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Merry Mithrastide from the Mysterium! This is my first time actually posting on this forum, so hi, you all terrify and enthrall me. I just wanted to thank this thread for some inspiration - I’m running a Mage: the Awakening campaign, and I’ve made use of the one and only bit of Beast that had any appeal to me in it. I learned about it lurking here, so I figured you all deserved an account. The general concept of the chronicle is that the PCs, a small group of Pentacle mages, were present at the assassination of an established Mysterium scholar, and while investigating the killing they discover that he kept a collection of human souls in his basement. The local Pentacle Orders have been infiltrated by the Tremere Liches, and only the PCs know this for sure (a spell thrown back through Time erased the evidence - the remains of a timeline in which they presented it to the local Hierarch, though I think the players may have basically just ignored that clue. Such is ST life). They’ve formed a cabal to puzzle out the assassination and unravel the Tremere presence in the fictional city of Cheston, Wisconsin. I’m from Madison, but I just didn’t feel the city was spooky enough for an Of Darkness game. Of course, a week after I announce the game and write up a city loosely based on Madison, I find out my teenage sister used to sneak out to an abandoned sanitarium on dares, and that there’s really no comprehensible mundane reason the city was built in the middle of a swamp then made State Capitol. So basically I was too much of a dork to know that Madison is plenty spooky from firsthand experience, but I’ll find it easier to blow Cheston up if the PCs go hog wild. In any case: In the course of investigating the souls they found in the lich’s sanctum, the PCs found Ward Six at the local hospital, which treats Cheston Shock Syndrome. For about two to three hundred years, people in Cheston have come down with a disease where they lose volition, a sense of self, and motive, and often fall into comas. Soul loss, in other words. On the cabal’s horrified analysis via Mage Sight, however, one coma patient was found to still have a soul, and indeed to have emotions running high and a mind in action... in the Astral Realm. This particular patient is a 16-year-old girl who has been in a coma for two years, and somehow survived - her name is Melanie Brown, and when they found her she was in a primordial realm of sacrifice and blood, at war with nightmares. You might recognize her as 'Sleeping Beauty' from the Beast preview. I’m pretty proud of how I spun that plot thread - she was attacked by a Reaper, which awakened her latent astral-projection powers, and sent her mind deep into the Astral, but saved her soul from theft. Since then she wandered through the astral reflection of her neighborhood, through the back alleys of the Metropolis, and finally through the conceptual realm of ‘the dark wood’ and into the Forest of the Golden Bough, representative of sacrifice and grail quests. Her goetia, rudely deposited into the Temenos by her spiritual maiming, became her traveling companions, while her personal phobias and nightmares harried her as monsters. So she’s been told by her Vice (Pride) and Virtue (Determination) that she has to go further, go deeper, keep fighting - while her Daimon tries to get her ‘killed’ so she wakes up. She’s been constantly at war for two years, forging deeper into the Temenos towards a distant tower, certain that this is her destiny and that she’s the heroine of a portal fantasy story. That’s how the PCs found her - ankle-deep in the blood of nightmares, forging towards an impossible goal. I’m really pleased with how much the cabal was clearly taken with Melanie: they kind of sidelined their plans to focus on helping her wake up. There were a few ways to resolve the situation; they managed to find one that didn’t involve fighting her and her goetia, as they managed to convince her that this wasn’t entirely real, her daimon wasn’t an enemy, and she should let them ritually execute her to wake her up. So that happened, and everyone was emotionally shredded by holding an execution for a heroic teen. Her parents are pretty happy, though, and she’s started in on physical therapy (boosted with some basic Life magic). Of course, they’re already considering asking her to help them go back into the Astral, to help them find the Temenotic Grail, since she was already some distance on the quest to find it. She’s the only Sleepwalker they have a relationship with, and at least two PCs are already aiming to help her Awaken to the Supernal. I’m not sure which Path she should have, though I’m open to her Awakening - Mastigos is obvious for her natural talents, but Obrimos and Acanthus fit her personality and story, respectively, and Moros fits the fact that she had to learn how to die to live. We’ll see if they push it! I’m not going to go into how I think that could play out, because I don’t know if my players might read this, and Awakening should never be guaranteed. But, all in all, I think I managed to salvage literally everything I could possibly want out of Beast. It's... not much. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Dec 13, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2016 23:14
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Over in the FATAL & Friends thread they've been discussing the Strix, and I realized that those horrible owl-things are pretty perfect for my Mage game. Specifically, with how the local vampire population relates to the big Mystery of my fictional city of Cheston, WI. So I just wanted to ask a general advice question: Can Strix reliably stand up to much Mage pressure? It seems to me that their inability to pass fire is considerably easier for a Mage to use than a vampire's simple weakness, since one ring of fire from Ruling Forces seems like it could pretty easily and inescapably trap a Strix, to say nothing of Death magic. My current impulse is to have the local Tremere hold a Strix captive for their experiments, and possibly even have intentionally bound one into a vampire for research. Which is such a great idea, no possible way that could backfire. Also on that note: Strix seem, in Mage terms, pretty solidly of Death. Any fun ideas for making that a bit more complex? Or theories the Mysterium or other Orders might have regarding the Birds of Dis, true or false, that the PCs could look up if they start dealing in Owls? Plus, one Owl is enough to terrorize a local vampire community, right? Especially a relatively weak vamp structure? Their powers seem pretty extreme, what with the body-hopping, near-invulnerability, and gaseous form. I'm also planning on using the pre-written Abyssal Intruder called the Red Worm if there's an opportunity to justify that manifesting, as well, so any ideas on how that parasitic perversion of predator/prey relations might interact with the Strix is appreciated! I'm not hugely into Vampire so I'm leaning heavily on pre-written vampire material to shore up that part of the setting, so I can focus my energy on the Supernal magic, Shadow, and similar side of things. Thanks!
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Dec 27, 2016 06:53
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Daeren posted:things from the Lower Depths (particularly Inferno) and things from the Abyss do not play well together. Interesting! I missed this in Left Hand Path (that book has been invaluable to me). My first instinct is to attribute this to the Abyss being corrosively antireal, and the Lower Depths have way less natural reality than the Fallen World. So even a little paradox could absolutely wreck them, and their denizens naturally recognize this. Meanwhile, the Abyss sees easy prey. Does that broadly fit things? Also, I'm tempted to play it that every 'Lower Depth' forms a sort of single being with some kind of halfway conscious drive to be real, all Strix being instances of the Strix Dimension's groping for reality. Because that way, a big enough summoning or screwup could open the way to the God of Strix (or the God of Whatever Lower Depth appears). Alternatively, denizens of the Lower Depths are just jealous that the Abyss doesn't do any of the work of existing or having internal consistency, but gets to have an antireality that's more potent than their pseudoreality.
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Dec 27, 2016 08:18
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Mulva posted:Exact opposite. The Abyss has no power over the Lower Depths. The Abyss is, quite literally, the Anti-Reality. It is totally destructive to the nature of the world as is.....but that's it. That's all it's relevance and it's power. That's why the Supernal can still pass through the Abyss and there is still magic in the world. The Supernal is also not reality, and the Abyss only has the power to unmake and pervert reality. I'm not entirely convinced by this - specifically, the idea that the Supernal is not 'reality' and especially the idea that the Supernal isn't targeted by the Abyss (if anything it would be a higher reality, since according to most mage cosmology it sustains and supports our universe). My understanding of the Abyss is that it most certainly feeds on and devours those scraps of the Supernal it can gain access to, scouring them from the Fallen World and enforcing 'mundane' Lying reality. Especially and particularly, we know that if a mage screws up a Supernal Summoning, the Abyss will happily and irresistibly eat the thing they try to summon: Mage: The Awakening posted:Once the [Supernal] being runs out of Corpus, it vanishes. The denizens can sense when their time is running out, and usually attempt to get back into the summoning circle, so that they can go directly home. If, however, the creature “dies” outside of the summoning circle, or is killed by a deliberate magical attack, it cannot use the path laid down by the mage to reach its home again. Instead, it vanishes into the Abyss. This is obvious to anyone watching — black tendrils may extend from the walls and rip it to shreds, or an Abyssal being might manifest to collect it. But it does seem reasonable that something from the Depths might be more resilient to the Abyss, if there's less there for it to devour and replace. Also, the Mage cosmology really is a fun combination of empowering and the famous circle of light surrounded by horrible things with too many teeth. EDIT: Thanks for the Strix clarification! It's nice to know that the owl horrors are emigres from a qlipphothic realm cast off by reality, that makes them much cuddlier. (Also, hey, cool, a dev gave me clarification, ten bucks well spent) Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Dec 27, 2016 |
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Dec 27, 2016 19:13
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Mulva posted:You aren't going to find meaning, or justice, or anything relevant to the "Why" of existence. Just the "How", the mechanics of metaphysics. As I haven't read Imperial Mysteries, I can't speak to its contents, and as far as I know you're right on the general - but I don't think anything I said disagrees with an amoral Supernal (though as a ST who doesn't hugely like Archmages for their effect on the basic Ascension War setting of Mage, Imperial Mysteries doesn't really grab me as a concept). I would be perfectly ok with saying that atomic physics are at least as real as human-scale physics, for one thing, and that their reality sustains and allows for our reality. I deeply dislike readings of Awakening that say the Supernal isn't at all like platonic forms, because it undermines the force of Supernal As Truth - and thus the horror of the Lie and the burning need for revolution that the Pentacle at its best represents. I mean, I guess there are valid readings of Mage that aren't about immanentizing the eschaton, but I wouldn't want to run them, even if I never expect a game I run to be about actually winning the Ascension War.
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Dec 28, 2016 02:08
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Mulva posted:Well I mean that's already done when you discount the moral competent, which is part of the whole deal. ... Perhaps the greatest tool that ever existed, but still just a tool. I disagree! Specifically, even if Supernal Truth (tm) is amoral, the existence and knowledge of it can be compellingly argued to be a moral right. As long as the Lie hides Supernal magic, humanity is in bondage to those who have Supernal magic (the Exarchs and their toadies). Or, on a more mundane level, it's a pretty obvious moral crime to prevent people from learning to read or write - which is a lot less comprehensive than preventing people from learning the true nature of reality. Not just because truth is good, though I'd argue it is, but because truth is power, and the current monopoly on that power is the Seers. Plus, one can have Supernal symbols representing society without having a single uniform set of them; we definitely have (potentially human-made) symbols of tyranny in the Exarchs, and could easily have symbols of democracy, oligarchy, anarchy, what-have-you without them necessarily dominating or being the One True Moral Way. They represent and epitomize, but are as you say - tools. Personally, I find the Libertine concept of humans creating new symbols a convincing one, since otherwise the Supernal would already include a complete record of human history into the future at least in terms of technology, art, and all else, which seems metaphysically suspect in the uncertain and tempestuous Chronicles. ...I'm very sorry for setting off another round of mage chat.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:18
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JohnnyCanuck posted:For this next round of MageChat, let's talk about what happens to a mage when they're caught completely unawares by a werewolf. The woofwoof obviously uses Efficient Killer to instantly end the mage, unless they're a Prelate of the General with the Crown of Fury, in which case they go 'NANOMACHINES, SON' and use Forces to punt the werewolf across a football field. Then the fight actually starts.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:23
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Yawgmoth posted:Archmages are This seems clearly true, but they also really seem to completely trivialize normal Mage-level play, which means that I'm really inclined as a GM to quietly erase them from the cosmology. Has anyone run into this in actual play? It's possible I'm worrying over nothing, but I have at least one player really prone to focusing on high-level elements (he played a Sidereal in a local adventuring-Solars game in Exalted, for example) and Archmages have already come up in concept, and I would prefer to focus on the Seers of the Throne and the Tremere and the like, which all seem to be rendered irrelevant by the existence of Archmages. Oh, speaking of which, thought experiment: What the heck would a Tremere Archmage be like?
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Dec 29, 2016 00:28
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Daeren posted:Useful Information Thanks - I guess this just makes me feel like Archmagi are pretty much replicable with high-Gnosis Mad Ones though, in plot terms? For a standard Mage game, I mean. Because if they're 'just' immensely powerful elder magetypes who can no longer meaningfully care about what actually matters, they're properly divorced from the setting, but also not really distinct from Mad Ones except that they have a decent chance of reaching Ascension any day now (and are much more immune to PC action). And if they don't care about the Ascension War because they could override it, rather than them being totally out to lunch, it makes the Pentacle useless for either adventure or horror on the grand scale, since any victories are irrelevant next to a bunch of extradimensional plus-one wizards. I'm sorry to be ornery, and if people are annoyed at this thread I can keep my frustration with archmagi out of here, I just don't really see a way to use them conceptually to improve core Mage gameplay. Actually, it really reminds me of the issues with late Exalted 2E setting writing: When there's a hundred or so unstoppable M.A.D. wizards whose politics could kill everyone or otherwise render the setting irrelevant (or in Exalted, an impending invasion by the forces of Hell and their developer-favorite spawn), it's going to be harder to get my players to focus on dealing with the things they can actually influence. Also, if Vampires can shut down Supernal magic with blood sorcery, can Mages use Awakened Magic to shut down blood sorcery? I feel like there are obvious arcanum/practice combinations to do that, but shied away from the possibility. EDIT: Also thanks to Yawgmoth!
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Dec 29, 2016 01:24
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citybeatnik posted:"You don't understand. He's a -Ventrue- -Primogen-. Imagine that instead of having Resources as a Background at 5 he had it as a -Discipline- at 5." This is great, and I'm surprised it would show up in Masquerade - I always got the sense that high-level vampires in M got things done with magic more than mundane resources, while Requiem was more inclined towards entrenched power through owning a city.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:25
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LordAbaddon posted:I've read up on both the God Machine and the Seers, I know that the Demon Storyteller's Guide mentions them working together frequently but I can't find any further detailing of why they would work together or for what kind of projects. Both of them love the Lie - the God-Machine wants to remain hidden because that's more efficient, and the Seers of the Throne exist solely to maintain the Lie. As such, a fun concept might be to start the game with the local population of Sleepers considerably more open to the supernatural than usual. Maybe it's because there was a huge UFO sighting, or maybe someone found a way to sidestep the Sleeping Curse, or maybe it's just that a Demon went waaaay too Loud out in the open. The Pentacle see this as a good thing - it's not specifically Supernal Magic so the Guardians are basically considering this a tool they can use, the Silver Ladder are inserting themselves as experts on the occult in politics, the Mysterium can take surveys, the Free Council is doing a little jig. All that jazz. Obviously, the Seers and the GM are not happy with this. The GM has to take a light hand... and by that we mean the GM is planning on undoing that breach of normalcy by main force, either literally rewriting history around St. Louis or some other magical-equivalent-of-chemtrails method that will cover this up. Local Seers have divined the GM's intent in this case and they think it's just swell, so they'll be running interference and supporting the Infrastructure with their own magic, running triage on the Masquerade. Hope that's useful!
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Dec 29, 2016 06:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm also reading Declare by Tim Powers, which is wonderful inspiration even if it's written by a filthy God-Machine sympathizer. Declare is the best occult spy fiction I've ever read (not that there's huge piles of that). It's very institutional, though - I'd actually use it for inspiration regarding what working for (or hiding from) the God-Machine would be like, from the perspective of a Demon's special offspring.
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Jan 9, 2017 06:50
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Yawgmoth posted:If someone's highest die is a 4, it should spit out "your nimbus looks like a dishrag." Any time someone rolls an exceptional success on spellcasting: "Condition or beat? We both know you want the beat. Take the beat." ...my players in general all agree that there are Too Many Conditions and they'd much prefer to avoid dealing with the mechanics for them, but they love the pooled beats system for advancement.
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Jan 9, 2017 06:53
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Ferrinus posted:I dunno why everyone's freaking out about the body horror guy in a horror game, but Beast's weird focus on the internet is pretty funny. Because this isn't good, interesting, or even particularly gameable body horror, and is really obviously somebody's weird sex thing. Given how off-putting even mediocre weird sex poo poo can be in RPG materials, having someone's creepy sexual fantasies on full display here is just bad for the game. I mean, can you actually imagine inflicting this infection on a player character? Or describing an NPC suffering from it?
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Jan 12, 2017 21:56
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Ferrinus posted:Hold on, let me find any possible object or circumstance that is not somebody's weird sex thing to use as a benchmark for this discussion (cut to your cobwebbed skeleton waiting for my return) This is the hill you want to die on? "Eggs from the dickhole, not at all sexual"?
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Jan 12, 2017 22:08
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Ferrinus posted:That's the exact opposite of what I said. Sorry, I guess you meant "Eggs from the dickhole, precisely as sexual as any other body horror"? E: Maybe I'm being a bit aggressive here, but I seriously can't stand the strain of thought that seems to hold 'overtly, creepily sexual body horror' and 'body horror' as being the same thing. One makes people a lot more uncomfortable and has considerably less usefulness at table, and I don't really think that the line is as blurry as you seem to be implying. At least not in this case. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 12, 2017 |
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Jan 12, 2017 22:15
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Ferrinus posted:"Someone probably finds this sexy" is not actually a strong criticism of anything. Do you? Is that the problem here? My criticism was really not 'this is something people find sexy' - I said it was bad writing, gross, and going to make people particularly uncomfortable in a way that is more likely to drive players away from the table than engage them. And the fact that it's gross in ways that just scream one-handed writing, even if that's not literally the thought process behind it, makes that discomfort worse. It may come as a surprise, but that kind of prurience does actually make people less comfortable, in my experience! Players who think weird sex poo poo is happening are way less likely to enjoy themselves than players who think this is above-the-belt body horror, because GMs getting off by torturing players happens and is insanely gross. See: that one 'enter my Magical Realm' comic. Ultraviolent horror can be like this but for /some reason/ rarely goes into the kind of weird obsession with details that makes this particular example stand out. Why is it worth any wordcount at all to spell out every orifice this guy drips eggs from? So yeah, this stands out to me as being, of what we've seen of this book, the most likely element to make players leave and never come back.
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Jan 12, 2017 22:59
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Kurieg posted:Patriarchy is the name of the Wyrm Spirit of the Abrahamic faiths. I love that in Awakening the Exarch of Prime, the Father, is pretty much still this concept but written well. He has a definite gender unlike the rest of them, represents religious oppression and is literally the closest thing to a standard God the Father one can meet in the Aether. He's also explicitly the Exarch that rules over misogyny in the same way as Unity rules over xenophobia and racism, as well as being in charge of blind faith, tradition overriding good sense, and censorship of true spirituality. He is absolutely the Exarch of religious patriarchy. I feel like this has to have been done on purpose.
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Jan 13, 2017 08:30
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, "narrative construct" made me think you were using one of the later/weirder exalted. The thing is, "you are hit by a bunch of unavoidable aggravated damage" (I'm not sure the multiattack aspect is even particularly salient here, since this is acombat system in which any old mortal can attempt a multiattack and the actual multiattack charms just let you do it with less of a penalty) isn't really remarkable by the standards of a majority of the 2E lines. So baby chosen are basically going to come off like a new kind of monster with unusually high numbers rather than precedent-shattering, context-warping gods. Really, I think the thing that the Solars would do to wreck the nWoD would just be... be Solars, culture heroes whose powers are decent for destroying monsters and who are amazingly good at drawing together armies of humans to their cause. A Solar who decides to hunt vampires might be someone like Blade, but they could just as easily turn a city's human population into hunters. All of them. As far as I'm aware, Solar recruit-and-train power didn't really reduce that much from 2 to 3. And when you try to assassinate the shining prophet who has roused humanity to take back the night, they have Solar combat abilities as well, because the rabble-rouser Solar definitely has the combat skills so they can train their followers in them. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 05:44
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Hey - how do people interpret the Bone Shadow ban in Forsaken? I'm chafing at the idea that paying each spirit in kind requires my Screaming Moon Gift cahalith to not ambush sacred prey out of nowhere and devour them, basically. Because enemy spirits will be on their guard. So I'm interested in other interpretations as well.
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Feb 4, 2017 06:46
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Reflections85 posted:[snip] We've been informed that being Tremere is no longer built like your standard Legacy; instead, it's a 'disease of Gnosis' that gives the mage a distinct subsplat template unique to the Tremere. Which is good, because it means Houses can be more expansive and having a Legacy is no longer a guarantee that someone's not Tremere.
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Feb 6, 2017 21:30
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Obligatum VII posted:What if instead of using up an awakened soul for a short term power boost or what-have-you, someone instead just networked a bunch of stolen wizard souls together like a magical botnet and then dumped like 50 souls worth of spellcasting mojo on someone at once? The power of teamwork(?)! ' There's a legacy, Cloud Infinite, that's trying to do this. Also, they're Reapers and also pretty much smug idiots, they're great.
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Feb 7, 2017 17:24
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Crasical posted:Death to the magi. And I'm sure the Exarchs will pay handsome bounties, too. Remember, humans should only be able to do immense evil with mundane tools like xenophobia, surveillance, and violence. Being able to also do it with magic is bad enough that we should just accept the eternal reign of xenophobia, surveillance, et al.
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Feb 12, 2017 18:05
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Axelgear posted:Death to the magi. If the government is the Exarchs, yeah, I'm more concerned that God is literally the divine spirit of the oppression of humanity than the fact that there are people with incredibly powers. I'm not saying that individual mages can't be terrible, or that mages as a whole are in any way safe or pleasant to be around. Just, if you accept the bare minimum of setting information required to say the Exarchs exist, then resistance to them is kind of important, and (horrifically!) the Lie keeps the vast majority of people from being able to oppose them. This isn't a hyper-libertarian standpoint -- any more than armed resistance to Apartheid South African government was. But, despite the fact that I am not really ok with my neighbors having bombs, in the context of the apartheid state I'm a lot more open to spreading weapons around. (Note: This is a broad comparison - there were many forms of nonviolent and other resistance to the Apartheid regime. But armed struggle was a necessary element.) In any case: Killing off all mages means killing off the only people capable of directly opposing the Lie, the same way killing off all werewolves in Forsaken would absolutely, setting-as-written, cause the spirit world to spiral out of control. I, personally, think that the existence of mages is a necessary evil, that they may yet overturn the symbolic order of the universe, rather than that the symbolic order of the Fallen World is a necessary evil to keep mages from being a danger to the world. I mean, this is all arguable, but I question the idea that mages, as a whole, do more harm than the principles of oppression being able to reinforce themselves on a metaphysical level. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 00:57
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Axelgear posted:If Mages were all glorious freedom fighters, working to liberate the masses from the tyranny of the Exarchs, you'd be right, but as it stands, the number of Mages who explicitly set that as their goal (the Silver Ladder and Free Council) are a fraction of the overall number of Mages, and the ones who actually do more good than harm in their pursuit of it, yet alone the number who actually follow through on even trying to achieve their stated goal, is a further fraction still. I get your point, but aren't the Free Council approximately the size of the Diamond and the Seers put together? Or at least, I seem to remember Dave Brookshaw saying something like that when asked about how he sees the setting's demographics. Of course, the FC aren't all perfectly dedicated freedom fighters, but they do on the whole want to free humanity (and the Ladder, similarly). I've always found it really makes the setting more real, and bearable, that, yes, when people see Revealed Truth and learn the nature of the Lie, they tend to be interested in doing something about it. A lot of them just want to get out on their own, of course, and many of the ones working 'for the greater good' are dangerous in a dozen ways to themselves and others... but the nature of Awakening is not being able to close your eyes to reality, and the reality is that the world (in this case Of Darkness) is in dire need of repair. It would make for a weaker setting, in my opinion, if mages are written as being primarily self-obsessed individualists with no conception of a larger cause, given the nature of Awakening as seeing a true symbolic order of the cosmos - a religious experience, in the old sense. Hell, even the Tremere Liches, the most selfish bastard mages one can imagine, declare that they're doing it to achieve a greater cause and unify all magic. Idealism (and Mage is literally, philosophically idealist, what with the Supernal and all) can be just as much grounds for horror as cynicism, and the Seers already cover all the cynicism the gameline could need. But, that's just my take on what makes the gnostic horror/adventure mystery interesting - perspectives will obviously vary. Also, from a Hunter's perspective I honestly think it's just as reasonable to think the local Silver Ladder are an apocalyptic cult (...they are, after all) and Must Be Stopped, regardless of whether they have high ideals that they literally cannot prove are real because it will cause a normal person's sense of self to erode. Awakening is well-calibrated to ensure that mages pretty much cannot show their math to Sleepers, and thus are estranged. And if they try to explain 'well actually I'm trying to improve the world' it's going to go poorly when the skeptical Hunter witnesses something so incredibly wrong their brain can't contain it.
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Feb 13, 2017 08:37
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crime fighting hog posted:I recently posted about starting a Hunter group with my friends. Whoever suggested the Horror Recognition Guide was spot on, it was a great read. If this was done by Seers they're almost certainly using a Profane Urim, a vile miracle/fashion statement of the Exarchs. It's a robe that lets you puppet Sleepers, and in that case killing the Sleeper does nothing to the Mage. In fact it's noted that some Seers use the Urim to engage in risky activities for their jaded pleasure by proxy. Hunters who want to deal with such a thing might try destroying the robe itself, as well as assassinating the wizard. Destroy the Servants of the Lie.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:51
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Kavak posted:Like any of us wouldn't kill to see that happen. When one falls, another takes their place.
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Feb 26, 2017 07:03
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Kavak posted:Well most real world abusive monsters still look like humans. So do many True Fae, though. You also can't prove the Gentry exist, except by the fact that they've hurt so many people... who look weird and have weird powers and they SAY they're victims but why should we believe them? Changelings also have a tendency to kill people and replace them - they even turn the body into twigs and leaves somehow! It's painfully easy to see why people would look at Changelings and just slot in every kind of denial. Isn't it easier to say 'this is a monster lying about its experience' than 'my loved ones or myself could be abducted by inhuman powers at any time, twisted and harmed, and the world would never notice?' Nobody wants to think they live in a society where people get hurt like that for no reason and nobody does something. I think it's interesting to note, as an aside, that Mages aren't so much 'hiding' as 'literally cannot go public even though the Ladder, the Free Council, the Mysterium, and maybe the Arrow all explicitly want to' because the Sleeping Curse is stronger than you are. The Lie beats the God-Machine for secrecy, because while Demons going loud get jumped by a bunch of angels, the people who witness it still witnessed it. If a Mage casts Supernal Magic in front of a stadium full of Sleepers, they get eaten by Paradox and the Sleepers have nightmares, but no real memories. I'd argue this is because Mage's core horror concept is that you know you know The Truth, about reality, society, and what must be done, and cannot express it to the world at large. Or at least, that horrifies me, personally, and is true in Mage. Contrasting that to Changeling and Demon, Changeling's horrible because you won't be believed, and Demon is horrible because the New World Order will send machine elves to recalibrate you into obedience with flaming swords. They all have very different takes on the basic 'secret society' axiom, which I appreciate. EDIT: Ok the reply before mine blows mine out of the water, and in a fraction of the words. My circumlocution is my damnation.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:49
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Mulva posted:The correct answer is to leak the location of the puzzle box around occult circles and kill anyone that shows up. Nobody that spends their time hunting down and opening mystic puzzle boxes is good for the health of the universe. GuardiansoftheVeil.txt
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May 20, 2017 23:35
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I really liked the dial-back to Essence 1-5 for Ex3, and I really liked the refocusing of the story and mechanics. Because the best part of the setting for me is in fact the setting - the Dying Earth meets Bronze Age meets actual socioeconomic detail. That last part sold it for me, the idea that Exalted is about playing the heroes of and within these societies that are not ours, and are detailed in depth as being not-modern, while at the same time applying modern understandings of social relations, oppression, imperialism, and so on. The Exalted skipping 'actual history' to produce 'Thomas Edison is actually unquestionably the best, cell phones, GUNS!!!' right out of the bronze age... well, players should feel free to do that. But the setting shouldn't start there, which 2e sometimes got close to. So refocusing down improved the use of the setting, in my opinion. If you want to ascend to the heights of power and redefine the very laws of nature, sure, do that in your own game, at that point you don't really need or want the sword and sorcery mechanics from the base game, so why should they be designed to run Golden Godsim eventually when that will make tons of problems at the ground level? (I feel much the same about the idea that the setting must, MUST be a tragedy, or the Yozis being about to rampage. These close off options, rather than opening up possibilities for interacting with the setting of Creation. I would actually have loved if the Exalted Core was just for playing mortals, and Solars got a simultaneous-release Solar Splatbook, though I understand why that doesn't fit the game's purposes. And I really like Solars!) All that being said... hahah what the hell, that prompt is taking Exalted seriously in all the wrong ways.
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Jun 8, 2017 16:44
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IDK, I'm fine with the Underworld being 'Gothic genre' to contrast with living Creation's Sword and Sandals setting. Abyssals being turbogoth is still better than them being barely-functional superslaves in 2e, which was never handled well at all. Plus, we won't be getting Morke and Holden Abyssals, we'll be getting Vance and Minton developments of the bare bones of Gothic Deathknight Exalted so I'm on board for that. I'm cautiously optimistic. 
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Jun 8, 2017 17:10
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Ferrinus posted:Abyssals being melodramatic goths is good; Abyssals being school shooters is bad. Extremely the case. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jun 8, 2017 |
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Jun 8, 2017 19:49
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Don't you retain all your injuries, mana expenditure, and Conditions when you use Shifting Sands? If I'm getting the mechanism right. It's more like Primer than most time loops - the Abyss and general wear and tear mean infinite loops pass unpleasantness back in time, leading to an eventual breakdown of the time-traveler. (Especially since you appear in your own Pattern back in time, so each further push back will be more prematurely exhausted, drained, and potentially injured, and definitely more Paradoxical. You can't 'leave yourself a note' because you've replaced yourself - you've Woven or Patterned, I can't remember which, your current time-state onto your previous time-state.)
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Jun 14, 2017 22:12
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citybeatnik posted:Important question before I steal this idea: how much Potence do you need to use a cannon as a sidearm? According to From Software, 30 strength. Given actual cannons in naval history you could probably swing a small one with only a few times maximum human strength?
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Jul 8, 2017 00:34
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The Lucifuge are also where you can make Hellboy, and not having a Hellboy variety of Hunters would be the worst kind of failure.
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Jul 18, 2017 17:22
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Mors Rattus posted:DEVAS ARE HERE I greatly enjoy how much the Devas are, in Scion, the USA of Pantheons. Rich, powerful, fond of military interventions, well-intentioned but also deeply tied to troubled history. Also, the writing style is absolutely overbearing and awesome in the old sense. In fact, I think my favorite thing so far about Scion 2e previews has been the shift in register and writing style between Pantheons, it gives them a strong, distinct sense of identity.
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Sep 20, 2017 15:46
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Nessus posted:Like a memetic monocrop of nerds. Don't forget that they have a few pet ideologues like Yudkowsky who actively proselytize within those circles in a way that hugely appeals to the 'rational' ego. And which is a very effective ladder from 'I'm into tech, science fiction, and atheism, but don't think much about philosophy or history' to 'O Godbot our help in Ages Future.' Basically these particular ideas are a greased slide, and people very willingly get on it because they've been told intelligent people get on the slide. At the bottom is this guy and his buddies building a 'winged taxi' that would fly in circles and collect passengers by skyhook. And complaining about the regulation on their deathtrap.
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Sep 28, 2017 04:34
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bewilderment posted:One of my players for Mage2e has asked how to accomplish the 'slipshank'/'Bill and Ted' maneuver where you look behind a rock and there's the item you need, because you went back in time and put it there, or similar. As someone running a Mage 2e game, that seems reasonable. Given how Mage 2e deals with Time, I would say that there are two versions that make sense to me. One is yours, where a future yet to be drops something down to you. Like you say, there's a danger of paradox. Another alternative would be to use Time 3, Shifting Sands (or similar) to drop back in time in your own timeline and put the object there. This would be somewhat safer, since the time travel happens in turn order and without loose ends, but also has the danger of messing up the past (as Time always does). Especially since you'd be popping back to inhabit your own Pattern, like most Time travel in Mage 2e. My 2c, anyways.
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Oct 9, 2017 03:37
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I would handle the 'split the party' issue by making any attempts to edit the past as a single individual (as opposed to mass-subject casting Corridors of Time so the entire cabal can play Ill-Advised Life Decisions Redux) play out in a much looser way, unless this is one player jumping back to warn the cabal of something major. If it's just Shifting Sands for a fight scene or something like that, I would play it out like the DETERMINATION ability in Fellowship, where everything goes the way it did unless they cause it to change, so their involvement can be skimmed over. Provided they only want to do what I would call 'reasonably bullshit time travel' - setting down preparations, avoiding ambushes, making better decisions with future knowledge - the spell acts more like a minor alteration to present reality. If they want to cause a huge change in timeline, make them pay in mana and extra paradox, same as any other story-breaking spell, and make sure the whole group is onboard with playing scenes out again. Of course, if you meddle enough in time, you won't get any scene re-dos, because the new timeline is very different. Of course, there are other things you can do with Time; two of my favorite Time ideas are both the same spell at Time 3 (Weaving Practice): The subject returns to their point and status in the Tapestry at the end of the duration, and as many times over as the spell's Potency. Can be used as a prison (let them walk free, they'll bounce back to where you are) or to make extraction from a difficult situation simple; can also be cast on bullets to make the least efficient infinite ammunition spell that doesn't create matter from nothing. Time is a fun, dangerous arcanum. I especially like the non-time travel applications, since they get weird fast.
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Oct 9, 2017 07:14
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:48 |
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Also, if the modern setting thing proves insurmountable, there are a bunch of CoD historical setting books now, which I hear are often very good.
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Oct 10, 2017 22:07
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