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Xelkelvos posted:I have the desire to, at some point run a Crossover game of WoD. While I already know about most of the pitfalls and divides from nWoD1E, I remember always hearing about how Geist has bits that are broken or potentially game breaking but I never really saw it explained. With Mage and Demon, I've studied enough or at least know where, at a cursory glance, they can bend and break things with ease, but I've never really seen it with Geist in practice (I'm the only one in my circle who likes Geist fwiw) or in theory. Can someone explain it to me as well as the difference that were made when its first version was edited? A lot of the edits were iirc fixing literally broken things. Like truncated power descriptions, baad page refs, contradictions, etc. As for broken in play stuff, there are a lot of gentlemans agreements required to not ruin your st's day. Like don't use boneyard with high ranks in any situation where omniscience and omnipresence would ruin a cool set piece. And don't use silent rage at all, unless he or she does not mind untraceable instant line of sight agg damage.
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Sep 12, 2014 04:55
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I really like these posts by reddit user necrotechnical about his take on Demon which deemphasizes the God and Hell aspects:quote:There's a difference between platonic gnosticism and techngnosticism. quote:Honestly, it's this reading that makes Demon: the Descent palatablem, Even amazing:
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Sep 12, 2014 05:30
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Yeah but who built the God-Machine. Wake up sheeple.
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Sep 12, 2014 07:04
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One of my most enjoyable convention experiences was a pre-Fall Demon: The Fallen game because it just so happened that this led to a fantasy setting chock full of grandeur and motivation. You protect and develop humanity, who have bizarre pre-Fall civilizations and glass cities on the Moon because as a demon you've helped them grow in ways that totally baffle any notion of technological progress. Plus the mythology, being accessible, is intuitive. Finally, it was at a curling club which was licensed.
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Sep 12, 2014 07:06
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tatankatonk posted:Yeah but who built the God-Machine. Wake up sheeple. Tarn Adams. It seems pretty obvious, frankly.
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Sep 12, 2014 07:11
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tatankatonk posted:Yeah but who built the God-Machine. Wake up sheeple. After the nine simultaneous armageddons of the OWoD, the Metatron/August Personage of Jade/last surviving Technocrats/whoever realize that the universe is FUBAR and force it into a hard reset. They replace the grossly inefficient and self-defeating Triat with something far more reliable and consistent. Except they all sucked at their jobs and failed miserably, Welcome to the God-Machine. 
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Sep 12, 2014 07:25
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We've also got the Tremere liches and their association with the number seven for a sixth potential secret identity of VII, so if we can just come up with one more somewhere... Also, Demon: the Fallen ruled. It was the first WoD game I sat down to extensively houserule!
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Sep 12, 2014 07:58
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You never forget your first time...
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Sep 12, 2014 08:00
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Luminous Obscurity posted:After the nine simultaneous armageddons of the OWoD, the Metatron/August Personage of Jade/last surviving Technocrats/whoever realize that the universe is FUBAR and force it into a hard reset. They replace the grossly inefficient and self-defeating Triat with something far more reliable and consistent. Except they all sucked at their jobs and failed miserably, Welcome to the God-Machine. Sucked at their jobs, or didn't give a gently caress about them because they were all busy arguing over who gets to be Exarch of what?
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Sep 12, 2014 08:56
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How awful am I for wanting to run/play in a WtF game like this  For those not familiar with Garo or sentai shows, their usual features are; humans being terrorized by horrible monsters, demons, spirits or whatever and the titular, and often tragic, heroes transform into supernatural forms to battle them, (hopefully) save the day and restore order. Some are more bleak, darker and horror oriented than others, like my title image.
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Sep 12, 2014 09:17
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Xelkelvos posted:I have the desire to, at some point run a Crossover game of WoD. While I already know about most of the pitfalls and divides from nWoD1E, I remember always hearing about how Geist has bits that are broken or potentially game breaking but I never really saw it explained. With Mage and Demon, I've studied enough or at least know where, at a cursory glance, they can bend and break things with ease, but I've never really seen it with Geist in practice (I'm the only one in my circle who likes Geist fwiw) or in theory. Can someone explain it to me as well as the difference that were made when its first version was edited? The thing about Mage vs. every other supernatural whose mechanics I've glanced over is that your experience in Mage buys you an entire class of powers that can be used to any number of ends whereas most other supernaturals have you spending the same or more experience on single powers that do specific things. What would be comparable is if instead of entire arcana you bought individual spells and could only use those spells. So basically if you have Mage PCs be prepared to dump massive amount of whatever the special resource is on the other supernaturals (I forget what Geist gets) and encourage/allow them to spend it on a variety of greater and lesser powers to have a comparable suite of go-to abilities to break out so the Mages aren't doing everygoddamnthing. That, and/or disallow certain arcana (Death, in this case) so the Geist player has a niche that no one else in the group can even touch that keeps them relevant.
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Sep 12, 2014 11:28
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Cabbit posted:Sucked at their jobs, or didn't give a gently caress about them because they were all busy arguing over who gets to be Exarch of what? Not sure what idea I like better, OWOD survivors creating the God-Machine to fix the world only to hear a resounding "ERROR: REBOOTING..." before everything flashes white or OWOD survivors recreating the universe only to squabble like children while the God-Machine builds a stagnant tomorrow.
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Sep 12, 2014 14:11
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Ferrinus posted:We've also got the Tremere liches and their association with the number seven for a sixth potential secret identity of VII, so if we can just come up with one more somewhere... I have the completely-unlike-the-final-release outline kicking around somewhere. If they 20fy that game it'll need the biggest visual update, since it's probably the most "state of the art for 2002" game in appearance. The earlier games benefit from simple visual design that doesn't date them overmuch, but DtF has Pixellated Fire and Cool Textures. See also, the gorgeous V: The Dark Ages vs. DA: Vampire. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 20:02
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Luminous Obscurity posted:After the nine simultaneous armageddons of the OWoD, the Metatron/August Personage of Jade/last surviving Technocrats/whoever realize that the universe is FUBAR and force it into a hard reset. They replace the grossly inefficient and self-defeating Triat with something far more reliable and consistent. Except they all sucked at their jobs and failed miserably, Welcome to the God-Machine. I must admit this is in places an apt, if snarky description of the creative process.
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Sep 12, 2014 20:06
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I have the completely-unlike-the-final-release outline kicking around somewhere. If they 20fy that game it'll need the biggest visual update, since it's probably the most "state of the art for 2002" game in appearance. The earlier games benefit from simple visual design that doesn't date them overmuch, but DtF has Pixellated Fire and Cool Textures. See also, Dark Ages vs. the gorgeous DA: Vampire. It's so hosed up, since of course it should be Unchained demons who have the power to blast you with pixellated fire and shroud themselves in cool textures.
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Sep 12, 2014 21:28
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It's not World of Darkness, but there's no Scion thread and I think it's relevant to White Wolf's history on the whole. Rose Bailey posts in a thread about trying to clean up Onyx Path's Scion forums and moderate them more consistently.Rose Bailey posted:So, here's something I think needs to be said, and it's not the easiest thing to say. This isn't really news, but I just thought it was interesting to read. I have a lot of respect for acknowledging mistakes and trying to do better. I don't think Rose is actually on the Scion 2e team, and spoilers remain thin this early, so conclusions can't be reached as to how well things will turn out, but I like apologies that are not weasel-word apologies, especially when there isn't any kind of specific backlash event prompting a PR response.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:54
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Well, it's pretty hard to make the Aztec gods look good. Maybe replace them with other Mesoamerican pantheons? I'm sure there's a lot.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:00
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, it's pretty hard to make the Aztec gods look good. Maybe replace them with other Mesoamerican pantheons? I'm sure there's a lot. Actually, no, it's pretty easy to make the Aztec theology make sense, if not necessarily pleasant, what with the actual reasoning behind and frequency of human sacrifices. The other issue is that all of Mesoamerica got rolled into a ridiculously offensive and inaccurate Mayincaztec pastiche, to say nothing of the grace and accuracy some of the other religions were handled with. I'm pretty pumped they came out and apologized about it that bluntly though, that takes some balls.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:03
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Daeren posted:Actually, no, it's pretty easy to make the Aztec theology make sense, if not necessarily pleasant, what with the actual reasoning behind and frequency of human sacrifices. The other issue is that all of Mesoamerica got rolled into a ridiculously offensive and inaccurate Mayincaztec pastiche, to say nothing of the grace and accuracy some of the other religions were handled with. Oh yeah, lumping all Mesoamerica into Mayincatec is racist as poo poo, no contest. It's just the Aztec gods in particular... well, even when they make sense, they're still... well... Yeah...
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Sep 13, 2014 02:06
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Onyx Path is really starting to feel like a mature White Wolf. It's kind of great to see actually.  MalcolmSheppard posted:I must admit this is in places an apt, if snarky description of the creative process. Yesssssss
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Sep 13, 2014 02:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:Oh yeah, lumping all Mesoamerica into Mayincatec is racist as poo poo, no contest. It's just the Aztec gods in particular... well, even when they make sense, they're still... well... Yeah... As bad as the Greek, Norse, and Egyptian ones, yes. The Mexica gods flayed their genitals open after reclaiming our bones and grinding them into powder, so that they could restore us to life with their blood. They now fight a never-ending battle against the stars, which seek to destroy them and us, and in order to have the power to fight day after day and night after night, they need blood. The blood they gave to us to give us life. Debt and sacrifice pervade the Mexica pantheon. It wasn't hard to find a place for Christ, when the time came. Now, consider that the Triple Alliance (AKA, the Aztecs) were a brutal, war-like empire, much like the Romans. The gods of the Mexica didn't belong to them, any more than they belonged to any of the cities or tribes of Mesoamerica that worshiped them. The brutality of the Triple Alliance doesn't need to be the brutality of the gods that they offered sacrifice to. In fact, it's somewhat short-sighted to decide to interpret the gods as they were worshiped at the height of an expanding empire's worst excesses. And really, if you're going to clean up a serial rapist (and bestiality enthusiast) enough to make him an acceptable dad for your character, I think you can do much the same for Huitzilopochtli. Rose Bailey seems pretty cool, so I'm willing to see what they do with it. BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 02:59
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BryanChavez posted:As bad as the Greek, Norse, and Egyptian ones, yes. The Mexica gods flayed their genitals open after reclaiming our bones and grinding them into powder, so that they could restore us to life with their blood. They now fight a never-ending battle against the stars, which seek to destroy them and us, and in order to have the power to fight day after day and night after night, they need blood. The blood they gave to us to give us life. Debt and sacrifice pervade the Mexica pantheon. It wasn't hard to find a place for Christ, when the time came. Pretty much this, really. Human sacrifice was an expected repayment to the gods for their sacrifices and protection of humanity, and keep the world from falling apart. To modern thought that's horrific, but if you're in a divine scheme where that's absolutely true, well, some fuckers gotta bleed to keep things going, and you gotta get that blood somewhere. The issue is that angle in Scion was more that the Mexica pantheon was explicitly written to be a bunch of bloodthirsty psychotic maniacs more in it to be Khorne, God of Blood and Skulls. And really, if you're including the classic trinity of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods, you have gods doing things equally at odds with modern tastes on a regular basis. Aztec gods needed blood to fight off the end of the world, while Zeus needed the orifices of anything that moved because he was a hedonist who wanted to get his dick wet, who happened to be a god, and therefore able to stick his dick in anything. Egyptian myth includes Horus jizzing all over Seth's food to make it look like Seth blew him so he could point and laugh at Seth later and say "Ha ha Seth's such a bitch that he bottoms for me, and swallows." Norse myth has loving near everything to do with Loki, especially getting hosed by giant horses so Odin could welsh on a deal, and the son born of that ended up being Odin's personal steed. And on, and on, and on.
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Sep 13, 2014 05:44
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Hmm, it's true that I was thinking of them at the time of the worst excess of the Aztec Empire. I hadn't thought about separating the gods from the people who worship. And yeah, I wouldn't defend the Greek Gods. They be massive assholes too.
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Sep 13, 2014 05:54
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Daeren posted:Egyptian myth includes Horus jizzing all over Seth's food to make it look like Seth blew him so he could point and laugh at Seth later and say "Ha ha Seth's such a bitch that he bottoms for me, and swallows." To be fair, the reason Horus added his special salad dressing to Set's lettuce was because Set had tried to impregnate Horus. But I'm with Luminous Obscurity - it's nice to see what the folks who did the WoD are doing now that they've matured a bit.
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Sep 13, 2014 05:58
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Daeren posted:And really, if you're including the classic trinity of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods, you have gods doing things equally at odds with modern tastes on a regular basis. Aztec gods needed blood to fight off the end of the world, while Zeus needed the orifices of anything that moved because he was a hedonist who wanted to get his dick wet, who happened to be a god, and therefore able to stick his dick in anything. Egyptian myth includes Horus jizzing all over Seth's food to make it look like Seth blew him so he could point and laugh at Seth later and say "Ha ha Seth's such a bitch that he bottoms for me, and swallows." Norse myth has loving near everything to do with Loki, especially getting hosed by giant horses so Odin could welsh on a deal, and the son born of that ended up being Odin's personal steed. And on, and on, and on. I don't think it's really a problem with "modern tastes", because everyone grows up reading these stories. We get the more uncut and raw versions as we grow up, but anyone remotely familiar with mythology is surely used to all of the weird (to us) poo poo that goes on in those stories. When Loki fucks the horse, you might as well roll a laugh track, everyone's heard the punchline before. The problem is more with modern, uh, standards I guess, where things like Zeus being a gigantic rapist clash with the desire to make a playable RPG. It's possible to fit something like the human sacrifice angle of the Aztecs or the Norse into some sort of narrative, but you can't really put in poo poo like Medusa's origins without massively derailing the story and making the gods irredeemably unsympathetic. Also, anyone know if they're planning on expanding or swapping out the pantheons? I always thought it was weird that a setting that had a very strongly implied American setting didn't have an American pantheon. A Navajo pantheon would be rocking, and who doesn't want to play as a scion of Coyote?
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Sep 13, 2014 06:10
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Tulul posted:Also, anyone know if they're planning on expanding or swapping out the pantheons? I always thought it was weird that a setting that had a very strongly implied American setting didn't have an American pantheon. A Navajo pantheon would be rocking, and who doesn't want to play as a scion of Coyote? The Aztec pantheon and the Voodoo pantheon are both pretty American, but I get what you mean, and I'd absolutely love to see another Native pantheon show up. By love, I of course mean "view with equal parts hope and apprehension". For the record, Huehuecoyotl (Very Old/Wise Coyote) actually does turn up in the Mexica pantheon, as a gender-fluid and wise trickster who walks between good and evil, and wouldn't be out of place in the revised and (hopefully) improved Atzlanti.
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Sep 13, 2014 06:26
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Tulul posted:Also, anyone know if they're planning on expanding or swapping out the pantheons? I always thought it was weird that a setting that had a very strongly implied American setting didn't have an American pantheon. A Navajo pantheon would be rocking, and who doesn't want to play as a scion of Coyote? Well there was one of the expansion books where you could be the Scion of, among other things, Brier Rabbit and John Henry...
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Sep 13, 2014 06:33
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MonsieurChoc posted:And yeah, I wouldn't defend the Greek Gods. They be massive assholes too. Tulul posted:The problem is more with modern, uh, standards I guess, where things like Zeus being a gigantic rapist clash with the desire to make a playable RPG. It's possible to fit something like the human sacrifice angle of the Aztecs or the Norse into some sort of narrative, but you can't really put in poo poo like Medusa's origins without massively derailing the story and making the gods irredeemably unsympathetic. That being said, yeah I definitely agree there's some  stuff, especially in Greek myth. But the way I see it, myth isn't really a set-in-stone kind of thing anyway. Most of those stories would change with every telling, so cutting out some of the super skeevy stuff isn't all that big of a deal, IMO.
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Sep 13, 2014 06:41
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BryanChavez posted:The Aztec pantheon and the Voodoo pantheon are both pretty American, but I get what you mean, and I'd absolutely love to see another Native pantheon show up. By love, I of course mean "view with equal parts hope and apprehension". For the record, Huehuecoyotl (Very Old/Wise Coyote) actually does turn up in the Mexica pantheon, as a gender-fluid and wise trickster who walks between good and evil, and wouldn't be out of place in the revised and (hopefully) improved Atzlanti. Yeah I meant more  , not American-American. Was thinking of American Gods, which was obviously a big influence and is very Americana. Although to my shame, I completely forgot about the Vodoun being in the game, although from what I remember, the writers did that a lot too. And I didn't know about Huehuecoyotl, that's really cool.
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Sep 13, 2014 06:44
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Tulul posted:Was thinking of American Gods 
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Sep 13, 2014 06:50
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It'd be interesting to explore how exactly one deals with being the son or daughter of a being whose world view is wildly different from your modern day norms.
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Sep 13, 2014 07:02
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SunAndSpring posted:It'd be interesting to explore how exactly one deals with being the son or daughter of a being whose world view is wildly different from your modern day norms.
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Sep 13, 2014 07:06
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SunAndSpring posted:It'd be interesting to explore how exactly one deals with being the son or daughter of a being whose world view is wildly different from your modern day norms. I haven't read it but I know there's a thread for that. Can you imagine the email forwards from a 5000 year-old hyper-entitled godling? DOCTOR ZIMBARDO fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 08:35
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BryanChavez posted:
Also, almost every pre-conquest Aztec record was deliberately destroyed, and the vast vast majority of what we "know" about them comes from Spanish friars, some of whom were sympathetic to the Aztec peoples but all of whom had an interest in making the conquest seem justified. Too, South American native peoples aren't as well studied in academia as other ancient cultures. We can be reasonably sure that human sacrifice took place in the Aztec empire, and that it held a fairly important position in their culture, but that's also true of the ancient Chinese flinging people into rivers to appease river deities and Norsemen making sacrifices to Odin. Since scholarly estimates for the number of people sacrificed per year across the Aztec empire range from "a few hundred" to "A MILLION BAZILLION, ONE IN FIVE CHILDREN MURDERED", we have to kind of admit that a lot of our preconceptions of the Aztecs are produced ex rectum. When writing them for an RPG, I don't think there's any particular need to make them or the gods they worshiped uniquely brutal among expansive empires.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:30
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Though an Aztec pantheon in the modern day might decide to deliberately adopt the extreme bloodthirsty image as a way of keeping relevant- a brand's a brand. Just ask Aztechnologies.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:32
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If the Atzlánti want to update their image, they need Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Jesucristo, and Santa Muerte in their pantheon (and no, being listed as an AKA of Mictlantecuhtli is not good enough). But especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Loa are established as only a few hundred years old, which, if gods can establish themselves that quickly, is more than enough time for the Queen of Heaven to assume her rightful place with the gods of the Mexica.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:56
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BryanChavez posted:If the Atzlánti want to update their image, they need Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Jesucristo, and Santa Muerte in their pantheon (and no, being listed as an AKA of Mictlantecuhtli is not good enough). But especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Loa are established as only a few hundred years old, which, if gods can establish themselves that quickly, is more than enough time for the Queen of Heaven to assume her rightful place with the gods of the Mexica. If I can't play the scion of El Santo I'm not sure I'd be willing to play the game.
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Sep 14, 2014 01:04
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Dammit Who? posted:Also, almost every pre-conquest Aztec record was deliberately destroyed, and the vast vast majority of what we "know" about them comes from Spanish friars, some of whom were sympathetic to the Aztec peoples but all of whom had an interest in making the conquest seem justified. Too, South American native peoples aren't as well studied in academia as other ancient cultures. We can be reasonably sure that human sacrifice took place in the Aztec empire, and that it held a fairly important position in their culture, but that's also true of the ancient Chinese flinging people into rivers to appease river deities and Norsemen making sacrifices to Odin. Likewise, even the fairer, less blatantly biased contemporary sources (especially the European ones) can't really tell us if the rites of blood sacrifice were practiced to such a widespread extent (or even at all) prior to the massive social strife that came with the post-Columbian pandemics and the Aztecs' subjugation of their neighbors.
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Sep 14, 2014 01:12
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The one time I played Scion it was "long-suffering son of Tsuki-yomi in his aspect of murderous restaurant critic." Every time they met it'd be at a new place and if the staff was rude or the food was late or improperly cooked I'd have to scramble to keep them from getting murdered or at least get dad's attention back on whatever the Titans were up to this time. So mostly we just played the alien viewpoints for comedy. Terrible, terrible comedy.
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Sep 14, 2014 01:17
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citybeatnik posted:If I can't play the scion of El Santo I'm not sure I'd be willing to play the game.  Sounds legit to me. Enmáscarado, the Folk Hero. I'm going to say he's a Scion of Santa Muerte, defender of the downtrodden and victimized, who ascended after his death.
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Sep 14, 2014 01:18
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