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bathroomrage posted:Not entirely true! I was in a Werewolf game where we healed the broken world through the power of song. Kumbiya or  or...? You can't really leave something like this just hanging.
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Jul 11, 2014 05:43
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So if I read this right everyone is a mage, just not in conscious control of what they do and thus not a capital M Mage. Because they can't control it it just defaults to reinforcing what they believe, hence paradox where their magic bitch slaps someone trying to use magic to go against what they believe. That about right? citybeatnik posted:I was about to make fun of this for its lack of ways that Bone Gnawers could take part in it, and then I remembered that Bone Gnawers have access to Hootenanny, aka "The Best Gift Ever". This is the greatest setting ever and I wish we got more video games out of it. Fantastic Alice fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 07:28
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xanthan posted:So if I read this right everyone is a mage, just not in conscious control of what they do and thus not a capital M Mage. Because they can't control it it just defaults to reinforcing what they believe, hence paradox where their magic bitch slaps someone trying to use magic to go against what they believe. Not exactly. Whether or not everyone has the potential to be a mage is an ongoing philosophical argument in-game. As a rule, being a mage means one day, you had some kind of epiphany about the world and how it works. It might have been violent, mystical, metaphysical, drug-induced, you name it. At the end of it, you got introduced to a fragment of your soul that's typically called your Avatar, which is a spirit guide/Jiminy Cricket/guardian angel/you name it, and now you're capable of changing reality through force of will. It's also important to note here that the basic mechanics of the game and how magick (the first two editions use the -k spelling) works don't always play ball. Out of game, magick is the act of changing reality; in-game, it's whatever your character's individual tradition and style make it. For example, a Catholic priest who works miracles with the aid of saints and angels does not ascribe any particular power to himself and as such would reject the "reality deviant" label. Paradox is what happens when what you do violates the rules of local reality. If I am standing in the middle of a busy street in New York City and I throw a fireball at a dude from my hand, most if not all of the people around me are going to recognize that as an impossible act and Paradox kicks in. If I describe to the guy running the game how that dude was just in the center of a really unfortunate gas main explosion, that is all too possible and Paradox leaves me alone. Playing Mage is, in many ways, about using the stats on your sheet to bullshit a favorable outcome ("the bullet struck my lucky cigarette case! I'm fine!"), and doing something explicitly "magical" is often not your best option. (Also, local activities and beliefs play a strong role. You don't want to gently caress with a Christian mystic in the heart of Vatican City, for example. If you do something "impossible" in a local climate that supports that specific impossibility--like faith-healing someone when you're surrounded by fervent believers--then it's not impossible anymore and reality has to play along with that.) Mechanically, it's a 20-point stat on your character sheet that represents how far you're pushing your luck. The higher it goes, the more likely it is that Something Bad is going to happen, whether it's a painful backlash, a permanent inconvenience, a long coma, spirits coming after you, or in extreme cases, part of reality being torn off and isolated so as to serve as your prison. The latter event is called a Paradox Realm, where consensus reality decides the best thing it can do is toss you into a cell for a while so you can think about what you did. (There's an example of a Paradox Realm in the Book of Worlds. Some dude tried to use magick to artificially induce the Big One, the earthquake that will tear California off the rest of the North American continent, because he'd preemptively acquired a great deal of land that would suddenly be oceanfront property. It didn't work and now his prison is, if you manage to visit it somehow, a flat plain that's constantly and violently shaking. He's in there somewhere, but nobody's sure where. (There's another one that's just big enough to contain one guy, who was apparently a blood mage in a Viking tradition. Nobody knows what he did to get tossed into the Realm, who he is, or if they could get him out. In the Realm, he constantly ages to death, then gets reborn to infancy to repeat the cycle. He's been in there for at least a few hundred years.) The basic idea is that the standard human paradigm in Western civilization is heavily influenced by the Technocracy, so what we know as technology is accessible to everybody. The downside to this is that it is, in fact, a technocracy; people treat themselves more like machines than people, imagination and wonder get stamped on, etc. The Technocracy actually does a lot to keep normal humans safe in the larger World of Darkness, but the cost's pretty high.
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Jul 11, 2014 09:43
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HaitianDivorce posted:Kumbiya or At one point my character, a trickstery type(I think the word was Nuwisha?), got the idea put in his head that since everyone's negative outlooks and thoughts were causing the Wyrm(aspect of destruction, Werewolf deals with a trinity) to be insane, maybe if they managed to get everyone across the world to feel positive at once then they could reverse what happened. So yeah, it was a little bit of both, I think Larry(my character) ended up getting the entire world to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, it's been quite a few years. It sure as hell worked though. Kobold eBooks fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 10:03
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xanthan posted:So if I read this right everyone is a mage, just not in conscious control of what they do and thus not a capital M Mage. Because they can't control it it just defaults to reinforcing what they believe, hence paradox where their magic bitch slaps someone trying to use magic to go against what they believe. In a nutshell. I'm sure yet another person who knows more about metaphysics of Mage explains it even more in-depth, my knowledge comes from just wiki-diving and stuff.
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Jul 11, 2014 11:18
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citybeatnik posted:I was about to make fun of this for its lack of ways that Bone Gnawers could take part in it, and then I remembered that Bone Gnawers have access to Hootenanny, aka "The Best Gift Ever". Bone Gnawers are the funniest tribe to play, by far. I played a chronicle with an entire pack of Bone Gnawers, the combat strategy revolved around this gift and throwing poo poo (bone gnawers are really good at throwing things). Also, teleporting between piles of trash and driving a pickup truck in the Umbra were funny gimmicks as well. Seriously, what can you expect from a tribe which one of his Tribal Totems is called the Great Trash Heap? 
Angry Lobster fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 12:04
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So.. Werewolves are magical? ..And apparently insane? This is new to me. I knew there were warring tribes and the like, but I had no idea they were this out there and silly. I assumed they were much more like what we see in the game.
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Jul 11, 2014 13:30
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Vagon posted:So.. Werewolves are magical? ..And apparently insane? This is new to me. I knew there were warring tribes and the like, but I had no idea they were this out there and silly. I assumed they were much more like what we see in the game. The Bone Gnawers are basically the Malkavians of WtA. On one hand, they're hobo werewolves leaving offerings of peanut butter and bacon sandwiches to Elvis and doing goofy poo poo that's fun and refusing to take themselves seriously. On the other hand, they're hobo werewolves armed with nothing more than 2x4s and molotov cocktails taking on things other tribes would only send their best equipped warriors at and winning.
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Jul 11, 2014 13:46
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Vagon posted:So.. Werewolves are magical? ..And apparently insane? This is new to me. I knew there were warring tribes and the like, but I had no idea they were this out there and silly. I assumed they were much more like what we see in the game. There's sixteen werewolf tribes, thirteen if you discount the ones that are either extinct or fallen to the Wyrm. About the only thing they agree on is that they don't like the Wyrm. There's a list of laws called the Litany that theoretically they all follow, but each tribebook comes with a breakdown of the ones they ignore, the ones they just pay lip-service to, and the ones they bend the hell out of. The werewolves, and most of the other werecritters, share the same dichotomy - they have two very different mystical power sources available to them, Rage and Gnosis. Rage is primal anger gifted to the changing breeds by the moon, which allows them to kick rear end harder and faster, ignore their own kicked rear end, and change into their other forms in order to kick even more rear end. Gnosis is the energy of the spirit world that fuels the magic of spirits and the changing breeds, which lets them do all kinds of poo poo, such as hootenanny and driving cars into the spirit realm. It's recharged from spirits, or more usually from places of great spiritual energy called Caerns, which werewolves revere greatly and will go to great lengths to protect. Often what they're protecting it from is it being controlled by anyone but them, which is a common theme with werewolves. Bone Gnawers aren't necessarily insane. The tribes are all very choosy about who gets to join them, and being born into them is just a good start in doing so. A lot of the time a prospective recruit will fail, or be unwilling to try, or be opposed to the philosophy of the tribe that they were born into or recruited by and decide gently caress that. But werewolves are social creatures and they need their delicious gnosis, so the vast majority of wash-outs will end up joining the Bone Gnawers, because it's better than nothing. It means they get a lot of cast-offs and broken people, but they also get the people that decide that their convictions are more important than toeing the line - and some of the tribes are really fuckin' out there, looking at you, Red Talons. The Bone Gnawers are the Omegas of the werewolf world. Yeah, yeah, it's an outdated concept and we all know wolves don't really work that way, but werewolves do. They're at the bottom of the totem pole, but at least they're on it - a werewolf without a tribe is asking to get horribly murdered if they try to recharge at a werewolf-controlled Caern. The Tribe is cursed, so they're all universally horrible with money so a lot of them are homeless. But that's not such a big deal. They're magical werewolves, and a lot of the signature magics are about doing a lot with a little. They can magic the interior of their cardboard box into a cozy little home. They can turn pretty much anything into food with a little gnosis. They can make a rusted-out junker turn into a small god of the roads with enough love and care. And if they get into trouble there's always a literal bum-rush within howling distance - the Bone Gnawers are easily the most numerous werewolf tribe. Plus they don't really go into the whole internal pecking order and politics bullshit that other tribes do. Nobody takes them seriously so neither do they, so they leave tribute for Elvis and use two-by-fours as weapons. But they're magical werewolves, so Elvis repays their generosity and their two-by-fours can hit harder than a warhammer. Mysticism 101 if you didn't get the whole Wyld/Weaver/Wyrm thing - they're the regular primal triad of chaos/order/destruction. Wyld is nature, Weaver is cities, Wyrm is anything the Planeteers would try to beat the snot out of. There's a hell of a lot more to it than that, but that's the general idea.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:26
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This is the greatest thing to wake up to. Please for the love of god tell me more about Magical Hobo Werewolves
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Jul 11, 2014 14:56
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JackNapier posted:This is the greatest thing to wake up to. Please for the love of god tell me more about Magical Hobo Werewolves I'm too tired and hazy to tell you anything super in-depth about much, but I did recall some information about my character. Like how Nuwisha are all basically Wile E. Coyote in terms of attitude and a lot of their powers are outright batshit insane Looney Tunes stuff. Like hurling someone multiple city blocks with a doofy "Heave-HO".
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Jul 11, 2014 15:06
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bathroomrage posted:I'm too tired and hazy to tell you anything super in-depth about much, but I did recall some information about my character. I love everything about that, I take it these guys are hilarious to play? Edit : My god, typo after typo JackNapier fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 15:24
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Nuwisha's are literally Native American coyote tricksters made flesh. If I remember correctly, they are born only under the Garou equivalent of Ragabash. They're only as fun to play as you make them out to be, but not get your dumb rear end killed by a raging Get of Fenris. Instead of Honor, as Garou have, they have Humor as the Coyote just God drat loves a good joke and a well-taught lesson is a sure-fire way to getting reknown with your tribe. You're the holder of secrets, confuser of many, and laughing all the way into the horizon.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:43
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The Bone Gnawers are, before anything else, survivalists, and probably the largest tribe in the entire Garou nation, also the most well adapted to urban life. In fact, they are the foremost experts in survival and guerrilla warfare in urban environments, alongside the Glass Walkers. All of this reflects in their selection of Gifts, fetishes and totems. They have lots of gifts to let them survive without a penny in a city, giving shelter or free food. For example, with the level 1 gift "Hungry Hound" they are able to find the closest source of discarded, safe, edible food, it usually manifests like a discarded still warm, perfect slice of pizza or a nearly full bag of nachos. The rank 1 gift "Cardboard Mansion" let's you fashion any ordinary cardboard box into a waterproof, noise-resistant and insulated home. Despite conditions outside the box, the “mansion” remains dry, warm and quiet. Another example of this is the Mouldy Grail: quote:The Bone Gnawers call all of central park’s bawn “home” and sleep wherever they wish. However, if the tribe has a single area where they nearly always congregate it’s around a trash can in the heavy trees near the softball field southwest corner of the Great Lawn (the one nearest the Delacorte Theater). For combat, they have some (hilarious) gifts like Stone-Throwing Devil, that gives more damage when you throw something, and "I Got a Rock" let's you throw anything you can lift with perfect aerodynamics, even motorcycles and cars. Sadly, this two gifts can't be combined together. This reflects the focus of the tribe, survival between humans and attunement to urban environments (there are many rural bone gnawers, though). Bone Gnawers aren't exactly heroes in the traditional Garou sense, but they can be drat dangerous, especially because when you are in a city, it's their turf, have eyes everywhere and there's a fuckton of them. Angry Lobster fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 15:59
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For people who want to know more about Mage and its insane metaphysics, there are a lot of little things that cross game lines, and one of them is Paradox. Not in the form you'd expect, of course. Vampires, Werewolves, and other things don't have Paradox, obviously. But Werewolves have noticed that, recently, the spirit of Absolute Order, the Weaver, has been getting tighter and tighter around Reality, driving the spirit of Chaos, the Wyrm, to further madness. And it's been noted that the Beast, the frenzying feral side of a Vampire, is connected to the Wyrm somehow, because Vampires in general are Wyrmspawn (if I remember correctly). So it's entirely possible that, because of the Technocracy, the Weaver is going nuts trying to control everything, crushing down on the Wyrm, which is in turn producing more spiritual darkness and leading closer and closer to the End of Days as the ancient Antediluvians become more and more aware of the frenzying Wyrm. It's also possible that the Weaver Spirits in Werewolf are Paradox Spirits to everybody else. Some additional fun trivia: in the Demon: The Fallen book, it's implied that, before God got pissed at everybody ever, magic was something everybody could do. The rebellious angels, who just totally loved us so much, taught humanity about magic. Then God came and got furious at literally everyone over the whole Tower of Babel thing, and may have split reality apart in a fit of hissy-pissy. This may have also created Paradox, because before then, the Wyrm and the Weaver probably didn't exist.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:21
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Sword Hunter Gil posted:For people who want to know more about Mage and its insane metaphysics, there are a lot of little things that cross game lines, and one of them is Paradox. So is God just throwing an artistic fit about how angels are TOTALLY RUINING HIS VISION and Galting out, or is there some justification for his loving all of reality?
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Jul 11, 2014 16:27
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whowhatwhere posted:So is God just throwing an artistic fit about how angels are TOTALLY RUINING HIS VISION and Galting out, or is there some justification for his loving all of reality? WoD God is a pissy autistic whiner who took his ball and went home after smashing some stuff.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:30
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Sword Hunter Gil posted:Some additional fun trivia: in the Demon: The Fallen book, it's implied that, before God got pissed at everybody ever, magic was something everybody could do. The rebellious angels, who just totally loved us so much, taught humanity about magic. Then God came and got furious at literally everyone over the whole Tower of Babel thing, and may have split reality apart in a fit of hissy-pissy. This may have also created Paradox, because before then, the Wyrm and the Weaver probably didn't exist. This is entirely from a Demon's perspective too. We don't know if that is what happened at all. There is a faction of demons that believe that this whole thing was a plan set up by God and that even their rebellion, imprisonment and release from hell was a part of a greater plan. Hell did things to the demons though, twisted them in a way that they really can't recover from. One of the things I like about Demon: The Fallen is that there is no clear cut answer. You can either serve and protect humans from other demons or you can start your own cult and control a city.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:30
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Yeah. When Demon was announced I thought it was another Pimp: the Backhanding---a joke designed to grab a few headlines. I mean, you play actual demons in a roleplaying game? That's totally trollbait for the evangelical parental set. But then it came out and I was shocked when it was really a well thought out game with some 'damned' good writing. They really tied everything together well, and I was sorry that the line didn't have another year or two to breathe before they ended the world. Then again they probably would have screwed it up somehow with excessive splatbooks if they did have the time, because they're White Wolf.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:37
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Angry Lobster posted:They have lots of gifts to let them survive without a penny in a city, giving shelter or free food. For example, with the level 1 gift "Hungry Hound" they are able to find the closest source of discarded, safe, edible food, it usually manifests like a discarded still warm, perfect slice of pizza or a nearly full bag of nachos. The rank 1 gift "Cardboard Mansion" let's you fashion any ordinary cardboard box into a waterproof, noise-resistant and insulated home. Despite conditions outside the box, the “mansion” remains dry, warm and quiet. These guys sound like the greatest werewolves, the greatest werewolves ever, I need to know more, please Goon Sir, may I have some more?
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Jul 11, 2014 16:53
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Yep, werecritter parazoology cares nothing for your labels, maaaaan. Coyotes might be part of the Canis genus but werecoyotes (Nuwisha) are still a completely separate type of werecreature to the werewolves (Garou). Even though the Bunyip tribe of Garou interbred with marsupial thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger. Science is a Weaver invention and the Garou are of the Wyld so if you don't like it you can pretty much suck it. The Nuwisha were intended to be Gaia's teachers, but it turns out the Garou don't listen to anybody so the only way to teach them a drat thing is the hard way, so they fell back on being tricksters - which comes naturally to them, since Coyote is the patron of the Nuwisha as well as a Totem1 of Cunning. There are Garou that follow Coyote as well, but Garou tend to mistrust those of their number that do. Bone Gnawers are drat good at surviving in the city, but that's it - they survive. They don't really thrive in it - more in spite of it - and as a whole they don't entirely trust the city, the Weaver, and most of them don't even trust humanity as a whole. If you want urban werewolves, the go-to are the Glass Walkers, which are entirely at home in cities. They reinvent themselves at the drop of a hat - currently the Hacker faction is in power, but in the past they've been businessmen, urban planners, mobsters, railway tycoons and alchemists. Most Garou don't really trust the Glass Walkers, seeing them as being a little too comfortable with the Weaver. While Bone Gnawers are very easy to lump into the 'washout' category, they still pull their weight and then some in the war against the Wyrm. There's hitch-hiker hobowolves, that protect the roads. There's hobowolves that hang out everywhere that's free to enter - public libraries, museums, monuments, and so on - to protect mankind's culture. There's a lot of the more together not-quite-hobowolves that work lovely low-end jobs in big-rear end corporations to feed information to the other tribes. And there's Robin Hood-style hobowolves that hold up chain stores and banks and whatnot to refunnel the money into helping the poor. Bone Gnawers have a lovely life, but they recognize that it's even worse for homeless people that don't have awesome werewolf powers, so they tend to help out the little guy where they can. There's rural Bone Gnawers, too. They tend to be... well, pretty much stereotypical rednecks. Backwards, insular and mistrustful of outsiders, but resourceful, stubborn, proud and loyal. They're currently2 under a pretty heavy cloud of suspicion because it turns out a small faction of them was going all insert-your-favourite-hillbilly-thriller and chowing down on passers-by, which is against the Litany. A big part of understanding Garou relations with humanity is how they breed. They're not a race apart - breeding between Garou is considered a sin, is against their Litany, and results in a sterile, deformed child, a lot of which end up hated and mistrusted for their inherited sin. A huge number of them end up dumping the Tribe they were born into and end up in the Bone Gnawers, who are much less judgmental. Garou children instead come from Garou mating with either wolves or humans, which has a small chance of producing a Garou and otherwise results in what's called 'Kinfolk' - someone who's almost entirely human, but doesn't have the inherited phobia of shapeshifters and would have a higher chance of producing Garou children. So each Tribe keeps tab on it's network of kinfolk, either directly or indirectly. The Bone Gnawer kinfolk tend to be down-on-their-luck, either because of inheriting a small portion of the tribal curse or because when you're a hobowolf you don't really have many dating options among the upper-classes. Opinions vary. You may have noticed a pattern of 'the Garou mistrust X for Y reason', where Y is something petty, closed-minded or way too broad a brush. The Garou are pretty much 95% huge dicks. But they can literally feel the planet dying in every moment of every day, and half their mystical kick-assitude is literally powered by Rage, and they're up against an enemy that's a master at subtle corruption, so it's easy to see why dickitude comes natural to them. 1: Totems are powerful spirits that empower their followers in exchange for some tribute or service. 2: When I say 'currently', I mean 'as of when the game died'  Sword Hunter Gil posted:And it's been noted that the Beast, the frenzying feral side of a Vampire, is connected to the Wyrm somehow, because Vampires in general are Wyrmspawn (if I remember correctly). Vampires smell of the Wyrm, and they smell more strongly the lower their Humanity. Most Garou consider this proof enough that they're Wyrmspawn and act accordingly, but it's pretty thin justification because someone that works at McTolleys, the Captain-Planet-antagonist version of McDonalds, would smell about as strongly of the Wyrm as a high-humanity vampire. But it's not entirely a state of all-out war, since the Bone Gnawers have some extremely arm's-length-and-then-some contacts within the Nosferatu, and the Glass Walkers have the same within the Ventrue. Sword Hunter Gil posted:So it's entirely possible that, because of the Technocracy, the Weaver is going nuts trying to control everything, crushing down on the Wyrm, which is in turn producing more spiritual darkness and leading closer and closer to the End of Days as the ancient Antediluvians become more and more aware of the frenzying Wyrm. It's also possible that the Weaver Spirits in Werewolf are Paradox Spirits to everybody else. The various origin stories among the Changing Breeds agree on two things - the Weaver and the Wyrm are insane. And that's it. The perils of an oral tradition, I guess. Too bad there's not a type of werecritter dedicated to remembering things oh wait there was and then the Garou wiped them out. Good thing they're coming back, though - oh wait the Garou think they're Wyrmspawn because the Wyrm digs a reptilian theme and are trying to wipe them out all over again. Here's the history of the world in a nutshell: everything was fine, then the Garou hosed it up. Did I mention that the werecritter dedicated to remembering things are weredinosaurs? They're weredinosaurs. But yeah, though the stories are confused and contradictory there's a few common metaphysical narratives. One is that the Wyrm was Up To Something and got himself trapped in Weaver, which drove him insane, which drove the Weaver insane. A second is that the Weaver went insane and tried to bind up the Wyrm to stop the Wyrm breaking all the Weaver's toys (as is probably the Wyrm's role in the universe), which drove the Wyrm insane. There's a lesser-told version that says that once, the Wyrm represented Balance, not Destruction. This lines up with the mirror of the Wyld/Weaver/Wyrm triat among Mage: The Ascension metaphysics, known as the Metaphysic Trinity of Dynamism/Stasis/Entropy - where Entropy represents destruction and decay, but also purification and rebirth. But almost all agree that these events happened in prehistory, what the Changelings call the Mythic Age, before the War of Rage (where the Garou tried to kill all the other werecritters because of reasons) and the Impergium (during which the Garou dominated humanity and brutally culled their numbers), since a significant number of versions of the story blame the Wyrm. But time isn't quite as linear as would be convenient in the good ol' World of Darkness, so it could be that the insanity of the Wyrm and Weaver was retroactive. Or maybe they're just using the Wyrm as a scapegoat. That history of the world I mentioned earlier? The sequel to that is almost always 'it's not our fault, it's the Wyrm's'.
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Jul 11, 2014 17:03
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Tehan posted:So many
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Jul 11, 2014 17:59
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JackNapier posted:Alright, this is like the fifth or sixth time I've seen the name, Please explain "Glass-Walkers", if its not to much trouble? City-dwelling werewolves. I recall their name used to be something else before the glass-and-steel skyscrapers went up, but it's basically like them and Gangrel vampires are on an exchange program; neither one likes to hang out where they're supposed to.
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Jul 11, 2014 18:21
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If vampires smell of the Wyrm, and they smell more of it the lower their humanity, wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that the Beast specifically is a reflection of/fueled by the Wyrm rather than that vampires are Wyrmspawn as a whole?
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Jul 11, 2014 18:24
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:City-dwelling werewolves. I recall their name used to be something else before the glass-and-steel skyscrapers went up, but it's basically like them and Gangrel vampires are on an exchange program; neither one likes to hang out where they're supposed to. Thanks!
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Jul 11, 2014 18:38
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JackNapier posted:Alright, this is like the fifth or sixth time I've seen the name, Please explain "Glass-Walkers", if its not to much trouble? Glass Walkers are one of the thirteen werewolf tribes. It's just their current name - as the tribe closest to mankind, they reinvent themselves pretty frequently. They were originally the Warders of Men, but reinvented themselves as the City Warders in medieval Europe, where they got tight with the Church to better protect mankind - and themselves - from vampires. In the Renaissance they were Tetrasomians, alchemists and philosophers investigating their own spiritual selves and trying to build a humanism for non-humans. During the Victorian Era they were the Iron Riders, championing the railroads in 'taming' the American wild west - when the European Garou came to the New World and found that the Native American Garou didn't feel all that keen about giving all their holy sites to these newcomers it turned ugly fast. And finally, when the City Father - a spirit that embodies a city - of London was found in the 1880s, they re-imagined themselves as the Glass Walkers and dedicated themselves to finding more of them. The name comes from how Garou need a reflection to easily step sideways into the spirit realm, and while more 'wild' Garou would use water, the city-living Glass Walkers would use reflections on windows and shopfronts. They're pretty widely mistrusted by most traditional Garou as being too comfy with the Weaver. They recognized this and were worried as hell about whether they'd fall to the Weaver, as one of the other Garou tribes did to the Wyrm, but then around '01 it happened - the Glass Walkers are largely democratic, and their reigning faction at the time was the CyberDogs, who sought to marry Weaver and Wyld in themselves and create motherfucking cyborg werewolves  . Then it was discovered that they were achieving this by experimenting on unwilling Lupus (born a wolf) Garou, and the tribe went apeshit and instantly purged the hell out of the CyberDogs. Since they live in cities they don't really have many wolf kinfolk outside of the occasional zoo, so Lupus Garou are pretty much holy to them.This catapulted the discoverer of this factoid into a leadership role, which she reluctantly accepted, and her faction, the... okay, look, it was the 90s... the 'Random Interrupts' rose to power. Hackers and programmers and scientists working to understand the world, technology, and especially the Internet, which you may remember is also a realm called the Digital Web where the Virtual Adept mages like to hang out. There's also the Corporate Wolves, businessman and investors seeking to control society from the top down; Umbral Pilots, who dedicate themselves to building spirit spaceships to go look for other worlds in the spirit realms; City Farmers, who hope to champion hydroponics so mankind will stop chopping down rainforests for farmland; the Wise Guys, who rose to power during the Prohibition and made a killing that catapulted the Tribe into riches, but are on their way out; and Dies Ultimae, PMC werewolves who think a werewolf's huge, bulging muscles are better employed double-fisting LMGs instead of just clawing poo poo, and kill poo poo for money so they can spend that money on campaigns against the Wyrm.You might think that all this means you're dealing with haughty motherfuckers, Ventrue with a taste for kibble instead of blood - well, each Tribe has a Patron spirit. The Nuwisha mentioned earlier have Coyote. The Bone Gnawers have Rat. The Glass Walkers... they had nobody - their history before 400 AD is a mystery to them, so they've got no ancient ancestor spirits, no deep pedigrees, no perfect spiritual BFF. Then Cockroach took a liking to them. So with Cockroach they are stuck. And needless to say, between their affinity for the Weaver, their close ties with mankind, their shallow history, and having a roach for a spirit daddy, they're pretty drat unpopular among other Tribes. Also they're my favourites  JT Jag posted:If vampires smell of the Wyrm, and they smell more of it the lower their humanity, wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that the Beast specifically is a reflection of/fueled by the Wyrm rather than that vampires are Wyrmspawn as a whole? See, when werewolves are involved, by the time you say 'wouldn't it be more reasonable' they've already ripped someone to bloody shreds. They murder first and ask questions a few years later when it turns out they really shouldn't have murdered that guy.
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Jul 11, 2014 18:46
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Tehan posted:Yep, werecritter parazoology cares nothing for your labels, maaaaan. Coyotes might be part of the Canis genus but werecoyotes (Nuwisha) are still a completely separate type of werecreature to the werewolves (Garou). Even though the Bunyip tribe of Garou interbred with marsupial thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger. Science is a Weaver invention and the Garou are of the Wyld so if you don't like it you can pretty much suck it. And then everybody sang Bohemian Rhapsody at once and the world got better. 
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Jul 11, 2014 18:51
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Tehan posted:
So wait, Mobsters...Mobster Werewolves, please for the love of god tell me you have stories!
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Jul 11, 2014 18:54
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JT Jag posted:If vampires smell of the Wyrm, and they smell more of it the lower their humanity, wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that the Beast specifically is a reflection of/fueled by the Wyrm rather than that vampires are Wyrmspawn as a whole? One of the big things about the World of Darkness is that the various supernatural critters don't make a habit of explaining themselves to each other. Werewolves as a rule don't know about "the Beast" and a lot of them kill first and ask questions never the moment they smell Wyrm taint on something. Vampires are also, even at high humanity, walking dead things and don't interact well with the natural world. There are actually some thaumaturgical paths that let a vampire summon spirits or go into the Umbra, but they make it clear that the only spirits that will voluntarily interact with them are specifically aligned with the Wyrm. There's an entire cosmology that vampires have to work very hard to interact with, and when they do, it reminds you that even the fluffiest bunny of a vampire is still a reanimated corpse powered by stolen blood. Further, both the Tzimisce and the Setites have had old, bad blood with the werewolves for centuries. The old-blood European Tzimisce have been feuding with the Shadow Lords in Europe for a long time, and the Setite Antediluvian is actually responsible for cursing the Silent Striders so they lost their tribal homeland of Egypt. As a result, the common theory on vampires among werewolves is that the best-case scenario, when dealing with a vampire, is that they're trying to manipulate you.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:01
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Wanderer posted:Further, both the Tzimisce and the Setites have had old, bad blood with the werewolves for centuries. The old-blood European Tzimisce have been feuding with the Shadow Lords in Europe for a long time, and the Setite Antediluvian is actually responsible for cursing the Silent Striders so they lost their tribal homeland of Egypt. As a result, the common theory on vampires among werewolves is that the best-case scenario, when dealing with a vampire, is that they're trying to manipulate you. Since then, there's few things more likely to get a horde of hobo-wolves bury your opponents under a pile of bodies than going "hey, a caern's in trouble!" It's also why Owl, the totem spirit of the Silent Striders, HATES Rat and demands sacrificial offerings of rodents to feed.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:09
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JackNapier posted:So wait, Mobsters...Mobster Werewolves, please for the love of god tell me you have stories! The Wise Guys were originally a pack operating out of Chicago in the 1910s, a pun based on their leader's prankster tendencies and the Chicago Outfit. Then Pappa Johnny Torrio, leader of the Chicago Outfit that Al Capone would later make famous, farmed some work out to them and became extremely impressed with how well they managed to pull poo poo off (not realizing that the pack had an inherent advantage of being able to turn into ten-foot tall murderbeasts). The more they worked, the more they learned, the more prestige they gained, and the more people were interested in learning about them. When Al Capone came to power, with less obsession about only employing Italians, the Glass Walkers had a lot of non-Italian murderbeasts available for hire. It was a huge self-fueling reaction that catapulted the faction to prominence, power, and influence. But their time in the sun - or the moonlight - was before the scope of the game. They went out of power in the 70s and by the time the new millennium rolled around they were barely hanging on, and most of that only due to charity from higher-ups hoping they'd share their signature magics before going extinct. I've heard they were more prominent in first edition, but I got into the game post-Revised so I don't really know much about that.
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Jul 11, 2014 19:14
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We touchee on Demon the Fallen but can anyone get into the nitty gritty on NWoD Demon: The Descent? What little I know of it sounded really cool
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Jul 11, 2014 19:34
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World of Darkness is so immersive. It's too bad I only played it when I was like 12 or something. I think I would enjoy it more if I had stuck with it for some more years. As a pre teen all I used to do when I played werewolf was to roll warrior types from the most violent tribes and do nothing but kill stuff. No politics or cosmological concerns at all. The main downfall of WoD in my nerd scene was that mostly emo (or pretend goths) kids would play it. I wasn't really into that poo poo so I mostly played other RPGs. Edit: Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. I remember taking a look at the current edition for Werewolf and I wasn't really impressed with how the new tribes work. I believe someone mentioned that they improved the mechanics of it, though. Kanthulhu fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 19:55
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Can somebody tell me a bit more about the different tribes of werewolves? Because the Glass-Walkers, and Hobowolves sound loving amazing.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:11
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JackNapier posted:Can somebody tell me a bit more about the different tribes of werewolves? Because the Glass-Walkers, and Hobowolves sound loving amazing. sure http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse
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Jul 11, 2014 20:20
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JackNapier posted:Can somebody tell me a bit more about the different tribes of werewolves? Because the Glass-Walkers, and Hobowolves sound loving amazing. In the order that I remember them: Get of Fenris: Germanic-Scandinavian warrior wolves, even worse at the murdering first and asking questions never than the others but at least they're honest about it. Children of Gaia: Peaceniks, pacifists, healers and philosophers, who are more about the healing the wounds than killing the wounders (but still about killing the wounders). Silent Striders: Mystics and wanderers originally from Egypt before Set, antediluvian of the Children of Set, booted them out and cursed them to wander forever. Uktena: Every stereotype about mystic, wise Native Americans that live in harmony with nature and all that jazz. Wendigo: Every stereotype about warrior tribes of Native America that kick cowboy rear end. Red Talons: Entirely wolf-born Garou that hate the Weaver, humanity, and anyone that doesn't hate those two as much as they do. A lot of them want things to go back to the times where Garou ruthlessly murdered people for the crime of there being too many people. Silver Fangs: Werewolf nobility and leaders of the Garou. Very much the Ventrue of the werewolves. Shadow Lords: Wannabe usurpers to the werewolf throne, sneaky, underhanded bastards with Slavic origins. Fianna: Celtic party animals with ties to the Fae and no ties to thinking before they act. Black Furies: All-female tribe that spent the entire revised tribebook trying to explain how they weren't the monster that lives in an MRA's closet. Very much focused on women's rights and equality and all that jazz, close links to the Children of Gaia, where they send their male children. That's twelve, who have I forgotten... Oh yeah, Stargazers, the mystic navel-gazers who took their ball and hosed off to the Beast Courts for all the murder first, ask questions never that the Garou tend to do. Extinct tribes: the Bunyip of Australia. The other Garou were manipulated by the Wyrm into declaring a genocidal war against them, which they were all too happy to do because hey, they wouldn't share their holy sites. Then after the last Bunyip died every spirit in Australia turned against the other Garou and tough poo poo, no holy sites for you. Croatan: Yep, that Croatan. The invasion of the Americas by the European Garou woke up some huge-rear end aspect of the Wyrm, and the Croatan sacrificed their entire tribe to put it down again. White Howlers: Pictish warrior tribe that were the very worst at thinking before they acted, who decided to go punch the Wyrm in the dick where he lives and none of them came out uncorrupted, giving birth to the Black Spiral Dancers - the only Wyrm-aligned werewolf tribe. Well that's no fun 
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Jul 11, 2014 20:28
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Just also wanted to throw out there that there is an awesome setting called Werewolf: the Wild West. W:tA sounded fun but I never felt super compelled to play it... I've wanted to play a Wild West game since I read the book.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:35
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Tehan posted:Fianna: Celtic party animals with ties to the Fae and no ties to thinking before they act. I closed my eyes and clicked and got this, alright magical Tehan Ball! Give me the story of Party Wolves!
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Jul 11, 2014 20:42
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JackNapier posted:I closed my eyes and clicked and got this, alright magical Tehan Ball! Give me the story of Party Wolves! They were to the Irish what the Ravnos were to the gypsies - every stereotype rolled into a ball and hastily retconned when the new edition came around. They're still wrapped up tight with Irish history, and it's definitely showing some biases that I flinch away from as a good lad of the Commonwealth who flees at any mention of the Irish Question. The good of them is that they've got the closest ties to their kinfolk of arguably any tribe. They fight with them, they bleed with them, they feast with them and they die with them. The bad of that is it leads them to treating the werewolf incest babies, called Metis, even worse than most tribes do, and most tribes treat them pretty fuckin' bad to begin with. They fight as hard as they party and party as hard as they fight, which is all well and good if it weren't for the fact if they're not doing either they're looking for the quickest path to it. They're the worst kind of dysfunctional family to a degree that honestly makes me a bit uncomfortable. If you're in they'll defend you even if you deserve the consequences of your actions, and if you're out they wouldn't cross the road to piss on you if you were on fire. And it can get pretty easy to find yourself 'out' if you start questioning some of their short-sighted, small-minded beliefs. The book for them actually has a sidebar that says 'terrorism is bad, m'kay, be a little cautious if you decide to go all IRA werewolf'.
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Jul 11, 2014 21:07
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Tehan posted:The book for them actually has a sidebar that says 'terrorism is bad, m'kay, be a little cautious if you decide to go all IRA werewolf'. I'm recovering from a viral infection that my son brought home at the moment, and as such, my throat is a death pit at the moment, the amount of laughing this single line caused basically made my throat  .Being born in Germany, and having a very rich family history in my native lands (or so my mother and Nana told me), tell me more about the Get of Fenris
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Jul 11, 2014 21:15
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