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Mors Rattus posted:I suppose I could. Shunned by the Moon is the one that wowed me most recently, but if folks enjoyed it I can take a look at the others. I am looking forward to the Mage one, Nameless and Accursed. If you'd do that one when it comes out (assuming it's worth doing) I'd be overjoyed. Also, thanks be to Inklesspen.
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Sep 10, 2019 21:38
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Lynx Winters posted:If a thought turns into an orb, through whatever process, does the person who thought it up lose that idea? Could someone just sit there adding two plus two in their head until they have enough marbles for a candy bar? If they turn "it's cold, wear a coat" into brain pennies, do they just not understand that idea until someone explains it to them again? If I write down my mom's chicken salad recipe and memorize it, then turn it into bus fare, can I read the recipe again and repeat the process? Well, there's also the question of 'what happens to one of these orbs when it's used. Do you absorb the inane fact from it for magical purposes? Or does it just exist as an object, exactly as if you'd minted a penny with metal? ...in a better setting the point of them could be that this wondrous and magical thought-crystallization process is being used to print money because unlike other material formations it's not possible to counterfeit by dragging material objects up from the Not Real Universe. But the point there would be that vislae society is, for all its apparent wonders, still driven by soul-deadening economic and social inequality. Which I don't imagine is the point.
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Sep 10, 2019 23:16
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Not that Invisible Sun deserves this level of investigation into its premises but does this mean that eventually you end up with a class of teens-to-adults with no pleasant memories, thoughts, or dreams from their childhoods, having had all of them orbed for the sake of orb? There is a note about a slow drain on the emotions of people in the world, but it doesn't draw any connection to orb production. It's in that bit about pressing emotions in books, which is such a fol-de-rol flight of fancy that I don't want to remember it.
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Sep 11, 2019 00:39
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In my Mage game that's absolutely a major part of the game. None of their weird vault contents are even a little bit stuff you can buy shopping, though. Except for the HDTV and Bluray player they stole from the penthouse apartment of a rival they later assassinated, but those are just to sell off later for normal cash. Also, the 'pen that only writes lies' and the 'pen that only writes truth' break any mystery solving in half unless specified. You just write 'the answer is X' with the grey one every time you want to test a hypothesis, then double check with the white one. If the grey one only writes knowing lies then it's less useful, but the white one is still basically a truth spell and we all know how great those are.
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Sep 11, 2019 23:05
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Why is a dinnerware set priced at '100 orbs' instead of being converted to crystal orbs? Why would even the most interior-decorating-ish person care about paying for metal-bound books one by one? Why is a magical lamp so much more expensive than an aetheric (and thus basically magical) lamp, when the aetheric version can also detect ghosts?
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Sep 12, 2019 00:08
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StratGoatCom posted:Do you want the thing randomly detecting ghosts as you eat dinner? Probably not. If a ghost is popping into my dining room I want to know whenever, especially since they might have just caught the train back from the Dead Zone.
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Sep 12, 2019 00:26
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tankfish posted:The whole faction feels like the writer really liked Rise of Legends and wanted to smash two of the factions together. Rise of Legends deserves better even if they named their clockwork Italians "The Vinci" Also I may have been getting the name of that game wrong repeatedly ITT.
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Sep 14, 2019 19:01
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What is zir Lineage?
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Sep 16, 2019 01:37
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I think that one of the interesting points of Promethean is that it recognizes that being a bad person is still being a person, but that there are limits to that and that ultimately in order to imagine oneself as human, one has to imagine others as human too. Prometheans who do violence the way humans do violence are going to be pretty different from Centimani. Which means that there's a temptation for Prometheans to declare 'humans kill each other all the time, so killing you for Vitriol is part of my Pilgrimage' and they're not totally wrong - but they're also not really doing it right.
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Sep 16, 2019 21:00
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I personally like that Pandorans, doomed creatures that are the byproduct of failed Pilgrimage, are similarly doomed to never attain their deepest desire (or their desires will never improve their condition) and drag Prometheans down themselves. Promethean shouldn't really have particularly heightened stakes from big monsters, because the stakes are already perfect: will you attain humanity? Or will you fail like so many before you? The Brain is great because it thinks it's a super genius and has Int 4 and terrible plans. It thinks the only personal growth it needs is a big beefy body to go with its big beefy brain. It's a living failure mode, a malicious lesson wandering around.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:49
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Mors Rattus posted:Hm. Tossup between Skybreaker, a high-power ochemata from Mage and a high-power Pangaean. Skybreaker is more of a fleshy dungeon crawl than an individual character IMO. Ochemata and Pangaeans are definitely pretty wild. I think it took me a minute to understand how much of a problem it is that Ochemata get the Rote quality on every mundane action. Plus they have monstrous dice pools iirc.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:03
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ChaseSP posted:It is pretty easy to see a Promethean wanting to murder a Beast given how much of living pieces of poo poo they are but that isn't unique to Prometheans. Beasts are specifically 'inhumanity cheerleaders' who encourage monsters to glory in monster-ness and ignore all kinship with humanity. They emphasize otherness as if it's power, and via their social and magical special effects, they can pretty hugely screw up a Promethean's Pilgrimage with little effort. Other than Centimani, a Beast is a direct threat to the guiding light of a Promethean's life. No other splat is as concerned with specifically hewing to humanity, not merely as a means to an end (staying stable and functional) but as the fundamental existential quest of their existence. On the other hand, I would say the problem with Prometheans-as-Hunters is less that it's inhuman to want to be a Hunter, but because Prometheans could easily become too good at it, forgetting human frailty. This is actually the arc of Roger the Homunculus in Hellboy: He uses his inhuman physique to be a potent BPRD agent, and as the Bureau is militarizing to fight a rising occult threat, he's encouraged to do so. This comes back to bite him specifically when he meets something that can kill him as easily as it kills humans; in Promethean, you don't necessarily need that tragic end, but a Roger working with (Disquiet-resisting) Hunters is still going to end up being marked out simply by the fact of their immense Frankenstein-y power. It's a subtle trap and an interesting one for a character arc, but absolutely not a dead end on a Pilgrimage. It just means that even Pulp Frankenstein throwing vampires out windows with big meaty hands is going to end up introspecting and comparing human vampire hunters to their own experience, in order to understand why humans fear vampires, what's so bad about vampires beyond the obvious, and what it means to be a mere mortal in a world with dark and spooky things that go bump in the night. E: Like, one result could easily be a vampire-hunting Petrificati: Prometheans have to change and grow, moving out of their current role to understand others. A Promethean who dedicated themselves to vampire hunting and didn't know when to put down the stake could easily become an automated vampire killing machine, the spark of life gone but the mission remaining. Hunters would probably love them (or at least, love their hollow-eyed walking corpse, which would then bring fellow hunters who went down back to life as more vampire-hunting automata). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 18, 2019 04:29
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The game for playing a non-angsty monster is literally any of them. Even that supposed value to Beast is both redundant and bad. It's very very easy to ignore those themes and just play spooky superheroes or rear end in a top hat vamps. It's a pretty limited mode in some ways, but it's easy to do. Or play Geist. Which afaict is not angsty.
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Sep 18, 2019 14:15
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wiegieman posted:You do have this total weirdo in your head with strong opinions about the oddest things, though. So does every PC, really.
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Sep 18, 2019 14:26
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Froghammer posted:Also worth noting is that Mask Slashers are probably the most terrifying combatant you can theoretically encounter in nWoD if you don't know how they work. I could easily see a Mask taking an Ochemata the gently caress apart. I'd be surprised, mostly because every Ochemata can run away with Rote Quality. Also an Ochemata of the General vs. a Mask would be a fascinating confrontation. Absolute command of violence as a means to power vs. Being A Horror Monster.
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Sep 18, 2019 15:16
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm fairly certain that ochemata are capable of causing environmental damage. For those of us who only remember Slasher mechanics vaguely insofar as we ever knew them, what's the Mask deal? I thought they just only ever took one level of damage from any source at a time, which wouldn't really prevent an Ochemata from pulling all sorts of tricks (or pummeling one into the ground slowly with Rote quality combat abilities).
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Sep 18, 2019 16:06
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Nessus posted:That seems like the Ochema is setting itself up to have Jason Voorhees pop out of a hole in time with a chainsaw at the moment when the Ochema is weakest, perhaps from having been infused with distilled mage chat. Ochemata tend to last only as long as their task from the Exarch that created them. They're utterly subordinate beings, in a sense, and extensions of an Exarch. Which does mean one could inspire Jason Voorhees to spend centuries slowly pursuing and attempting to kill Power Through Violent Coercion, because an Ochema of the General messed with him. Hunting Seers, becoming involved (horrifyingly) in peace talks and international nonviolent intervention protocols. A grateful humanity giving The Camp Teenagers Death Shadow a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on police reform is just a beautiful image to me.
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Sep 18, 2019 19:20
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Halloween Jack posted:Outside of some goofs in the franchise here and there, Jason doesn't really chase people, he's a territorial predator. Then again, Michael Myers is also given as an example of a Mask, and he's all about stalking targets for inexplicable reasons. The Exarchs are in all places at all times, so, technically speaking Jason's territory is being violated by the General.
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Sep 18, 2019 20:16
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NuWoof mythology and setting is good for playability because it's mostly a long list of interesting things and ways to hunt rather than just 'I guess we're either slaughtering innocent humans or being shot at with silver bullets again.'
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Sep 20, 2019 16:46
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Geists are the working-class labor activists to Mage's academic Marxists, with a generous dash of "mystery cult" thrown in for flavor. I mean the Free Council also exists. I would have said the difference is that in Mage you're fighting Capitalism and the Patriarchy and in Geist you're fighting The American Empire and Colonial Powers - there's a specific manifestation, the Underworld, which you can go into and blow up and so on. So the struggle is real and valuable but you can play it more like the ANC overthrowing Apartheid, while in Mage things are either apocalyptic revolution or long-term simmering insurrection. (Spire is a good game, on a related note.) Mage certainly has a more academic bent.
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Sep 20, 2019 23:06
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Ok but the Rake is literally just 'The Doctor from Doctor Who shows up and tries to help' and that's an odd concept for Promethean to me.
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Sep 22, 2019 03:34
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There can be more than one The Doctor! Also, I have never, ever seen a character or NPC in an RPG who's meant to be the Doctor who hasn't been insufferable, even the fun ones. The Rake is one of the fun ones, potentially, with a good ST. The Rake also seems insufferable.
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Sep 23, 2019 15:29
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The Lone Badger posted:Clones seem like a lot of work for not much return. Yes you create artificial life... except not really, because you had to use better artificial life as an ingredient. You're just taking an engine apart and puting it back together shittier. Well, apparently you can slap some headphones and a 'How To Be A Corporate Assassin' Throne-brand training cassette on there and you have ready-made minions. I can see why to a certain kind of person that's extremely appealing. The same kind of people, if they Awaken, become Seers who use Hollow Ones - i.e. people whose sense of self has been fed to a Thing From Beyond, which the Seers keep locked in a monastery basement for this purpose. The state of 'utterly objectified person' is one that the villainous types in Chronicles are really keen on, for obvious metaphorical reasons.
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Sep 24, 2019 02:16
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The Lone Badger posted:But for every one you've got to hunt down an elusive target who's always hiding and has supernatural powers, then capture them alive for vivisection. And do it every few years for each clone you want active. Hollow Ones are also way more work than the general Seers project of 'pay someone a lot of money to be the evil henchman' combined with 'artifacts that let us possess people.' They offer a specific kind of appeal to a person, not a good person, who wants to have someone utterly under their thumb. When a mob boss wants a mindless puppet body bodyguard it is precisely because they don't want a real human. Think about Thulsa Doom in the Schwarzenegger Conan movie: "Steel is weak, flesh is strong." The kind of person who wants to be able to order their henchman to kill himself without a second thought, just to prove they have that absolute power. That's what the Hollow Ones and Promethean Clones appeal to in a villain. That or just... y'know, it's a boondoggle like many weird secret projects. But the appeal of the boondoggle is that you get to say 'this human being is mine, all mine, and utterly without independent existence.' Sure, you can try to raise a child utterly indoctrinated to serve you, but that's slow and takes patience and personal involvement. Clones give you that right out of the box, in theory. Plus 'utterly dehumanized created humans' fits very well into Promethean's themes as, like, a thing someone would want to cut you up to make. Prometheans are messy, self-willed, and in a sense very human - the demiurge who makes a promethean for a servant is going to run into problems. So the 'solution' if you're an evil mad scientist is to chop up Frankenstein to power your free-will-less Frankenstein Mk IIs.
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Sep 24, 2019 03:29
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IshmaelZarkov posted:These Promethean/Geist 2E reviews are killing me. Mage: The Awakening and Changeling: The Lost are also very good (I have personal experience with Mage, which is a joy to run, but not with Changeling).
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Sep 24, 2019 04:20
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JcDent posted:Btw, what kind of stuff benefits are Prometheans left with after they New Dawn? Can they then become a Hunter? How powerful would they be when compared to lvl 1 Hunter? I mean, thematically the game is about becoming human, so it makes sense that you lose all the cool Frankenstein powers and stop being much of a PC. You can get, I think, basically 'minor supernatural powers' like 'natural Astral Realms traveler' and such. The memory loss makes sense, I think, mostly to help Promethean Throngs move on from their fellows who've achieved the New Dawn - the character is supposed to be happily retired, not dragged around with the Throng getting Disquieted and Wastelanded. It is a raw deal, though.
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Sep 24, 2019 20:37
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I feel like tying Zeky radiation to Pyros expenditure and Disquiet buildup might work better, and also having it be more 'long-term low-level radiation' outside of Wastelands. Let them talk to people normally, with maybe a permanent intensity 1 radioactivity if you absolutely must. Also don't have 'personal radioactivity from powers' and 'environmental intensity' run on the same rules. Just say 'when the nuclear core vents Pyros, everyone present takes one bashing/one lethal/one aggravated, and mortals who take agg from this get cancer' or something like that. Maybe have a power that lets you blast high-intensity radiation on purpose in an area, but... playability! That's the key! Wastelands, yeah, should be horrifically radioactive if the Zeky screws up. That's just frankenscience.
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Sep 25, 2019 20:12
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The Jovian feels both over- and under-developed. The basic idea is good, since The Terrible Trivium was one of the better monsters from The Phantom Tollbooth, but the implementation is a little too untouchable. Personally I'd give it standard human-ish stats, a few weak unique powers, tons of info, an untouchable mind (to keep that info locked up) and then also any time you kill or immobilize it, it shows up in a new body later unless you fulfill the applicable conditions. The Jovian is here to help, hard to get rid of, and the 'help' is universally bad. About on the same level, as an antagonist, as the Lethean Abyssal Entity from Mage - a really solid storyline or two, then done. I can also see having the Jovian as an antagonistic NPC you go to for information while knowing their advice is poison somehow, after the initial realization of what exactly it's up to.
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Sep 25, 2019 22:48
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Mages are explicitly not immune to Disquiet (in 1e). Which leads to a Silver Ladder theorist circulating a proposal to mass-produce Prometheans as servants for humanity. Aka 'hahaha wow that's the worst idea ever imagined by the Silver Ladder, which is an impressively competitive category.'
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Sep 26, 2019 06:22
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I'm pretty sure that weird rumor about a demon making a deal with the devil is referencing non-Demon demons, things from the Lower Depths (In Awakening cosmological terms) that love human vice. They have impressive powers, can be summoned, and are kind of a generic monster for various lines - I think they have a connection to the Maeljin, the Werewolf Satans. So the implication might be that the 'occult matrix' of obelisks wasn't a God-Machine construct at all, but something from the Lower Depths, having more in common with Mage occultism than standard techgnosticism. The Mayor made a deal, 'signed on the dotted line' - it's an intentional irony, a Demon purchasing what seems like a Hell (i.e. heaven, for Demons) but realizing that ironically what they want more than anything else is to be free of this job. At least, that's how I'd run with that plot hook: There are non-God-Machine things out there, and the Mayor made a deal with one for a Hell of her very own. That could be a fun twist at the end of a chronicle where the Mayor is an antagonist/ally, that the city in question is in fact powered by SATAN MAGIC rather than Demon techno-occultism, and the normal rules of Angels and the God-Machine went out the window precisely because there's something else there. e: Plus it's a nice layering of the spy drama/occult secrets dynamic, where Demons are (in this specific case) revealed to be operating under conditions beyond what they themselves naturally understand, just like mortals dealing with a Demon don't know the half of it.
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Sep 27, 2019 17:07
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Concept: Demon artist who constructs elaborately unusable Covers as art installations on the nature of humanity and demonic existence, while maintaining a perfectly acceptable Cover they live in.
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Sep 27, 2019 21:17
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Wait someone called Jenna Moran an idiot dumbfuck, what the hell, she's great. Do not blaspheme the name, etc.
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Sep 27, 2019 23:00
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Nessus posted:Can y'all tone down the Internet cult poo poo over Jenna Moran like four notches? Sidereals was not some immaculate tome disgorged by the Amida Buddha, beyond critique Sure, but, it's still pretty good and the performative 'gently caress Exalted' stuff is... equally dumb? Like, saying 'Demon uses a lot of Sidereal-type concepts' doesn't require calling the people who conceptualized and wrote the fluff for Sidereals dumbfucks. It's just exhausting how 'this looks inspired by [other thing]' gets framed as 'this is like [other thing] but not total trash lol' presumably to avoid saying that this new thing isn't a totally independent invention. Also, if you couldn't tell, 'do not blaspheme the name etc' was, y'know, a joke.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:11
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Nessus posted:For whatever emergent cultural reasons we tend to valorize negative emotions (despair, suffering, pain) as being more real, more legitimate, than positive emotions (joy, triumph, determination). Things that include mostly the latter tend to be treated as kiddy poo poo or wish fulfillment, so obviously things that include mostly the former must be the opposite: Cool things, for matures. This really can't be overstated; even the mimetic novel is basically considered as realistic as it is miserable. This means that anxiety and misfortune 'read' as more realistic and immersive, and we'll accept pretty lovely excuses for why this is actually more true. Think about Game of Thrones - some of the misfortune and bad things happening aren't any more historically realistic than things going well, but it's the bad that reads as more like reality. As a result, GMs who enforce negative affect through supposedly simulationist (but actually not even dedicated) means create emotional immersion which is, in part, aimed at convincing the player that this is all just the natural outcome. Bad things happen naturally; good things either happen with immense effort or because the setting is story-shaped not immersive. This leads to some really lovely practices like the one described, where immersion can be mined from a player by making them anxious, unhappy, and constantly worried. It's honestly a power-trip thing, speaking as a GM who does really want to immerse my players and sometimes elicit negative emotions as well as positive ones - it's really pleasant for people to be bought into your setting and ideas, your plotlines, and it just feels drat good when they take them seriously. Which can mean wanting to really sell how grim some situation is. But, that's not a great impulse when it leads to torturing your friends and taunting them with 'there's one correct way out, you just need to find it!' because it makes you feel like a good writer to force the players to be attentive, unhappy readers. (And also that's not good writing, it's hack writing). (Though 'metarailroading' where you move on to the next set-piece or have certain things happen only when the work has had the desired effect, is good actually. If players are getting anxious and worried in room three of a ten-room dungeon, you should be thinking 'ok, they're in that mindset, now I can move on before it gets miserable.' Or alternatively, if something's supposed to be funny, don't run it into the ground. Hitting the emotional beat is as important as getting the right exposition; on the other hand, if the emotional beat doesn't land, you can't force it, so you may well want to move on early if the scene just isn't having any effect.)
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Sep 29, 2019 22:26
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It's also unfortunately the case that a lovely GM who produces really immersive anxiety can be extremely, well, immersive. Players can feel obligated, because the moral reality of the game feels real; they desperately want the catharsis of making it through, rather than the fiction they're immersed in ending without that solution. Frankly, some GMs use this in an emotionally abusive fashion. I had a GM who absolutely combined this kind of immiseration with moral dilemmas and NPCs who variably punished and rewarded, in such a way that the game became a kind of immersion skinner box. I don't game with her, or indeed hang out with or have anything to do with her, any more. One of the games she ran was causing some of my friends in college to break down crying outside of the game, on a weekly basis, out of anxiety for their characters and goals in the game. gently caress GMs who do that, and gently caress them for justifying it with either simulation or immersion or both. It doesn't make them better at producing compelling works, even, because the fiction becomes entirely consumed by the pressure and anxiety.
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Sep 29, 2019 22:53
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Yeah I mean, I regularly generate a bunch of setpieces and examples for traveling through weird ruins/wastelands for games, then theoretically I plan to use a set number of them at random - but when my players get enthused about exploring I end up just going through the whole list one by one or until the enthusiasm looks like it might wane. I have no problem with the theoretical 'do this until they're X or Y' - it just needs to be well-structured and not based on emotionally grinding your players down.
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Sep 30, 2019 01:04
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PurpleXVI posted:It's really fine line to walk, there's the sort of tension where you're invested and nailbiting, and the eventual release and resolution of that tension is highly satisfying catharsis, but there's also the kind of tension where you just start thinking up excuses not to show up to the next game. Not that every game has to be grim and dark, but a game without any nailbiter moments or potential for failure at all would be, I think, not very exciting to play in. Oh, certainly - I would say a meaningful part of it is having suspension of disbelief rather than 'simulation.' If they as players can trust that you as GM won't totally screw themmover or toy with them, but instead you're trying to create meaningful drama, they'll be prepared to buy into nail-biting or horror or anticipation without being worn down by it (you also need to pull tr trigger at the right time, reliably, for negative emotions to no overstay their welcome, or to make sure they're cathartic when the result is tragic or negative overall). E: lots of typos, sorry
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Sep 30, 2019 01:44
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Which, to be fair, is exactly how things are for regular spies. So it's entirely possible or to have one robust cover and then a few backup covers for specific jobs; having a criminal Cover is probably useful when you need to be Matches Malone, because Bruce Wayne is no more likely than the Bat-Demon to be able to join a street gang.
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Sep 30, 2019 17:27
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Think of Cover like a disguise; the only person is you wearing tha disguise. You can put it on and take it off. With demon powers and pacts, you can transfer memories of other people onto the disguise, and you can get your disguise a credit history or whatever, but ultimately once the Cover is in use it's a disguise with a backstory that's more or less fabricated. E: and in some cases involves killing and replacing the subject. Demon Cover works basically exactly like spy infiltration, except you're hiding from a divine surveillance network and what normally takes an extended organization years of work and tons of resources you can do on your own with your satan powers. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 30, 2019 |
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Sep 30, 2019 19:05
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Also worth remembering that the setting of the Chronicles is a 'toolbox' and while crossover material exists, it's inherently optional. Mages and the God-Machine coexist to the exact degree it's useful for your table.
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Sep 30, 2019 20:12
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