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Loomer posted:Wild West Werewolf is just a fun concept. Cowboy Werewolves with revolvers, attacking steam trains transporting Wyrm-agents to the Coast? Fun. I won the Werewolf Wild West book way back at a game store Halloween party. I've always wanted to run it, but I've never been able to sell anyone on the concept. The novelty bullet hole in the book was pretty cool too.
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Oct 18, 2012 15:20
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Loomer posted:Wild West Werewolf is just a fun concept. Cowboy Werewolves with revolvers, attacking steam trains transporting Wyrm-agents to the Coast? Fun. Am Canadian. Don't care. Would prefer the Seven Years' War as a period, but nobody else would care about that even though it owns.
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Oct 18, 2012 18:02
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Shut up and get the rest of the fiction on DTRPG, Canada-boy. I actually had a guy refuse to sell me a book the other day because he's in Canada and I'm in Australia. I don't understand why.
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Oct 18, 2012 18:18
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I had a dream where my mom told me, "I think my paradigm shifted". I need to read this thread less.
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Oct 18, 2012 18:37
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Loomer posted:...I actually had a guy refuse to sell me a book the other day because he's in Canada and I'm in Australia. I don't understand why.
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Oct 18, 2012 21:29
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Can someone explain the awesomeness of DA: Fae to me? It sounds great by the general thread opinion, and I'm interested in getting it, but it's hard to glean why it's great/themes from what I can find online. I love C:tL and even have a soft spot for C:tD (first game I STed as a tiny nerd), so I am onboard for all fairy ridiculousness. Am I right in guessing it's about original flavor terrifying fae? Do you menace the countryside or benefit human in weird and tricky ways? What peril faces the characters? What is the overall mood?
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Oct 18, 2012 21:41
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Grim posted:Had he set the postage too low in his listing or something? drat postage fees end up being near half of the total cost when I'm ordering second hand Maybe. All I know is Canada is America's hat, and our older, less cool brother with a french girlfriend. None of that excuses not selling me a book, dagnabbit.
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Oct 19, 2012 03:09
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Am Canadian. Don't care. Truly this attitude bespeaks the soul of an American. Werewolves and the Wild West have a lot of cool overlapping points, and it's a shame the line didn't go further. It would be great to see W20 include this stuff, or at least see some resurgence of it in the Kickstarter.
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Oct 19, 2012 04:13
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Proprietors of Fate arrived. Vampire Jesus away!
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Oct 19, 2012 05:34
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It's official. Jesus don't cast no reflection. Jesus is a Lasombra.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:21
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Attorney at Funk posted:Wow, you just gotta suck the magic out of everything, don't you. A true Technocrat. Learning the truth is magical. 
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Oct 20, 2012 15:18
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Am Canadian. Don't care. Would prefer the Seven Years' War as a period, but nobody else would care about that even though it owns. I mean, I'm American, so ninjas just bore me to tears.
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Oct 20, 2012 16:31
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Froghammer posted:Clearly this means you are incapable of enjoying the concept of cowboys. I'm a ninja, therefore I greatly dislike Kung Fu and Shaolin monks. 
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Oct 20, 2012 19:13
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TheKingslayer posted:I won the Werewolf Wild West book way back at a game store Halloween party. I've always wanted to run it, but I've never been able to sell anyone on the concept. I'd play the poo poo out of it, let's go!
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Oct 20, 2012 19:56
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So, here's a thought: Mage: the Awakening is not and has actually never been about hubris, and in fact its mechanics neither encourage, highlight, nor punish acts of hubris. If Mage was really about pride goething before a fall, and acts of extravagant self-aggrandizement leading to horrible comeuppance, the Wisdom scale wouldn't punish you for killing people or stealing souls. Rather, Wisdom sins would be like "Summoning a spirit with a Rank exceeding your Gnosis score" or "Adding more than ten total factors to a spell" or "Boosting your attributes to superhuman levels". There would be rules for exploding or mutating uncontrollably if you tried to contain too many points of mana at once, and rules for summoned or dominated minions inevitably turning on you when you need the most, and stuff like that. Furthermore, since a game that's constantly slapping you on the wrist for daring to do something interesting wouldn't actually be that fun to play, Mage shouldn't particularly care to be about hubris. Instead, Mage is (and should be) about privilege. It's all about the stupid bullshit you get up to and the ridiculously exclusive secret clubs you join when you find yourself with incredible access to power and knowledge that totally trivialize all the problems that normal people think are important. ~think about it~
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Oct 20, 2012 21:23
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Ferrinus posted:Instead, Mage is (and should be) about privilege. It's all about the stupid bullshit you get up to and the ridiculously exclusive secret clubs you join when you find yourself with incredible access to power and knowledge that totally trivialize all the problems that normal people think are important. ~think about it~ Oh my god.
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Oct 20, 2012 21:34
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Ferrinus posted:Instead, Mage is (and should be) about privilege. It's all about the stupid bullshit you get up to and the ridiculously exclusive secret clubs you join when you find yourself with incredible access to power and knowledge that totally trivialize all the problems that normal people think are important. ~think about it~ JEET. SWESUS. It all makes sense now! 
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Oct 20, 2012 21:39
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I can see the past and future and reshape matter with my mind but I still haven't overthrown the Demiurge and claimed the heavens for my own #AtlanteanDiamondProblems
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Oct 20, 2012 21:43
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Ferrinus posted:Instead, Mage is (and should be) about privilege. It's all about the stupid bullshit you get up to and the ridiculously exclusive secret clubs you join when you find yourself with incredible access to power and knowledge that totally trivialize all the problems that normal people think are important. ~think about it~ So the Seers of the Throne are basically the Tim Wises of the universe.
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Oct 20, 2012 22:02
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Privilege is a pretty good reading of Wisdom. I've always seen it as you becoming gradually more removed from what it means to be a regular person. Eventually you just stop seeing Sleepers as actual people as opposed to either resources or barricades to what you want. You hear "That spell you just cast accidentally caused the deaths of eight Sleepers" and the difference between Wisdom 8 and Wisdom 4 is "oh poo poo, that's loving horrible, those poor people and their families I have to make this right" versus "god drat it, now the Guardians and Consilium are going to be on my rear end." Even Seers do this really, Sleepers just become pawns or chattel in a giant cosmic game of slap and tickle. In other news, I run my game on a modified MUSH server and it has some fun commands I am only just discovering, namely @pemit. It lets me send an @emit (piece of text) to just one player instead of all players, and it shows up to them the same way a regular @emit would so they can't tell that only they see it. One of the PCs caused a Bedlam Paradox, so on a whim instead of saying "okay you have Depression go pretend to be sad" I started sending him poo poo that looked like the other PCs were saying awful, mean poo poo to his PC. He spent the entire game subject to a torrent of horrible verbal abuse about how worthless he is and how he should just kill himself and none of them have caught on to his weird and defensive outbursts yet. After the game he asked me why everyone's PC is being so mean to his PC all of a sudden.
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Oct 21, 2012 06:46
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Reene posted:Privilege is a pretty good reading of Wisdom. I've always seen it as you becoming gradually more removed from what it means to be a regular person. Eventually you just stop seeing Sleepers as actual people as opposed to either resources or barricades to what you want. You hear "That spell you just cast accidentally caused the deaths of eight Sleepers" and the difference between Wisdom 8 and Wisdom 4 is "oh poo poo, that's loving horrible, those poor people and their families I have to make this right" versus "god drat it, now the Guardians and Consilium are going to be on my rear end." Well unless you have that Thyrsus merit that lets you ignore killing-related Wisdom loss checks as long as you don't get off on it. I guess it makes you a well-adjusted sociopath? Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 07:32
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Reene posted:
I can't tell if this is horrible and makes you a bad person, or if this is an excellent tool for roleplaying that stuff. Error 404 fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 19:09
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Reene posted:In other news, I run my game on a modified MUSH server and it has some fun commands I am only just discovering, namely @pemit. It lets me send an @emit (piece of text) to just one player instead of all players, and it shows up to them the same way a regular @emit would so they can't tell that only they see it. This is loving amazing. 
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Oct 21, 2012 19:26
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Reene posted:In other news, I run my game on a modified MUSH server and it has some fun commands I am only just discovering, namely @pemit. It lets me send an @emit (piece of text) to just one player instead of all players, and it shows up to them the same way a regular @emit would so they can't tell that only they see it. That is amazing and you should feel awesome for coming up with that.
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Oct 21, 2012 20:03
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@pemit spoofing...gads, I remember sabotaging games with that, but never making one good. Kudos to you.
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Oct 21, 2012 21:33
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Reene posted:In other news, I run my game on a modified MUSH server and it has some fun commands I am only just discovering, namely @pemit. It lets me send an @emit (piece of text) to just one player instead of all players, and it shows up to them the same way a regular @emit would so they can't tell that only they see it. I hope you told him  That's freaking sweet but it's hard IRL to think people are being mean to you.
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Oct 21, 2012 21:35
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Reene posted:Privilege is a pretty good reading of Wisdom. I've always seen it as you becoming gradually more removed from what it means to be a regular person. Eventually you just stop seeing Sleepers as actual people as opposed to either resources or barricades to what you want. You hear "That spell you just cast accidentally caused the deaths of eight Sleepers" and the difference between Wisdom 8 and Wisdom 4 is "oh poo poo, that's loving horrible, those poor people and their families I have to make this right" versus "god drat it, now the Guardians and Consilium are going to be on my rear end." Even Seers do this really, Sleepers just become pawns or chattel in a giant cosmic game of slap and tickle. This sounds amazing. I want to play with you on this MUSH server now. Let me know if you're ever gonna run werewolf on it.
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Oct 21, 2012 21:35
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Ferrinus posted:So, here's a thought: Mage: the Awakening is not and has actually never been about hubris, and in fact its mechanics neither encourage, highlight, nor punish acts of hubris. If Mage was really about pride goething before a fall, and acts of extravagant self-aggrandizement leading to horrible comeuppance, the Wisdom scale wouldn't punish you for killing people or stealing souls. Rather, Wisdom sins would be like "Summoning a spirit with a Rank exceeding your Gnosis score" or "Adding more than ten total factors to a spell" or "Boosting your attributes to superhuman levels". There would be rules for exploding or mutating uncontrollably if you tried to contain too many points of mana at once, and rules for summoned or dominated minions inevitably turning on you when you need the most, and stuff like that That's not how the classical notion of hubris works. The gods don't punish you for being too awesome, like eating a really big sandwich, but for filling the sandwich with goodies that are taboo for mortals, or by claiming that you, and you alone, are responsible for this sandwich's deliciousness, so you owe the gods nothing. Now in Greece this folds into ideas that also define dickishness, so desecrating a body is ritually traspassing and expressing contempt for the divine mandate, and also everyone thinks you're an rear end in a top hat for doing it. The real problem with hubris in Mage, which Dave and I have been talking about at length recently, is that the "gods" have no moral authority in the setting, being either people who got away with hubris or amoral exemplars of Supernal symbols.
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Oct 21, 2012 22:14
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Froghammer posted:Clearly this means you are incapable of enjoying the concept of cowboys. I know some Canadians that do, but I mean, here in real Canada, as opposed to the West, it's not a thing. Like keep in mind that the most Canadian same-period genre stuff you have around here is the Murdoch Mysteries, which is about a brilliant detective who has mild arguments with murderers every week. Sometimes, the ruffians knock his bowler off his head, but that kind of work is left to Scotsmen, mostly. Then he fails to ask his true love out on a date and goes to church. I don't know how cowboys can compare with that kind of action. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 22:19
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MalcolmSheppard posted:the Murdoch Mysteries, which is about a brilliant detective who has mild arguments with murderers every week. Sometimes, the ruffians knock is bowler off his head
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Oct 21, 2012 22:23
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Augure posted:I hope you told him Not yet because he has another IG hour of it to go, but I'll clue him in afterward. We're all friends and we've gamed before so he's not taking it personally or anything, he's just really confused as to what his character did to warrant it. The PCs aren't exactly nice to each other in the first place, so it's just plausible enough that he believes it for now. I love using the MUSH server for reasons like this, it's a great medium to play nWoD games through.
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Oct 21, 2012 22:28
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MalcolmSheppard posted:That's not how the classical notion of hubris works. The gods don't punish you for being too awesome, like eating a really big sandwich, but for filling the sandwich with goodies that are taboo for mortals, or by claiming that you, and you alone, are responsible for this sandwich's deliciousness, so you owe the gods nothing. Now in Greece this folds into ideas that also define dickishness, so desecrating a body is ritually traspassing and expressing contempt for the divine mandate, and also everyone thinks you're an rear end in a top hat for doing it. If the gods had decreed that humans must content themselves with medium-sized sandwiches, wouldn't it be an act of hubris to eat a huge-rear end sandwich? But, as you say, the Mage setting doesn't actually contain any definite limits to mortal action such that attempting to transcend those limits is obviously blasphemous. Like, it's not actually true that desecrating a body is ritually trespassing and expressing contempt for the divine mandate... because there is no divine mandate that protects the sanctity of any particular dead body. Similarly there are no cosmic laws about what humans are allowed to eat and no unseen presences ready to give you such a smack if you happen to gloat that not even Zeus could wield so much power. (Indeed, some Mage characters would be strictly correct in making such a remark.) The thing is, that is a strength, rather than a weakness, of the game. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 22, 2012 |
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Oct 22, 2012 00:07
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My friend points out that hubris is actually a credible theme of a SEERS game, because the Seers of the Throne are actually in explicit service to roughly all-powerful divinities and their agents who've got it all planned out but who you, the player character, probably want to increase your standing with and maybe secretly want to suborn and replace. When you decide you can run a better presidential campaign than the one that the Unity has mandated must occur, you commit an act of unconscionable hubris.
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Oct 22, 2012 00:21
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Ferrinus posted:But, as you say, the Mage setting doesn't actually contain any definite limits to mortal action such that attempting to transcend those limits is obviously blasphemous. Other than Wisdom? I mean, not "blasphemous" exactly, so maybe not "hubris" exactly, but within a couple of rings of the bullseye, yeah?
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Oct 22, 2012 00:57
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JDCorley posted:Other than Wisdom? I mean, not "blasphemous" exactly, so maybe not "hubris" exactly, but within a couple of rings of the bullseye, yeah? Wisdom as a game mechanic amounts to an idiosyncratic psychological problem unique to mages. There is no actual cosmic smackdown, nor any coherent standard or lawgiver from which that smackdown would flow.
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Oct 22, 2012 01:02
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JDCorley posted:Other than Wisdom? I mean, not "blasphemous" exactly, so maybe not "hubris" exactly, but within a couple of rings of the bullseye, yeah? quote:So, here's a thought: Mage: the Awakening is not and has actually never been about hubris, and in fact its mechanics neither encourage, highlight, nor punish acts of hubris. If Mage was really about pride goething before a fall, and acts of extravagant self-aggrandizement leading to horrible comeuppance, the Wisdom scale wouldn't punish you for killing people or stealing souls. Rather, Wisdom sins would be like "Summoning a spirit with a Rank exceeding your Gnosis score" or "Adding more than ten total factors to a spell" or "Boosting your attributes to superhuman levels". There would be rules for exploding or mutating uncontrollably if you tried to contain too many points of mana at once, and rules for summoned or dominated minions inevitably turning on you when you need the most, and stuff like that.
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Oct 22, 2012 01:03
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The only real problem with Wisdom at that point is how it interacts with certain other systems, namely the Abyss and Paradox. Even if you take the wisdom-as-privilege approach, why does that make paradoxes worse for you?
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Oct 22, 2012 01:06
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Reene posted:The only real problem with Wisdom at that point is how it interacts with certain other systems, namely the Abyss and Paradox. Even if you take the wisdom-as-privilege approach, why does that make paradoxes worse for you?
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Oct 22, 2012 01:08
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Reene posted:The only real problem with Wisdom at that point is how it interacts with certain other systems, namely the Abyss and Paradox. Even if you take the wisdom-as-privilege approach, why does that make paradoxes worse for you? Well, Wisdom as a game trait ends up as a measure of the extent to which you can stop your privilege from going to your head. The interaction of Wisdom and Paradox has always been pretty clear to me, whether or not you think that hubris is a thing that Mage credibly deals with: the lower your Wisdom is, the less respect you have for the world on a fundamental level, and the less care you subconsciously take when casting powerful spells. A high-Wisdom mage has the restraint and composure to use a light touch when calling down spells, but a low-Wisdom mage has an underlying contempt for reality itself that makes them wield supernal power with reckless abandon and therefore leave nasty blisters on the skin of the world in the process of spellcasting. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Oct 22, 2012 |
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Oct 22, 2012 01:10
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I agree there's no cosmic smackdown, sure. It sounds like the issue is that there's no punishment, not that the descending Wisdom scale doesn't show a Mage increasingly absorbed in the power/narcissism combo that is the heart of hubris. But c'mon, "adding more than 10 total factors to a spell" isn't inherently hubris any more than murdering a dude with magic is. That's like saying really advanced mathematicians offend the natural order. Maybe they do, in a game world you create, but they don't have to. Similarly, you can sub in any set of Wisdom offenses you desire. It's interesting, mechanically there is little punishment for moving down the Wisdom scale...but players, in practice, in my experience, put a huge amount of importance on it. They want to feel like good guys. The system telling them "nope, you aren't as good as you were a minute ago" is a big step for them. Even just the decreasing number with no penalty or derangement issues is enough to motivate players to feel something is going wrong. At least that's how I've experienced it.
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Oct 22, 2012 01:11
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