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MonsieurChoc posted:Except for all the people who liked and bought Requiem for years? I mean, to say that Requiem was unsuccessful is either stupidity or a bald-faced lie. Hey man, I'm not the one not making the VtR games. Ferrinus's slot machine buddies are.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:41 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 16:39 |
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I don't think Requiem had as big an audience as Masquerade had, and alot of Masquerade fans despise Requiem, but I think it did alright anyway? It would be a tall order to be as big as Masquerade was at its zenit.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:43 |
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Kurieg posted:The press release apparently came out on January 28th. So he was attacking Onyx Path for being bad brand stewards after signing a deal to make vampire slots.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:45 |
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Vampire: The T-Shirt Vampire: The Cereal Vampire: The Flamethrower
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:47 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:I don't think Requiem had as big an audience as Masquerade had, and alot of Masquerade fans despise Requiem, but I think it did alright anyway? It would be a tall order to be as big as Masquerade was at its zenit. It did a lot more better than alright, revisionist history by oWoD fanboys aside. Edit: The boom from the 90s was already over, and had been for a few years, when the nWoD and Requiem came out. It actually sold better and got a bigger audience than the oWoD had been getting for the few years prior. It wasn't as huge a hit as Masquerade at it's height because that was impossible in the state of the industry at the time, and even more impossible today. From 2004 to 2008 (when the world economy crumbled) the nWoD was a pretty consistent Number 2 in gaming. People who keep saying the nWoD wasn't a success are factually wrong. MonsieurChoc fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 23, 2016 |
# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:48 |
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nopantsjack posted:I'm probably going to keep the number of successes thing though, just as a rough indicator of how well you did, I like the granularity it gives your rolls but good to know about the chance die and crit thresholds! It's your choice to make, but just remember I brought it up in case it doesn't work out. Rolls in CoD are very swingy, but it matters a lot less when you're mostly just checking if there are any successes at all. It's what it was balanced around. nopantsjack posted:e: Oh a question, is there any difference in trying to use a discipline on a vampire than a human or is it just higher stats to oppose? Check the dice pools for each power; some mention that they subtract the target's Blood Potency from the activation pool (resistance), or add it to the target's opposing pool (contested). Mortals, of course, have zero Blood Potency. (If you later pick up any other CoD games, other supernatural characters have their own traits that directly slot in here too, so if you had a vampire trying to Dominate a werewolf, they'd apply Primal Urge at the same rate.) There probably will be a lot of cases where it's smoother in play to just let a power succeed against a minor NPC. Also check out the Down & Dirty Combat rules to simplify violent confrontations with ordinary schmoes. nopantsjack posted:Yeah I think they are cool things, but could do with being a bit less opaque for new players, mask kinda makes sense but why dirge other than it sounds like a cool gothy word. They used to be Masquerade and Requiem, respectively, since they directly correspond to what those terms mean in-universe, just in a more personal sense. They got changed to synonyms because it was confusing to have Requiem be both "a vampire's unlife" and "this system trait about a vampire's personality." I'm not a huge fan of the alternate Anchors the second edition rules have introduced for supernatural characters. First edition just had vampires use the same traits mortal characters used to recover Willpower, Virtue and Vice, and the 2e incarnation of Virtue and Vice (page 169 in Vampire) feels pretty versatile and intuitive. Just pick a character flaw you lean on to keep going and a heroic drive you risk all to achieve. nopantsjack posted:Whats the deal with willpower, is it basically action points i.e. spend to take an extra turn or do some specific cool thing? Extra turns don't happen in CoD; this is an important balancing point. They don't work well with the dice system. Some abilities or powers cost Willpower, but mostly you burn a point (you can't burn multiple at once) on heroic effort when you really strive to succeed at something, which gives you +3 dice on a roll or +2 to a trait you resist another character's dice pool with (so, for example, Resolve or Defense). Willpower is meant to be pretty easy come, easy go. In a fight, for example, you pretty much have no reason not to burn Willpower every turn you can, because your unlife might be on the line, so you're meant to be pretty lenient with allowing Anchors to recover it. Mortal characters also recover a point of Willpower for a restful night's sleep, but the Vampire developer has said the intent was that vampires don't. It's a common house rule, though.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:51 |
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I hope that someday we get a Mage themed slot machine that just has video of a Syndicate technocrat pointing at the player and laughing.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:52 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:It did a lot more better than alright, revisionist history by oWoD fanboys aside. How can one verify that? Do companies publish how well they are doing or selling?
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 18:53 |
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IIRC literally the only game that has ever been as big as Masquerade was at its height is D&D, so that's kind of a high bar.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 19:58 |
nopantsjack posted:I do remember the 20th anniversairy edition telling me they all had to be fledglings so thats a good change in requiem.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:21 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:
I notice this is always true of games people don't like. They're always backed up by capitalism on stats nobody has actually read.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:24 |
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Ferrinus posted:Willpower works like oWoD willpower. You can spend a point to get a bonus on a roll, and a lot of powers cost willpower instead of (or along with) vitae to turn on. Nice, my rules-readiness is approaching 50%! Noob question # 6789: If something says "buff x adds +2 to social rolls" am I right in thinking that adds +2 to the roll results (i.e. 6s become 8s and so succeed) or does it add 2 bonus dice? Thanks all for dealing with my awful questions.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:45 |
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You know, what I heard that there'd be new oWoD games... Excuse me, I'm going to go play Bloodlines to try and get rid of how flummoxed I am.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:46 |
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nopantsjack posted:Thanks, yeah I'm coming off of one game of Masquerade I ran a year or two ago. Liking a lot of the Requiem stuff so far but not that they doubled the complication of chargen, whenever I look at a new edition of an RPG my first port of call is "how have they simplified chargen?". It's harder in some ways (though Merits and Flaws, I would argue, were pretty loving tedious). The first time I did char gen in Requiem 2e, I asked my players to give me a backstory and then I generated stuff (apirations, touchstones) based on what they told me. Then I gave them a free pass to change any of it later on once they had a better grasp of what the system was and how it worked. It was a good compromise; it takes some of the guesswork out of it for the players and it means if you have a good idea what constitutes a good touchstone (for example) than you can get into play that much faster. quote:I'm probably going to keep the number of successes thing though, just as a rough indicator of how well you did, I like the granularity it gives your rolls but good to know about the chance die and crit thresholds! Be careful when doing this. There are two kinds of rolls in CoFD; resisted and contested (or simple). A resisted roll usually has a penalty based on some factor (Defense in combat is the most common). These kinds of rolls by their nature usually benefit from more successes anyway. Simple/contested rolls just form a baseline, though. One of the issues in Masquerade was that one or two successes didn't exactly achieve what you were aiming for and a minimum of three was required to actually do what you set out to do. Because a single success is statistically more difficult to achieve in CoFD, make sure you grant additional benefits for more success instead of imposing penalties for 'not quite enough'. quote:e: Oh a question, is there any difference in trying to use a discipline on a vampire than a human or is it just higher stats to oppose? Handwaving powers against mortals is a good idea, particularly since a lot of mind control powers impose conditions on NPCs that might not be worth tracking. Instead figure out the most optimal route for the PCs and just have the NPCs behave in the expected manner, reserving more nuanced behavior for major NPCs. As an aside if you're coming from Masquerade make sure you actually read the Disciplines carefully. One of the major pitfalls for Masquerade players (myself included) is making assumptions about how stuff is supposed to work based on previous experience; often times it doesn't work the way you think it does. If something seems familiar read it more carefully, not less. It will save you a major headache later on.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:51 |
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nopantsjack posted:Nice, my rules-readiness is approaching 50%! Noob question # 6789: If something says "buff x adds +2 to social rolls" am I right in thinking that adds +2 to the roll results (i.e. 6s become 8s and so succeed) or does it add 2 bonus dice? Bonus dice. All bonuses and penalties in CofD are dice added or taken away to your roll; if penalties reduce you to 0 or fewer dice, you roll a "chance die:" roll one die, and only 10 counts as a success. Furthermore, a 1 on a chance die means a dramatic failure: something goes catastrophically wrong or backfires on you. Also good to remember: unlike in oWoD games, 1s do not cancel out successes on rolls in CofD. The only time 1s have any special effect (beyond "not being a success" that is) is on chance dice. EDIT: Mendrian posted:Be careful when doing this. There are two kinds of rolls in CoFD; resisted and contested (or simple). A resisted roll usually has a penalty based on some factor (Defense in combat is the most common). These kinds of rolls by their nature usually benefit from more successes anyway. Simple/contested rolls just form a baseline, though. One of the issues in Masquerade was that one or two successes didn't exactly achieve what you were aiming for and a minimum of three was required to actually do what you set out to do. Because a single success is statistically more difficult to achieve in CoFD, make sure you grant additional benefits for more success instead of imposing penalties for 'not quite enough'. Seconding this very strongly. CofD dice probabilities are built around the idea that, for 90% of actions, a single success is all you need. If you go the route of "one or two successes is a bare or partial success," you're going to have characters that feel remarkably incompetent even when they're supposed to be good at something. As a general rule of thumb, you can assume that 3 dice in a pool roughly correspond to one success on the roll, on average, so if you're thinking that three successes means a basic, free-and-clear success, you're effectively saying that characters need a pool of 9 dice before penalties to reliably achieve that. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Feb 23, 2016 |
# ? Feb 23, 2016 20:54 |
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GimpInBlack posted:Bonus dice. All bonuses and penalties in CofD are dice added or taken away to your roll; if penalties reduce you to 0 or fewer dice, you roll a "chance die:" roll one die, and only 10 counts as a success. Furthermore, a 1 on a chance die means a dramatic failure: something goes catastrophically wrong or backfires on you. Nice the bonus dice thing is much simpler, I had hoped I was wrong. Thanks for letting me know about the lack of 1s cancelling out too, I woulda definitely used that. I wasn't planning on using degrees of success like "you need at least this many successes" more like "oh poo poo you opened the gently caress out of that door" or "you just barely catch the baby"
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:13 |
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nopantsjack posted:Nice the bonus dice thing is much simpler, I had hoped I was wrong. Thanks for letting me know about the lack of 1s cancelling out too, I woulda definitely used that. Yeah, that keeps in line with the use of margin of success in the game. Exceptional Success is an actual mechanical keyword thing and some abilities have special results because of it. Like grappling.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:15 |
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Kurieg posted:The press release apparently came out on January 28th. So he was attacking Onyx Path for being bad brand stewards after signing a deal to make vampire slots. I mean, if you're the type of person to use the phrase 'brand steward' then that scans. The part of my brain that contains my (useless, overpriced, pointless) business degree was nodding along very intently with that press release.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:15 |
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nopantsjack posted:Nice, my rules-readiness is approaching 50%! Noob question # 6789: If something says "buff x adds +2 to social rolls" am I right in thinking that adds +2 to the roll results (i.e. 6s become 8s and so succeed) or does it add 2 bonus dice? GimpInBlack has already answered this nicely, but just to underline it because it's a significant difference: nothing in CoD ever changes the target number of 8 for normal rolls or 10 for chance dice. (Actually there's some weird stuff that's only in Mummy but you're not playing Mummy and it's not very good anyway.) The primary means of tweaking the difficulty of an action is circumstantial dice modifiers. The ST should feel free to add or subtract a few dice from any given roll that seems like it's harder or easier based on circumstance. When you factor in rerolled tens and all that, a dice pool of 3 is about an even chance of success or failure, 4 is where you're more likely to succeed than fail, and each die from 4 on yields diminishing returns. But again, the target number of 8 means these dice pools are prone to a lot of random swinginess, which is why you don't want to diminish the value of a single success, because it won't be uncommon that that's exactly what you'll get on even a large dice pool.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:17 |
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I Am Just a Box posted:GimpInBlack has already answered this nicely, but just to underline it because it's a significant difference: nothing in CoD ever changes the target number of 8 for normal rolls or 10 for chance dice. (Actually there's some weird stuff that's only in Mummy but you're not playing Mummy and it's not very good anyway.) The primary means of tweaking the difficulty of an action is circumstantial dice modifiers. The ST should feel free to add or subtract a few dice from any given roll that seems like it's harder or easier based on circumstance. Most bonuses/penalties I see for this are in the 1-3 dice range. I think there may be some exceptional circumstances that offer up to 5, but that would be rare.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:21 |
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Cool, thats quite a nice system, I was thinking that having to get 8s for everything made stuff quite hard. Makes a lot more sense if 1s dont cancel and you only need 1 success. Seems like it makes dealing damage quite tough though. Also am I right that that means exploding tens are mainly only useful when dealing damage or opposing someone? I suppose you don't get automatic successes anymore if you only need one.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:29 |
nopantsjack posted:Yeah I think they are cool things, but could do with being a bit less opaque for new players, mask kinda makes sense but why dirge other than it sounds like a cool gothy word. It's almost the exact same thing as nature and demeanor from V:tM. And yeah, Willpower is a great resource to spend when you *really* need to get something done.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:36 |
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nopantsjack posted:Cool, thats quite a nice system, I was thinking that having to get 8s for everything made stuff quite hard. Makes a lot more sense if 1s dont cancel and you only need 1 success. Seems like it makes dealing damage quite tough though. Also am I right that that means exploding tens are mainly only useful when dealing damage or opposing someone? The 2e weapon ratings (which can be conferred on unarmed attacks by Protean or Vigor) are the main factor in dealing damage. On a successful attack roll, you add the rating of your weapon to the damage inflicted. So there's not generally anything that gives you one unqualified success, but there are effects like weapon ratings that increase your total of successes if you already succeeded with your base pool. And yes, the N-Again qualities don't affect your likelihood of success on most rolls outside combat, but they make you more likely to achieve an exceptional success. Their effect is also proportional to the size of your dice pool, so it can sound nice on paper to apply 9-Again to all your rolls of a given Skill or something (like the Professional Training Merit does), but it really only makes a difference if your pool was already strong by itself.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:40 |
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nopantsjack posted:Cool, thats quite a nice system, I was thinking that having to get 8s for everything made stuff quite hard. Makes a lot more sense if 1s dont cancel and you only need 1 success. Seems like it makes dealing damage quite tough though. Also am I right that that means exploding tens are mainly only useful when dealing damage or opposing someone? They are good for that and trying to get lucky to score an Exceptional Success. There are some merits and abilities that can expand exploding dice to 9's or 8's. Usually called 9-again and 8-again property. Weapons also have built in damage. Like, a pistol has a damage rating of 2. This means that when you get a success in battle, it deals <number of successes> + 2 damage. Different weapons have different damage ratings. Some have 0 which means it just changes your damage from bashing to lethal. There are also merits (fighting styles, I think) that can make your fists/feet/whatever have a weapon rating, too.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:40 |
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nopantsjack posted:Cool, thats quite a nice system, I was thinking that having to get 8s for everything made stuff quite hard. Makes a lot more sense if 1s dont cancel and you only need 1 success. Seems like it makes dealing damage quite tough though. Also am I right that that means exploding tens are mainly only useful when dealing damage or opposing someone? Weapon damage modifiers apply to damage after you count successes. For example, if you roll three successes on an attack roll to shoot someone with a pistol that has a damage rating of 2, you inflict 5 damage (reduced by the target's Armor, if they have any). It's difficult to inflict appreciable damage in a single attack by just standing there trading punches, but weapons escalate fights quickly. And, as I mentioned earlier, if you're serious about putting the hurt on someone, you have to make an effort: Spend Willpower, make use of combat options like Surprise and All-Out Attack, gang up on people, etc. Also, make sure you're remembering to apply the Beaten Down rules on p. 175 of Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition: real people are rarely willing to fight to the death or to serious injury, and if you try to run every fight as a slog to unconsciousness or death things can get tedious. Since you were asking earlier about handwaving Disciplines on mortals, you'll probably also want to make liberal use of the Down and Dirty Combat rules on p. 176 for resolving less-important fights with a single roll. Multiple successes are most beneficial on combat actions or contested rolls, yes, but remember that any action scores an exceptional success with 5 or more successes, so those rerolled 10s can still be nice to have. Most actions will tell you what happens on an exceptional success, but absent any specific rules an exceptional success gives you a beneficial Condition like Inspired or Informed.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:42 |
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Something that may be of interest to you and your group are the Social Combat rules. I have only used them a couple times, so I'm not well-versed, but it allows a mechanical way to interact/bargain/whatever with important NPCs that isn't boiled down to a single dice roll. The general concept revolves around Doors and opening them to earn more trust with the NPC. This requires opposed rolls, iirc. There are merits and abilities that will let PC's start with <x> number of Doors already open. There is also a limit to the number of times a PC can attempt to open a door for an NPC before it is no longer successful. ---- If you do lots of investigation the new CoD core book has new rules to help with that. They are actually good!
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 21:47 |
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spectralent posted:I notice this is always true of games people don't like. They're always backed up by capitalism on stats nobody has actually read. Here's an old White Wolf quote from 2006. quote:Well, to log in with an "official" opinion here
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:34 |
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All out attack and beaten down are handy to know about. Also is there a specific school of magic that would let a mage transubstantiate a pile of babypowder into a pile of magical vampire cocaine? Just transmutation in general I guess. I don't know if thats how magic in mage works but I assume there are discipline style magic trees.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:36 |
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And on from Justin Achilli:Justin Achilli posted:Because reality rarely intrudes upon Internet forums' opinion-forming processes.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:40 |
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Sure; I'm agreeing with you. But every RPG commentator somehow has psychic knowledge games they don't like aren't what the market wants, and this proves they're terrible.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:44 |
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nopantsjack posted:All out attack and beaten down are handy to know about. Short answer: The Matter Arcanum covers magic that influences nonliving material. You'd need 4 dots to transmute baby powder into something else. If your "magical vampire cocaine" interacts with vampires' powers somehow, you'd also need some dots of Death. Longer answer: One of the great things about CofD is that it places a much bigger emphasis on weird, occult poo poo that defies categorization and doesn't fall into the neat little boxes of capital-V Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc. If you're just getting the hang of Vampire and running a game for people not familiar with it, I'd recommend you not try to bring mages into it: it's a whole other pile of rules, assumptions, and setting stuff that's really not necessary for what you're trying to do. If you want magical vampire cocaine, just say there's magical vampire cocaine: maybe some weird vampire alchemist ginned it up out of the powdered blood of psychics cut with mugwort and henbane, or maybe it's just what happens when you drip the blood of someone pure of heart into your Bolivian marching powder, but it'll probably serve your game better to have it just be a bit of weirdness and not "a wizard did it."
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:48 |
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spectralent posted:Sure; I'm agreeing with you. But every RPG commentator somehow has psychic knowledge games they don't like aren't what the market wants, and this proves they're terrible. Oh, I guess I misunderstood you. Sorry.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:55 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:Oh, I guess I misunderstood you. Sorry. It's okay! I mean, I'm happy there are contributing counter-stats, but everyone's going to keep saying "Nobody plays NWoD, nobody I knew bought it".
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 22:59 |
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GimpInBlack posted:Short answer: The Matter Arcanum covers magic that influences nonliving material. You'd need 4 dots to transmute baby powder into something else. If your "magical vampire cocaine" interacts with vampires' powers somehow, you'd also need some dots of Death. I sorta want to have the wizard did it thing because I think it'd be funny, especially if he's a confused addict wizard making his own wonder drug and just sharing the wealth with no idea whats been going on outside his trailer. I sorta wanna show that Vampires aren't the only crazy protagonists walking around and werewolves seems too typical, I like to play these kind of games as gothic action-comedies and wizards are inherently funny. Thats helpful though, he'll have some inorganic magic and a little death magic and no real idea how to use either.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 23:00 |
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You could always flavor it as a hedge wizard who stumbled on some secret recipe somewhere and hosed it up (or followed it exactly). Hedge wizards are not Mages in CoD, so that would prevent potential confusion if someone learns about Mages in the future while still preserving "a wizard did it" and the weirdness inherent to CoD. It would also allow this hedge wizard to be hapless without giving him ridiculous power like four dots in Matter would.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 23:06 |
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Kibner posted:You could always flavor it as a hedge wizard who stumbled on some secret recipe somewhere and hosed it up (or followed it exactly). Hedge wizards are not Mages in CoD, so that would prevent potential confusion if someone learns about Mages in the future while still preserving "a wizard did it" and the weirdness inherent to CoD. That could work, what's a hedge wizard in VtR as opposed to a mage?
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 23:48 |
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I'm sure this has been talked to death, but I'm not going to dig through hundreds of paging searching for it. What is the general consensus on the second editions of CofD? I've heard that second edition Vampire and Werewolf were well-received, but I'm primarily a Changeling and Hunter player and some of the things I've heard about the new Changeling have me concerned.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 23:48 |
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nopantsjack posted:That could work, what's a hedge wizard in VtR as opposed to a mage? A hedge-wizard is akin to witch doctors, psychics, and other small-time acts. A mage forces reality to fit his will. People more well-versed than me can probably explain the differences better.
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# ? Feb 23, 2016 23:57 |
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A hedge wizard is a wizard who follows rules other than those that Mage follows. Generally, they're less powerful. That's it, that's the whole meaning.
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# ? Feb 24, 2016 00:10 |
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# ? May 11, 2024 16:39 |
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nopantsjack posted:That could work, what's a hedge wizard in VtR as opposed to a mage? Since the supernatural is real in the World of Darkness, there is such a thing as magic, which like, actually works, and can be learned and practiced by humans, and such. It's just really obscure, really hard to do, and and pretty low-key in its effects unless it actually amounts to a way to beg favors out of more powerful supernatural entities like spirits or demons. But, in principle, you can and do get alchemists, diviners, potion brewers, telepaths, psychokinetics, etc. who are otherwise totally regular humans and not wrapped up in all the high weirdness Awakened mages are. People like that sometimes serve as acolytes or cat's paws for the Awakened, in fact.
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# ? Feb 24, 2016 00:12 |