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Kavak posted:You find inspiration for WoD games in the strangest places This was great but I'm curious to hear what game people would put this in. I'd probably make it one session in a mage game
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Jun 7, 2016 21:57
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Idrin posted:This was great but I'm curious to hear what game people would put this in. I'd probably make it one session in a mage game
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Jun 8, 2016 00:06
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http://www.theonion.com/article/bloodblood-everywhere-2420 is another good Onion/Horror piece.
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Jun 8, 2016 00:19
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Idrin posted:This was great but I'm curious to hear what game people would put this in. I'd probably make it one session in a mage game Hunter, probably. A magically powerful child gets very attached to his picture book and drags his mental images of them out of the Astral, and the players come in to kill them and attempt to find someone who knows what they're slung with magic to teach the kid.
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Jun 8, 2016 07:27
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I'd probably try and make it point to some type of abyssal manifestation for mage . I wonder if this scenario could be used in Demon...
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Jun 9, 2016 02:31
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mage
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Jun 9, 2016 04:51
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Any suggestions re WtA and gently trying to keep some form of hierarchy in place re tribes in general and bone gnawers in particular without going full shitlord? It basically boils down to me playing a put upon claith Shadow Lord metis philodox trying to go "no you idiots the elders will drop on you like a ton of bricks stop this and wait a bit this is called politics i'll help" without actually saying that out loud since, you know, Shadow Lord. But the cryptofascist method is something i'm wanting to avoid because gently caress that noise. New game that i'm not completely sold on but i'm giving it a try. Just wondering how folks handle the "yeah this society is hosed up, but gothic punk ergo it's going to stay hosed up" aspect. There has to be a some good balance between everyone holding hands or silver fangs/gets organizing sparta-style heliot cleansings to keep the rabble down, right?
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Jun 15, 2016 18:27
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I just started a Mage game in the 2E Los Angeles setting. We're starting with a ~3 session prologue story set in the past before we skip ahead a year to the present day, the idea being that this is the last couple days they spent with their Mentor before she died. The overall theme behind this game is things like inheritance, legacy, duties and obligations, family history, things from the past that won't stay buried. In that spirit, I want to populate this prologue story with little side encounters and details and characters that will be interesting to check up on in the present. Situations where the PCs can do something or meet someone, and then see what's happened to them after a year. The players are more interested in magical weirdness and supernatural investigation than they are in wizard politics, so I don't want to dive into that too deeply at this stage- this whole prologue is more of a bottle episode than majorly setting the stakes for the game as a whole. I do want to take advantage of the timeskip to establish that things are different and make it feel like time has actually passed in various ways. Here's some of the moving parts after the first session:
Apart from that, I have another goal with this prologue. The PCs have a shared Mentor, a once-famous Thyrsus Thrice-Great who used to be a big deal and is now mostly secluded to her sanctum and personal projects, like guiding younger mages. I've already pitched the game as "investigating the mystery of your mentor's death and dealing with the fallout of her complicated legacy", so she'll be taken off the table during the timeskip and the PCs know that. What I want to do is make the most of the short time she'll be onscreen (2, maybe 3 scenes) to make a good, memorable impression on the players as a likable character and get a sense of what each of their relationships are with her. They'll be seeing her at her sanctum during a typical day for an elder mage, not on her deathbed or anything, so some kind of set piece ritual or dramatic confrontation with striking visuals would be perfect. What should I be doing here? How do I make the most use of an important NPC that's only going to be alive for a short time?
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Jun 16, 2016 09:51
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Kellsterik posted:How do I make the most use of an important NPC that's only going to be alive for a short time? How are you seeding the Mystery of her death? My first thought would be to add a few ominous signs or foreshadowing in those scenes. Not the focus of those scenes, mind you, but small things. * A cough or headache at a stressful/magical point that seems unusual. * A conversation about an unfulfilled debt. * The arrival of a tome/book/item that the mentor uses heightened security to handle for some reason. * Mention of an old apprentice. I suspect the players would be tempted to be on high alert (perception-wise) as they know about the death before hand, so throwing them some things to chew on would let them scratch that itch in a controlled way.
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Jun 16, 2016 13:21
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Kellsterik posted:
Not to criticize Kellsterik's game, it sounds pretty cool, but I really hate this trope. I just see this all the time and it always feels so drat cheesy. It just destroys whatever mystery is still possible with supernatural characters. Vampires and werewolves and whatever else should be hard to find because they don't want you to find them and because if you can just go have a beer with them, they're not scary. What I like instead: Everyone has heard stories about the haunted statue in the park. People say they've heard strange noises of seen weird lights near it at night. Homeless people leave little tokens there for the Virgin Mary or their favorite saint. Cryptic graffiti appears on the base of the statue, and reappears every night if the city washes it off. Legends even say the statue, a revolutionary war general, leaves his pedestal and roams the park at night looking for redcoats. In fact, the statue is a sort of supernatural dead drop. You can arrange a meeting with almost any faction in the city, if you know the right sign to leave at the statue. Allegedly it's been warded at some point to provide privacy and discourage violence in it's vicinity after sunset. Normal people tend not to remember the details of anything they see near the statue, no matter how odd. The homeless in the park know to stay away from the statue at night, and in turn those supernatural communities that might prey on the homeless leave them in peace when they're in the park. The homeless don't know the nature of their visitors, but they make note of who leaves what sign at the statue. The rumors that the statue is actually some sort of golem or marks the tomb of an ancient vampire are probably just rumors. Probably.
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Jun 16, 2016 15:19
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Gilok posted:Not to criticize Kellsterik's game, it sounds pretty cool, but I really hate this trope. I just see this all the time and it always feels so drat cheesy. It just destroys whatever mystery is still possible with supernatural characters. Vampires and werewolves and whatever else should be hard to find because they don't want you to find them and because if you can just go have a beer with them, they're not scary.
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Jun 17, 2016 00:28
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Mostly I just think it denatures the setting irreparably if different strains of WoD creature were not, all things being equal, hostile toward one another to the point of violence. Drinking with others denotes a measure of trust in them that should be risky at best and disastrously foolish by default.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:27
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I like the idea of crossover games, but with the groups in general still unaware/wary/hostile as appropriate. Cooperation is something for the PCs and certain groups, allied or opposed to your players. If the players want to encourage anything beyond that in the communities as a whole (or at least the groups they actually like), then that's a major thing to work towards for them.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:40
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Crossover games work if there's a goal or dilemma that makes unlikely allies. If people are just hanging out and playing darts or w/e, you introduce the notion that hey, maybe with a little bit of trust and understanding we might just come together and succeed at our various impossible tasks, and the WoD loses that je ne sais quoi that makes it what it is.
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Jun 17, 2016 02:44
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Basic Chunnel posted:Mostly I just think it denatures the setting irreparably if different strains of WoD creature were not, all things being equal, hostile toward one another to the point of violence. Drinking with others denotes a measure of trust in them that should be risky at best and disastrously foolish by default. That's old WoD thinking. New WoD has everyone mostly neutral or ignorant of each other and then any interactions between supernaturals depend on individuals and regions.
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Jun 17, 2016 03:33
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I don't think there's anything wrong with friendly local supernatural hangout depending on the tone of your game. If you're going for more a Buffy or Lost Girl vibe it can be a fun way to get the story rolling and foster a sort of meta-society as an analogue to the various social groups that exist in monogames. If I wanted to explore the consequences of a location like that (not every game demands it) I'd follow it to its logical conclusion - Joe Vampire's Elder Broodma says, "Hey Joe, you're friends with a Mage right? Get him to do such and such for me" and watch the whole conflict of loyalties explode.
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Jun 17, 2016 05:01
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Basic Chunnel posted:Mostly I just think it denatures the setting irreparably if different strains of WoD creature were not, all things being equal, hostile toward one another to the point of violence. Drinking with others denotes a measure of trust in them that should be risky at best and disastrously foolish by default. I dunno, I think on a basic level you probably shouldn't trust any supernatural on that basic level, whether or not you share the same evil genes.
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Jun 17, 2016 05:31
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Yeah. Like, demons don't trust anyone by default, and given their situation I could actually see some being a bit more trusting of werewolves or another type of supernatural than they are the average demon, given that the former know less about them and thus are less capable of completely screwing them over, at least deliberately. Besides, they could have shared goals; an idea I mentioned in the F&F thread involved all the PCs trying to change, theoretically for the better, the city the game takes place in. Like, the werewolf could want to protect their territory and fix its spiritual landscape, while the demon wants to purge the city of God-Machine influence as part of their vision of Hell; both have something of a similar goal (they want the city to be a better place, and the God-Machine's machinations cause havoc on the spiritual landscape and such in a way the werewolf and their pack probably wouldn't appreciate), so some sort of cooperation between them could be possible. It also provides interesting avenues of conflict, both through goals not quite lining up all the time, and things like, say, some of the werewolf's pack not liking the outsiders they're dealing with, or the vampire's covenant discovering the arrangement and pressuring them to take advantage of it in ways that the vamp specifically and/or the group at large don't agree with. Also the group doesn't necessarily have to all get along; the PCs could be two or three groups with someone from each being their connections to each other, rather than a big circle of friends. Say the demon and werewolf are friends through the above, and also know a sin-eater, who is their link to the mage, vampire, and changeling of the group. The sin-eater and vampire might be best of buddies, but that doesn't mean that the changeling isn't freaked out by the demon's pact-making, even if the demon is the friend of a friend of a friend. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 06:11
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Other supernatural forces are wild cards to each other, and humanity in general has a love-hate affair with wild cards. Yes, there's going to be a lot of suspicion and mistrust and murdering of people who blab too much about Wizard State Secrets, but the value of being able to aim a sucker punch at a rival out of left field can't be denied. Plus, most of them are still people in the broad sense. There's going to be enough novitiate supernaturals bonking into each other and finding common ground that there will inevitably be some inter-spooky alliances that are off the official record, which can be used to either pull strings at appropriate times or catalyze temporary working alliances for a mutual interest. In fact, it's when they all find common ground and knuckle under for some idealistic goal that you're most likely to get the sort of misunderstandings and violence that undermine the striving towards impossible goals. As mentioned, any changeling that even gets the tiniest inkling of what a demon is is probably going to freak the gently caress out and try to kill the demon, a demon that gets too paranoid about a mage's questions quietly disappears someone who happens to be the only thing holding a tenuous intra-order alliance together, a werewolf loses control and eats someone alive in front of an Ogre who has a PTSD flashback, hunters eventually find a good reason to shoot basically anybody in the back, Sin-Eaters get ripshit pissed when they discover traditional Moros methods of treating ghosts... The closer you cozy up to someone else, the bigger the differences between you start to appear.
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Jun 17, 2016 21:26
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The most common mage response I've seen to other supernaturals is dissection and study.
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Jun 17, 2016 21:58
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ZiegeDame posted:The most common mage response I've seen to other supernaturals is dissection and study. What moron wizard has to kill and dissect someone to study them when they've got every flavor of Mage Sight in the rainbow? Vivisection is far more viable.
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Jun 17, 2016 22:00
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Daeren posted:There's going to be enough novitiate supernaturals boinking each other and finding common ground that there will inevitably be some inter-spooky alliances that are off the official record, which can be used to either pull strings at appropriate times or catalyze temporary working alliances for a mutual interest. If human history teaches us anything about how humanity views things that are "different," it's that the two inevitable options are "kill it" and "gently caress it." WoD: Monster Hearts. Which is basically just Monster Hearts, really.
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Jun 17, 2016 22:20
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ProfessorCirno posted:If human history teaches us anything about how humanity views things that are "different," it's that the two inevitable options are "kill it" and "gently caress it." Don't you mean "'Kill it' or 'gently caress it'?"
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Jun 17, 2016 22:22
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Covok posted:Don't you mean "'Kill it' or 'gently caress it'?" It's the WoD, both versions work.
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Jun 18, 2016 01:02
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If I were a vampire lord that wanted to meet with a rival supernatural without the possibility of getting murdered, I'd probably use skype. Just sayin'. Androc fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 04:10
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All I can picture now is Hardestadt screaming at Jan Pieterzoon to come fix the camera angle because he doesn't understand how laptops work. It might ruin any pretense of drama to reveal the elders to be in full-on grandpa mode when it comes to skype.
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Jun 18, 2016 06:07
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Loomer posted:All I can picture now is Hardestadt screaming at Jan Pieterzoon to come fix the camera angle because he doesn't understand how laptops work. It might ruin any pretense of drama to reveal the elders to be in full-on grandpa mode when it comes to skype. That's pretty much text without any sub there. Which is why Demolitions is the most powerful Discipline.
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Jun 18, 2016 06:18
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Loomer posted:All I can picture now is Hardestadt screaming at Jan Pieterzoon to come fix the camera angle because he doesn't understand how laptops work. It might ruin any pretense of drama to reveal the elders to be in full-on grandpa mode when it comes to skype. All I can hear in my head is Hardestadt as Gavin Belson screaming "Audio works? gently caress you, audio works. Audio worked a hundred loving years ago!"
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Jun 18, 2016 06:28
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MonsieurChoc posted:That's pretty much text without any sub there. Is "Demolitions" something like Dementation getting autocorreted, or is there a discipline I'm not aware of but am now very curious about? Daeren posted:Other supernatural forces are wild cards to each other, and humanity in general has a love-hate affair with wild cards. Yes, there's going to be a lot of suspicion and mistrust and murdering of people who blab too much about Wizard State Secrets, but the value of being able to aim a sucker punch at a rival out of left field can't be denied. Plus, most of them are still people in the broad sense. There's going to be enough novitiate supernaturals bonking into each other and finding common ground that there will inevitably be some inter-spooky alliances that are off the official record, which can be used to either pull strings at appropriate times or catalyze temporary working alliances for a mutual interest. Yeah, it would be... Interesting to see how such a game would go. I'd really like to play one, but, don't really have a group for it (or anything really at this point), so.
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Jun 18, 2016 06:32
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Roland Jones posted:Is "Demolitions" something like Dementation getting autocorreted, or is there a discipline I'm not aware of but am now very curious about? It's one of the Other Abilities you can take in the various Player's Guide/Storyteller's Companon. And explosives are hilariously destructive in Vampire: the Masquerade. One of my most broken character was a Ravnos Antitribu with Demolitions 5 and Arsenal 3 (the maximum my ST would let me have, which was more than enough). The crazy bullshit I pulled in that game was amazing. "So you know I can make illusions, but you need to be able to disbelieve them to see through them. And at least one of those bombs is real." Edit: "You fool, bringing a knife to an explosion fight." MonsieurChoc fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 06:36
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Loomer posted:All I can picture now is Hardestadt screaming at Jan Pieterzoon to come fix the camera angle because he doesn't understand how laptops work. It might ruin any pretense of drama to reveal the elders to be in full-on grandpa mode when it comes to skype. If I recall correctly, Etrius in the Tremere Clanbook has a legion of underlings with the singular purpose of trying to translate modern technology trends to someone that was from the 10th century. Part of the problem is that the people directly under him need their own translators, who in turn need their own, on down the line until you get to the handful of haggard 13th Generation grunts that have to figure out how to explain microprocessors to someone who remembers the invention of the steam engine. And if you believe that one god-awful book, Vykos has one of its ghouls help it troll chatrooms.
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Jun 18, 2016 07:05
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God help them when they have to explain something more advanced, say if they ever capture anything a techmage created. Though I suppose 'It's sorcery, pure sorcery' might be relatively straightforward to explain to someone old enough to remember when everyone and their dog had to worry about some mad Hermeticist accidentally turning the town into an animate gingerbread colossus with a hunger for human flesh.
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Jun 18, 2016 07:35
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Don't know if (specifically) Etrius would buy that, though. He was one of those random Hermetics 800 years ago.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:04
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Loomer posted:everyone and their dog had to worry about some mad Hermeticist accidentally turning the town into an animate gingerbread colossus with a hunger for human flesh.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:49
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"Elders are constitutionally incapable of learning how to use modern technology" is a Vampire trope that runs the risk of turning the setting into unintentional farce pretty quickly. Elders who've just awakened from a century-plus torpor, sure, but it's kind of silly to have someone who's been active for most of the last half-century treating a computer like a magic witching box, especially if that elder is personally running a network of contacts and catspaws that's even slightly enmeshed in mortal society. A modern-day elder likely won't know how computers work on a technical level, but that doesn't mean that they won't at least know how to use email or a cellphone, even if they personally choose not to use that technology themselves.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:19
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bewilderment posted:This link seems just as useful for Mage 2e as the original was for 1e. There's also this, which is the same but longer and more in-depth, but somewhat more specific to 1e as a result. I'd like to go back and revisit it for 2e at some point, but the magic system is different enough, and more rigorously generalized enough, that it'd require a somewhat different approach. Also the Path write ups for 2e are actually not terrible this time. Also also I am now a grown-up with a full-time job and I can't easily spend 12 hours a day for three days carefully constructing and formatting a megapost like that.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:20
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gtrmp posted:"Elders are constitutionally incapable of learning how to use modern technology" is a Vampire trope that runs the risk of turning the setting into unintentional farce pretty quickly. Elders who've just awakened from a century-plus torpor, sure, but it's kind of silly to have someone who's been active for most of the last half-century treating a computer like a magic witching box, especially if that elder is personally running a network of contacts and catspaws that's even slightly enmeshed in mortal society. A modern-day elder likely won't know how computers work on a technical level, but that doesn't mean that they won't at least know how to use email or a cellphone, even if they personally choose not to use that technology themselves. We've actually got a similar situation on our Vampire game. One guy's playing a really, really old vampire who was torpored for a couple hundred years, but he's been awake long enough that he knows how to use a cell phone and email, and understands the concept of automatic firearms, even if he doesn't actually fully comprehend how they work (and misses the days of honorable sword duels). It's actually working out pretty well.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:01
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I had an idea for a group of neonate PCs who found their niche by helping elders acclimate to all the changes that happened during torpor i.e. updating them on the history they missed, computer use and typing skills, driving cars, etc. I figure it would be a bit like when Bill and Ted kidnapped Napoleon and took him to the future
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Jun 18, 2016 20:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BKzuzjjCro So I was looking up some Alex Jones stuff for fun on Reddit and ended up stumbling upon a rather strange video. He's full of bunk, but his rant on clockwork elves sounds like something straight out of the God-Machine Chronicles.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:55
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DMT has that effect on people
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Jun 18, 2016 21:41
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