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Dave Brookshaw posted:As for an experience rule of thumb, take the old cost of the third dot of something and divide it by five. That would make Attributes cost 3 XP per dot, not 4 XP per dot as they are in GMC.
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Sep 8, 2013 21:45
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Hey random question, but wasn't there a fan supplement city for LA made for Vampire the Requiem a while back?
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Sep 9, 2013 22:52
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So, there's an Ordo Dracul preview up: http://whitewolfblogs.com/blog/2013/09/09/preview-mysteries-of-the-dragon/ I haven't looked much into the Coils in either the original VtR or this new one, so I don't have much to comment on. However, I have to say that I don't particularly like the idea of a blanket immunity to fear frenzy, for free, forever. Also, the fact that "Conquer the Red Fear" is the only power in the Coil of the Ascendant that doesn't involve the Blush of Life makes it look incredibly out of place. INH5 fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 01:07
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Huh. I've only really looked at the first Coil so far but it looks promising. I see a lot more synergy between the various Tiers of the Coil (read: any) and none of the Tiers seem completely useless. The Scales are neat and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they are at least as useful for the Dragon activating them as they are for other targets, if not more so. For instance the ability to reverse your sleep/wake cycle is cool and all, but way cooler when you're near-immune to sunlight in the first place.
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Sep 10, 2013 01:23
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I have to say, the "Surgical Heart Removal" Scale is totally badass. It's like a lich, except 30 times grosser. And I really like that it makes you (or an NPC) a lot tougher to kill in the story while having a minimal impact on combat balance. Though I'm a bit confused as to how or if this is supposed to be sustainable if you can't feed afterwards. Do you have to cut yourself open and put the heart back when you run low on Vitae? Do you have to sprinkle blood on the heart or something to refuel? Also, I noticed the conspicuous omission of anything that lets you drink human or animal blood if you have a higher Blood Potency. I think I can get behind that, as it avoids questions of why there aren't a whole bunch of BP 6 or greater Ordo Dracul elders running around. Also, it would basically be a dead level for BP 1 or 2 players, so that's a good reason to not have it as a low dot Coil ability. INH5 fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 01:33
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INH5 posted:I have to say, the "Surgical Heart Removal" Scale is totally badass. It's like a lich, except 30 times grosser. And I really like that it makes you (or an NPC) a lot tougher to kill in the story while having a minimal impact on combat balance. Though I'm a bit confused as to how or if this is supposed to be sustainable if you can't feed afterwards. Do you have to cut yourself open and put the heart back when you run low on Vitae? Do you have to sprinkle blood on the heart or something to refuel? quote:Should her body be destroyed the subject will regenerate from the heart itself after the proper interval of
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Sep 10, 2013 02:18
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The Monday Meeting notes are up. There's a few things that are interesting. This one is near and dear to my heart.quote:Forsaken‘s is the Idigam Chronicle (not Idigram as I insisted on writing it in the Gen Con promo info- doh!) and it’s central premise is “The Wolf Must Hunt!”. That phrase should give WtF fans a bit of a clue where developer Smilin’ Stew Wilson is going with the book, as it already shifts the overall theme from “spirit world beat-cop” as it was in the WtF core book. It's not a very well kept secret that I love Werewolf: the Apocalypse, so moving away from the spirit beat cop premise and towards a more ultraviolent concept is a big plus. I had a big rant about how Forsaken was the only nWoD game that was a clear step down from the original, but long story short the spirit border patrol premise wasn't an engaging setting. I don't mean "engaging" subjectively; I mean that there was nothing engaging player characters into the spirits v. everyone else conflict. In W:tA, the tribes were meant to do that, but the W:tF tribes had premises that were wholly removed from what was supposedly the main thesis of the game. What did mastering technology have to do with spirit incursion? Outside of combat utility, what did the Bone Shadows' necromancy have to do with anything? All of them do have to do with dominance and violence on some level, though, so the greater emphasis on "the Hunt", whatever that may be, would make the game actually workable. Then there's talk about the Dark Eras book. Rich Thompson expounds on this weird idea where there are nine different reward tiers for the nine different gamelines, each the same price for the same book, but whichever tier has the most pledges will "win" extra wordcount. There's also the possibility for eras by all-star writers (I'm hoping for a Greg Stolze Babylonian vampire era), or eras for other minor lines. Innocents was name-checked, and I didn't even know I wanted a historical supernatural child game.
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Sep 10, 2013 02:37
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I like Werewolf: the Forsaken a lot more than I ever did Werewolf: the Apocalypse - I liked that it was more about personal survival and territory-keeping than global war, and I much preferred a feral and antagonistic spirit world to a threatened one. It's definitely true that WtF is weakest where it forgets "The Wolf Must Hunt" and starts thinking of spirit-policing as a religious/ideological duty rather than a survival strategy, though. There's something wrong with a game in which spirits are ravenous predators, and you're a monster even to spirits... and yet you need to perform a complicated and finnicky magical ritual just to hunt down a spirit and eat it. I'm not sure how I feel about the new Coils... the Scales are great and it's good to see a social characters get stronger support within the Order, but the five-step progression instead of a three-step progression takes a lot of the "wow!" factor out of individual Coils and Wyrm seems to be the Coil of Punching to an embarrassing extent. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 03:42
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Personally, I'd prefer Conquer the Red Fear to be something like: "You are immune to fear frenzies from the mere sight of fire or sunlight. You are still subject to frenzy as a result of being burned by fire or sunlight, but [you get a bonus on the roll, or the penalty is removed, or you need less successes, or something]." So you can stand in a room with windows open to the daylight without any issues, and even calmly walk through a burning building as long as you're careful to stay away from the flames (vampires don't have to worry about smoke inhalation), but an entire game mechanic doesn't just disappear. And if every other power in the Mystery requires you to activate the blush of life, this should too. Not that it really matters, as after you get 2 dots it's just 1 extra Vitae per night. Though I guess total immunity to sunlight frenzy is a necessity for B&S's daywalking neonates, or daywalking elder Dragons with Sun's Forgotten Kiss and Epidermal Shielding Bath. On that note, the Epidermal Shielding Bath would make a handy Humanity measuring tool. Expose a guy to sunlight, examine the wound, then put him in the tub, drip a precisely measured amount of Vitae in, expose him to sunlight again and compare the severity of the burns. If they did enough experiments, the Ordo Dracul could probably create a precise measure of vampire evilness based on pints of Vitae required to minimize the wound (since 7-10 Humanity is just 1 lethal from sunlight). And yeah, the 4 and 5 dots of Coil of the Wyrm are the least compelling abilities in the whole section. They're basically just "get bigger stats when frenzying." None of the others were straightforward combat buffs, so they just look boring and out of place. EDIT: It turns out there is something similar to the old 2 dot Coil of Blood ability, though it's quite a bit more involved. It's the Sanguinary Invigoration Scale, and involves injecting someone with a cocktail that includes 1 point of your own Vitae. Afterwards, they act like they've been shot up with speed, and you can feed from them as if your BP was 4 points lower. In practical terms, this means that you can feed from animals if you have a BP of 6 or less and humans if you have a BP of 9 or less, provided that you perform the aforementioned procedure on whatever you're feeding from. Which actually does sound pretty cool. In general, I really like the vampire mad scientist vibe that many of the scales have. INH5 fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 10, 2013 |
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Sep 10, 2013 04:17
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I remember when the Tremere were movin their hearts all over the place, and the Setites were keepin em in jars. In the day we called that....."good times." I remember one noob who was like "Oh man, so nobody can stake you!!" "Unless they know where I moved my heart, that's right," says Mr. Tremere. "Can you do it for me?!" says noob excitedly. "Sure, where do you want me to move it exactly?" says Mr. Tremere. Noob is about to answer...then realizes what this actually means...then says "I'll let you know."
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Sep 10, 2013 07:31
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pospysyl posted:It's not a very well kept secret that I love Werewolf: the Apocalypse, so moving away from the spirit beat cop premise and towards a more ultraviolent concept is a big plus. I had a big rant about how Forsaken was the only nWoD game that was a clear step down from the original, but long story short the spirit border patrol premise wasn't an engaging setting. I don't mean "engaging" subjectively; I mean that there was nothing engaging player characters into the spirits v. everyone else conflict. In W:tA, the tribes were meant to do that, but the W:tF tribes had premises that were wholly removed from what was supposedly the main thesis of the game. What did mastering technology have to do with spirit incursion? Outside of combat utility, what did the Bone Shadows' necromancy have to do with anything? All of them do have to do with dominance and violence on some level, though, so the greater emphasis on "the Hunt", whatever that may be, would make the game actually workable. Really, the problem goes even deeper than that. There's no reason for werewolves to be present at all in nWoD Werewolf. It's an abstract, forced conceit that "this is a game with Werewolves in it." The spiritual beat-cop premise would work just as well with mortals, or any other spirit-hybrid entity you want to create.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:32
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You could say the same thing about Apocalypse. There's no reason the defenders of Gaia had to be werewolves instead of, say, teenagers with magic rings. It really comes back to, "We want to make a Werowolf game. In movies werewolves mostly just rampage around and eat people, but we already have a vampire game, and we want this to be different. Maybe if we made them ecoterrorists that are actually fighting a cosmic horror for the fate of all existence." [later] "So, ecoterrorism isn't cool anymore, maybe instead they could be...um...spirit police?"
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Sep 10, 2013 17:59
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"Spirit police" to Forsaken isn't analogous to "defenders of Gaia" in Apocalypse, I don't think. The former isn't an overarching mission you undertake for ideological reasons like the latter is. In Forsaken, the spirit world is both a looming threat and the source of all your power, and something you become increasingly incapable of ignoring as your Primal Urge increases. Spirits frequently encroach on the physical and, by default, view you as a contemptible mutant, so establishing some kind of equilibrium with them isn't something you do out of the goodness of your heart. I like werewolf's animistic elements and absolutely love the feral, Darwinian spirit world. I'd like to see "spirit cop" more explicitly called out as a mythological concept that some werewolves consider important but that, for many werewolves, is a flimsy abstraction compared to the basic challenges of surviving from month to month.
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Sep 10, 2013 18:20
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I always gathered it as one of those things that their society/religion says they should really be doing, what with it being their birthright and all. It's just that there's a guy we're keeping our eye on who's going to go through First Change soon, we've got this feud on with the pack in the next valley and things are kinda hairy right now with the pack on the other side and our alpha needs to go have a talk, and it's been rumoured some Pure scouts have been sniffing around in the area so we need to be extra vigilant about that and Jake's cousin is in trouble with those gangs in his neighbourhood again and we should probably help him out and the cops have been sniffing around our business what with the disappearance of that one guy a month ago and oh yeah I forgot, one of us is convinced there's a goddamn vampire feeding off people in our territory and of course we take our duties as spirit police seriously, Elder, it's just that, well, there's a lot going on right now and they mostly do their own thing, you know.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:06
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Convention Book: Syndicate is finally available for print-on-demand 
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Sep 10, 2013 22:48
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Ferrinus posted:"Spirit police" to Forsaken isn't analogous to "defenders of Gaia" in Apocalypse, I don't think. The former isn't an overarching mission you undertake for ideological reasons like the latter is. In Forsaken, the spirit world is both a looming threat and the source of all your power, and something you become increasingly incapable of ignoring as your Primal Urge increases. Spirits frequently encroach on the physical and, by default, view you as a contemptible mutant, so establishing some kind of equilibrium with them isn't something you do out of the goodness of your heart. It sounds like "The Wolf Must Hunt" will follow through on that. I also like the antagonistic spirit world, but using it in game results in a neverending slog where the pack just happens upon spirits and fight, week after week. W:tA could have the same problems, but at least there were several natural arcs to it. INH5 posted:You could say the same thing about Apocalypse. There's no reason the defenders of Gaia had to be werewolves instead of, say, teenagers with magic rings. It really comes back to, "We want to make a Werowolf game. In movies werewolves mostly just rampage around and eat people, but we already have a vampire game, and we want this to be different. Maybe if we made them ecoterrorists that are actually fighting a cosmic horror for the fate of all existence." [later] "So, ecoterrorism isn't cool anymore, maybe instead they could be...um...spirit police?" Apocalypse linked the werewolves to animistic myths of people who could turn into animals, so it had that link. Forsaken made it even more faux-Native American, which is another thing that turned me off. With Forsaken werewolf society so scattered and paranoid, it wouldn't make sense for them to have a thorough monomyth, common political parties, or even a shared purpose. I like the perspective that they're just people thrust into a situation where they're monsters that have to kill spirits to survive, but the game itself resists that with its Gift structure, splats, and fluff. To me it feels like the setting and mechanics of Apocalypse were developed together (outliers like Appearance still being a major attribute and Willpower as a splat specific stat aside), while Forsaken had the framework from Vampire and had its setting mashed into it. As an aside, I really like the Pure/Forsaken conflict. The Pure actually have a reason to pick on the Forsaken, and the Forsaken definitely have reasons to fight back. Basing an entire game just around werwewolf wars might limit it, but it's by far the best part of the game. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 02:50
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One thing that has helped in spirit-cops Werewolf games for me is having spirits that manifest in weird ways or which are not immediately obvious when entering their area. They might have lesser spirits to do their dirty work and get easily killed by Werewolves that come along. In other words, work your way up to busting spirit meth kingpins and not spirit junkies.
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Sep 11, 2013 03:06
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pospysyl posted:It sounds like "The Wolf Must Hunt" will follow through on that. I also like the antagonistic spirit world, but using it in game results in a neverending slog where the pack just happens upon spirits and fight, week after week. W:tA could have the same problems, but at least there were several natural arcs to it. Spirits usually don't attack werewolves on sight. I don't think I've ever seen or encountered the expectation of a W:tF game in which you just charged into battle whenever you saw a spirit. In fact it would seem to me that W:tA is the game where you straightforwardly and uncompromisingly roll initiative the second you encounter things wearing the wrong color jersey, and in which said things do the same to you.
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Sep 11, 2013 03:16
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Today's Cracked almost reads like something from a Demon supplement. Blood-worms infesting a water-supply for an entire town, giant swarms of crickets that smell like rotting meat, and a million+ roaches swarming a Chinese town. I'm reasonably certain that's like, two signs of the apocalypse right there.
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Sep 11, 2013 13:18
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JDCorley posted:I remember when the Tremere were movin their hearts all over the place, and the Setites were keepin em in jars. In the day we called that....."good times." Not as bad as some of the stuff I've stumbled across, mind. "Anal ghouling/blood bonding" coming to mind. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 16:06
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I think I've figured out what's off about the new Coils: they mix and match scientific disciplines (small d) and character motivation in arbitrary and limiting ways. The Ascendant, Wyrm, and Voivode definitely represent the three leading ideologies in the Ordo Dracul - maybe you're a Dragon because you want to escape all your weaknesses, or because you want to amplify your powers, or because you want to master yourself and the world around you. The three Mysteries correspond roughly to Dracula's three brides, mental/physical/social, power/finesse/resistance, it's great stuff. But- What sort of happened was, for each ideology, one or two existing Coils were taken and bent into a shape befitting that ideology. So, the Mystery of the Wyrm is powered solely by the old Coil of the Beast, and frankly there's only so much super-monstrosity you can wring out of "I frenzy a lot" before you start doing some combination of repeating yourself, chopping up single cool powers into multiply crappy powers, or just slapping integer bonuses onto stuff. Really, there's no reason that a devotee of the Wyrm would be developing exclusively frenzy-centric powers, anyway - what about multiple redundant hearts? What about perma-active physical disciplines? What about Way of the Locust diablerie-of-mortals? Ideally, you'd have some sort of modular system where maybe your Dragon cares a lot about becoming Ascendant and uses every one of the Ordo's sciences to pursue it, or maybe your Dragon's a whiz when it comes to Banes and knows how to tweak sun-vulnerablity for the purpose of defense, offense, you name it. For instance, within the Mystery of the Ascendant there are two Coils each of Banes, Beast, and Blood - Ascendant Beast makes you immune to all fear frenzy, Ascendant Blood lets you use the Blush of Life to blunt sunlight damage, that sort of thing. You can buy them in any order (so they'd all be equally powerful, and you'd never have crappy level 1 Coils versus awesome level 5 Coils). To an extent, the original Coils drew this kind of distinction. Generally, the first tier of each Coil was a totally workmanlike "you used to have this weakness, now you don't" deal while the higher tiers of each Coil were more about wielding your inhumanity as a tool and weapon - the simplest example is probably Beast 1's "stop yourself from frenzying" which led to Beast 2's "frenzy whenever you like! free of charge! we mean it! go wild, pun intended!" It could definitely be cool to separate that stuff out explicitly, though, so that the degree to which each Dragon draws on Column A versus Column B is a matter of personal taste.
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Sep 11, 2013 19:47
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Ferrinus posted:Spirits usually don't attack werewolves on sight. I don't think I've ever seen or encountered the expectation of a W:tF game in which you just charged into battle whenever you saw a spirit. In fact it would seem to me that W:tA is the game where you straightforwardly and uncompromisingly roll initiative the second you encounter things wearing the wrong color jersey, and in which said things do the same to you. Both games are limited in that respect. I just think Apocalypse lends itself better to dramatic escalation. There's something every pack can build to, not only with the big set of major villains but also with the organized war effort. Without that organization, Forsaken just lends itself to fighting in a given territory until there's nothing left to fight. That's thematic, but it doesn't really lend itself to a long term satisfying narrative. In Apocalypse, you fight one group, and there's likely more around as well as an opportunity to fight up the food chain. In Forsaken, you solve one weird spirit phenomenon, and then you solve another and then another... You might move up the particular court that spirit is in, but that's also kind of aimless. Spirit courts don't have a purpose other than feeding, so if you do follow the "fight a court" storyline, the only motivation each succeeding spirit can have is a primitive revenge revenge. The Pure avoid that bey having an overriding goal that the Forsaken can actually take steps to thwart instead of just finding the spirit and dealing with it that way.
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Sep 11, 2013 23:40
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But... no, though. Both games aren't limited in that respect. WtA lends itself to an escalating series of boss fights, because the whole premise of the game is that there's this irredeemably evil stuff out there that you were born to fight. Just going around and fighting everything in your territory that gives you guff in a WtF game would be stupid, suicidal, and majorly divergent from what you're "supposed to" be doing. I like the Pure as antagonists, but I think the idea that the Pure outnumber the Forsaken (which WtF walked back pretty strongly, iirc; it turns out they happen to currently outnumber the Forsaken in the US, but it's not a general thing) is harmful - "you are outnumbered by bad guys who will never negotiate, fight them" is a fun premise for a story but not for a World of Darkness game line. The Forsaken are cooler when they have room to breathe and create their own problems.
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Sep 11, 2013 23:50
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I've been streamlining rituals in Mage:quote:A spell's dicepool whether improvised, rote, or ritual is only rolled once. Every hour that a mage spends upon a ritual, she gains automatic successes up to a maximum of her Gnosis. 1 Willpower can be spent to increase this limit to Gnosis+1. These successes can be spent on a one-for-one basis to add to the spell's successes, or can be spent in the following ways: I'm not married to these effects or the pricing, but I think this is an elegant way to nerf rituals while still keeping them powerful and a lot less complicated.
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Sep 12, 2013 00:09
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I've been streamlining rituals in Mage:quote:A spell's dicepool whether improvised, rote, or ritual is only rolled once. Every hour that a mage spends upon a ritual, she gains automatic successes up to a maximum of her Gnosis. 1 Willpower can be spent to increase this limit to Gnosis+1. These successes can be spent on a one-for-one basis to add to the spell's successes, or can be spent in the following ways: I'm not married to these effects or the pricing, but I think this is an elegant way to nerf rituals while still keeping them powerful and a lot less complicated. Tezzor fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 00:27
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That's a good idea but yeah, I don't like the things you can buy with successes - particularly the 6 success one. That's archmaster territory.
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Sep 12, 2013 01:08
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Doodmons posted:That's a good idea but yeah, I don't like the things you can buy with successes - particularly the 6 success one. That's archmaster territory. As for #1, #3, #4, and #5, it's just way too complicated. Figuring out how to spend your "successes" here is a difficult math problem with only one correct answer (and the answer is situation-dependent, no less; sometimes you want high-risk high-reward and sometimes you want to play it safe). What's the benefit of posing this problem to your players? They're just going to think hard about it, give up and take a wild guess, and feel then stupid or cheated if it turns out poorly.
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Sep 12, 2013 02:26
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McNerd posted:As for #1, #3, #4, and #5, it's just way too complicated. Figuring out how to spend your "successes" here is a difficult math problem with only one correct answer (and the answer is situation-dependent, no less; sometimes you want high-risk high-reward and sometimes you want to play it safe). What's the benefit of posing this problem to your players? They're just going to think hard about it, give up and take a wild guess, and feel then stupid or cheated if it turns out poorly. I think they might be a bit complicated, just less complicated in practice than "roll the square of your dicepool this frequently, determined by table X112."
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Sep 12, 2013 02:34
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Ferrinus posted:But... no, though. Both games aren't limited in that respect. WtA lends itself to an escalating series of boss fights, because the whole premise of the game is that there's this irredeemably evil stuff out there that you were born to fight. Just going around and fighting everything in your territory that gives you guff in a WtF game would be stupid, suicidal, and majorly divergent from what you're "supposed to" be doing. I'm not saying they're just running around beating up random spirits. At the table, the way spirits are going to come up is by the ST saying, "There's something spooky going on around town! Maybe you want to go figure it out?" and of course the pack is going to check it out because that's the game. Of course, they might not actually eat or beat up that spirit, but they are going to disturb it from its doings, unless they want Urged or Ridden running around. Maybe the spirit will turn out to be nice or scheming and suggest that you attack some other spirit. Whatever the case, once you disturb that spirit, the ST needs to come up with something else, likely along the same lines. There are a variety of ways to deal with nWoD spirits so maybe I'm not being fair on that front, but my problem is in the introduction. Moreso than Apocalypse or the other nWoD games, injecting those situations is much more artificial. There's nothing leading players to the spirits in Forsaken, other than your ability to find them. That's not totally invalid because spirits are plenty unusual, encouraging players can engage with them, and they can act as antagonists, but the relationship isn't really developed past that, not even mechanically. You can get fuel for your cool powerz from eating spirits, but you can also get it from just meditating or eating meat. There are Gifts that actually deal with spirits, but again, they don't go beyond "you can see them", and none of the Tribes give you gifts to deal with them. Forsaken's Renown doesn't really work, and even if it did, only Wisdom and Purity actually compel you to seek out spirits. At least they keep the idea that you have to persuade a spirit to teach you a Gift (and Matt McFarland's spins on this from the Chronicler's Guide was great). That and Totems work just as well as they did in Apocalypse, which is kind of the point. I was actually going to ask if anyone had problems with the Pure majority. I go back and forth on it, mainly because it could harm the influence of the guys you're playing as. Sometimes I think of it as analogous to Exalted. You're not just a werewolf, you're a werewolf chosen by the moon to deal with spirits and the Pure. Other werewolves hate you because of your status. Like the Solar Exalted, being the minority supernatural doesn't harm your influence or protagonism (I hate that word, but there you go). I might just like the Pure because they're more developed versions of the Black Spiral Dancers and villainous Red Talons.
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Sep 12, 2013 02:46
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As a werewolf, you need spirits to increase your Renown and to teach you Gifts. If you don't interact with spirits regularly you won't have, like, powers, except for those built into your template. Unfortunately, you'll still be a werewolf, and liable to make enemies just by existing and endanger people by just being around them. Spirits aren't all you do. I think in a lot of werewolf stories spirits are a side element - if you're feuding with other werewolves or some vampires or something, or there's an Azlu trying to eat your family members, it's not super important what's going on on the other side of the Gauntlet unless you've got a particular plan for exploiting it. But you can't ignore them entirely, and when your Primal Urge gets high enough you've got no choice but to live among them. Forsaken aren't chosen to fight the Pure, by the by. Everyone gets an auspice, the Pure just burn theirs out because it's the only way they'll get the Shadow to accept them for what they are. I put it to you that the Pure aren't the Black Spiral Dancers - they're the Garou! The nastiest sides of the Garou, anyway. They're about supremacy of spirit over flesh, of nature over artifice, and of werewolf over human.
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Sep 12, 2013 02:58
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My problem with Forsaken is that the protagonists aren't particularly interesting, for much of the reasons that have been brought up earlier. What I love about Forsaken is the antagonists. The Pure are at once understandable and completely bugfuck insane, the spirits are alien in behavior and appearance, the Host (I think that is the right word) have this wonderfully terrifying countenance to them and function as another mirror to the Forsaken, and those primordial exiled spirit things are probably the best conceived Lovecraftian horrors that the World of Darkness has to offer. I suppose that is why I like to steal antagonist ideas from Forsaken when I run other games.
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Sep 12, 2013 04:05
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Meinberg posted:What I love about Forsaken is the antagonists. The Pure are at once understandable and completely bugfuck insane, the spirits are alien in behavior and appearance, the Host (I think that is the right word) have this wonderfully terrifying countenance to them and function as another mirror to the Forsaken, and those primordial exiled spirit things are probably the best conceived Lovecraftian horrors that the World of Darkness has to offer. I suppose that is why I like to steal antagonist ideas from Forsaken when I run other games. Bingo. For my money, nWerewolf has the strongest antagonist lineup of any line in oWoD or nWoD, and that just makes the problems with the protagonist writing stand out even more.
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Sep 12, 2013 04:55
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I also thought it would be interesting to give rituals a "non-ritual power up" ability instead of focusing on one spell. The successes mechanic above is the same, but for [successes] minutes, the mage gains a [+successes] bonus on all non-ritual magic rolls, as well as immunity to disbelief and [-successes] to all Paradox rolls for the duration. Disbelief occurs twice as fast as normal after this expires, and the mage cannot speak or write in anything other than High Speech for the duration, rendering them incomprehensible to everything except Awakeneed as well as gaining a penalty of (6 - other mage's Gnosis) to any attempts to convey complicated messages.
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Sep 12, 2013 05:00
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The antagonists in WtF really are cool as hell. Also Ferrinus is definitely right that the Pure are straight up Garou, not BSDs. I think the major problem with Werewolf is basically that it's about... werewolves. Which are just not that interesting no matter what you do with it, unless you're one of Those People Who Are Really Really Into Wolves, Dogs, Wolf-People, Et Cetera. They're just a really specific and narrow cultural touchstone compared with vampires or magicians. I think this was also a problem in Apocalypse. I appreciate what the writers do with it to try to broaden it -- and I do think that, hands down, Forsaken is a much better direction to take it than Apocalypse -- but there's only so much you can do with someone who, fundamentally, interacts with the world on a human-dog continuum.
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Sep 12, 2013 05:04
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I keep hearing rave reviews about the Pure, but my (admittedly limited) experience with them never really left me that interested. My understanding is, basically, they're these werewolves that hate you because of an ancestral grudge about who did or didn't kill Daddy Spirit before any of you were born. And their totems are different. What am I missing that's so great?
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Sep 12, 2013 05:33
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Androc posted:I keep hearing rave reviews about the Pure, but my (admittedly limited) experience with them never really left me that interested. My understanding is, basically, they're these werewolves that hate you because of an ancestral grudge about who did or didn't kill Daddy Spirit before any of you were born. And their totems are different. What am I missing that's so great? For me, what makes the Pure so great both as a book and as antagonists is that it goes great distances to muddle the issue over who exactly was right in what to do with Big Daddy Wolf, and who has the moral rightness in the war between them. While the Pure do terrible things, it comes from a rejection of what they see as, and what very well may be, corrupting elements. As has been mentioned, they become closer to the Garou of WtA, creatures who are more in tune with the inherent wildness of their being, rather than suppressing it to be more human, as the Forsaken do.
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Sep 12, 2013 05:55
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When you read The Pure, you start to go "huh, drat, they're making some exceptionally good points, maybe they're not all b-oh wait, a third of them are cannibalistic Luddites, a third of them are Literally Nazis, and a third of them are transplants from the Cult of Grandfather Nurgle. WELP." It takes three groups with completely evil paradigms, gives them a good reason to be semi-unified, and actually frames their arguments so compellingly that you start to feel bad for some of them. The Forsaken sure love to play down the fact that Luna is completely batshit insane, for instance, and that having her as a patron arguably sucks a lot more than it helps, even if you ignore the common Pure narrative that she's responsible for Father Wolf's death. Even if she wasn't, even the Forsaken agree she cursed everybody involved in a fit of pique before halfway changing her mind for some of them sometimes maybe. In addition, Forsaken ways of interacting with spirits tend to do little more than piss the spirits off and make them more ornery, compared to Pure ways. Of course, Pure ways usually involve a lot of grovelling and unsavory sacrifices, but what're you gonna do? Etc, etc. The Pure have a lot of good arguments, the weight of numbers on their side, a third of them are infectiously (  ) charismatic, spirits like them more, they generally know what they're doing more often than the Forsaken...but they're twisted, hosed in the head, zealous to the point of madness, or just plain cruel due to what they see as the natural impulses of werewolves. The book goes into a good bit of detail how a newly inducted member of the Pure goes from ritually abused, traumatized, regretful (if they had a choice in the matter) inductee to someone who believes with all their heart that they're doing the morally justifiable thing by eating humans, enslaving wolf-blooded people and forcing them to make inbred werewolf clans, and spreading revelatory plague.
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Sep 12, 2013 07:12
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Tezzor posted:I also thought it would be interesting to give rituals a "non-ritual power up" ability instead of focusing on one spell. The successes mechanic above is the same, but for [successes] minutes, the mage gains a [+successes] bonus on all non-ritual magic rolls, as well as immunity to disbelief and [-successes] to all Paradox rolls for the duration. Disbelief occurs twice as fast as normal after this expires, and the mage cannot speak or write in anything other than High Speech for the duration, rendering them incomprehensible to everything except Awakeneed as well as gaining a penalty of (6 - other mage's Gnosis) to any attempts to convey complicated messages. While you're changing things, I'd also consider granting these "automatic successes" for having a really good sacrifice for your ritual. The downside if you make that too strong is, starts to look a lot like an archmage game where everything revolves around questing for Quintessence. Which doesn't bother me much because I think that's a really cool mechanic, but if your game actually uses archmages and you want to make sure they're different and strange, maybe you'd want to reserve this for them?
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Sep 12, 2013 16:37
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The question is, what are rituals actually for? My ideas are this: * Spontaneously-cast spells last a scene. If you want a spell so powerful that it uses mana to last for a long time, you cast it as a ritual. This doesn't give it a longer duration, but rather makes the spell take effect and keep on going for so long as you're in the circle chanting and dancing. * Casting a spell at its maximum potency costs a lot of mana and might hurt you. Performing a ritual is a way to slowly but safely build up to that same maximum potency - in effect, you spend time and a sacrament instead of health and mana. * Some effects like soul removal or spirit creation are only possible through ritual.
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Sep 12, 2013 16:42
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Ferrinus posted:The question is, what are rituals actually for? My ideas are this: I'm thinking the point is that you would break the game in half if all the cool mage stuff you want to be able to do could be done as an instant action mid-fight. This especially applies to antagonists. You want to have to stop the bad guy from nuking Boston, so bad guys have to be able to nuke Boston. Except they can't also be able to nuke you in one turn or it won't be much of a fight. Now of course if it's just for antagonists you don't really need rules for that ritual, but half the point of playing Mage instead of D&D is having a magic system that handles everything under the sun. And anyway I think the same point can be made for PCs. They need to be able to cast awesome epic spells without breaking the combat system, because that's the fun. This is probably an awful idea but I'd almost like to mandate that 5 minutes of real-world time have to pass between consecutive ritual rolls, or else you can spend 10 minutes per roll beforehand questing for your ritual sacrament. Big gamebreaking fuckoff rituals exist to serve the plot; if this isn't important or interesting enough to spend session time on, it doesn't get to happen. (Naturally this reflects the fact that lengthy rituals are long and boring and your character doesn't do them unless it's important.) McNerd fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 18:20
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