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So, I've been lurking for a while, and this thread is a major reason why I finally got around to paying my  . There was some talk about Wraith on the previous page, especially Charnels Houses of Europe and Wraith: the great War. I've got both those books (in fact, I have a lot of Wraith books), and they're pretty great. The thing about Charnel Houses is that they actually took the time to make a great setting, full of plot hooks and interesting NPCs, that no one is ever going to use.
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Oct 21, 2013 12:58
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Adnachiel posted:Are you implying that you want to do a write up of Charnel Houses? I have a morbid interest in the Holocaust and I have been interested in that book ever since I heard it was actually good, even though I've never been interested in Wraith. I'd read it. I guess I could do that, or Great War or any other Wraith book, really. I really love Wraith and I'd love to talk about/ramble on about it. Unless someone else wants to do it first?
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Oct 22, 2013 04:07
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Charnel Houses of Europe The Shoah Part 1: Introductions This isn’t an easy book to read or talk about, but I’m going to try. Published in 1997, Charnel Houses was developed by Richard Dansky and written by Jonathan Blake and Robert Hatch for the Black Dog Factory imprint. Most Black Dog books are closer to Cthulhutech than Shindler’s List, being mostly juvenile stuff with lots of sex and violence, but this book is actually a mature take on a difficult subject. The authors really did a good job, or as best as possible when writing a RPG book about the Holocaust. Foreword Mi Yagid Labanim: Who will tell the children? By Janet Berliner The book starts by an essay written by an author who, at the time, was about to publish the last book in a trilogy of novels dealing with the Holocaust. Here, she tells the story of all the memories she thought of when Rich Dansky called her about the project, and of what went through her mind before she answered him. She remembered a photograph of her grandmother and her siblings, three of which were deported to the camps. She remembered her uncle, who would speak while constantly switching between 6 languages, an old habit that was used to make sure the guards wouldn’t understand what you were saying. She remembered the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem, a memorial to the 1,5 million children who died during the Holocaust. Ultimately, her message is this: we must remember the horros of the past, to hopefully prevent them from happening again. This is a theme that is very present throughout the book, the back cover writes in big letters “Because the Story Must Be Told” and it’s repeated again in the introduction. Ghost Story: Rusalka By Robert Hatch This is the classic White Wolf short story at the start of the book. It’s only two pages long, and starts with a quote from “The Song of the Murdered Jewish People”, a poem by Yitzhak Kacenelson, who died at Auschwitz in 1944. The story itself is the charming tale of a woman who died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and now takes her revenge on the granddaughter of one of the German doctors who was there. It’s short, brutal, and effective at setting the tone. Introduction We now come to the introduction proper. It starts with the usual description of what is in the book, before dealing with the controversial nature of the book. It is stressed that everything dealing with real world history was researched, and only the stuff dealing with the World of Darkness was added. The Holocaust wasn’t some weird plan of some occult faction, it was a human work, just like in the real world. The book is more interested in looking at the consequences of the Holocaust on Wraiths than in shifting blame, a position that I find myself agreeing with. Charnel Houses of Europe posted:Wraith is about unfinished business and passion, and surely the 12 million souls who died in the events of the Shoah had much that they left unfinished. I think I’m going to stop here for now. Not much for a first post, but the next chapter is pretty big. Next time: The Telling of Agonies.
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Oct 23, 2013 00:06
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AmiYumi posted:I don't remember too much about the book, but I do recall it heavily leaning on the position the good WW writers took: Supernaturals don't "cause" major events in history, they just claim they did after-the-fact; the ones with the power to cause real change are too terrified of change or playing N-dimensional chess with their rivals or just generally have their heads up their rear end too much to see the potential in doing anything other than being parasites. Yeah, this started around the end of the second edition and became the norm into Revised: Supernaturals aren't nearly the Secret Masters they think they are, and they get surprised by humanity all the time. And in the case of Wraith in particular, it would be hard for dead people to cause much of anything. They're dead. Sure, a smart ghost could set himself up some followers, maybe an ancestor cult, but if he's too blatant others are going to come down on him like a bag of soulforged bricks. Someone once described Wraith as the game where "you start off dead, and it goes downhill from there." It's not always true, but it's pretty appropriate anyway.
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Oct 23, 2013 02:12
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Part 2 The Telling of Agonies: A Chronicle of the Millions By Jonathan Blacke  ”Charnel Houses” posted:You would tell the truth… And you know what would happen?... They wouldn’t believe you. They’d say you were crazy. Might even put you in a madhouse. How can anyone believe this terrible business – unless he has lived through it? So, this is the history chapter. It tells in detail the history of the Holocaust, from Hitler taking power to the Allies liberating the survivors of the Death Camps. It goes over a lot of things, like the Evian Conference, the Krystallnacht, Operation T4 and all the other nice things the Nazis did. I’m not really going to over that, it’s a pretty good history and it really made me alternatingly sick and angry and sad. Instead I’m going to focus more on the sidebars that can be read throughout the chapter dealing with the effects on the World of Darkness. It was decided, wisely, to separate the fiction from the facts in this section, so that no one could mistake one for the other. Note: There’s going to be a lot of Wraith jargon thrown around, so it might be a good idea to reread the old Wraith corebook review in the first thread. Hidden Agendas: While the various Supernaturals were not the cause of the Holocaust and were not leaders in the Nazi party, they were still involved in some ways. In this Sidebar, it’s revealed that the early Thule Society had many Verbena members, while the Technocracy, especially the progenitors and Iteration X, had close ties to the Nazi regime. If those names don’t mean anything to you, don’t worry, this is Mage stuff. The Sons of Tertullian, a group of extreme exorcists know for burning down orphanages rather than let ghosts live in them, were also involved in the Nazi government, albeit at the lower levels. They used the Nuremberg laws to persecute Gypsies, believing them to be mediums, and many of “Gypsies” were imprisoned in concentration camps and had forced “exorcism” performed on them. Few survived. Taking Sides: During World War II, many group saw themselves torn apart, divided along national lines. This is especially true of Mages, with the Technocracy falling into literal civil war over it. Meanwhile, in the Underworld, Charon and the Hierarchy were at war against the Dark Kingdom of Jade, and every resource Stygia could muster were used for the war. Reapers, the people in charge of processing new wraiths and decide whether to enslave them or soulforge them (Wraith is such a cheerful setting, isn’t it?) suffered tremendous overwork due to the war, and took a lot of short-cuts to deal with it, such as getting unofficial apprentices. The early Holocaust wraiths were therefore lost in the bureaucratic mess for a while. The Partition Accords: Eventually, the Hierarchy started noticing what was going on. Nihils, holes in the underworld leading to the Labyrinth, started appearing in places that had been stable before. And then strange wraiths, with never before seen Deathmarks, started showing up. They were refused entrance in many Necropolises, as they looked strange and ragged, others feared they might be a new breed of spectre, and some simply had not let go of their living prejudices and so wanted nothing to do with these undesirables. Eventually, a group of representatives of the new Shoah wraith reached Stygia, accompanied by the mysterious Ferrymen, and demanded an audience with Charon. They got it. There, they revealed what was happening in the lands of the living. Charon and the Deathlords were stunned, but not because they cared about the Shoah wraiths. This was dangerous for the state of the Shadowlands, as it could cause all kinds of Spectre nastiness to come into being. With Charon busy with his war against Yu Huang, the Deathlords drafted what was called the Partition Accords: the new wraiths would be placed in gated communities, protected by the Equitaes (knights of the Hierarchy) until they could adapt to life in the shadowlands and integrate with the rest of the Hierarchy over time. To the surprise of no one with half a brain, the ghost ghettos were a complete failure. Project Werewolf: Not just humans were used in the Nazis’ experiments, some of the supernaturals were caught along with the communities they had been hiding in. Some werewolves and a few vampires were found and experimented upon by people like Mengele, to horrifying results. Most died. Some vampires also found the camps to be nice feeding spots. The Nazis did not care if they found the desiccated corpse of a prisoner, as he was going to die later anyway. Man, vampires are dicks. The Army of Fire: Many members of the various resistance groups who fought against the Nazis did not stop fighting after death. They regrouped and started calling themselves the Army of Fire and went around trying to find old comrades… and enemies. When they saw the ghettoes of the Partition Accords, they were enraged and convinced the wraiths living in them to leave and join them. The Hierarch administering let them do it, thinking something like ‘Good Riddance’. When the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Sixth Great Maelstrom (a giant reality storm covering the shadowlands around the world, full of specters and other fun stuff) started. Charon vanished, presumably destroyed, fighting a giant Malfean who attacked the City of Stygia. Now in charge, the Deathlords had to deal with the Shoah dead. Another conference was called, and this time everyone showed up. The Deathlords, the Ladies of Fate, important officials, the Ferrymen, representatives of the Holocaust wraiths and of the Army of Fire were all present. There, the victims accused the Hierarchy of failing them and of shirking its responsibilities. The Deathlords, unsure of their new power, accepted their faults and signed a new treaty, the Covenant of the Millions. Basically, it renounced all authority over the Millions, gave them the Haunts created by the death camps as territory and promised to hand over to them all Nazi wraiths they could find. In exchange, the leaders of the free camps had to deal with the Nihils and Spectres created by the holocaust. The ghettos are linked through the old nazi railway system, blasted into the Shadowlands by allied bombardments. The railways are protected by remnants of the old Army of Fire, to stop poachers and slavers who would target their trains. As far as organization go, they’re pretty anarchic, usually going by the “one leader chosen by the population” method of rulership. They mostly focus on finding still missing wraiths of victims and family members, hunting down the ghost of nazi war criminals and trying to redeem victims who have become Spectre. Because of their self-ruling nature, they are largely not trusted by neighboring Necropolis and are treated as outsiders by many. Many of the higher-ups are angry that these wraiths who “should have been theirs” were given so much liberty, and would like to bring the “Dark Kingdom of Wire” back under the thumb of the hierarchy. Fortunately, they are not without allies, with many Renegade groups and lower-ranked bureaucrats of the Hierarchy sympathizing with their plea. Another important topic for them is memory: structures in the shadowlands are powered by memories of the living. In order to be safe, they want to make sure the living remember what happened at these sites, and they subtly help things like Holocaust museums and other projects. In the remaining chapters, we’ll see in more details four of these free ghettoes. Next: An Antechamber of the Damned.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:09
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BryanChavez posted:I don't really give a poo poo about historically-accurate ships, but I did find it really dumb that I needed to forget what I knew about the actual Age of Sail and actual geography in a game where I accidentally said 'France' instead of 'Montaigne' half of the time anyway. Ever since I played Europa Universalis and read the Baroque Cycle, Théah has become waaaaaay too small for me. You look at 17th-century Europe, and man there was a lot more going on than in 7th sea. A lot more countries and cultures, that's for sure.
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Oct 26, 2013 04:37
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Count Chocula posted:If somebody were to run a game based on Charnel Houses of Europe would it resemble the classic Twililight Zone episode where ghosts of concentration camp victims tortured/guilted a former camp commandant? That was much closer in time to the Holocaust, and it carried all of Rod Serling's moral outrage. I remember there were a fair amount of plot hooks in the book when I read it the first time: hunting down Nazi ghosts is only one of them. There's a lot of stuff to do in the various settings, and I think the "default" Charnel houses campaign would be more about trying to move on after the horrors your character lived through, while trying to protect your little enclave in the underworld. I'm going to do this book pretty slowly: while it's pretty well written, it's not exactly a "fun" read.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:59
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Part 3 An Antechamber of the Damned: The Theresienstadt Ghetto  Wikipedia Article for people who want to be depressed.  In 1944, an International Red Cross delegation arrived at the Theresienstadt Ghetto, worried by the rumors of something horrible happening in central and eastern Europe. They went away satisfied that the rumors were unfounded: what they saw there was a perfect "model ghetto", with well-maintained streets, a flourishing artistic community, children playing in a park, with good food and all run competently by a council of Jewish Elders, the Judenrat. This was all, of course, a big lie. As soon as the Red Cross left, the living conditions became as terrible as they were before and it resumed it's true purpose: a waypoint on the railroad leading to Auschwitz, Dachau and other Death Camps. All in all, 35 000 died in the camp, due to disease, hunger and mistreatment. Of the 15 000 children who passed through Theresienstadt, only 100 survived. What remains in the Shadowlands is a phantom copy of the camp, looking like a wound in the surrounding country, complete with bleeding walls. The wraiths who live there, calling themselves the Ghetto Circle, have decided to transform the place into a site of healing for the dead, not an easy task. The nearby Small Fortress, used by the SS for torture and execution, is the site of a Nihil, a hole in the Shadowland leading to the Tempest and serving as a gateway to the Spectres who live there. Thanks to the work of the Ghetto Circle, it is much smaller than before, but it remains a constant threat. Here's a map of the camp:  Town meetings take place in the Church. The Hospital house those who died of disease, with Doctor Holvenbach acting as their spokesperson, a responsibility he takes very seriously. The old Judenrat quarters host what passes for city administration. There's a few factions in the camp: the largest are the patients, led by Doctor Holvenbach. They often dictate policy because of that. Some resent the majority for their power,e specially since their leader is German. There is also fear of the Doctor's Redemption program, his still unsuccessful attempts to redeem people who became Spectres. The smallest and most hated group are the Red Cross wraith, members of the IRC who visited Theresienstadt and are now Fettered there. Their inability to see what was really happening has not be forgiven by many. Some of the most important NPCs are described, with stat blocs. Butterfly is the ghost of a young street painter who died after her drawing of what was going on in the camps was discovered during the lead-up to the Red Cross visit. Her nickname came from the children living in the camp, for whom she would draw butterflies and other happy things. Now, she mostly stays silent, and draws constantly. She draws strange murals, sometimes hopeful, sometimes full of despair, reflecting her deep connection with the Haunt. Her passions include convincing people of her connection with the spirit of the camp and helping others with her drawings, as well as finding the children she used to watch over. Her Shadow, however, tells her no one cares about her "special connection" and wants to convince her she should sacrifice herself for the good of the camp. Solomon Eisenfeld is the leader of the camp, and a Rabbi who was on the Judenrat when alive. Sent to Theresienstadt because of his fiery sermons contesting the Nazi regime, he put in charge of selecting who would be sent east to the death camps. This job destroyed him inside, until he found himself deported in 1944. Now, he seeks to earn forgiveness and does his best to protect the ghetto wraiths, despite many still hating him for what he did. His Shadow, on the other hand, wants to rule with an iron fist and break the covenant with Stygia, as well as convince him that he is a horrible leader. Dr. Richard Holvenbach was a proud german, born during the Second Empire under Bismarck. His brother died during WWI and he found himself on the wrong side of the Versailles Treaty frontiers, but he never stopped hoping that the land would return to Germany. When it happened, he was initially quite happy and enrolled as an army Doctor. His whole world crashed when he was affected as camp doctor to Theresienstadt. Seeing the horrors perpetrated by his countrymen, he did his best for the prisoners of the camp, even trying to talk to one of the Red Cross diplomat who did not believe him, until he died of cholera in 1944. He now represents a large group of wraiths who look up to him, remembering the good things he did in life, and leads the camp's Redemption program. His passions are to redeem Mortwights (wraiths who became spectre instantly upon reaching the Shadowlands) and represent his constituents. His Shadow passions are to sabotage the Redemption Program and sow dissension within the Ghetto Circle. Jean-Claude Leclerc is the Red Cross diplomat who didn't believe Dr. Holvenbach. Such horrors could not be possible! He died in 1947 of intense alcoholism, and joined the Ghetto Circle soon afterward. His passions are to Gain acceptance in the Ghetto, find the SS who lied to him and get even, and to help his fellow IRC wraith. His Shadow Passions are to Find the SS ghost and lead them to the camp, discredit Holvenbach and bring Spectre into the Ghetto. Aaron Dahlcek was one of the carpenters who originally built the camp, lured there by the false promises of the "model ghetto". That illusion did not last long, and he soon saw the camp he had helped build become a house of horrors. He died during an escape attempts, two weeks after the Red Cross visit. While he hates the camp for the memories it brings, he is helped by the friednship he has formed with Butterfly. His passions are to protect Butterfly and help Holvenbach with the Redemption program. His Shadow wants to abandon Butterfly and to convince Aaron that by helping build the camp he is responsible for what happened in it. The chapter ends with three story ideas: - The characters are part of an attempted redemption of a Mortwright that goes horribly wrong, causing the subject's destruction. They are now accused of sabotage, and must clear their name by finding out what went wrong. - Eisenfeld tells the characters of his suspicion that there is a mole in the camp working with SS ghosts. He cannot help the players in their investigation, however, as suspicions about his dealings with the Stygian representative are on the rise. - The situation blows up between holvenbach and Leclerc, causing the Red Cross wraiths to leave. Eisenberg and Dahlcek are worried they might do something self-destructive and send the characters to find them, but even if they do they must deal with holvenbach and Leclerc... and their Shadows. Next: Behind the Wall
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Oct 31, 2013 04:07
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Traveller posted:
Cheer up, I haven't gotten to Auschwitz yet. ... 
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Oct 31, 2013 04:42
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gently caress everything.
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Part 3 Behind the Wall: The Ghetto at Warszawa  The Warsaw Ghetto is one of the most well-known locations of the Holocaust, along with Auschwitz. If you've seen Schindler's List, The Pianist or many other movies you've seen the Warsaw ghetto. After the Nazis conquered Poland and took over Warsaw, they corralled all the Jews into a small and poor neighborhood and then built a wall around it. Life in the ghetto was pretty terrible, with the authorities treating the inhabitants terribly and resources being terribly lacking. The author can't help but notice that the Snickers bar he was eating while writing this chapter contains more calories than the average inhabitant of the Ghetto would get in an entire day. Once again the Nazi set up a Judenrat to serve as their puppet government, as well as a Jewish Police Force made up of people who had little contact with the Jewish community previously. They were apparently sometimes worse than even the SS. Adam Czerniakow, the leader of the Judenrat, choose to cooperate with the Nazis as much as possible, but eventually killed hismelf in 1942 when he found out what deportation really meant. It changed nothing. Meanwhile, a resistance was being formed in the Ghetto. Helped by a member of the Polish Communist Party, Pinkus Kartin, partisan's were trained and started planning attacks. While he was soon executed by the SS, he did meet up with a young man by the name of Mordechai Anielewicz who ended up becoming a leader of the Ghetto Resistance. Despite the lack of help from other Polish resistance groups, who were pretty anti-semite themselves, he started storing weapons and ressources. They slowly turned the ghetto into a veritable deathtrap, full of traps and secret tunnels and bunkers. And when in early 1943 the Nazis decided to completely empty the Ghetto in preparation for the Final Solution, the Jew fought back. Charnel House posted:Mein Gott! Die Juben haben Waffen!(My God! The Jew have weapons!) For 27 days, the various Resistance groups fought back in Ghetto Uprising. Armed with Molotov Cocktails, smuggled guns, artisanal explosives and whatever they could get their hands on, they held the Wermacht at bay for more days than it took to conquer Poland in the first place. Eventually, the german commander Jurgen Stroop won, but only by burning the entire Ghetto to the ground. The entire neighborhood was razed block by block, with the few survivors sent to the Death camps. In the Skinlands, almost nothing remains of the ghetto, except for a few monuments and small museums. However, in the Shadowlands the place remains almost entirely intact, sent there due to the German destruction. The dead remain segregated in death as they were in life, with the Dybbuks of the Ghetto rarely meeting with the Polish ghosts of the rest of Warsaw. While not all Jewish dead became Wraiths, it is estimated that as many as 20000 wraiths live in the Ghetto. There's a lot of factions among them, the most numerous being the ghosts of the partisans, still lead by Anielewicz. While the Hierarchy considers them to be Renegades, their popularity and the Covenant renders them untouchable for now. The Ghetto is now protected by the Wall that closed it in the lands of the living. Huge and oppressive, it offers protection against the Spectre that try to attack the Ghetto... as well as the eternal prison of Nazis who found themselves on the wrong side of the wall in the afterlife. The Sewers under the Ghetto are still there, patrolled to keep an eye out for Spectres who might invade from the Labyrinth. The Central ghetto is where the Judenrat used to be housed, and now houses the new leadership of the Ghetto. It also houses a few monuments in the Skinlands, serving as springs of Pathos to the wraiths. The Productive Ghetto was where the factories were, and in death the factories are still there, working for the Jews this time. This is where things are soulforged or moliated into tools, and due to the lack of raw materials a thriving Black Market is also present. Finally the Wild ghetto, what used to the poorest and most destroyed area of the living Ghetto, is now a lawless mess were most Dybbuks fear to go. It might house Spectres, and it's "leader" might or might not be the ghost of Moishe the Bolshevik, a man who helped Anielewicz during the Uprising. We now get to the important NPCs of the Ghetto. First up is Mordechai Anielewicz: after leading the Uprising, the young man did not let something as trifle as death stop him. He's now the leader of the Ghetto wraiths, and is something of a legend among Europe's wraiths. His stats are suitably impressive, wit multiple Attributes and Arcanoi at 4 or 5. His Passions are to keep protecting the living and dead Jews of Warsaw and to never let a fascist regime threaten his people again, while his Dark Passions are to give up the good fight, betray the people and avenge himself against the ingrates. Emily Landau was the first to kill a Nazi during the Uprising, and the first Jew to die. She's one of Anielewicz's top aide, but has developed unrequited romantic feelings for the leader. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of strengthening her Shadow, as the dead 17-years old teenager does not know how to deal with her emotions properly. Her Passions are to make Anielewicz fall for her, avenge herself and protect the surviving Jews of Warsaw, while her Dark Passions are to make Mordechai care (associated with codependency instead of love) and to "avenge" herself on anyone who pisses her off. Adam Czerniakow is the old leader of the Judenrat. He spent many years wandering aimlessly through the Ghetto until Anielewicz gave him a minor diplomatic position out of pity. Czerniakow hates him because of this pity and mercy. And it seems his Shadow has used his diplomatic position to enter into contact with dangerous Dead... His passiosn are to redeem his "good" name, atone for the deaths of the deported ones and to keep the community safe, while his Dark Passions are to get Anielewicz killed and to force the Warsaw wraiths to show gratitude for all he has accomplished. Rebbe Zishe Friedman was an advocate of nonviolence in lfie, which led to him being beaten to death by an SS officer. Now, he's become a sort of religious leader in the local dead's search for Transcendence. His Passions are to preserve the Judaic faith beyond the shroud, teach "truth" to all listeners and to abstain from militancy, while his Shadow Passions are to study occult lore without caring for the consequences and tot rick people into avenging his death. The chapter ends once again with story ideas: - The Warsaw wraiths become involved in the politics of newly democratized Poland, violating the Dictum Mortuum. The player's are dispatched to patch things up... or exploit them for their own ends. - Anielewicz makes a daring raid into the local Hierarchy Citadel, stealing a powerful Artifact, and the characters are sent to retrieve it. But was it really him who did it? And if it was, with whom the characters will ultimately side? - Rebbe Friedman (or his Shadow) contacts a Spectral hive, allowing them into the Ghetto. A harrowing game of Cat and Mouse ensues in the Wild Ghetto. Next: A Struggle for the Forsaken
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Nov 6, 2013 18:58
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Mors Rattus posted:If I recall, they actually give the rationale behind making Anielewicz a complete statistical monster. It is something along the lines of 'Here's what this man did. In real life. You can go read about it. Now come back and tell us that these stats are wrong.' Pretty much. One of the reasons I'm so glad about having read this book is all the stuff I learned by reading it. I never knew about Theresienstadt. Babi Yar and the ghetto Uprising. The Uprising is the most simultaneously  and I've read. Screw the 300, this is the Last Stand I remember with tears in my eyes.
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Nov 6, 2013 19:34
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citybeatnik posted:One of the things I always had a hard time with Wraith was wrapping my head around the, well, time difference - could you be one of the Resistance fighters with starting stats? Would you be folded in as one of the recently dead if you died near the Ghetto from unrelated causes? IIRC, there's a merit or background in the Player's Guide to be a really old ghost. Doesn't make you stronger, because it's not because you've had more time to improve yourself that you actually took the time to do it, but it gives you a benefit based on how loving long you've been around. Unlike, say, vampires who would become really powerful when older, most wraiths just keep hanging around, so there is literally no limit to how old your character would be. I never managed to get a game of Wraith going, but I did run a few successful one-shots. You really need players who are game for it though. And then there's the unfair advantage of not everyone having the same roleplaying skills, so that some Shadows become stronger simply because they're played by people who are better at loving with someone else's mind.
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Nov 7, 2013 00:12
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Flavivirus posted:Whatever, dude. Wraith is an excellent game of pathos and tragedy and the darkness inside, it's true, but Orpheus is an absolutely brilliant horror action movie of a game. The system's power structure is versatile and gives characters plenty of cool toys, and the metaplot is honestly the best metaplot I've seen written, never putting expectations on PC action or assuming an NPC is unkillable or unstoppable. Sure, it doesn't have Wraith's tone, but it's a hell of a ride. Yeah, the campaign's pretty great. And as a Wraith fan I found the conclusion to be pretty awesome, thanks to all the little connections. Wraith and Orpheus are both ghost games done by White Wolf, but they're very different takes on the subject. If anything, Orpheus is closer to Delta Green than the typical White Wolf game.
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Nov 7, 2013 13:53
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...maybe I should write it up for F&F.
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Instead of continuing Charnel Houses like I should, I've been reading my copy of Over the Edge that arrived yesterday. Reading old posts in this thread is what made me buy it, and so far I'm not disappointed. It's the first game I've read that I feel I could run games inspired by Suda 51's work in them. It seems like Killer 7 would just fit right in with all the weirdness in Al Amarja.
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Nov 10, 2013 01:44
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Kurieg posted:Ravnos were written out for a couple of reasons, their clan power was Chimerstry, which allowed them to create illusions that were more real than reality. Used properly you could invalidate any social or combat encounter by making your foe react to false stimuli and do something dumb. They were also the "Gypsy" clan, and they fell onto a lot of the same problems that the Gypsy oWoD book had. They also had a clan specific path known as the 'Path of Paradox', more commonly known as the 'Path of whatever I was going to do anyway' because of it's hierarchy of sins. Actually, you couldn't start with higher than 2 in Kailindo, and that was if you got a good mentor and your Storyteller let you. It was still broken as poo poo though. 
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Nov 13, 2013 04:09
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Another thing I "like" about the Vampire metaplot is how they finally wrote good-to-great clanbooks for Ravnos, Setites and (especially) Assamites, but by then the metaplot had already done it's damage. Heck, the Ravnos had already been wiped out when their (average-to-good) clanbook came out!
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Nov 13, 2013 04:19
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Bieeardo posted:They ended up putting the kibosh on Glass Walkers cybering themselves to the gills, didn't they? Not as sweeping a change as things like the Avatar Storm, but given that some of them were basically angry daggits it was a breath of fresh air. The whole apathy thing never worked for me, especially for a game trying to be global like Mage. I mean, looking at the world, it's quite clear apathy hasn't taken over anything. If the game had been restricted to the U.S., it could have worked, but from the get-go Mage had always been pretty global, with Traditions coming from (originally very badly described) all the corners of the world. The whole Paradigm of Apathy therefore fell apart as soon as you looked at it.
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Nov 14, 2013 01:55
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I vote for Hobbits twice, because a game of The One Ring without a hobbit is like a gentleman without a monocle. It just doesn't work. 
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Dec 8, 2013 07:16
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