|
Zeithos posted:Speaking of oWoD fiction, back when WW published novels and anthologies under their own imprint (Psalms of Herod was really loving good, as I recall, and had nothing to do with the WoD), they put out an anthology of vampire stories. They did a number of these, some abhorrently terrible, but there was one collection that had a story where I poo poo you not, Jesus was embraced. As awful as it sounds, it was actually quite good, and the author used it to explain/showcase Paul's corruption and reformation of Christ's message into his own psychological crutch. I've got an anthology of short stories about Elric by various authors, "Tales of the White Wolf", that they published. Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Sep 16, 2012 |
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 04:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 03:09 |
|
|
Check it for Vampire Jesus.
Loomer fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Oct 11, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 04:46
|
|
|
Ah, yeah, see, I don't actually use the Paradox charts. I generally just decide on something appropriately either annoying or dangerous based on the severity of the Paradox.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 04:49
|
|
Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
|
Quantum Mechanic posted:Ah, yeah, see, I don't actually use the Paradox charts. I generally just decide on something appropriately either annoying or dangerous based on the severity of the Paradox.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 05:27
|
|
|
It only took using the default Paradox charts a few times for me to realize how much it loving sucks. Sometimes the "you go crazy!" effects can be fun but usually they're just dumb and feel shoehorned into the scene. Anomalies can be cool if there's a way to make it screw with the PCs in an unexpected way. My favorite was one of my players using Decay to weaken a wall and the Anomaly it created unbeknownst to them made all of their food spoil and go rotten, which they didn't discover until they were hungry, trapped somewhere, and realizing they had no way of getting food without using more vulgar magic. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 05:44
|
|
|
Vampire Jesus was in Dark Destiny II: Proprietors of Fate, and Vampire Sodom and Gomorrah was in Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula. (They invented sodomy in Sodom, and they invented Draculas in Gomorrah.) Tales of the White Wolf wasn't an embarrassing WoD anthology, it was a collection of Michael Moorcock homages by authors like Neil Gaiman and Nancy A Collins (and Gary Gygax, whose short story retconned his pet Greyhawk character Gord the Rogue into an incarnation of the Eternal Champion).
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 06:02
|
|
|
I just make my players draw from the Mage Tarot deck and then we do something based on the card, they throw out ideas and everyone kind-of looks forward to paradox kind-of fears it because sometimes the cards are a dick (it's me, I'm the dick)
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 08:04
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Check it for Vampire Jesus. Words to live by. gtrmp posted:Vampire Jesus was in Dark Destiny II: Proprietors of Fate, and Vampire Sodom and Gomorrah was in Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula. (They invented sodomy in Sodom, and they invented Draculas in Gomorrah.) And thank you, sir!
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 09:49
|
|
|
Why are these two novels not on DTRPG? I need to know what Clan Vampire Jesus was! This is important, goddamn it! White Wolf guy, yell at marketing or something!
Loomer fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Sep 16, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 09:59
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:I've got an anthology of short stories about Elric by various authors, "Tales of the White Wolf", that they published. I've got that. There's a Moonglum story by Gary Gygax in it, which is strange. And it features Elric killing Nazis, which is AWESOME. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Sep 16, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 15:54
|
|
|
Over beers with my ST last night in the pending VTR game I hope to join next month, he said that a main source of conflict will come from us, the PCs, fighting eachother. Should I be concerned? Is that a normal thing for VTR? I imagine nobody gets along all chummy, what with being eternally damned predators of society and all, but I'm not sure if killing and being killed by other players next to me is gonna be all that fun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 23:37
|
|
|
Fighting doesn't have to mean death. Hell, in VTM I'd lump regular politically-motivated backstabbing under fighting. Sounds like a fun game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 23:39
|
|
|
Is there a list of nWoD (or oWoD) books to avoid? I know Changing Breeds is bad juju, but what else is?
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2012 23:56
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Is there a list of nWoD (or oWoD) books to avoid? I know Changing Breeds is bad juju, but what else is? -The entire nWoD book series of Ghost Stories, Mysterious Places, Tales from the 13th Precinct, Midnight Roads, Dogs of War, Nomads, etc are all pretty awful. They're nothing but vague plot hooks that are not better than anything you could come up with by just ripping off a random episode of Angel. -WOD: Innocents. It a book about playing a group of children.  -Tome of the Watchtowers. The Thyrsus chapter is very poorly written and I would actively discourage a new player from reading it. The new Thyrsus merits are cool in concept but they are completely out of sync with the rest of the game in terms of what they do. I don't "hate" changing breeds, I just think it was a bit of a squib. -It only outputs a very narrow type of "shapechanger". There's no excuse for this book AND the book Skinchangers existing. You should be able to create a character who acquired their shapeshifting power from being bitten, created by a mad scientist, consciously chosen through some magical ritual, or genetics with the same rule set. -It should have just been a Werewolf supplement and saved a lot word count. Irritatingly, the authors go out of their way to poo poo on crossovers with Werewolf by saying: quote:the Uratha consider themselves to be the ultimate and rightful predators of all other species. It’s also hard to tell the difference between Hosts, skinthieves and beast-blooded ferals when you’re looking in from the outside. quote:Ferals tend to be rather independent, and it’s unusual to fi nd more than two of them congregating unless they come from extremely social species or they’ve established a butoka, or common sanctuary. For the most part, beast-folk keep tend their own business and leave tribal politics to vampires and werewolves. -It's a really egregious example of the nWoD paint-by-numbers approach to supernaturals, e.g. the 5x5 supernatural spread and White Wolf's insane need to make up new goddamn words for the same concepts in every game. See: Krewe in Geist.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 01:28
|
|
|
crime fighting hog posted:Over beers with my ST last night in the pending VTR game I hope to join next month, he said that a main source of conflict will come from us, the PCs, fighting eachother. The main thing to remember is that everyone has to go in with the knowledge that PVP is allowed, expected, and/or encouraged. If everyone isn't on the same page about it, that's when games collapse.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 01:53
|
|
|
Krewe is a real word that tenuously relates to the whole Carnival, jazz funeral aesthetic they were going for, but there was probably a very strong element of "find a random word that sounds cool".
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 01:54
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:Krewe is a real word that tenuously relates to the whole Carnival, jazz funeral aesthetic they were going for, but there was probably a very strong element of "find a random word that sounds cool". I know it is a real word, just like Arete, Gnosis, Harmony, etc are real words. My critique stands: Making up new words for the exact same concept in every game line is dumb and they shouldn't do it. You should only make up a new mechanic when it's necessary to make up a new mechanic and by extension you should only make up a new word when it's necessary to use a new word. Every new mechanic and every new vocab word has a cost in terms of making it more difficult for new players to play the game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 02:07
|
|
|
Gobbeldygook posted:Every new mechanic and every new vocab word has a cost in terms of making it more difficult for new players to play the game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 03:31
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:It's one of those things that is pretty well handled in vampire, so long as everyone is on the same page regarding it. As with everything, there's a right way and a wrong way to handle it. I have stories about PVP gone wrong/right/combination of, if it's desired. I'm always down for hearing stories from games, so everyone should feel free to share.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 04:36
|
|
|
Gobbeldygook posted:-WOD: Innocents. It a book about playing a group of children. I'm not sure where you got the idea that Innocents was bad and Changing Breeds was just narrow. Given one is about playing kids and approaches the topic in a mature manner, and even talks about how to tone down the darkness level if you want to have a nice game of Scooby Doo or kids-as-neighborhood-boogeyman-hunters rather than terrified children running from vampires. And, uh, the other is about all the bad parts of oWerewolf and how they gently caress their pets and hate man for inventing fire and poo poo in cars so much that the cars break. So, basically, you have no taste whatsoever.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 05:21
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I'm not sure where you got the idea that Innocents was bad and Changing Breeds was just narrow. is like the least appropriate possible emoticon for Innocents, given that the authors spend something like a full page explicitly telling you why not to child molestation as a plot device in an elfgame about children.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 07:04
|
|
|
I hear owls outside my window. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 09:09
|
|
|
Simian_Prime posted:I hear owls outside my window. Run run rabbit, run away~
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 09:24
|
|
|
gtrmp posted:Also, It's a good thing we can count on the mature and well adjusted gaming community at large not to Rule Zero this one!
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 11:39
|
|
|
crime fighting hog posted:I'm always down for hearing stories from games, so everyone should feel free to share. Playing VTR with the VTM clans as ancient clans/rare bloodlines. I'm playing a Tzimisce koldun (we did koldunic sorcery as a bloodline discipline using Zagovny as the base, and Way of [Element] as rituals, converting as per thaumaturgy in the translation guide.) and after a couple players vanished into the twisting nether as internet players are wont to do, we find a new guy; this guy wants to play a Ravnos. We say sure, that's awesome, illusions are just what we need right now as it happens. So he makes this character and he's kind of all over the place with his skills, but he says he wants to be a jack of all trades, so we figure it'd be fine. As it turns out, his idea of JoAT was "buy random poo poo, change all of my goals every other session" and it was not fine. Fast forward a bit. Our new guy proves that he doesn't really grasp concepts like "don't piss off other vampires without a reason" and "don't piss off elder vampires without a plan" and "don't be a shithead to your coterie mates, especially when it's not your house". He also has a tendency to just disappear for nights at a time and come back with really tenuous stories of where he was. So my character starts tracking him via the Zagovny 1 power (lets you scry on the person you mark) whenever he decides to run off suddenly. And there he finds that newbie is conspiring with his nemesis in town, actively trying to gently caress up his plans. So not only has he been constantly bragging about how powerful he is and how he could destroy any of us easily, but now he's also been using my Tzimisce hospitality against me. So me and the ST talk between sessions about how to handle this, because the player has been instigating PVP in-character and my character now has both no reason to protect him (as he has smoothed things over a few times for him; gotta protect those in your home and all) and has a reason to kill him. Also, the player has been shown that he can't be trusted to not metagame, since we've had to tell him a dozen times "you don't know that in character" and even then he never really changed his actions. So we get a dicebot (up until then we had just been rolling physical dice and PMing # successes; we are chill like that) and the next session, I ambush him. We open with him coming back to the haven, I chat him up a little, ask where he'd been, tell him to head inside because I have something to show him. I blindside him by locking him out of spending willpower via Way of Sorrow, and all his poo poo is powered by willpower. We roll init, and I use another ritual to stop him from acting unless he spends a willpower point by inflicting crippling pain. And then I sit on his chest and ask him why he would attack me like this when I have done nothing but help keep him alive, despite having multiple reasons to do otherwise. He responds with "I could have killed you if I acted first." I laugh, say "Yes, well, you didn't. And now you pay the price." and proceed to torpor and diablerize him. Out of character, he flips his poo poo. Demanding to know how I knew all this, how I could do these things, why he didn't get to know know about every power I had ahead of time, why he didn't get to roll a hundred different things to preempt me, etc. The thought that I had powers he had not seen in action had never crossed his mind. Or that a given blood sorcery ritual might not have distinct and noticeable verbal and somatic components. Or that he would actually need dots in Occult to know any truth about any sort of magic. Or that aiding someone's most hated enemy might be a poor idea when you live with that someone. Or that a PC might retaliate against another PC when instigated several times over. Despite explaining all of this to him (and having explained to him that no it does not work the way it does in Exalted repeatedly), and saying multiple times that we had nothing against him - it was that his character acted poorly, planned poorly, and suffered the fate of any vampire who gets caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar - he took it as a personal attack against him and said would never play vampire again. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you're gonna PVP, you have to be open to the possibility that the other player might be more prepared than you. Also be smart about your scheming because everyone has tricks up their sleeve.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 14:51
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm walking that thin line right now in my RfR game. Although it's less lolrandom and more character-driven, so at least I've got that right? 
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 15:26
|
|
|
Yawgmoth the problem with that story is that it's against pvp actions of any kind, since the guy who initiated them was a douche. Recently in Tolth's IRC game we had to take a coterie-wide one drink vinculum to manage our characters' friction. that was cool. It's also not going to stop us from conspiring with NPCs and each other to get ahead, although it hopefully will stop us from actively betraying one another. Still one of my favorite moments of the game so far was driving a Jag at 80mph into another players' sire. Guy dodged unfortunately but it was still funny
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 16:09
|
|
|
I guess my problem is I hear PVP and I instantly remember nightmare sessions of D&D with our party rogue stealing stuff from the other players as we slept so we had to kill him the next morning and the player getting pissed off, stomping outside to cry and throw his yu-gi-oh cards into the street. Oh, junior high. If it's fun and actually serves a purpose beyond dick waving then PVP could be a cool facet of the game. I really just want to drink beers and roll dice on the other side of the screen for once.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 16:46
|
|
|
crime fighting hog posted:I guess my problem is I hear PVP and I instantly remember nightmare sessions of D&D with our party rogue stealing stuff from the other players as we slept so we had to kill him the next morning and the player getting pissed off, stomping outside to cry and throw his yu-gi-oh cards into the street. Imagine if the whole game encouraged that kind of stealing, but because items and gold weren't really the point of the game, the impact wouldn't be that the party fighter couldn't get the +3 Firebrand he wanted and so everyone suffered. Instead, the party Dracula wizard would lose status in vampire society for failing to protect what was his, and the person who stole from him would turn it over to their Circle of the Crone mentor. And then they would turn around and give it to the prince, and so the Crone would be elevated above the Ordo Drakul. Now the Dracula wizard's mentor (who would also have given the thing to the prince) is pissed off, and one of his competitors gets that big dracula promotion he wanted. So the end result is that the crone player gets a boost in his own vampire society, and his society gets a boost in general, while the draculas are marginalized a little and the dracula mentor is slightly less useful in the following nights. But really it's not a huge deal yet, and next week maybe the tide of fortune will reverse itself. But now the player who has been elevated discovers that the Crones have some internal trouble, while a third player in the Invictus finds out that the prince has a vinculum to someone. He goes to the Drakul player and together they discover the master's identity: a diablerist, hiding among the Lancea Sanctum! The Prince is ripe for overthrowing, and revealing the diablerist will seriously gently caress up the Lancea Sanctum. By tying themselves to the prince, the Circle of the Crone have set themselves up for disaster and don't have the internal leadership to handle it. The player who found out about the prince's vinculum is in a really good position to knock over the whole house of cards. Only the Drakul, driven out of politics by the most recent events, will be untouched. That's the kind of PvP you should get in vampire. Liesmith fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 17, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 17:05
|
|
|
My first Requiem chronicle has been broken up and used in... Several books the setting and two npcs are in Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners, the Chronicle structure's in Danse Macabre. It ended with the players dividing into two mutually-antagonistic groups, and one side using a liberal amount of White Phosphorous on the other. I consider it a win.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 18:12
|
|
|
Liesmith posted:Yawgmoth the problem with that story is that it's against pvp actions of any kind, since the guy who initiated them was a douche. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 19:04
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:Yeah, I'm walking that thin line right now in my RfR game. Although it's less lolrandom and more character-driven, so at least I've got that right? We've a point for it to show up in RfR, so it's not just 'hurrdurr, I'm plotting against you and metagaming like a prick because I'm so super special'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 19:30
|
|
|
Dave Brookshaw posted:My first Requiem chronicle has been broken up and used in... Several books the setting and two npcs are in Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners, the Chronicle structure's in Danse Macabre. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 19:30
|
|
|
Dave Brookshaw posted:My first Requiem chronicle has been broken up and used in... Several books the setting and two npcs are in Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners, the Chronicle structure's in Danse Macabre. Oooh, which ones? I love Immortal Sinners, and really the whole Night Horrors line.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 20:53
|
|
|
Attorney at Funk posted:Oooh, which ones? I love Immortal Sinners, and really the whole Night Horrors line. To reverse-engineer my old Chronicle, use the "Nights of Long Knives" Chronicle set-up from Danse Macabre, change all the names back into Hungarian so they fit the Budapest setting described in Hunyadi Dorjan from Night Horrors, add a Hungarianised (is that a word?) version of Jacob Skinner from Night Horrors as one of the character's sires, stir, put the PCs into Ancillae positions and then have all the elders vanish into torpor. Watch as the political machinations tear the setting apart in amusing and backstabbing ways. The only element that I don't think has been put into a real book was my version of VII - to emphasize the pressure-cooker, I needed to lock the characters into the city (Budapest) more than is normal for Requiem, so my VII were a bloodline of nomadic Gangrel who had a Flight Discipline and who - as the secret tribute to them from the Prince who'd used them to murder the majority of vampires in the city when he rose to power had now stopped - were about to invade and kill everyone. We had a secret Invictus member pretending to be the Carthian secretary (who "won" the game), a Carthian true-believer, a out-for-herself Mistress of Elysium who was "Skinner's" childe, a Csalad who'd been forced to join the Ordo Dracul as a childe and was determined to ruin the covenant out of spite, a Ventrue who was actually the previous Prince (he'd abdicated in favor of Dorjan, but thanks to the Fog couldn't remember a bit of it), a racist scumbag Khabit Sheriff, a German-hating Hungarian noble Ventrue who'd once been a submarine captain, and a Gangrel who turned out to be the embrace-descendent of a VII Gangrel who'd settled. Crazy times.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 23:13
|
|
|
Dorjan is probably my favorite elder in all of nWoD, he is just so drat cool and has so many plot hooks. And he also isn't the kind of elder that assumes total control of all PC initiative near him, he's the kind that's fun to introduce. And on the other hand, in the very same book, there's Zagreus. I...am not fond of Zagreus.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 23:16
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Dorjan is probably my favorite elder in all of nWoD, he is just so drat cool and has so many plot hooks. And he also isn't the kind of elder that assumes total control of all PC initiative near him, he's the kind that's fun to introduce. He also spent the entire chronicle he was invented for... In torpor! He was killed in his coffin, so to speak, by Team Willy Pete. EDIT: The leader of Team Willy Pete was the player who later became Cobalt in Soul Cage. Racist Khabit rear end in a top hat was the guy who is currently Herophilus in The Man Comes Around. Ordo Dracul Judas and Honest Carthian were Wolsey and Damascus from Broken Diamond. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Sep 17, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 23:21
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Dorjan is probably my favorite elder in all of nWoD, he is just so drat cool and has so many plot hooks. And he also isn't the kind of elder that assumes total control of all PC initiative near him, he's the kind that's fun to introduce. I liked Zagreus as written in the R for Rome extras, as an unstatted, mysterious presence that observes, but never interferes. He's more of a prize, to be pursued for the knowledge he has, rather than a mover-and-shaker. I'm not a fan of the Immortal Sinners, super-elder version. (But I do like the implication that he may not be a vampire...) Jacob Skinner is one of my favorite Vamp NPC's, and the other Ordo Dracul mad scientist in there (Heinrich Haldane, The Nosferatu with the uglifying machine) just pales in comparison. On one end, you have an obsessed mad scientist who's horrific experiments with the torpid condition may result in an actual benefit for all vampire-kind, and who must himself remain a prisoner so that his crimes are never revealed. On the other... you have an mad scientist who makes pretty vampires ugly because... ugly people are better, I guess? It's like the gave the concept of "vampire mad scientist" to a good writer, and a mediocre writer. And then placed both concepts in the book right next to each other to make a glaring contrast in quality.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2012 23:46
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:no it does not work the way it does in Exalted Was he trying to claim that Intimacies existed in Vampire?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2012 01:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 03:09 |
|
|
ErichZahn posted:Was he trying to claim that Intimacies existed in Vampire? To this day he's still the only person I've seen make Chimerstry look underpowered.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2012 03:57
|
|