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Raepdog posted:Looking at one of my players thinking a normal person is a supernatural, any tips? Instead of an actually normal person, you could make him a Slasher, albeit a low-powered, high-functioning one. His behavioral... quirks inadvertently (or deliberately?) lead the PCs to thinking that he's supernatural, or at least affiliated with some supernatural thingy, without actually giving away what he actually is. When the PCs try to kill him or otherwise gently caress up his life, it's not because they realize how dangerous he is, but because they think he's Something Else - and when they realize they're wrong about him being supernatural, they don't realize that they were right about him being a very real threat. Of course, if he survives, this could be what pushes him over the edge to becoming a full-on Scourge, now set on getting even and newly aware of what the PCs' capabilities are and how they operate.
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Oct 4, 2012 00:16
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MalcolmSheppard posted:So, my recommended structure: This is basically what I did with the Mage pbp I'm running here. Started with two chapters as mortals concluding with a group-based Mystery Play. That got players comfortable with their characters, gave a lot of details for the mages' normal lives and a ton of NPCs to go back to later. Players picked Path first a few sessions before the Mystery Play, so I could work in signs and portents leading up to the big moment. Once awakened, irrelevant Merits were refunded and Arcana dots came right away. They met actual mages soon after. Order picks came next, followed by Rotes a few (free) dots at a time as the story progresses. The actual training scenes we are flashing back to during an action scene, to avoid actually playing through wizard training, but still showing them learn Mage Armor and whatnot. Legacies aren't even on the radar yet, that will be a distant future thing after Gnosis ratings get raised a bit.
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Oct 4, 2012 00:50
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Thanks, this is really helping, keep the suggestions coming. Also you said "Mystery Play" which makes me think I should do something really ridiculously outre with The Play's The Thing.
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Oct 4, 2012 01:46
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JDCorley posted:Thanks, this is really helping, keep the suggestions coming. Also you said "Mystery Play" which makes me think I should do something really ridiculously outre with The Play's The Thing. To be honest, you could do worse than to read Ritorix's game and see how he did it. It's a really good game.
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Oct 4, 2012 03:17
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The Suicide Problem or; How to Make a Spark in The World of Darkness So I'm an ST in a mixed game, we got quite a few players but we're all good friends so its working out well even if there is the occasional bitching. I have one player I like a lot, hes an ex-cop who recently fell in love with a dame and he is living out a supernatural Noir lifestyle. Problem is, the character's life is so lovely and so grim its hard to keep the player interested- it is almost reaching a point where a normal person would kill themselves. Almost, and I should clarify a bit. Ordinary cop leaves force and has zero resources so he works at a grocery store for a pimple faced condescending teenager half his age (the economy is personal horror). That actually gets a bit brighter when someone looking at attack this guy stabs his boss with a needle and gives him Hepatitis, and I've worked at having things be dark with the occasional gag. Basically a women dressed in black with black hair and a story to tell meets him, shes looking for protection and pays him with a red broach. They go back to his place, something attacks them and can only be identified by its low breathing and the ex cop gets to be a hero by killing what turns out to be an old man with a respirator possessed by something. The creature holds a grudge, attacks him at work and gives his boss Hepatitis before the meth head that hes possessed is killed by cops. So of course he shoots the gem in his home and that turns the game into Silent Hill: The Room when he finds out that his apartment is now in Malfeas and that if he exits his fire escape window hes in a hell world. Now, this is not too bad- he had a great scene talking to his Eurotrash Landlord. It does however bring up something I notice in a lot of World of Darkness Games, something I try not to do as an ST and hate when other people do it- make it so dark that no one in their right mind would do anything short of pack up and leave their life behind. I notice that sometimes new STs will look to 'troll' the players and end up making it less World of Darkness and more World of Everything You Do Fails and You Suck. I've always found that seeing the consequences of succeeding at something is way more horrible personally than bad things happening because you fail at something. Anyone else notice this trend in some games or have any advice how you work around it?
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Oct 4, 2012 16:14
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Well, to me it doesn't sound super terrible, assuming the woman with the red brooch is someone worth protecting/actually has something at stake. Or maybe an old friend on the force believes his story and helps him out of a jam, but now they want him to keep digging into it "off the books". Basically I would work out what good things could come of his actions or how he might be rewarded for what he's done, and do that, if things are getting too grim. Edit: Snotty kid with hepatitis is brought low by his misfortune. Will the PC help him out or step on his face? And so on. JDCorley fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Oct 4, 2012 |
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Oct 4, 2012 19:06
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I had the terrible habit of buying and reading nWoD books without really liking the system. I thought I'd gotten over it. But I just saw there'll be a new Demon... this changes everything!
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Oct 4, 2012 21:40
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It's simple: in World of Darkness, especially in scenarios like that, you can never be sure that where you'd be going after you die is better than what you're leaving behind.
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Oct 5, 2012 01:02
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Phil Brucato posted a thing over on RPGnet about the possibility of M20:Phil Brucato posted:Hi, folks. 
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Oct 6, 2012 04:56
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Ah yes, 1995's Clanbook Tzimisce. Why, hello transgendered Nazi Tzimisce Lizard Woman Anti-Semite.
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Oct 6, 2012 11:34
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Grim posted:Phil Brucato posted a thing over on RPGnet about the possibility of M20: Hey, don't lump us Mage: the Awakening fans in with those weirdos.
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Oct 6, 2012 13:15
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So, I have a relatively unpleasant situation in my weekly Changeling game and I'm not sure if I acted correctly. The Summer Republic was couped and turned back into a Court (I'll spare the political details). The PCs were okay with that, as only one of them belonged to Summer, Aldric, and he didn't care about politics, while the rest of the players had closer ties to the leaders of the new court than the old one. Aldric's mentor, Theodor, was the leader of the Republican Guard, and was now the leader of the resistence. The Summer Queen offered to make Aldric one of her knights if he could use his relationship with Theodor to kill him. Part of the group agrees to help him, with the plan of tricking Theodor into eating poisoned food to lower his guard, as he had been established as one of the more dangerous Changelings in the region and was under siege in Summer's Hedgefortress, so he could use the supplies from his student. They make pledges for the mission to improve their persuasion, one of them brings his Homespinner's Needle (another social booster) and they head out. So far so good. Once they get there they have a somewhat tense conversation, because two of the PCs that came along are friends of the coup leaders, and, before anyone could trick anyone of anything, Aldric just pulls out his knife on Theodor, fails to get a surprise attack, and the entire party rolls terribly for the entire combat, resulting in two of the PCs in a coma and the two others surrendering because they didn't sign up for fighting. Anyway, to prevent a TPK for those present, I had Theodor use this opportunity to extracts oaths of non-interference with the resistance from the party (mutual) and to have them spy on their allies for him for a year in exchange for tokens(sanction is a curse), he forced Aldric in a similar oath, except he was swearing on his life. So, did I act correctly on this? Most of the players are okay with the whole "double-agent" set-up, though Aldric's player was visibly frustrated. Also, not all of the PCs took part in this, including the deadliest members of the Motley (who thought the whole plan was dumb), so the group is not necessarily restricted in their position towards the resistance.
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Oct 6, 2012 13:36
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it sounds like your player decided to try to surprise you, maybe because he thought you would manage to make the foodpoison plot backfire. There's always that element of adversarial play in RPGs, and generally on the fly stuff like that is why you play pnp rather than on the computer, but this time it hosed up on him because his alternative was really crude. You didn't take the opportunity to escalate and drop rocks on his guy, so I'd say you did fine. What else could you do, give him a pass? Nah, as long as he got the message that choices have consequences without getting hosed over by you railroading the plot then it's all good.
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Oct 6, 2012 14:14
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Yeah it sounds to me like you handled it pretty well actually.
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Oct 6, 2012 14:36
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From the sounds of things you really made the best call. God only knows what the guy was thinking, pulling a knife on the guy when everyone had tooled up for social.
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Oct 6, 2012 20:16
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Yeah I really have no idea how he expected that to play out. Everyone buffs up for social and he pisses it away because... 
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Oct 6, 2012 20:54
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YithianHistorian posted:Hey, don't lump us Mage: the Awakening fans in with those weirdos.
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Oct 6, 2012 21:47
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Loomer posted:Ah yes, 1995's Clanbook Tzimisce. revised edition pretty much admitted ic she was an embarrassment to the clan. Personally I never really thought much of Tzimisce being pally with the Nazi's if anything they should have bitterly opposed them under the assumption it was yet another wave of Tremere/Ventrue backed germanic incursion into Slavic lands. But CWoD always were quite clumsy in their application of history.
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Oct 6, 2012 22:46
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What was the Avatar Storm?
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Oct 6, 2012 23:00
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crime fighting hog posted:What was the Avatar Storm? AFAIK, it was basically a magical barrier between the flesh and spirit worlds that inflicted agg damage on any mage (and ONLY mages) who tried to cross it. In game, it was the fallout from the spirit nuke the Technocracy used to kill the Ravnos Antediluvian. Out of game, it was part of the attempt of Mage Revised to center the game's conflict on Earth rather than the Umbra. It was a little heavy-handed, but I agreed that a lot of Mage 2nd unfortunately focused on the spirit worlds, making the game seem more sci-fi/epic fantasy than the gritty urban fantasy genre it was intended to emulate.
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Oct 6, 2012 23:09
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Hey I was probated before but Werewolf: the Forsaken owns. Its mechanics have some rough edges but frankly I complain much more vociferously about games that I like even more. Werewolf is really neat and playing one in the WoD game I'm in now has been a blast!! I didn't like Apocalypse much, but mostly because I'd have preferred a game in which your characters were much less ambiguously the good guys and had much less ability to sort of sit around a caern chilling. (Yes, I know that Apocalypse werewolves are pretty brutal regardless of the rightness of their religious crusade.) I can definitely appreciate it in the abstract as a gory, over the top action game.
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Oct 6, 2012 23:50
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That's the nice thing about werewolves. Anything from spirits, Pure, other Forsaken and even humans are your enemy. Where Mages might have an interest in protecting humanity because they might awaken or vampires want to keep a docile herd of human allies, that church that just moved in might start feeding spirits of faith that are possessing mortals that make them attempt near suicidal risks to test their faith. So even though that church has done good for the community, helping the poor and the hungry, they have got to go!
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Oct 7, 2012 00:05
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Some people mentioned not being sure about getting the V:tR Blood Sorcery book earlier, it's definitely worth picking up. It turns Cruac/Theban Sorcery into an extremely stripped-down version of Mage's spellcasting with five pseudo-Arcana (Creation, Destruction, Transmutation, Divination, Protection), with spell factors, ritual casting rules, and improvised spells. They struck a really good balance, imo, between making the new system powerful/interesting and making it easy to understand and use. So now, at long last, your vampire witch can make poisoned apples and summon up crows and spiders and turn inconvenient corpses into rotting vegetation and go Maximum Witch 100% and it just loving owns
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Oct 7, 2012 00:32
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Unfortunately, your witch can also walk around with months-long mage armor or whatever. I love a lot of Blood Sorcery, but some of the mechanics are questionable and like half the Threnodies should just be merits or devotions.
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Oct 7, 2012 00:46
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Ferrinus posted:Unfortunately, your witch can also walk around with months-long mage armor or whatever. I love a lot of Blood Sorcery, but some of the mechanics are questionable and like half the Threnodies should just be merits or devotions. Wow, man, don't be such a wet blanket. If someone wants take advantage of these cool new rules and systems to be a more perfect monster then it's not fair for you to rain on their parade.
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Oct 7, 2012 01:13
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I woked so hard designing a "mutate into a giant monster" Devotion and they, just, loving, crank out a paragraph instructing you to roll to see how high your stats go, god drat it-
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Oct 7, 2012 01:20
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I just realized I never got to introduce the Sleestaks in my WoD game. Bugger. They're mentioned about... three or four times by Clutch (just as the reptoid-men in the swamp in Sleestak Lightning, as devil-analogue in Never be Moved (they'll make a meal of your sins), and so forth.)
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Oct 7, 2012 04:21
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Loomer posted:I just realized I never got to introduce the Sleestaks in my WoD game. Bugger. They're mentioned about... three or four times by Clutch (just as the reptoid-men in the swamp in Sleestak Lightning, as devil-analogue in Never be Moved (they'll make a meal of your sins), and so forth.) The answer is probably going to make me feel dumb, but what's a Sleestak?
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Oct 7, 2012 05:33
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Error 404 posted:The answer is probably going to make me feel dumb, but what's a Sleestak? Characters from Land of the Lost
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Oct 7, 2012 05:39
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Error 404 posted:The answer is probably going to make me feel dumb, but what's a Sleestak? 
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Oct 7, 2012 05:44
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My favourite WoD line is easily Demon. Its a shame that they have gone away from the christian-centric definitive mythology for their games so Demon will never be seen again, but its understandable and probably for the best all things considered.
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Oct 7, 2012 06:24
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MonsterUnderYourBed posted:My favourite WoD line is easily Demon. Its a shame that they have gone away from the christian-centric definitive mythology for their games so Demon will never be seen again, but its understandable and probably for the best all things considered. You realize that there's a new Demon coming out next year, right?
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Oct 7, 2012 06:34
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Yeah, you're in luck on this one.The Onyx Path Release Schedule posted:August 2013 The month beforehand, they're releasing the translation guide between Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the ???
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Oct 7, 2012 06:39
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Error 404 posted:The answer is probably going to make me feel dumb, but what's a Sleestak? Reptile-man from Land of the Lost that clutch referenced a few times. They were pretty awesome, as memory serves - savage, slave-taking, all that jazz. So naturally, Clutch (being surprisingly nerdy for guys who look like they were goddamn born playing hard rock in biker bars) put them in songs. Most notable would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2zHiZvyw5M which is both awesome and a complete reworking on an earlier song, I Send Pictures. Clutch actually does that quite a bit, re-releasing new versions of old songs with completely revised lyrics and schemes, or new songs incorporating the best elements of others. Personally, I prefer the following picture to Mors's.  The idea I was working with for the campaign was that eventually the Sleestaks would surface, (after a sufficient break from fishman killing), as both mundane reptoids and infernalists, and as the apocalypse slowly ensued the swamps of Delmarva would turn into a killing field between the players, the Sleestaks and their new Fishman allies, and the reptile-men fleeing from the sinking of Southern Florida (drawn from the song Oregon, where Draco, King of the Dragon Men, comes from. He's actually a Marvel comics character.) Loomer fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Oct 7, 2012 |
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Oct 7, 2012 06:43
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The Wondersaurus posted:Yeah, you're in luck on this one. Well hoooooly poo poo, thats the best gaming related news I've heard in ever!
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Oct 7, 2012 06:53
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Man, I'm sorry your PbP petered out Loomer Did you have any plans involving Robbie's witch-monster backstory?
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Oct 7, 2012 08:30
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Yup. I was going to try and integrate everyone's backstories in as a later encounter or plotline (Hop got the short end of the stick with the fishmen, for instance). There were actually a number of plans involving the fae, including the organ-harvesting hag. The organ-harvested corpses from just before we collapsed were actually a misdirect, but the Hag was out there at the same time as one of the alternative routes that could have been pursued. Seth's invisible critter had kinfolk that are none too pleased with their uncle's fiery demise, and as the apocalypse unfolded they were going to start making appearances (well, so to speak) as well, and it was going to tie in with Malcom's stuff because of the suggestion in Yith's post, which I quite liked. Danny was going to end up facing down with Joey Matas and that dead hobo as part of a greater Vampire-themed plotline, involving the war between the Princes of Baltimore and D.C., who are in open conflict over who's going to control the greater metropolitan area. The Father, well, the loving Apocalypse is on the horizon. You'd best believe his lapsed faith is going to come into play, especially with the infernalists coming about. Elaine's plotline was going to tie into the vampiric war as well, for obvious reasons, but I also had the concept of trying it more closely to her theme song and involving the fae. That was one I wasn't sure on but liked the idea of using both. Blaine, if things had added up, was going to find out what really happened to his mama, and learn just why you don't want to go poking under dark rocks when it comes to family. His stuff was rougher by the time it caved, since he was the newest addition.
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Oct 7, 2012 09:02
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Man, I'm really sad that dropped now. So hey, anybody curious how well Hunter stuff might port to that new tremulus game?
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Oct 7, 2012 09:19
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Question for you guys: Which Mage: The Awakening spells would you consider it a waste of time to roll dice for? I'm not talking about spells that don't work properly, but those where a dice roll just doesn't matter much in play -- you'll probably succeed if you're halfway decent, and more successes don't matter. The classic examples are Shielding armor spells, where a roll might provide a trivial Mana discount. Can you think of others? MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 7, 2012 13:45
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Basically all the Unveiling spells come to mind - a killer roll on a Mage Sight doesn't give you any more information, since that's what Resonance Analysis and other rolls that indicate protracted, focused scrutiny do. Potency just makes those harder to dispel, and really how often is someone going to go out of their way to shut down your (free, infinitely repeatably castable) perception spells?
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Oct 7, 2012 14:28
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