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"I'm gonna swing this sword in a method that doesn't use the combat mechanics but still disables my opponent" would get squashed at the table, so why should the spells be allowed to do the same thing?
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May 2, 2015 17:20
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There's a reason that everyone and their brother's first thought about Mage always seems to take the form "heh, instead of zapping my enemies with Damage Bolt I prefer to use my environment to do an end run around what I assume the intended game mechanics are". It's because having two such categories in the first place always ends up leaching one of significance and rhetorical weight. "You deal 3 damage, Flavour That" doesn't feel as real as "Okay, the sword's magnetized through the air and straight into his chest. According to the weapons chart, swords deal 3 damage, so that's what he suffers." In 1E, I'd favor moving everything to an abstracted "your successes are your damage" model because that's how combat already works, but since 2E combat is based on hits for weapon-appropriate flat damage versus misses for squat, it'd make more sense in 2E if everything looked like environmental shenanigans, rather than if everything looked like a differently-colored Damage Bolt.
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May 2, 2015 17:59
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Gerund posted:"I'm gonna swing this sword in a method that doesn't use the combat mechanics but still disables my opponent" would get squashed at the table, so why should the spells be allowed to do the same thing? Or at least, what does it say about the combat system if the principal reward of magic is that you don't have to use it anymore?
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May 2, 2015 18:00
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Attorney at Funk posted:Or at least, what does it say about the combat system if the principal reward of magic is that you don't have to use it anymore? In my take-this-as-a-non-rhetorical-question opinion, it means that the combat system is where players are expected to spend their character-definition points into to Not Die, but is a very explicitly zero-sum game of diminishing returns and is not is an enjoyable process to go through for anyone involved.
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May 2, 2015 19:21
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Gerund posted:In my take-this-as-a-non-rhetorical-question opinion, it means that the combat system is where players are expected to spend their character-definition points into to Not Die, but is a very explicitly zero-sum game of diminishing returns and is not is an enjoyable process to go through for anyone involved. Yeah. It seems suboptimal for that to be the case, given how much more robust the combat rules are than any other part of the game.
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May 2, 2015 20:10
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Whatever mage ruling most brutally dunks on the moros nerds who've printed up a copy of WP:Worlds_Most_Reactive_Substances and transmute everything to francium as their sole means of interacting with the world; that I'll back.
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May 2, 2015 20:21
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Why is it Mage specifically that always inspires the fifty-page rules arguments? Are the mechanics that vague?
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May 2, 2015 20:21
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Mage is vague in scope but very precise in the intended actions. Playing Mage is like having n+1 people swinging wrecking balls of exactly half a ton of mass on a wire of exactly one hundred feet in random directions.
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May 2, 2015 20:26
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Pope Guilty posted:Why is it Mage specifically that always inspires the fifty-page rules arguments? Are the mechanics that vague? It's precise enough that when you start to sit down and think about the logical end result of mechanical interactions things can get extremely silly, while vague and often poorly laid-out enough that you can argue for fifty pages (five hundred pages if you're Ferrinus) over what the logical end result actually is.
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May 2, 2015 20:54
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Fairest are up.
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May 3, 2015 02:25
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The Fairest write-up is easily the most conceptually interesting and tonally-appropriate of any of the seeming write-ups we've seen so far, so I suppose they felt obligated to balance that out by not proofreading or editing it whatsoever. It's occasionally hard to tell what some of these sentences are even supposed to be saying. Edit: I'm not going to quote any of it here because it'd just be the entire thing, but I'm shocked this was posted in this state. Crion fucked around with this message at 02:48 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 02:39
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Definitely a different take from what I was expecting. Kinda reminds me of Werewolf storm lords. Though, the method of escape is a little confusing unless literally every Fairest returns from Arcadia with a full coterie. e: Or whatever the hell the Designed White Wolf Term for a group of changelings is. Androc fucked around with this message at 03:00 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 02:56
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I'm a bit surprised all the Escape: sections aren't going to feature some specific-to-Seeming moral or psychological compromise. I'm extremely surprised at the absolutely atrocious state of the editing. Like... they didn't just upload the wrong file or something, did they?
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May 3, 2015 03:01
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Androc posted:Definitely a different take from what I was expecting. Kinda reminds me of Werewolf storm lords. Though, the method of escape is a little confusing unless literally every Fairest returns from Arcadia with a full coterie. A "motley," unless they're changing it
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May 3, 2015 03:03
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Ferrinus posted:I'm a bit surprised all the Escape: sections aren't going to feature some specific-to-Seeming moral or psychological compromise. I'm extremely surprised at the absolutely atrocious state of the editing. Like... they didn't just upload the wrong file or something, did they? In the case of the Paths they were put up as raw first draft--no edits, just what I had for Dave. There's an even earlier "zero draft" state that developers sometimes look at before writers officially submit anything within the production cycle as well.
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May 3, 2015 06:05
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MalcolmSheppard posted:In the case of the Paths they were put up as raw first draft--no edits, just what I had for Dave. There's an even earlier "zero draft" state that developers sometimes look at before writers officially submit anything within the production cycle as well. I really do appreciate you guys putting these drafts up. Especially in the infinished/ unedited state of these early previews.
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May 3, 2015 12:53
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New mage blog: http://theonyxpath.com/supporting-cast-mage-the-awakening/ This one looks at mage's supporting cast, and it looks like sleepwalkers are getting quite a boost to their relevance - they can work as a yantra for spells, and can even maintain multiple spells for you if your sympathetic connection to them is strong enough.
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May 3, 2015 21:22
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Flavivirus posted:New mage blog: http://theonyxpath.com/supporting-cast-mage-the-awakening/ And we've managed to fit the rules for Proximi into the corebook, too!
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May 3, 2015 21:28
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Every psychic, ghoul, wolf-blood, etc. being a Sleepwalker is a pretty big change. If Dissonance actually has teeth relative to Disbelief, it'd even be a buff of sorts for mages who antagonize or get antagonized by other monsters.
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May 3, 2015 21:30
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Ferrinus posted:Every psychic, ghoul, wolf-blood, etc. being a Sleepwalker is a pretty big change. If Dissonance actually has teeth relative to Disbelief, it'd even be a buff of sorts for mages who antagonize or get antagonized by other monsters. I'm mad keen on the idea, toyed with in both Ascension and Awakening, that full mages share their societies with a panapoly of lesser talents and in-the-know muggles. But just as "Sorcerer" presented the Traditions as being full of linear mages but was then ignored by the rest of the line, things like the Proximus rules being relegated to Silver Ladder hurt the presentation of it in Awakening. We could only give a new Dynasty if we reprinted the rules, and the only writer bloody-minded enough to do so was... me. In Seers of the Throne. So... High Priority. The core Proximus rules don't take up much room (less than they did in 1e, even), but I'm not going to allow second edition's core to get printed without them. Same way I have absolutely no desire to re-explain what the Eleven Major Exarchs are every bloody book.
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May 3, 2015 21:38
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Oh, yeah, Proximi are a necessity for the corebook and in general having a few lay ritualists who get to hang with the cool kids is good stuff, but the fact that every single ghoul can remember that you threw a fireball is a pretty big deal. It means it's harder for mages to gently caress with the infrastructure of other supernatural creatures, but also harder for other supernatural creatures to drive mages out of confrontations through sheer weight of numbers. Like, having a posse of wolf-blooded at your back will no longer make your enemy's spells go horribly haywire. The fact that everyone who's even a little bit telepathic or blessed or w/e is also not a Dissonance risk means that mages have a way bigger pool of confidantes than they did before, too. In 1E you could stumble onto a a guy with ESP or a girl who knows how to whistle up ghosts... but, damnit, they're still Quiescent, so that's either a no go or it's gonna be really awkward to bring them around the lab. Which is a thing I like, actually - one bit of that writeup I'm really glad for is the acknowledgement that there are in fact friends and servants of mages who are 100% in the know, believe in magic with all their hearts, etc. etc. etc., but just... aren't allowed to ever see it, and won't even remember it if they do. One of the more poignant parts of Ascension that Awakening still had but didn't play up as much was the tragedy of having something amazing and being unable to share it. IMO the Dissonance should go farther - instead of wallpapering over a witnessed feat of magic after the fact, a Sleeper should dissociate then and there, reacting logically to a fireball without ever truly grasping it.
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May 3, 2015 21:52
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I'm extremely excited about the idea of more explicitly sharing mage society with sleepwalkers and proximi, that's definitely something i'll be incorporating into my games. I really like how 2e (and even Mummy) is emphasizing proximi, wolf-blooded, stigmatics as viable character types in mixed groups in general, a few of my players enjoy playing in these settings with mechanically simpler characters.
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May 3, 2015 22:06
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Sorry to interrupt the eternal MageChat, but I received a challenge to run a 90 minute Vampire: the Requiem mini-game on Hangouts, so I did. It was hard and had a TON of prep that we did in Google docs and such: Here are all the links. It ends more or less right when the "set up the situation" part of the game ends, so there we go. Edit: Here's the game blurb I sent in: "this is a vampire the requiem game everything in it happens on a friday night specifically friday april 24 1981 and the name of the game is "before the ghost town" JDCorley fucked around with this message at 04:14 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 04:08
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Why that date specifically? I'm guessing from the title that it's set in Britain.
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May 4, 2015 04:21
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No particular reason for the date except to emphasize the "reality" of it - it's set in a fictional (American) city of my own devising in which, over the last two years, I've run multiple nWoD games of various descriptions, lengths and themes - Vampire in the 20s, Changeling in the 70s, Hunter in the 60s, etc. Vampire in the early 1980s seemed a perfect match.
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May 4, 2015 04:25
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I like your idea of the World of Darkness, very similar to how I imagine it. What were the other games you did in Kingsport like?
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May 4, 2015 05:06
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The Vampire game I posted about a bit in the last thread. I really liked it. It was a 1920s game that I did when the Blood and Smoke rules dropped. Basically I decided that the PC coterie would all be Invictus, in a town where the Invictus were hated by the powers that be and most had been framed, driven out of town or disappeared over the years. The PC coterie was the last Invictus coterie, and with the sudden burst of Prohibition, the bar they owned was suddenly a massive gold mine instead of just one little seaside bar. So they all got rich and started expanding their turf against all the cheats, scumbags and rascals all around; also solving the disappearance of one of their Sires (Satan was responsible), some vampire hunters (if you do a vampire game and there are no vampire hunters, gently caress you) and of course, going to court and making the Prince look like poop. It was a 4 person game. There were things in this game that I had never tried before and that ended up working really well. For example, in the Coteries book it says that Invictus coteries have a set-in-stone hierarchy. There's a Primus, Secundus, etc. all the way down the line. Not only do you have to do what people higher than you in the hierarchy say, but you also have to actually pay them tribute, and of course there's elaborate feeding/hunting rules so that the people further up the chain always get first pick of any mortal you target. Often times in situations where there has to be a "PC leader" everyone goes "not it", or they nominally pick one but then nobody pays any attention to their authority. I told the group "no, gently caress that, there's a Primus, and the Primus is in charge, and there's a Secundus, and so on, all the way down the line. How rough the Primus is with that authority and how much weight you give it is up to you. But if some Invictus bro comes to town to help you, he's going to talk to the Primus. And everyone else in the Covenant is going to assume you're doing it the right way. If you don't like it, remember there's 2 NPC Vampires in the coterie so I can put one of them in charge if you really want." Suddenly everyone really wanted there to be a hierarchy. One session I turned to the Primus and told her, "Hey, you're coming up on the day of the year the rest of the coterie is supposed to pay you tribute. It's gauche to ask for something in particular, but some hints would probably not go awry." And she straight out spoke privately to everyone else in the coterie and said "Look, we're all in a lifeboat together. But one reason we haven't sunk yet is because we're doing things the right way. The Invictus way. If you give me a spool of thread, I'll take a spool of thread and be proud to call you my subject. The only thing you can't give me is nothing. If you give me nothing then we have lost faith in what we're here doing and we might as well exile ourselves." It was this really touching moment for a time when she was putting a boot on the other PCs' necks. The Atrocity system in Danse Macabre is just the best humanity system the game line has ever had. We had people humiliating their best friends and screaming at people who were writing poems about them. Because they had to be violent, ugly shits and I could not stop grinning the whole time. I imported the Arcanum from oWoD to the 1960s Hunter game as a sort of precursor to Null Mysteriis that was still willing to look into occult explanations and have a couple of hedge magicians or psychics on staff. It went really well, there was a truly awful God-Machine experiment scenario I came up with where there were some cronenbergs, Morty, and a town that was undergoing mysterious changes (buildings changing position, people switching minds, etc.) It was nutso. An angel told them not to interfere. The Changeling 1970s game fell apart a bit because the people involved didn't want to play the new Changeling (or the old Changeling either), they were just too excited about being in a game after a long time and didn't really give good feedback until about 3 sessions in when they said "meh, this isn't doing it for me". Which is fine, but it does mean I do need to get another version of the game going. The situation was that the player characters' escape was the first beacon of hope in a city full of privateers and shitheads and everyone wanted to get their hooks into them to either bring them down or lift them up. Also dealing with their mortal families (none had been gone all that long) and their Fetches. I currently have a Promethean game set with a rural electrification crew in the 1930s, an Orpheus (despite appearances this is essentially a nWoD game) game set around the time of the Time-Warner AOL Merger when all that startup money started to dry up, and a few others in mind.
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May 4, 2015 05:27
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If you still have those notes, maybe run that Changling game as a pbp here? That sounds amazing.
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May 4, 2015 05:33
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I've never had good luck with PbPs. Also I am bad at keeping track of PbPs. But thanks, I might! I actually think there might be something fun to do with epistolary or found-footage stuff in PbPs that hasn't been explored yet.
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May 4, 2015 05:34
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It says that Sleepers can't witness magic even if they believe in it, but what does "witnessing magic" mean? Do the effects still take place if you tell them to turn around, instantly create a magnificent statue out of dirt, then have them turn back?
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May 4, 2015 06:13
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Tezzor posted:It says that Sleepers can't witness magic even if they believe in it, but what does "witnessing magic" mean? Do the effects still take place if you tell them to turn around, instantly create a magnificent statue out of dirt, then have them turn back? I think if it's just a freestanding statue of dirt, the statue stays, but if there's no way that you could have made it without magic their memories of the scene will be such that they saw you make it normally. If you're actively sustaining a spell to keep the statue together, like it wouldn't stand on its own without it, then the spell unravels and the statue falls apart.
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May 4, 2015 12:32
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I'm pretty into the idea that you could be able to play an interesting low-powered game as Proximi. The best game I ever ran was a Second Sight game so I like stuff that lets people play the street-level supernaturals of the world of darkness.
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May 4, 2015 13:41
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Tezzor posted:It says that Sleepers can't witness magic even if they believe in it, but what does "witnessing magic" mean? Do the effects still take place if you tell them to turn around, instantly create a magnificent statue out of dirt, then have them turn back? What are you talking about? That statue's been around for ages.
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May 4, 2015 19:30
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No one will ever convince me that this is not how they make new Cultists of Ecstasy in the oWoD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU
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May 5, 2015 07:48
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Nah that's either a hugely successful success on a Forces ritual, or a spectacular failure on the same ritual. Mage - creating memetic sex-juggernaut plagues since 1993.
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May 5, 2015 11:01
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Ambi posted:memetic sex-juggernaut. mods namechange please
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May 5, 2015 12:16
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http://theonyxpath.com/hurt-locker-storytelling-and-red-linesdevelopment/ 19 red-lined pages of the Hurt Locker have been posted.
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May 6, 2015 18:44
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Dramatic Failure: The character bypasses the Trauma Survivor Condition and immediately develops the PTSD Condition.
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May 6, 2015 19:03
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I see that those rules conspicuously fail to mention systemic, or objective, violence. This, I claim, is ideology.
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May 6, 2015 19:56
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Ferrinus posted:I see that those rules conspicuously fail to mention systemic, or objective, violence. This, I claim, is ideology. Actually the original outline they posted did specifically mention systemic violence as a topic for this combat sourcebook, which i'm extremely curious to see how they intend to address.
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May 6, 2015 21:00
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