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Ferrinus posted:Alright, I've read Awakening 2E and overall really like it. It's been written by people who both enjoy and understand the material, and it completely shows - a lot of stuff in there leaves you thinking "why wasn't that there in the first place?" when you read it, which I think is the best place to be for updates and changes to a game like Mage.
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# ? May 16, 2016 16:23 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 02:36 |
I really like yr point about unleashing vs containing paradox and will annoy my nerd friends with discussing the idea
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# ? May 16, 2016 16:32 |
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Terrorforge posted:Demon question: suborned Infrastructure is "unhooked" from the God-Machine, but how disconnected can it be exactly? If it's something mobile or at least reasonably possible to relocate, like a car or a phone booth, does removing it from its original context destroy its ability to function even as an Aether generator? The connections between elements of infrastructure usually aren't physical trunklines. You can drive an eldritch food cart across state lines and it will probably still work. The linchpin of your suborned infrastructure is more likely some strange element underneath the surface of the workings that you can't remove or allow to be damaged. The suborned car might have a beating heart speared into the middle of its engine block, and if you rip it out and replace it with a regular engine, you've got a working car but not any kind of functional infrastructure. The food cart has brassy heating plates that smell of sulfur and discolor meat. Terrorforge posted:Oh, and I was reading the Chronicles of Darkness book and noticed a bunch of references to a "Fate" trait that isn't actually explained anywhere. Found some discussion noting that it's a scrapped aspect of CofD that managed to stick around in an embarrassingly major way. How was it supposed to work, though? I get the impression that it's meant to give characters an end point other than "eaten by night terrors", but then there's that angel that's vulnerable to people who have recently "fulfilled their Fate". Check page 177, or if you don't see a relevant sidebar there, check your drivethru library for the updated version of the book. They ended up finding it easier, in revisions, to add a summary of the Fate system as an optional add-on to the God-Machine Chronicle material than to excise all the references that persisted. It's like an extra aspiration towards a vaguely defined doom, that modifies how you can benefit from spending Willpower to face or resist your doom.
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# ? May 16, 2016 16:37 |
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Oh yeah, on the topic of Mage 2E: while mana is clearly more valuable in 2E than it was in 1E it still feels kind of superfluous to the game as a whole. I'd rather it was more intimately tied to spellcasting itself (each Reach past your guaranteed costs 1m, certain practices always cost 1m or more, each Mana spent is straight up +1 die, etc) rather than a resource that mostly fuels your incidental Template-based super powers and insulates against paradox. The paradox insulation never sat well with me - the more supernal power you channel, the safer the spell gets? Frankly I suspect it would not be too hard to delete Mana from the game completely - Yantras and Reach are plenty of things to hoard and fight over. It's still possible in 2E to layer buffs on yourself such that you can walk around with 5 to 10 dots in a bunch of Skills or Attributes. Since Attributes never factor into spellcasting and Skills are but one way to hit a hard cap this ends up feeling a little less mandatory, but it's still annoying to do while being easy and risk-free enough that it's stupid not to do all the time. Yeah, you have to Reach a few times to make sure your Dex 5 Stamina 5 last all week, but a couple paradox dice per week is pretty much living a Charmed life for more mage PCs anyway. I very much appreciate that all spells are one roll long and it's no longer possible to assemble an arbitrarily high pile of factors by just spending a long enough period of downtime in your basement, but I'm still real leery of the still-present incentive to walk around wearing a bunch of buffs all of which boast unique effects and duration timers.
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# ? May 16, 2016 17:15 |
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I Am Just a Box posted:The connections between elements of infrastructure usually aren't physical trunklines. You can drive an eldritch food cart across state lines and it will probably still work. The linchpin of your suborned infrastructure is more likely some strange element underneath the surface of the workings that you can't remove or allow to be damaged. The suborned car might have a beating heart speared into the middle of its engine block, and if you rip it out and replace it with a regular engine, you've got a working car but not any kind of functional infrastructure. The food cart has brassy heating plates that smell of sulfur and discolor meat. So what I'm getting from this is that as long as the linchpin is in place, the Infrastructure continues to produce Aether? Correct me if I'm wrong. Either way, how much of the Infrastructure needs to remain intact? Assuming you need the original linchpin you obviously can't just take one of the tires off the car and reap the harvest, but could you perhaps take out the entire engine block and just leave that chugging away in a locked garage somewhere? Presumably it wouldn't generate as much aether, but in cases where the Infrastructure is something like an entire skyscraper it might be worth the effort to cut out and cart off the bleeding server rack in the ninth floor closet.
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# ? May 16, 2016 17:49 |
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GM-decided case-by-case there.
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# ? May 16, 2016 17:51 |
Terrorforge posted:So what I'm getting from this is that as long as the linchpin is in place, the Infrastructure continues to produce Aether? Correct me if I'm wrong. As far as I can tell, this is not something you can generalize. It will heavily depend on the exact piece of Infrastructure you're looking at, and even Demons will have a hard time figuring out the answers to these questions without taking it apart until it stops working, at which point they probably can't put it back together.
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# ? May 16, 2016 18:24 |
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As an aside note regarding nMage 2e: I am incredibly surprised it does not list 2015's Doctor Strange series (or any Doctor Strange series, for that matter) among its inspirations cause I am reading both right now and sometimes it seems they were made specifically for each other. Or out of each other. The resemblance in tone is uncanny.
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# ? May 16, 2016 21:42 |
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Foglet posted:As an aside note regarding nMage 2e: I am incredibly surprised it does not list 2015's Doctor Strange series (or any Doctor Strange series, for that matter) among its inspirations cause I am reading both right now and sometimes it seems they were made specifically for each other. Or out of each other. The resemblance in tone is uncanny. Because I only got Marvel Unlimited last month, and hadn't read it!
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# ? May 16, 2016 23:50 |
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I'm a little confused as to why Mage 2e says that Mages get mana most often from a Hallow. Aren't Hallows relatively rare and probably already controlled by someone else? Seems like way more mages would Pattern-scour for the free three mana. All it takes is spending a day being either weaker than normal, clumsier than normal or more fatigued than normal - or if you really insist, taking two days to heal up a resistant wound. Sure, "you feel like someone twisted your arm painfully and it'll take a day to heal up" isn't great, but in 90% of cases that's a better option than "you owe a favour to the guys who own the nearest Hallow" because, well... Mages.
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# ? May 17, 2016 01:08 |
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Although the game does not have mechanics for this, healthy people don't deliberately self-harm to gain temporary resources. I mean, yeah, mages, but this isn't Unknown Armies.
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# ? May 17, 2016 01:28 |
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Rand Brittain posted:Although the game does not have mechanics for this, healthy people don't deliberately self-harm to gain temporary resources. Some Moros and Thyrsus alike would argue that flesh/health is a temporary resource just like mana is. They're just transmuting the base matter of the Lie into purer supernal matter. You can turn mana into health at the exact same cost (except not to the wound you just created, of course).
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# ? May 17, 2016 01:31 |
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Rand Brittain posted:Although the game does not have mechanics for this, healthy people don't deliberately self-harm to gain temporary resources.
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# ? May 17, 2016 02:04 |
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Yawgmoth posted:Like you've never pulled a double shift for a few extra bucks. This is just the magical version. There's a difference between working too hard and cutting yourself.
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# ? May 17, 2016 02:39 |
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If you could make 1000 dollars once per day by cutting yourself, though, there would be much less of a difference.
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# ? May 17, 2016 02:47 |
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Given that the sample 2-dot Life Attainment makes it so Scouring stops being a pain in the rear end math-wise (makes it so the attribute damage you take doesn't spill over into derived traits), it seems like it's a thing that a decent chunk of the Awakened are aware of and totally cool with doing. Plus! It's rolled into the same Attainment that makes your self-healing more effective mana-wise to begin with, which renders this statement:bewilderment posted:Some Moros and Thyrsus alike would argue that flesh/health is a temporary resource just like mana is. They're just transmuting the base matter of the Lie into purer supernal matter.
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# ? May 17, 2016 02:56 |
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While we're on the topic of mutilating yourself for mystic power, listing soul stone creation as an official Wisdom sin is never not going to be stupid.
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# ? May 17, 2016 03:40 |
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Ferrinus posted:If you could make 1000 dollars once per day by cutting yourself, though, there would be much less of a difference. Yeah tass is like... literally Mage currency and surely there's a Prime rote to turn pattern-scoured mana into tass, right? People around the world do much worse every day. Ferrinus posted:While we're on the topic of mutilating yourself for mystic power, listing soul stone creation as an official Wisdom sin is never not going to be stupid. I feel like I've missed an old argument here. What's wrong with it being a 'sin'? It's literally taking out a piece of your soul, making it so that you can never reach maximum enlightenment, in order to have power right now.
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# ? May 17, 2016 04:12 |
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Ferrinus posted:If you could make 1000 dollars once per day by cutting yourself, though, there would be much less of a difference. These days with camshows there's probably a market.
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# ? May 17, 2016 04:15 |
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bewilderment posted:I feel like I've missed an old argument here. What's wrong with it being a 'sin'? It's literally taking out a piece of your soul, making it so that you can never reach maximum enlightenment, in order to have power right now. It's already inherently risky and fraught and doesn't actually harm or endanger anyone except for you, and it only harms you in an extremely abstract and long-term sense. In fact, if you're the kind of obsessive psycho who'll stop at nothing in their quest for Ultimate Power, making a soul stone is extremely unappealing.
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# ? May 17, 2016 04:29 |
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Isn't sacrificing your long-term health and well-being for immediate temporal power exactly the sort of thing that one could describe as unwise?
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# ? May 17, 2016 05:36 |
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Cabbit posted:Isn't sacrificing your long-term health and well-being for immediate temporal power exactly the sort of thing that one could describe as unwise? Isn't caring more about The Lie than your spiritual growth exactly the sort of thing one could describe as unwise?
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# ? May 17, 2016 05:38 |
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Because I only got Marvel Unlimited last month, and hadn't read it! I hope you like it when you read it, then
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# ? May 17, 2016 05:44 |
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Cabbit posted:Isn't sacrificing your long-term health and well-being for immediate temporal power exactly the sort of thing that one could describe as unwise? A soul stone doesn't cost you long term health and well-being, unless you define health and well-being as "Gnosis 10 and possessed of no connections to things outside myself that can be used to magically attack me". I do, obviously, which is why, were I a mage, I'd probably never make a soul stone. But, I'm pretty sure that I'm not the kind of person that a high Wisdom score is supposed to describe. Moreover, beside "acts of self-mutilation", every other sin against understanding Wisdom involves actually endangering and hurting people. I don't think plucking one of your eyes out or chopping off one of your arms is a wise thing to do, but I also don't think it should be pushing you down the scale that measures how much of a hazard to your surroundings you are.
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# ? May 17, 2016 06:08 |
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Ferrinus posted:I don't think plucking one of your eyes out or chopping off one of your arms is a wise thing to do, Tell that to Odin.
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# ? May 17, 2016 07:05 |
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ZiegeDame posted:Tell that to Odin. If it's good enough for Odin, then it's good enough for me to desperately emulate in a hubristic quest for Supernal glory.
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# ? May 17, 2016 08:20 |
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cptn_dr posted:If it's good enough for Odin, then it's good enough for me to desperately emulate in a hubristic quest for Supernal glory. This, but unironically. Do as Odin does! Simultaneously bring victory in law cases while sponsoring outlaws! Be awesome! Grow a beard!
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# ? May 17, 2016 09:02 |
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Loomer posted:This, but unironically. Do as Odin does! Simultaneously bring victory in law cases while sponsoring outlaws! Be awesome! Grow a beard! Get eaten by a wolf in a massively pointless battle with a bunch of folks you always knew were a problem because oh well, it's Fate? I mean they were better than the Greeks, but they are still bitch tier gods.
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# ? May 17, 2016 09:41 |
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Boogaleeboo posted:Get eaten by a wolf in a massively pointless battle with a bunch of folks you always knew were a problem because oh well, it's Fate? Just make the wolf hubris and bam, Mage chronicle right there.
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# ? May 17, 2016 09:52 |
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I mean hell, what else do you do when you arrive in the Primal Wilds?
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# ? May 17, 2016 09:56 |
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cptn_dr posted:I mean hell, what else do you do when you arrive in the Primal Wilds? Fenrir always seemed cool. He just chilled around the place, being a big wolf dog thing, and they were complete assholes. "Hey break this". "Sure, why not?" *snap* "poo poo Hey break this. It is super strong and you will totally gain much fame in the breaking of it." "That does sound pretty awesome." *snap* "gently caress gently caress gently caress Ok, you should totally break this." "Noooooope." "Come on look at it, it's super strong, none of us could break it, they will totally write songs about this *snicker*" "One, it totally looks like a hairband and I will not look cool for breaking it, and two it is totally magic and you are all loving with me and that is getting no-where near my leg." "Listen if you can't break it we will totally take it off for you because you are a bitch" "If you tie me up with that I will be waiting sweet loving forever for one of you assholes to take it off for me, but fine, whatever, I'm not a bitch. If you are totally sincere one of you put your hand in my mouth and we'll do this." *everyone immediately bitches out* *Tyr sighs and walks forth* "Rrrrrrrrrrrr and ro, thas preeey goo' ruys. Ruys?" "HA HA HA HA gently caress YOU WOLF YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT OF THERE! WHOOOOO WE ARE SO SMART AND AWESOME AND THIS WILL NEVER HAVE ANY CONSEQUENCES!" *everyone walks away laughing* *Tyr stands there weeping manfully over his severed hand* And that's why Ragnarok is the touching story of a bunch of total assholes finally getting theirs in the end.
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# ? May 17, 2016 10:15 |
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How about that time when a god lazered the head of his own child and then gave it the head of a passing elephant? Or how about that time a god commanded everyone on to a boat and sunk the planet? Or how about the time when a god hosed a lady as a swan? Or how about that time that a god pronounced a curse on a tree by tripping over near it? And so it goes. All Gods are divinely endowed idiots who shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects.
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# ? May 17, 2016 11:38 |
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Josef bugman posted:How about that time when a god lazered the head of his own child and then gave it the head of a passing elephant? I like the time a god swore a blood feud against the moon and thus keeps chasing after it as the sun to kick its rear end.
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# ? May 17, 2016 13:22 |
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One time Loki stole Mjolnir and gave it to the Giants so Thir dressed up like a lady to steal it back
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# ? May 17, 2016 13:51 |
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Josef bugman posted:Or how about that time a god commanded everyone on to a boat and sunk the planet? See that one hosed over everyone else. Not the god in question. That's proper godding behavior. quote:Or how about the time when a god hosed a lady as a swan? The Greek/Roman gods are the worst gods in the history of theology. Just the most pathetic and useless bunch of gods that has ever existed, anywhere. Ever. quote:And so it goes. All Gods are divinely endowed idiots who shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects. Nah, all of them are a step up from the Greeks, most are a step up from the Norse. There are levels. We should never give failures a pass because other people weren't perfect. That's how you get Zeus. Nobody wants Zeus.
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# ? May 17, 2016 15:04 |
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Really, the problem is that Zeus became conflated with local gods a lot, and every local god had a local lover/wife in myth. And the solution to this was that Zeus had all of them.
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# ? May 17, 2016 15:19 |
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Josef bugman posted:How about that time when a god lazered the head of his own child and then gave it the head of a passing elephant? citybeatnik posted:I like the time a god swore a blood feud against the moon and thus keeps chasing after it as the sun to kick its rear end. Literally The Worst posted:One time Loki stole Mjolnir and gave it to the Giants so Thir dressed up like a lady to steal it back Well thanks for getting me excited for Scion all over again >
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# ? May 17, 2016 15:23 |
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The Aztec pantheon makes a lot more sense if you picture Huitzlpochtli as the letter-jacket wearing jock in highschool ready to dunk on nerds.
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# ? May 17, 2016 15:27 |
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Literally The Worst posted:One time Loki stole Mjolnir and gave it to the Giants so Thir dressed up like a lady to steal it back He also tied his balls to a goat once.
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# ? May 17, 2016 15:46 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 02:36 |
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Boogaleeboo posted:Nah, all of them are a step up from the Greeks, most are a step up from the Norse. There are levels. We should never give failures a pass because other people weren't perfect. That's how you get Zeus. Nobody wants Zeus. Excuse me, but I think you'll find if you read the mythology that lots of people wanted Zeus
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# ? May 17, 2016 16:06 |