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joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Nessus posted:

Maybe it was just the one Ecstatic I made in a game like twenty years ago, but whenever I see the Cultists of Ecstacy I definitely think Hellraiser before most of the other things.

Obviously, Pinhead fell to Quiet or Jhor or whatever between the second and third films.

For as big of a Hellraiser fan as I am, somehow that connection never crossed my mind. But yeah, I could absolutely see Pinhead and the rest of the crew being COE who fell to Quiet or made a deal with a Nephandus (explains Leviathan).

I think for me it's because the COE have barely appeared in the stuff I've read, and most of their deal in the corebook felt very "Magic Jim Morrison" or something where they're all just really hosed up on whatever crazy drugs they cooked up with magic. And probably orgies.

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
The Mage 2e CoE illustration, coupled with a Nigel D. Findley story with a CoE protagonist, cemented my image of the Cultists as dirtbag slacker hippies.

"Someone's dicking around with Forces" he said as the Technocracy assassin blew out the streetlamps.

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


Mage in all its incarnations has always been weird to me, because white wolf games are for like Darke Chyldren and stuff but Mage is always super bitchy about the idea you might want to be one of the evil mages. like isnt your whole company made of the idea of letting people play the normally evil stuff? why make cool super evil mages with unreality powers and then be like 'if you play one you become an NPC sorry'

Bar Crow
Oct 10, 2012
Maybe the idea of being a wizard taps into far darker impulses in players than being a vampire or werewolf and they needed to crack down on it for the game to be playable.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

joylessdivision posted:

I think for me it's because the COE have barely appeared in the stuff I've read, and most of their deal in the corebook felt very "Magic Jim Morrison" or something where they're all just really hosed up on whatever crazy drugs they cooked up with magic. And probably orgies.

Their Revised Tradition Book is very... normal. The protagonist (basically the person we follow as she explains the CoE to somebody else) is a very stable girl who doesn't really do much CoE-esque. I think at most they visit a Cultist chantry, pardon, PLEASUREDOME and peek in at some folks doing tantric sex to raise energy for some magic with a k thing. They got really hit hard by the Revised bat where it really helped some of the other Trads. No more Jim Morrison for you, young man, woman or enby.

Bouquet
Jul 14, 2001

Book of Chantries continues the long tradition in RPGs of forgetting that the PCs have magic powers. It's especially egregious in Mage because the PCs having extremely flexible magic powers is the entire point.

Lo Pan's spooky plant maze depends on no one having Life 2, Prime 2, which ought to be enough to create a sustained effect that kills all the plants within reach even if they are super duper magic plants. Maybe you could require Prime 3? At 29 xp, Life 2/Prime 3 would be completely reasonable for someone 10 sessions into a campaign, which also seems like well before an adventure set in some evil godlike wizard's Realm would make sense. If you require someone to have Correspondence 1 to effect enough at once for the whole party to just plow straight through that's pretty rough because the Maze of Ebon Gates gives -3 to Correspondence. Correspondence 4 is an additional 52 xp/20ish sessions. That still seems like well before you would want to send a party up against a foe with Arete 8 and 34 dots of spheres (out of 45 possible).

The spooky corn field in Sam Haight's latest railroad ride could be dealt with (maybe coincidentally depending on your GMs interpretation of how much consensus reality accepts crop circles) with Life 2, Correspondence 2: a wave of corn bending down to the limits of your vision. The limits of your vision can be easily extended with your buddy's coincidental Forces 3 effect to make your lantern be super powerful. Those spheres are achievable at character creation with flaws allowed or after just a few adventures with xp. And if you're sending a party that inexperienced up against at least three BSD it's a TPK even if the PCs easily see the woofs.

It's the D&D 3.x/5e equivalent of putting a level 2 party up against multiple trolls in terms of deadliness or thinking a chasm all by itself is going to significantly inconvenience a level 8 party with a competent arcane caster or druid in terms of environmental obstacles.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



joylessdivision posted:

For as big of a Hellraiser fan as I am, somehow that connection never crossed my mind. But yeah, I could absolutely see Pinhead and the rest of the crew being COE who fell to Quiet or made a deal with a Nephandus (explains Leviathan).

I think for me it's because the COE have barely appeared in the stuff I've read, and most of their deal in the corebook felt very "Magic Jim Morrison" or something where they're all just really hosed up on whatever crazy drugs they cooked up with magic. And probably orgies.
Here I always thought they did have some of those people in there, even if they were probably adjacent to the weird sex stuff. Self-mortification and such seems easier to get your head around if potentially problematic in a game where you only have 7 "hit points." Then again, it would be a splendid way to buy your innate soak dice up.

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

Kurieg posted:

There's a great line in, I think, the Glass Walker Revised book about how Yes, vaccines have tiny little banes in them but any theurge who thinks they shouldn't be vaccinating their kinfolk is an rear end in a top hat because there's a very simple bane cleansing rite but there's no rite that cleanses polio.

Sounds like it's time to go talk to some spirits in the Umbra while the Ahroun stands around meaningfully.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

juggalo baby coffin posted:

Mage in all its incarnations has always been weird to me, because white wolf games are for like Darke Chyldren and stuff but Mage is always super bitchy about the idea you might want to be one of the evil mages. like isnt your whole company made of the idea of letting people play the normally evil stuff? why make cool super evil mages with unreality powers and then be like 'if you play one you become an NPC sorry'

The silliest part is that if a player wants to be an "evil wizard" there's nothing stopping them (aside from maybe other players and the consequences of their actions). Voormas is at least as evil/awful/horrific as the worst of the Nephandi without technically being a Nephandi. Personally I think it'd be interesting to take a version of the Jade Demon's path. A character who became a Nephandi and then rebelled against and broke from that path. Now uses his Q-Entropty to burn other Nephandi from the pattern of the universe as an "evil" that destroys other evils.

Meanwhile, I like Sam Haight as a character, but I loving H-a-t-e the adventures that he's in. Because they aren't really adventures. They're "storytelling" in the worst possible sense. "Gather 'round children. I'll be your GM and I'm gonna tell you a stowy. It's a stowy because you cannot meaningfully affect it in the slightest and your characters will look like incompetent gently caress-heads because of that. Have fun."

There's seems to be no consideration in the adventure for the party's composition or actions. What if one of them is a, say, a Dreamspeaker who has a Supernatural Ally who is a Garou? Someone who would know exactly who Haight is and exactly who and what the BSDs are. What if one of the party stays with Alison to chat with her and Sam and to protect Alison? Does she still get her head ripped off because "that's how the stowy has to go?"

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012
How many people actually played (as opposed to read) these kinds of railroad metaplot adventures?

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Everyone posted:

The silliest part is that if a player wants to be an "evil wizard" there's nothing stopping them (aside from maybe other players and the consequences of their actions). Voormas is at least as evil/awful/horrific as the worst of the Nephandi without technically being a Nephandi. Personally I think it'd be interesting to take a version of the Jade Demon's path. A character who became a Nephandi and then rebelled against and broke from that path. Now uses his Q-Entropty to burn other Nephandi from the pattern of the universe as an "evil" that destroys other evils.

Meanwhile, I like Sam Haight as a character, but I loving H-a-t-e the adventures that he's in. Because they aren't really adventures. They're "storytelling" in the worst possible sense. "Gather 'round children. I'll be your GM and I'm gonna tell you a stowy. It's a stowy because you cannot meaningfully affect it in the slightest and your characters will look like incompetent gently caress-heads because of that. Have fun."

There's seems to be no consideration in the adventure for the party's composition or actions. What if one of them is a, say, a Dreamspeaker who has a Supernatural Ally who is a Garou? Someone who would know exactly who Haight is and exactly who and what the BSDs are. What if one of the party stays with Alison to chat with her and Sam and to protect Alison? Does she still get her head ripped off because "that's how the stowy has to go?"

It's incredibly frustrating, and even taking what's written as "How WW would run it" and using it as a template, you have the same ending to each of these adventures so far, which is Sam going "Smell ya later nerds" and escaping.

You can definitely use the adventure as written as a loose frame to guide a session, but there's definitely a spoken/unspoken aspect of the writers expecting the ST to make the needed adjustments to the stories so they fit their game, and not just running the thing from the book.

They do the "It's your game, play it how you like" and I believe in Amazon they were more explicit in "Hey make going to the Amazon make sense for your game"

I feel like if they did a bit more vignette elements to the adventure scenes, like Valkenburg had, at least in the NYC story with "Here are various things that could happen in this scene" than the more standard "Here's our story, you figure it out" it might not be as frustrating.

Also just having like a clear vision of a story for Haight that didn't stretch him out across 6 books and 3 games in his got drat introduction to the setting would have probably helped too. If he'd been kept as a Werewolf antagonist across a few books who happened to pop up in other games after a period of time, I think having him be a cross over villain could have worked. Instead he gets a great introduction, a decent second Werewolf story, this which is fine, and then after thought in one vampire book and likely a minor NPC in the next Vampire book (haven't gotten through the adventure yet).

The more I work on this Samuel Haight series the more I want to write my own Haight adventure that doesn't suck

sasha_d3ath
Jun 3, 2016

Ban-thing the man-things.
You shouldn't do it, people would Haight that.

Pakxos
Mar 21, 2020

joylessdivision posted:

The more I work on this Samuel Haight series the more I want to write my own Haight adventure that doesn't suck

Must be a universal thing for creatives - even got Sam the Man brought back in W20.

Ghost Armor 1337
Jul 28, 2023

sasha_d3ath posted:

You shouldn't do it, people would Haight that.

And besides Toji Fushiguro is superior character since he have the decency to die in both his apparencies

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Pakxos posted:

joylessdivision posted:

It's incredibly frustrating, and even taking what's written as "How WW would run it" and using it as a template, you have the same ending to each of these adventures so far, which is Sam going "Smell ya later nerds" and escaping.

You can definitely use the adventure as written as a loose frame to guide a session, but there's definitely a spoken/unspoken aspect of the writers expecting the ST to make the needed adjustments to the stories so they fit their game, and not just running the thing from the book.

They do the "It's your game, play it how you like" and I believe in Amazon they were more explicit in "Hey make going to the Amazon make sense for your game"

I feel like if they did a bit more vignette elements to the adventure scenes, like Valkenburg had, at least in the NYC story with "Here are various things that could happen in this scene" than the more standard "Here's our story, you figure it out" it might not be as frustrating.

Also just having like a clear vision of a story for Haight that didn't stretch him out across 6 books and 3 games in his got drat introduction to the setting would have probably helped too. If he'd been kept as a Werewolf antagonist across a few books who happened to pop up in other games after a period of time, I think having him be a cross over villain could have worked. Instead he gets a great introduction, a decent second Werewolf story, this which is fine, and then after thought in one vampire book and likely a minor NPC in the next Vampire book (haven't gotten through the adventure yet).

The more I work on this Samuel Haight series the more I want to write my own Haight adventure that doesn't suck


Must be a universal thing for creatives - even got Sam the Man brought back in W20.

WWExec: "I got it. We don't bring back Sam. We bring in his kid. Let the Garou fear the Son of Sam. What? Why are you all wincing like that?"

The group I used to game with thought of our RPs as movies or TV shows with the PCs being the main characters. We'd even pick various actors and actresses to be the "faces" of our characters. Bringing this around, how often does one see a TV show or movie where the protagonists where utterly unnecessary to the plot?

That's how the Haight adventures feel to me, like the events of the "adventure" would play out as they do whether the PCs were there or not. So instead of being the main cast, they're barely extras.

Just based on what I've read, the Book of Chantries scenario desperately needs to reduce the scripted outcomes to maybe "Sam escapes again" and everything else is up for grabs. The PCs can potentially save Alison, catch the Progenitor and save the Tree. And if/when Sam shows up again, well, he's maybe a little weaker having failed here. Or maybe he retreated and raided a different chantry (maybe Sam's on the Jade Demon's poo poo list now). All that only matters if you're GMing a cross-game, multi-party Sam Haight campaign or something.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



sasha_d3ath posted:

You shouldn't do it, people would Haight that.

:v:

Pakxos posted:

Must be a universal thing for creatives - even got Sam the Man brought back in W20.

That's the bonus review to cap off the series.


Spot on. And I do the same with the "Casting" element of games, it makes it a lot easier to give everyone at the table a clear vision of who the people they're talking to are and such.

My own Haight adventure is still a lot of floating ideas and somewhat tied to my other idea of doing an updated Valkenburg chronicle, but I haven't put words to page yet.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
I combine the casting with little handout cards that summarize what they know. With everything being digital now they're easy to update, too.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

Don't forget The Chaos Factor adventure which iirc is all about Sam.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy
I've always felt it's a testament to how poorly baked some concepts were in Ascension because Jhor seems to get passed over a lot with talk about Marauders and Nephandi but high Jhor kind of makes a Mage a combination of the two. Voormas is honestly the main bad guy of Ascension, I know the actual Ascension book gives other scenarios, but that's mainly due to no other strong singular candidates. He's also a Marauder but for one who wants to snuff out reality. While the Technocrats are bad, they have no singular leader or actual leaders that you can point out as the main adversary. They're a faceless monolith that doesn't realize they're ruled by that concept. The Marauders are just whatever and poorly thought out too, not really good or evil, just chaos. The Nephandi are all evil and represent descension, obviously the reverse of ascension and fundamentally wrong but not for the good reasons you get in Awakening for fallen mages for instance. The Nephandi are bad because they worship not-Cthulhu or whatever and it's honestly boring compared to what Awakening does with the stuff from dead or parallel hell universes. Jhor though represents the entropy and destruction of reality. Entropy is itself lowkey a corrupted sphere, mainly due to Voormas from what I remember, but that all should have been given more page time than it got. It didn't even really get what the Weaver as a big bad got from Werewolf and that was not much outside a book.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



You were not brought upon the Tellurian to "Get it," Mr. Haight!

Explodingdice
Jun 28, 2023


On casting characters, I've had a fair amount of success with kumu.io. It allows for a quick reference - this character looks like this and we've found this and that out about them.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I've always felt it's a testament to how poorly baked some concepts were in Ascension because Jhor seems to get passed over a lot with talk about Marauders and Nephandi but high Jhor kind of makes a Mage a combination of the two. Voormas is honestly the main bad guy of Ascension, I know the actual Ascension book gives other scenarios, but that's mainly due to no other strong singular candidates. He's also a Marauder but for one who wants to snuff out reality. While the Technocrats are bad, they have no singular leader or actual leaders that you can point out as the main adversary. They're a faceless monolith that doesn't realize they're ruled by that concept. The Marauders are just whatever and poorly thought out too, not really good or evil, just chaos. The Nephandi are all evil and represent descension, obviously the reverse of ascension and fundamentally wrong but not for the good reasons you get in Awakening for fallen mages for instance. The Nephandi are bad because they worship not-Cthulhu or whatever and it's honestly boring compared to what Awakening does with the stuff from dead or parallel hell universes. Jhor though represents the entropy and destruction of reality. Entropy is itself lowkey a corrupted sphere, mainly due to Voormas from what I remember, but that all should have been given more page time than it got. It didn't even really get what the Weaver as a big bad got from Werewolf and that was not much outside a book.

The Revised Euthie book goes into really nice detail on the effects of Jhor and how it would be easier if it was just the Marauder style insanity where you're throwing fireballs at the yellow lizards.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness Presents
:smugwizard: The Book of Chantries - Haighters Gonna Hate Volume 4 :smugwizard:

Part 11

Scene Five: The Harvest

While the Dancers are causing trouble up front, Sam assaults the Tree, which has changed dramatically since the players first saw it. Its branches are now curled in pain and its rough face contorted in agony. The cauldron has been kicked over, badly dented and showered with some kind of acid. The altar is shattered, and the circle is broken.

As the Crombey’s and the players reach the tree, they see it is too late, as Haight plunges his hand, sheathed in fire, into the heart of the tree. He rips a burning sphere of pure Quintessence from inside.

The tree screams as it dies, a piercing wail that deafens the players and shatters the windows of the farmhouse.

Haight then yanks a branch loose from the tree and channels the primal energy into it. So long as he holds the branch, he can be considered to have infinite Quintessence for the duration of the scene. He knows the risk of using vulgar magic, but considering how few would see them out here, he’ll gladly take the risk of Paradox to destroy his enemies.

But that’s not all! As the players and family recover from the noise, the guardian of the tree rises from the ground, not to strike at Haight, but its former masters. The guardian and any scarecrows left begin immediately attacking the players and the Crombey’s, leaving only Haight alone.

The ground around the husk of the tree then explodes as the remains of the Chantries dead Mages begin to rise, merging into a massive skeletal horror. From all around, the fragments of dead animals and rotting plants fly through the air, weaving into the monstrosity that has just risen. In its final form, it is over 7 feet tall and equally wide.

Turns out that Robert is a turncoat, and during the confusion, collocated himself back into the farmhouse and cast Blight of Aging on anyone who was still inside.

While it’s true that Sam would have joined the Chantry without violence had his offer been accepted, he and Robert had a contingency plan. In exchange for a bit of Haight’s DNA, Robert promised the Progenitors would help Haight. For now, only time will tell if either side holds up their end of the bargain.

While the players are dealing with the horror that just rose from the ground, Robert plants explosives in the cauldron and makes his retreat while Sam does the same with his fetish. Sam should not be caught under any circumstances because yada yada, we know he’s coming back.

Robert on the other hand, is fair game.

The Guardian
It has two extra dice for countermagic, for a total of 6.

Image: A hideous sight, the remains of all previous Chantry ages and all the victims of th scarecrows, combined into a multi-limbed killing machine.

Conclusion

Sam is gone, and Robert may or may not have escaped with him. The World Tree is ruined forever, its power stolen by Samuel Haight, and with that power gone, the power of the pumpkins is gone as well, leaving them little more than stores of Tass, one point per pumpkin.

Once the players have finished the battle, the family's cauldron will be destroyed, along with the farmhouse, leaving nothing but the cornfield. Without their World Tree, the Chantry will take a long time to recover, as a new tree will have to be planted and nurtured. Any of the family who survived will swear an oath to destroy Haight by any means possible. If Alistair has survived, he is a man of major influence within the Verbena and will use every ounce of that influence to avenge his wife. Samuel Haight has made a permanent enemy of the Verbena.

So that’s Harvest Time. We’ll get into the NPCs in a moment, as there are a few of them, but I wanted to interject and say a few things about the story before we moved on.

Once again, I’m left feeling like this story would work a lot better as a Werewolf story, as Garou players are the most likely to have met Haight. While I understand the desire to have a games spanning villain, considering that the six books he appears in were published between February 1993 (Valkenburg) to July 1994 (Chaos Factor), we’ve got just slightly over a year of this character appearing in six books that are all specially marked as having Haight involved in them, and that’s just sort of it. Why bother even doing this big crossover villain if you’re only going to write him into six books over the course of almost a year and a half?

Haight could have been an ongoing villain of the setting that just kept getting away to pop up in various books as a bit of a fun easter egg or plot device to a story, but considering we wrap this whole thing up in Chaos Factor, it seems like the writers either didn’t think this idea through completely, or got so much criticism from the fans that they decided to just end the poo poo after 6 books and never speak of Sam Haight again.

Which is a shame, because as I’ve said in the earlier reviews, aside from his blink and you’ll miss it appearance in the Sabbat Handbook, he’s been a solid villain for players to encounter, especially Werewolf players.

Having said that, converting this story over to Werewolf wouldn’t be all that hard, you could essentially keep most of the plot as is, but changing who is sending the players to the Crombey’s, or even just have the players sent off because there’s some weird vibes coming from this place in Kansas that might be a Caern. The players then meet the kindly farmer Mage family, maybe cotton on to something being amiss and then whoops, look at that, someone’s Sense Wyrm is tingling and wouldn’t you know it, here comes the BSD to cause some chaos. From there you can just run the rest of the story as is, Haight gets his McGuffin for the story, gives the players the finger and fucks off into the Umbra again.

Which, if you were telling these stories in order, would mean that your Garou players have already dealt with this loving rear end in a top hat back in the Amazon, and are probably extremely extra pissed to see that this mother fucker is at it again, causing trouble for them.

What I’m saying is that I appreciate the idea of doing this big crossover villain, but the execution is loving lacking and Haight would work better as just a straight Werewolf villain, unless you heavily seeded him into your other games as a weird threat.

As for the adventure itself? It’s not bad, and I think it would work well for a group of relatively low level/newer Mage characters, and could easily slot in as an early adventure in a Chronicle, as the setup is very simply and direct (go place, attempt to acquire thing) and it’s set at a farm in Kansas, the least likely place for some kind of otherworldly horrors to occur. The player's paranoia about something being off would be right, but you could run this as straight as possible until it's time for the poo poo to hit the fan, and then when it does, it really hits the fan. I also appreciated that they added a roll for the likely unaware Mage players to get an idea of who the hell Samuel Haight is.

I don’t think it’s as good of a solution as actually running your players through the previous Haight focused adventures, but it's at least a solution to the problem of “Who is this guy?”, although it relies entirely on the ST selling that Haight is a very dangerous character, which can be done of course, but if we’re talking about narrative quality in our Story Games, then I think that if you’re going to use Haight, you gotta put in the work to adapt the previous adventures to whatever game you’re running so that the players have experience dealing with the character, otherwise he’s just “Very Powerful and Dangerous NPC” instead of a villain the players can invest emotion into.

Now let’s look at some NPCs.

Characters

The Crombey Family

Alistair Crombey

I hear Fred Gwyne in Pet Semetary in my head looking at him.

Alistair appears to be a thin man in his 50’s but is actually 200. He has thin, hawkish features, and dark hair that’s gone mostly gray. He’s just under six feet tall, and usually has a faint smile on his face. Like the rest of the Crombey’s, he dresses like a farmer.
  • Nature: Architect
  • Demeanor: Traditionalist
  • Essence: Pattern
  • Tradition: Verbena
  • Spheres: Correspondence 2/Entropy 2/Forces 4/Life 5/Mind 2/Matter 3/Prime 3/Spirit 4/Time 1
  • Willpower: 7
  • Arete: 7
  • Quintessence: 14
  • Paradox: 5
Background: Leader of the Crombey Verbena Chantry for over 200 years, he is well respected within the Tradition and has considerable influence.

I appreciate that they slapped name tags on each of these images. It makes this process a lot easier to know for sure that Image X is NPC Y.

Allison Crombey


The prototypical farmer's wife, she is a portly woman with blonde hair, worn in a bun for efficiency. While she and her husband treat the “kids” as their own, her actual children lived and died long ago, un-Awakened. She is easy going, always happy to take care of guests, as they have so few at the farmhouse, and a perfect hostess.
  • Nature: Caregiver
  • Demeanor: Director
  • Essence: Questing
  • Tradition: Verbena
  • Spheres: Correspondence 2/Entropy 1/Forces 3/Life 5/Mind 2/Matter 2/Prime 2/Spirit 2/Time 1
  • Willpower: 8
  • Arete: 4
  • Quintessence: 7
  • Paradox: 4
Troy Crombey


Heavyset and muscular, Troy is clearly used to hours of hard labor on the farm. He is Allison and Alistair's great-grandson. He dresses in jeans, work boots and t-shirts, and is heavily tanned, accenting his brown hair and eyes. He comes across as the most aloof of the group, carefully watching any visitors with open suspicion.
  • Nature: Conformist
  • Demeanor: Curmudgeon
  • Essence: Pattern
  • Tradition: Verbena
  • Spheres: Entropy 2/Forces 2/Life 2/Mind 2/Prime 2/Spirit 2
  • Willpower: 7
  • Arete: 2
  • Quintessence: 5
  • Paradox: 2

Cecilia Crombey


The stereotypical farmer’s daughter, she is Troy’s twin sister, blonde, buxom, freckled and embarrassingly friendly. Under her careless exterior however, she’s incredibly perceptive and though she’s young, a powerful Mage. She dresses like her brother.
  • Nature: Bon Vivant
  • Demeanor: Bon Vivant
  • Essence: Dynamic
  • Tradition: Verbena
  • Spheres: Correspondence 2/Entropy 1/Forces 3/Life 3/Matter 2/Prime 3/Spirit 1
  • Willpower: 8
  • Arete: 3
  • Quintessence: 9
  • Paradox: 4
Robert Crombey


Robert shares his cousins Cecilia’s openness and Troy’s build for farming. He has light brown hair, green eyes and more freckles than should be possible, and takes his farmer gimmick to the next level by chewing on a bit of straw.

It is entirely possible that the real Robert is dead, as during a trip to San Francisco to visit friends, he disappeared for several days. When he returned, he was haggard and dirty, claiming the Technocracy had been after him, but that he’d escaped.

The bonds of family kept the Crombey’s from questioning the story, despite what came back looking and acting like Robert, but he certainly didn’t seem to think the way Robert had, and he sure seemed a lot stronger than he was before. “Robert” has been biding his time and concealing his true power for the right moment to strike.

Robert was never really satisfied with life on the farm, and so the question is, did the Progenitors create an excellent clone, or did Robert really sell out? ST’s can spin this tale in either direction with potential implications for both.

By nature, Robert is an open and friendly sort, always flirting with the ladies and joking around with the gents. He’s always willing to lend a hand and try to smooth over disputes between the Crombey’s and the players. His friendliness should be played up so that when his betrayal is revealed, it is more painful.
  • Nature: Conniver
  • Demeanor: Conformer
  • Essence: Questing
  • Tradition: Verbena
  • Spheres: Correspondence 3/Entropy 2/Forces 3/Life 4/Mind 3/Matter 2/Prime 4
  • Willpower: 9
  • Arete: 4
  • Quintessence: 6
  • Paradox: 3
Now, we get to the man himself, Samuel Haight. Before we look over his updated stats for this book, let’s go ahead and look at his Rage Across the Amazon stats to see how much of a jump his stats have taken.
  • Breed: Homid
  • Tribe: Outcast - He thinks of himself as the first of the Skin-Dancer tribe
  • Auspice: Theurge
  • Attributes: Strength 5/Dexterity 3/Stamina 5/Charisma 5/Manipulation 5/Appearance 2/Perception 4/Intelligence 4/Wits 4
  • Abilities: Alertness 4/Athletics 4/Brawl 3/Dodge 4/Intimidation 5/Primal-Urge 3/Streetwise 3/Subterfuge 4/Animal Ken 3/Drive 2/Firearms 5/Melee 4/Leadership 5/Stealth 4/Survival 5/Computers 2/Enigmas 4/Investigation 4/Linguistics 3/Occult 5/Politics 4/Rituals 5
  • Backgrounds: Allies 5, Resources 5
  • Gifts: Heightened Senses/Razor Claw/Inspiration/Curse of Aeolus/Visceral Agony, Thieving Talons of the Magpie/Bane Protector/Wyrm Hide/Blood Omen
  • Note: the first six gifts were taken from Garou, the last three from BSD. Most were gained through the Conquistadors' Sword.
  • Thaumaturgy: Movement of Mind 3/Lure of Flames 2/Weather Control 2/Spirit Thaum 1.
  • Rites: Ritual of Sacred Rebirth, Donning the Mask of Shadows, Puissant Shield, Ward against Lupines
  • Rage 8/Gnosis8/Willpower 9
  • Fetishes: Shedding the Spirit Skin (Level 5, Gnosis 7)
Also, for shits and giggles, here is his image from Rage



Let's see how things have changed


  • Breed: Homid
  • Tribe: Outcast - He thinks of himself as the first of the Skin-Dancer tribe
  • Tradition: Orphan
  • Nature: Deviant
  • Demeanor: Architect
  • Essence: Dynamic
  • Auspice: Theurge
  • Attributes: Strength 5/Dexterity 3/Stamina 5/Charisma 5/Manipulation 5/Appearance 2/Perception 4/Intelligence 4/Wits 4
  • Abilities: Alertness 4/Athletics 4/Brawl 3/Dodge 4/Intimidation 5/Primal-Urge 3/Streetwise 3/Subterfuge 4/Animal Ken 3/Drive 2/Firearms 5/Melee 4/Leadership 5/Stealth 4/Survival 5/Computers 2/Enigmas 4/Investigation 4/Linguistics 3/Occult 5/Politics 4/Rituals 5
  • Backgrounds: Allies 5, Resources 5, Avatar 5, Fetish 5
  • Willpower: 9
  • Arete: 4
  • Rage: 8
  • Gnosis: 8
  • Quintessence: 8
  • Paradox: 2
  • Spheres: Correspondence 3/Entropy 3/Forces 3/Life 2/Matter 3/Prime 2/Spirit 4
  • Fetishes: Shedding the Spirit Skin (Level 5, Gnosis 7)
  • Gifts: Heightened Senses/Razor Claw/Inspiration/Curse of Aeolus/Visceral Agony, Thieving Talons of the Magpie/Bane Protector/Wyrm Hide/Blood Omen/Unseelie Faerie Kin/Inspiration
  • Thaumaturgy: Movement of Mind 3/Lure of Flames 2/Weather Control 2/Spirit Thaum 1.
  • Rites: Ritual of Sacred Rebirth, Donning the Mask of Shadows, Puissant Shield, Ward against Lupines


So, we’ve had a few changes to his stats, mostly the additions of a Tradition/Demeanor/Essence/Nature and two new gifts, Unseelie Faerie Kin and Inspiration, along with Arete and Avatar scores.

Now here's where things get interesting. Remember how I said I put this book down to read through Rage first when I realized my mistake? Right, so I told you that so you would know that Amazon is very fresh in my mind when I picked back up with reading this book, and so I noticed some things.

From the Amazon review, this is how Haight is described:

quote:

Image: A middle aged man in excellent physical condition with hazel eyes and pure white hair. In all forms, he retains the white hair.

Here’s how this book describes him, and remember, this book takes place after the fall of El Dorado.

quote:

Image: A middle-aged man with hazel eyes and brown hair that is starting to gray. In all forms, Haight maintains a brown coat shot with gray.

God drat my dudes, it’s obvious that the folks working on one book were talking to the people working on the other book, and you couldn’t do the two seconds of looking over the earlier information to properly copy/paste information? So that’s the first oddity I spotted, that the authors of this book didn’t bother to get Haight’s physical description correct.

Allow me to point out how loving stupid it is that they messed up something as simple as the characters description:

From Rage Across the Amazon



Now, what does this book say in that same section?



Yeah, they just copied and pasted part of it. And that’s not all. Almost 90% of the “Background” segment on Sam in this book is directly lifted from the same section in the Amazon book, with the only changes being the addition of what Sam did in El Dorado, and that he currently lacks the discipline to control his new magical powers.

I don’t want to poo poo on the authors by saying they were lazy for doing this, because honestly, as I pointed out earlier, all six of the books in this little adventure series came out over about a year and a half, so by all means, when you’ve got a good write up for a character, re-use it and make the needed additions, but come the gently caress on, if you’re going to copy stuff from the other book, at least copy it correctly.

This is certainly a moment of “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” because this is supposed to be this big, crossover event villain, and we now have him appear in this book 4 months after Amazon was released, in a decent story, but somehow editing didn’t catch a very obvious mistake of WHAT THE loving CHARACTER LOOKS LIKE.

Of course, this likely wouldn’t have been that big of a deal at time of release, as most players wouldn’t have read both books, but it is, as I said above, very disappointing what little care was put into this bit of the character who is supposed to be a central element of the stories in six books. Enough of a central character to warrant a god drat full-page ad calling him the Ultimate Badass.

Get your poo poo together mid 90’s White Wolf!

With all that pissing and moaning out of the way, I do enjoy Harvest Time, and I appreciate that it’s a lot lighter on suggested dialogue and not as heavy handed in how the story “Should” play out, and I kinda love the idea of Sam Haight showing up, being a perfect gentleman to this family of Mages he’s trying to get in good with, and then just flips his poo poo and rips someone's head off, WHILE IN HOMID FORM! It’s stupid as hell, but c’mon, it's also kinda awesome in a very dopey, comic book villain way.

It’s still frustrating that Haight once again just gives the players the finger before zipping off into the Umbra. As I said in the Amazon review, I think the ending of that story, and this one would feel a lot less frustrating to the players (especially if they’ve met Haight before) if they actually get a shot in on him. Sure, he’s going to escape, and that’s fine, but at least give the players a shot off on him before he does fucks off screen with the McGuffin of the story.

I don’t understand how no one working on these books back then had the common got drat sense to just add a little “Let the players get a shot or two in on Haight, but make sure he doesn’t die, and that he escapes, as he’ll be appearing in additional White Wolf books” instead of the “Don’t let the players touch him at all, he can’t die, because we’re putting him in additional books.” stuff. Fine, I understand he’s going to appear in other books, but outright keeping him in this bubble of ST invincibility to the point that the authors are explicitly saying he shouldn’t be hurt at all is frustrating beyond belief.

Okay, for real I’m done bitching (for now), so let’s wrap this chapter up.

Setting

The Crombey Farm Chantry
  • Powerful: 70+ points
  • Status 3
  • Reputation 3

    Advantages/Disadvantages
  • Atmosphere: Peaceful (+5)
  • Phenomena: Normal (+0)
  • Magical Manifestations: Subtle
  • Guardians: Scarecrows, Guardian of the Tree (Ridiculous +20) Supernatural (+10), Loyal (+15)
  • Location: Isolated Farm (+5)
  • Size: Chantry, Average (+5), Node, Average (+5), Realm, None (-5), Real Cost: 5
  • Security System: State of the Art, Scarecrows (+10)
  • Wards: Difficulty 10 (+10
  • Defensive Wards: (+5)
  • Typical Shallowing: (0)
  • Communications: Modern (+2)
  • Large Private Landholding
  • Node: Tass (variable negative) \
  • No Realm
  • Arcane Library: Good (+5)
  • Laboratories: Inadequate (-5)
  • Internal Politics: Traitor (-20), Harmony (+10), Total Cost: (-10)
  • Leadership: Benevolent Leadership (+10)
  • No Servants: (-10)
Total Cost: 82

So that’s how we end this chapter, with the stats for the Crombey farm from the perspective of the points system. It makes some sense, but without the added context of the points system, right now it’s basically gibberish numbers. And while I did read Appendix Two in my first read through, as I’ve said in previous reviews, a lot of these mechanics slide right out of my head after I'm done working on these reviews, if they even stick around that long, so as I sit here writing this closing paragraph, I have no real context for what any of the stats for the farm. But all will become clear once we get to Appendix Two.

But first, we must delve into Appendix One.




Appendix One: Other Strangeness

A whole appendix of Chantries that don’t quite fit the mold of Tradition/Technocracy/Nephandi control. Are you ready for poo poo to get weird?

Chantries of Ka Luon

Plenty of Mages believe in extraterrestrial life who are, though not Nephandi, still locked on the other side of the Horizon from entering the Near Umbra. Some of these races are said to be allied with the Nephandi, while others are simply explorers, and still others supposedly experiment on humans or attempt to breed with them, in the hopes of creating hybrid creatures for reasons unknown.

These races are broadly known as the Ka Luon or Hidden Ones by the Traditions, though it is likely that each race has its own name. These Hidden Ones are believed to control large Chantries that resemble spaceships that are capable of traveling the Umbræ and Earth. Sleeper reports of UFO’s (or UAP’s as we call them now) are believed to be sightings of these Hidden Ones. No one is entirely sure how many of these mobile Chantries exist, or if they are in league with each other or not.

Some believe these UFOs are actually Marauders, Nephandi, or even visitors from the Chimerae, though the existence of the Hidden Ones remains unproven……for now.

Sure, why not throw aliens into things, this is Mage after all where they spent a paragraph or so saying in the corebook that you could essentially port anything into the game and make it work, so gently caress it, let’s throw some UFO wackiness into things. I mean, considering the WoD is run by inhuman monsters, it’s not such a stretch to believe that aliens aren’t pulling some strings as well.

Abandoned Chantries

Chantries are exceptionally valuable places, and are therefore, rarely abandoned. However, there are some situations where a Chantry is vacated by force. Often, Mages whose Chantry has been captured will lay terrible curses on their Realm, Nodes and Chantry building itself to prevent their enemies from using them, with the curses generally extending to anyone who was not already a member.

These Chantries, therefore, stand abandoned and empty until the curse is lifted. There are very few of these still around, as most have had their curses lifted, though figuring out how to lift these curses often proves more difficult than just founding a new Chantry.

One such abandoned Chantry is the Manse of Madness in the Realm of Creeping Doom (which holy poo poo, what a great name for a place, sounds like a King Diamond song title). The Chantry belonged to the Order of Hermes, but all who resided within were executed by the Nephandi, but not before the eldest Mage was able to lay a curse on the entire realm and those who would seek to control it with their dying breath.

The Realm still exists, and there is even an Earthly aspect that can rebuild itself after being destroyed. The Chantry looks like a dilapidated, old two-story wooden house, its interiors covered in dust, though most of the previous occupants' belongings remain. Of course, taking any of these items will bring the curse down on the thief, who is unable to be rid of the item until the curse has run its course. All items that are stolen from the Chantry eventually find their way home.

Rumor has it that the Chantry is haunted by numerous spirits that Mages are unable to control, appearing to whomever they desire, usually with the goal of driving their victim mad. Some believe that powerful cosmic secrets can be learned in the house, but so far, no one has come out with anything resembling their sanity intact. Seems it’s name is apt, as all who try to stay within the Chantry are driven insane, often leading to the murder of another victim until only one remains to be carried off by the spirits of the Manse for eternal torment.

Now that is how you write a decent weird rear end Chantry. It’s just a creepy haunted house that drives you crazy, and if you go with a group of pals, you’re all going nuts until there's only one of you left, and that lucky bastard gets dragged off by spirits. Spooky poo poo, in my wizard game? It’s more likely than you think!

Mobile Chantries

[i]The Flying Dutchman


We’ve all heard tales of the legendary ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman. Some believe that the ship is under the control of Marauders, but so far no one has been able to prove that. The ship is only seen at night, around the Cape of Good Hope.

The ship is often described as having a faint bluish-green glow, and spotters ranging from merchant marine ships to US aircrafts have reported seeing the ghostly merchant ship. The Dutchman is said to fire a few cannons as a warning to those who get too close, though there are no reports of it sinking another vessel.

No one is sure what the purpose of the ship is, and some claim to have heard human voices, described as either laughter or screaming. A Technocracy Shock Corps once attempted to attack the Dutchman, only to be met with flying Marauders and a sea serpent. Before they could actually attack, the Dutchman simply disappeared, along with the storm that surrounded it. Gazing into the Umbra revealed the ship had completely disappeared.

If the rumors of the Dutchman are true, it would suggest that the Marauders are working together in large numbers to carry out missions. Perhaps the Marauders aren’t quite as insane as once believed, and they do have goals.

Booooo, just make the cool ghost ship a got drat ghost ship! We got a ghost ship in Promised Lands, it’s not like it’s not something that exists in the universe. Why do we need to slap the Marauders into this thing?

[i]The Knights of Newark


Newark, New Jersey is the home of a Cabal known as the Knights of Newark, composed of four mages, Denton Klein, a VA, Dedra Sain, a CC, Russel Johnson a OoH, and Christina Lewis, a Hollow One. This motley crew controls a most peculiar node, a 1978 Volkswagen van in perfect running condition. The Knights use the Node as their mobile Chantry, as the interior of the van leads into a small Horizon Realm pocket. The Realm looks like a loft, but its walls and floor look like the interior of the van. Each Mage has a partitioned section for their own rooms and shares a large communal area.

The van is capable of healing itself when damaged, as long as no one is looking. And is still in perfect running order, thanks to running on Quintessence instead of gas. The van also has a one-way portal that drops the Mages off in a dumpster in Jersey City.

The Knights are currently at odds with the Camarilla, Sabbat and Anarchs of the world, and they have lost numerous friends already. They’ve also had a few run-ins with Garou and a couple of Technocrats. While the Cabal has an ancient Hermetic Mentor, he is bedridden due to incurable damage done to his body by his own magic.

I kinda love that a Cabal out of Jersey is tooling around in a magical VW van and have somehow made enemies of literally all three Kindred factions. Bravo friends. Also, I’m imagining these Mages as trashy Jersey stereotypes, and it makes their enmity with the Kindred that much funnier. You just know they’ve worked fist pumping into some kind of Rote.

Other Chantries of Note

Balador, Cult of Ecstasy Pleasuredome in the City of Altua

:nws: :nws:

All CoE Chantries are considered to be palaces of utter decadence by those who misunderstand the Cult. Outsiders see vices, and the Cult sees legitimate means of attaining transcendental states. Philosophical differences aside, Balador stands as one of the greatest Chantries of the Cult, resembling the Hagia Sofia cathedral and surrounded by the city of Altua, a city that features similar architectural style.


The Hagia Sofia

Balador has a distinct Greek-Arabic ambience, with street markets, temples to forgotten Gods of pleasure, and beautiful people of Greek ancestry.

……But…. none of Arabic ancestry? In the place that you said has Greek-Arabic ambiance? While modeling it after a place that is now a Mosque? I’m not saying you’re being racist here WW, but you’re certainly being something that skirts drat close to being racist.

The Pleasuredome is the home of four CoE Cabals and two multi-Tradition Cabals. These Mages rarely leave the Realm, instead preferring to expand their inner horizons with every imaginable stimulation. Mages have every pleasure center on their bodies stimulated in every way possible, chemical, magical, fleshly and less identifiable pleasures occupy the Mages while the various Acolytes of great beauty and insight tend to the more worldly concerns.

So the Acolytes are the jizz-moppers is what you’re saying. God drat I would not want to be one of those poor bastards having to clean up after these likely sticky Mages. Blech, if there’s one thing I hate more than Mages, it’s sticky Mages.

The Mages of Balador also “commission” shows for the citizens and themselves, using Correspondence magic to bring all manner of entertainers into the Realm, and then using Mind magic to cloak their memories, leaving the performers with vivid dreams of wild shows.

I’m not the only one sitting here reading that and seeing the absolutely worst possible direction that poo poo could go right? Just mindwiping entertainers so they don’t remember whatever gross poo poo you did to them. loving sticky Mages!

The Chantry is overseen by Archmage Marianna, Master of Correspondence, Life, Matter, Mind and Time. The guards of the Chantry are powerful and possess unusual mental powers, while the members of the multi-Tradition Cabals act as the Realm’s Sentinels, as well as the bulk of away missions.

The Pleasuredome controls four Nodes in Istanbul, including the real Hagia Sofia, as well as a Node in Thrace called the Temple of Dionysus, an ancient Greek temple cloaked by a magical forest. The priestesses of the temple are said to be on good terms with the Black Furies.

Balador’s Earthly aspects are located in New York, Istanbul and Los Angeles, and those who spend time in New York have encountered members of a Wyrm cult known as the Seventh Generation (additional info in Rage Across New York), a cult whose deliberate corruption of sexuality has so infuriated the NY Cabals, that they are hatching plans to infiltrate the Generation to bring them down.

Do I want to know what the gently caress “Deliberate corruption of sexuality” means? I mean, I’m going to read Rage Across New York in the very near future, so I suppose I’ll find out when I get there, but boy howdy, does that line not fill me with confidence at all!

The Celestial Temple of the Sun

Under the streets of Vatican City is a massive underground temple that resembles a medieval monastery with labyrinthine tunnels and numerous rooms, all lit by magical candles that do not extinguish or burn down.

You might expect a Celestial Chorus Ancestral Chantry to be a place of glorious palaces with golden streets and angelic hosts singing praises unto the Almighty.

You would be wrong in this case, as the Mages of this temple are ascetics living a quiet, monastic life. The temple, known by very, very few members of the Tradition is not actually on Earth, instead the subterranean staircase that leads into the temple is actually the gateway to the Chantry Realm, and these stairs can be made to appear or disappear as needed.

There is no “outside” as the entirety of the Realm is the Chantry, able to grow or shrink to accommodate the needs of the Mages in residence. It is also where many of the holiests relics and artifacts on Earth are stored.

The Temple is home to 30 Celestial Choristers from all over the world and walks of life, united in their service to the One. While they seek Ascension, their focus is on the diminishing spirituality of the Sleepers, seeking to restore religious belief, as only through faith in the One can Ascension be achieved, or at least so the Chorus believes.

Rumors claim the residents of the Temple are in direct contact with the Oracles of Prime, and that they will, in the near future, bring a miracle of the One to the Sleepers on Earth. The details of said miracle remain unknown, but the Mages nonetheless prepare for this event, believing it a necessary catalyst to lead the Sleepers back into the good graces of the One.

It’s fine lol. I don’t have a lot to say about the Celestial Chorus in general as what bits I remember of them from the corebook screamed “Christian Mysticism” which you know, is neat I guess. Oh and being a Televangelist was a viable character option which is hilarious and also does not exactly paint the CC as being particularly “Good”. The last goddamn thing we need is Benny Hinn or Peter Popoff having legit magical powers.

The Nightmare Theatre: A Hollow One’s Haunt



The modern World of Darkness denizens have abandoned movie theaters in favor of the cineplex, leading to many old theaters being left to rot in squalid downtown areas.

One of these abandoned theaters is in Gary, Indiana, known as the Royal Palace Theatre, closed since the 1970’s and now serving as the home of a Cabal of Hollow Ones. The Theatre is home to three Mages and two Acolytes, Crystal Spinner, Marvin Hafuer and Klenton McKay, all Mages, and Julie Pratt and Dwaine Smith, their Acolytes. While the Cabal’s powers are weak, they make up for it in resolve.

The Cabal uses the offices, the areas behind the screen and a massive hidden basement as their home. There is no security system, guardians or wards, and their only servant is a 15-year-old runaway named Eddie. The group often shows old movies for their own amusement, and occasionally discusses turning the place into a nightclub. The Cabal knows two local Kindred, Juggler and Michael, as well as having met many of the Chicago Anarchs.

They’re hoping to form some sort of gang with a few of these Kindred, who, for their part, plan to make this group of squishy magical juice boxes into their Blood Bound servants.

While not as much fun as the Sepulcher and its motley crew, The Nightmare Theatre is neat, and it's nice to see Juggler and Michael make an appearance again, as I liked both of those characters in the Masquerade core.

I haven’t pointed it out prior, but it does strike me as slightly odd that the “World of Darkness” as a thing is referenced a couple of times in this book. I mean I know it’s the name of the setting, but it still just feels sort of odd to see it referenced the way it has been.

Anywhoo, that’s it for Appendix One. We got a cool, spooky cursed Chantry, a not as cool, not actually a ghost ship Flying Dutchman, a CoE Chantry that almost certainly has extremely sticky floors and a bunch of Acolytes that are questioning their choices in life, some Jersey fist pumping Mages with a green VW van, a less interesting spooky Hollow Ones Chantry and a Celestial Chorus monastery. Oh, and aliens, can’t forget about the aliens, because this is the 1990’s after all, and the X-Files started this year and was just beginning its ascent to the top of the ratings.

Overall, I’d say this appendix isn’t terrible, though I shudder to think too much about the Pleasuredome.

This is it folks, the home stretch, so let’s bring this bad boy in for a landing as we plow through the Chantry Creation System in Appendix Two



Appendix Two: Optional Creation System

Creation Points

For those of you who want numbers and precise details for creating your Chantries, there is the points system. Each step of the process lists advantages and disadvantages that can be purchased with Creation Points (or for disadvantages, gaining creation points). The points you start with are determined by the number and power level of the Cabals who reside in the Chantry, and taking disadvantages will bump that number up.

While base creation points are ultimately up to the ST, guidelines are provided. ST NPCs can also “contribute” points, based on the abilities of each NPC Cabal in the Chantry. Players may also take the Chantry Background (more shortly), pool their points, and add them to the NPC points.

Starting Creation Points

Pitifully Weak Chantry — 10-20 points
Weak Chantry — 20-30 points
Average Chantry — 30-50 points
Strong Chantry — 50-70 points
Powerful Chantry — 70-100 points
Very Powerful Chantry — 100+ points

NPC Cabal points (per Cabal)

Apprentices — 10 points
Predominantly Disciples — 20 points
Predominantly Adepts — 30 points
Predominantly Masters — 50 points

Chantry Background Sidebar

This background is intended to be taken if you are using the creation points system for Chantry building, and can only be taken by players. If a player leaves a Chantry that they donated creation points to, they do not regain these points upon leaving. Any points associated with this background that were not used, however can be use to purchase more points in Chantry, as long as the new Chantry they join was also created with the points method.

Note that the Chantry Background is different than the Node Background, which is the amount of additional Quintessence that the players Cabal can access on its own.

1 Dot – 1 Point
2 Dot – 2 Points
3 Dot – 3 Points
4 Dot – 4 Points
5 Dot – 5 Points.

Costs

Chantries automatically own a building of some kind. Each Node costs 5 points, while Realms cost 10. From there, all characteristics either add or subtract from this amount. All aspects of a new Chantry are covered in the following lists, with Advantages listed with the points required to purchase them, and Disadvantages listed with the points they remove from the total cost.

ST’s are advised to emphasize the disadvantages, making them worth their points. Total disadvantages should not be worth more than half the total point spent on Advantages.

Example: A Chantry has 100 points in Advantages, and 45 in Disadvantages.

Chantry creation can be broken down into six interrelated categories:
  • Node, Realm, and Building - External: Covering physical dimensions, general state and surroundings and research facilities.

  • Outside Population, Servants and Acolytes, and Internal Workings - Internal: Covers the general population of the Chantry and Realm (if applicable) and relations of the Mages therein.

Costs cover on particular area, and each additional area advantage must be bought separately. Characteristics of each aspect should be noted during creation.

Example: A Chantry with a five-point Ward covers both the Chantry building and Node, for 10 points. To extended the ward to the entire Realm, would cost 15.

Tomorrow: The conclusion of Appendix Two and Book of Chantries :smugwizard:

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Everyone posted:


The group I used to game with thought of our RPs as movies or TV shows with the PCs being the main characters. We'd even pick various actors and actresses to be the "faces" of our characters. Bringing this around, how often does one see a TV show or movie where the protagonists where utterly unnecessary to the plot?

When I started running the Buffy RPG about 20 years ago, I had all the players 'cast' their characters and then made an opening credits sequence as a Flash video with an opening song ('Dig That Stupid Sound' by Big in Japan) and the final frames with all the monsters of the week being added as they appeared in the season.

Ever since, we've been casting our characters in all our camapaigns.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
The Seventh Generation's thing is deliberate and systematic child abuse. It is fairly gross - think this generation of White Wolf trying to pull off True Detective season 1.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


I like how every time Sammy Haight makes an appearance to gently caress poo poo up it very obviously could have been better resisted if the various WoD denizens were capable of working together.
I have no idea what he'll come up with next but I'm sure adding some powerful mages to his pile of nemeses will not slow him down at all.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Now if WoD lean more into that "This guy wouldn't be a threat if these guys would quit trying turbo murder each other or turning them into lawnchairs for five seconds to pay attention" and didn't give him plot armor, it'd be better.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



By popular demand posted:

I like how every time Sammy Haight makes an appearance to gently caress poo poo up it very obviously could have been better resisted if the various WoD denizens were capable of working together.
I have no idea what he'll come up with next but I'm sure adding some powerful mages to his pile of nemeses will not slow him down at all.

His next appearance is in New Orleans. He's apparently got info the players need, and he wants to be fully changed into a vampire because apparently being a not-garou shifter, ghoul and also a wizard isn't enough.

The NObN adventure is like half the book and I just haven't touched it this week because I've been on staycation playing Diablo 4.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

joylessdivision posted:

Once the players have finished the battle, the family's cauldron will be destroyed, along with the farmhouse, leaving nothing but the cornfield. Without their World Tree, the Chantry will take a
Balador’s Earthly aspects are located in New York, Istanbul and Los Angeles, and those who spend time in New York have encountered members of a Wyrm cult known as the Seventh Generation (additional info in Rage Across New York), a cult whose deliberate corruption of sexuality has so infuriated the NY Cabals, that they are hatching plans to infiltrate the Generation to bring them down.

Do I want to know what the gently caress “Deliberate corruption of sexuality” means? I mean, I’m going to read Rage Across New York in the very near future, so I suppose I’ll find out when I get there, but boy howdy, does that line not fill me with confidence at all!

You should already know. Seventh generation is a bunch of child molesters who worship the Wyrm. I think it's kind of cool that the Sex, Drugs 'n' Rock and Roll Mages still have moral lines and are planning to utterly destroy the cult of child molesters.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


joylessdivision posted:

His next appearance is in New Orleans. He's apparently got info the players need, and he wants to be fully changed into a vampire because apparently being a not-garou shifter, ghoul and also a wizard isn't enough.

The NObN adventure is like half the book and I just haven't touched it this week because I've been on staycation playing Diablo 4.

Next up Sammy stops to personally poo poo in Caine's cornflakes which in no way hinders him on his way to Stygia to open a portal to Arcadia or whatever.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Everyone posted:

You should already know. Seventh generation is a bunch of child molesters who worship the Wyrm. I think it's kind of cool that the Sex, Drugs 'n' Rock and Roll Mages still have moral lines and are planning to utterly destroy the cult of child molesters.
I thought those guys canonically got butchered by what's his name the signature Silver Fang, which was like his rank challenge for being King.

Explodingdice
Jun 28, 2023


Nessus posted:

I thought those guys canonically got butchered by what's his name the signature Silver Fang, which was like his rank challenge for being King.

They did, yeah. It gets mentioned a couple of times, and I think happens before second edition, but after Rage Across New York sets the scene and gives them an adventure.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Nessus posted:

I thought those guys canonically got butchered by what's his name the signature Silver Fang, which was like his rank challenge for being King.

That's much later, sometime during Revised.

The Seventh Generation were a playable faction when the Rage card game did their Wyrm expansion, so that's nice.

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


The 'turn into an npc' punishment in white wolf games is also really weird. Usually that comes up in more like traditional games when you would become a vampire or illithid or like something opposed to the playstyle of a classic adventuring party. And also like, for a couple of those the transformation is more a 'killed and replaced' deal, where the original character's soul has departed and its just their body being driven around by someone else.

but in white wolf poo poo you're like, already a monster. So instead the 'becoming an NPC' thing is 90% the time just a case of the character being insufficiently angsty about being a monster. There's no real change in life state, its just policing the players behavior. Which is not really needed, because most players are probably on board for the designers fantasy as-is, and the ones who want to do the other thing will just do the other thing, so it just makes the designers seem controlling. If a group thinks they can do something fun with an 'unintended' playstyle then let them, and if they don't think they can they won't do it.

nwod mage does a bit more of a convincing job of turning players away from 'unintended' playstyles by extensively statting out the abyss mages and their process of becoming one, and just makes it abject poo poo nobody would ever want. which kind of uh raises more questions, like 'why would anyone ever do this?'.

if you introduce dangerous, forbidden powers people are gonna want to play with them. regard it as a success that anyone wants to play with something you wrote, don't get mad.

although as a writer who has done both fiction writing and rpg writing, i feel like a fair amount of people in the industry are people who would like to write a novel, but thats hard, so they write the outline of their idea as an rpg adventure so other people have to fill in the blanks. that way you get the praise of having cool ideas without having to do all the annoying unfun parts of fiction writing.

i would never do anything like that myself though

Arcanuse
Mar 15, 2019

think there's some rogue [i]talicization.

anyways bit miffed at the Marauder's inclusion in this one.
comes off as
"Hey, we have a marauder chantry yet?"
"no"
"eh just put em on a spooky boat, call it a day"
which is a disservice to both marauder and boat, really.

Why not, Iunno, a traveling theater-chantry of marauders working magic (knowingly or not) to spark people's imagination and put a little wonder back in the world?
Just something more than a relative footnote where I'm left wondering why include them at all.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Nessus posted:

I thought those guys canonically got butchered by what's his name the signature Silver Fang, which was like his rank challenge for being King.

They did. The key words in my post were "planning to." Figure the CoE folks, being up their own asses Mages, were still in the "planning to" stage when the Silver Fang guy just went in and murked the whole 7gen.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
It's slightly more complex than that. Albrecht didn't take them on single-handed - there's a couple of Werewolf NPCs whose deal is finding out this poo poo isn't just isolated incidents but an actual illuminati pedophile ring and trying to work out what to do, who have unclear links to Marianna's Children's Crusade, which has already been fighting them for years on a global scale. Albrecht gets told and, being on the outs already, figures he has nothing to lose so he doesn't bother trying to think about the long game and just hears 'cabal of child abusers, but for the wyrm', gets his klaive, and starts hacking up bodies on a local level. That inspires more direct action by more Garou, who get information on where to strike from both their own networks and from... Marianna. Also, from Special Agent John Courage of the Technocracy and a few other paperpushers who hear reports of literal werewolves storming orphanages, ripping off heads, and abducting children, dig literally an inch below the surface, go '...oh. Uh. You know what? I didn't see poo poo, and also, here is the address to that guy's boss, I sure hope it doesn't fall out of my pocket and into your mailbox, just like I sure hope this report on mages and werewolves being involved doesn't fall into this shredder here.'

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Loomer posted:

It's slightly more complex than that. Albrecht didn't take them on single-handed - there's a couple of Werewolf NPCs whose deal is finding out this poo poo isn't just isolated incidents but an actual illuminati pedophile ring and trying to work out what to do, who have unclear links to Marianna's Children's Crusade, which has already been fighting them for years on a global scale. Albrecht gets told and, being on the outs already, figures he has nothing to lose so he doesn't bother trying to think about the long game and just hears 'cabal of child abusers, but for the wyrm', gets his klaive, and starts hacking up bodies on a local level. That inspires more direct action by more Garou, who get information on where to strike from both their own networks and from... Marianna. Also, from Special Agent John Courage of the Technocracy and a few other paperpushers who hear reports of literal werewolves storming orphanages, ripping off heads, and abducting children, dig literally an inch below the surface, go '...oh. Uh. You know what? I didn't see poo poo, and also, here is the address to that guy's boss, I sure hope it doesn't fall out of my pocket and into your mailbox, just like I sure hope this report on mages and werewolves being involved doesn't fall into this shredder here.'

Secret Agent John Courage is a true hero.

And yeah, Albrecht basically mobilized the Garou in the northeast going off the information another Fang collected, plus these 'additional sources' and was a step towards showing the Fangs could still be useful.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Loomer posted:

It's slightly more complex than that. Albrecht didn't take them on single-handed - there's a couple of Werewolf NPCs whose deal is finding out this poo poo isn't just isolated incidents but an actual illuminati pedophile ring and trying to work out what to do, who have unclear links to Marianna's Children's Crusade, which has already been fighting them for years on a global scale. Albrecht gets told and, being on the outs already, figures he has nothing to lose so he doesn't bother trying to think about the long game and just hears 'cabal of child abusers, but for the wyrm', gets his klaive, and starts hacking up bodies on a local level. That inspires more direct action by more Garou, who get information on where to strike from both their own networks and from... Marianna. Also, from Special Agent John Courage of the Technocracy and a few other paper-pushers who hear reports of literal werewolves storming orphanages, ripping off heads, and abducting children, dig literally an inch below the surface, go '...oh. Uh. You know what? I didn't see poo poo, and also, here is the address to that guy's boss, I sure hope it doesn't fall out of my pocket and into your mailbox, just like I sure hope this report on mages and werewolves being involved doesn't fall into this shredder here.'

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that those CoE New York cabals were involved in passing info to the people that were decapitating the pedos. I like that even within some of the "bad guy" organizations, there are lines. And that while they may not personally go vigilante, they are absolutely willing to help along and provide cover for those who will.

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Fish Heads
Jul 29, 2023
Albrecht is clearly Garou-Anon, Seventh Gen is being systematically arrested and brought before military tribunal, TRUE Silverfang patriots are in control.

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