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Note: Hell is full of damned souls being eternally harvested for the Essence they produce.
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Feb 1, 2016 04:14
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Let's go ahead and do Lilith, since it won't take very long.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:01
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I'm interested in hearing about Zadkiel drama.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:41
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I'm in favor of finishing all the Superiors, and Litheroy is the best one anyway.
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Feb 6, 2016 02:37
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Lilim are cool; they just kind of only have a couple of stories in them, which contradicts with how they're supposed to be only moderately uncommon. (They remind me a lot of Charlie's Archons in Erfworld.)
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Feb 7, 2016 00:57
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Litheroy is a great boss for a game but working for him would be absolute hell.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:39
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Cythereal posted:Most of them seem pretty reasonable to me, especially if you go with the mindset that angels fundamentally are not human and don't think quite the same way we do. Yeah, the game isn't always consistent about that, though.
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Feb 7, 2016 04:51
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Black August posted:In game, though, you're not meant to be dealing with your Superior. You'll usually be dealing with ranking Wordbound - unless you're specialists, well, why would the mailroom kids talk to the CEO? But yeah, Superiors are tricky and sticky to handle well in a setting. That's why they have four books and five straight-to-digital products entirely about their personalities and opinions! I laugh, bleakly, because I know exactly how it is.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:22
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Every time I read In Nomine I keep wanting to construct the story of how human Saints learn to pool their songs together to form an effective Superior and just start ignoring all the crazy Word-bound and form their own organization in Heaven. Maybe invite Lilith to join just to annoy everybody else. I mean, what are the Archangels going to do? They don't exactly have the authority to toss them out of Heaven, or even really to order humans around who aren't their own Servitors.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:05
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Elminster is actually funny if you just play him as the king of all curmudgeons instead of the wizard who has all the levels of everything. (If you read the old book for the Cult of the Dragon, you discover that there's at least one major evil group in the setting that exists largely because Elminster was a curmudgeon to their necro-master when they were supposed to be working together.) Well, okay, he was also Nice Guying Mystra and two of her Chosen at the same time, being Svengali'd by a priest of Bane, and struggling to deal with how as Chosen of Mystra he possessed untold power and that if his control faltered for an instant innocent people would die. But Elminster's lack of bedside manner was a key player in the rise of Undead Dragon Avon.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:31
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Kavak posted:Same. What are the groaner spots besides Greenwood's pet NPC's again? Honestly, my main impression from reading old Realms stuff is that they pretty much just paid Greenwood to publish his campaign notes, because there's a whole lot of pointless stuff in the old books. Like, Cult of the Dragon has full stats for Sammaster at four different points of his life. My favorite bizarre thing is the Magister. Let me tell you a story! Once, Mystra decided that knowledge of magic was in danger. Somebody might murder all the wizards, or blow up the world, and everybody's knowledge of the Art would be lost. How terrible! So, she decided to name a very special wizard as the Magister. The Magister would be in charge of teaching the Art and safeguarding the knowledge of magic for everyone. She'd get all kinds of special powers, and when she died, Mystra would choose a new Magister. Or, if you killed the Magister, you'd become the new Magister! Tell me, children, can you pick out the sentence where this turned into a terrible, awful idea? Anyway, the book is filled to the brim with the history of Magisters who lived miserable, hunted lives*, hiding from the wizards determined to kill them and take their office. At no point does it ever show any awareness of how completely Mystra hosed up this whole business or how messed-up it all is. *including one spectacular tavern brawl where twelve new Magisters were appointed in one night, causing Mystra to change the rules--so that the Magister got plot armor for six hours.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:47
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Ao is basically the divine equivalent of the teacher who ignores bullying until a fight starts and somebody is bleeding, and then suspends everybody involved. The Lady of Pain believes in actively encouraging good behavior. I mean, presumably she does.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:55
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NachtSieger posted:What edition was this and what book did it come from? Because I want to read this madness and do my own The book is called "Secrets of the Magister," is from 2e, and is not to be confused with "The Magister," which is about something totally different.
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Feb 7, 2016 08:24
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Black August posted:Asmodeus has an expanded writeup too. He's pretty cool when players and GMs aren't wanking over him. As for likeable Superiors, it depends on how you as a GM portray them. Canonically, the writing is too over the place for most writeups and usually comes across as everyone being a giant sperglord rear end in a top hat who's impossible to deal with. The intent, however, is that they're pretty ok to work for, just don't poo poo on their Word and screw around. They're ancient element beings with some human traits, not humans with some ancient elemental traits. If In Nomine ever gets a second edition, I hope it makes being Word-bound a lot less like being mentally ill. The Superiors tend to come across as obsessed with their tiny piece of the pie to the point that giving them leadership positions is fabulously unwise.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:34
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Cythereal posted:Eh, I think I prefer interpreting Litheroy as a hair away from Falling and generally being more of a problem for heaven than a help. In an ideal world, he'd be fine. But he's not in an ideal world, and doubly so when interacting with humans. Jaina's story seems like a pretty good indication of what working for Litheroy is like, complete with victim-blaming. I wouldn't put him as anywhere near Falling, though.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:39
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Libertad! posted:Dragonlance gets criticized pretty heavily for the role the Gods played in the Cataclysm. Basically a Lawful Good empire of Bahamut/Paladine started doing horrible poo poo to the point of no return, so the entire pantheon agreed something must be done. They dropped a meteor on the empire's capital, sending a fair portion of the eastern continent under the sea, destroying its infrastructure in the outlying provinces, as well as retreating from the world and taking all divine magic with them. Because that would make all the Drizzt novels for 4e non-canon, is the only reason I've been given. Not that nerd franchises seem to need a reason for having overcomplicated excuses for their reboots.
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Feb 8, 2016 00:22
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Yeah, Ravenloft 3e is defined for me by its attitude of "This land is still worth saving. Don't give it up to the night."
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Feb 9, 2016 00:25
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Sadly, as far as I know, the White Wolf era of Ravenloft never got added to either company's digital stable.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:31
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Use Costume Fairy Adventures and just replace fairies with mahous and clothes with... clothes.
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Feb 10, 2016 23:57
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Zereth posted:Ah, but she's a Cherub. She shouldn't seem human. Being very human is weirdly out of character for her Choir. Except for Seraphs, the game almost never presents angels as particularly inhuman. Heck, it's on the back of the book: "they are very much like us."
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Feb 12, 2016 02:30
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The Libers are all pretty boring, so let's go through the Player's Guides.
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Feb 18, 2016 05:14
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I thought I would check out Mystic Empyrean based on your review, but wow, the text is awful. It's not even the font, really; there's something desperately wrong with the kerning.
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Feb 20, 2016 18:29
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Angelic; the sooner we get to Ethereal the better. It's all downhill from there.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:11
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Infernal. Let's ride this to the end.
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Mar 3, 2016 17:39
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The Celestial Song of Laughter sounds like it would be downright insane if you managed to get a spot on the Tonight Show.
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Mar 16, 2016 22:39
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We've been very patient, so now let's do the Ethereal Player's Guide.
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Mar 17, 2016 23:40
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Ethereals are so much more coherent than the rest of the setting that they almost want their own game line.
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Mar 18, 2016 15:51
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Count Chocula posted:I'd play that in a heartbeat, though I guess it's Nobilis? Nah, Nobilis is all about being one of the most important people in the world, whether you're playing it as Game of Thrones or just doing an endless succession of magical tea parties. Ethereals are all about being on the ropes.
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Mar 19, 2016 04:16
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Count Chocula posted:You seem really hostile to every basic setting and stylistic assumption of Mage. It's cool, not every game is for every person, but so much of this hate seems directed at things that are either inoffensive or pretty cool. Sure, everything is a bit fuzzy - because you're playing reality-warping Mages who can make up their own spells. So maybe a 'Mob' is 12 people if you're using neurolinguistic programming to effect people who can hear your voice, but it's 70 people if you're releasing a mind-control virus. Just discuss it with the ST and go with what seems coolest. That flexibility is the whole point! I think we perceive M20 as hostile to the basic setting of Mage, because it's boiling down the central assumption of the game where we all create our own reality to "oh, but they all work the same way and any perceived differences are meaningless set dressing that you should grow out of."
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Mar 28, 2016 02:10
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Count Chocula posted:I don't understand this? There needs to be be SOME codified rules, but the whole 'we all do the same thing, we just perceive it differently' has been part of the attraction of Mage from the start. The idea that a drug guru and a hardcore Catholic can both access the same power but shape it through different means is neat. Conversely, I always treated this as a mechanical necessity that forced things to work the same way even when that didn't make sense, like the box in Dreamspeakers that said "okay, yeah, Dreamspeakers believe that all their magic invokes spirits, so the idea of them having a specific Sphere to invoke spirit magic which they all have to buy doesn't fit. But this game we made uses Hermetic Spheres in the rules, so." I want the differences between paradigms to be important rather than cosmetic.
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Mar 28, 2016 02:48
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Count Chocula posted:Why, though? I LIKE that you can mix and match whatever's cool, so you can play a Jerry Lee Lewis type who's foci are God, Sin, and Rock and Roll. It's part of the attraction of the setting to me that you can play The Invisibles and have a party with a bunch of weird mishmashes. Because I want to play a version of Mage where the differences between paradigms are important, and the details of your paradigm are worth thinking about. quote:And if you don't like it, why treat it like it's WRONG somehow? It's just a setting element. I think elves and orcs and Medieval Europe are overdone, but I don't get annoyed at every D&D heartbreaker. Accept that, yes, Mage is a 90s game about Chaos Magick. There aren't many of them. Lots of really good books for Mage didn't treat chaos magick as the only truth.
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Mar 28, 2016 03:06
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Or write your own review! I'm actually interested in talking it out with people who have a different take on the book.
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Mar 28, 2016 04:02
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Honestly I wouldn't actually mind if the Traditions were an eclectic group of all possible mystics rather than nine splats, but then, there's a reason White Wolf has always stuck to using splats—they're really helpful to new players.
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Mar 30, 2016 05:48
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Kai Tave posted:Anybody who likes Phil Brucato's writing is someone whose opinion you can pretty safely dismiss. Well, I mean, it's not like the guy never did anything good. He was behind Guide to the Technocracy, and I don't think any of the complaints listed about M20 would apply to that.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:29
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Guide to the Technocracy is a not-very-subtle parody about how the Union are the real heroes. It wasn't written by people who bought into that view, although somehow a lot of readers missed it. (It really isn't subtle at all.)
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Mar 31, 2016 00:26
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Nessus posted:I suspect they did not produce a fancy hardbound book purely as an intellectual jape on their silly fans, though of course we are talking about White Wolf, so that's less implausible than usual. I don't mean that it was a joke on the fans; I mean that it was written in-character from the perspective that the Technocracy are the real heroes who protect us from the evil, light-bulb-fearing Traditions, but was not seriously putting that perspective forward as the true one out-of-character.
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Mar 31, 2016 00:55
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Nessus posted:This confuses me because why do you need to be advancing a "true" perspective out of character, even with a metaplot and such things? All the WOD lines seemed to have several groups who were various shades of justifiable, "I can see playing these guys," plus a couple of others who were in fact cartoon monsters. I... don't think what I'm describing is particularly uncommon? A lot of White Wolf books, and a lot of splatbooks from other companies, are written from the in-character perspective of the group they're about, and are about why that group is great and correct, but are written by authors who are writing with self-awareness of the ways in which the group in question is kind of full of poo poo. Guide to the Technocracy is just a little more cartoonish than average, with things like "we lose more cyborgs that way" and vague hints that the Void Engineers are all secret wizards who don't actually need to wear space helmets except to maintain kayfabe in front of the bosses.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:27
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Oh, I see what you mean now, Nessus. It's basically a good thing if you want your game to have consistent themes to not have different writers who all write about supposedly-identical-but-actually-widely-divergent versions of the setting based off their own views and biases. White Wolf failing to curate this stuff twenty years ago is pretty much why Mage fandom turned into a roiling pit of flames—they basically taught people to play several different mutually exclusion games that all had the same name, catered to all those groups at different times, and then started playing favorites, resulting in an explosion.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:38
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Kai Tave posted:"I'm going to write this book, ostensibly designed to be informative, but get this! It's going to be presented entirely in-character so that all of the information has to be parsed through my attempts to be clever and obfuscatory while falling back on the tired old excuse of it being the character talking and not me, the writer" is maybe not the most insufferable trend 90's RPGs have to answer for, but it's certainly top three. It's number one when you combine it with "oh, and the in-character narrator will be the most intolerable smuglord I can conjure forth from the page." I mean, it's a good technique when you do it well*, but when you do it badly the result is much, much worse than just being boring.** * books that used this technique successfully: Followers of Set Revised, Devil-Tigers, Euthanatos Revised ** Virtual Adepts Revised probably wins the prize for being worst
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Mar 31, 2016 01:40
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Nessus posted:To me it doesn't feel like some immensely complex thing, and I don't get why it seems to be uniquely nasty to Mage. Maybe it's because Mage clearly casts the PCs as being most likely in an oppressed group, but the other guys are a. disproportionately powerful and b. arguably not the worst ever compared to the alternatives? Mage maps to real-world political arguments way more easily. Nobody's going to get really invested in the idea that the Sabbat is better than the Camarilla (I hope), but there are a lot of people who get mad at the idea of playing a heroic faith healer fighting the forces of scientific oppression.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:52
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