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 Welcome to the New World of Darkness thread! Yes, this is where you can post about Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Requiem, Vampire 20th Anniversary, Vampire Bloodlines, and Vampire 5th edition, alongside Vampire the Eternal Struggle! So many vampires! But it's not just draculas in here, we got werewolves, we got wizards, we got frankenstiens, we even got demons and mummies so many other weird gribbles you don't even know. Here are the rules: 1) Don't post in bad faith. Later on I'll be talking about the controversy of Vampire 5th. The game is tainted by some behind the scenes poo poo that is really gross and literally caused an international incident. Feel free to talk about your games, the mechanics, and what you like/dislike about it, but don't come in here like some keyboard fash dickhead whatabouting and gaslighting. 2) Be mindful of your content. Keep that racist, queerphobic, misogynistic posting over on reddit, buddy. Ironic racism is still racism. The old WoD games are 90's af and include A LOT of really bad stereotypes, so when you discuss them, be respectful towards the queer, non-white, and non-male posters here, myself included. 3) No edition wars. We really haven't really needed this until a couple of bad faith posters came in to poo poo up the thread with their hot takes on 5th edition, but there you have it. The best edition is the one you and your pals have the most fun with. Talk about what you like and dislike about them, but don't attack other posters for their preferences. General links Things Everyone Can Do - Chronicles of Darkness Vampire Demo Werewolf Demo Mage demos Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Promethean Demo Changeling Demo Hunter Demos The Hunt One Year Later Geist Demo Demon Demo Online Character Sheets http://sheetgen.dalines.net/wiki/WikiStart This one is my favorite for online play. You can set up an account and save all the sheets you make, and edit them when you need to. easy to link to, and pretty good looking. Mr.Gone's character sheets. Bad site design with Good custom WoD character sheets in easy to print pdf format, also home to varying levels of homebrew. infinite personae This looks like a general sheet, I've never used it but somebody said it was cool. Previous Megathreads Archive: Megathread 1 Megathread 2 Megathread 3 Megathread 4 Megathread 5 Special thanks to Luminous Obscurity for the parts of their OP I copied Tuxedo Catfish posted:Goku's one of the Bound and King Kai is his Geist. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Before we get into any of the specific gamelines, if you're curious about what the World/Chronicles of Darkness is about, here's a link to the best book ever released: The Horror Recognition Guide While this is a supplement for Hunter, it can be used for any line. What we love is just the feel of awe, terror, and mystery these entries provide. If you read this and nothing grabs you, these just aren't the games for you, and there's nothing wrong with that. We start with my favorite, the Chronicles of Darkness. Currently releasing their second editions, Chronicles of Darkness was a departure from the World of Darkness, originally designed as more street level with a tighter focus on personal horror and character development. Die pools are still made up of Attribute+Skill, but our target number is 8, 1's do not subtract from successes and a single success is all you need to pull off your trick, with 5+ successes counting as exceptional. Chronicles has a heavy focus on adding CONDITIONS to characters and NPCs, conditions being effects that compel the character to act in a certain way by providing bonuses or penalties to actions, many of the conditions that can be applied to players award a beat for resolving the condition. A too heavy focus on these conditions is a common critique of the game line. As just mentioned, beats are a thing now. A beat is a fraction of an XP, five beats equals one XP. By default, each character earns their own beats, but the thread hivemind has agreed that the best way to play is to use the optional method of pooling all beats earned by all characters and parceling out an equal amount of XP to everyone, so characters don't get left behind. Some ST's have had good results by just straight up awarding a set amount of XP at the end of scenes, chapters, and stories.  Vampire the Requiem is about trying to cling to the shreds of your humanity while having to feed off the people you once cared for. Surrounded by beings more powerful than you who will stop at nothing to consolidate their own power, what will you do to survive? Your morality track is Humanity and higher is better. The game gives you the option to play as one of five clans, each representing a vampire archetype. The Deava are the sexy ones. The Ventrue the aristocrats. The Gangrel the bestial ones. The Nosferatu the terrifying ones, and the Mekhet the best ones. Further, instead of just the Camarilla/Sabbat/Anarch divide we saw in the oWoD, Requiem has five separate Covenants for your vampire to be a member of, and while they're not exactly friends, there's rarely that out and out war between them you see in the Sabbat/Camarilla conflict. The covenants that are usually linked together the most are the Invictus, the vampire ruling class, and the Lancea et Sanctum, a vampire religion based on being god's chosen monsters. Their ideological opposites would be the Carthians, vampires fighting for freedom and self rule, and the Circle of the Crone, a mishmash of pagan blood cults and religions. But things really aren't that simple. As one poster in the old thread said about the Carthians, “Vampire communists are great, but what happens when the kindred start to see humans not as comrades, but the means of production?” The fifth covenant are the Ordo Dracul, founded by Dracula (the real one, not Count loving Dracula) and his Brides that is dedicated to research into the vampire condition and how to become a better monster. The best books for Vampire are the clanbooks, here's a link to Mekhet Other books: The Clanbooks Damnation City A Thousand Year’s of Night Night Horrors: Wicked Dead Ancient Bloodlines/Ancient Mysteries.  Werewolf the Forsaken is about creatures who straddle the line between the mortal and the spirit worlds, who's charge is protect each from the other and cultivate a beneficial ecosystem with their only tool being horrific violence. A common critique of this line is that it overburdened with lingo. Your morality track is Harmony and keeping it close to 5 is better. Werewolves have five auspices, Rahu, the full moon warriors. Irraka, the new moon ambushers. Ithaeur, the crescent moon shamans. Cahalith the gibbous moon bards, and the Elodoth , the half-moon judges. The uratha are further split into tribes which are organized around what threat to the balance. Blood Talons are the warriors and hunt other werewolves. Bone Shadows are the mystics and they hunt spirits. The Hunters in Darkness are the stealthy ones and they hunt the Hosts, monsters made of of swarms of rats, spiders, leeches, or other vermin. The Iron Masters are the ones most invested in human society because it's human and human adjacent monsters like vampires that they hunt. The Storm Lords are survivalists and hunt the claimed, humans and animals fully possessed by spirits. The best book is Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon Other good books: Predators The Pure  Mage the Awakening is about being an insufferable, naval gazing rear end in a top hat and mage chat ruins everything. … Okay, fine. Mage is actually a really great game about why is reality. Your character gains awareness of the building blocks of existence and along with that pull towards obsession over mysteries, are drafted into a cold war against the servitors of godlike beings who keep the majority of the population asleep and docile. How do you fight the personification of war or greed or surveillance? Wouldn't it just be easier to focus on improving your little patch of territory, experimenting with creating portals into your own mind that definitely won't backfire causing your deepest fears to manifest and eat your neighbors? While mages seem the most human, their obsession with mysteries put everyone around them in danger. Your morality track is Wisdom and higher is better. Mages are divided among five Paths, mystical realms who's Watchtower holds their true names. The Acanthus from Arcadia who manipulate Time and Fate. The Mastigos from Pandemonium who control Mind and Space. The Moros from Stygia who control Death and Matter. The Obrimos from the Aether who manipulate Prime and Forces, and the Thyrsus from the Primal Wilds in control of Life and Spirit. They divide themselves among five different orders called the Pentacle. The Adamantine Arrow pursues combat in all forms. The Guardians of the Veil protect secrets too important for any to know. The Mysterium are hoarders of knowledge. The Silver Ladder seeks to throw off the shackles of mundane existence and awaken everyone. The Free Council is a collection of mages who practices vary wildly, but agree that magic can best be found in human creativity. The best book is Left Hand Path Other good books: Mysterium The Silver Ladder Guardians of the Veil The Adamantine Arrow Seers of the Throne Astral Realms Summoners Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss Signs of Sorcery That Old Tree posted:Here is a post pointing to Dave Brookshaw's Mage APs on RPGnet, with some commentary.  Changeling the Lost is a game about surviving and healing. Many see this game as a metaphor for abuse survivors and while that is a valid interpretation and one I subscribe to, you do not have to play it that way. Changelings are humans that were kidnapped by the True Fae, living stories, to act out some role in their Arcadian kingdom. Eventually your character escapes through the Hedge and finds their way back to the real world, most likely to find that an impostor made of garbage and magic has taken over your life. Sometimes they make a better you than you did. What do you do when your life has been stolen and you've been physically changed by your ordeal? When you can see dangers around every corner that normal people cannot? Your morality is Clarity and higher is better. Changelings are divided into Seemings and Kiths. Seemings are the general type of change you've gone through, while Kiths are specific changes your character experienced. They are not linked and any seeming can have any kith.  Geist is a game about breaking the system. You died, and there as the last bits of life flowed out of you, a powerful ghost made you a deal. Help them with their issues and you can live again. You and your Geist enter into a symbiotic relationship as you become the point of contact between the living and the dead. Do you exploit this power, or do you take a look at how terrible the afterlife is, the links between human misery and the reflection of that in the land of the dead and try and change things? Your Morality stat is Synergy and higher is better. Sineaters are divided by the way they died and how they responded to it. Do you want revenge? Do you want to help ghosts resolve their trauma and move on? Do you just want to celebrate life? Build your own mystery cult, a religion that draws in normal humans and ghosts as well as your Krew. Geist Primer  Promethean is an intensely personal game and probably the most optimistic of the line. You aren't a real person. You were made. From other humans, from clay, from code. You're fake and everyone hates you because they know it. But thanks to the fire of creation, you are ALIVE and your quest is to learn what it is to be human. If you do it well enough, if you survive, you will actually BECOME human! Prometheans are divided by how they were created, from your classic Frankenstein's Monster to a cosmic accident. Throughout their existence they put themselves into a variety of different social roles in order to experience what it means to be a person. Change and growth are constant themes. Pilgrimage is your morality stat and higher is better.  Demon the Descent is a game about free will and paranoia. You are a technobiological horror that's been crammed inside of a human suit to serve the will of the God Machine. But something made you defect. Something made you Fall. You're now a renegade, inhabiting a life that was only supposed to fool people for a little bit while you went about your mission. You need to build that cover while following your desires to thwart the God Machine. Cover is your morality stat and higher is better. Demons are divided by their former role as angels and their attitude towards the God Machine.  Hunter second edition is still being worked on, so we don't know exactly what'll be going on. In the past hunters were organized by range of influence. Most games start as a loose group of people brought together for a specific problem, but there are compacts like the Union, working class people who know what walks the night and have organized for protection, to global conspiracies like the Lucifuge, children of the devil who hunt things even more twisted. What will remain true is that VASCU will still be the best compact.  Is the newest game introduced should be out in 2020. This game is a fun catchall of “you done been experimented on” horror. You might be the result of spirit possession, cult ritual, medical experimentation, or mutation from industrial run off. What links the characters is a desire for revenge balanced against the need to protect those things that keep them human. My goal for this game is to be able to create Turbo Teen. unseenlibrarian posted:It's me, I'm the one who voted for Deviant despite it not being out yet after reading the kickstarter previews and realizing it would be possible to play Dean Koontz's Watchers by letting someone take a Manticore companion merit that's explained as a super-intelligent golden retriever.  No one plays Mummy. It has an interesting premise where your power stat starts at 10 and decreases over time. Your character spends most of their existence asleep, and chronicles can spend centuries, but consensus is that the rules are a mess and hopefully a second edition will do for Mummy what it did for Promethean. Second edition has been successfully kickstarted! Octavo posted:I voted for Mummy (even though I usually run Mage: the Awakening and play Vampire: the Requiem) since it's the game that got me to jump over from classic WoD. It's definitely a mess, but I have played it and it's fun. If I were to give a pitch for Mummy, it would be that it's about the horror of specifically middle management in eldritch stage capitalism. Your millennia-spanning self has a cult to serve you, judges that you serve, and you get summoned back from the Underworld to do the bidding of both. Here's feedback from the kickstarted preview of Mummy I Am Just a Box posted:Short version:  https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/beast-the-primordial/  We don't talk about Beast. You play an abuse elemental, the lead designer was a serial abuser, everything is hosed. There are some cool parts of this game, but every attempt at salvaging it takes way too much effort. quote:Matt McFarland, AKA Black Hat Matt, was a freelance writer for White Wolf, and later Onyx Path Publishing. He and Rose created Demon the Descent in 2014 and it was incredibly well received. After Demon was released Matt pitched his idea for Beast: the Primordial, the elevator pitch is "You're a person with the soul of an ancient monster, like a dragon, or a gorgon." and given his tenure on Demon people were pretty optimistic. The Kickstarter draft came out and Beasts were actually incredibly petty, very rapey, did not actually transform into dragons or gorgons, and had very strong coding as LGBTQ/Minorities. They also exude what we have dubbed the "Poochy field" that makes all the other supernaturals love them and ignore their more problematic qualities. This wouldn't be too bad except for their enemies were also rather obviously themed as gamergaters, MRAs, and white supremacists. What made this worse is that Matt straight up compared his detractors to MRAs. After some controversy, OPP released a press release promising that they'd fix the wording in the actual finalized book. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 17:20
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 The old World of Darkness is still around, in addition to classic books, there are 20th anniversary editions of the main lines. We'll talk about Vampire 5th a bit further down. Old World of Darkness is VERY 90s, every line has some problematic elements in it, but most of them can be excised from your play. Thanks again to Luminous Obscurity for these descriptions: Vampire: The Masquerade - You're a vampire! Hope you like eating people and politicking! Its' 20th Anniversary Edition is out now! Werewolf: The Apocalypse - You're a werewolf. You fight for nature like only a proper 90s Environmentalist can. There's also all kind of other Were-stuff. Its' 20th Anniversary Edition is out now! Mage: The Ascencion - You're a wizard. Reality is consensual. Everyone loves the Technocracy. Its' 20th Anniversary Edition is out now! Wraith: The Oblivion - You're a ghost. Kind of. Held in very high esteem around these parts. Its' 20th Anniversary Edition is finally out! Lord_Hambrose posted:Please include an extensive discussion of why Wraith was the best White Wolf line. (It was!) Dawgstar posted:It's a shame all its best books - and they were really good - came at the tail end of the line. Lord_Hambrose posted:Oh yeah. It is such a fascinating setting, but starting off dead and things only getting worse is a harder sell than being a cool Werewolf who gets into rowdy fights. Changeling: The Dreaming - Hoo boy. For better or for worse its' 20th Anniversary Edition is out Rand Brittain posted:Dreaming 20th Anniversary's writers made heroic efforts to turn the gameline around, and honestly succeeded incredibly well. They came up with a take on Banality that's useful (basically, anything that makes you too tired to have fun is banal), reworked the Unseelie Court so that it has a philosophy beyond just being a murderous lunatic, and came up with a system for hsien magic that actually works. On top of all that, the Arts and Realms were reworked into a magic system for Kithain that's good, actually powerful, and makes every Art and Realm worth buying or combining. (I think changelings are now one of the most powerful splats instead of definitely the weakest.) Later, several other lines were added to the mix. We most likely won't be seeing re-releases of these for a while: Hunter: The Reckoning - Hunters! You have superpowers granted by God, at least you hope the voices in your head are God. Mummy: The Resurrection - You're a mummy. One of the few instances of unquestionably "good" PCs. Not much going on with this one. Demon: The Fallen - You're a fallen angel as per Paradise Lost. General consensus around here seems to be that it owns. What about Dark Ages? Wasn't that a thing? Dark Ages was a historical setting for (you guessed it) Dark Ages Europe. V20 Dark Ages is out now, and the overall reception seems to be pretty positive. That Old Tree posted:A Somewhat Comprehensive History of Samuel Haight It could definitely stand to be further summarized but this might be a good starting place. [/quote] Soonmot fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Sep 29, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 17:20
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 Oh boy. Vampire fifth edition was birthed in controversy. At first we were all overjoyed. Paradox Interactive bought White Wolf! We'll be getting awesome WoD themed video games!!  The information started to come out. Martin Ericsson, aka Swede Dracula, the guy above, was the driving force behind the game and treated it as an extension of his home game. Things were going to be geared towards LARP. And guess what? His perfred LARPs were kind of rapey! Then some playtests were released, an playable character was literally a pedophile. Children suicide bombers were infiltrating Germany disguised as refugees! Example die rolls came up 1488. Brujah's clan cursed was called “triggered”! It was edge and terrible and caused lots of angry emails to be sent to PI, who simply said, “Hey, they're just a subsidy, White Wolf is doing their own thing.” At least until Chechnya. https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/chechens-hate-vampire-the-masquerade-game-for-sultan-ramzan-character/ One of the books used Chechnya's ongoing genocide of homosexuals as a backdrop to a vampire plot. It was incredibly tasteless and pissed off the President of Chechnya leading to an actual international incident. After this, Swede Dracula was demoted, White Wolf was absorbed fully into Paradox and the WoD Ips are being licensed out. Mulva posted:Again, White Wolf is dead. They fired everyone and turned it into an internal brand name. It's not going to develop anything. It's not going to publish anything. All the people involved in the terrible setting ideas are gone, a statement we can make fairly accurately because literally everyone is gone. V5 was the vanity project of one guy at Paradox, and they didn't give a poo poo because they could make back every single dime he spent there by releasing a single video game. Seriously if they made "Europa Universalis but Vampire" I'm pretty sure they could buy out 99% of all active roleplaying game publishers. The only thing that could possibly happen for them to give a poo poo about White Wolf was it causing so much horrific press they were forced to actually acknowledge it existed. All that said, there are some good people playing this game. There are some novel, interesting mechanics such as the Predator types, and Hunger dice. Discussion of V5 is encouraged, but don't be an rear end about it. Downplaying the foundation of poo poo this game was built on is only going cause half a dozen posters to dogpile on you. No one wants that. Here are some Actual Plays of V5 Helical Nightmares posted:Come on down to the actual play thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3743698 Werewolf 5th edition is on the way. With Swede Dracula sidelined, hopefully they're not going along the "heroic fascism" bullshit he wanted to do. The dev team trailer gives me some hope. Dawgstar posted:Speaking of: Here's the video for the Werewolf creative team for the OP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfAWlJkshE and here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZZ7Q2Lsvc  The Project is our thread's own irl wizard Loomer's attempt at breaking reality open and seizing ultimate power by conducting a census of every supernatural critter in the Old World of Darkness. quote:Loomer wrote on Sep 29, 2019 12:56 AM: Soonmot fucked around with this message at 22:53 on May 1, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2019 17:21
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 Feel free to talk about lore from the original game or the upcoming sequel in here instead of derailing the excellent game thread. Bloodlines two is a follow up to the cult hit and all around amazing game Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines. The sequel will be using a version of the 5th edition rules and for some lovely reason, be first person only. I have been repeatedly assured that there will be mods to turn it third person, but goddamn do I hate first person view.  Beefeater1980 posted:Trip report: tried out CoNY and so far it’s a better-than-usual visual novel that nails the atmosphere. Rolled up a Toreador and so far everyone around me is a pretentious a-hole, 5/5 would luvvie it up again. Spector29 posted:I have returned from 1.2 playthoughts of the new game, Coteries of New York. Verdict: It's Not Great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Coteries_of_New_York Preview for Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6uuGf_3k_8  Angry Lobster posted:Welcome to Vampire: the Eternal Struggle (or VTES for short)! VTES is a multi-player collectable card game based on the award-winning Vampire: the Masquerade role playing game in which players take on the role of ancient vampires known as a Methuselahs. Considered mere legend by many, Methuselahs rule everything from the shadows, engaging in a eons-long Machiavellian conflict that encompasses political, social, and even physical warfare. The struggle is won or lost based on the actions taken by your minions – younger vampires who unknowingly do your bidding. In this way, the game can allow for deep and immersive storytelling as your minions purchase equipment, hire retainers, and even suggest legislative changes to vampiric society, all in the service of your dark plots. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 20:24 on May 16, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2019 17:57
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Minor correction to above: AIUI, it's a stretch to say Greg Stolze designed Demon: the Fallen. He has prominent credits in the supplement line (where arguably the work of redesigning the game into something playable actually happened), but in the core book he's credited as one of about nine contributing authors. The Designers (listed separately from authors) are listed as Andrew Bates, Ken Cliffe, Michael Lee, Rich Thomas, and Steve Wieck, and the overall line developer was apparently Michael Lee. Small thing I know, but I think it's important to emphasise given that Stolze has a reputation for solid system design which Demon: the Fallen (especially from core), ahahahahaha, doesn't exactly measure up to, and you wouldn't want people to think that it's a Stolze-designed game because I bet that even within the constraints of 2002-vintage Storyteller Stolze could design a much better game by himself given full creative freedom than Demon turned out to be.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:29
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Warthur posted:Minor correction to above: AIUI, it's a stretch to say Greg Stolze designed Demon: the Fallen. He has prominent credits in the supplement line (where arguably the work of redesigning the game into something playable actually happened), but in the core book he's credited as one of about nine contributing authors. The Designers (listed separately from authors) are listed as Andrew Bates, Ken Cliffe, Michael Lee, Rich Thomas, and Steve Wieck, and the overall line developer was apparently Michael Lee. Flaw: No Cell Phone (3)
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Sep 27, 2019 18:37
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Do you want a "Best book list" for Changeling or are you running out of space on that, OP?
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Sep 27, 2019 18:37
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It's me, I'm the one who voted for Deviant despite it not being out yet after reading the kickstarter previews and realizing it would be possible to play Dean Koontz's Watchers by letting someone take a Manticore companion merit that's explained as a super-intelligent golden retriever.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:44
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Gerund posted:Do you want a "Best book list" for Changeling or are you running out of space on that, OP? Plenty of space, lemme have em
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Sep 27, 2019 18:50
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Warthur posted:Minor correction to above: AIUI, it's a stretch to say Greg Stolze designed Demon: the Fallen. He has prominent credits in the supplement line (where arguably the work of redesigning the game into something playable actually happened), but in the core book he's credited as one of about nine contributing authors. The Designers (listed separately from authors) are listed as Andrew Bates, Ken Cliffe, Michael Lee, Rich Thomas, and Steve Wieck, and the overall line developer was apparently Michael Lee. Whatever happened to Andrew Bates? I remember his work on Trinity and Adventure! being pretty great.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:57
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unseenlibrarian posted:It's me, I'm the one who voted for Deviant despite it not being out yet after reading the kickstarter previews and realizing it would be possible to play Dean Koontz's Watchers by letting someone take a Manticore companion merit that's explained as a super-intelligent golden retriever. These three words sold me more on this splat that anything else I've read.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:59
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unseenlibrarian posted:It's me, I'm the one who voted for Deviant despite it not being out yet after reading the kickstarter previews and realizing it would be possible to play Dean Koontz's Watchers by letting someone take a Manticore companion merit that's explained as a super-intelligent golden retriever.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:59
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I've started my V5 campaign where thinblood vampires are abducted and taken to a new wing of the South Pole research station, where governments do research on them away from the public eye (radiation exposure, freezing/heating etc). After an accident, the vampires get released from storage. Also, its happening during the night time. So imagine 30 days of night mixed with The Thing and a sprinkling of Fargo here and there. It is going to be great.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:05
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Hey, give me your fan splats for the video game fan splat post
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Sep 27, 2019 19:12
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Top Hats Monthly posted:I've started my V5 campaign where thinblood vampires are abducted and taken to a new wing of the South Pole research station, where governments do research on them away from the public eye (radiation exposure, freezing/heating etc). After an accident, the vampires get released from storage. Also, its happening during the night time. So imagine 30 days of night mixed with The Thing and a sprinkling of Fargo here and there. It is going to be great. Hey now, Fargo isn't that cold, it's only NEARLY that cold.
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Sep 27, 2019 19:27
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You know, I haven’t seen any discussion at all about CtD 20th. Flipping through the core it looks like an absurdly overpacked monstrosity, seems like they added every supplement or crossover supplement the original ever had to the main book? I can’t even imagine what a mess that must be to try and reference. Was there any chat here, or just a lack of interest given its origin material?
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Sep 27, 2019 20:02
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I voted for Mummy (even though I usually run Mage: the Awakening and play Vampire: the Requiem) since it's the game that got me to jump over from classic WoD. It's definitely a mess, but I have played it and it's fun. If I were to give a pitch for Mummy, it would be that it's about the horror of specifically middle management in eldritch stage capitalism. Your millennia-spanning self has a cult to serve you, judges that you serve, and you get summoned back from the Underworld to do the bidding of both. It plays like inverse D&D. You the immortal lich are usually awakened by pesky adventurers breaking into your tomb, setting off your traps, stealing your treasure, and killing your henchmen. Then you go after them! One great way to play the game is to have one or two players be the mummies and have everyone else be the obsequious cultists. The best books for the line are Sothis Ascends (historical settings), Book of the Deceived (truly horrifying antagonists), and Malcolm Sheppard's phenomenal bit of mythcrafting, Dreams of Avarice. Octavo fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 20:05
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AmiYumi posted:You know, I haven’t seen any discussion at all about CtD 20th. Flipping through the core it looks like an absurdly overpacked monstrosity, seems like they added every supplement or crossover supplement the original ever had to the main book? I can’t even imagine what a mess that must be to try and reference. I remember there was but I can't remember what the feeling was about it. I'm fairly certain they went back on all science being banal.
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Sep 27, 2019 20:22
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Dreaming 20th Anniversary's writers made heroic efforts to turn the gameline around, and honestly succeeded incredibly well. They came up with a take on Banality that's useful (basically, anything that makes you too tired to have fun is banal), reworked the Unseelie Court so that it has a philosophy beyond just being a murderous lunatic, and came up with a system for hsien magic that actually works. On top of all that, the Arts and Realms were reworked into a magic system for Kithain that's good, actually powerful, and makes every Art and Realm worth buying or combining. (I think changelings are now one of the most powerful splats instead of definitely the weakest.) Unfortunately, Matt McFarland is a very bad developer as well as a rapist, and the book isn't consistent about any of this stuff. The Unseelie have a reasonable philosophy in their discussion section, but all the Unseelie legacies are only fit for murderous lunatics because they're unchanged from the last edition. Some sections still occasionally refer to science as banal because writers who didn't read any of the discussions on the topic didn't get their drafts edited. The king and queen are waiting for a sidhe baby to be born and settle the succession, which is not actually a thing that happens. Also the Gallain got squeezed into such a tiny section that there's no room to explain what purpose they serve in the game or why you would play one. Honestly, they never actually had a purpose, and they probably should have gotten a full book of their own instead of being crushed into such a tiny space.
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Sep 27, 2019 20:31
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C20 is rad, entirely playable, and has relatively minor flaws. Considering what CtD 2nd gave people to work with that's a minor miracle. There's nothing too egregious in it, rules or setting-wise, and the majority of flaws are "I wish it had more room to talk about this thing". I'd easily put it over V20 and Woof20 simply because their Revised versions weren't actively painful to work with, so having great releases isn't really a massive step up. M20 is mechanically whatever and fluff-wise.....yeesh. And Wraith is strong and clean and powerful. e: Considering the track record I'd slit throats for Hunter 20, because holy poo poo is that the line that I think would benefit the most from a second pass.
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Sep 27, 2019 20:37
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I feel like CtD20 doesn't get a lot of discussion because, despite the heroic efforts Rand mentions, maybe a couple dozen people in the world like the game specifically as opposed to sort of generally appreciating that it's another part of the WoD.
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Sep 27, 2019 20:38
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I confess that I always wanted Changeling to be good. I wanted to live a double life of wonder and magic in the modern world without The Man coming to kill me. I wanted to explore a strange other world that works on fairy tale rules and dream logic, where the losers of the last war lick their wounds and plotted revenge. I wanted essentially Sandman or A Wrinkle in Time the RPG. Sadly, I couldn’t get past having to be a six year old who was having medieval Romance and would dry up and blow away if I attended school for a week and just adventured on the weekends. I couldn’t get past having to spend more game time gathering resources to stay alive than doing literally anything else. And I couldn’t get past having a power set that wouldn’t work on anything at all ever without blowing enough power to completely unmake my character in game one. I hear C20 fixed it, but I haven’t had time to look these days.
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Sep 27, 2019 23:32
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At least they made Child Satyrs explicitly less horny in the 20th Anniversary Edition. Also, mental health professionals are not the most dangerous thing in the world, or the crushing banality of having a family.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:07
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My Werewolf players are in a pickle, they're up against an army of CHUDs, injured, allies are fleeing. The three ithauers are going to use their spirit howl ability all at the same time. It is a full moon. My players are going to do Three Wolf Moon and I love them for it.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:20
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Child satyrs were never horny.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:31
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Top Hats Monthly posted:I've started my V5 campaign where thinblood vampires are abducted and taken to a new wing of the South Pole research station, where governments do research on them away from the public eye (radiation exposure, freezing/heating etc). After an accident, the vampires get released from storage. Also, its happening during the night time. So imagine 30 days of night mixed with The Thing and a sprinkling of Fargo here and there. It is going to be great.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:31
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OH WOW! I did not know all that Bullshit about Beast.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:35
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BigRed0427 posted:OH WOW! I did not know all that Bullshit about Beast. Don't feel too bad, that is the result of about 3 years of research and painful experience.
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Sep 28, 2019 02:43
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This morning, the Deviant kickstarter posted the systems for the all purpose combat power: "Lash" at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game/posts/2633815 This is really neat for a few reasons. Usually new powers in a nWoD/CofD game tend to look like reskinned Vampire disciplines (I'm being overbroad here since arcana decidedly don't work like this). They have an description evocative of the source material and narrative effects interwoven with systems. Not Deviant. With this power at least, the systems come first and you build them via a menu to fit your vision of the power. The best part of it all is that it has several completed examples of the power, so players who don't want to tinker with the power menu can just grab one and go.
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Sep 28, 2019 02:51
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Top Hats Monthly posted:I've started my V5 campaign where thinblood vampires are abducted and taken to a new wing of the South Pole research station, where governments do research on them away from the public eye (radiation exposure, freezing/heating etc). After an accident, the vampires get released from storage. Also, its happening during the night time. So imagine 30 days of night mixed with The Thing and a sprinkling of Fargo here and there. It is going to be great. Somewhere along the way, Elder Hardluck gets hurt even in Antarctica. Nowhere is safe for this poor Methuselah.
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Sep 28, 2019 03:18
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Soonmot posted:My Werewolf players are in a pickle, they're up against an army of CHUDs, injured, allies are fleeing. The three ithauers are going to use their spirit howl ability all at the same time. It is a full moon. Wishing them luck. It's rough being on the run as a werewolf.
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Sep 28, 2019 03:20
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Magechat: A primer Magechat is the most loved, hated, and feared event that can happen in a WoD thread. Anytime there are suddenly eighty new posts here it’s because someone mentioned Beast, someone’s trolling about V5, or Magechat happened. At its core Magechat is basically getting high with your friends after philosophy 101 and talking about like, what the universe really is, man. But also with nerdy RPG hermeneutics. It’s the worst (best.) Magechat is all consuming for a few reasons. First off, Mages in game are nosey, arrogant assholes. Mage has a fairly consistent system where basically all phenomena, natural or supernatural, can be controlled by one of the arcana/spheres of magic. This usually means in game Mages just see the other splats as manifestations of their own game rules, even if that explains nothing at all. So part of Magechat is going “well Vampires are affected by the death arcana, so clearly they’re a death phenomena” and everyone else going “THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING.” Getting into Mage lore gives you a vocabulary to talk about like, the fundamental rules of the occult in the WoD. The vocabulary, and nothing else. Oh, and in oWoD the fundamental rules of the occult are consensual reality, except when they aren’t. Archmages can do some really, really weird stuff too, and so part of Magechat is kind of a secret history of the World of Darkness, but it's the kind of secret history which ends up in "Western Europe used to worship Mithras until someone cast a spell so powerful that it removed Mithrasism and the spellcaster from reality and anyway that's why Mithrasism and Christianity (which seeped into to replace it) have so much in common." It's nonsense. It rules. The second amazing reason why Magechat is the best (worst) is because nWoD’s Mage games have an explicitly political backdrop. Most PC mages are assumed to be on the side of the occult orders who ostensibly want more magic for more people, most antagonistic mages work for the living platonic symbols of oppression, so like they get their orders from a person who turned themselves into literally oppression via a persistent surveillance state. Unless that’s all propaganda to get the evil wizards something to work for? ANYWAY the basic tension in a nMage game is “Let’s work to liberate humanity!” vs “Hey what does this do? Oh gently caress, did I just accidently remove the souls of everyone in downtown Boston?” This means Magechat is political, with a decidedly leftist bent. And, well, if you’ve been around leftist online communities you know the knives can come out when people debate the better world they're striving for. So in summation you get people using complete but useless paradigms to discuss everything else in the world of darkness while arguing with each other about if magical vanguardism is a valid way to democratize magic, if alliances with counter-revolutionaries are permissible under existential threat, or what it would mean to punch the symbol of fascism in its face. It’s loving glorious. Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 03:30
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While I appreciate the shoutout in the intro, we could probably do without bombarding new readers with my lengthy rants. I can do a more polished general write-up/abstract of what it's about with links to my relevant posts and OPP threads, if that's agreeable?
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Sep 28, 2019 03:48
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Digital Osmosis posted:This means Magechat is political, with a decidedly leftist bent. And, well, if you’ve been around leftist online communities, or even like know a single thing about a single successful revolution IRL, you know the left eats itself. this is something that reads out of an alt-right rulebook.
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Sep 28, 2019 04:35
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TheNamedSavior posted:this is something that reads out of an alt-right rulebook. IT HAS BEGUN I just finished Miéville's October and might be in a pessimistic bent. Great book, inspiring story, brutal epilogue.
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Sep 28, 2019 04:44
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And the alt-right unironically says that the left eats itself all the time, so saying literally that is a loving invite for those type of assholes, I would recommend not implying that any attempt to overthrow the oppressive governments ends with failure no matter what you do in a thread that's supposed to be against the racists stealing WOD from us.
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Sep 28, 2019 04:50
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I hadn't previously thought of that phrase as implying failure or as injunction to inaction and I didn't know that had become a nazi catchphrase. I've edited the sentence in my post. I hope below I can explain better what I was trying to get at - that Magechat ends up being used as metaphor for rehashing some old, sometimes vicious, intra-leftist debates. Up until pretty recently, rightest movements were generally unified by a goal to return to status quo ante, and I do think there's therefore some truth what I was (clumsily) trying to say. A leftist regime imagines a new future, which involves differing opinions. A rightest regime, both because they claim to only want to return to the past and because rightists are big on deference to authority, tends IMO to be more initially unified. Things have gotten bonkers lately with rightists also in "burn it all down and start again" mode but as far as I can tell you generally get more fundamental disagreements about what politics should look like among leftist thinkers than among rightists. Since apparently the specific wording I used has turned into some kind of "don't be a leftist" shibboleth than I'm very pleased to ditch it, but I really do think the leftist bent of nMage can lead Magechat to have some emotional positions and heated arguments. edit: but also, you know, if I was trying to say that intra-leftist fighting is an occasional feature of this thread, you calling me out for specific, non-offensive language use in a post about how cool it is to argue fantasy revolutionary politics kinda proves my point, no? Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 05:19
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Loomer posted:While I appreciate the shoutout in the intro, we could probably do without bombarding new readers with my lengthy rants. I can do a more polished general write-up/abstract of what it's about with links to my relevant posts and OPP threads, if that's agreeable? Very much so. Edit:. Anyone who wants to do a write up on vtes is welcome to. I'm working all weekend so I won't start the video game section until Monday Soonmot fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 05:30
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Digital Osmosis posted:edit: but also, you know, if I was trying to say that intra-leftist fighting is an occasional feature of this thread, you calling me out for specific, non-offensive language use in a post about how cool it is to argue fantasy revolutionary politics kinda proves my point, no? people need to relax about tabletop games imo
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Sep 28, 2019 06:15
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