hands of humanity with Science. Science isn’t magic. Science isn’t magic Science isn’t magic Science isn’t loving MAGIC! I hate this element of the game so goddamn much, and it drives me absolutely crazy that the game hammers on and on about how terrible the Technocracy is, and how all modern technology is really just magick maaaaan and to that I say, no gently caress You, White Wolf. I get that it was the early 90’s and everyone was on a heavy spiritual trip again, and eastern mysticism and all the new age stuff was getting big and popular, but I’m offended that this game decided “Hey, every human being who ever did science and helped elevate our understanding of our planet and ourselves as living beings, and the universe, who saved innumerable lives with their discoveries and helped us literally reach the heavens, they’re all assholes who just decided to couch magic in more rigid terms and then fed it back to us with technical terms and math to back it up” gently caress off, and then once you’ve hosed off, continue loving off until you’re certain you can’t anymore, and then continue loving off! The Technocracy is broken up into subgroups because what is an evil faction without sub-factions. Iteration X are the transhumanist technomages who believe combining flesh and machine will lead to ascension. They have an umbral realm called “Autochthonia” which just sounds like Cybertron from Transformers from its description. They also have Terminators they call HIT MARKs. Like straight up T-800 terminators. The New World Order (4-lyfe) is exactly what you expect from the name, a Big Brother convention focused on information tech who kidnap and brainwash Mages who are causing trouble. They also have Men in Black. The Progenitors are the genetics and cloning group. That’s their whole deal, they replace Mages with clones. If you read that line and said “I bet there’s a Nazi Wizard in here somewhere” then please pat yourself on the back and see the management about collecting your prize for correctly guessing that White Wolf gonna write something Racist/Gross into a game The Syndicateare all about power through money, and also control the mafia and organized crime. They systematically destroy a Mage’s life before finally just killing the Mage. The Void Engineers are all about exploring the deep umbra, and convincing everyone that the beings that exist in the deep umbra are aliens and not powerful celestial beings. The moon landing was their doing, but whoops that had the side effect of making people dream of going to the stars which opened up the path to Arcadia and Changeling magic to infect the world. As punishment the fall of Skylab and the Challenger explosion were caused to make the Void Engineers settle down. Way to go White Wolf once again making a real tragedy a part of the games. Classy. There are two offshoot traditions from the Technocracy, the Sons of Ether who are into science but the wacky and weird parts of science, aka the bullshit like alchemy, or if you want to get really gross with it, phrenology and eugenics. They believe that Ether is a thing in space and have since advanced the theory of Quantum Mechanics, which has pissed off the Technocracy. The other offshoot is the Virtual Adepts who have created a virtual realm via computers. The Technocracy didn’t like that so they kicked the VA’s out of the club. However, the Technocracy then realized “Oh poo poo, they might still have access to our systems. Oh poo poo, they might share our secrets! FIRE UP THE MURDER MACHINES BOYS!” and have since stepped up their efforts to purge non-Technocracy mages. The Traditions are pretty pissed about it and blame the VA for bringing the heat down on everyone which is fair I guess? But if the Traditions weren’t acting like a bunch of goddamn babies and actually fought back this might not be a problem. The Technocracy has Symposiums where each convention talks about how well they’re doing in the whole oppression of the sleepers thing. In recent times young Tradition Mages have launched attacks on these symposiums. The Marauders are given a bit more detail, they’re the mages that stared too deeply into the abyss and the abyss looked back. Their goal is a return to the Mythic Age when magic and quintessence were plentiful and the realms weren’t locked away. Like the Marauders, The Nephandi are given a bit more detail as well, although it’s essentially a page of reiterating what was said when they were introduced in Chapter One and again in the beginning of this chapter. Remember how I said this book repeats itself a lot? Yeah. Oh hey we finally get our first bits of information about the Traditions, AKA the Player character groups. There are 9 traditions that determine the rules and customs of those that follow its path. It’s the wizard equivalent of Clans or Tribes in Vampire and Werewolf. Our Heroes are: The Akashic Brotherhood: Martial arts monks who focus on the sphere of Mind. Celestial Chorus: Believe that “The Great One” is the source of all power and the destination of Ascension, and focused on the sphere of Prime. Cult of Ecstasy: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. They control the sphere of Time and probably do a ton of drugs. Dreamspeakers: Shamen who speak with spirits and focus on the sphere of Spirit. Euthanatos: A death cult who uses the sphere of Entropy to kill and destabilize things. Order of Hermes: Once the masters of reality, they’ve fallen off quite a bit since the middle ages. They have mastered the sphere of Forces to control the essence of the universe. Sons of Ether: The junk science wizards previously mentioned, Matter is their sphere of choice giving them control of physical reality Verbena: Mages focused on life and the sphere of Life. Virtual Adepts: The VR wizards, they focus on the sphere of Correspondence. Life in the Traditions: Mages have a social order, because these games are all basically “High School: The Cliquening” Orphans are Mages who awakened without a teacher and have no tie to a tradition. The Traditions look down on them because the Traditions are assholes. Apprentices are baby Mages who haven’t been accepted into their tradition yet as they are still learning. Disciples are Mages of full status within their respective tradition. Adepts are Mages who have achieved Rank 4 in any sphere. This is seen as a much greater accomplishment than achieving Rank 3 in a few spheres. Masters have reached Rank 5 in a sphere Oracles as previously mentioned are Mages who have achieved total mastery of a sphere and have hosed off to the Far Umbra to go do some real wizard poo poo, free of the threat of Paradox. Ascension is explained some more, and essentially comes down to the agreed upon outcome among the traditions that there must be balance between Forces and Stasis. The Technocracy wants all stasis, the Marauders want dynamic change constantly, while the Nephandi want unification in Oblivion. The traditions believe in the middle ground approach, that personal enlightenment is important, but that all of humanity must be awakened for Ascension to be achieved. The traditions all agree the Technocracy has to be stopped because they’re loving it up for everyone. The traditions also believe in protecting the sleepers and pulling them back from the Technocracies' control, because human souls and the earth are the center of the magical universe and are very important. I already explained what a Cabal is, but in case you forgot they helpfully explain again that it’s what you call a group of Tradition Mages that work together. Sometimes Mages go bad and they’re called Rogues because the traditions are very, very clever you see. Chantries are a cabal’s home base, usually built near or on a quintessence node, which can be used in the creation of a Horizon Realms. Each chantry has rules for how things are run, and new cabals often have to work for the members of a chantry to gain acceptance and access to the resources of the chantry. Chantries of course have ranks because there wasn’t enough stupid terminology to remember. Pedagogue- A chantry teacher of renown. Deacon- Leaders of the chantry Fellow- General membership of a chantry Sentinel- Guards of a chantries node and occasionally the folks you send out to wreck some poo poo for you. Errant- A Mage whose chantry and cabal have been destroyed. No one wants to deal with them because their enemies are usually not far behind them. Rogues- Bastard Mages no one else wants to deal with, they are mercenaries who don’t have ties to a chantry or node. Did you know there are different Types of Chantries? Well there are, and they fall into a couple categories: Ancestral- What it says on the tin, the ancestral home of a tradition. College- Magic school Squatter- A chantry not built on or near a node. Basically wherever a cabal sees fit to set up shop. The Net- Virtual adepts created VR, and they go there. With magic. The Technocracy also has chantries, usually where they do their research. Iteration X’s chantries connect to Cybertron. The Technocracy finds its nodes by finding Tradition chantries and destroying them. If Mages duck out to the horizon realms, they run the risk of attack from Marauders and Nehphandi because horizon realms are built out of quintessence and the Marauders and Nehphandi can’t easily access earth for that sweet sweet Q. Oh god we have more Proper Nouns that no one playing this game is going to bother to remember, but here we go anyway: Apprenticeship Being an apprentice takes about a decade of training with a mentor of the same tradition, and then your Avatar is awakened and you become a proper Mage. Acolytes Regular sleepers who help out Mages and sometimes are chosen to be apprentices. Acolytes are the goobers Mages go to for mundane help because being a wizard is far more important than remembering to pay your taxes. The Traditions have Protocols which are general rules everyone agrees on. -Respect those of greater knowledge -A debt to a tutor must be repaid -A Mage's word is his honor, never break a sworn vow -The will of an Oracle must be obeyed -Do not betray your cabal or chantry -Do not conspire with the Technocracy or other enemies of Ascension -Protect the Sleepers, they are ignorant of what they do. If you break enough protocols a Tribunal is called and has various forms of punishment: Censure- Formally rebuked and put on probation with various restrictions. Ostracism- Formally exiled, no one can talk to you or they also risk censure or worse. Branding- A master of Spirit marks your avatar with a sigil to show you were a very naughty Mage. Death- gently caress you buddy, you’re avatar is getting recylced into someone who will appreciate it. Also you’re dead. Gilgul- A fate worse than death I suppose, as the offending mage has their Avatar straight up destroyed, leaving the former mage nothing more than a basic schmuck again. Did you know that Mages are all about knowledge and teaching? Well they are, so they create colleges or take on Mentor roles. Tuition is paid to a mentor by going and doing poo poo for them because wizards don't need money and I have better things to do with my time right now like figure out how to harness the powers of the cosmos Timothy, and I want an iced Latte and I can’t do both things at once! The Spontaneous Gift aka Orphans So because the world is hosed up, some sleepers are being born with awakened avatars or randomly awakening on their own, thus earning themselves the title Orphans. Tradition Mages (as previously noted) are assholes who don’t really like or trust Orphans because of course they don’t. There isn’t really a good reason given for why the Traditions were such assholes to Orphans in the past, but eventually they stopped being as big of assholes about it, and realized that Orphans are potentially useful assets in the Ascension War. Much like the Caitiff from Masquerade, Orphans are the outcasts of an already hidden society, and it sucks to be them, but the Orphans also have their own semi-tradition known as The Hollow Ones which is a Gothic-Punk tradition, so they’re the gothy goths of the setting. Victor Frankenstein was a Son of Ether because sure why not, and is mentioned to illustrate that the angry villagers who rose up to burn down his laboratory are a good analogy for why Mages currently keep magic on downlow. Human beings are really bad about accepting things that frighten us or that we don’t understand, which the Technocracy has exploited by creating the Consensus Reality that the game takes place in. To further elaborate on this point the book offers us yet another fundamental misunderstanding of what science actually is and how it works, telling us that sleepers will accept a news story about a new scientific device or breakthrough that would allow a doctor to completely change the genetic structure of a child in utero, but if that same story were about the miracle of a man waving his hand over the woman’s womb and causing the same effect, no one would believe it despite achieving the same effect and “Even though the exact process of either method is incomprehensible to the average person” Again, this is where I take issue with this entire book’s anti-science premise, because for being so goddamn focused on the Earth and Humanity being the loving center of the goddamn World of Darkness universe, they seem to really, really hate the average folks of this games universe, and seem to treat them like they’re just utter morons. And while granted, I am guilty of thinking that some people I encounter in the real world are utter morons, I am also well aware that if we had the technological capability to completely change the genetic composition of a human being in uetero, THERE WOULD BE PAGES AND PAGES OF loving DOCUMENTATION AVAILABLE TO EXPLAIN IT and while it might not be easily grasped, the average person could very likely come away with at least a basic understanding how the thing worked. Also, if you said “A Wizard did it”, I can almost guarantee that some percent of the population will 100% go along with that explanation, no questions asked. God drat this book makes me angry. So that was Chapter 2! We got a whole lot of terms thrown at us, Gilgul being one I find especially amusing to say every now and then, along with the reiteration of ideas already introduced in chapter one, as well as stuff that was introduced in this very chapter! I’m not going to rant further about my hatred of the writer's treatment of science and technology, but know that fire burns deep within me, and it’ll come out again, because good lord does it pop up alot in this book.
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Jul 9, 2022 02:56
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It's interesting to note that according to legend MRH had very little to do with Mage. This was the Wieck brothers' baby. That probably explains the attempt at a different feel than Vampire or Woof.
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Jul 9, 2022 02:59
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Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness presents Chapter Three: Storytelling The chapter kicks off with several large blocks of text regarding what the role of the Storyteller is, how to use rules that haven’t been explained yet, and that as the ST, I can use as many or as few of the rules as I want! That’s great but at this point I don’t know what the actual rules of the game are because those are in the next chapter. Game Layout! White Wolf is terrible at it! There is discussion of the two extremes of STing, “Rules Lawyer” and “Free Form” with the book suggesting that taking a more middle ground approach between these two extremes is the recommended approach. This seems like one of those things that should be as obvious as “Rule 0” but we’ve all suffered a rules lawyer at least once in our gaming careers, so I suppose having these suggestions sprinkled throughout are useful. A Chronicle is the term used to describe the overarching story taking place at the table, the bigger picture that is being made up by the individual stories and sessions. Creating a Chronicle details just that, how to create your own chronicle. First up we have Setting which is very straightforward advice to the reader, explaining that you should be thinking about not only the location of your game, but the flavor of the place, the type of people who live there, if there are other supernatural creatures in the area, etc. The Characters section provides more common sense advice for the ST. The game should be focused on the players and their characters, not your genius NPC’s and their plots and machinations. You should talk to your players about their characters beforehand to get an idea of what they want to do and have that help inform the game you’re writing. Big old No poo poo there but again, we’ve all played with That Guy as the ST(DM, etc) who was god awful because they had written their campaign just so and there will be no deviation from it! We’re given advice on handling Antagonists, with the suggestion that if they are going to be a recurring villain in the story, make them stronger than the players, but if they’re just a one off or a mook, it’s fine to make them at level with the PCs. We also get a suggestion to use the other published books (at this point Masquerade and Apocalypse) as antagonists for your chronicle. Again, they’re leaning into this being the crossover game and honestly it’s just not needed. We have three (3!!!) flavors of villains in just this book! Werewolves I can at least understand showing up in a Mage game, because Mage’s need Quintessence, which is stored in Nodes, which Werewolves protect, so obvious and easy conflict to toss in there, but Kindred politics is it’s own can of worms, and while sure you could absolutely entangle Kindred bullshit into your Wizard game, it seems extremely unnecessary. Scheme is mostly good advice about how you should approach prepping for a session, writing an outline of the plot for the session and treating it as a framework that the players will fill in through roleplaying. I take issue however with the following line from the book: “You must then decide whether you want to sacrifice the players free will by forcing them back into your intended plotline, or sacrifice what could possibly be a better chronicle conclusion to go with the radical new direction the players have chosen” Oooooooh boy. Okay, first off, if you’re at the conclusion of a Chronicle, as in the final game to, in theory, cap off a series of games and stories that followed this group of characters, as the ST, you should have a pretty clear idea of how things are going to end, with several back up plans just in case. I cannot see a group reaching the final session of an ongoing chronicle and then just deciding “No, we don’t want to go do the thing this final story arc has been building to, we’re going to all become donut chefs now”. While I understand what the book is trying to say, that as the ST you are going to occasionally have to kill your darlings and let the players chase whatever plot threads have caught their attention, trying to tie that lesson to the final session of a chronicle feels like the epitome of STDH, but also poo poo That Wouldn’t Happen. Of course we are talking about tabletop players, so someone, somewhere probably has done exactly this kind of dumbshit, but I feel like this is an issue best solved by Talking to your Players, a thing the book has been really good about recommending. Finally there is the Title, what are you going to call your chronicle? The book suggests giving it a name that suggests something about the story, or just whatever sounds cool. Now that we know what a chronicle is, let’s talk about some Chronicle Concepts. These are different from a Story Concept which we’ll get to shortly. Retainers of the Chantry-The players have to go do stuff for their chantry. Recommended as a good starting chronicle as it gives the ST considerably more control over where the players go. Street Gang- The players are a gang of awakened Mages who aren’t part of the greater Mage social hierarchy. Fight the Technocracy- The players are fighting against the Technocracy. Pretty simple jumping off point with a bunch of suggestions Espionage- The Players have infiltrated the Technocracy and are trying to fight from within. Quest for Ascension- See Chapter 8 for more information about Ascension because we’re White Wolf and we love to talk about concepts and ideas in parts of the book and then refer to a later part of the book to explain the thing we’re talking about for pages on end without definition or explanation of how it works in game. Surmount the Quiet- I guess this is the David Lynch/Clive Barker (as noted by the book) chronicle idea, but then it again refers to chapter 8 about loving Quiet. I don’t know what Quiet is at this point! I do know this is apparently the way to go if you want to do a high strangeness chronicle which is cool. (note: If I had bothered to read the Lexicon, I would have known what Quiet was )The Ivory Tower- The players have spent all their time in a chantry and now have to deal with reality and the horror of the WoD. Exploration of the Telurian- Remember how I said that in the Near Umbra, spirits of fictional characters exist? Yeah this concept is basically carte blanche to do whatever the gently caress crazy crossovers you want. Want to play Mage in Sailor Moon world? Or what about Ravenloft or Dark Sun or Unknown Armies? In the Telurian, anything and everything is possible!* *Possibility may still incur paradox, see the rules regarding use of magic in the Telurian in a later chapter. The Guardians- The players are tasked with protecting a place from the evils that lurk beyond the darkness. Historical Setting-Self explanatory. Mention of Ars Magica as a source of info about Mages in the middle ages. Also suggests Highlander as an example of the historical chronicle that takes place in various time periods, or Hellraiser for a trip through the unknown. Oh hey here are those Story Concepts I mentioned that are totally a different thing than Chronicle concepts, but I won’t elaborate on that right now, but don’t worry, the book will break down in excruciating detail the difference between a Story and a Chronicle soon enough. Quintessence Raid- Go steal some magical mcguffin juice, deal with the problems this entails. Not a bad jumping off point. Marauders take Manhattan-Marauders have shown up and are wrecking poo poo. Exploration- Send the players out into the Umbra to explore some poo poo. (yes, they used “Explore the Tellurian” twice with a slightly different title.) On the Home Front- Bring the action to the players, put 'em on the defensive! Mystery- Figure out the mystery. War- Wizard Fights! Freelance- the players are asked to help someone do something. Before Beginning a Story, you should make sure that your previous story has concluded and that there aren’t any dangling plot threads that need to be resolved, unless your next story is part of the same chronicle. We’re also given some tips on being a decent host, like providing snacks and drinks and chairs for the players. Telling a Story gives us all the secrets we could possibly want to know about telling a story. Really it’s pretty straight forward “Fiction 101” kinda stuff like the suggestion to use Foreshadowing and Symbolism and *Gasp* Suspense in your game. I can’t really rag too hard on this stuff because while it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever put pen to paper and written fiction before, or sat through an English class, it’s still probably a good thing to remind the ST of the practicals of creating a narrative game, while they’re also busy trying to remember how to actually run this dumpster fire. Anyhoo, Conflict is explained to us because we are apparently children who don’t understand that fiction has conflicts, and we’re presented with a list of potential conflicts to bring to our stories. Traditions vs Technocracy Traditions vs Nephandi Traditions vs Marauders Tradition vs Tradition Cabal vs Cabal Mage vs Mage Mage vs Umbrood (Umbral beings) Mage vs Vampires Mage vs Werewolves Mage vs Supernatural Mage vs Paradox Mage vs Sleepers Mage vs Self Sanity vs Madness. Each of these has a small paragraph offering suggestions and ideas for how to potentially use any of these conflicts in your game, although they’re all pretty self explanatory, even based strictly on the information we’ve been given in the book to this point. Did you know you can employ Advanced Techniques to your storytelling? I dunno if I should tell you about this, because these are like…really heavy duty and only for the most advanced storytellers. Okay I guess I’ll tell you. DREAM SEQUENCES AND FLASHBACKS. These are the truly powerful and advanced storytelling techniques that one must hone their storytelling skill to use. I laughed incredibly hard when I read this paragraph of the book. I’m sorry, but loving dream sequences and flashbacks are not advanced techniques, they’re super easy and extremely common tropes in fiction you loving dorks. Now, doing a Parallel Story is a more advanced technique and definitely going to be more work for the storyteller, as trying to run two distinct plots at one time is a headache at the best of times. So I’ll give you that one, but I will not agree that goddamn dream sequences and flashbacks are advanced or difficult techniques. Pretentious dorks, the lot of 'em over there in the '93 White Wolf office! Preparation style covers how much or little prep a storyteller should consider before going into a session. The book also outright says that if your sessions are going 100% to how you wrote them, you are railroading your players (and that’s bad), once again reiterating the advice that you should have an outline of the session with the names of locations or NPC’s the players are likely to encounter handy. No poo poo. Working with the Players feels like another section I could dunk on for being seemingly common sense advice, but it’s good to have an RPG rule book straight up say “Hey, talk to your players about the game, keep them engaged, find out what’s working and what isn’t, make sure everyone is included in the story”. It’s the kind of common sense courteous game mastering that one would expect to just…know but like I said, it’s still good to have the reminder on the page. After the Story is more obvious advice for the ST, to take notes of any major events that took place, and make adjustments to the setting as needed. Ending the Chronicle tells us we should make the final act of our chronicles special, because it's the big finale. Have an epilogue to wrap things up and give everyone a chance to wind down after the story has concluded. And hey there pal, now that your chronicle has concluded, don’t you think it’s time to start thinking about the Next Chronicle you want to run? Will this be another series of adventures for these characters or maybe you and your friends would like to try out one of White Wolf Games' other Great Storyteller SystemTM Games like Werewolf or Vampire. I am absolutely not making this up, the finale lines of this chapter are pitching you on buying more White Wolf books. The shilling of other products in this book is truly a sight to behold and holy poo poo does it get outrageous and down right offensive at one point. But that’s later…..so much later. And that wraps up chapter 3! Broadly speaking, it’s not bad, there is a lot of good practical advice in here for how to handle being and ST, and while I think most of it is pretty common sense stuff, it’s fine. Except that nonsense about dream sequences and flashbacks being advanced techniques.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Book 2 We get another one page story bit about our awakened assassin. I think she’s being awakened by a Euthantos, but I also don’t really care as this story is just not that interesting and parceling it out in these vague single pages at the front of a long segment of the book is not the way to keep me engaged. ~~~~~~~~ Chapter 4: Rules Ah those things I was complaining about not knowing in the last chapter! Good to know we’re finally going to learn some rules….oh no wait we have to discuss time first. A Turn refers to a very short span of time, typically 3 seconds to 3 minutes in game time or how long it takes for the player to perform an action. A Scene refers to the series of turns/actions or events taking place in a singular location, and a scene does not require turns if no dice are being rolled. A Chapter refers to a singular game session. A Story refers to the game being played currently A Chronicle refers to the ongoing story. See, I told you we would define the difference between a Story and a Chronicle, and to be honest it’s such a minor thing that you could probably use both terms interchangeably and be fine. When I run Masquerade, I organize my game(s) into a chronicle tab, and then if I’ve come up with a different story title I’ll use that, but generally I just use chapter titles. Anyway, more terms! Actions are what the players are doing when not speaking in character. The player tells the ST what they want to do, the ST either gives them a difficulty number to beat in order to accomplish the action, or they can simply do it because who rolls for walking across the street? Rolling Dice is what you do. D10’s (10 sided die) to be specific is what we’ll be rolling here. Ratings relate how good you are/how many dice you have in a given skill or trait. 0 is Abysmal and 5 is Superb. When the ST calls for a roll, it will generally be an Attribute + Ability and the number of dice to be rolled is determined by the number of dots in the attribute/ability requested. Difficulties are rated on a 1-10 scale, with 1-2 being considered automatic successes, and 10 being impossible, however if the ST sets a difficulty at 10 and the player rolls at least one 10, the whole roll is considered a success. 3-9 break down thus: 3-Easy 4-Routine 5-Straightforward 6-Standard 7-Challenging 8-Difficult 9-Extremely Difficult Success is any dice rolled that are equal or higher than the difficulty number established by the ST prior to the roll, and Degree of Success is graded on a 1-5 scale: 1-Marginal 2-Moderate 3-Complete 4-Exceptional 5-Phenomenal The Rule of One is simple: every die that comes up 1 automatically cancels out the equivalent number of successes rolled, and if no successes were rolled or the whole thing came up 1’s, it is considered a Botch and the consequences are determined by the ST. Automatic Successes as noted previously are anything that the players can do without rolling dice, or to get really technical about it, an automatic success takes effect when the players dice pool for a challenge is equal to or greater than the difficulty. While this is an auto success, it’s only considered a Marginal success, and so players can choose to roll their pool regardless of the auto success, in an attempt to bump up the quality of the success. Players can also burn a point of Willpower to gain an auto success, however we haven’t even discussed Willpower yet. Extended Actions are anything that require the player to achieve a designated number of successes to accomplish. The player can attempt the rolls as many times as they wish to accomplish the task, unless they botch, in which case they have to start over. Resisted Actions are simple. Two characters are attempting to attack each other and roll against each other, whoever has the most successes wins. However the Rule of One applies here in the sense that your opponents successes act as ones against your successes. Whoever has success dice at the end takes the win. Teamwork (makes the dreamwork) allows the players to combine successes to achieve a goal, however they can not combine their traits for a roll. So while two players can both roll their Strength + whatever they can’t combine their Strength scores to make one pool. Trying Again is about raising the difficulty of an action once it has been failed. Number go up. We’re given some example rolls to get a clearer picture for how to use the Trait+Ability math and target difficulties (You yell at a taxi driver to make him drive faster, roll Charisma + Intimidation at difficulty 6) as well as The Golden Rule. But let me be clear, they give nearly an entire page to example rolls. I’m starting to think that they’re just padding the word count to pad the page count :hyperthunk: The Golden Rule, also known as Rule 0, is very simple. Use whatever rules you want from the book or don’t, it’s your game so run it how you see fit. If you wanted to be a smartass about it you can wave this rule around and say you don’t even need the book, and sure you could absolutely do that, but I’ve always understood the intent behind Rule 0 to be not to treat anything in the books as too precious or unchangeable, and to have fun with the game you’re running. Personally I can’t imagine running a game without some amount of homebrewing to the setting, even if it’s just adjustment to metaplot or even just how I describe the use of a power. The chapter finishes out with another lexicon, this time of game terms starting with Ability (A Trait that describes what a character has learned) to Willpower (One of the most important Traits is Willpower. It measures the self-confidence and internal control of a character. However, Willpower works differently from most Traits, it is usually used up instead of rolled.) I am at this point, impressed with how straightforward and downright….simple the rules of this game are. Of course, Spoiler they get a lot more complicated later, and while my familiarity with the newer WoD system (V5) has given me a solid basis of knowing this system, it’s still fascinating to come back to a first edition and see the bones of that same system are here, albeit with a few more fiddly bits (I want to say you don’t lose all successes on an extended action if you botch in V5 but I could be wrong). I’m going to be honest, I don’t hate this chapter. It’s a little overly wordy in its explanations and examples of how the rules work, but I’m okay with that, as they manage to get the absolute basics of gameplay explained in an understandable way. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter Five: Character Before one can play the game, one must make a character. The first page of this chapter straight up calls out power gamers, saying: “Character creation usually follows a pattern from the general to the specific. Do not use this process to create the ‘Best’ possible character, that defeats the whole purpose of making up a really interesting individual. These numbers are intended to enhance the roleplaying, not open an avenue to some mythical character Hall of Fame” Emphasis mine because God drat White Wolf, getting salty about how people play your games huh? While I understand that The World Of Darkness is a dark and serious roleplaying world of personal horror and all, and I appreciate that earnestness, I really do because it’s what drew me in as a teenager, but come the hell on White Wolf. Get over yourselves. You’re literally pushing crossovers in this very book, and you expect a player to create a Mage for this theoretical crossover game and not powergame just a little bit so they can actually stand up besides a Kindred and a loving Werewolf?! This is an ongoing tonal problem with this book, where the artwork often shows cool wizards doing cool wizard poo poo, or wielding katanas (there are so many katanas in the art for this book, it's absurd) but then hammers on about Paradox and not actually using your cool powers. Make up your mind White Wolf! Anyway, before we really get cracking into character creation we have five character creation concepts the developers want us keep in mind: 1.You can be anyone from anywhere, but you’re still a newbie 2.Focus on who the character is, don’t sweat the numbers 3.Character creation works on a point buy system, so don’t stress to much if you can’t get all the things 4.Reminder that Traits are 1-5 5.Don’t be a dickhead. Make a character that fits the chronicle All fine advice, not really concepts but whatever. The ST is advised to treat session 1 as a chance to guide the players through character creation, answer their questions etc. We just call this “Session 0” nowadays grandpa! Character Creation breaks down into a totally simple, and not at all convoluted process of just 5 easy steps: 1)Concept 1a-Concept/Tradition/Essence/Personality Archetype(Nature/Demeanor) 2)Attributes 2a-Prioritize three categories: Physical, Social, Mental (7/5/3) 2b-Choose Physical Traits: Strength, Stamina, Dexterity 2c-Choose Social Traits: Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance 2d-Choose Mental Traits: Perception, Intelligence, Wits 3)Abilities 3a-Prioritize 3 categories: Talents, Skills, Knowledge 3b-Choose Talents, Skills, Knowledge (13/9/5) 4)Advantages 4a-Choose Backgrounds(7),Sphere(5+Tradition Speciality) 5)Finishing touches 5a-Record Arete (1), Willpower (5), Quintessence(equal to Avatar rating) 5b-Spend “Freebie Points” Step 1: Character Concept So this is kind of poorly explained, but to break it down into the simplest way, you start out with an idea for a basic rear end mortal, like a journalist or priest. That’s your concept. Then you choose your Tradition (what kind of wizard are you), then Essence which is supposed to represent your Avatar and how you relate to magic. The 4 Essences: Dynamic-They work throughout their lives to master a specific field or complete a certain endeavor Pattern-The architects of the world Primordial-Their power comes from deep within, from the original energy of the universe Questing- They move continuously through life seeking knowledge and purpose. Personality Archetype are 20 choices meant to express your character’s Nature and Demeanor. Nature refers to who the character is at their core, Demeanor refers to how the character presents themselves to the world. Nature has a mechanical effect, Demeanor doesn’t, and is more a flavor aspect. Step 2: Choosing Attributes Attributes are explained with the 7/5/3 rule (7 in your best attribute, 5 in your second best, 3 in your worst) and each attribute starts at 1 dot out the gate for the player. The attribute categories are: Physical (Strength/Dexterity/Stamina), Social (Charisma/Manipulation/Appearance), Mental (Perception/Intelligence/Wits) Step 3: Choosing Abilities Your abilities are broken down into three main categories, Talents, Skills and Knowledge and are meant to reflect things your character has learned vs things they can naturally do. Ability points are spread as 13/9/5 using the same method as described above for attributes, however at this point in character creation you cannot go over 3 dots in any ability, until you are finishing up with the “freebie” points left at the end, at which point you can bump up to 4 or 5 dots in an ability. Step 4: Choose Advantages Advantages are split between two major categories, Background (7 points across 10 choices) and Spheres (1 dot in your Tradition Sphere, and 5 points to be spent on additional spheres). Players cannot go above Rank 3 in any sphere at creation, and also can’t have a ranking higher in any sphere than their Arete score. Also you can’t raise a sphere above 3 unless you learn from a mentor. Why? I mean sure you can probably toss that in as part of your prelude if the ST is cool with it, but it still seems like the game is just trying to punish you for…doing cool wizard poo poo. Backgrounds work on a 1-5 scale, with each dot increasing the quality of the background element. The backgrounds are: Allies/Arcane/Avatar/Destiny/Dream/Influence/Library/Mentor/Node/Talisman. No, I won’t explain what the dots equate to in these backgrounds or what these backgrounds actually mean right now because those won’t be explained until the next chapter. Step 5: Finishing Touches Record your Arete score (1), Willpower (5) and Quintessence (equal to your Avatar rating). Then you get to spend your 15 freebie points. They even provide us with a table:  Good lord this loving table. Okay first complaint is while the Quintessence seems like a good deal, it’s temporary. So why waste those points? That bit about how you can’t raise a Sphere above your Arete score comes into play here, because every player starts at 1 Arete. We are expected to spend 5 dots in Spheres before we get to these freebie points, which means we have to spend at a MINIMUM 4 freebie points to bump Arete to two, which is still hot garbage, and even in the “Example of Character Creation” that this chapter provides, our example player drops 8 freebie points on Arete because OF COURSE YOU WOULD! Why the hell wouldn’t you bump that score up to be able to actually do something useful with your wizard powers? Because lemme tell you the 1 dot spheres are all poo poo. Anyway the next part of character creation is the Spark of Life which is meant to further flesh your character out beyond just numbers on the page. Appearance is exactly what you expect, what does your character look like? Specialites are any abilities the player has 4 or more dots in and should be noted on the character sheet. Specialities are also discussed in the next chapter. Equipment is anything your character already owns or is in possession of, however you can only have a Talisman if you have the Talisman background at creation, or you acquire it through gameplay. Quirks and Motivations are unique elements about your character and what drives them to pursue magic. Mundane Identity is who you pretend to be when dealing with sleepers, or one could even say it’s your Mask? Looking Ahead and The Prelude dovetail into each other nicely to close out the chapter, with the former hammering on the idea that you should keep thinking of your character as a real person and be willing to change them as the game moves forward, and have those changes come from the narrative events of the game, and not just a series of numbers on a sheet of paper. The remainder of the chapter details how to run a Prelude with the players, a one on one session where the ST and the player sit together and run a short introduction for the character to the story and setting. There are also a number of questions to ask the player as a guide for the ST, including a few for the group to answer about their cabal. And that wraps up Chapter 5. Why would you put Character Creation as Chapter 5 when half of the information I need to actually understand the choices I’m making are in Chapter 6? Follow up question, why would you put the other half, and arguably the most important part of a game called MAGE, the loving MAGIC SYSTEM in CHAPTER GODDAMN 7? Honestly, can someone please explain to me who at White Wolf thought this atrocious loving layout was a good idea? Because it’s not, it's a goddamn terrible and infuriating idea and I hate it. Anyway, Chapter 6 Ahoy!
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Jul 9, 2022 04:01
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You could probably make a concept with six 1 dot Spheres work pretty well but you'd basically be the guy from Disco Elysium. Hold on, I think I've found a chargen concept for you.
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Jul 9, 2022 04:12
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I feel like if you replaced "Science" with "Capitalism" the Technocracy would instantly work 1000% better.
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Jul 9, 2022 04:43
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Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness presents Chapter 6: Traits Oh I’m sorry, did you expect a chapter entitled “Traits” to start with those? What are you, some kind of logical thinking person? Get outta here, this is 1993 White Wolf! We’re starting off with the Traditions (Tradition!). Each of the 9 Traditions is detailed through their Introduction, Philosophy, Organization, Meetings, Initiation, Chantry, Acolytes, Sphere, Foci, Concept, Quote and Stereotypes. For the sake of brevity I’m not going to cover every one of these categories for each tradition, and mostly just cover the most important or amusing bits. Let's kick things off (waka waka) with The Akashic Brotherhood.  More or less magical Shaolin monks, the Brotherhood practices a blend of martial arts and yoga that they call the Do (pronounced like the animal), and believe that knowing oneself is the path to enlightenment and thus, Ascension. If you guessed they have a monastery style chantry system, you would be correct and wouldn’t you know it, they have a secret hidden monastery in Tibet. Men and women are welcomed into the Brotherhood, and like all the Traditions, their Acolytes and Concepts overlap a lot with both suggesting Zen practitioners, Buddhist Scholars, martial artists and wandering wise men. The Brotherhood have mastered the sphere of Mind and their Foci are Do (Correspondence/Mind/Prime/Time), Purification (Spirit/Entropy), Sash (Forces), Weapons (Life/Matter). The Celestial Chorus comes across as very heavily inspired by Christianity, as they believe in “The One”, a creator being that gave itself life (somehow?) but was later fragmented. The Chorus believes that an event they call “The Reconciliation” must occur to restore The One and to achieve Ascension. They’re pretty hazy on the details of the reconciliation, with no real word on what happens when all the realms are smashed together as this event is supposed to cause.  Some of the Chorus have taken up arms against “Evil”, and of course this has never ever caused any issues for anyone at all, and you should absolutely ignore those rumors about heretics being locked away. Because they’re on a mission from Gawd you see. Apparently the Chorus draws from Red Cross workers, the “Faithful” in general, Televangelists :hyperthunk: , Witch Hunters (a thing that actually gets detailed later in the book), priests and theologians. They have mastered the sphere of Prime with their Foci being Fire (Prime/Spirit) Holy Symbols (Forces/Mind), Pure Water (Entropy), Song (Correspondence/Life/Time) and Touch (Matter).  The Cult of Ecstasy is next, and all I can say is drugs man. DRUGS. Do you want to play a drug addict wizard? Wait…..isn’t that just Alan Moore? Well now you can by joining the Cult of Ecstasy! They are a nomadic tradition that takes drugs and inspires artists and believe that Self Expression and Free Action are the pinnacles of human achievement. Their main chantry is in Berkeley, California because of loving course it is. They also were the cause of Woodstock and the Summer of Love so thanks? I know this was ‘93, but I wonder if by that same logic the CoE were also behind Woodstock ‘99, in which case big old LOL there. Our drug addict wizard pals have mastered the sphere of Time and their Foci are (I poo poo you not) Incense (Correspondence/Spirit), Music (Forces/Mind), Ring (Entropy/Matter), and Vice (Life/Prime/Time)  Concepts and Acolytes are entertainers, musicians, Hollywood agents and whatever the hell a “Primitive Drummer” is. The CoE does have a couple of funny stereotypes relating to the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts: SoE: This is what science outta be, funny goggles and Frankenstein. VA: These guys are cool, check ‘em out. I can’t hate the druggie wizards, although they probably smell like patchouli.  To my absolute shock the Dreamspeakers are not the racist caricature I was expecting. They are the most Earth focused of the Traditions, with their thing being interacting with Spirits and Gaia herself. Unfortunately because of the Technocracy's shenanigans, and the ongoing destruction of the planet, the Dreamspeakers are kinda losing their minds a tiny bit. They lack any kind of real organization, but those drawn to them are generally Shamen, hitchhikers, ecologists, environmentalists, Garou,  and Sleepwalkers.Their sphere is Spirit and their Foci are Crystals (Life/Mind/Prime) Drums (Correspondence/Entropy/Forces/Matter/Time) and Feathers (Spirit)  The Euthanatos are a death cult who are pretty goth but they’re more of the nihilistic, death-rock goths. They believe that humanity is wasting the most precious gift it has been given, life itself. So they’ve taken it upon themselves to just murder folks to put their souls back into the ethereal rotation for a fresh incarnation. Many of these victims of the “Good Death” return as Euthanatos, which seems like some fuckery going on from the tradition to stack the deck in their favor. Also they are obsessed with figuring out the Kindred. Because they are goth dorks. They have mastered the sphere of Entropy with their Foci being Bones (Entropy/Matter/Prime), Dancing (Correspondence/Spirit) Dolls (Lfe), Rattle (Mind/Time) and Weapons (Forces). Voodoo Priests/Witch Doctors, morticians, occult store keepers, Terrorists  , assassins, doctors, scholars and gravediggers are all offered as concepts and potential acolytes of the death wizards. Okay, I know I just called the Euthanatos the goth wizards, but Holy poo poo. The Hollow Ones are literally the Gothiest Goths to ever Goth. They fart cobwebs and poo poo bats, that how loving GOTH they are. Technically the H1’s are Orphans, and they don’t care about Ascension maaaaaaan. They just want to hang out in the club, smoking cloves and nodding along to The Sisters of Mercy. They call their Cabals Cliques, they hang out in cemeteries and clubs and on Halloween they throw a big ball where all the cliques come together and the positions of power within the largest few cliques (these leaders are known as Prince and Princess) are up for a vote. But not King and Queen of the H1, that’s until death and already went to the two prettiest goths in all of the tradition. I swear I am not making that up, it is literally on the page oh my god I loving love this nonsense so much. The H1 are essentially White Wolf saying “Hey there spooky goth kid, we know you’re already playing Masquerade because you’re a gloomy little rain cloud that nobody understands, but now you can play a Wizard! But, like a totally cool and dark wizard with nice cheekbones and Robert Smith hair.” I can’t even be mad at this, its so loving funny, and obviously WW not only trying to bait their Masquerade audience over to Mage, but it also feels like they are just absolutely mocking the ever living hell out of their audience, and to be honest, I’m fine with it in this case because this tradition is loving Amazing. The Hollow Ones draw from Blood Dolls (slaves of vampires who serve to be fed on) occultists, artists, runaways and night-shift workers. They also don’t have any specific sphere or foci linked to them which seems like it might be cool from a creative freedom perspective, however they pay a higher cost for their spheres per chapter 8   The Order of Hermes are you good old fashioned cantankerous, obtuse wizards. The most secretive of the Traditions, they use arcane languages, “Profound Metaphor” and esoteric numerology as part of their magic. Oh and they apparently created Kabbalah which…..I think the Jews might have something to say about that? Also they started the Order of the Golden Dawn which was a magical society that Alester Crowley was involved with at one point before he hosed off to start his own magical order. None of that information beyond the Golden Dawn being started by the OoH was in the book, that’s just some fun facts from me to you  The O of H used to have an Order working out in the open during the Middle Ages as a sort of experiment. Apparently this didn’t work out so well, as there was corruption and somebody decided to start summoning monsters. To be honest, what else are you going to do when chanting arcane languages? That’s how you summon monsters, everyone knows that! Anywhoo, the O of H draws from Mathematicians and members of secret organizations like the Golden Dawn or the CIA, and also scientists. They have mastered the sphere of Forces with the Foci Circle (Spirit), Language (all spheres including those with another focus *linguistics ability required*) Seal of Solomon (Forces/Prime), Showstone (Mind/Time)  Oh hey it’s The Sons of Ether, and lemme just say right off, I absolutely love the tiny Robot Monster guy with the tray! It is Adorable. Anyway the Sons are the mad scientists of the setting, and their understanding of magic is that if you believe hard enough in you stupid theory, it will work because it should work that way from your perspective. Mad scientist wizards. Kinda love em, but as I said in their initial introduction, because they’re all about scientific thought that has been disproven, you have the unfortunate potential for these guys to be gung-ho about some really, really bad ideas. Mad Scientists, absent-minded professors, inventors and eccentric people are the suggestions of who the SoE recruits. They have mastered the sphere of Matter with their Foci being Abacus (abaci?) (Correspondence/Entropy) Electricity (Life/Prime) Ether Goggles (Mind/Spirit), Scientific Meter (Forces/Matter/Time)  Look everyone it’s the Not Tremere I mean The Verbena. If the Dreamspeakers are our earthy tradition focused on Gaia and spirit, that makes the Verbena the weirdo quasi-wiccans who are really, really into blood rituals. Also said to be the source of most fairytale depictions of witches so that’s fun. They draw from Civil Liberatarians (the gently caress?), Wiccans of course, butchers, new Agers (again no poo poo), Druids (do we have an abundance of Druids hanging out or something? Did I miss a memo?) and explorers. Their sphere is Life with their Foci being Blood (Life/Prime) Cauldron (Entropy/Spirit), Herbs (Matter), Wand (Correspondence/Forces/Time) Weapons (Mind)  Oh poo poo it’s VR CHAT time with the Virtual Adepts. I already discussed the VA in a previous chapter and their info here doesn’t do much to expand on what we already know, they created a digital virtual reality realm that they hang out in via magic. Because it’s 1993 and VR is going through its early 90’s “Technology of the Future!” push. I actually think the idea that the VA created VR Chat is much, much funnier, and you’ll pry the image of big tiddie anime girls talking about how to take the Technocracy down while a Ugandan Knuckles in a tank is there, and probably some furries, from my cold dead hands…or brain because it’s something I imagined. This book is driving me insane. The choices of who the VA draws from are hysterical in how Extremely 90’s they are with Sci-Fi fans, Hackers, PC gamers, Software Designers and “Computer Net Operators” which…..I feel like in 2022 we are all “Computer Net Operators”. Their sphere is Correspondence (a word I am getting very sick of typing at this point) and their Foci being listed as Computer (All Spheres), Electricity (Forces),and Network (Prime/Spirit). I know later in the book it explains what all these Foci actually are, but what in the gently caress do they mean by Network in this case? Again, I’m trying to translate 1993 understanding of technology and trying to sound advanced into 2022 coherence and lord help me it just ain't gonna happen every time. Personality Archetypes are finally detailed a bit more, remember this is supposed to be a way for the players to express their Nature and Demeanor through handy stereotypes. For the sake of brevity I’ll just list the Archetypes along with their flaws and how they regain Willpower. Any commentary I have about them will be saved for the end of the list. 1)Architect - Flaw: Obsessed Willpower is regained whenever they create something of importance of lasting value. 2)Avante-Garde - Flaw: Pride Willpower is regained whenever they are first with a piece of new info or other significant discovery. 3)Bon Vivant - Flaw: Hedonism Willower is regained whenever they have a truly good time or can fully express their exultation. 4)Bravo - Flaw: Anger Willpower is regained whenever they intimidate or physically force another person to do what they wish. 5)Caregiver - Flaw: Lack of Confidence (The self sacrifice of helping others is done out of a need to be appreciated) Willpower is regained whenever they successfully protect or nurture someone else. 6)Conformist -Flaw: Low Self Esteem Willpower is regained whenever the group accomplishes something because you helped. 7)Conniver - Flaws: Envy Willpower is regained whenever you are able to get your way by tricking someone into doing your will. 8)Critic - Flaw: Arrogance Willpower is regained whenever you discover a significant imperfection that others overlook. 9)Curmudgeon - Flaw: Lack of Imagination Willpower is regained whenever someone does something stupid, just as you predicted (Prediction has to be made out loud to the other players or in private with the ST) 10)Deviant - Flaw: Perversion Willpower is regained whenever you successfully thumb your nose at society without retaliation. 11)Director - Flaw: Lack of Tolerance Willpower is regained whenever you are allowed to lead a group and accomplish a significant task. 12)Fanatic - Flaw: Stubbornness Willpower is regained whenever you accomplish an act that furthers your cause. 13)Jester - Flaw: Hypocrisy Willpower is regained whenever you raise the spirits around you through humor, especially if you are able to escape your own pain at the same time. 14)Judge - Flaw: Lack of Vision Willpower is regained whenever you are able to separate truth from lies, or when convincing disputing individuals to agree with your judgment. 15)Loner - Flaw: Lack of Empathy Willpower is regained whenever you accomplish a significant task on your own without aid of others, but still aids the group. 16)Martyr - Flaw: Pessimism Willpower is regained whenever you sacrifice yourself in a real and immediate way for your beliefs or for another individual. 17)Rebel - Flaw: Lack of Direction Willpower is regained whenever your rebellion against the status quo turns out for the best. 18)Survivor - Flaw: Lack of Trust Willpower is regained whenever you survive a difficult situation through your own cunning and perseverance. 19)Traditionalist - Flaw: Complacence Willpower is regained whenever you are able to protect the status quo and prevent change. 20)Visionary - Flaw: Pride Willpower is regained whenever you are able to convince others to believe in your dreams and follow the course of action you’ve outlined for the future. Not bad for some archetypes to build a character off of, and the flaws make for an interesting direction for a character to focus their journey to Ascension. The regaining willpower for some of them is a bit silly though, like what the gently caress does “Thumbing your nose at society without retaliation” mean exactly? Are you saying if the player pulls off a bit of vulgar magic and gets away with it, they would get some willpower back? Why do you do these things to me White Wolf? Essences describe your Avatar, and there are 5 essences, but Mages are only semi knowledgeable of four. The Infinite is the fifth and unknown of the essences and is assumed to just be part of the way magic works despite no one actually being able to confirm that it exists. Dynamic essence is the force of change, and while all Mages have a bit of this essence, those that have it as their primary essence are driven to constant change and are seen as pioneers. Pattern essence Mages are all about a focused goal, working towards an end, and are typically part of the Technocracy. Primordial essence Mages are the most rare, and considered somewhat obsolete. Questing essence was once considered part of Dynamic essence, but Questing is about the bigger picture and achieving the goal. Specialites are a specific aspect of an attribute or trait that is 4 dots or higher, and allows the player to re-roll any 10’s scored while performing an action directly involving the specialty. The original 10 is counted as a success, and any additional successes are added with the player being allowed to reroll for each subsequent 10. This rule also applies to magical effects if the player has a speciality that connects to the magical effect they are creating. Example: a Euthanatos with a Medicine specialty for Heart Diseases, causing a victim to have a heart attack would allow the reroll 10’s rule to apply. Attributes are finally given some actual explanation because these dots gotta mean something! Attributes are both straightforward and also a bit loose, as everything is on the 1-5 dot scale with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent, and each dot has a recommendation/example to express the quality. Of course as outlined in Character Creation, the player's attributes break down into 3 main categories with each of those breaking down into subcategories. Physical: Strength: 1 dot = to bench pressing 40lbs 5 dots = benching 650lbs. Dexterity: 1 dot =You’re a klutz 5 dots =You can juggle knives blindfolded. Stamina: 1 dot= frail or sickly 5 dot = Tough enough to survive almost anything Social: Charisma 1 dot = People avoid you 5 dot = You could lead a nation Manipulation 1= You’re real bad at expressing yourself 5 dot = “You could sell ice to an eskimo” Appearance 1=You attract the hostility of others (with your Elephant Man looking rear end) 5= First reactions are either that of awe, intense jealousy or complete solicitude. Mental: Perception 1=Oblivious to anything but the very obvious 5=You can find a needle in a haystack Intelligence 1=IQ 80. 5=IQ160+ (Pretty sure IQ tests are bullshit. Also LOL) Wits 1= You send money to televangelists (which is double lol considering they’re a viable part of the loving Celstial Chorus) 5=Your brain is a supercomputer Abilities kicks off explaining the re-roll on 10 for specialites rule again. Even though we just had the rule explained to us 4 pages ago? Abilities break down in the same way the Attributes do, with Talents, Skills, and Knowledge. To spare all our sanities, I’ve included the Talents, Skills and Knowledge below as lists with specific notation regarding dot descriptions when something was worth noting. Talents: Alertness Athletics Awareness Brawl Dodge Expression (1dot = Tabloid Reporter, 5 dot = William Shakespeare) Intuition (1dot = Good instincts, 5 dot = You could bankrupt Vegas) Intimidation Streetwise Subterfuge Skills Drive Etiquette Firearms Leadership (1 dot = You could coach little league, 5 dot = “You are a Napoleon, a Churchill, or a HItler…”) :hyperthunk: Meditation Melee Research Stealth Survival Technology Knowledge Computer Cosmology Culture Enigmas Investigation Law Linguistics Medicine Occult Science Backgrounds were mentioned in Chapter 5 but now we get more information about what a background actually means and its value scale in dots. We’re also informed that dots cannot be added to your background with XP, it has to happen via gameplay events. Which contradicts the last chapter saying those “Freebie Points” could be used to….Improve your Background at *consults lovely table* 1 point per Background dot. Soooo I’m going to assume that when they say your background score can’t be improved with XP, they’re not talking about the freebie points given at the end of character creation, and mean generally earned XP. Allies are anyone who helps out the player, however the dots in this background allow for consolidating the dots used into a singular/more powerful ally, so a player can choose 3 allies with 3 dots, or 1 ally equal to the power of 3 dots, where 1 dot is listed as being “of moderate power” and each subsequent value being “Of correspondingly greater power” which….sure whatever, throw some math at me with no real parameters for what I should adding up. Game Design! Arcane oddly enough is more about hiding than it is arcane knowledge, but isn’t meant to be taken as a stealth ability and more about how well the Mage is able to “Cloud minds” and keep attention off themselves. 1 dot is “Easy to Overlook” with 5 dots being “Which grain of sand?” Avatar relates to the character's base Quintessence pool. If the player’s Quintessence falls below the number of this trait, they can reabsorb Quintessence after successful meditation at a node with a difficulty 7 roll. Quintessence gained with this background cannot be transferred to other Mages. Each dot is equal to the equivalent quantity of Quintessence that can be regained. Destiny is the Mage's ultimate potential. The higher the Destiny score, the more likely the Mage is to do something important and the more respect they receive within Mage society. Once per game session a Mage can roll a number of dice equal to their destiny rating (difficulty 8), with each success the player regains a point of willpower. Dream relates to the Mage’s ability to tap into the “Collective Unconscious” and gain information they would not normally have. This can also be used to boost an ability, however if it is used in this way then the user can only use Dream as a substitute for the ability for the rest of the day. Dream can also be used in situations where another ability wouldn’t work (Example: Intelligence+Dream (Linguistics) to understand the language of a being from another realm. 1 dot = “Hazy bits of information can be gleaned” with 5 dot = “Astounding insights are possible” Influence reflects the player's ability to influence mortals and gain followers. Influence can also be used with trait rolls to exhibit expertise. 1 dot = “Moderately influential” to 5 dot = “Vastly Influential” Library is related to the quality of the magical tomes in your personal/chantry library. The dots work slightly differently here as each dot adds “Study Points” that can be used to learn spheres (explained in Chapter 8 goddamn it) 1 dot = 5 study points, 5 dots = 25 SP. Mentor is who taught the player how to use magic and can additionally teach Spheres and Abilities to the player (per Chp.8) 1 dot = The Mentor knows a little bit of important info, 5 dot = They basically know everything Node works as a group score, as each player’s Node score is added together to gain the group's Quintessence value for that node. Each dot is equal to the equivalent dots of Quintessence. The Quintessence gained from the node is additional to any Quintessence gained from the Avatar background for the player with that background. Talisman refers to an item imbued with Quintessence that can be used by a Mage to help perform magic. The dot value of this background determines the power of the item. It is also used when creating a talisman. 1 dot = a minor talisman (Spirit helmet, listed as “Spirit Goggles” in the appendix) to 5 dot = a talisman of incredible power (Prodigy, a four pound supercomputer) Your Arete score covers a few things. It dictates how many dice a player can use when attempting to use Magic, it also allows the player to no longer need a Foci for one Sphere, and with a score of 3, the player can choose two spheres to discard the need for Foci. The final aspect Arete covers is the level of Sphere mastery the player can achieve. 0 is Superficial, with 10 being Enlightened. While Willpower was previously explained in chapter 5, this section is more focused on how the Willpower pool dictates the difficulty rating for a Willpower roll (1 being weak, 10 being Unshakeable) with players starting at a base of 5 (Certain) with the ability to purchase additional willpower during character creation. A point of Willpower can be used for 1 guaranteed success on a roll. The player may also use a point of willpower to counteract the storyteller in a situation where the storyteller calls for the player's action to be dictated by instinct/primal urge/gut reaction. If the player chooses to use the point of willpower to counteract this, they can. But the ST can just do it again, forcing another use of WP. (This is a loving stupid rule and really is only potentially going to lead to a war of attrition until the player is out of Willpower. And I don’t just mean on the paper either.) Willpower can be recovered at the end of the story (not the end of a session, the actual story what the gently caress) WP can also be recovered by special success in the story, fulfilling a criteria of their archetype, or if they have a sufficient Destiny score. The Paradox and Quintessence tracker works on a 20 point circle. Left side going clockwise for Quintessence, right side counterclockwise for Paradox. Quintessence ratings reflect how much energy a Mage has to use to power their magic. Paradox reflects that the Mage is an aberration to reality. Paradox can overlap Quintessence, but Quintessence cannot overlap Paradox on the tracker. Quintessence is gained by the Large Avatar background, or absorbed from a talisman, mystic site or a chantry’s reservoir/node. Quintessence can be used to lower the difficulty of a magical effect roll with each point spent equal to one less difficulty. Using Quintessence this way may have an effect on coincidental/vulgar magic rolls. Paradox can be gained whenever a player does a magic roll, and increases when using vulgar magic. The rules are in Chapter 8 because WW doesn’t understand how to lay out a usable corebook. A character's Paradox rating also indicates the player's level of Quiet, which is a measure of how “Sane” a Mage is. The higher their Quiet, the more likely they are to see things that don’t exist/miss things that do exist. Again, chapter 8 is called out as where the full rules are. I promised tables, so here’s the Health Level Table  As the table notes, once you are Incapacitated, if you manage to take additional damage, you are dead. And that is it for Chapter 6. I love The Hollow Ones, they are just the most adorable nonsense ever, although having not attempted to create one yet, I am unable to assess if this system hates them as much as I suspect it does. This chapter is broadly good, and has a lot of very useful information, it being after the rules for character creation is so utterly unintuitive, because as I’m reading this book the way it's goddamn layed out, I feel like I’m constantly trying to figure out what the hell the book is trying to convey, or just keep up with the jargon its flinging at me before bothering to actually give context for any of it. As for the Traditions, honestly other than the Hollow Ones and maybe the Sons of Ether, none of them really grab me as being a character I would be interested in playing. But that’s enough about Chapter 6 because friends, it is time to delve deeply into what is possibly the most important chapter of this book? That’s right. Next time its Chapter 7, MAGICK joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jul 9, 2022 |
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Jul 9, 2022 05:00
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Than you all for tossing a vote,between here and the WoD thread it has been decided by 4 votes that Werewolf the Apocalypse 1st edition will be the next core I read. Rest of the review of Mage should be up tomorrow, I gotta wrap up writing the last couple chapters and create my characters and having to go through and manually fix the bbcode is a pain.
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Jul 9, 2022 05:21
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Ehhhh, dumping basically every "primitive" or "native" magical practice into the Dreamspeakers is still kinda racist.
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Jul 9, 2022 06:24
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Zereth posted:Ehhhh, dumping basically every "primitive" or "native" magical practice into the Dreamspeakers is still kinda racist. You're right, I don't think it even really registered that's what they were doing with them. I think I had a line in my notes about them being a "born not made" Tradition and how that seemed kinda weird, but I didn't follow through on that thought.
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Jul 9, 2022 07:05
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I believe Mage shows a thing that will come up later in Scion 1E, which is when the game was clearly designed "around" a particular splat and so in a sense everyone else is a metaphysical reflection of that splat. in Scion's case it was the Greeks, in Mage's case it's the Order of Hermes. They play with this some later, with the Technocracy having meaningfully different "alternative" Spheres for a few of 'em, but that comes up in the deep revised stuff.
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Jul 9, 2022 07:25
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To be fair, I should probably never play Mage. I work as a computer programmer. Designing solutions to fit inside arbitrary parameters (such as not triggering Paradox) is my lifeblood. But I only ever read the most recent version of Mage. Let's see how far down this rabbit hole goes...
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Jul 9, 2022 10:06
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All right gang my teeth hurt and I need a distraction so tell me about the edgiest WoD tomes and I'll gross the pain away. Freak legions I've already read through. stupidly edgy and disgusting in privileged whit person ways.
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Jul 9, 2022 10:19
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Gypsies comes to mind. I know there was a Mafia sourcebook, which would probably be a source of some 90s edgelording. Guide to Pentex goes places, if I’m remembering right. On the other hand, I believe the book about the Shoah is actually very well handled. GreenMetalSun fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Jul 9, 2022 |
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Jul 9, 2022 10:28
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Gypsies and Shoah were reviewed here but Pentex seems promising. E: just started and The Dilbert Principle is listed as inspirational media. By popular demand fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Jul 9, 2022 |
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Jul 9, 2022 10:35
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By popular demand posted:Gypsies and Shoah were reviewed here but Pentex seems promising. scott adams can post so hard he hypnotises you into the most powerful orgasm of your life irl so I'm terrified of world of darkness scott adams
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Jul 9, 2022 10:44
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I want to say that one of the ‘decent’ parts of the Pentex book was that the evil beer company isn’t even up to anything supernaturally nefarious, they just make incredibly cheap beer that gets you real hosed up, flood the market with it, and get rich while not giving a poo poo about the fallout/the effect it has on addicts/the poor.
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Jul 9, 2022 10:49
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Nessus posted:I believe Mage shows a thing that will come up later in Scion 1E, which is when the game was clearly designed "around" a particular splat and so in a sense everyone else is a metaphysical reflection of that splat. in Scion's case it was the Greeks, in Mage's case it's the Order of Hermes. Ascension is designed even more around chaos magic, which is a really silly magical practice that goes around looting other cultures for their spiritual heritage so they can swap magical techniques around like Nintendo cartridges. This is the core of the setting, which has you playing someone engaging with the system through heterogenous magical practices. The Sons of Ether, for example, are straight-up chaos magic, just limited to pseudoscience: if you need to make something work, just swap around your (pseudo)scientific theories until you’ve made something happen. That said, as part of this morass of disparate and incompatible magical beliefs, hermetic magic is fairly prominent. There’s the Order of Hermes who are your classical symbol-using magicians, but the Virtual Adepts also have a fundamentally hermetic paradigm: the world is a computer simulation, and by representing part of this simulation and then altering the representation, you can also alter what it represents. As above, so below. As below, so above.
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Jul 9, 2022 10:59
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First woman to be described:
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Jul 9, 2022 11:10
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