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See, i was hoping to provoke a little magetalk i could use for my chronicle. Excellent.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:16
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As a for-instance, I like springing 'Hey, this looks like a pattern of vampire attacks and then surprising hunters with that tongue parasite thing from one of the vampire Night Horrors books. It's a surprise that only works -once- with a single group but it's a very effective one.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:41
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I'm broadly dubious of the necessity of changing "the rules" up on even experienced players with regards to what kills vampires or whatever. I think each kind of supernatural is designed such that even if your character has somehow managed to read a monster's entire corebook, any individual example of that supernatural is going to have surprises in store for a potential hunter and will have the capacity to act as a believable and scary antagonist even if they're a totally vanilla example of their kind. Obviously there are weird cryptids that look like werewolves or whatever at first glance but are actually far stranger, but you shouldn't feel the need to use them all the time. Odds are, if you've got players who know all about the World of Darkness and yet want to participate in a game set inside it, you've got players who actually do want to run into Daeva or Moros or whatever rather than off-brand knockoffs of same.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:54
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I dunno, my WoD-fan players seem to enjoy when I pull out more weird-rear end folkloric vampire types, too.
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Aug 20, 2015 05:30
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The penangallan freaks everybody out.
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Aug 20, 2015 05:41
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Suddenly Mothman. No one will expect it.
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Aug 20, 2015 15:28
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MonsieurChoc posted:Suddenly Mothman. I totally want to play Indrid Cold.
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Aug 20, 2015 15:31
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MonsieurChoc posted:Suddenly Mothman. real talk mothman creeps me the gently caress out
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Aug 20, 2015 15:41
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Okay, so second question: How do I make a hunter story that isnt just monster-of-the-week?
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Aug 20, 2015 15:45
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Hunter stories, generally, are about monsters. However, they're also about Hunters. Emphasize the effects of their actions, and the actions of the monsters, on their community and organization. Did the monster kill someone? Were they important? Who are their family? How do people feel about it? Was it a young girl, and the community is in mourning? Is someone starting a panic about whatever group they hate? If the Hunters are part of a larger organization, what is that organization like? What themes does it evoke? Do they have to worry about internal politics? Are there rival Hunters? You can also play up the "Are we the real monsters?" angle. Hunter, more than any other game, is about straight up killing things, and the things they kill are often indistinguishable from people. This should be profoundly uncomfortable. Put moral dilemmas in their path. Child vampires are great for loving with people. What if the monsters are killing rapists? What if the white supremacist group contacts them with information on a monster who happens to be black? Oops, turns out your civil servant dad has been a vampire's ghoul for the past decade and that's how he beat the cancer. Now he can't get his fix because you killed his vampire, and the cancer is back.
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Aug 20, 2015 16:19
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Pope Guilty posted:I totally want to play Indrid Cold. I've been wanting a minor gameline/singular blue book about Ufolore for a long time now. Ever since the nWoD core, which was full of Mothman stuff. You come back from a 2 weeks vacation only to find out everyone is convinced you were there all along. Someone that looks like you lived your life for two weeks.
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Aug 20, 2015 16:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:I've been wanting a minor gameline/singular blue book about Ufolore for a long time now. Ever since the nWoD core, which was full of Mothman stuff. If you don't already have GURPS Illuminati get a copy right the gently caress now. It's literally an entire book about running paranoid conspiracy campaigns.
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Aug 20, 2015 16:33
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It's called Changeling
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Aug 20, 2015 16:33
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Pope Guilty posted:If you don't already have GURPS Illuminati get a copy right the gently caress now. It's literally an entire book about running paranoid conspiracy campaigns. I have very few GURPS books, so I'll get right on it.
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Aug 20, 2015 16:49
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Gilok posted:You can also play up the "Are we the real monsters?" angle. Hunter, more than any other game, is about straight up killing things, and the things they kill are often indistinguishable from people. This should be profoundly uncomfortable. Put moral dilemmas in their path. Child vampires are great for loving with people. What if the monsters are killing rapists? What if the white supremacist group contacts them with information on a monster who happens to be black? Oops, turns out your civil servant dad has been a vampire's ghoul for the past decade and that's how he beat the cancer. Now he can't get his fix because you killed his vampire, and the cancer is back. This is the most perfectly sophomoric imagined moral dilemma I've seen here.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:11
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The tea kettle's whine hasn't fully reached its peak when the Story Teller leans forward, his smile a mixture of excitement and barely suppressed shame. "But what if," he says. The rest of the group tenses. They're used to it. It never gets easier. "But what if," the Story Teller says, "Oskar Schindler was also a vampire?"
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Aug 20, 2015 17:13
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tatankatonk posted:This is the most perfectly sophomoric imagined moral dilemma I've seen here. It's not a dilemma at all if you're the Thule. Now instead of one target, you have two!
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Aug 20, 2015 17:15
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DJ Dizzy posted:Okay, so second question: How do I make a hunter story that isnt just monster-of-the-week? Attorney at Funk posted:I've said before, and I still believe, that Hunter is the scariest WoD line both in terms of how bleak it is and in terms of how uncomfortable and sinister the questions it asks of its players and player-characters are.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:27
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Cryophage posted:
Okay. Kishoutenketsu is derived from the Qijue poetic form. Here's a translated example: Daughters of Itoya, in the Honmachi of Osaka. The elder daughter is sixteen and the younger daughter is fourteen. Throughout history, generals killed the enemy with bows and arrows. The daughters of Itoya kill with their eyes. Four lines. Ki - introduction. You bring in the topics, characters, etc. Shou - development. You elaborate on the introduced elements. Ten - twist. You add a new element that enables a re-evaluation of what has gone before. Ketsu - conclusion. You tie everything together. Apart from poetry, this is a common way of structuring essays, anecdotes, and plain statements. There's at least one article warning Japanese businessmen that this approach is often alienating to Americans used to five-paragraph essays. However, this is also how the classical detective story works. You have an initial incident, the detective's investigation of that incident, the key clue that breaks the case, and the conclusion that explains it all. Even the unusual Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", where the criminality is on the part of Holmes and Watson, features this same structure. If you tried to apply the five-act structure I outlined above to Star Wars, it would fit poorly. Episode IV has six-seven distinct acts. But it does track similarly to kishoutenketsu, as the climax comes with Luke using the Force/Han coming to the rescue, relying on actions that recontextualize the previous length of film, followed by a brief conclusion. What should be in anyone's mind as they think about dramatic structure is that no structure of any use is universal. Know the limitations of each structure. Also, most structures are built around limitations. Musicals are divided into two acts so that there's a intermission halfway through, so as a consequence, the climax comes halfway through, such as with Hello, Dolly!'s song "Before the Parade Passes By", where Dolly Levi resolves to pursue Vandergelder. And so on. TV shows plot around the commercial breaks.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:59
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Please do!
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Well, duh. But that doesnt really tell me how to piece together a story. "Everything sucks" isn't really the greatest motivator for keeping people invested in a game.
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Aug 20, 2015 18:00
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DJ Dizzy posted:Okay, so second question: How do I make a hunter story that isnt just monster-of-the-week? To turn the question around what you're asking is how do I tell a long-arc story with Hunter? Hunters are soldiers, mostly. Sure some of them are volunteer, and some of them are secret-FBI, and some of them are religious nuts, but they are fighting a war, and a secret war at that. Things that afflict soldiers afflict them. What happens when a commanding officer dies? What happens when close companions die or are injured? What happens when they receive conflicting orders, or when they think there's a leak in their midst? What happens when Hunters form attachments? What happens when they have difficulty integrating into normal society again? Hunters are also criminals. What happens when the police some calling? Or a different Hunter faction? What happens when innocent people get in the way? What lines won't they cross? In other words: stories that aren't monster-of-the-week are going to focus on relationships. The traditional way of handling this is to focus your sights on your relationship with a primary antagonist (such as, I don't know, a really huggge werewolf) but you can also shift the lens to other hunters. Hunter does lend itself very well to MotW stories but you have other options. Human stories are often the most engaging. If you want to go more Hollywood with it, you could turn it more into a long-term Investigation ala Penny Dreadful and similar shows. In a lot of media characters spend a relatively small portion of their time interacting with the main antagonist and most of their them preparing or following leads to be occasionally interrupted by minions of the main antagonist. Considering running Hunter in seasons consisting of between 10 and 20 sessions. Each season can focus on one antagonist. This allows you to run a longer game with more focus without the worry of running out of steam.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:20
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Daeren posted:The Panopticon Ministry is probably still high-fiving each other on top of a mountain of tass-cocaine over Google's ascendancy, and the evolution of telecom in general over the past two decades. Like, you really can't make any reasonable argument against them being the King Shits of Poop Mountain in most of the postindustrial world, magically, especially since these days the Ministry of Mammon is probably angling for the final dagger thrust into the Hegemonic Ministry, Paternoster is dealing with the slow decline of faith in much of the world, and the Praetorians are rapidly finding themselves in a world where war depends on the Panopticon's favorite toys. So what I'm getting from this, is that I should make the big bad Seer boss man Senator Steven Armstrong. Rohan Kishibe fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 19:45
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Prison Warden posted:So what I'm getting from this, is that I should make the big bad Seer boss man Senator Steven Armstrong.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:55
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Prison Warden posted:So what I'm getting from this, is that I should make the big bad Seer boss man Senator Steven Armstrong. You and your group continue to appear to be funhavers of refined taste. Though, if you want to get MGS level complicated, Armstrong might actually fit a particularly deluded Silver Ladder tyrant who appeared to defect to the Hegemonic Ministry while in truth playing for drat near every Ministry (you could make a good argument for Mammon, the Praetorians, and Panopticon at the very least) behind the scenes in order to advance his ideology.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:05
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DJ Dizzy posted:Well, duh. But that doesnt really tell me how to piece together a story. "Everything sucks" isn't really the greatest motivator for keeping people invested in a game. What tiers are you planning to use?
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Aug 20, 2015 20:22
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Tier one, maybe two. Dunno yet, I dont want the compact to become a crutch for my players. I'm thinking of setting it in the early 90s New York or Detroit.
DJ Dizzy fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 20:30
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DJ Dizzy posted:Tier one, maybe two. Dunno yet, I dont want the compact to become a crutch for my players. Each tier has a fairly distinct style. T1 is about people encountering things they don't understand or have any obvious way to understand, T2 offers a framework for dealing with the monster, T3 an understanding of what the monsters are, etc. So for T1 going to T2, a good non-episodic narrative would be to have monsters lead into other monsters, or if your players are willing to play out a bunch of ordinary people talking in a VFW hall or a Denny's, non-monstrous supernatural phenomena to begin with. Say, for example, they encounter a draugr or revenant, which leads them to a vampire, and from there to a mage, and then to a werewoof, (the mage being a Thyrsus), and then they discover that the monsters are everywhere just as they enter T2. In other words, a fundamentally mystic narrative where each encounter initiates them further in supernatural mystery until the capstone revelation, the point where, to quote Springsteen, they look into the eyes of the sun. Or just one set of associated monsters. Note that monsters absolutely shouldn't all be hostile. They should be abnormal, for sure, but not all hostile. If you want to make an apocalyptic narrative out of this, then the revelations should involve prophetic flashes too. Probably would be a good idea to disassociate it from particular monsters, too. Also, don't be afraid to include T3 hunters as monsters.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:47
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90s New York is a good setting because it's a time of big change that is shaking up a powerful city. It's the transitional period between the scummy NYC of the 70s with crack, gangs and porn theaters and the media/family friendly NYC of the 00s with billboards, Times Square and streets safe enough to bring an out-of-town field trip down. Whatever shakes up a city also changes consolidated power structures in supernatural groups.
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Aug 20, 2015 21:02
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Effectronica posted:Each tier has a fairly distinct style. T1 is about people encountering things they don't understand or have any obvious way to understand, T2 offers a framework for dealing with the monster, T3 an understanding of what the monsters are, etc. Definitely will include some Luciferge hunters as monsters aswell. Don't see much of TFV being monsters, and Malleus has that whole "act of god" going for them.
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Aug 20, 2015 22:08
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DJ Dizzy posted:Definitely will include some Luciferge hunters as monsters aswell. Don't see much of TFV being monsters, and Malleus has that whole "act of god" going for them. Cheiron make obvious, but interesting antagonists. Don't forget how cool they can be. Maybe it's low-hanging fruit to say so?
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Aug 20, 2015 23:24
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How do I make my players HATE monsters but also instill into them moral dilemma?
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Aug 21, 2015 01:55
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DJ Dizzy posted:How do I make my players HATE monsters but also instill into them moral dilemma? Make taking them out cause collateral damage.
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Aug 21, 2015 02:07
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DJ Dizzy posted:Definitely will include some Luciferge hunters as monsters aswell. Don't see much of TFV being monsters, and Malleus has that whole "act of god" going for them. Well, they might not be monsters in the same supernatural way as a vampire or werewolf, but that doesn't mean you can't use "top-secret government paramilitary murder squads" and "religious zealots with the power of God" as villains.
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Aug 21, 2015 02:08
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DJ Dizzy posted:Definitely will include some Luciferge hunters as monsters aswell. Don't see much of TFV being monsters, and Malleus has that whole "act of god" going for them.
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Aug 21, 2015 02:11
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Magnusth posted:Make taking them out cause collateral damage. I was thinking of going with the "Are we the real monsters around here"
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Aug 21, 2015 02:31
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DJ Dizzy posted:I was thinking of going with the "Are we the real monsters around here" Well, if it's some sort of harmfull spirit, as an example, make it so that to exorcise it, they must kill the person or child it's connected itself to and is drawing its power from while it goes around stealing people's souls or making people commit murder or whatever. Bam. Kill the person or the child, and well, that's a pretty good case for monstrocity.
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Aug 21, 2015 03:03
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Also play with their expectations, exploit the stress and paranoia. Sometimes the weird woman who vanishes every full moon just likes to go fly fishing at night.
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Aug 21, 2015 06:41
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The vampire runs an orphanage. Sure she drinks the blood of children, but kill her and who takes care of these orphans? An actual balance-of-evil ecosystem might also be fun to explore. The consequences of removing anything might be worse than leaving it in place.
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Aug 21, 2015 12:33
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Yeah, kill the Prince, and all the crazy bastards he was keeping in check suddenly run wild, fighting each other to see who emerges on top. Actually, that could be a great chronicle: the PCs get lucky and kill the leader of a Supernatural group in the beginning of the chronicle, causing a huge power vacuum. THye then have to deal with the consequences of this. Will they try and kill them all, possibly letting people from out of town take voer? Will they make a deal with the lesser evil to at least restore some semblance of order?
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Aug 21, 2015 12:47
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MonsieurChoc posted:Actually, that could be a great chronicle: the PCs get lucky and kill the leader of a Supernatural group in the beginning of the chronicle, causing a huge power vacuum. THye then have to deal with the consequences of this. Will they try and kill them all, possibly letting people from out of town take voer? Will they make a deal with the lesser evil to at least restore some semblance of order? IIRC this is the premise of the Vampire SAS "Reap the Whirlwind", which could be a good source of ideas.
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Aug 21, 2015 18:04
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