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Attorney at Funk posted:Is it too late to formally request that the Fallen World Chronicle have readable headers? I was just looking at the Awakening corebook and reminded to ask about this, for some reason. Don't know. The team have to write it, and then I need to talk to Mike (the art and layout guru.) Blood & Smoke changed the heading font for Requiem, so it's theoretically possible.
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May 29, 2014 07:41
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Don't know. The team have to write it, and then I need to talk to Mike (the art and layout guru.) Blood & Smoke changed the heading font for Requiem, so it's theoretically possible. Did it? I'm pretty sure the heading font for Requiem has been Hopper Edward for pretty much all of the post-clanbook era. Unless you mean the chapter headings, but I mean, those are legible in Mage.
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May 29, 2014 08:10
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Yessod posted:They showed up in the SF Vampire LARP I play in. They did a bunch of influence stuff and took over the SF Armory. Basically, kink dot com was actually run by weird pagan vampire cultists, everything remains exactly the same. We tried to play nice with them for a year or so then decided they were super creepy and weird and not Camarilla anyway, so we used misdirection to get big scary NPC monsters to kill them all. Is it bad I can actually picture, really vividly, Peter Acworth doing a shitton of cocaine and wandering around a LARP meeting screaming about vampires? Dude is crazy.
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May 29, 2014 14:18
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Doodmons posted:So, yeah, I kinda don't want the game to come grinding to a halt while we take a few sessions to resolve this issue, the coterie were just getting onto the trail of the main plot. Fortunately the gonzo factor of the game is quite high and one of the coterie has Status: Prima Invicta 5 so it's not completely out of left field for me to be able to say "Yeah, this is going to be a tough one to cover up, but it's not beyond the capabilities of the Prima and the London Domain. You've just spent a lot of political capital to get out of this one with your head, though". I'm not sure if that's a good idea, however. Now is probably a good time to take a step back and decide for yourself in what ways your game is going to deviate in theme and mood from straight Vampire, because if this happened early on it's probably only going to escalate from here. In something that sticks strongly to the concept of the base game, the PC coterie are de facto enemies of the state unless they can convince someone with enough juice that they are worth more walking around then piles of dust. This is the kind of thing that shouldn't just take a few sessions to resolve, but should probably permanently alter the chronicle as a whole. Covering it up will require the rapid deployment of massive resources - whomever does so will either make a name for himself as possible Prince or be overexposed and vulnerable to having an old score settled. Unless the city is so dysfunctional that no one is willing or able to stick their neck out and clean this up - in which case your home just posted to its Twitter feed "Please come destroy me #completelyvulnerable". Sounds like you're running something fairly high-powered, so one way to go with it is that greater power means greater headaches. All the major players in the city are willing to let the coterie clean up their own mess, so they probably have a few days of being leeway to handle it themselves. If you don't want that to be the next focus of the game, then anyone who wants to clean it up for them is either asserting their dominance or doing them an immense service on spec in the hopes of calling in a marker later. TL; DR version is that this fight would normally be a huge loving deal. If it doesn't have very significant consequences that alter the game, you're going down the road of basically running a superheroes-with-fangs game and the basic setting & mechanics are going to be much help and you're going to have to make it up as you go.
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May 29, 2014 17:49
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I was going to chime in earlier to say that I've always thought that the "stereotypical" Masquerade risks that get talked about are overblown. If you got caught in the crossfire of a gunfight in the middle of the night, you wouldn't know what the gently caress. You probably wouldn't notice someone moving at superhuman speed because everything is happening so fast anyway. Even most blatant supernatural stuff would be quickly rationalized even if you captured it on a phone camera. But yeah, throwing trucks? Transforming into clouds and animals and poo poo? And there's camera footage? It sounds like the episode of Hellsing I watched last night; hope you have a lot of ghoul cops and media people in your pocket.
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May 29, 2014 18:26
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Maybe the Masquerade makes sense in the novelizations, I have no idea. I do know that most actual vampire games with any combat more resemble Saints Row than a game of chess.
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May 29, 2014 21:23
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Tezzor posted:Maybe the Masquerade makes sense in the novelizations, I have no idea. I do know that most actual vampire games with any combat more resemble Saints Row than a game of chess. Presumably http://deckers.die is when a bunch of demons get involved in the storyline.
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May 29, 2014 21:36
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What I'm thinking is that the consequences of this will be the destabilising of the city's hierarchy of power. The two main themes of the game are 'Not Vampires anymore' and 'Elders can't be stopped'. The coterie have already demonstrated to the city that they are completely above vampire law. Anyone who has any hope of stopping them has too much invested in their own survival to try and nobody has the political or social clout to do a drat thing about it. However, what I do have now is an excellent opportunity to show that their actions have dire consequences for everyone around them. London is fairly evenly divided between a giant Invictus bloc, who have the Prince, the Court and everything north of the river, and an equally large and entrenched Carthian bloc who run everything south of the river. It's been a developing theme that both sides are going to go at it at some point. The combat happened north of the river, but what I'm thinking is that teams of Carthian cleaners with Blink and Hidden Agenda haul rear end up from the South and completely take charge of the situation. B&S Majesty, Dominate, Auspex, Nightmare and Blood Sorcery can probably clean this problem up if you get enough people in on it. The Invictus use their connections to suppress the news, the internet and any governmental or police reaction to it but the Carthians are the stars of the show who make all the witnesses think it was just a terrible car accident. On Invictus territory without permission no less. And without question they're the ones who save the day. The Prince is going to look like a dumbass and is going to be pissed. Throughout this, I'm guessing the coterie continue not to give a poo poo and continue to pursue their own agenda, but in the background the Carthians are surging on the wave of their new popularity and the Invictus begin reprisals. By the time the party are ready to leave London, they're leaving a developing Kindred warzone of their making that never really affects them.
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May 29, 2014 21:39
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Doodmons posted:What I'm thinking is that the consequences of this will be the destabilising of the city's hierarchy of power. The two main themes of the game are 'Not Vampires anymore' and 'Elders can't be stopped'. The coterie have already demonstrated to the city that they are completely above vampire law. Anyone who has any hope of stopping them has too much invested in their own survival to try and nobody has the political or social clout to do a drat thing about it. However, what I do have now is an excellent opportunity to show that their actions have dire consequences for everyone around them. Sounds about right. A lot of factions would be able to set their differences aside and take care of a crisis like this, but Carthians and Invictus? Nothing but beheadings all the way down. Tezzor posted:Maybe the Masquerade makes sense in the novelizations, I have no idea. I do know that most actual vampire games with any combat more resemble Saints Row than a game of chess. Mechanically, the Masquerade lets you have a setting where you don't have to completely restructure modern society because there are loving blood drinking monsters everywhere, something that is not uncommon amongst a lot of modern fantasy. Thematically it serves two purposes. One is to emphasis just how lovely the World of Darkness is - the Masquerade functions as much because people want it to as because vampires bring it into being. People need the plausible deniability that maybe the shadows aren't full of fanged sociopaths because that alternative is that the shadows are ABSOLUTELY full of fanged sociopaths. Secondly it creates a sense of powerlessness that is important for horror: vampires have to be worried about people and the mortal consequences of their actions. Sally the Waitress might be as an insect to your sanguinary sorcery, but you still have to do something about what she saw last night or you'll have to snap her neck and deal with the Humanity consequences. Yes, the Masquerade frequently gets discarded in favor of superhuman beatdowns and flashy effects - turns out that a lot of people play World of Darkness games for reasons other than horror, but that's (in theory) what the toolkit is designed for.
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May 29, 2014 22:10
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kaynorr posted:Sally the Waitress might be as an insect to your sanguinary sorcery, but you still have to do something about what she saw last night or you'll have to snap her neck and deal with the Humanity consequences. It's worrying that in my experience the majority response to that situation would be the second choice rather than the first.
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May 29, 2014 22:20
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Tezzor posted:Maybe the Masquerade makes sense in the novelizations, I have no idea. I do know that most actual vampire games with any combat more resemble Saints Row than a game of chess. To be fair, if you're neonates, this is how it should be. Less Gothic, more Punk. 
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May 29, 2014 22:36
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Commissar Budgie posted:To be fair, if you're neonates, this is how it should be. Less Gothic, more Punk. Yea I never got why so much fiction was based around gothic poo poo for young vampires, they pretty explicitly talk about how the gothic 'modern' system ofr vampires is complete bullshit if you're fresh born or even just 'young' by vamp standards. The best VtR games I've played involved us basically going 'gently caress the elders we're gonna do us'. I no joke thought that the whole 'gently caress sitting around in parlors talking about politics, the system's broken and we're not going to play it' was like, a norm. I went through the longest time thinking that my group wasn't weird basically treating Vampire like Shadowrun. Like, to be clear we weren't always running high combat anarch games or whatever but we never had a game where like, the whole 'know your place neonate' was a thing that was met with anything but 'yea ok (gonna fuckin stake you later)'.
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May 29, 2014 23:51
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Loomer posted:Is it bad I can actually picture, really vividly, Peter Acworth doing a shitton of cocaine and wandering around a LARP meeting screaming about vampires? Dude is crazy. He'd fit in pretty well. That's pretty close to the description of a couple of characters already (including the Malkavian Seneschal and the Ventrue Prince of the East Bay), so we'd probably just assume he was a new Malkavian instead of a schizophrenic cocaine addict.
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May 30, 2014 00:04
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Like, to be clear we weren't always running high combat anarch games or whatever but we never had a game where like, the whole 'know your place neonate' was a thing that was met with anything but 'yea ok (gonna fuckin stake you later)'.
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May 30, 2014 00:08
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Yawgmoth posted:I've had several STs who would try desperately to enforce this through gen 4/BP 8 elders just blasting/staking anyone who didn't fall over themselves in reverence for them at all times. Shockingly enough all of those games lasted somewhere between half and two sessions; turns out it's real fuckin' boring playing a minnow in a particularly predator-filled part of the sea. Always beware STs playing at being god-NPCs because they want to create the appropriate amount of boot-licking.
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May 30, 2014 00:17
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I never got why so much fiction was based around gothic poo poo for young vampires, they pretty explicitly talk about how the gothic 'modern' system ofr vampires is complete bullshit if you're fresh born or even just 'young' by vamp standards. The best VtR games I've played involved us basically going 'gently caress the elders we're gonna do us'. I no joke thought that the whole 'gently caress sitting around in parlors talking about politics, the system's broken and we're not going to play it' was like, a norm. I went through the longest time thinking that my group wasn't weird basically treating Vampire like Shadowrun. My first game of Vampire (Masquerade flavor, haven't actually played Requiem yet), my ST set us up in a way where we were spooked the gently caress out by crazy elder European vampires in the city, but it was almost a running theme (by our own choice, not necessarily his) that yeah, 5-point disciplines and oodles of retainers are pretty neat, but car bombs made from bathtub semtex are most certainly neater. I also appreciated the fact that one particular Elder, was actually just a Neonate with a history degree that could speak French and bullshit hard. gently caress you Collin.
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May 30, 2014 02:35
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While I prefer the Gothic horror themes, that's often divorced from the whole neo-feudal politics (which I like!) and it's actually the neo-feudalism that tends to have the more "punk" element (though that's not a stated part of the setting anymore in nWoD), what with "gat-errants" and turf war as a major element. I think that though you've got to balance the right elements to get it to work. Not much wrong with playing it like Shadowrun, but I'd rather it be about people dealing with a strange secret society and their increasing isolation from Humanity (and their own Atrocity). I've not really had the Masquerade problem described here, even in games involving a lot of combat, because it's always been localized, and people have always wanted to go at it from a proxy or different angle than, say, out in the middle of the open. On my end, as a Storyteller I make sure the challenges are set up based like that too, unless it's frenzy, in which case it's about cleaning up the mess. The closest I came to a "incontrovertible Masquerade breach" was a game that played like an 80's action movie using the B&S quickstart, and even then the action was done through Havens, back alleys. It only escalated at the very end which was a sort of "gently caress all this" moment at the very end of a one-shot sessions where the PCs just started an open raid on Elysium, but since the Master of Elysium had fore-warning, most of the important witnesses were not there. So there was a firefight. Even punk brawls can feel like chess, it's just about building context. It's really lazy to just use extremely powerful NPCs to bludgeon people. It could just be player-buy in, but I never had a problem establishing authority not through like direct inflicting of harm or threats, but using insinuation and just roleplaying. The only NPCs the players fought against directly were usually of their own level! Demonstrating why authority exists is better when you actually have the society benefit the players in some way, covering up their mistakes and using prestation/boons to bind them into your plot. In a Renaissance Italy game, I had a player embraced by an Osite illegally, and that Osite was killed, but the childe spared to continue their sire's role of gaoler, for instance. That demonstrated the "power over life", sure, but it was more important that the player was given a responsibility as well. Territory and domain is a big part of Vampire for me for that reason, and players should be given slices of it, which is why Damnation City and the neo-feudal model (and thus small vassalages and tenancies) is so good for building stories.
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May 30, 2014 03:27
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Yawgmoth posted:I've had several STs who would try desperately to enforce this through gen 4/BP 8 elders just blasting/staking anyone who didn't fall over themselves in reverence for them at all times. Shockingly enough all of those games lasted somewhere between half and two sessions; turns out it's real fuckin' boring playing a minnow in a particularly predator-filled part of the sea. It's why I'm having an absolute blast with the Methuselah game. Half the NPCs would be cat-piss stories if they were in your average Vampire game. The Prince is a BP7 serial diablerist, the two Hounds are BP6 combat monsters wearing riot gear using incendiary loaded machineguns, the local Kogaion is a BP7 nine-coil weirdo. None of these people can stand up to the party at all and it's amazing portraying vampire society breaking apart at the seams because people who have been unassailable for centuries finally meet something thye can't deal with. Relatedly, in the two Vampire games I've actually played in recently, one very rapidly went down the "gently caress the system, Burn Down The Estate" path and we actually took the money when a Strix put a 10 million pound hit out on the Prince. We were BP2 Carthian neonates and through the magic of Obfuscate, circular saws and trucks full of nitromethane we brought the system down. In the other, which has been going on for about a year, we're playing an exclusively Ordo Dracul game so we basically get to completely ignore the whole "know your place, neonate" thing in that it's our job description to ignore all that petty Invictus age based heirarchy thing. One thing and one thing only gets you ahead in the Ordo and that's knowing Coils. Considering we're PCs who actually gain XP and we've gone from slaves to scribes in nine in game months, our covenant thinks we're hot poo poo and we don't give a drat what the court thinks. Also I was put under court questioning as to whether I was a diablerist because I demonstrated that I had Majesty 5 as a year old fledgling. Nope, just that good. It's a source of neverending amusement to me that the power the Ordo get in IoD when they control a domain is the ability to just swag out of a social challenge because they're better than this petty bullshit, man.
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May 30, 2014 12:16
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Commissar Budgie posted:My first game of Vampire (Masquerade flavor, haven't actually played Requiem yet), my ST set us up in a way where we were spooked the gently caress out by crazy elder European vampires in the city, but it was almost a running theme (by our own choice, not necessarily his) that yeah, 5-point disciplines and oodles of retainers are pretty neat, but car bombs made from bathtub semtex are most certainly neater. I also appreciated the fact that one particular Elder, was actually just a Neonate with a history degree that could speak French and bullshit hard. gently caress you Collin. Yea I never got why more STs don't have fun with poo poo like this. In one of my favorite games the prince of a city we had a grudge against turned out to be just like, a little 'bigger' than us, and he just was really good at bluffing his way into power and doing poo poo like having his sire killed to cover his tracks. It was a really fun thing when this dude we expected to be some powerful elder was suddenly all 'oh gently caress guys don't kill me'. My group's ST is great at creating atmosphere and the whole lead up to that 'fight' was a big elaborate heist type thing that involved tons of 'oh gently caress please don't mess up and get us killed' moments. I legit don't understand how so much of the community thinks licking boots and pouting in salons is more fun.
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May 30, 2014 16:59
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I never got why more STs don't have fun with poo poo like this. In one of my favorite games the prince of a city we had a grudge against turned out to be just like, a little 'bigger' than us, and he just was really good at bluffing his way into power and doing poo poo like having his sire killed to cover his tracks. It was a really fun thing when this dude we expected to be some powerful elder was suddenly all 'oh gently caress guys don't kill me'. My group's ST is great at creating atmosphere and the whole lead up to that 'fight' was a big elaborate heist type thing that involved tons of 'oh gently caress please don't mess up and get us killed' moments. I legit don't understand how so much of the community thinks licking boots and pouting in salons is more fun. Because in the GRIM DARKNESS of the 21ST CENTURY, there is only GOSSIP.
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May 30, 2014 18:32
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I never got why more STs don't have fun with poo poo like this. In one of my favorite games the prince of a city we had a grudge against turned out to be just like, a little 'bigger' than us, and he just was really good at bluffing his way into power and doing poo poo like having his sire killed to cover his tracks. It was a really fun thing when this dude we expected to be some powerful elder was suddenly all 'oh gently caress guys don't kill me'. My group's ST is great at creating atmosphere and the whole lead up to that 'fight' was a big elaborate heist type thing that involved tons of 'oh gently caress please don't mess up and get us killed' moments. I legit don't understand how so much of the community thinks licking boots and pouting in salons is more fun. That's actually closer to the whole Gothic themes that just the standard "hostile jungle" political aspect, or even ye old boot lickinge. The whole point of the politics and isolation for elders is to isolate them and keep themselves alive in a society where everyone is a monster, and due to diablerie, is a threat. I mean, in this case it was more like a heist, but the whole dealing with mortality, vulnerability, and really just doing the sort of inhumane things humans do to each other is on the money, though B&S has pretty much shed the Gothic trappings (unfortunately for me but I understand the reason) for a more modernist take. Even when using an elder, they are supposed to be crippled in senses that neonates are not, which is why it's suggested to play neonates! Even discounting the whole fact that even taking a single move will result in all their enemies doing the same, the fog of memory and the way they are described implies they are essentially hovering near torpor at all times, languid beings that almost literally can't see what's going on around them. Not necessarily in the Lovecraftian "cannot see the ants on their feet", but legitimately delusional and confused about the world they live in, and it's a mixture of their individual power and their past plots that's keeping up the local inertia, and they are just as much victims of that inertia as any. Active elders are by far exceptions to the rule (though sometimes Requiem's material is not always consistent on that, for sure.) Mummy gets into that a little too, though in that case it's everybody. Well, all of the Arisen, anyway.
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May 30, 2014 19:09
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There was a really great story in the Blood and Smoke anthology about that, in which the Roman legionnaire from the Rome book's fiction wakes up in the modern nights and is both utterly unstoppably powerful and totally confused and out of it.
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May 30, 2014 19:59
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I actually like doing games with a lot of action and combat and maybe even SWAT vampires with katanas, as long as it's grounded in the boundaries of the setting. (Like how Armory explains that gangsters don't really have elite snipers, and based on vampire population and resources, no Prince has dozens of SWAT vampires on retainer.)
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May 30, 2014 20:05
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One thing also to note about "elders" in Requiem is that they aren't always powerful even if they are super old. Torpor thins out the blood. Sometimes quite a lot.
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May 30, 2014 20:15
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Mors Rattus posted:One thing also to note about "elders" in Requiem is that they aren't always powerful even if they are super old. Torpor thins out the blood. Sometimes quite a lot. It's also important to note that Requiem's power curve is evened out a lot. Even a BP 6 or 7 Elder isn't really going to be able to stand up to 5 or 6 neonates if the builds aren't aligned for easy slaying. The lack of multiple actions in Requiem reallllly makes up the gap in favor of multiple combatants, which means that Requiem's elders have to tone down the whole 'being a giant dick' just a hair because they aren't personally powerful enough to slay the entire court alone.
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May 30, 2014 20:27
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Besides, being a giant dick (openly) is the last thing say, Invictus elders want to do. The whole system of etiquette I've seen perverted into a bludgeoning tool to punish players before, but the actual intent for it given in the Invictus book especially was a way to prevent frenzy and control the Beast rather than as an excuse for it. Elders don't want a bunch of neonates frenzying on them (or themselves frenzying on neonates, to be fair) because they are entirely cognizant (save for the most far gone and delusional which are explicit antagonists) of their own mortality, and how five of anything seems to be able to kill one of anything, and even beyond mechanics again and again that's pointed out in the flavor, and why so much effort is put by the establishment to create neo-feudal divides between their descendents. And the restrictions work both ways: when someone doesn't follow etiquette and isn't part of the Society, that's just gravy, the system/covenant exists to let the elders be comfortable in smug self-superiority without having to killmurderdeath to serve their Beasts, and it gives neonates a way that you can communicate with hoary old assholes with a relatively accepted set of rules (even if unwritten) if you actually want their attention. Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 21:02
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From time to time, Cracked offers something that immediately makes me think of the World of Darkness. Today, it was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck,_5th_Duke_of_Portland, a mad englishman who built an extensive quasi-underground labyrinth below his house and was obsessed with never being seen by anyone. Nosferatu as gently caress.
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Jun 1, 2014 14:26
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Loomer posted:From time to time, Cracked offers something that immediately makes me think of the World of Darkness. Today, it was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck,_5th_Duke_of_Portland, a mad englishman who built an extensive quasi-underground labyrinth below his house and was obsessed with never being seen by anyone. Nosferatu as gently caress. When I saw that, my first thought was that he lived in Portland, Oregon. That would have been purestrain OWoD.
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Jun 1, 2014 14:34
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Apparently, building underground tunnel mazes was something of a habit of eccentric Englishmen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Tunnels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Caves God knows, if I had unlimited funds I'd do pretty much exactly that.
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Jun 1, 2014 16:50
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potatocubed posted:Apparently, building underground tunnel mazes was something of a habit of eccentric Englishmen: I've been to the Hellfire Caves. I'm currently thinking of hiring them for a LARP.
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Jun 1, 2014 17:32
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I've been to both those places - my fiance and I briefly considered hiring the Hellfire caves for our wedding but it's a bit drippy in the main room.
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Jun 1, 2014 18:19
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I never got why so much fiction was based around gothic poo poo for young vampires, they pretty explicitly talk about how the gothic 'modern' system ofr vampires is complete bullshit if you're fresh born or even just 'young' by vamp standards. The best VtR games I've played involved us basically going 'gently caress the elders we're gonna do us'. The Family Is Awful is a pretty standard gothic theme, though it may be confusing because it's not really in Dracula.
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Jun 3, 2014 20:10
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:When I saw that, my first thought was that he lived in Portland, Oregon. That would have been purestrain OWoD. Even Portland today is purestrain OWoD.
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Jun 4, 2014 05:41
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Error 404 posted:Even Portland today is purestrain OWoD. The dream of the '90's is alive in Portland.
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Jun 4, 2014 07:11
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Kickstarter for W20 Book of the Wyrm went live yesterday. Certain backer levels get to nominate new characters for the Pentex Board of Directors which will then be voted on later. The Wyrm is my favorite Extreme 90's antagonist faction so this should be fun.
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Jun 4, 2014 15:15
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I can't help but feel that we missed out on a somewhat bowdlerized 90s Werewolf cartoon. Fuse Street Sharks with Captain Planet with a side of the Toxic Avenger cartoon. That poo poo would have been so great. I'm really glad Book of the Wyrm is another Kickstarter that presents the raw text draft of the book; I want that trend to continue. $25 is a little stiff for a PDF for me right now, especially when Flowers of Hell is on the edge of being released, but I'm so pleased when books sell themselves by their own content. The book is pretty thoroughly silly, but I can't decide whether it's overall the kind of silly I enjoy about Pentex and the Wyrm. It bounces between the two. Lord Steel spending the bulk of his time just sitting on his throne being really angry? Goofy but not useful. Pentex launching a program to research how to intentionally genetically engineer genetic disorders in fetuses, for basically no reason except to be mean and then claim credit when they treat them? Goofy and moustache-twirling in a way I like. The prevalence of explaining Pentex products away as carrying ambiguous "Wyrm taint" whose effects, other than causing people to smell of the Wyrm, are largely undefined? Disappointing. loving surveillance lipstick? Ridiculous and inspired. All the description spent on places in Malfeas that you're thoroughly hosed if you visit? Not to my taste, teeters between boring and trying too hard. Artificial werefrogs and greed-is-good were-businessapes? I love those. It's kind of sad looking at the Black Dog Game Factory section and noticing how much has happened since that section must have been written.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:11
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I Am Just a Box posted:I'm really glad Book of the Wyrm is another Kickstarter that presents the raw text draft of the book; I want that trend to continue. This is fantastic! I've been teasing an enemy Black Spiral pack in my Oregon W20 game, and this could be just the thing I need.
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Jun 5, 2014 12:38
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I Am Just a Box posted:I'm really glad Book of the Wyrm is another Kickstarter that presents the raw text draft of the book; I want that trend to continue. $25 is a little stiff for a PDF for me right now, especially when Flowers of Hell is on the edge of being released, but I'm so pleased when books sell themselves by their own content. I like Kickstarters that release the text, so all the Werewolf kickstarters will continue to do so. quote:The book is pretty thoroughly silly, but I can't decide whether it's overall the kind of silly I enjoy about Pentex and the Wyrm. It bounces between the two. Lord Steel spending the bulk of his time just sitting on his throne being really angry? Goofy but not useful. Pentex launching a program to research how to intentionally genetically engineer genetic disorders in fetuses, for basically no reason except to be mean and then claim credit when they treat them? Goofy and moustache-twirling in a way I like. The prevalence of explaining Pentex products away as carrying ambiguous "Wyrm taint" whose effects, other than causing people to smell of the Wyrm, are largely undefined? Disappointing. loving surveillance lipstick? Ridiculous and inspired. All the description spent on places in Malfeas that you're thoroughly hosed if you visit? Not to my taste, teeters between boring and trying too hard. Artificial werefrogs and greed-is-good were-businessapes? I love those. From talking to people, different folk want different things. Some are really psyched at the Malfeas descriptions and the ways to kill the Maeljin, others want surveillance lipstick and gonzo Pentex-made were-apes, others are all in for the new take on the Black Spirals, and others want more products like the entirely-not-evil hybrid car that's a giant  to werewolves. I'm glad that everyone's finding some stuff that they like throughout the book.quote:It's kind of sad looking at the Black Dog Game Factory section and noticing how much has happened since that section must have been written. Yeah. Just... yeah.
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Jun 5, 2014 12:45
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DigitalRaven posted:I like Kickstarters that release the text, so all the Werewolf kickstarters will continue to do so. By the way, I don't think Idigam Chronicle is really slated to have anything Kickstarted, but the same general philosophy has considerably raised my interest in seeing how that book turns out as well. First edition Forsaken was arguably my least favorite nWoD line primarily due to a lackluster execution, but the previewed second edition material really looks to turn around a lot of that. DigitalRaven posted:others are all in for the new take on the Black Spirals, I'm more of a gonzo-goofy Pentex type, as is obvious from my post (I got suckered in by the Subsidiaries book, that book is great), but I do think it's worth pointing out if anybody in the thread cares about this that this is executed pretty well from what I saw, too. The Black Spiral material avoids immature pitfalls (or I must have skimmed past any parts that didn't) and provides a basis for a more thoughtful take on them while still leaving plenty of room and support for a more traditional black-and-white portrayal.
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Jun 5, 2014 12:53
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While I think that the ability to kill some of the Maeljin Incarna is not really something I will ever use since I rarely use Pentex with Werewolves, some of the new parts of the book are hit or miss but ultimately I'm pretty thrilled with it.
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Jun 5, 2014 13:53
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