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Yeah, the Coils really weren't that powerful and the prohibitive XP costs meant the average Ordo Dracul elder could get the poo poo beaten out of him by any ancilla or neonate.
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Jun 26, 2015 19:04
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I don't know much about the old Ordo (I never really touched VtR 1e, I got into it with 2e), but of the new one I did find the Coil of the Voivode odd. Like, the lore of the Ordo talked about Dracula not having to feed often/ever, walking in sunlight, and having utter mastery of himself. The Coils do things along the lines of the latter two, but the first one is nowhere to be seen, and the Coil of the Voivode is utterly disconnected from any of the given legends about their supposed progenitor.
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Jun 26, 2015 19:11
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Well, in my case there was a steady background noise of people saying "I love nMage's rules, but prefer cMage's background," so the Translation Guide had a target audience. I never read cDemon, though - I'm completely unfamiliar with its fandom. There's one or two posters constantly bemoaning the fact that nDemon isn't biblical demons, though. Maybe it's aimed at them? Also holy poo poo nDemons colonizing Hell sounds 
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Jun 26, 2015 20:49
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Q: isn't DtF Hell a featureless psychic void where you can't touch anything
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Jun 26, 2015 20:55
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I really like God-Machine demons, but I admit that I love actual demons from actual Hell, which exists IRL, and want to pretend to be them in a WoD game.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:59
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Attorney at Funk posted:I really like God-Machine demons, but I admit that I love actual demons from actual Hell, which exists IRL, and want to pretend to be them in a WoD game. There's this game called Beast: the Primordial
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Jun 26, 2015 21:05
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I'm not a fan of Fallen demons, largely because one of my favorite things about nWoD is its rejection of any kind of religious truth.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:06
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm not a fan of Fallen demons, largely because one of my favorite things about nWoD is its rejection of any kind of religious truth. Unless you worship a nigh-omnipotent supercomputer, in which case, congratulations, you win.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:07
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Kellsterik posted:Q: isn't DtF Hell a featureless psychic void where you can't touch anything Also the God-Machine isn't the Adversary, first of the rebellious angels, transformed and evolved into a vast animate network of cosmic machinery to keep the Creator and the Fallen alike from entering and influencing the world, and the Fallen aren't hungry dominions of sin and vice from the Lower Depths. When you're dealing with setting permutations designed to fuse two games from two game universes together, you ought to be a little flexible in altering the premises.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:08
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Roland Jones posted:Unless you worship a nigh-omnipotent supercomputer, in which case, congratulations, you win. The Gangster Communist Computer God isn't actually a deity!
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Jun 26, 2015 21:16
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm not a fan of Fallen demons, largely because one of my favorite things about nWoD is its rejection of any kind of religious truth. More accurately, it smashes several dozen pieces of religious truth together in a tiny box, shakes it up, runs an immersion blender in it, and hurls it violently at the guy who came up with Timecube.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:24
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Well, yes, but that means no one can actually go 'and so, my beliefs are demonstrably true' which is really quite nice.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:25
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, yes, but that means no one can actually go 'and so, my beliefs are demonstrably true' which is really quite nice. That was always one of the weird parts about oWoD to me. Yahweh was explicitly a thing and the Book of Genesis was canon, and nothing ever seemed to be done with that.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:43
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Roland Jones posted:Unless you worship a nigh-omnipotent supercomputer, in which case, congratulations, you win. I am pretty sure this is what people think millennials actually do anyway.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:49
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I just recently discovered the Mage chronicle book Reign of the Exarchs features a Hindu antagonist who believes the Exarchs and the Trimurti are one and the same, which I guess isn't that far off from the Scelesti Christian minister in Night Horrors who thinks the Abyss is God talking to him.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:50
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Kellsterik posted:I just recently discovered the Mage chronicle book Reign of the Exarchs features a Hindu antagonist who believes the Exarchs and the Trimurti are one and the same, which I guess isn't that far off from the Scelesti Christian minister in Night Horrors who thinks the Abyss is God talking to him. Ah, Anurati. One of my favorite characters in the book. Matt McFarland wrote that story. When I ran Reign of the Exarchs, I made her the mother of one of the PCs.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:53
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Cabbit posted:I am pretty sure this is what people think millennials actually do anyway. There are actually people who do this in transhumanist circles, though they often don't frame it as religious worship, it just happens to have almost all the hallmarks, like secret knowledge, apocalyptic thinking, moral reasoning, and the desire for a benevolent higher power to make the world sensible and just. They also tend to believe they'll need to create the computer rather than it already existing, being insane, and having weird rear end bio mechanical angels playing cold war spy games.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:54
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Night10194 posted:There are actually people who do this in transhumanist circles, though they often don't frame it as religious worship, it just happens to have almost all the hallmarks, like secret knowledge, apocalyptic thinking, moral reasoning, and the desire for a benevolent higher power to make the world sensible and just. They also tend to believe they'll need to create the computer rather than it already existing, being insane, and having weird rear end bio mechanical angels playing cold war spy games. DON'T MENTION THE BASILISK
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Jun 26, 2015 22:08
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Ferrinus posted:Invictus elders would not be jumping ship to the Ordo Dracul upon finding out what the Coils did because the Coils didn't actually make you more powerful. Effort spent developing the Coils is effort not spent developing the Disciplines. The old Coils were pretty expertly judged in terms of their scope and power level - they were amazingly potent and did exactly what they said on the box, but because they were pretty much all about passivity and convenience they'd only actually appeal to, you know, mystics, health nuts, and transhumanists. What does an Invictus lord care about minimizing his feeding requirements? I don't think wyrm and ascendent are too bad; it's coil of the vivolde i dislike the most. Wyrm is too focused on power and not enough on not frenzying, but it does have some amount of "controlling the beast" in it. Vivolde, though... that's just wierd. I mean, i can see it as a sort of thing the Ordo Dracul could practice, but not as a core coil. It'd be real cool as scales to a propper coil of blood though.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:10
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Attorney at Funk posted:DON'T MENTION THE BASILISK The one belonging to Roko?
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Jun 26, 2015 22:11
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Attorney at Funk posted:DON'T MENTION THE BASILISK The God-Machine could be torturing infinite simulations of you RIGHT NOW!
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Jun 26, 2015 22:13
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For those of you who don't like the new coils, it does pretty much say that you're free to use the old ones considering the three in the book are not in any way the only three that Ordo members worldwide have developed.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:35
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The thing is, the old Coils are largely stronger than the new Coils. Good luck joining a Vampire 2E game being like "hey so I know there's this progression that gets you kinda anemic frenzy-related powers over the course of five dots, but I'mma buy a massively influential frenzy power as a single dot instead. Cool? Cool."
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Jun 26, 2015 23:44
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Ferrinus posted:The thing is, the old Coils are largely stronger than the new Coils. Good luck joining a Vampire 2E game being like "hey so I know there's this progression that gets you kinda anemic frenzy-related powers over the course of five dots, but I'mma buy a massively influential frenzy power as a single dot instead. Cool? Cool." Anyone who prefers the new Coils shouldn't be running Vampire anyway.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:48
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Ferrinus posted:So what? So you do not see the difference between "Nah, I can just keep on feeding off of mortals" and "I need to turn you supernaturally-potent beings into meals"? Elders don't always end up in torpor of their own free will. More often, quite the opposite. Vampires are parasites/predators. They like to pretend they aren't but every one of them knows it, deep down, and they turn people into food, but they're typically comfortable being victimizers when they can pretend it's not the case. The moment someone starts looking at them as an edible morsel, suddenly it stops being so easy to ignore. The social powers that let elders feed give them the power to stay alive but unbound but they're still making themselves beholden to their lessers who likely feel uncomfortable being a piece of meat. Sorcery, meanwhile, takes time and still requires you to have a vampire available to feed off of. They all tie you further to other Kindred, make you more vulnerable, and give them a reason to fear you, while the Coils don't. The Ordo Dracul elder is just fine feeding every so often on a cow. You guys keep doing what you're doing. Mm-mm. Beef blood. This is before we even get to the point where we discuss how Ordo Dracul elders can refill their Vitae pools off of any convenient source nearby, meaning they're able to restock quickly during a fight, whereas your Invictus elder is pretty much running on whatever they have in reserve. All in all, the Dragon's pretty solid here.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:05
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Yes, the Coils are basically unmatched when it comes to convenience and are one's single best option for avoiding dealing with other vampires. Where's the problem?
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Jun 27, 2015 00:15
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I think next time I run vampire, the Ordo will just be happy to teach everyone who wants to learn Coil of Beast 1 in exchange for only a minor boon or something. They'd consider it their part in maintaining the Masquerade by making sure all the vampires in the city have no excuse when it comes to Wassail or Rotschreck in a populated area. It'd be one of the reasons they're an accepted part of the court. Heck, Blood 1 too - massively decreasing the amount of feeding that needs to take place on a night-by-night basis for the entire domain is in everyone's best interests.
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Jun 27, 2015 01:31
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My long-time Vampire character always believed that would be a good idea, but the sad fact is that teaching Coils is hard, learning Coils is harder, and a lot of vampires who try to develop them just go insane forever instead.
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Jun 27, 2015 01:45
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Well if you just want the WOD-ish flavor, PbtA has Urban Shadows which is kind of a quasi-WOD setting (probably closer to adult Monsterhearts). Someone is in the process of hacking it to add WOD lines (mix of new and old), but personally I don't think they did a very good job translating the NWOD stuff. Kellsterik posted:At one time I tried to run nMage in FATE but it didn't go long enough to really play with the rules much. Yeah, I do like FATE and FAE is pretty streamlined, but the aspects have always felt a little flimsy to me. I agree that US isn't quite what I'm looking for. I've been toying with a PbtA hack that focuses on a binary between the "Lie" - being a mortal statblock and profession - and the "Truth" which represents the magical powers and greater universal truths. I'd also like to ditch the grimdark grimdarkness of nWod and switch it up to a more of a "Price of Power" type deal. A little more Unknown Armies than Awakening. The GM soft moves would be along the lines of: - Barf forth contradictions - Strip away reality to reveal the truth - Punish mages for their hubris - Reveal the price of power - Reconcile humanity with what comes before and after - Keep the Liars from the Truth. Player moves would be something like: - When you tamper with Power beyond you control, take 1 hubris and Roll +Gnosis. On a 10+ hold 3, on 7-9 hold 1. Spend hold 1-for-1 to: +Steal a fraction of that power for yourself; +Unleash hell on your allies and enemies; + Free something meant to be chained; + Learn or hide a lethal Truth; + Break an essential fact.; Generally as players advanced their mortal shell would begin to lose power, suffer consequences, and become unhinged, while their magical powers and awareness rise to fill gaps. The Gnosis tree would be a straightforward and limited mode of advancement, and each campaign would start at Gnosis -1 or 0 and advance as the players reveal more truths. But I'd also like for there to be room to ditch all of the Awakening baggage. Maybe there's no watchtowers, no vampires, etc... so the players and GM could fill in relative "Truths" which are explored more and more as the players poke at the strings of power.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:04
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Ferrinus posted:My long-time Vampire character always believed that would be a good idea, but the sad fact is that teaching Coils is hard, learning Coils is harder, and a lot of vampires who try to develop them just go insane forever instead. I don't have a 2e book handy but I do not believe the rules support that assertion.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:35
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The rules don't support the assertion that it's harder to become a millionaire than it is to get in decent shape and learn to code or something, either. Vampires don't actually write themselves into being according to the character creation and advancement rules listed in the corebook.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:43
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Ferrinus posted:Yes, the Coils are basically unmatched when it comes to convenience and are one's single best option for avoiding dealing with other vampires. Where's the problem? I'm not sure I'd call it a problem, per se. It just begs the question of "Why don't the Ordo Dracul run everything?". For me, that's a plot hook. There's the potential for a heck of a lot of high Blood Potency elders out there somewhere, so where are they? What're they up to? I kind of want to say at least one figured out Dracula's legacy and is sitting on the French Riviera somewhere, enjoying the sunshine and sipping a pina colada.
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Jun 27, 2015 04:42
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Axelgear posted:I'm not sure I'd call it a problem, per se. It just begs the question of "Why don't the Ordo Dracul run everything?". For me, that's a plot hook. There's the potential for a heck of a lot of high Blood Potency elders out there somewhere, so where are they? What're they up to? As far as I remember, it notes in a lot of Ordo fluff that the Ordo are relatively small, give basically no shits about political masturbation unless it directly serves their research, tend to not be that good at actually maneuvering Invictus-style politics when forced to, and are way too busy chasing after the dream of becoming Super Dracula to actually run anything. Ordo-run cities are extremely weird outliers. If the Invictus, Sanctified, and most Carthians are constantly in a three way grudge match over political dominance, the Ordo are the guys in the seats throwing popcorn, and the Crone are either off in the forest a few miles away or are the people trying to bomb Parliament with the more extreme Carthians.
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Jun 27, 2015 04:51
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What if the Ordo Dracul was a secret society and not a "secret society"
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Jun 27, 2015 05:01
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Axelgear posted:I'm not sure I'd call it a problem, per se. It just begs the question of "Why don't the Ordo Dracul run everything?". For me, that's a plot hook. There's the potential for a heck of a lot of high Blood Potency elders out there somewhere, so where are they? What're they up to? Because convenience isn't power. Investing heavily in the Coils actually detracts from your ability to shape the world around you and overpower or outmaneuver your opposition, because you're focusing on eliminating drawbacks that vampires are perfectly equipped to just... deal with. It's like asking why ascetic health nuts don't rule human society. Each one's digestion and cardiovascular health are so good! Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 05:04
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tatankatonk posted:What if the Ordo Dracul was a secret society and not a "secret society" There's a version of them in Danse Macabre that has an actual secret society inside the Victorian style ""secret society"" of the Ordo, which kidnaps vampires with wild abandon to experiment on them and fuel the creation of even more ridiculous Coils. Dracula - or at least a guy who can actually make a really good claim of being Dracula - is one of the heads.
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Jun 27, 2015 05:04
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tatankatonk posted:What if the Ordo Dracul was a secret society and not a "secret society" This is how I typically try to run the Ordo; dual-membership isn't a maybe, it's a matter of course. Members only speak in code, and meet masked, to conceal their identity. The Kogaion actively enforces rules about who can interact with who and only the Kogaion knows all the members. Career members of the Ordo typically devote their entire life to mono-focused studies or become guardians of people or sites. Most 'casual' members are ranking members of other Covenants, like the Invictus. I don't like the idea of the Ordo as a covenant the way other covenants exist; I don't like the idea of Ordo meetings (I don't really like caucuses) and I don't like the idea of the Ordo having an 'agenda'. The Ordo is an idea that supports other agendas, and saps you for whatever you can contribute to the cause.
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Jun 27, 2015 05:10
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The Ordo were more fun in Dark Ages where they actually were a genuine cross-covenant secret society. It's such a good plot hook for intra-city politics that maybe the Invictus Sheriff and Carthian rabble rouser who publicly hate each other actually belong to the same secret society on the sly and spend a lot of their time together getting really good at being vampires. Discovering that key vampires throughout the city are pretty much part of the freemasons would be a terrifying thought to an Invictus or Sanctified, especially when being a mason gives you phat powers. Working out who in the city seems to be avoiding confrontation with who, digging for evidence, doing one of those red string diagrams to work out who's a heretic, trying to bring the Ordo down while it rallies. That would be a hell of a campaign. Or, you know, you could run them as the covenant that explicitly only do stuff that nobody else cares about, c'est la vie.
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Jun 27, 2015 15:56
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I dunno, I kind of like the idea of one covenant being the weirdo loner off to do their own thing, with just enough weird powe and objectives weird enough that even the Invictus most entrenched in their own politcal maneuvering can't afford to forget about them completely.
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Jun 27, 2015 16:22
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Latest Beast update is up. It's the chargen/mechanics chapter and it is the least changed yet. This is just really, really disappointing.
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Jun 27, 2015 19:56
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