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Helical Nightmares posted:Very interesting. Were you involved with brick-and-mortar retailers or distributors? In various capacities, with local retailers and publishers, and I was in contact with a printer that handled orders from WW and GoO.
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Feb 18, 2016 08:49
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Grim posted:The Tremere thing is more pointing out that people just fuckin' love them, not commentary on how interesting they actually are This reminds me. I was talking to another designer about how V:TM might be redesigned and he was like, "Get rid of the Tremere," but I explained that you can't, because folks like them too much. Especially LARPers, where Tremere organizational stuff highly motivates players, especially if they're lil' heel-clickers to begin with. This brings me back to what works for Vampire that can be taken from Nordic LARP. WW's stereotype was to produce these enormous books that folks would read and STs would interpret and release bits of through play. The College of Wizardry LARP isn't really "light." There's an enormous book full of spells and lore. The difference is that this is explicitly player-facing material. There's no double talk about knowledge, because the book exists in the world. Lots of WoD stuff could be used that way, and was written to support it, but wasn't explicitly released this way. Tremere have an advantage in that they have more player-facing lore to guide what they do and provide a sense of purpose.
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Feb 18, 2016 09:01
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MalcolmSheppard posted:In various capacities, with local retailers and publishers, and I was in contact with a printer that handled orders from WW and GoO. It's also fairly well documented in Designers & Dragons as well, for those who are curious. AFAIK, no oWoD game after Mage was an unqualified success, and White Wolf had seen diminishing returns year after year. Without the nWoD, I think the WoD would have crashed harder and sooner. It was what the line needed at the time, but it's likely nothing could have actually saved it with the market and economic forces in play.
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Feb 18, 2016 11:05
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Alien Rope Burn posted:AFAIK, no oWoD game after Mage was an unqualified success, and White Wolf had seen diminishing returns year after year. At least it made being a collector of oMummy really easy!
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Feb 18, 2016 11:53
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MalcolmSheppard posted:This brings me back to what works for Vampire that can be taken from Nordic LARP. WW's stereotype was to produce these enormous books that folks would read and STs would interpret and release bits of through play. The College of Wizardry LARP isn't really "light." There's an enormous book full of spells and lore. The difference is that this is explicitly player-facing material. There's no double talk about knowledge, because the book exists in the world. Lots of WoD stuff could be used that way, and was written to support it, but wasn't explicitly released this way. Tremere have an advantage in that they have more player-facing lore to guide what they do and provide a sense of purpose.
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Feb 18, 2016 14:30
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LatwPIAT posted:At least it made being a collector of oMummy really easy! Was oMummy good? I never hear anyone talk about it.
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Feb 18, 2016 15:19
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Gilok posted:Was oMummy good? I never hear anyone talk about it.
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Feb 18, 2016 15:25
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Let me put it this way. There are few oWoD products I've had less recollection of than any incarnation of oMummy. They just... Didn't make an impression.
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Feb 18, 2016 15:26
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Gilok posted:Was oMummy good? I never hear anyone talk about it. Since I own the entire line of Mummy: the Ressurection (all two books!) I believe I'm well-qualified to speak on this.  It's... dull. A lot of thought and effort was put into making Mummies their own distinct thing in the World of Darkness with their own ties to the other supernaturals and the alike, and it doesn't really matter one bit because there's basically nothing to do. The only real hook Mummies have is that they fight the servants of Set (vampires in general and the Children of Set in particular), and other than that the Mummies just kind of are there. In the great lineup of old World of Darkness games, the Mummies inhabit the role of "...and Mummies were there too." There's some hints at something really interesting there though; Mummies have a Solar-like two-part soul that consists of both an ancient Egyptian and a recently dead person, which could make for some interesting personal roleplay in the vein of Promethean, but in the end nothing is done with it. There's also an appendix of rules for non-Egyptian Mummies, which is slightly more interesting if just for novelty. It allows you to play smoke-dried Incan Fire-Mummies!
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Feb 18, 2016 16:03
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The only thing most people know about oMummy is the three-dot power that does agg damage to an area equivalent to a small town.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:11
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Gilok posted:Was oMummy good? I never hear anyone talk about it. Mummy: the Resurrection is difficult to play without some changes, IIRC, because you either have to be based out of There are some cool ideas sprinkled throughout, and I especially liked the character creation: you make a normal person, then kill them, and add on the Mummy aspect to it. Kind of a dry run for the way nWoD does it. A supplement expanding the appendix about non-Egyptian mummies would have been very welcome. It would have been a very good game with another pass through for balance and playability and some better editing. A lot of the good things in the book were poached for nWoD, as I mentioned above, and that makes the game a very interesting read, even if you don't play it, if you're into that sort of "game genealogy". Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 16:18
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Tremere organizational stuff highly motivates players, especially if they're lil' heel-clickers to begin with. Laughed out loud at this. Anyway, what you do is you keep them but you make them people who knew what they were getting into - mages who tired of petty willworking and consensus-shaping and sought, instead, for direct access to the mind and power of God. Obviously you get that stuff right in the blood of Caine's descendants, and obviously it should specifically produce a power suite that resembles the Path of Father's Judgment/Theban Sorcery rather than http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/spells.htm
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Feb 18, 2016 16:27
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Ferrinus posted:Laughed out loud at this.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:39
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Yeah, the problem with Mummy: the Resurrection was that a) it basically demands that you play in the modern Middle East, b) it's deceptive about this fact so that you won't figure it out without reading it, and c) it doesn't really provide even a fraction of the support random American nerds would need to do this without being super disrespectful.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:39
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Lets not pretend that being in the same timezone ballpark makes European nerds more able than Americans to play with middle-eastern culture without incident.
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Feb 18, 2016 17:16
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Gerund posted:Lets not pretend that being in the same timezone ballpark makes European nerds more able than Americans to play with middle-eastern culture without incident. Oh, yeah, probably; I just can't speak for those.
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Feb 18, 2016 17:19
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Can you imagine what Mummy: The Resurrection would look like if written during or shortly after the Arab Spring? (Mind you, I don't particularly enjoy nMummy, either.)
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Feb 18, 2016 17:32
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Ferrinus posted:Laughed out loud at this. What if every character wasn't a jaded, genre-savvy wizard who'd figured out the actual real truth and was making the most efficient possible beeline towards it
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Feb 18, 2016 17:54
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Attorney at Funk posted:What if every character wasn't a jaded, genre-savvy wizard who'd figured out the actual real truth and was making the most efficient possible beeline towards it 
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Feb 18, 2016 17:56
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, the problem with Mummy: the Resurrection was that a) it basically demands that you play in the modern Middle East, b) it's deceptive about this fact so that you won't figure it out without reading it, and c) it doesn't really provide even a fraction of the support random American nerds would need to do this without being super disrespectful. This is actually something I'd really like to see, modern settings described in the same detail as a city in an RPG sourcebook, and toward the same purpose. Like, if I want to be from Waterdeep there's books that will tell me what the town is like, who lives there, what their lives are like, who's important there, what are the politics like, what's the geography like, what sort of food they eat, and on and on. I want that book, but for Baghdad or Moscow. Anything like that that I'm aware of either isn't built for RPGs and is more geared toward tourists than teaching you what it's like to live there, or is an RPG supplement that is mostly about the game setting as it pertains to the city. White Wolf sourcebooks tend to touch on what I'm looking for a little bit, but still feel more like visitor's guides and don't make me feel like I can paint a good picture of a city I've never been to for my players or accurately portray a resident.
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Feb 18, 2016 20:21
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Gilok posted:This is actually something I'd really like to see, modern settings described in the same detail as a city in an RPG sourcebook, and toward the same purpose. Like, if I want to be from Waterdeep there's books that will tell me what the town is like, who lives there, what their lives are like, who's important there, what are the politics like, what's the geography like, what sort of food they eat, and on and on. I want that book, but for Baghdad or Moscow. They aren't made for RPGs, but you can find those Frommer's and Baedeker's guides at most bookstores and public libraries, and despite being for tourists, they do actually give a pretty good sense of the region and its people. They'll give you a quick, canned history of the region, all its major geography, some taboos to avoid if you're not local, the notable sights and destinations, good restaurants and stores, etc, as much as in your average RPG sourcebook anyways. The older ones, especially, were the go to guides for writers who didn't live in a region. Vintage Baedeker's are an absolute goldmine. You'll need to make up your own NPCs though.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:27
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So, I was going over that Changeling 2e stuff mentioned earlier, and I kinda noticed something weird. Y'know how in 1e harvesting Glamour from emotions had no direct penalty for the subject? Like, if you did it right it was at worst a victimless crime. But in 2e, harvesting from someone gives them the Reticent condition, which is, uhh. "Your character has lost emotion, and is but a dull reflection of her normal self. She loses all Willpower, and cannot regain Willpower so long as she has this Condition. However, she gains a +3 bonus to any attempts to manipulate her emotions, or move her to impulsive action. If left unchecked, this Condition lasts either one week, or two days per dot of the changeling’s Wyrd who caused it, whichever is longer." So, Changelings are like pseudo-vampires now? I mean, I didn't have a problem with Mask and Mien being swiped wholesale because they fit and made sense, and Touchstones were okay once you got used to them, but I'm not sure I'm a fan of leaving people psychically drained husks.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:39
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Bikindok posted:So, I was going over that Changeling 2e stuff mentioned earlier, and I kinda noticed something weird. Y'know how in 1e harvesting Glamour from emotions had no direct penalty for the subject? Like, if you did it right it was at worst a victimless crime. But in 2e, harvesting from someone gives them the Reticent condition, which is, uhh. Yeah, I definitely agree here. Leaving the target unaffected played up the Changeling's isolation. You aren't part of the world any more, no matter how much you try to be. You aren't even a parasite dwelling among them, like a vampire. Nobody knows what you've suffered, nobody even knows you're there. You're just stuck on the outside looking in, vicariously feeling the emotions that are lost to you, wearing your fake mask in a fake life.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:45
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That is unusual, and does not really seem appropriate.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:47
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Also losing all Willpower and being unable to regain it means that they're basically the worst non-lethal thing that can ever happen to a Hunter. So that's...cool...
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Feb 18, 2016 21:52
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The funky thing is, it sounds like that's the result of some wires getting crossed. From that same section:quote:Harvesting Glamour is an intensely emotional action. Many changelings liken it to a combination of euphoric high, revelatory dream, and body-shuddering orgasm all taken in a single breath. They feed on the power of sentiment and the essence of emotion, drawing life from the very feelings of living things. This is not necessarily a predatory act (although changelings can prey on their victims to elicit Glamour of the appropriate “flavor”), in that it does not require actually harming the subject. Instead, it's as if the subject creates a vapor cloud of emotional energy in which the changeling immerses herself, breathing it in, tasting it, allowing it to fill her lungs and her mind and her heart. Feeding doesn't harm the victim and it's described as breathing in a kind of vapour someone exudes, rather than taking something from them.
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Feb 18, 2016 21:52
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Bikindok posted:So, I was going over that Changeling 2e stuff mentioned earlier, and I kinda noticed something weird. Y'know how in 1e harvesting Glamour from emotions had no direct penalty for the subject? Like, if you did it right it was at worst a victimless crime. But in 2e, harvesting from someone gives them the Reticent condition, which is, uhh.  that condition is potentially even more crippling than a vampire's bite! You take a bit of lethal from the blood loss and what, you're superficially lightheaded for a couple days? As long as you don't get stabbed/shot/in a car accident you're fine. But losing all of your willpower with no way to recoup it for a week means you literally cannot exert mental effort on anything and rest doesn't really do anything at all for you. Adding in the "easily manipulated/coerced" bit pushes this straight into NPC/villain territory, holy poo poo.I could see this as a thing when huntsmen/gentry/fetch regain glamour to make them more terrifying (since your average person won't know the difference between the fae that makes them want to die and the one that does not) but as a core part of the PCs? No. It's completely antithetical to the theme of CtL, at least in my opinion.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:00
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Axelgear posted:The funky thing is, it sounds like that's the result of some wires getting crossed. From that same section: Yeah, you're right, sounds like someone's not quite understood something along the way. I mean, they always hinted that feeding on the same guy over and over again may have consequences to it. But not 'first time you feed, this guy gets hosed' I suppose this is the point of the questionnaire they've provided. Hopefully they'll realize the mistake and get that corrected.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:00
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Yawgmoth posted:I could see this as a thing when huntsmen/gentry/fetch regain glamour to make them more terrifying (since your average person won't know the difference between the fae that makes them want to die and the one that does not) but as a core part of the PCs? No. It's completely antithetical to the theme of CtL, at least in my opinion. ... I actually like this idea, now that you've mentioned it, especially since the victim of it couldn't be fed on by a Changeling. Not only do the forces of Arcadia harm someone, they also take away their ability to be a strength to you in the process. It emphasizes the parasitic nature of the Gentry, too, as they steal something genuine to empower their magic.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:02
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This actually doesn't make any drat sense at all, because it's not like WoD fae consume human emotion, leaving empty husks in their wake. That's Exalted fae!
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Feb 18, 2016 22:02
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If that change to how glamour harvesting works isn't a case of crossed wires/a mistake, it's the first thing going out the window if I run Changeling 2E. No interest in further thematically diluting that line by turning them into Emotion Vampires.
Crion fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 22:02
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Ferrinus posted:This actually doesn't make any drat sense at all, because it's not like WoD fae consume human emotion, leaving empty husks in their wake. That's Exalted fae! Maybe we had it backwards the whole time. Maybe the WoD is the precusor to Exalted!
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Feb 18, 2016 22:05
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Okay, I'm confused now. Is Changeling 2.0 the sequel to "Your enemy is normal people working to feed their families, ugh screw those guys and their non-whimsy" Changeling, or to "Well, you got kidnapped and abused and escaped but now you're pretty much going to be chased forever" Changeling?
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Feb 18, 2016 22:09
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The Lord of Hats posted:Okay, I'm confused now. Is Changeling 2.0 the sequel to "Your enemy is normal people working to feed their families, ugh screw those guys and their non-whimsy" Changeling, or to "Well, you got kidnapped and abused and escaped but now you're pretty much going to be chased forever" Changeling? Second one. It's nWoD AKA Chronicles of Darkness
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Feb 18, 2016 22:11
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It also doesn't seem to be quite as easy to extract Glamour from Pledges. There is an Oath that'll let you swap your Willpower and Glamour pools around, so that'd work, but I'm not really seeing any other ways. Also, Harvest acts as an equipment bonus to gathering rather than a steady trickle, so that's out too. Eating Goblin fruits and/or certain Hedge creatures is mentioned as a possible glamour source, but no real details seem available beyond that it's apparantly kind of a crapshoot and that they're frequently used as traps by the Fae. It looks like they're trying to ratchet up conflict by making Glamour less readily available, which I guess makes sense, but I'd have to see the finished product before I could really say I was okay with this direction.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:19
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Hey, at least this way Beasts are no longer the splat that harms mortals most to survive.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:22
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Since, as far as I can recall, CtL True Fae don't really care about what emotions people may or may not be feeling, and don't exactly go away if people stop believing in them, I've always thought it was a bit weird that Changelings derive Glamour specifically from human emotion. Like, maybe they should instead be pulling it from certain narrative circumstances or (sometimes artificially arranged) storybook coincidences or something. But there's no way they should be parasitic or predatory in the actually-feeding-on-you sense.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:24
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Making Changelings explicitly monstrous is an improvement on the prior edition, because it gives the Changeling condition some story hooks that aren't purely reactive.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:32
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I agree, but it's a mistake to make them monstrous in a way that doesn't echo their Keepers.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:34
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Ferrinus posted:I agree, but it's a mistake to make them monstrous in a way that doesn't echo their Keepers. So you're saying Changelings should have to kidnap and enslave people?
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Feb 18, 2016 22:36
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