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Does anyone have a link to that fanmade PDF that broke down the Arcana in Mage by Practice? It was something like "Here's some examples of Weaving for the Arcana etc etc"
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May 7, 2015 17:02
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FewtureMD posted:Does anyone have a link to that fanmade PDF that broke down the Arcana in Mage by Practice? It was something like "Here's some examples of Weaving for the Arcana etc etc" http://www.modernfables.net/mark/primals/docs/TheArcanaofCreativeThaumaturgy.pdf This one?
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May 7, 2015 18:10
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I'm currently running a hunter game that is about three criminals in a cyberpunk setting who have turned to hunting as a means of getting cash (main fence buys supernatural parts and vampires don't ash unless they are completely killed). We have a big guy with an axe, a potion master and a an ex-druid who just learned to use a spirit animal. Anyone have some tips about making magic parallels for non mages? The elixir girl, to make a new one, tells me the intended effect, I give her a dot tier (using elixirs as a merit) that she must be at to use it and then rolls Intelligence + Medicine (herbology) to determine it's general effectiveness. She has a sorta bag of holding that holds all her potions but can only take one of each and must replenish at home. I'm thinking that tier 5 potions (invisibility, temp high damage soak, etc.) Should require getting an ingredient that is difficult to acquire (werewolf tail, Gangrel claw, demon eyes) but only needs to be acquired once. She's resisting because she's investing in medicine but doesn't use it for anything else and thinks the merit tax should be enough.
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May 8, 2015 19:34
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Inzombiac posted:I'm thinking that tier 5 potions (invisibility, temp high damage soak, etc.) Should require getting an ingredient that is difficult to acquire (werewolf tail, Gangrel claw, demon eyes) but only needs to be acquired once. She's resisting because she's investing in medicine but doesn't use it for anything else and thinks the merit tax should be enough.
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May 8, 2015 19:43
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Sorry, those were bad examples. Invisibility, temp agg claws, mind reading and such. Basically, they are stagnating a bit and need better excuses to go hunt harder creatures. They have Templars breathing down their collars to kill all non-humans but no PCs have taken an oath of the cloth.
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May 8, 2015 20:14
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Just a short question- does the 20th Anniversary edition of V:tM's rules match with the newest nWoD ones? I'm going to try run a game for some mates next week, and while I mostly like the fluff and stuff for the lines, my nostalgia for the video game makes me want to keep the Malkavians, Toreadors etc. Also because part of me want to have the endgame being 'everyone against Ravnos/Tzimisce/Ravnos and Tzimisce's illegitimate Mary Sue daughter' or summat of the sort.
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May 9, 2015 23:59
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CommissarMega posted:Just a short question- does the 20th Anniversary edition of V:tM's rules match with the newest nWoD ones? I'm going to try run a game for some mates next week, and while I mostly like the fluff and stuff for the lines, my nostalgia for the video game makes me want to keep the Malkavians, Toreadors etc. Also because part of me want to have the endgame being 'everyone against Ravnos/Tzimisce/Ravnos and Tzimisce's illegitimate Mary Sue daughter' or summat of the sort.
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May 10, 2015 00:11
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Nope, V20's still oWoD rules top-to-bottom, just with stuff cleaned up and made consistent between all the various versions of disciplines/bloodlines/etc. floating around in splatbooks. BUT the rules are completely self-contained so you could just, run a V20 game straight-up out of the book instead of doing anything with the nWoD/VtR/ Blood and Smoke stuff. You could also pick up the Vampire Translation Guide on DTRPG if you want a reference for converting oWoD concepts to nWoD rules. It's pre-second edition though, so it might not sync up 100% any more.
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May 10, 2015 00:14
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GimpInBlack posted:You could also pick up the Vampire Translation Guide on DTRPG if you want a reference for converting oWoD concepts to nWoD rules. It's pre-second edition though, so it might not sync up 100% any more. Yeah, I think I'll do this. It'll be my first time running WoD, both old and new, so if I'm going to make any screwups, they might as well be official ones, thanks!
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May 10, 2015 04:10
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In V20 news, the next book Lore of the Clans was up for a "live proofing session" that is currently up on YouTube. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I like the show of transparency to the KS backers and wonder if any one else had any opinions.
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May 11, 2015 14:47
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This weekend most of my players swore up and down OOC that their characters would never commit murder and had never killed anybody. This group includes several people playing elders. Additionally, I found this in the coordinator report: quote:Domain census and recruiting new members: Several new players are interested in Werewolf, and intend to form a pack. A few are possibly interested in Vampire but are put off by the competitive atmosphere. ...maybe I should just cancel game and hold Diplomacy sessions until they acquire a taste for backstabbing.
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May 12, 2015 21:58
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Nah, just produce lots of lunatic evil NPCs "back for revenge" for poo poo these pantywaists did 100 years ago and have their vampire moms tell them on Twitter "told you to kill that guy when you had the chance".
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May 13, 2015 04:44
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Pope Guilty posted:This weekend most of my players swore up and down OOC that their characters would never commit murder and had never killed anybody. This group includes several people playing elders. Holding Diplomacy sessions would probably backfire since after that they' d just never want to speak to each other ever again.
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May 13, 2015 11:29
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OPP published more Beast stuff, this time regarding Lairs: http://theonyxpath.com/beastlairs/
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May 13, 2015 19:38
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Apparently Cleveland is the serial killer capital of America. Being a terrible human being, I thought that the city would make a great setting for the WoD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM
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May 13, 2015 20:07
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MonsieurChoc posted:Apparently Cleveland is the serial killer capital of America. Being a terrible human being, I thought that the city would make a great setting for the WoD. Speaking as someone who lives there, it really would and I would have done it if my group was willing to play WoD.
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May 13, 2015 20:29
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Draxion posted:Speaking as someone who lives there, it really would and I would have done it if my group was willing to play WoD. I'm thinking Hunter-focused, with plenty of the other critters to go around? And heavy use of Slashers?
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May 13, 2015 23:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm thinking Hunter-focused, with plenty of the other critters to go around? And heavy use of Slashers? Don't forget you can have the river catch on fire and still have the setting be fully accurate.
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May 14, 2015 06:37
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Pope Guilty posted:This weekend most of my players swore up and down OOC that their characters would never commit murder and had never killed anybody. This group includes several people playing elders. Maybe introduce some NPC's that start loving them over? I mean I dunno, this is such a weird problem to have with a vampire game.
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May 14, 2015 12:27
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Hipster Occultist posted:Maybe introduce some NPC's that start loving them over? My operating theory is that they're nice people OOC and that they don't want to be mean to each other IC. Which I guess is better than them being dicks IC and having it bleed into OOC (I knew a guy back in 2000 or so who quit LARPing, saying that being a manipulative jerk was starting to bleed into his actual personality and he felt it wasn't healthy for him to keep playing), but it makes the game a bit off from what we're ostensibly going for. It does raise the question of why you're playing Vampire if you want to be Lawful Good, but right now my plan is to scour their backgrounds for things I can dangle in front of them that multiple players will want and only one can have. There's also a part of me that suspects a lot of the younger players view all RPGs through the lens of D&D/Pathfinder and can't imagine why they would be expected to work against other members of the party (where "the party" = "the Camarilla"), but I can't exactly assign them five-page papers on how the Camarilla has a level of disregard for the welfare of its individual members that the Hierarchy of Stygia would raise an eyebrow at.
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May 14, 2015 13:46
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The solution that the writers of Vampire have given to the problem of players being too "party friendly" is to turn your Cam game into a Sabbat game.
Gerund fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 14:30
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Pope Guilty posted:There's also a part of me that suspects a lot of the younger players view all RPGs through the lens of D&D/Pathfinder and can't imagine why they would be expected to work against other members of the party (where "the party" = "the Camarilla"), but I can't exactly assign them five-page papers on how the Camarilla has a level of disregard for the welfare of its individual members that the Hierarchy of Stygia would raise an eyebrow at. I think this is a place where showing is going to be much more effective than telling. Don't be afraid to use NPCs to demonstrate what a backbiting, infighting, corrupt, and petty "organisation" the Camarilla is. Throw the PCs in the deep end of the Prince's reindeer games. Maybe he assigns them to "investigate" an innocent vampire with the aim of wrongly executing them. But the framed individual has irrefutable blackmail dirt on the Prince, showing that the Prince is worse than they are! Who do they side with?
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May 14, 2015 15:01
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Showing backstabbing through NPCs can sometimes work in my LARP experience, but it also just as often seems to lead to an us-against-the-ST mentality from the same good-guy playerbase. It always seems like pulling teeth getting the younger players to embrace the PvP aspects of vLARP. Either they don't want to be mean, or when someone actually does start going head to head, one side quickly gets frustrated and escalates right to PKills, thus chilling out further thoughts of players taking risks against each other. They just unify and wait for the chapter bad-guys to show up so they can fight. 10 years ago it was D&D games, but also WoW and MMOs which were the big influences of people. The character-building slow accrual of XP from MMOs/LARP combined with perma-death is a hard combo for people to accept. And the people who do accept it can often have the I don't give a poo poo attitude about the whole game and can be more disruptive than conducive. Random attempts at mitigation: Giving the PCs scarce resources to fight over (feeding grounds, special sites, relics) is a good intro into the kiddie-pool of PvP. For players with Mentors or Allies who need favors, I tend to make those favors be PvP in nature rather than straight up sandbox. Incentivize PvP by hyping up players who start getting into the spirit of it. Give PvP bonuses in addition to roleplaying bonuses. Allow people who get ganked to have a starting boost to any new character to soften the loss.
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May 15, 2015 16:14
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It cannot be emphasized enough that vampire LARP suffers if every new character is constructed from a recently-embraced template and can never have an option against the players that "succeed" in PVP. Vampire is inherently a small part of a bigger world, and players should be given the option to come in having some influence in the goings on. If the players fear PVP in the LARP because they don't think they'll have fun with it, you need to restructure the systems of your LARP so that the players will have fun doing PVP. Plotting your setting to make players have to PVP to have fun has nothing to do with this.
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May 15, 2015 16:32
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I don't think it's necessarily bad for players to form death-before-betrayal style loyal groups with each other but the extent of those loyalties should be tested. It's pure drama fodder, not just tempting people to sell out the group in big or little ways (ie laughing along with the Cool Ghouls when they tell a joke about the lame need character). You can also tempt them by exploiting other times they might disagree by framing it as a chance for them to help each other - like "maybe you can get through to him that what he did was wrong". If they always choose loyalty over principle that's a valid thing but also a great source of Horror.
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May 15, 2015 16:42
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I say that if you've found a troupe of Vampire players who are actively avoiding backstabbing and killing the poo poo out of each other and derailing your plot , treasure them for now and contact the Smithsonian
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May 15, 2015 17:06
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I heard they're incorporating the God Machine Chronicle revisions back into the core book as a second edition. Is that out yet? I don't own World of Darkness and I've heard Second Edition is really good so I'd rather just buy one book, you know?
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May 16, 2015 08:06
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Covok posted:I heard they're incorporating the God Machine Chronicle revisions back into the core book as a second edition. Is that out yet? I don't own World of Darkness and I've heard Second Edition is really good so I'd rather just buy one book, you know? I think you can just buy Vampire or Werewolf 2nd edition as standalone games now, without having to go back and buy a core book at all. If you want to use one of the other lines I think you need the original core and whatever line book you're using + the free God Machine Chronicles rules update they put out.
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May 16, 2015 08:16
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To answer your other question, the WoD 2E Core is still in dev. It's currently slated for release sometime this Summer.
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May 16, 2015 08:41
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Swagger Dagger posted:I think you can just buy Vampire or Werewolf 2nd edition as standalone games now, without having to go back and buy a core book at all. If you want to use one of the other lines I think you need the original core and whatever line book you're using + the free God Machine Chronicles rules update they put out. That's pretty nice since it reduces how many books you need to buy from 2 to 1. It does make it harder to play a mortal game, but I wonder how many people play those. Speaking of which, my one and only experience with the system was a one-shot, mortal game. This was the first time any of us played with the system and the other players were mostly familiar with D&D. I had never played nWoD or anything really serious before. When I made my character, I made a concept in my mind for a person in a gritty world (member of organized crime, not one by choice, whose greatest fear is becoming comfortable with murder) and built around that idea. I picked skills and stats that matched the concept and such. Do to a miscommunication (I wanted a supernatural ability to match my ability to read people well: telepathy, maybe, but reflavored as just perceptiveness), supernatural powers got added in to the game. Essentially, I was trying to make something that felt what I heard WoD was about. When it started, all the other players were very silly and bordering on superhero. We had a little girl who killed for candy, a man who did everything with parkour, and a hobo with the power to shapeshift. It didn't really match my expectations (or the GMs, according to a chat I had) of the type of game this system supposedly provides. Now, I didn't say anything or complain during the game, I just played it out. Since it was a one-shot, I didn't have to bow out from future sessions, but I would have. Now, I know there is no right or wrong way to play a game, but I'm wondering if that experience was common or not. From what I heard, I expected a gritty, noir-esque experience where we would explore what made our characters tick while being faced with the unexplainable and dealing with politics of immortal beings. Is that off? I've never read the book or setting itself outside the rules section we read for the one-shot. On occasion, I've heard people say that it ends up as superhero game because of how the system works in play. I guess to further clarify my query, I'm wondering if this game, in play, matches what I expect of it or if no one really plays the game in the way I expected it to play? Fake Edit: Luminous Obscurity posted:To answer your other question, the WoD 2E Core is still in dev. It's currently slated for release sometime this Summer. Oh, okay then. Thank you!
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May 16, 2015 08:55
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I think what you're describing has more to do with how wide-open and nebulous a "real world" setting can be without guidelines on the specific type of game being played. People don't really know what to do so they make whatever random concept. I definitely experienced something like that when I ran Unknown Armies, although that setting is friendlier to a bunch of weirdos running around. In more specific settings for the individual gamelines I think people know more what they're working within as opposed to "anything human".
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May 16, 2015 09:27
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You can end up doing a lot of stuff with WoD. I ran a Second Sight game where the two players were a pizza delivery guy who was a minor magician and a history student/medium. That game was basically a guy ritchie crime story with weird supernatural stuff added in. That sounds a little closer to what you were expecting but it's perfectly possible to have a semi-superhero game as well. It's really a case of getting a group on the same page before character creation.
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May 16, 2015 09:59
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UrbicaMortis posted:It's really a case of getting a group on the same page before character creation. This is probably the crux of it. There wasn't too much advice given on what the game was going to be able so I guess the end results make sense. Luminous Obscurity posted:To answer your other question, the WoD 2E Core is still in dev. It's currently slated for release sometime this Summer. Actually, now that I think about it, if all the 2nd edition books are now complete so you can play without a corebook as Swagger said, what is core for? Just mortals games?
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May 16, 2015 10:22
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This was always my experience with D&D- I'd get invited to play and told to bring a character, show up with a Dwarven Cleric or something, and everybody is half-dragon or half-celestial [class from some sourcebook I've never heard of].
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May 16, 2015 10:29
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Covok posted:Actually, now that I think about it, if all the 2nd edition books are now complete so you can play without a corebook as Swagger said, what is core for? Just mortals games? As I understand it, at least, the upcoming corebook is basically for a combination of storytelling advice for mortals games, a book to sell to people who don't want to play as monsters, and (probably primarily) a collection of systems that are relevant for 2e WoD in general, but that the monster cores generally don't have space to include. The specific example I remember is the car chase and crashing rules that were in the 1e rulebook. Vampires and werewolves don't have specific rules for car chases because they're already straining at word count to fit in the stuff about actually being a vampire or a werewolf, but if you want car chase rules, you get the 2e corebook. There are various other omissions for space — for instance, Requiem 2e lacks the rules for ghosts, angels or spirits (Forsaken 2e also lacks the ghosts and angels), Tilts, or non-vampire-specific Fighting Merits. Stuff like that, useful but not essential.
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May 16, 2015 10:56
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Mortal horror games are some of the most fun I've had with the nWoD, although they do tend to be shorter and more focused than games of the various supernatural groups.
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May 16, 2015 15:38
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Covok posted:Now, I didn't say anything or complain during the game, I just played it out. Since it was a one-shot, I didn't have to bow out from future sessions, but I would have. Now, I know there is no right or wrong way to play a game, but I'm wondering if that experience was common or not. From what I heard, I expected a gritty, noir-esque experience where we would explore what made our characters tick while being faced with the unexplainable and dealing with politics of immortal beings. Is that off? I've never read the book or setting itself outside the rules section we read for the one-shot. On occasion, I've heard people say that it ends up as superhero game because of how the system works in play. I guess to further clarify my query, I'm wondering if this game, in play, matches what I expect of it or if no one really plays the game in the way I expected it to play? For what it's worth, I'm in 2 vampire games which pretty much lie on opposite ends of that Gritty Noir <------> Superheroes spectrum. Game 1: Ordo Dracul neonates trying desperately to stay ahead of the game in a place that they have no hope of dealing with. It's very "real" where we don't really want to commit murder, even on people who deserve it, are very hesistant to go into dangerous situations without lots of help, spend a lot of time just dealing with the fact that our lives are terrible, making friendships, enjoying what may be some of our last nights and trying to actually do our jobs. There's not a lot of gameplay focused decisions, like building optimised characters, making optimal decisions in combat, metagaming to do what will be a more useful action. We're roleplaying scared, unprepared normal people who are in way over our heads. It's loads of fun. Game 2: Camarilla Alastor Hit Squad Extravaganza. We're elder vampires who have a license to kill, carte blanche to do pretty much whatever the gently caress we want, loads of connections and power, a really wide reaching job description and we're all loving stronk in our own powers. We globetrot to the worst and most serious trouble spots that the Camarilla experience, roll up in our private jet, swag around the area in an armored limo bullying people until we get the information we want and then either go on a killing spree or do blood sorcery at the problem until it goes away. Unfortunately Gehenna is about to happen so we may have to get really crazy. We've all built deliberately optimised characters and our characters have enough IC knowledge about the setting that we can metagame pretty much as much as we want and we're being very direct, sensible and effective as appropriate roleplay for such badasses. It's loads of fun. Those of you who are paying attention at the front may have noticed that one of these games is oWoD and one of them is nWoD. I'll let you decide whether that means anything.
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May 16, 2015 23:42
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Man, the official forums have a lot of people who think the Setites and Baali are completely redundant.
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May 17, 2015 09:37
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Loomer posted:Man, the official forums have a lot of people who think the Setites and Baali are completely redundant. Slaves of the Aeons, all of them!
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May 17, 2015 09:43
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I've been looking at Changeling the Dreaming a little bit since finding out that they're going to do a 20th Anniversary, and the impression I get is that it was a failed attempt to do a take on that subgenre of 80s fairy-based urban fantasy like Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, Charles de Lint's Yarrow and John Crowley's Little, Big. I really hope they go back to these books, examine where the original creators fell down and go back to the drawing board. It's the oWoD game that needs it the most. While both editions are a mess (2E is at least a pretty mess) I honestly do think there's a salvageable concept there.
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May 17, 2015 10:26
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