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Well there's always Slasher.
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Jun 19, 2014 12:16
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Daeren posted:I don't particularly like it as the only reason for the conflict, but it's a fantastic explanation or conspiracy theory to explain why the Machine just lets some things slide. Really, that's a good part of why I like Demon - the God-Machine appears infallible to shallow inspection, but the cracks in the logic that make it work allow for big honkin' blind spots and flaws. Angels, by nature, have to be susceptible to the Fall, because the God-Machine needs a way to parse interactions with humanity, so "patching out that bug" would leave it with a completely useless tool that can't give it useful feedback. Infrastructure has to have a weak spot. Its power has to come from somewhere, some arcane combination of action and ritual that can be disrupted. Its innermost workings have to be accessible, no matter how sequestered, so they can be maintained. I actually kind of agree on this - my thought is just, the God-Machine isn't good at people and so it's more a happy accident rather than the plan itself.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:12
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I think Hunter adds a very important depth to the world where it presents the victims of the 'bigger' games and puts them in a role where at the end of the day they have to decide if they're going to continue the cycle of blind violence based just on 'because we can' or if they're going to take a more nuanced view of a hosed up world they're not a part of. Even moreso given that it's probably better-than-even odds that your hunter group will, when faced with the inhumanity of what they're doing, just shrug and say "That's how it's gotta be". That's when you throw a group of less terrible hunters at them and you get something that's both more of a fair fight AND moral comeuppance all at once. Hunters have no Beast, no Rage, no Paradox, and no Evil Abuser Stepparents. They are the WoD protagonists that are bad because they 100% chose it.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:23
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Just wrapped up the last Hunter book for 2000. It comes out at exactly 520 entries, representing maybe 350 unique hunters including unnamed ones. Hunter-net.org itself has a highest-known count of 322.
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Jun 21, 2014 06:48
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There's like ten different RPG shops in Vegas and none of them are doing a Free RPG Day thing, such that I can get my grubby hands on a Mage20 Quickstart. Meanwhile, some shop in a town 200 miles off in Utah is. Apparently that's the closest participating store. What the hell.
Cabbit fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 09:26
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That's basically how Free Comic Book Day works, too. Historically, the free adventures have shown up on Drivethru for free and eBay for way too much.
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Jun 21, 2014 15:44
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In case anyone is this thread is interested, i'm recruiting for a Demon PbP game here. I'm hoping to shoot ideas on IRC first before picking players, so people can introduce themselves and make characters that fit together more like you would with an in-person group.
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Jun 23, 2014 00:50
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I'm reading Chaining the Beast for Masquerade, which is excellent, but I've come across a couple of things I'm curious about. First, it makes mention of the Sabbat's Black Monastery being the location where several Paths of Enlightenment were codified. Is there a book with more information about this location? Second, it mention that the Giovanni loathe the Path of Death and the Soul, but doesn't really explain why, or why Giovanni are forbidden by the family to study it. Any ideas? Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Jun 23, 2014 |
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Jun 23, 2014 01:52
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No idea about the Black Monastery, but the Path of Enlightenment issue is mostly a Cappadocian/Giovanni thing. Giovanni often study the Path of Bones, whereas Path of Death and the Soul is the Cappadocian's version. Both have similar aims - chain the beast by understanding death - but the Cappadocian path focuses more on the material side, whereas the Giovanni almost exclusively study what comes after; Wraiths, the Underworld, etc. The Hierarchy of Sins is mostly the same though shuffled around a bit, with Giovanni being a lot less Zen and less against murdering dudes for your own ends, thus the forbiddance to follow it is probably an edict from Giovanni himself, to distance his new Clan from the Cappadocians, and possibly to prevent anyone else of his blood from realising what a fratricide he committed. Also likely that the Path of Bones is mostly setup to breach the Shroud between life and death, through constant poking and crossing, which is one of Giovanni's end goals.
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Jun 23, 2014 02:17
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Pope Guilty posted:I'm reading Chaining the Beast for Masquerade, which is excellent, but I've come across a couple of things I'm curious about. Giovanni Chronicles II goes into some detail about the Black Monastery, but in the context of a broader campaign and it doesn't dwell as much as one might like on the Paths. It is however the only 'major' source for the Black Monastery's inhabitants and philosophers. It might also explain the specific paths question - can't remember.
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Jun 23, 2014 02:24
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We're back! So, the new Demon book came out recently. Anyone had a chance to give it a read through?
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Jun 26, 2014 03:22
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SunAndSpring posted:We're back! Working on it. Solid enough so far. Meanwhile, Heirs to Hell was disappointing and kind of suffered from "it turns out that devoting a hundred pages to this topic kind of removes all the mystery and supposed rarity of the subject matter."
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Jun 26, 2014 03:36
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Loomer posted:Giovanni Chronicles II goes into some detail about the Black Monastery, but in the context of a broader campaign and it doesn't dwell as much as one might like on the Paths. It is however the only 'major' source for the Black Monastery's inhabitants and philosophers. It might also explain the specific paths question - can't remember. In GC2, the Black Monastery is just a place for the elders living there (coincidentally, there's exactly one representative for each clan) to put a PC of their own clan through a clan-thematic moral or physical wringer. Which was exactly the same setup that the Giovanni conspirators in GC1 used on the PCs, except that in GC1 each of the elder conspirators ran the captive mortal PCs through the gauntlet to prepare them for being Embraced into their clan. I guess GC1 was popular enough that White Wolf figured that they could get away with recycling the exact same premise for GC2 even though it's more transparently railroady in GC2, given that the PC are now centuries-old globetrotting ancillae rather than the helpless mortal victims that they were in GC1. GC2 doesn't really have anything to say about the Black Monastery beyond "there are some elders there who are evil for evil's sake": the individual elders represent the sort of generically evil indulgent pseudo-philosophizing that one would expect from Sabbat-affiliated vampires circa VtM 2e. The elders are putatively there to develop the philosophies that become the Paths of Enlightenment, but in the context of the story all that's pretty much a pretext to get a bunch of eeevil elders in one place to put the PCs through their paces.
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Jun 26, 2014 03:38
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I'm still slightly dumbstruck that there was so much enthusiasm for that specific concept as a full book. I guess demon children are a staple of the genre, but Promethean did supernatural kids justice with a few pages in Magnum Opus.
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Jun 26, 2014 03:40
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It's that time again! Eight months has passed, I've read a year's worth of oWoD publications, and it's time for the line count, and a reminder that I really need to stop wasting my life or at least do the project while I'm on the treadmill at the gym. Please send help. There are, as of the end of 2000's book run (excepting a couple of the novels, VTM Redemption, and including VTES and newly released content): Vampire: 8,467 entries. That's a pretty ridiculous growth of over 2000 new entries. The new clan books are largely to blame. Umbra and spirit entries: 4119, for a growth of about 200 entries - almost exactly, in fact. The end of Wraith really slowed things down on this front. Werewolf: 4,344 entries. 1054 growth. Like VtM, it was a good year for Werewolf with a new edition and quite a few splats. Mage: 3,719. Not too bad - Just shy of 500 entries of growth. This is also likely the least accurate as a number of books are listed online as 2000 published but as 2001 in my copies, and as such will be done as part of 2001. Changeling: 1830 entries, with a grand total of 18 new entries. Always one of the slowest to grow due to its focus on a revolving set of courts and rulers, the 'end' of Changeling (a couple of books yet to come, but let's be real: it ended in '99, with only MET content and some KotE mentions in 2000) pretty much killed off any growth. Wraiths and risen at least get mentions in Hunter content. The broad General cat: 1305. A growth of 195 entries - but much of that is due to expanding the Pentex listings. Hunter: 527 entries, for a growth of 341 entries. Plenty of individual duplication, however. The last four years of the oWoD were pretty productive all the way through, churning out some very good (and some abysmal) books - and accordingly, a hell of a lot of entries for the lists.
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Jun 26, 2014 12:28
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Flowers of Hell is an interesting read, and I would say generally much more useful than Heirs to Hell. I was really only disappointed by the section on catalysts, which seems to try to pin everything about a Fall down to a single moment and cause, which I think isn't always a good idea or accurate. The slow buildup of doubt and the complex and messy situation are both potential Fall scenarios that don't have to have a single moment to point to and say 'this, right here, is the specific instant that caused the Fall.' The new Embeds and Exploits are neat, though, and so is a lot of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 was less impressive for me in general but wasn't really bad for the most part. I really liked the introduction of facade Covers, which are very handy. The gadget stuff is stuff I am still mulling over and have no opinions on yet.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:01
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Caved and bought Flowers of Hell. I think my favorite part were the new Embeds and Exploits, (Like The Movies is now my favorite), but the advice that the book gives is extremely helpful for roleplaying a paranoid magical spy robot. Pricy, but mostly worth it.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:09
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Bizarrely, the gadget rules talk about angels spotting flares of Aether, which is supposed to be something they specifically can never perceive.
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Jun 28, 2014 04:52
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Rand Brittain posted:Bizarrely, the gadget rules talk about angels spotting flares of Aether, which is supposed to be something they specifically can never perceive. Yeah, they play that up a lot during the whole book, it's rather weird.
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Jun 28, 2014 05:28
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Rand Brittain posted:Bizarrely, the gadget rules talk about angels spotting flares of Aether, which is supposed to be something they specifically can never perceive. Well, flares of Aether usually cause big nasty lightning storms and power outages in the area. I didn't read the gadgets section too closely, but I figure they'd probably send something to investigate odd and unplanned electrical disturbances.
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Jun 28, 2014 06:26
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http://seattletimes.com/html/picturethis/2023957142_celebratingthenewsouthparkbridge.html With the opening of the south park bridge, the demon book is officially now categorically dated
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Jun 30, 2014 16:08
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I'm reading the Clan Novel Saga, a four-volume series where they took all the V:tM Clan Novels, disassembled them, then rearranged the individual chapters (1-6 pages, mostly) into chronological order. They're surprisingly good for game fiction, and what's really striking me about this collected edition is that it's rather like watching an HBO drama with a large cast, like HBO or Game of Thrones- you hop from point of view to point of view and can kind of watch various characters intersecting and so on. I figured they'd be trash, but this is pretty enjoyable reading.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:32
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I got two of those back in the early 2000's really cheap and I enjoyed them. Unfortunately because they go chronologically and presumably weren't written with that in mind, sometimes one story would have had like a day or two where nothing happened, and so that story would be "on hold" because two other books had a bunch of poo poo happen on those days.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:38
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XyloJW posted:I got two of those back in the early 2000's really cheap and I enjoyed them. The only problem I'm having with this is that the Malkavian chapters generally border on the incoherent, and hopping back and forth between Talley trying to get Sabbat members to stop being idiots long enough to keep Lucita from murdering them and Anatole going on a vision quest is maddening.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:12
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Good news! Your second problem should solve your first one.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:29
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The correct reading order for the Clan Novel Saga is to read Setite first, then read Ravnos, then stop.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:13
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I read the Tzimisce book because someone thought it would make a good gift for me. Granted it was translated, but I still think it was the worst loving book I've ever read.
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Jul 1, 2014 04:22
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gtrmp posted:The correct reading order for the Clan Novel Saga is to read Setite first, then read Ravnos, then stop. Hesha Ruhadze forever.
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Jul 1, 2014 06:57
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Mage 20 preview is up.
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Jul 1, 2014 07:03
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This passage was written in Anno Domini 2013/14: "The future Americas see various sects rise and prosper. Sadly, the coming storm from the distant east will wipe away almost every trace of their achievements…" god drat i hate everything to do with this hobby
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Jul 2, 2014 09:25
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I couldn't get through the opening to that. Also the goth chick. I'm kinda glad I didn't back m20, but if the rules are good/different from MRev I might buy it I guess. Disclaimer: I haven't read V20 or W20 so I don't know if rules changes are even a thing they're doing. I saw that 1's still subtract from successes and botches are still a thing so  .
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Jul 2, 2014 13:21
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Gilok posted:Disclaimer: I haven't read V20 or W20 so I don't know if rules changes are even a thing they're doing. I saw that 1's still subtract from successes and botches are still a thing so V20 and W20 both have some balance changes but the core systems are largely the same as far as I can tell. The biggest thing I noticed is that Dodge as a skill is gone, and it's functionality has been given to athletics.
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Jul 2, 2014 14:11
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Mexcillent posted:This passage was written in Anno Domini 2013/14: Too lazy to wade through that. I have just one, very important question: are the Etherites still presented as equal parts batshit mad scientist and two-fisted adventurer?
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Jul 2, 2014 15:33
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I'm curious if they gave an explanation for leaving Linguistics off of the character sheet. Especially in Mage, where arcane lore and dead languages are part of the appeal.
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Jul 2, 2014 19:11
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Oberndorf posted:I'm curious if they gave an explanation for leaving Linguistics off of the character sheet. Especially in Mage, where arcane lore and dead languages are part of the appeal. V20 treats languages spoken fluently as a merit, while attempting to figure a new one out falls under Academics. I think it's just part of the streamlined/new rules.
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Jul 2, 2014 19:18
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I just started reading Demon. Holy poo poo, is Demon good!
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Jul 2, 2014 20:43
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Mexcillent posted:This passage was written in Anno Domini 2013/14: You do realize that's a pretty accurate description of Native American cultures versus Europe, right? If it wasn't the smallpox, it was the guns, if it wasn't the guns it was all the farmland being stolen. Hell, what we see admits that the Dreamspeakers were a half-assed attempt by the European Traditions to force all of the indigenous ones into a convenient umbrella. They are not happy about this. Which isn't to say the  part of Mage is not in full force here - it is, with all the technophobia replaced with more crazy. And with just a smidgen of self-awareness (I just love how they bluntly stated "How much of reality is shaped by human belief? We honestly don't know," and the dark aside of how pointless this makes life seem if nothing is true) to turn the whole thing utterly hilarious.
Erebro fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 2, 2014 |
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Jul 2, 2014 21:24
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Soonmot posted:I just started reading Demon. That it is. Also the only nwod book I read all the fiction for!
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Jul 2, 2014 21:47
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That M20 preview reads like the old mage books, which I assume is what they were going for.
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Jul 2, 2014 22:16
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Feel free to ignore this, I'm going to gush about a game I'm taking part in: It's a Hunter game, with a twist - instead of working for one of the canon groups, we work for a non-profit 'research organization', "Salient Solutions for the Unsolved" (a kind of dumb name), which as a cover does all kinds of research (at the behest of a mysterious billionaire backer who personally funds the organization fully) into things like AIDs cures, ways to wipe out cancer, all kinds of stuff. In reality it's a two part organization, the first of which is basically the X-Men school - it's a boarding school type place where supernatural people can attend at live a semi normal life. The second part of the organization is actually based around research into getting supernaturals that kind of normal life. Artificial blood pills so Vampires don't need to hunt, sunscreen so they can go outside, tranquilizers that can calm down a raging werewolf, anti anxiety and depression medication that works to help changelings (as well as research into how to hide them from Fae.) The Hunters in said game have the job of recruitment. We get orders from this mysterious billionaire (Mr. Jackson, who may be a Mage) where supernatural poo poo is going to go down, and then are supposed to de-escalate the situation. Killing is a last resort - we're all about helping people. ST plays a little fast and loose with what other splats can do, but it's fun - our first mission involved a 11 year old changeling who was turning Denver colorado into a 108 degree Fahrenheit desert due to the panicky PTSD. So our characters went in and calmed her down with conversation, and got her to take some medicine to help us stop her abilities, then slipped her out and took her back to the school portion of the organization. Second mission involved a werewolf raging in the middle of LA - we had to actually fight this one, and tranq'd him down eventually (mostly via tactics and planning ahead), but he was... unwilling to come with, to say the least. He disappeared. It's actually maybe (we don't know yet) a not nice institution - all of the research they do on 'normalizing' supernaturals just happens to provide the weapons us Hunters use to disable and subdue them. And every supernatural who refuses to join the organization after being told about it, or who flees the school and refuses to go back, just happens to disappear. But the player characters are all (sans one, who is does double shifts, one as part of the wetworks team to deal with loose ends...) are very moral people who care about saving the supernaturals, because they're people too, sort of. Its been a lot of fun and I like it. It's my first Hunter game (and my first WoD game actually...) but it feels really different from how the books would want you to run Hunter. It's definitely less becoming monsters, at least so far.
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Jul 2, 2014 23:04
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