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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I like the idea that serving the literal rulers of reality gives you The Easy Magic, but the Cool stuff seems like something best kept away from the Empowered Middle Management of the Fallen World. Who then see the guys on the other side of the fence messing around with the Cool stuff and, being power-grabbing assholes, either convert for it or steal it, giving them access to it in the long run anyway.
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Jul 24, 2015 01:47
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There's lots of things serving the literal rulers of reality can give you, though. The question is, what should it? Speaking as someone who likes The Cool Magic, I want it. I want the cool magic. You shouldn't get cool magic by growing up and putting away childish things and beginning a stable and lucrative management career - you should get cool magic by being the kind of obsessive psycho every Diamond Order and at least swathes of the Free Council encourage you to become. If, instead of joining the army, you crack open a copy of Street Sword, you should actually end up deflecting streams of assault rifle fire with the blade of your katana while trained soldiers look on aghast. It's like - imagine if Cypher was, as his reward, charged up with Matrix-warping superpowers sufficient to at least match Neo's. That wouldn't scan.
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Jul 24, 2015 01:48
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Daeren posted:Who then see the guys on the other side of the fence messing around with the Cool stuff and, being power-grabbing assholes, either convert for it or steal it, giving them access to it in the long run anyway.
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Jul 24, 2015 01:54
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:You've now described a narrative with stakes and tension. This differs from the situation I think you intend to support. Yeah, but a narrative with tension is different from "You don't get cool powers because you're the magical middle management," because the Exarchs would probably see the disconnect between promising power for obedience and the guys disobeying getting toys they don't hand out that don't actually endanger them beyond the philosophy behind the people who have them. Or maybe not! They're assholes, after all. Also, I don't think of Seers as just growing up and being a middle manager. Their book points out that the Pyramid is hardly a stable, cushy job, it's full of people who want to rip you apart and take your spot while the people you're giving obedience to are watching you for even the slightest bit of subversion. You're not settling in as an accounts manager in the Ministry of Mammon, you're doing obsessive cult poo poo about the ideology of amassing supernal power by amassing material wealth. I do agree with Ferrinus that the conflict there is people wanting to get the gently caress out of a viper's nest, but I think that it's less one side being more persuasive and more both having a grass-is-greener thing going on for the other side's disenfranchised.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:04
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Daeren posted:Also, I don't think of Seers as just growing up and being a middle manager. Their book points out that the Pyramid is hardly a stable, cushy job, it's full of people who want to rip you apart and take your spot while the people you're giving obedience to are watching you for even the slightest bit of subversion. Wait, you said it wasn't like being a middle manager. Ha ha! Just some office humor for you. But seriously the poisonous ever-shifting cutthroat conspiracy elements aren't at all at odds with what I'm saying. Every mage wants power... but what kind of power? I put it to you that Seers are Seers because they want temporal power, power that flows down from the existing system, power that manifests in perks and privileges and ease of living. If they cared more about wielding magic, wielding the greatest and mightiest magic, wielding magic no matter who says not to, no matter what happens - if they cared more about wielding magic than benefiting from magic, they wouldn't be Seers. They wouldn't be part of the edifice whose primary purpose is to constrain what magic men may wield. In general, I think it's part of the genius of Mage that the protagonist faction is the one that will tend to appeal to/resonate with the kind of instincts people bring to games of play-pretend, while the antagonist faction is the one that sensible people would actually join if they were actually for-real making decisions about their own life and generally taking things seriously. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 02:11
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Malcolm X posted:So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called "Uncle Tom." He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro. Now obviously an elfgame about fantasy wizards is not the same as real-life slavery and racism and civil rights, but this is the sort of thing that Pentacle/Seers is meant to evoke.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:02
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Aside from the ridiculousness of you using a Malcolm X quote, the Seers are explicitly not Uncle Toms because they do have a material interest in the status quo, they do have representation under the status quo, and they are its architects and enforcers, not its sycophantic slaves. The Seers are the Exarchs are the Seers.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:09
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The great thing about this hobby now versus twenty years ago is twenty years ago, we would have just compared our fictional wizard factions to the struggle against white supremacy faced by American Blacks in the context of their own history without a single thought about it being ridiculous, embarrassing, or entirely inappropriate. Now, we know that it's all of those things -- but instead of just, say, not doing that, instead we acknowledge that it's ridiculous, embarrassing, and entirely inappropriate, and then we go ahead and let that poo poo fly regardless.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:11
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I wouldn't say it's completly off base. Seers aren't the same as Exarchs, and though many aspire to become Exarchs most will certainly fail - hell, maybe the idea of ever reaching the pinnacle of the pyramid is itself a lie and they're all going to fail. Seers aren't the archons of the demiurge, they're the servants and cheerleaders of the archons of the demiurge. Of course, all that doesn't prevent it from being a really, uh, charged example.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:13
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The struggle of the Pentacle vs the Seers is the struggle of D&D fans vs d20 Modern fans.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:24
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tatankatonk posted:Aside from the ridiculousness of you using a Malcolm X quote, the Seers are explicitly not Uncle Toms because they do have a material interest in the status quo, they do have representation under the status quo, and they are its architects and enforcers, not its sycophantic slaves. The Seers are the Exarchs are the Seers. It's also a bad quote because House Slaves really weren't treated better by their Masters.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:26
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's also a bad quote because House Slaves really weren't treated better by their Masters. Yeah, the false consciousness he's talking about doesn't work with the Seers because it buys into the ideology of racial superiority, and the necessity of one group permanently being the servants of the other, for the good of both . A "house negro" doesn't believe he will one day be "the master." In the ideology of the Iron Pyramid, you do believe that, and the ideology of upward movement very much believes in that future transformation, regardless of the actual chances of it happening. Now, let's not ever talk about this again
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Jul 24, 2015 03:33
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Attorney at Funk posted:The struggle of the Pentacle vs the Seers is the struggle of D&D fans vs d20 Modern fans. *gurps a lil* oh, excuse me
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Jul 24, 2015 03:49
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tatankatonk posted:Now, let's not ever talk about this again
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Jul 24, 2015 03:53
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Daeren posted:
Agreed, I'm dumb.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:00
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Dammit Who? posted:*gurps a lil* oh, excuse me Get lost, Technocrat.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:10
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Dammit Who? posted:*gurps a lil* oh, excuse me Greetings, fellow banisher.
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Jul 24, 2015 10:57
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So what does that make Star Wars RPG fans? Sithlesti?
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Jul 24, 2015 11:02
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I'm having trouble understanding damage in nWoD. I have the book here in front of me but I'm having problems registering it in my head. Could anyone give me a baby rundown?
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Jul 24, 2015 12:11
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Roaper posted:I'm having trouble understanding damage in nWoD. I have the book here in front of me but I'm having problems registering it in my head. Could anyone give me a baby rundown? Three types of damage: bashing, lethal, aggravated. If your Health is filled up with bashing damage you're knocked unconscious. If it's filled up with lethal or aggravated you're loving dead. Damage wraps around, so that if you take more bashing damage than you have Health then it becomes lethal. Without any kind of supernatural healing, one box of bashing damage heals every 15 minutes, one box of lethal heals every 2 days and one box of aggravated heals every two weeks.
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Jul 24, 2015 12:34
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Roaper posted:I'm having trouble understanding damage in nWoD. I have the book here in front of me but I'm having problems registering it in my head. Could anyone give me a baby rundown? You have a health track. It's 5+Stamina boxes long. For most people this is 7 boxes long. You have three types of damage: Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated. Bashing is 1 line. Lethal is 2 lines. Aggravated is 3 lines. When you take X Bashing damage, you fill X boxes with a single line. When you take X Lethal damage, you fill X boxes with 2 lines each. When you take X Aggravated damage, you fill X boxes with 3 lines each. If you have filled all your boxes with (at least) 1 line, and take Y Lethal damage, the Lethal overwrites the Bashing. If you had 7 Bashing and took 3 Lethal, you end up with 3 Lethal and 4 Bashing. If all your boxes are filled with at least 1 line and you take Aggravated damage, it also overwrites; first it overwrites any available boxes with 1 line in them, and then ones with 2 lines in them. If you have 4 Lethal and 3 Bashing, and take 2 Aggravated, you end up with 2 Aggravated, 4 Lethal, and 1 Bashing. If you take 2 more Aggravated, the first point overwrites the Bashing, and the second point, since there's no more bashing to overwrite, starts overwriting the Lethal. If you take Bashing or Lethal damage, but all your boxes are filled with Bashing or Lethal, you upgrade the damage one step. For example, if you have 7 Bashing, and you take 3 more Bashing you add the 3 new lines on top of the old lines. This gives you 3 Lethal and 4 Bashing. If you have 7 Lethal and take 3 more Bashing and/or Lethal, you write the 3 new lines on top of the old lines. This gives you 3 Aggravated and 4 Lethal. Both Lethal and Bashing upgrade Lethal to Aggravated; i.e. even though Lethal is drawn with 2 lines, it just adds one extra line to Lethal. Damage is always sorted left-to-right, with the most severe damage in the leftmost boxes, and the least severe in the rightmost boxes. If you have at least one line in the third-to-last health box, you take a -1 dice penalty to all actions. If you have at least one line in the second-to-last health box, you take a -2 penalty instead. If you have at least one line in the last health box, you take a -3 dice penalty instead. When you have 1 line in the rightmost box, you have to roll Stamina every turn of combat to stay unconscious (not subject to the -3 penalty). When you have 2 lines in the rightmost box, you immediately fall comatose until it's healed. When you have 3 lines in the rightmost box, you're dead.
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Jul 24, 2015 13:00
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Part of me wants to like Werewolf the Forsaken, but there's one thing I can't get my mind around: How do the Urathra exist? They're charged with a thankless task protecting people who they explicitly don't care about by and large, and the people they protect would likely gun them down if they knew what they were, even if they could understand what the Urathra do and why they do it. After that, you have spirits, who generally hate the Urathra and will kill them if they can get away with it, occasionally hunting them down if it benefits the spirit in question. After that, you have the Pure, who are more numerous, better equipped, are generally more friendly with spirits than the Urathra are, and live mostly to see the Urathra die. Yes they are weaker to silver than the Urathra are, but they're morally prohibited from using it (else they start going crazy). Not only that, the Pure are sadistic, psychotic assholes who make vampires look normal by comparison. If your players lose a fight to them and they're not squirming in their seats listening to what those assholes do to the character and their loved ones, you aren't roleplaying the Pure correctly. Mostly what I've used it thus far is a Saints Row-like game where if it moves, it's probably okay to kill it in a grotesque fashion. Have they addressed this at all with 2nd edition, or is the game still THE WEAKER THAN YOU DESERVE TO DIE! YOU'RE WEAK! DIE BITCH! Even though Apocalypse had problems ( <- understatement of the year candidate), it at least had a way to make the world slightly better, so you're not asking "Why are we doing this again?" It doesn't seem like it's a Roguelike rpg where the goal is naked survival. Is Second Edition still Bad Cops who can Turn Into Wolves?
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Jul 24, 2015 21:32
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TwoQuestions posted:After that, you have the Pure, who are more numerous, better equipped, are generally more friendly with spirits than the Urathra are, and live mostly to see the Urathra die. Yes they are weaker to silver than the Urathra are, but they're morally prohibited from using it (else they start going crazy). Not only that, the Pure are sadistic, psychotic assholes who make vampires look normal by comparison. If your players lose a fight to them and they're not squirming in their seats listening to what those assholes do to the character and their loved ones, you aren't roleplaying the Pure correctly. This is the part that really bugs the poo poo out of me. The Black Spirals at least sort-of-kind-of made sense, as the Agents of the Wyrm were loving everywhere and dominated the equivalent of Umbrella Corp? and of course having a giant world-ending cosmic deity back you up tends to help. The Pure were the ones who have largely spurned their spiritual allies, and Predator Kings at least are luddite xenophobes, so uuhh. Yeeeaaaahh. Second edition itself is less bad cops and more YOU ARE THE HUNTING POP CULTURE INSPIRED APEX PREDATORS WHO HUNTERLY HUNT THE PREY WITH YOUR AGES OLD HUNTER POWERS FROM THE PENULTIMATE HUNTER-FATHER TO KILL WITH THE KILLING URGE OF THE HUNTER AND MUCH MURDER DEATH IS HAD RARH. You hunt everything. You don't specifically have a job or a task. I personally thought they were going to push the Idigam as a sort of galvanizing cosmic horror force that give the Forsaken, and Uratha in general, a thing to focus on (maybe even push the idea of Pure and Forsaken having to preform the ages old cliche of teaming up to kill a common foe?) but ..no we got nothin'. I've been reading through the 2e book again lately and I'm just not sure what the hell the theme or focus is anymore. For how overly specific and confining 'spirit cops' is, at least it was Something? Now its just one facet of the Hunt. WtA had its issues, yes, but at least it has some broad focuses and themes, of which hunting was one but not the entirety of their being. The opening question in old editions of 'When will you Rage?' was very prevelant. Its basically an expression of youthful anger, adrenaline and self-destruction fueled toward a world that is terrible at large thanks to horrible entities and faceless corporations... okay so basically *punk with more Starship Troopers and slasher violence. But there was a reason to fight, and a possible hope of making things less lovely even if you all have to die come Ragnarok. Forsaken doesn't really have anything like that besides, I guess, familial unit stuff. It reminds me too much of The Walking Dead... WtA is arguably one of the less cloying Classic lines in terms of metaplot, too, but that is just my opinion. Strength of Many fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 23:28
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TwoQuestions posted:Mostly what I've used it thus far is a Saints Row-like game where if it moves, it's probably okay to kill it in a grotesque fashion. Have they addressed this at all with 2nd edition, or is the game still THE WEAKER THAN YOU DESERVE TO DIE! YOU'RE WEAK! DIE BITCH! What are you talking about? When was it ever? What's going on and where am I?
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Jul 24, 2015 23:43
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Strength of Many posted:The Pure were the ones who have largely spurned their spiritual allies Err, this is about as backwards as you can get. The Forsaken killed Father Wolf, and want spirits to stay on the far side of the gauntlet, thereby pissing off almost everyone. The Pure believe spirits are right to be angry and leverage this hate for the Forsaken into getting bigger, beefier spirits to work with them against the Forsaken, and are far more able to get spirit allies due to this. Strength of Many posted:Second edition itself is less bad cops and more YOU ARE THE HUNTING POP CULTURE INSPIRED APEX PREDATORS WHO HUNTERLY HUNT THE PREY WITH YOUR AGES OLD HUNTER POWERS FROM THE PENULTIMATE HUNTER-FATHER TO KILL WITH THE KILLING URGE OF THE HUNTER AND MUCH MURDER DEATH IS HAD RARH. The theme of Werewolf was refined from 'spirit cops 24/7' to "spirit cops, with other discussions of marginalization, non-traditional familial bonding, being in a liminal state in society, sins of the fathers," and generally a bunch of stuff about stress, unconventional/guerilla warfare, and desperately trying to plug the holes of a world that's falling apart bit by bit. There's still a lot of Apocalypse DNA in Forsaken, it just scrubbed off the ecoterrorist paint job.
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Jul 24, 2015 23:58
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Ferrinus posted:What are you talking about? When was it ever? What's going on and where am I? I remember the Harmony page going on and on about how normal people don't kill things weaker than them, and due to werewolves' instincts were utterly pitiless. That made it hard to take them seriously, and I mostly ran joke games with the Werewolf rules instead of trying to engage with the standard Werewolf PC, which morally resembled the Always Chaotic Evil werewolves from 1st edition D&D. Sure they're trying to protect humans, but humans are weak so they deserve to die. gently caress humans. Daeren posted:The theme of Werewolf was refined from 'spirit cops 24/7' to "spirit cops, with other discussions of marginalization, non-traditional familial bonding, being in a liminal state in society, sins of the fathers," and generally a bunch of stuff about stress, unconventional/guerilla warfare, and desperately trying to plug the holes of a world that's falling apart bit by bit. There's still a lot of Apocalypse DNA in Forsaken, it just scrubbed off the ecoterrorist paint job. This actually sounds interesting, I may have to get it now. TwoQuestions fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 00:00
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TwoQuestions posted:I remember the Harmony page going on and on about how normal people don't kill things weaker than them, and due to werewolves' instincts were utterly pitiless. That made it hard to take them seriously, and I mostly ran joke games with the Werewolf rules instead of trying to engage with the standard Werewolf PC, which morally resembled the Always Chaotic Evil werewolves from 1st edition D&D. Sure they're trying to protect humans, but they're weak so they deserve to die. gently caress them. It's got a few warts, but I personally think the themes are overall a lot clearer from the getgo than the 1e core. At the very least, 1e Harmony was probably the worst Morality spinoff, whereas 2e's Harmony is a double-sided scale that benefits actual balance between 'being a person' and 'being more like a spirit'. As for killing humans, it's less that all weak things deserve to die - that's the Predator Kings' schtick - and more that sufficiently callous werewolves have a very jaded eye on humanity. If someone's loving things up badly enough when it comes to the territory, they have to die, period. They got kids? Oh well. He's not being killed because he's weak or an idiot, he's being killed because if he's left alone he'll make a whole lot more people suffer in the long run. Now, when it comes to things less black and white, like a dude who's just doing his job and won't take a hint and stop trying to rezone that block of brownstones you're using to keep a horrible spirit trapped even after you put the squeeze to him? That's where you're meant to feel kind of lovely/conflicted. If you leave him alive, it's likely that spirit will do horrible things to a lot of people when it gets out...but the alternative is killing a guy who, in terms of human morality, has done nothing wrong and has no real culpability in the matter. It is possible, iirc, to declare a Sacred Hunt on someone and count as fulfilling it when you've neutralized them as a threat even if you haven't actually straight up murdered them, but I'm not sure about that, and that leaves loose ends that might come back to bite you.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:11
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TwoQuestions posted:I remember the Harmony page going on and on about how normal people don't kill things weaker than them, and due to werewolves' instincts were utterly pitiless. That made it hard to take them seriously, and I mostly ran joke games with the Werewolf rules instead of trying to engage with the standard Werewolf PC, which morally resembled the Always Chaotic Evil werewolves from 1st edition D&D. Sure they're trying to protect humans, but humans are weak so they deserve to die. gently caress humans. Even deliberately read for maximum misanthropy, the 1E Harmony chart only let you get off scott free for killing people in self defense or when otherwise imperiled or provoked. You've just plain 100% made the rest of this stuff weakness therefore death stuff up, which is pretty easy to tell because it's incredibly stupid. Like, stupid to the point where you yourself are forced by the basic integrity shared by all humans that you made no attempt to engage with it and used it purely for the sake of mockery. Please stop with this nonsense.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:12
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Daeren posted:Err, this is about as backwards as you can get. The Forsaken killed Father Wolf, and want spirits to stay on the far side of the gauntlet, thereby pissing off almost everyone. The Pure believe spirits are right to be angry and leverage this hate for the Forsaken into getting bigger, beefier spirits to work with them against the Forsaken, and are far more able to get spirit allies due to this. I just want the broader strokes of Apocalypse, which mostly came from the very metaplot they try to avoid. As I said before it feels directionless at times and mostly about survival and savagery with your surrogate family, which again, comes off like The Walking Dead and any other (post-apocalyptic) survivor story. I can understand why some people like that but its very not much my thing. Plus other splats can do the strange familial bonding thing too, its just more expected of the Werewolf line. Not necessarily the Black Hats of the Wyrm, I definitely prefer the Pure and Bale Hounds and spirit ridden over the Black Spiral Dancers and Fomori, and nwod mechanics to owod are hands down better, but.. idk I want more of a sense of purpose in these kind of games I guess. Or at least some intrigue and mysteries to latch onto besides who has been pissing in our turf recently. edit: controversial opinion time; Forsaken's Fera are also pretty dull or awful, Apocalypse's Fera were dumb but fun in a stupid way. I suppose its that black comedy side of Apocalypse is part of what has turned everyone away from it. But sometimes Forsaken, and nwod in general, rubs me as being too drat serious about itself. Strength of Many fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 00:26
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Ferrinus posted:Even deliberately read for maximum misanthropy, the 1E Harmony chart only let you get off scott free for killing people in self defense or when otherwise imperiled or provoked. You've just plain 100% made the rest of this stuff weakness therefore death stuff up, which is pretty easy to tell because it's incredibly stupid. Like, stupid to the point where you yourself are forced by the basic integrity shared by all humans that you made no attempt to engage with it and used it purely for the sake of mockery. Please stop with this nonsense. Damned if I can find my book now, but I clearly remember that even before the First Change, the example they used was if a store got robbed the werewolf-to-be didn't feel bad for the owner. He was weak, therefore deserved to get robbed by the dude with the gun. One can only assume this gets more pronounced as Morality is replaced by Harmony. It isn't so much "gently caress humans", as "gently caress the weak, humans are weak, so gently caress humans, unless there's an army of them". Their whole moral philosophy looks like Be Spirit Cop, and Might makes Right, and the first thing seems really arbitrary. The only reason given that they protect humans and do their Spirit Cop jobs is because Luna said to. Only the strong survive, and only the strong deserve to survive. I know it's Apocalypse, but look at the Get of Fenris and Red Talons, they were all KILL THE WEAK, all the time, and that sentiment more than made it into Forsaken. Strength of Many posted:I just want the broader strokes of Apocalypse, which mostly came from the very metaplot they try to avoid. As I said before it feels directionless at times and mostly about survival and savagery with your surrogate family, which again, comes off like The Walking Dead and any other (post-apocalyptic) survivor story. Which I can understand why some people like that but its very not much my thing. Plus other splats can do the strange familial bonding thing too, its just more expected of the Werewolf line. Also this, in more clear words that I was putting it.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:29
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TwoQuestions posted:Damned if I can find my book now, but I clearly remember that even before the First Change, the example they used was if a store got robbed the werewolf-to-be didn't feel bad for the owner. He was weak, therefore deserved to get robbed by the dude with the gun. One can only assume this gets more pronounced as Morality is replaced by Harmony. "Only the strong survive, and only the strong deserve to survive" is the philosophy of the Predator Kings, not the philosophy of the werewolves or of Harmony in general (and I'm saying this who thinks that Harmony on the whole was lovely and best replaced with Humanity or outright ignored). In general, Forsaken claims that werewolves lack the same instinctual aversion to conflict and violence humans have, but that you jump from "a werewolf doesn't recoil from theft or combat" to "kill the weak" says a lot more about you than it does about Werewolf.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:24
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Apocalypse benefited from the core concept fitting into a 30 second elevator pitch. With Forsaken, the guy's still going on about Father Wolf and Spirits. And now he's following me out of the elevator into the lobby, I've only got thirty minutes for lunch and don't want to spend it with this jerk.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:29
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I feel 2e has a pretty simple elevator pitch. "Okay, so a werewolf pack is basically a family of hunters and killers, and they hunt and kill people who threaten their territory. And spirits, which hate them because of an ancient betrayal. They hunt humans, spirits and things in between, because that's their sacred task.' And, you know, an episodic game of hunting poo poo and getting in trouble for hunting poo poo? I'm cool with that.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:43
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Werewolves are a concrete metaphor for the boundary between civilization and the wild. The fact that they are both wolves and men would probably say this loud enough but they also go on to represent the boundary between flesh and spirit. They like to keep all of those things separate while at the same time having fundamentally human needs and motivations. That right there should be enough to fill most people's chronicles.
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Jul 25, 2015 01:50
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Finally found the Harmony text again online, and it turns out it's a Harmony 6 sin to kill humans or wolves needlessly, though it can be read to be sinful to kill needlessly at all. It does make it perfectly clear humans are no more special than any other animal, so if you hit one with your car or something it's no big. Oddly enough it's still a sin to kill Pure Ones even if they're trying to kill you, but you can kill scores of humans if it means protecting the Urathra secret without degeneration rolls. So not so much they hate humans for their weakness, it's they just don't give a poo poo other than the ones they care about. I must have mixed it up in my head with the Get of Fenris and Red Talons who were all about killing the weak in their midst, and that bloodlust for the not-strongest caused no small amount of conflict between tribes in Apocalypse. What gets me though is that in such a world where any one of the threats arrayed against the Urathra could genocide them if they so chose, and where very much motivated to do so, but for some reason didn't. The Urathra are the only ones standing in the way of the Pure One's dream of werewolf supremacy, despite being outnumbered, spiritually outgunned, and outflanked at every turn. Sure they worked together against global existential threats like the Indigam, but otherwise the Pure One's top prey were Urathra. That doesn't even count the government sponsored werewolf hunting teams that aren't subject to Lunacy, and they carry silver arms. The themes behind the game are good and all, but for the People to be besieged on all sides endlessly by vastly superior foes strains belief.
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Jul 25, 2015 02:17
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I think the trick is that none of those forces can get it together enough to cooperate with one another.
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Jul 25, 2015 02:23
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Mendrian posted:I think the trick is that none of those forces can get it together enough to cooperate with one another. From what I remember and have just looked up to remind myself, the Pure Tribes are explicitly more numerous than the Urathra, and they have less qualms about killing werewolves, and they're not hunted by spirits like Urathra are. Unless you're willing to houserule it down (and I do), for every Urathra there's a good 3-5 more experienced Pure Tribes. I own The War Against the Pure, so I'll give it another look. From what I remember off the cuff, there's 2 scenarios. 1) Luna decides she's had enough of the Pure Tribe's poo poo, and gave the Urathra more and better spiritual arms to kill Pure. 2) The spirits revolted against both the Pure and Urathra for reasons unexplained, now the werewolves left have to whether the siege.
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Jul 25, 2015 02:32
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It should be noted that Uratha don't really have that big a problem killing werewolves if they think they deserve it. Kind of got an entire tribe that specializes in this.
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Jul 25, 2015 02:56
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Mors Rattus posted:It should be noted that Uratha don't really have that big a problem killing werewolves if they think they deserve it. Kind of got an entire tribe that specializes in this. The part of the Oath that talks about not killing other werewolves is treated about as seriously as most Christians treat "Thou Shalt Not Kill/Murder." That is to say, good as a general guideline, but sometimes they think a motherfucker's really got it coming, or that it's justified in current circumstances, or they do it even though they'll feel horribly guilty about it.
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Jul 25, 2015 03:00
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Generally I treat the Pure as the kind of werewolves that werewolf hunters are able to isolate and target mostly, and while they aren't explicitly "attacked" by spirits or hated by them in the same way, they have the opposite and equally dangerous problem of being open to spirit influence and subjugation and worst of all spirit politics. The Pure have a lot more to deal with than strictly just fighting the Forsaken, the way I see it, and that can help balance them as an antagonist despite the whole "outnumbered and outgunned" narrative. I also tend to play the Forsaken as more willing to work together. Predator King philosophy is ultimately anathema to working together even within their own tribe for any goodly amount of time, the Ivory Claws tend to be extremely aloof from the other two tribes. The Fire-Touched are explicitly the tribe that is most numerous and that's because they are willing to recruit, and they have a problem with zealotry and organization that is similar to say, the Sabbat in oWoD where a good amount of them are probably not exactly at a high level of involvement, information, or means. Each of the three Pure tribes kind of represents a different threat, rather than altogether a joined one, and I like that. I play the Predator Kings as the reason you don't go too far outside known territory, the monsters in between the points of light, while the Ivory Claws are specifically the ones that singularly hunt and kill their own kind, like a vile family of killers. The Fire-Touched, with their themes of disease and rabies on top of the religious schtick, are the whole "danger to our family" narrative that I think functions a bit differently than the insidious threat of Bale Hounds. Fire-Touched instead represent an "alternative", something that celebrates being a werewolf rather than, as the name Forsaken suggests, treats it as a burden. An infectious idea.
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Jul 25, 2015 03:29
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