|
Attorney at Funk posted:Who's your favorite nWoD character and why? Frances Black, whose story shows how even somebody who seems so normal and human can be hollowed out by the Beast and left a mere reflection of who she was in life. Mors Rattus posted:Vincent Moon, eccentric pulp novelist, noted owner of fuzzy slippers, weirdo British occultist with a sense of fashion from 1947 and prophetic vampire cult master. He ruled too! God, the Mekhet clanbook owned, didn't it? .
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 09:41 |
|
|
Technically I think Kenneth Hite's a character in some mage sourcebook fiction except they murdered him in the same book so I don't think that counts, but he'd be my favorite.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:08
|
|
|
So, a few things i want to mention, which might give some insight into some of the comments in that Elricsson. I'm a danish larper, and some of his comments make much more sense in that context. First, larping is pretty big in the Nordic countries. During a survey in 2004, 8% of children have participated in larps the last month, and that number has likely risen, as far as i can tell. There are no less than two Efterskoler (bording schools wher you only take the last grades of public education, roughly corresponding to 14-17, depending on exactly when you start and stuff like that) dedicated to 'roleplaying games' (read: mostly larp) as the central form of education, and quite a few of those people and the kids running around hitting each other with swords in the forrests, graduate into propper nerds - nerds for, for some inexplicable reason, like cWoD over nWoD. There are alot of teenagers and twentysomethigs who's probably go buy a bunch of cWoD books and a masquerade fourth edition. I'm not sure if that's the same in sweden, but i know larping is really big there, too. I have a feeling that this audience might be the audience they are trying to win over. Sure, a lot of them would never ever touch mind's eye theater with a 10-foot pole, and i only think i've seen, like, one game use it, and it wasn't popular. Most games around here make their own rules system, or crib one from some other campain, which, generally, nobody really minds. However, if there were a consistant larp system in line with the prevailing sensibilities, i could see the being used, and i could see organizers paying to use official online tools to help track and manage their campain - especially since most larps are run by the local hobby group, and can likely draw on the cash flow generated by membership dues from non-larpers and likely a bigger fantasy campain by the same club. And if you somehow manage to turn these larpers into cutomers, which shouldn't be too hard, that would be a pretty good consumer base in most of the nordic countries, i think. Another interesting thing is "Official White Wolf larps will not use Minds Eye Theatre rules but be organized more like Monitor Celestra or College of Wizardry." See, these larps are very big, and they are very nordic. By big, well... CoW (college of wizardry) costs about 400 dollar to participate in, and draws players from around the world, despite being in poland (organized by danes), and it got mentions in several major american newspapers - or at least their online versions. During it, a little over a hundred people go to poland and occupy a castle for half a week pretending to be harry potter charecters. After the initial run, it kickstarted $163,118 dollar and has spawned american spinoffs and such. I wasn't at any of the monitor Celestra games, so i won't say too much, but they were set in a real-life decomissioned battleship for a battlestar galactica Larp. Keep in mind, all of this is non-profit. Now, the other thing about these games is that they could easily seem 'systemless' to the outside observer, i think. but tend to have a well-thought out structure and specific techniques in play more than 'rules.' Again, my direct expeirence comes from College of Wizardy, which was more player-driven than monitor celestra. In this sort of larp, the general 'rule' or 'system' tends to be "go with it; listen to organizers." in CoW, for example, if someone casts a spell on you, it's your perogative to choose what happens, especially if you're not sure what the player expects. the only 'system's as such i can think of are the dueling systems (whoever runs out of new spells first looses; teachers always win) and the potion system (green affects body, blue mind, iirc). No numbers, no dots, no resolution mechanics, but often lots of workshops beforehand to get everyone on the same page and plan possible avenues of drama and what each player wants from them. The plot was player-driven but organizer-managed, though some larps are significantly more organizer-story-driven. This sort of larp also often involves metatechniques, which is everything from safewords and words to escalate or deescalate a scene, stepping into a defined blackbox for certain sorts of scenes, playing around with time and many others. Now, (besides wanting to prozlyatise my favorite genre of larp), this paints an interesting future for WW larps, i think. I don't think it's impossible that we'll see big, expensive, nordic larps in the style, but far beyond the size of, college of wizardry and the like as a way to market their new WoD and generate interest again. 'White wolf is organizing a larp like CoW but bigger' would send shockwaves in the danish larp community, i think, and possibly beyond. I know i'd be giddy as a schoolgirl, even if it was cWoD, because most of those organizers are just drat good at their jobs - and Martin Elricsson, the lead storyteller, knows many of them personally. i've got 15 mutual friends with him, ffs, most, but not all, of them through cow (others through my old school which was one of the shcools mentioned in the start)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:11
|
|
|
What I'm getting from this is if I made some kind of luminescent Fairest and gave him the Control Elements contract to create an inferno, I essentially have a will-o-the-wisp that can blast areas with giant laser beams. Edit: Oh hey, Discreet Conjuration still has this really goofy limit: quote:The object vanishes after one scene or as soon as it leaves the character’s hands or the character stops paying attention to it, whichever comes first. .. making it utterly useless for conjuring a lot of things, including the gun listed in the description of the contract itself. Edit 2: Oh, unless a Wizened is using it I guess. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Feb 17, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:16
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:I'm more inclined to blame the ttrpg collapse on the rise of graphical MMOs culminating with World of Warcraft rather than any affect D&D had. Really there were D&D only players and players who wanted to play anything but. I'm talking about a specific set of events running from 2003-2005 or so that are well known to anyone who was in the industry at the time, not a set of abstract ideas about What Happened to RPGs, Man. An enormous glut of D20 releases used the original design protocol, which required dependence on the 3.0 PHB. In 2003 WotC released D&D 3.5. This was much, much earlier than anticipated. It immediately made page references and certain systems obsolete for hundreds of products, many of which were filling the majority of RPG shelf space at brick and mortar retailers. This made many products impossible to move and triggered a general sense of skepticism for the original D20 business model. Stores stopped ordering them. Retailers who couldn't get rid of their products often went out of business. In the meantime, Wizards closed their retail chain and multiple distributors/fulfillment houses such as Osseum Entertainment went out of business.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:51
|
|
|
Attorney at Funk posted:Who's your favorite nWoD character and why? The Nemean, because he actually delivers that line about eating hearts in a piece of fiction somewhere and the character being spoken to is like "oh my loving god it's this poo poo again"
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 05:54
|
|
|
Attorney at Funk posted:Who's your favorite nWoD character and why? Carl, the folksy Brineborn of few words who just wants to live a quiet life giving boating tours, watching people go about their lives and reading his Bible (Jesus – now there's a man who makes sense), but who's about to be caught in the middle of a religious war between the creepy sacrificial Deep One types and the moon-worshipping wolf-people they've inadvertantly pissed off. Dizang, the God-Machine's exiled bodhisattva, who considers the Unchained a wayward flock to earnestly convince to return to God, and who only resorts to violence defensively, to protect bystanders. Sergeant Delgado, the portly, past-his-prime desk sergeant who's been working the night shift and bringing in donuts and coffee for six months now since he died peacefully in his sleep. He's been growing increasingly alarmed since he quietly noticed he was dead. Hendaid Bran, the Promethean who has labored for centuries on a seemingly pointless Pilgrimage. He's old, and tired, and stubborn, and all but ready to just lie down and die, but it's not done. And he doesn't know how to do it. The Great Work is the achievement of humanity. How is your Great Work even supposed to end when you were patched together from the body of a crow? I'm a sap.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 06:32
|
|
|
Gerund posted:Appended to the end of the interview where the Lead Storyteller stuck his foot deep in his mouth. That's a nice gameline you have there, a real beaut...it'd sure be a shame if something happened to it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 07:22
|
|
|
I always liked Shakes, the Changeling. It's not that she's a bad person, exactly, it's just that she'll do anything to avoid going back, and if that means her former Keeper gets you instead, well.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 07:35
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I'm still confused as to which characters from oWoD were especially iconic and beloved. Off the top of my head, I like Beckett.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 07:40
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:That's a nice gameline you have there, a real beaut...it'd sure be a shame if something happened to it. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 08:21
|
|
|
Ive been out of the loop for a while. Is there an update on 2nd Edition mage/ hunter?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 09:01
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I'm still confused as to which characters from oWoD were especially iconic and beloved. Any of the characters who turned up in the Transylvania Chronicles? The Antediluvians themselves had a ton of personality? Anyone who was a Tremere? WoD videogames and CoD rpg books makes a ton of sense, let them be their own thing
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 09:17
|
|
|
Cabbit posted:Divis Mal sticks with me. But what about his cousin, Abis Mal? (and their ancestor Abnor Mal)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 09:25
|
|
|
I like Saulot as this guy who wandered around trying to be cool but everyone was just determined to be a dick to him and interpret everything he did in the worst possible light.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 10:30
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I'm still confused as to which characters from oWoD were especially iconic and beloved. I kinda liked Penny Dreadful
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 16:25
|
|
|
I can remember which oWoD character I hated the most, at least: Dr. Gunther Draggerunter. So there's that. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 16:54
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I can remember which oWoD character I hated the most, at least: Dr. Gunther Draggerunter. So there's that. Wow, I just read up on him and woooo boy. That's loving awful on so many levels at once I can't even express it. I'm not sure if it's worse the idea that Freud was right about poo poo, or that Freud was bullied into retracting true statements by cult dedicated to child abuse.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 17:09
|
|
|
Grim posted:Any of the characters who turned up in the Transylvania Chronicles? The Antediluvians themselves had a ton of personality? Anyone who was a Tremere? Heeeeeeeeeeeh... Most NPCs in the Transylvania Chronicles aren't that great. Antedeluvians had tons of personality, I guess, depending on which version of them you used since they never got an official version. And "anyone who was a tremere" doesn't mean anything. I can name interesting Tremere characters (Goratrix, Oliver Thrace, etc.) but it's certainly not all of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 17:15
|
|
|
This is seriously the best news I've had all day. How is this not getting more love? The new contracts seem pretty good from my glance over, I love that they've given Changlings a few ways to go loud if they need to, gives them a little bit more kick against whatever poo poo is coming their way. I'm super excited to see Changeling 2.0 in it's finished form. But even before then, all the rules required to run the game at a basic level are there!
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 20:37
|
|
|
About half of those Wizened kith/seemings combination appear to just have technological, kith-friendly bits and bobs attached to them. This doesn't really say Wizened to me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 20:40
|
|
|
paradoxGentleman posted:About half of those Wizened kith/seemings combination appear to just have technological, kith-friendly bits and bobs attached to them. This doesn't really say Wizened to me. Why? They were always technology friendly option in the first edition, along with manikin elementals. Artisans and Chirurgeon and whatnot. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Feb 17, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 20:53
|
|
|
I know, I know. I think this might be on me: it was never my favorite part of the Seeming, I prefered imagining them as reduced and devoured by their occupations (Wizened, exactly) and made to fit them in more "natural" ways: overgrown razor-sharp fingernails over gauntlets ending in scalpels, so to say. But that's on me, it's not the game's fault.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 21:13
|
|
|
I think its kinda lovely for Court Goodwill in 2E to emphasize how much of a 'betrayal' and 'suspect' act it is to realize that you didn't want to be part of a silly faerie mil-play court just because you get mad sometimes. Hallow is emphasized to exist in the hedge and has more solid rules and less about arguing over the ineffable differences between a 4 dot or 2 dot Size rating. The Escape Clause as a feature of being a changeling is a nice way to avoid your games becoming trapped in the alternate hell-dimension that is every single RPG's grappling rules, or just having a player to get into the failure-state of being 'stuck in a room' by themselves. Fang and Talon is still outmoded by a merit or two and now gets capped away from being able to Turn Into A God drat Whale. Either the writers didn't pay attention or didn't care. holy poo poo they kept the immobile rod contract and still gave absolute zero explanations as to how it works. Even better, you can freeze a Changeling or other supernatural in place, forever, with a single roll and no opposed counter. Congrats everyone, we did it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 21:43
|
|
|
I don't get why changelings have two separate, stacking means of going loud.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 21:52
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Heeeeeeeeeeeh... Most NPCs in the Transylvania Chronicles aren't that great. Antedeluvians had tons of personality, I guess, depending on which version of them you used since they never got an official version. And "anyone who was a tremere" doesn't mean anything. I can name interesting Tremere characters (Goratrix, Oliver Thrace, etc.) but it's certainly not all of them. The Tremere thing is more pointing out that people just fuckin' love them, not commentary on how interesting they actually are  Also Transylvania Chronicles might have been a rail-roady piece of poo poo but as far as NPCs that people like you've got Anatole, Lucita, Vykos, Etrius, Goratrix, Tremere the actual guy, Lambach Ruthven, Dracula, etc. No judgement on how "good" they are but for people who played Vampire (especially Dark Ages) those are THE iconic characters (along with the Antediluvians / Kupala / etc who also turn up)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:17
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:I don't get why changelings have two separate, stacking means of going loud. Sometimes you've got to go Super Sayan And then sometimes you've got to go Super Sayan 2. Terrible anime jokes aside, I'm not really sure. But I rather like it. One's pretty clearly a 'here I loving am, come get me' mode. The other strikes me as something a changeling embracing their wyrdness, a choice that is abhorrent, but sometimes necessary.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:33
|
|
|
Wow, Arcadian Body got a hell of a boost. No longer chargen only, includes the extra stat dot instead of making you buy that separately...
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:38
|
|
|
Arashiofordo3 posted:Sometimes you've got to go Super Sayan I don't see any reason at all the two couldn't be combined into one mechanic, and I do see a reason they shouldn't remain separate, or even remain period: jumping into the boots of a new character and suddenly realizing you've got a dozen different inborn powers or special conditions to keep track of is an enormous drag. One problem with what feels like every 2E game, especially (as far as I can tell) Werewolf, is that your level 1, 0xp character has a bajillion minor supernatural active and passive abilities before you even start looking at any of your Gifts or Disciplines or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:41
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:I like Saulot as this guy who wandered around trying to be cool but everyone was just determined to be a dick to him and interpret everything he did in the worst possible light. I actually liked the interpretation of him from (IIRC) the end of the Transylvania Chronicles, where he tried being good moral for millennia but failed to reach Golconda and regain his humanity, so he said "gently caress it" and figured that, if God wouldn't allow him to be a saint, then he'd become the wickedest devil to ever walk the earth, purely out of spite for God. (And even before that, he sired the Baali bloodline by burying a bunch of people in a hellmouth and then seeping his vitae into the pit, just to see what'd happen.) Of course, every book that came after that stuck with the dull "Saulot is a literal saint" characterization, right up until he martyred himself in Gehenna.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:46
|
|
|
Nifara posted:Wow, I just read up on him and woooo boy. That's loving awful on so many levels at once I can't even express it. He's also a really, really spiteful demonization of James Randi, which isn't as obvious nowadays, bur it's pretty clear if you know about his role in trying to disprove repressed memory treatments. Randi is also mocked in Second Sight, though nowhere near as venomously.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 22:58
|
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:Carl, the folksy Brineborn of few words who just wants to live a quiet life giving boating tours, watching people go about their lives and reading his Bible (Jesus – now there's a man who makes sense), but who's about to be caught in the middle of a religious war between the creepy sacrificial Deep One types and the moon-worshipping wolf-people they've inadvertantly pissed off. Hendaid Bran and several other Promethean characters get a good resolution in the Firestorm Chronicle fiction anthology, fyi.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 23:00
|
|
|
gtrmp posted:I actually liked the interpretation of him from (IIRC) the end of the Transylvania Chronicles, where he tried being good moral for millennia but failed to reach Golconda and regain his humanity, so he said "gently caress it" and figured that, if God wouldn't allow him to be a saint, then he'd become the wickedest devil to ever walk the earth, purely out of spite for God. (And even before that, he sired the Baali bloodline by burying a bunch of people in a hellmouth and then seeping his vitae into the pit, just to see what'd happen.) Wasn't he revealed to have been trying to become the Demon Emperor from Kindred of the East in the belief that he'd be less terrible than the other contenders? Jesus Christ the oWoD metaplot was loving terrible.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 23:05
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:I don't see any reason at all the two couldn't be combined into one mechanic, and I do see a reason they shouldn't remain separate, or even remain period: jumping into the boots of a new character and suddenly realizing you've got a dozen different inborn powers or special conditions to keep track of is an enormous drag. One problem with what feels like every 2E game, especially (as far as I can tell) Werewolf, is that your level 1, 0xp character has a bajillion minor supernatural active and passive abilities before you even start looking at any of your Gifts or Disciplines or whatever. 1. The limit break where you drop your skin mask and revel in being inhuman. This makes you better at magic, at the risk of exposing you to the things always hunting you. This initially invokes Bewitched on people who see you transform. 2. The limit break where you embrace magic and transform. This makes you inhumanly good at anything you want, at the risk of making you crazy. Also you can drop your skin mask for no additional benefit. This initially invokes Bewitched on people who see you transform. Like it's not just two forms of Going Loud, it's more accurately two flavors of Gauru Form But Loud.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 23:06
|
|
|
So in other news, CofD Corebook' PDFs's gone to the final version and the Print on Demand options are up- just got the coupon link to order the physical copy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 01:54
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:I like Saulot as this guy who wandered around trying to be cool but everyone was just determined to be a dick to him and interpret everything he did in the worst possible light. I liked Cappadocius. The Vampire who met Jesus and stumbled out of his tent, confused and converted. I want to see Crusader Kings: The Dark Ages Vampire. Also a Civ 5 oWoD expansion. Tribes of werewolves capture cairns or something on a hex map.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 04:49
|
|
|
gtrmp posted:I actually liked the interpretation of him from (IIRC) the end of the Transylvania Chronicles, where he tried being good moral for millennia but failed to reach Golconda and regain his humanity, so he said "gently caress it" and figured that, if God wouldn't allow him to be a saint, then he'd become the wickedest devil to ever walk the earth, purely out of spite for God. (And even before that, he sired the Baali bloodline by burying a bunch of people in a hellmouth and then seeping his vitae into the pit, just to see what'd happen.) So the story in the Baali clanbook was right. Interesting.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 04:51
|
|
|
MalcolmSheppard posted:I'm talking about a specific set of events running from 2003-2005 or so that are well known to anyone who was in the industry at the time, not a set of abstract ideas about What Happened to RPGs, Man. Very interesting. Were you involved with brick-and-mortar retailers or distributors?
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 04:54
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:I want to see Crusader Kings: The Dark Ages Vampire. Werewolf would be better because eugenics is already hard baked into the system and werewolves aren't immortal.Vampires choose who they embrace most of the time so you wouldn't have the fun of hoping all your kids are werewolves and finding them the perfect kinfolk to make a werewolf ubermensch.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 05:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 09:41 |
|
|
poo poo, Prestige and opinion would work great too. Like you could keep going if all you had were Kin, but with massive penalties to opinion and prestige except for with other kin and CoG leaders, and with Garou leaders getting a free CB on you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 05:57
|
|
