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Mors Rattus posted:The canonical explanation is they're extradimensional horrors trying to take over the world but it's pretty lame. Either they're an evil invading alien force or they're alternate dimension hunters trying to steal power from this world to save their own. I dunno, the photographs portion of Horror Recognition Guide, as well as the Prince of Ten Thousand Leaves in Mage, give a pretty horrifying idea of what their home dimension looks like.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:19
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How far along is Changeling? If I was just going to use 1e Lost how badly will it react to GMC rules?
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Jun 12, 2015 00:22
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It's pretty fantastic how half of the Hunter Conspiracies are later revealed to be secretly under the thumb of out-and-out monsters/witches. Mm, yes, a righteous helping of dramatic irony. 
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Jun 12, 2015 00:26
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Dave Brookshaw posted:So one of the amusing things about this meme, is that Brutal Casting doesn't actually exist. I didn't like it in the first draft of Mage's Merits, so I deleted it in the redlines. Well, now that it's not a spoiler for an upcoming product, clearly you can tell us all about it. 
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Jun 12, 2015 00:34
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Compacts and Conspiracies was either written by morons or people playing favorites. See: Aegis Kai Doru getting three suggested options like most White Wolf setting mysteries, and the "gently caress you, it's vampires" for TFV. I'm not even sure why Cheiron is the way it is- telling their average hunter that their bosses are monsters is likely to be answered with "Do I still get paid?"
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Jun 12, 2015 00:36
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I still like the idea someone posted in this thread that TFV is run by patriotic monsters who put country first. It's not because you're dead that you stop believing in AMERICA, after all.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:38
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I kind of like the second option for Cheiron, because it's always funny when aliens show up and go ".. wow, this place is hosed up!" instead of just going bleep blorp invasion.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:43
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spectralent posted:How far along is Changeling? If I was just going to use 1e Lost how badly will it react to GMC rules? Not that bad! Changeling already cleaves closely to the mortal power-scope, so a number of the GMC additions are more bang for your buck. You will have to alter the combat powers slightly to be more in-line with the GMC system (skill to defense, weapon rating to damage, not roll). On the other tack, the requirement to set expectations to combat during initiative and using dramatic consequences as a method to gain experience via beats is supet for a game of esxaping from a walking narrative that hates you.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:44
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Kavak posted:I'm not even sure why Cheiron is the way it is- telling their average hunter that their bosses are monsters is likely to be answered with "Do I still get paid?" "I got called in to see the boss the other day. He offered me a sea bishop tongue. Got it straight some some sort of Cthonian church. I asked him if it made it a sea bishop bishop tongue. Now I'm having to pull double shifts. Thanks a lot, Pope Piouseidon."
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Jun 12, 2015 00:45
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spectralent posted:How far along is Changeling? If I was just going to use 1e Lost how badly will it react to GMC rules? MonsieurChoc posted:I still like the idea someone posted in this thread that TFV is run by patriotic monsters who put country first. It's not because you're dead that you stop believing in AMERICA, after all. I love this. 
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Jun 12, 2015 00:47
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I admit, the more I think of Cheiron as strange alien dark lords who just want to make oodles of money and save the world, the more I'm actually sort of okay with that. "Boss called me in to tell me the Great Secret and how we have a hidden duty to save this falling world, lest we all be Fallen as he is, but I told him, 'Mr. Bishop, you make more figures a month than I got fingers. That's what I'm here for.' Then he called me a kindred spirit who truly understands, doubled my pay, and sent me on the worst mission I've ever seen. Still not sure if I pissed him off." Basically Cthulhu+Hank Scorpio+Umbrella could work out for a sillier game.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:I still like the idea someone posted in this thread that TFV is run by patriotic monsters who put country first. It's not because you're dead that you stop believing in AMERICA, after all. There's a vampire in one of the antagonist books that's exactly like that, except he's French.  My other favorite theory is "Mr. Burns"- there are so many supernatural creatures and things competing for influence that they cancel each other out and TFV basically functions as normal.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:55
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Did the Montreal by night book include separatist vampires?
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Jun 12, 2015 01:04
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Fsmhunk posted:Did the Montreal by night book include separatist vampires? No, it was all about shock value and over-the-top Sabbat bullshit. Man, gently caress the Sabbat. They're easily the worst part of Masquerade.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:30
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MonsieurChoc posted:No, it was all about shock value and over-the-top Sabbat bullshit. What was their goal, anyway? I played Bloodlines and all and they always just sound like they're a pack of psychos who don't get why the vampires need to hide.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:35
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Night10194 posted:What was their goal, anyway? I played Bloodlines and all and they always just sound like they're a pack of psychos who don't get why the vampires need to hide. Pretty much that, they thought they were top poo poo, humans should cower before them also they better be ready for the Antediluvians when they return (while the Camarilla's party line was 'there's no Antediluvians stop asking'). But then again what do you expect of an organization that got their mooks by literally hitting them upside the head with a shovel before draining them of blood?
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Jun 12, 2015 01:40
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Ormi posted:It's pretty fantastic how half of the Hunter Conspiracies are later revealed to be secretly under the thumb of out-and-out monsters/witches. Mm, yes, a righteous helping of dramatic irony. That kind of thing works better in the nWOD where supernaturals don't generally completely control major organizations, so their level of influence over compacts and conspiracies is actually remarkable. Like, in the new world of darkness it is not at all clear that killing literally every supernatural would improve the world such that the average guy on the street would notice or care. So Hunters end up caught in the same trap mages are, where they care a great deal about things which actually are important but which people outside their subculture quite justifiably don't give a poo poo about. Hunter paranoia is correct, they are everywhere- but only in Hunter's relatively tiny world. They end up with the choice of either staying a cell and maintaining autonomy at the price of effectiveness, or moving up into the compacts and conspiracies where they get more support and more chances to effect their goals... but are also constantly looking over their shoulders and twitchily glaring at everyone else they meet because you're all working for a thousand tiny Illuminatis, they're all in on it, you might be in on it, the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces are called aglets and their true purpose is sinister. Y'all are right that explicitly defining who's influencing what in books isn't the greatest idea, though.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:45
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Night10194 posted:What was their goal, anyway? I played Bloodlines and all and they always just sound like they're a pack of psychos who don't get why the vampires need to hide. Freedom from the antedeluvians. Cainites free to choose their own destiny!
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Jun 12, 2015 02:10
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The Sabbat basically never really got over the Inquisition and the end of the Long Night and wants to go back to when vampires could rule over mortals openly and all that. Unfortunately the lionizing of individual freedom (as the Sabbat describes it- there's a bunch of neonate Camarilla who appreciate that the Cam doesn't force them to live in a pack structure, attend rituals, or participate in Vaulderie) means that the Sabbat is terrible at organizing for much other than murder.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:40
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You know, a destiny that involves lording over the humans and descending into even deeper spirals of blood fueled debauchery.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:42
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I kind of like the alien idea for Cheiron group, except rather than extra-dimension horrors, they're just extra-dimensional people. Regular humans from our world, or one very much like it, that doesn't have vampires and werewolves and magic. Harvesting monster parts is insanely profitable because there's no way to get them on their world. They're basically strip-mining the one unique resource they've found on the alien world they've somehow discovered.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:46
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Mormon Star Wars posted:"I got called in to see the boss the other day. He offered me a sea bishop tongue. Got it straight some some sort of Cthonian church. I asked him if it made it a sea bishop bishop tongue. Now I'm having to pull double shifts. Thanks a lot, Pope Piouseidon."
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Jun 12, 2015 02:58
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I feel like the Sabbat's 'goal' morphed several times to take them from mustache-twirling boogyemen to something nearly playable. Like I never understood how the litany of 'gently caress all humans' was meant to be innately compatible with 'gently caress the Antediluvians.' I feel like at some point in the history of the Camarilla or the Sabbat someone would stand up and say, "You know, I oppose the apocalypse, but I also don't want to like, literally murder children." That's sort of Masqeruade in a nutshell though - absolutely zero nuance unless you're willing to look very very deep into the sourcebooks or make it up yourself. It's also kind of nice to play that sometimes, because it means no matter how big of an rear end in a top hat you are in the Cam, the Sabbat will always be worse.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:23
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The oWoD had an ongoing problem where enemy factions would morph into becoming playable over time until games lost their premises and degenerated into a giant sandbox filled with chargen options.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:24
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Night10194 posted:What was their goal, anyway? I played Bloodlines and all and they always just sound like they're a pack of psychos who don't get why the vampires need to hide. I loved the Sabbat, ran a bunch of Sabbat games back when oWoD was current. The best way to think of them, for someone familiar with new vampire, is like an even more hosed up version of the Sabbat. They believed that vampires had a right to do whatever the gently caress they wanted because they were made the superior species, that they were the real inheritors of the earth, and that God's law didn't apply to them. They also believed that the end of days was coming and that they were the only vampires that could stand against it, that the Antediluvians were going to try to wipe out their children, and that all the other vampire organizations were their pawns. (The bizarre thing about the Sabbat was that, in most of the endings, they were correct.) Also, because of their emphasis on freedom to be superior vampires, Satan was their enemy. They really hated Satan and demons. Consorting with them was a death penalty. Mendrian posted:I feel like the Sabbat's 'goal' morphed several times to take them from mustache-twirling boogyemen to something nearly playable. Like I never understood how the litany of 'gently caress all humans' was meant to be innately compatible with 'gently caress the Antediluvians.' I feel like at some point in the history of the Camarilla or the Sabbat someone would stand up and say, "You know, I oppose the apocalypse, but I also don't want to like, literally murder children." That's sort of Masqeruade in a nutshell though - absolutely zero nuance unless you're willing to look very very deep into the sourcebooks or make it up yourself. The way we handled that was to make it a freedom thing. People do stand up and say "I don't want to literally murder children" so if someone tries to tell you to do it you push their teeth in. Unless it's another Sabbat member, in which case you have to engage in Camarilla-style subtle politicking and deception in order to arrange their untimely demise since pushing in the teeth of other Sabbat members was frowned upon.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:35
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Also, because of their emphasis on freedom to be superior vampires, Satan was their enemy. They really hated Satan and demons. Consorting with them was a death penalty. I admit I'm not really sure how one follows the other, here.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:42
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Kai Tave posted:I admit I'm not really sure how one follows the other, here. Basically, dealing with things that would try to subvert the organization and put itself on top of the Kindred.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:48
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The Sabbat definitely underwent major tonal shifts between 1E and Revised. poo poo, originally they were treated as a clan in 1st Ed material and were a lot bigger on the 'gently caress all this secrecy bullshit' and less on the 'we are holy soldiers preparing for an unholy war' element. I personally think the best view of the Sabbat is actually the one where it's really three or four disparate factions held together as much by opposition to the Camarilla as anything else. You have your loving lunatic 'DEATH TO ALL HUMANS! LET BLOOD RAIN IN THE STREETS!' extremists - both among the shovelheads and the older members - chafing under the rule of the more conscious and self-aware elders of the sect, who aren't all that different from the Camarilla except in end goal. They enforce a masquerade, they manipulate and control the younger sect members, and they learned lessons from the many times where Vampires tried to rule openly in the past. Then you have your religious nutjobs, who are significantly weakened when Moncada dies but still have their presence, particularly in the Inquisition and the Templars. And finally, you have the Black Hand, who are the ones taking the whole 'holy soldiers for an unholy war' bit really seriously while being sabotaged by the True Black Hand, who also take the same thing very seriously but for the opposing side. On any given night, any of these factions - not to mention the oldschool Tzimisce - might be actively engaged in fighting each other as much as the Camarilla or other threats. That's the Inquisition's whole deal, even, to police the rest for infernalism etc. And this is where the Sabbat becomes weak. If they were one faction, with their numbers they could steamroll the Camarilla in a year. But they have no centralized command structure and where they do, there's actually three of them all fighting the others for power. It's almost like the Ancients wanted to set up a controlled opposition and hamstring them.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:06
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So where do the crazed Nazi Tzimisce fit in there? Because that was a thing. Really, in general the Tzimisce confuse me because they are at once extremely specific body horror vampires from this one short story, and also Eastern European voivode Dracula types.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:12
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Rand Brittain posted:Basically, dealing with things that would try to subvert the organization and put itself on top of the Kindred. I guess I've just never thought of Satan as being really interested in involving himself in vampire power struggles, to be honest.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:17
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It was the oWoD, Satan was into everything.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:21
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I guess my confusion stems from the idea that Satan is generally considered one of biblical history's biggest rebels, going against The Big Guy himself, so I figured a bunch of splatterpunk 90's neo-anarchist vampires who were all about killing puppies and going "gently caress the Man! Do whatever you want!" would at the very least have some degree of "Satan did nothing wrong" going on, but I guess they're just too rebellious for that.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:32
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BlackHatMatt posted:OK, so. Hey look they properly took notice. In that thread, Banshee46 was specifically talking about the terrible comparison/metaphor between Beasts and marginalised groups.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:33
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Kai Tave posted:I guess my confusion stems from the idea that Satan is generally considered one of biblical history's biggest rebels, going against The Big Guy himself, so I figured a bunch of splatterpunk 90's neo-anarchist vampires who were all about killing puppies and going "gently caress the Man! Do whatever you want!" would at the very least have some degree of "Satan did nothing wrong" going on, but I guess they're just too rebellious for that. What demons want is for you to sell your soul to them and do their bidding. First, the Sabbat is about freedom, and demons want to enslave you and spread the slavery. Second, Sascha Vykos didn't spend 500 years molding the Sabbat into a war engine to stand between it and the Antediluvians so that some pissant fallen angel could hijack it for its own ends. So anybody that consorts with demons dies in a fire. Mors Rattus posted:So where do the crazed Nazi Tzimisce fit in there? I dunno what short story you're talking about- the Tzimisce are pretty much straight up the vampires from the Necroscope novels, who are extradimensional fleshcrafters who are all over the world, including Eastern Europe.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:44
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Looking back, the Sabat would have been into Satan as a rebellious anti-establishment figure. But Demons in the oWod represented pre-fallen Earthbound spirits - petty gods that demand worship and subservience. oWoD demons finally came into focus in DtF, with the authoritarian Earthbound being the rebel angels' antagonists. (Removing the Judeo Christian Ser dressing was a great creative decision in nWoD - it allowed a clear, unobstructed focus on the themes of control and obedience. ) But by then the Sabat's niche as wild rebel gently caress You Dad immortals was eclipsed by actual fallen angels.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:52
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Kavak posted:There's a vampire in one of the antagonist books that's exactly like that, except he's French. Canonically, the connection between TFV and the Seers is the most boring crossover ever, which I take full credit for. TFV's budget is partially managed by a Seer controlled federally sponsored enterprise that deals with funds and disbursements for black budgets. This means that, for instance, TFV probably has a bunch of gear that is actually leased, so that through complicated schemes the money drains back into a few Seers' bank accounts. They're probably skimming the pensions, too. Otherwise, they probably have little idea what TFV, which for them is a series of spreadsheets, actually does. They fret over TFV not buying enough guns and cool cars.
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Jun 12, 2015 04:54
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Pope Guilty posted:I dunno what short story you're talking about- the Tzimisce are pretty much straight up the vampires from the Necroscope novels, who are extradimensional fleshcrafters who are all over the world, including Eastern Europe. I meant those novels, for some reason I thought it was just a short story.
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Jun 12, 2015 05:01
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Mors Rattus posted:The canonical explanation is they're extradimensional horrors trying to take over the world but it's pretty lame. Either they're an evil invading alien force or they're alternate dimension hunters trying to steal power from this world to save their own. I dunno, I kind of like the second option of them being an Alien Vigil that's looking out for our world in a weird, insane sort of way.
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Jun 12, 2015 05:29
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Kai Tave posted:I admit I'm not really sure how one follows the other, here. Demons co-opt free will. If you sell your sole to a demon, you aren't free anymore.
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Jun 12, 2015 05:35
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Any chance of like five more Horror Recognition Guides? That's probably my favorite thing WW's ever put out.
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Jun 12, 2015 05:46
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