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Mors Rattus posted:I'm not sure nihilistic is the right word to use. Sure, you (by default) probably aren't going to defeat all evil, destroy the God-Machine, unmake the Exarchs, destroy all vampires and so on. Right, that was a problem in some WoD games, people knew they couldn't meaningfully interact with the metaplot so they'd gently caress off to the high umbra or the realms supernal to do something somewhere else. CofD Doesn't have that metaplot, and the world isn't directly ending. So the theme of say, Werewolf, has changed from "The world is ending and you're but one soldier amongst thousands fighting at the feet of titans" to "You can't kill someone's drug addiction, oh wait, you're a werewolf, you literally can. Go take care of that and make your neighborhood a better place."
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Apr 13, 2016 15:10
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Terrorforge posted:The Lead Storyteller looks like this: Wait, that's what he actually looks like? I always assumed that was just some picture from a WoD book he liked or something. I didn't realize they ACTUALLY had Goth Rasputin in charge
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Apr 13, 2016 15:16
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Kaza42 posted:Wait, that's what he actually looks like? I always assumed that was just some picture from a WoD book he liked or something. I didn't realize they ACTUALLY had Goth Rasputin in charge Goth Rasputin who can't wait to tell you everything written after 1992 sucks. I'm still mad.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:32
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Look, the man is an integral part of the time portal to the 90s we are building.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:32
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Kaza42 posted:I always assumed that was just some picture from a WoD book he liked or something. It is, but it's a picture of him from a WoD book.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:40
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Terrorforge posted:That's actually kind of disappointing. I was hoping they'd hired a full-time Goth Rasputin to be in charge of the story because frankly, "is Goth Rasputin" seems like exactly the kind of qualification you want to see on a WoD developer's CV. Allan Moore already has a job.
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Apr 13, 2016 19:10
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I've been reading Demon: the Descent and man you weren't kidding; it owns. The only real complaint I have so far is that the exceptional success results for a lot of the Embeds are only useful if you already know they're going to happen. For example, the ability to hold the Shatter effect for one minute has a lot of potential, but 9/10 times when I activate Shatter it's going to be because I want to break something now. If I could do it at will I could find a ton of use for it, but as a random upgrade it's only relevant if I'm planning to destroy something and leave immediately. Oh, and I'm a little confused about Cover. Specifically, the line about how "taking an action grossly out of character" risks Compromise. Is that meant to apply regardless of whether anyone sees you do it? It feels like it should, but it also feels like that would make it really hard for a demon to be a a demon. I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure that bartering for souls and colluding with occult forces to spy on God counts as acting grossly out of character for pretty much anyone.
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Apr 19, 2016 13:52
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It is meant to apply when no one is watching, but also meant to only apply to stuff that would, essentially, be Integrity breaking points for the person you are pretending to be. It's the killing-random-people clause, you can only do that if your Cover is, like, a serial killer. (Bartering for souls is covered by 'revealing information about your true nature to others'.)
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Apr 19, 2016 13:57
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It specifically calls out "suddenly displaying doctorate-level knowledge of physics" as an example, though. Elsewhere it's mentioned that if your Cover is a "strict corporate boss", showing too much compassion can cause Compromise, as would your Cover disappearing for weeks without notice. I guess it's just a matter of degree? Acting out wildly, obviously or consistently risks your Cover, but occasional indiscretions slip by unnoticed. Your corporate tycoon can probably polish his enchanted broadsword in peace, but he shouldn't wear it to board meetings. As an interesting aside, I'll note that in both examples of pact making in the book, the demon goes out of their way to not reveal their true nature, posing as a mortal cultist and a divine messenger respectively. It's a nice example of the lateral thinking they keep banging on about. Actually, speaking of revealing information, that clause also confuses me. It's pretty clear that anyone spreading the information at any time is supposed to be a Compromise, though telling multiple people at once only counts as a single leak. But what exactly counts as "at once"? The example used is a Hunter telling his cell about the demon. What if instead of holding a meeting, that hunter calls each cell member individually? What if he holds a meeting, but one member is out of town for a week and doesn't get the info until a week later? What if he tells one guy who then immediately goes into the next room and tells another guy?
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Apr 19, 2016 14:35
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I agree that it could be much clearer; my understanding is primarily drawn from forums exchanges and other non-textual material from the writers. That said, I think the solution that particular issue is 'don't be a dick, GM'. Because, y'know, whether all that happens is entirely up to the GM and how big a dick they want be to the demon's player.
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Apr 19, 2016 14:40
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In most cases, yeah. The problem I foresee is a player (or possibly an especially shrewd NPC) abusing the RAW to destroy a Cover by doling secrets out sequentially. It might seem clever at first, but I don't think that's a can of worms you want to open. And yeah, the book as a whole could use a few more explicit yes/no statements. My current bugbear is The Word, because it's really vague about its limitations. What counts as a "command"? Will the target follow the letter or the intent of the command? Does the target have to hear and/or understand the command word? If I can make someone "burn", can I make them "grow" or "evolve"? I get that it's "Storyteller's Discretion: the Exploit" but I feel like it should at least mention whether or not I can use it over the phone.
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Apr 19, 2016 15:01
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Terrorforge posted:It specifically calls out "suddenly displaying doctorate-level knowledge of physics" as an example, though. Elsewhere it's mentioned that if your Cover is a "strict corporate boss", showing too much compassion can cause Compromise, as would your Cover disappearing for weeks without notice. I guess it's just a matter of degree? Acting out wildly, obviously or consistently risks your Cover, but occasional indiscretions slip by unnoticed. Your corporate tycoon can probably polish his enchanted broadsword in peace, but he shouldn't wear it to board meetings. You've got it. It's specifically for things that Cover would not or absolutely could not do. If you find yourself running into confusion over whether things like fighting angels or spying on G-M facilities, consider that a not-inconsiderable number of people would fight back or investigate weird things they came across. I admit that the doctorate level of physics example isn't a good one for this particular kind of compromise--it's really a better example of the kind of thing that's probably not a compromise roll in and of itself, but could make someone suspicious enough to start investigating you. But yeah, it's a matter of degrees. If Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross shows up at the office Monday morning and suddenly gives everyone a bonus and three extra weeks' vacation, that might be a compromise. (It might also just be like the physics thing above--his coworkers get suspicious and start trying to figure out what's up, which leads to a risk of compromise when they realize Ohmiel ate Blake's soul at Studio 54 Saturday night.) If he just throttles back on the hardass front, or just starts acting a little erratic, that's suspicious but not necessarily a compromise. It's something you can tune depending on how much you want your game to focus on paranoia and the consequences of letting your lies slip, even for a second. Terrorforge posted:Actually, speaking of revealing information, that clause also confuses me. It's pretty clear that anyone spreading the information at any time is supposed to be a Compromise, though telling multiple people at once only counts as a single leak. But what exactly counts as "at once"? The example used is a Hunter telling his cell about the demon. What if instead of holding a meeting, that hunter calls each cell member individually? What if he holds a meeting, but one member is out of town for a week and doesn't get the info until a week later? What if he tells one guy who then immediately goes into the next room and tells another guy? A good rule of thumb is probably "if you can sum up the information dissemination as a single event, it probably only counts once. "Gary told his cell about the demon" is probably a single event, no matter the specific logistics of how he told them. "Gary told his cell about the demon, then Bob called that weird old guy who calls himself the Chevalier to ask 'is this one of yours?', and Judy went and did some more digging on her own" counts as multiple. There are probably edge cases that you'll have to adjudicate, but that's a good baseline.
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Apr 19, 2016 15:49
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*e whoa, formatting
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Apr 19, 2016 17:40
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The way I think of cover risk is as a specifically risky and extraordinary action taken while under cover. To adapt an example from an old Demon game in the PbP archives: A demon is under cover as a cordon bleu chef, and he needs to high tail it to a local clusterfuck to extract the other demons in his ring. He Tokyo drifts his rear end across the city in minutes during high traffic hours, because time is that critical. The God-Machine doesn’t have eyes EVERYWHERE, but it has two primary means of detecting incognito demons – a variable sensitivity (based on angel proximity, etc.) to manipulation and exertion of aether, and a duller sensitivity to things working the way they’re “supposed to”. Demons operate on the margins of the GM’s rules of reality, and beyond things like physics and chemistry, there are to a greater or lesser degree rules about what humans can or cannot do. An action doesn’t have to be impossible, but if very few can do it, it has to be accounted for or else it will stick out. Doing crazy poo poo slips the mask of cover ever so slightly and there’s a chance you’ll catch heat if you’re not careful. So a demon’s stunt driving across LA. Normally this would incur cover risk, because nobody would expect a chef to have such skills. But say the demon secured a lesser contract with a petty criminal, who gave up his experiences joyriding as a kid in exchange for the “misplacement” of evidence against him in a robbery case. Now driving like a maniac is part of that chef’s history. A thing about the GM and angels that demons can often exploit is that they’re observant but not terribly critical, and because of that, players-as-demons can get away with a lot of stuff if they rationalize it in such a way that the action falls within the realm of logical possibility. It’s much like paradox in Mage, as I understand it – summoning a fireball from nowhere incurs it, but if you’ve got a lighter and an aerosol can on hand it’s a lot less risky. I sort of see this as a corollary to the systems like “morality” in Hunter. In that system, a person with low morality score can do a lot of things without consequence, but a paragon of morality will risk devolution if they look at someone’s hard drive without their permission. Higher score, higher standards. Likewise a Demon’s cover, as it gets stronger, becomes more defined, there are more “facts” that are added to the legend, and therefore more opportunities to slip up and break the rules. So if you go into action with a cover, it’s going to deteriorate. A good cover will just last longer before you have to go loud. Note that espionage is acting. I as a GM would allow wiggle room if something extraordinary is done but finessed in certain ways. So if a demon needs to convey what the temperature in Kelvin of plasma in a solar core, he could say “ten to the seventh power” on the spot, which would be a risk if the cover is a line cook, but if that line cook liked to read in his spare time then the demon could make a big show of it with pacing and brow-rubbing for a minute and saying “God, I know I read this somewhere” and throw out a false answer before “remembering”, but still acting uncertain. That wouldn’t raise flags.
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Apr 20, 2016 00:26
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Basic Chunnel posted:Note that espionage is acting. I as a GM would allow wiggle room if something extraordinary is done but finessed in certain ways. So if a demon needs to convey what the temperature in Kelvin of plasma in a solar core, he could say “ten to the seventh power” on the spot, which would be a risk if the cover is a line cook, but if that line cook liked to read in his spare time then the demon could make a big show of it with pacing and brow-rubbing for a minute and saying “God, I know I read this somewhere” and throw out a false answer before “remembering”, but still acting uncertain. That wouldn’t raise flags. I was thinking along the same lines. It might also be worth considering that as described in-universe, except for truly egregious compromises, Cover doesn't so much disappear in chunks as "fray" away bit by bit. Thus it seems reasonable to me for non-catastrophic breaches to come with a grace period. Take the above example; if you don't prepare properly and just blurt out an answer you shouldn't have, that's suspicious, and suspicion eats at your Cover. If you can defuse that suspicion by convincing those present that you're just a well-read nerd with a head for numbers, the damage stops there - although your next indiscretion will be even harder to brush off. If however you were to just drop that bomb and not even to explain it away (or worse, tip your hand further with clumsy attempts at damage control), that suspicion might fester and permanently damage your Cover (force a Compromise).
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Apr 20, 2016 00:59
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From all this talk it sounds like Demon is just Shadowrun: gently caress god edition.
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Apr 20, 2016 01:09
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Nomadic Scholar posted:From all this talk it sounds like Demon is just Shadowrun: gently caress god edition. It's got something of that in it. I think of it as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Cyborg.
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Apr 20, 2016 01:22
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Attorney at Funk posted:It's got something of that in it. I think of it as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Cyborg. The Honorable Schoolbot.
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Apr 20, 2016 02:08
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I've just started a campaign with some friends using the CofD rules for vampire: Requiem 2e is what we're using. I don't have the most experience with Chronicles; so maybe you guys can help! How often do vampires need to feed in 2e? I don't see it anywhere- also what happens when you're out of Vitae? What makes a vampire hungry or starving for modifiers to predatory aura? The rules for vitae say about kindred vitae: "However, it’s efficient. Every Vitae taken is a Vitae earned" What does that mean? Does it give more vitae? Does mortal blood not nourish as well? With regards to sanctity of Merits- what happens when you lose a touchstone? Do you just automatically get a new touchstone? How do you get the languid condition? The rules are kind of confusing! Are touchstones aware of the vampiric condition since they can talk a vampire down from Frenzy? Is there a good source for antagonist design for Chronicles?
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Apr 20, 2016 05:01
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Quantumfate posted:How often do vampires need to feed in 2e? Quantumfate posted:what happens when you're out of Vitae? Quantumfate posted:What makes a vampire hungry or starving for modifiers to predatory aura? Quantumfate posted:The rules for vitae say about kindred vitae: "However, it’s efficient. Every Vitae taken is a Vitae earned" What does that mean? Does it give more vitae? Does mortal blood not nourish as well? Quantumfate posted:With regards to sanctity of Merits- what happens when you lose a touchstone? Do you just automatically get a new touchstone? How do you get the languid condition? The rules are kind of confusing! You don't get a new Touchstone automatically - you have to work for it, establishing the relationship through roleplay and then gain a point of Humanity to cement it. As for the sanctity of merits, that just means that if you do lose the touchstone permanently, you get to reassign that merit dot - for example, putting it into Haven to represent your character retreating from a frightening world. Quantumfate posted:Are touchstones aware of the vampiric condition since they can talk a vampire down from Frenzy? Quantumfate posted:Is there a good source for antagonist design for Chronicles?
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Apr 20, 2016 11:56
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Terrorforge posted:I don't think there's any such material for 2e specifically, but it's not like converting 1e stuff is a herculean task. Requiem itself has all the business with the Strix, though, which seems like a good place to start. The new Chronicles of Darkness core book has the horror creation section which would let you build supernatural creatures for use with Requiem.
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Apr 20, 2016 15:23
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Stumbled on another unclear rules thing reading through the CofD rulebook:Chronicles of Darkness posted:If the Storyteller judges that your character’s actions during a scene reflect his Vice, he regains one spent Willpower point. Note that acting on a Virtue or Vice does not need to pose difficulty or risk to your character. For a second I thought that implied you could also regain single points of Willpower by fulfilling your Virtue in small ways, but it's just a typo, isn't it?
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Apr 21, 2016 15:00
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Terrorforge posted:Stumbled on another unclear rules thing reading through the CofD rulebook: Looks like a typo, yeah.
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Apr 21, 2016 15:20
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Terrorforge posted:Stumbled on another unclear rules thing reading through the CofD rulebook: You could probably just re-order the sentences to make better sense: quote:Note that acting on a Virtue or Vice does not need to pose difficulty or risk to your character. e: I guess there is still some ambiguity that way and that was what you picked up on anyway, so nvm.
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Apr 21, 2016 15:23
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Started recruiting for a D:tD game over in The Game Room. 3-4 players, ideally available for real-time chat. Post in the thread if you're interested.
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Apr 25, 2016 07:06
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Vampire MET update. Regional Prince and my Advocate were having a private meeting (which is why I imagine Vampire LARP has such a negative stereotype, it's more or less Boardrooms the Masquerade, anyone not involved in the power plays feels like an extraneous charterer at times), which apparently brought to light that the Anarch's constable was feeding info to the local hunters, which lead to the death of the Cams Harpy. Rather then asking our Constable, the Advocate decided to try and pry it out of his brain, while we were busy doing his job negotiating a temporary truce with the local Settite clan. So he wigged out and left town. Me and the other anarchs were left sitting on park bench bored out of our minds, wondering what the hell just happened. Needless to say I did what any self respecting Anarch would do and started a riot during the Cam meeting. All while very clearly luring the entire Settite group to their meeting. Not a Cammie got hurt, the entire Cult of Set was slain to a snake(?), and I made some friends with a pair of Toreadors. Granted pretty much any person with authority seems to hate me but what's you gonna do. Seriously, though, me and like half the Anarchs were gonna walk from boredom until I decided to start poo poo. It's waaaaay to easy to put a Vampire court into a state of doing nothing safely, which seems to be the current goal of both the Advocate and Ambassador.
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Apr 26, 2016 21:33
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Sounds like an inherent risk of a political game where the big dogs are real players and there's little risk of outside influence. Much as it's nice to talk up player agency, most players like to "win", keep their characters, move forward with the story etc., so they don't take big risks or start interesting but risky conflicts. That's usually offset by an ST forcing action on them, but when the whole thing is player-lead there's a significant risk it breaks down into "playing house", as it were. Kudos on making poo poo happen. Makes me wonder if it mightn't be a good idea to seed these events with "NPC" troublemakers. Give somebody a "fake", disposable character and the explicit mission to poke the hornet's nest.
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Apr 27, 2016 12:34
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Terrorforge posted:Sounds like an inherent risk of a political game where the big dogs are real players and there's little risk of outside influence. Much as it's nice to talk up player agency, most players like to "win", keep their characters, move forward with the story etc., so they don't take big risks or start interesting but risky conflicts. That's usually offset by an ST forcing action on them, but when the whole thing is player-lead there's a significant risk it breaks down into "playing house", as it were. Kudos on making poo poo happen. This works very well, especially if you (as the ST) get them to visibly go through the process of character creation, establishing ties with other PCs, etc.
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Apr 27, 2016 13:17
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Someone in the Catpiss thread did that in a Dark Ages LARP, playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by way of a Lasombra priest, getting involved in as much as possible to cause chaos. Nobody picked up on what was happening even when he flipped in front of them, and he was eventually staked on an unrelated matter, nearly causing a fight to break out over what to do with him. Then the truth finally came out to the shock (and enjoyment) of the players.
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Apr 27, 2016 13:22
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Terrorforge posted:Sounds like an inherent risk of a political game It's tough to appreciate conflict in a LARP game when you deal with character death and XP loss, or when your political enemies use ST plots as excuses to attack your position/status, or when people who are bored decide to 'start poo poo' by wiping out an entire Clan (hopefully if any PCs got wiped out, they at least had some kind of fun.) The usual lack of good Staff to Players ratios, people identifying more strongly with their characters because of the medium, and a vast differential between player investment in the game itself (people who have been playing for years, vs. newcomers and tourists competing for the same space/plots) are all pitfalls that seem to come up over and over again in long-form Vampire campaigns. Most LARP games like that would almost run better as PbP. It takes a really good crew to really work around those pitfalls in a live game and take advantage of the medium. Anti-Citizen, can I ask what City your game is in?
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Apr 27, 2016 13:25
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The best LARP story I ever heard is of a few people who decided to join a vampire LARP, played a bit, and then were asked to sit outside a room and wait by the Storytellers. After hours of inactivity they were informed that their characters had been ambushed, staked, and diablerized, and the huge delay was a result of the culprits (longtime players with ST support) carefully calculating who should diablerize whom and in what order in order to maximize the gains.
Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 13:29
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Pope Guilty posted:This works very well, especially if you (as the ST) get them to visibly go through the process of character creation, establishing ties with other PCs, etc. This works well sometimes. Unfortunately, I've seen it backfire too, with the established player-base then distrusting new players as a knee-jerk reaction. And while having a paranoid-Prince establish Nazi-like interrogation scenes for every new lick that shows up is an interesting concept, in practice it usually just turns off any new players from investing in the game when that's their first experience. e: ^Ugh, that's terrible. The diablerie mechanic is so bad for group games. Incentivization to kill other PCs for free XP is not a good rule. Barbed Tongues fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 13:30
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Ferrinus posted:The best LARP story I ever heard is of a few people who decided to join a vampire LARP, played a bit, and then were asked to sit outside a room and wait by the Storytellers. After hours of inactivity they were informed that their characters had been ambushed, staked, and diablerized, and the huge delay was a result of the culprits (longtime players with ST support) carefully calculating who should diablerize whom and in what order in order to maximize the gains. That was HappyElf, and I don't think it was a LARP. quote:MEGA-DIABLERIE CHAIN:
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Apr 27, 2016 13:39
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Barbed Tongues posted:This works well sometimes. Yup, the whole 'secret infiltrators' does not work at all if it results in a playerbase that spends the first hours of a player's experience with the game as a depressingly solitary interrogation. Its better to trust that player will develop their rivalries and compete, especially with hard XP floors to keep everyone from feeling like they can't fall behind.
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Apr 27, 2016 14:30
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Reading through F&F I came up with a game idea where you play as aliens fleeing their homeworld after it got shitfucked by WoD shenanigans, only to come to Earth and find it engulfed by those same forces. With not enough supplies to go with any alternative, they now have to adopt to their new home, and figure out how to defeat the darkness and whether or not the Earthlings are acceptable collateral damage. Each of the splats represents the different WoD lines in alien form, but they each look like movie aliens. Or rather, movie aliens look like the real deal. So instead of vampires you have Mr. Spock that feeds on rational thought, and instead of werewolves you have Giger Xenomorphs.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:12
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My favorite vampire LARP story was the group that went into an established Camarilla larp, sat down in a circle with an egg timer. When asked what they were doing they just said they were casting a ritual and otherwise weren't disruptive or hostile to conversation. Eventually the egg timer went off and the Storytellers informed everyone that they just let a bunch of Sabbat vampires infiltrate their gathering and complete a blood ritual and now all of them were dead.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:18
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I like the story where super soakers were used to protect a university burrito shop from closing.
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Apr 27, 2016 15:53
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Barbed Tongues posted:
We're in Sacramento, most of the game is PbP which yeah works a lot better. I was just annoyed with the 4 hour long meeting with an hour long break for bickering over the summoning rules had monopolized the session. That part could have easily been done on the web.
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Apr 27, 2016 21:50
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Kurieg posted:My favorite vampire LARP story was the group that went into an established Camarilla larp, sat down in a circle with an egg timer. When asked what they were doing they just said they were casting a ritual and otherwise weren't disruptive or hostile to conversation. Heh, reminds of that time when Spoony first participated in a LARP where his character was tortured by the other players who then foolishly let him join their Covenant in the belief that they "won him over." As his PC was min-maxed in chemistry, he infiltrated Elysium with a bunch of homebrewed explosives and blew them up, killing the majority of the Kindred gathered there. Starts around the 10:34 mark.
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Apr 28, 2016 01:35
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Well, since I hate myself, and I'm sort of obligated to, I got the Beast fiction anthology. The first story is an Eshmaki Nemesis gaslighting her abusive mother that she hasn't seen in fifteen years. Really off to a great start.
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Apr 28, 2016 03:42
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