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MalcolmSheppard posted:If they're effective. I mean the Nemean's MO is keeping his hands out of actual government except to manage crises. If you can't solve your problems with deals, oaths and duels, he takes over and punishes you for being too dumb to work things out yourselves. When something needs to be dealt with by the Consilium as a whole he herds everyone to get it done, and then leaves everyone free to do whatever afterward. If another body took over those functions out from under the ruling council that'd make him pretty mad, but if they just have a bunch of bullshit meetings, fair enough--but someone from the Noose will probably check them out. Yeah. In the sanctum and sigil book they keep mentioning that mages sometimes turn to assemblies in order to solve disputes that the consilium wont/cant solve.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:03
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In the vein of "The Nemean is a dick," the Fallen World Anthology for nMage is now out. The longest story in it features... Well, you get the idea.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:50
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Dave Brookshaw posted:In the vein of "The Nemean is a dick," the Fallen World Anthology for nMage is now out. The longest story in it features... Well, you get the idea. Do you guys take submissions for these things, or commission the stories from the in-house line writers only?
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Jan 21, 2015 22:40
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Tailfnz posted:Good God, the more I read about CtL's Miami seeing, the more I want to play or run it. Do any of the splats aside from the Demo go into more detail about Miami as a game setting? I'll glance later, but not a huge amount if I recall. There are a number of NPCs described for it in various books, particularly Autumn Nightmares. I was very fond of one of them; the Fetch for The Butcher (a high-wyrd ogre who lives in the hedge, there's a chapter intro involving him in the main changeling book). Basically, he was an amazing chef working at a restaurant with a couple michelin stars. Then he got abducted. His fetch woke up in a bar a few days later, fired for not showing up to work, and while he doesn't really remember what happened he knows that somehow he lost his real creative spark during those few days. He can still cook okay, he just can't innovate. So he keeps working at lower end restaurants, and then a few years later a weird ogre thing that he somehow is intimately connected to shows up and eats half his coworkers before running away (and into the hedge forever). Now he looks for help hunting down the monster that ate his crew, and keeps his iron chef's knife razor sharp.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:51
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If you told a White Wolf writer that they had to write a piece of intro fiction/short story without using curse words, would they have a massive rage-stroke or just look at you uncomprehendingly?
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Jan 21, 2015 22:55
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They would probably find themselves illustrated in an increasingly exaggerated and disorderly way with each successive panel.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:57
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Crion posted:Do you guys take submissions for these things, or commission the stories from the in-house line writers only? We have no in-house writers! Everyone's a freelancer! Geoff Skellams hasn't written for an rpg book in three years - I decided to use his intro from Seers of the Throne (as I wanted a Seer-viewpoint story) and contacted him to see if he'd be up for writing another. This anthology is Tristan Tarwater's first published work for Onyx Path (I think) - she's written for second edition itself, and came on recommendation from V20 Dark Ages. They work like any other book - we source writers from previous books, "industry" contacts, and the Submission pile.
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Jan 21, 2015 23:18
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Oh, interesting. I guess I'll poke around for the submission guidelines again.
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Jan 21, 2015 23:23
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The general assumption I make for Mage and Vampire is that there's enough of each (at least on the PC factions) to fill every seat in a large function room you're using for a big company dinner or something, as well as a few holdouts who don't show up to that kind of thing. Plenty, but enough so that if you gathered them all together like that you might notice somebody new without too much effort. It's the Z splats that bug me, like legacies. I mean, assume that at a base level every mage will associate more with their cabal than with any other group. And cabals are usually mostly aligned by Order, with PC groups being the main exception to this, but there's probably still regular meetings of them, which seems reasonable, in addition to any semi-regular whole-Pentacle all hands on deck meeting. But then apparently most mages get legacies, and legacies also have their own totally parallel organisational structures with different positions? The impression I got in the corebook is that legacies are very much a master-and-apprentice sort of thing where there's only a few members of any given legacy, if any at all, in any city, but then later books feel like they have entire global contact networks. Edit: While NPCs will obviously different, knowing how long it takes for the 'average mage' to hit Gnosis 5 or 7 or whatever would be nice. Hitting the second attainment in a legacy requires Gnosis 5, but to me that says "mage of significant power". On the other hand since being a Mage isn't as inherently hazardous to your health as being a vampire, I suppose it's entirely possible for the amount of mages at any given level of Gnosis until reaching the higher levels to be relatively equal. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 01:47
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Dave Brookshaw posted:In the vein of "The Nemean is a dick," the Fallen World Anthology for nMage is now out. The longest story in it features... Well, you get the idea. Also features Khonsu from Mysterium.
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Jan 22, 2015 03:08
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1 in 50k makes no sense at any population level. A gaming group of five werewolves might get away with only like 1 to 5 other werewolves in the area, but that's still like 1 in 1000 people are werewolves in a rural area, maybe even like 1 in 20 in a really rural area, plus then there's gotta be at least twice that many total Hosts, Claimed, hunters, cultists, vampires, mages, weird monsters, etc, because oblivious humans are terrible and ineffective antagonists. Mid-range towns with 50,000 to 500,000 people are worse if we're going by "one in 50k" because they would be totally barren of any "society of the night" elements especially when the PCs make up no less than 50% of that society, especially if we don't do crossover with other lines. When we start getting into the multiple millions it gets more workable as long as you don't incorporate line crossover, because then you've got at least several hundred supernatural creatures running around in secret. You really can't make sense of the population statistics in any WoD game because the correct number of supernatural of each group in a metro area is and has to be "a sufficient number to fill out all the necessary NPC roles."
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Jan 22, 2015 05:33
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With vampires, at least in nWoD, they make some attempt to explain - vampires center almost entirely on urban areas with high population density. This means there are vastly higher vampire-to-human ratios in cities than anywhere else, where you might get a single vampire for an entire rural area, simply because it's a lot harder to hunt when there aren't that many prey humans around. So the trailer park out by the farmlands has one vampire, and he's happy to be the single vampire there. Vampires also don't move between cities very often in nWoD, so they're kind of like islands of vampire society in a vast sea of empty space.
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Jan 22, 2015 05:52
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Mors Rattus posted:Vampires also don't move between cities very often in nWoD, so they're kind of like islands of vampire society in a vast sea of empty space. Points of Darkness, you might say.
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Jan 22, 2015 06:12
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bewilderment posted:The general assumption I make for Mage and Vampire is that there's enough of each (at least on the PC factions) to fill every seat in a large function room you're using for a big company dinner or something, as well as a few holdouts who don't show up to that kind of thing. Plenty, but enough so that if you gathered them all together like that you might notice somebody new without too much effort. Legacies, I believe, are supposed to not all exist in the same world at the same time and only the ones you want to use are assumed to exist. So, basically, the gigantic conspiratorial ones like the Left-Hand Path Tremere are intended to be dominant and major features of your World of Darkness if you use them as written.
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Jan 22, 2015 06:20
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tatankatonk posted:If you told a White Wolf writer that they had to write a piece of intro fiction/short story without using curse words, would they have a massive rage-stroke or just look at you uncomprehendingly? I have a hard time writing an outline without using the Scottish Comma, let alone anything longer. Also, if you want to add your name to our "potential freelance" list, this blog post is still the best way to do it. Matt added some follow-up bits/FAQs here. I've got some good writers through the submissions, and periodically check what we've got to pull in more. I know a whole chunk of people on Promethean 2nd wrote on the book because of their submissions.
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Jan 22, 2015 10:25
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Tezzor posted:1 in 50k makes no sense at any population level. A gaming group of five werewolves might get away with only like 1 to 5 other werewolves in the area, but that's still like 1 in 1000 people are werewolves in a rural area, maybe even like 1 in 20 in a really rural area, plus then there's gotta be at least twice that many total Hosts, Claimed, hunters, cultists, vampires, mages, weird monsters, etc, because oblivious humans are terrible and ineffective antagonists. Mid-range towns with 50,000 to 500,000 people are worse if we're going by "one in 50k" because they would be totally barren of any "society of the night" elements especially when the PCs make up no less than 50% of that society, especially if we don't do crossover with other lines. When we start getting into the multiple millions it gets more workable as long as you don't incorporate line crossover, because then you've got at least several hundred supernatural creatures running around in secret. You really can't make sense of the population statistics in any WoD game because the correct number of supernatural of each group in a metro area is and has to be "a sufficient number to fill out all the necessary NPC roles." Werewolves population doesn't quite work the same though: they cluster around places of power and usually stay out of cities, so even if they're population is 1 in 300 000 or soemthing, the spread is different. For example, it's stated multiple times that there are only about 800 Stargazers left in the entire world.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:27
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Also, in general, there could easily be cities with far fewer vampires than you'd expect them to support and others with far more, or whatever. There's definitely X tigers per Y humans, speaking globally, but that doesn't mean the actual local ratio is consistent between Canada and Siberia.
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Jan 22, 2015 19:11
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Ferrinus posted:Also, in general, there could easily be cities with far fewer vampires than you'd expect them to support and others with far more, or whatever. There's definitely X tigers per Y humans, speaking globally, but that doesn't mean the actual local ratio is consistent between Canada and Siberia. Well that doesn't really rebut my point that the only real standard of how many supernaturals are in an area is "however many there need to be for plot and setting purposes," not any consistent math you can apply to any location. If you want to say that globally there are 50k humans for every vampire that's fine, but then trying to apply that math to derive the number of vampires in any specific location is always going to be faulty for one or more reasons. The number of vampires globally is completely tweakable, too. Maybe there are only 1000 vampires in the whole world and they all live in London. Maybe vampires are so viciously territorial they can only support a population density of one per square mile, so they're both less numerous and far less centralized and more likely to be found in small towns and suburbs than in the default assumption. Maybe 10% of the population are vampires with more power to cover things up than assumed in the default setting. Maybe a majority of the adults on earth are either supernatural or aware of it, but an instant before they try to talk about it in public they always die horribly and mysteriously.
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Jan 23, 2015 00:32
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Ferrinus posted:Also, in general, there could easily be cities with far fewer vampires than you'd expect them to support and others with far more, or whatever. There's definitely X tigers per Y humans, speaking globally, but that doesn't mean the actual local ratio is consistent between Canada and Siberia. Actually that gives me a good idea for a chronicle setting: an oil boomtown or something that's previous had very few vampires getting an influx because a bunch of low-tier vampires from the big city see a fertile hunting ground with no entrenched power structure and ship in. Kind of a gold rush narrative except instead of gold it's blood.
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Jan 23, 2015 01:28
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I personally always liked the idea that there are lot more vampires in the 'places inbetween' than anyone realizes. It's just they never talk to anyone because other vampires are loving assholes. So you've got your gangrel guy living in the woods eating deer and hikers, being mistaken for Bigfoot or the Chupacabra from time to time; your Nosferatu lairing in a tourist-trap cave system, a vampire who doesn't even know there are clans living in a trailer park.
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Jan 23, 2015 03:15
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Loomer posted:I personally always liked the idea that there are lot more vampires in the 'places inbetween' than anyone realizes. It's just they never talk to anyone because other vampires are loving assholes. So you've got your gangrel guy living in the woods eating deer and hikers, being mistaken for Bigfoot or the Chupacabra from time to time; your Nosferatu lairing in a tourist-trap cave system, a vampire who doesn't even know there are clans living in a trailer park. One of my favorite things from Requiem is that brood of Ventrue who just chill out as kings of a trailer park. No real ambition, no towering skyscrapers, just a trailer park.
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Jan 23, 2015 03:54
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Pope Guilty posted:One of my favorite things from Requiem is that brood of Ventrue who just chill out as kings of a trailer park. No real ambition, no towering skyscrapers, just a trailer park. Yeah, the Prince of the Trailer Park and his crew of ghouls is pretty amazing.
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Jan 23, 2015 04:13
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Loomer posted:I personally always liked the idea that there are lot more vampires in the 'places inbetween' than anyone realizes. It's just they never talk to anyone because other vampires are loving assholes. So you've got your gangrel guy living in the woods eating deer and hikers, being mistaken for Bigfoot or the Chupacabra from time to time; your Nosferatu lairing in a tourist-trap cave system, a vampire who doesn't even know there are clans living in a trailer park. That idea is literally supported by some of the bloodlines and material. The Oberloch bloodline sees itself as an extended family and mostly lives out in the boonies in the periphery of rural towns. The book says that they're so isolated some of the Oberlochs aren't really aware they're vampires, or if they are that there can be other kinds of vampires with powers besides what they have.
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Jan 23, 2015 21:40
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Not only are the Oberloch a thing, but they share their niche with another Gangrel bloodline, the Mabry, which seems to be based entirely around the diner in From Dusk Til Dawn. The Mabry, and arguably the Overloch, are so niche -- and their weaknesses so severely, with the Oberlochs' stats degenerating over time and the Mabry just getting flat -2 to all rolls over a mile away from their Mabry buddies -- that they're unplayable for PCs unless you're playing an Oberloch game or a Mabry game. Hopefully bloodlines will get away from that kind of stuff going forward. edit: Like there is a whole sub-genre of bloodlines for vampires that exist out of normal urban court structure, and for the most part they're only feasible for NPCs.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:54
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I don't see anything wrong with niche Bloodlines, it's a cool piece of the setting. Not everything has to be playable.
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Jan 24, 2015 00:11
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Except that wordcount and page space are best saved for poo poo that is playable, usually, or at least important enough that GMs will want to use them for NPCs that will do more than just be a guy you visit when out in the boonies for one session. Like, I agree it's neat, but 'neat' is less important than 'adds to game experience.'
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Jan 24, 2015 00:26
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Sure, but there's a million bloodlines out there. It's cool to take time for a few that are "And sometimes a crazy person bends their blood into horrifically unstable pretzels of failure and torment." rather than "Twinkzor McCheatsheet has 3 reduced cost Physical Disciplines" or "If you actually try to use this power the Storyteller will throw a rock off your head". It's nice to give people ideas on just how bad, sad, or just plain weird being a vampire can get.
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Jan 24, 2015 01:37
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Play Bohagande and nothing else. "Whats that? You wanted to actually feed on a mortal? Too bad. He turns out to be a Malleus Maleficarum hunter. lovely luck, huh?"
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Jan 24, 2015 01:38
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Boogaleeboo posted:Sure, but there's a million bloodlines out there. It's cool to take time for a few that are "And sometimes a crazy person bends their blood into horrifically unstable pretzels of failure and torment." rather than "Twinkzor McCheatsheet has 3 reduced cost Physical Disciplines" or "If you actually try to use this power the Storyteller will throw a rock off your head". It's nice to give people ideas on just how bad, sad, or just plain weird being a vampire can get. That sure is a nice middle you're excluding there.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:36
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I like the idea of keeping actual, published bloodlines to a degree of functional playability, and releasing 'NPC-only' (by nature or by default, e.g. the Oberlochs) bloodlines as seperate web-only items for a buck or two. Want a neat little bloodline for <x> niche purpose? Grab a couple of the online ones. Want bloodlines of broader playability, those are in the books.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:43
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I actually do like the idea of weird setting/game-type specific bloodlines et al being planted in the line just so that the average book-reader can imagine a different game than the assumed normal.
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Jan 24, 2015 14:33
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Loomer posted:I like the idea of keeping actual, published bloodlines to a degree of functional playability, and releasing 'NPC-only' (by nature or by default, e.g. the Oberlochs) bloodlines as seperate web-only items for a buck or two. Want a neat little bloodline for <x> niche purpose? Grab a couple of the online ones. Want bloodlines of broader playability, those are in the books. But as far as actual books go, I definitely agree that anything that goes into them should be playable by the players since statistically speaking they are the vastly larger demographic.
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Jan 24, 2015 18:11
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I don't mind NPC-only game rules, or rather game rules that anyone could use but which are only really practical for NPCs. I just tend to read them as fiction (in the sense of, like, chapter fiction or whatever rather than "they're not real"). It's the same as NPC statblocks. It's not relevant to my character what Dispater's Destiny Bane is. but it's a fine thing to put in a book. Game rules have the power of language.
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Jan 24, 2015 18:37
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I've been thinking about the 1s problem with large dice-pools. I was considering something like a "two wrongs" house rule, where 1s can cancel out either a success or another 1. Because we roll a lot of 1s. Does anyone have anything similar or better? Maybe dropping it entirely might be more effective?
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Jan 25, 2015 22:58
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I thought ones stopped cancelling out successes way back in VRev. It's been like a zillion years now so I might be remembering wrong.
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Jan 25, 2015 23:04
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I'm reading through some 1e Wraith, so that's entirely possible. I also just got to the part about auto succeeding if your pool meets the difficulty number - I have no idea how I never noticed that before.
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Jan 25, 2015 23:14
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Gilok posted:I thought ones stopped cancelling out successes way back in VRev. It's been like a zillion years now so I might be remembering wrong. 1s definitely cancel successes out in both Vampire Revised and Vampire 20th.
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Jan 25, 2015 23:53
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moths posted:I've been thinking about the 1s problem with large dice-pools. I was considering something like a "two wrongs" house rule, where 1s can cancel out either a success or another 1. Because we roll a lot of 1s.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:42
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Ugh, no. I gave up on nWOD after my first game, where I succeeded on precisely zero checks. That TN 8 crap just killed me.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:11
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When I ran Wolf20, everything ended up being TN 6 because I couldn't remember to make it harder before the roll. It worked pretty well, except when 1s show up to poo poo the bed.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:17
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