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Mors Rattus posted:What, no out-of-print markup? [stares hollowly at entire shelf full of 3.x splat treadmill printings i kept around for this reason]
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Jul 1, 2016 00:23
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Did you really try to speculate on 3.5 books, really
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Jul 1, 2016 01:07
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Gerund posted:If you don't think the current owners aren't going to be featured heavily as "saviors" of the old ways, I have a shelf of used books to sell you at face value. Oh no I have no illusions that that won't be exactly what they'll do. Sweedracula has already set himself up as the one true heir to MR*H's legacy.
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Jul 1, 2016 01:29
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Mors Rattus posted:Did you really try to speculate on 3.5 books, really No no, I just didn't sell the ones I had when I played 3.5 because I assumed the price would go up to be fair I was in my teens at the time
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Jul 1, 2016 01:31
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I've got a poo poo-ton of old WW books I don't know what to do with. No one wants my semi-complete Exalted 2nd collection.
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Jul 1, 2016 01:33
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Pope Guilty posted:Weren't the bloodlines anarchs left out of anarchs unbound? NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 02:14
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NutritiousSnack posted:Yes, but are now mentioned in the Beckett's Jyhad. Yeah, I was pleased that Nines is still kicking around.
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Jul 1, 2016 02:24
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Mors Rattus posted:Apocalypse is full-bore, balls-deep into a lot of Magical Native racism and a lot of deeply uncomfortable stereotyping, but that's par for the course for oWoD. It is also aggressively anti-technology, anti-science and so on, but that's kind of baked into the setting conceit. (As is the fact that werewolves are violent, territorial authoritarians.) Not just Magical Native racism - Pure Breed has always come across as something really troubling to me.
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Jul 1, 2016 08:08
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Let's not forget the rapey-vibe of some of the powers. Werewolf: Where quasi-fascist rage-monsters who despise intercultural exchange, favour segregation, and practice widespread infanticide and murder of those born disabled* are the good guys. (* and treat them like poo poo even when they don't, and let's not get into the terminology on that one...)
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Jul 1, 2016 09:41
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Loomer posted:Let's not forget the rapey-vibe of some of the powers. One of my bigger pet peeves of that game is how they keep tossing in real world words for things that have apparently existed since for-loving-ever.
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Jul 1, 2016 09:46
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Most of those things are first edition Bridgesisms to make werewolf more like it's big brother vampire. How can you be expected to rail against authority if they're being reasonable people? Better make them all incompetent hidebound racists. It's even in the canon NPCs too. Albrecht rose to power because no one else thought taking down Wyrm NAMBLA was a worthy idea. Australia is so incompetently protected by the Council that a group of sixteen year olds basically fix everything within months of showing up, while also slaughtering thousands of innocent farmers who had the audacity to farm, killing an old British silver fang who is using the trapped spirits of an entire aboriginal tribe as an ottoman, and stopping a plot by the shadow Lord to kill the rest of the Council via air dropping kinfolk and Garou armed with assault weapons and silver bullets right into the Sept since the current council isn't racist enough for his tastes. Because Bridges. Skemp did away with as much of that as he was allowed once revised kicked in.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:27
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Loomer posted:Let's not forget the rapey-vibe of some of the powers. "Vibe", yes... Like how each type of werewolf (human-born, wolf-born, and werewolf-born) have their own thing they do when frenzying from Rage. Eating bodies, mutilating bodies, and loving bodies., respectively. Bodies don't have to be dead. Not that only loving dead people would make it any better, really...
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Jul 1, 2016 16:27
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Wait. I'm not remembering any rapey werewolf powers off hand. But I was never really into it and also like 13 at the time. Please tell me of the horrors I missed.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:45
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Werewolves all have an "Animal Attraction" power that makes people want to have sex with them. It's meant to be a sort of "werewolves are preternaturally sexy even if they're basically Wolverine and have no social skills" thing but it comes off as a compulsion because, uh, Storyteller doesn't have sufficiently sophisticated social mechanics for it to work as anything other than a compulsion.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:48
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It's one of the things that carried over to W:TF, along with some really bizarre slut shaming for female werewolves with the temerity to have sex with another werewolf. W:TF 2nd got rid of both of those things.
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Jul 2, 2016 04:05
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Kurieg posted:It's one of the things that carried over to W:TF, along with some really bizarre slut shaming for female werewolves with the temerity to have sex with another werewolf. W:TF 2nd got rid of both of those things. And included the new social combat rules so that people can resist poo poo like that if someone were to introduce it.
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Jul 2, 2016 04:44
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Animal attraction wasn't in Forsaken 1E, unless it's in a sourcebook that I haven't read. Definitely not in the core, at least.Kurieg posted:Skemp did away with as much of that as he was allowed once revised kicked in. He's denied it, but the Pure are pretty obviously meant to be a villainous twist on the Garou. Without much twisting required.
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Jul 2, 2016 04:50
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Tulul posted:Animal attraction wasn't in Forsaken 1E, unless it's in a sourcebook that I haven't read. Definitely not in the core, at least. Tulul posted:He's denied it, but the Pure are pretty obviously meant to be a villainous twist on the Garou. Without much twisting required. Revised Red Talons is a somewhat well written book about a group of people who have made themselves incapable of realizing that they're actually incredibly lovely examples of what they aspire to be. I haven't looked into Revised Silver Fangs, but Revised Get of Fenris is almost entirely debunking the horrible stereotypes and writing given to them in 1st and 2nd ed. Children of Gaia is an outlier still. I have no idea how that got written other than the fact that they gave it to probably the worst person they could have.
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Jul 2, 2016 05:02
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Revised Silver Fangs is a good book, largely thanks to Albrecht being there to say "this is rear end in a top hat logic from an rear end in a top hat" in response to everything so that I didn't have to do it myself.
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Jul 2, 2016 05:46
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Revised Stargazers is a good look at a tribe slowly killing themselves by trying to not be assholes too hard.
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Jul 2, 2016 06:50
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I once did a review of Revised Stargazers on another site, saying that it was disjointed and confusing with too many changes in narrative voice and conflicting messages. The author then chewed me out saying that it was all intentional and I was just too dumb to understand his meaning.
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Jul 2, 2016 14:02
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Kurieg posted:Uratha can walk up to any wolf-blooded and put the moves on them unless they already have a "True Love". There's a image in one of the books of a woman in a sheer dress swooning at the sight of a naked near-man werewolf swinging in through her window. They can put the moves on them, but it doesn't convey any special advantage. There's just a natural attraction that works both ways. 'This phenomenon is not supernatural in origin and in no way forces a wolf-blood into anything; an uragarum who is married and isn't inclined to cheat on her spouse won't fall into bed with just anyone, werewolf or not (though she may well fantasize). It's an attraction that's pheromonal in nature, and the wolf-blood may well have no real idea why she finds the stranger so attractive - a classic case of "he's not ordinarily my type."' And she's sitting on a bed.
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Jul 2, 2016 20:42
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I had to check a couple of citations in Rage Across Australia and I forgot how loving terrible that book is. One of the more recent things about to make me twitch is the unquestioning acceptance it had of the position that our indigenous peoples didn't practice agriculture or ever grow grains. Which, in fairness to the authors, was the mainstream position until very recently - but there was plenty of available material at the time to contradict it if they'd sat down to check, and for a book real big on 'gently caress the mainstream narrative!' it would have even worked better. That's without all the other huge problems it has, it's just the most recent thing to stick in my craw.
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Jul 5, 2016 05:49
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Don't forget the discussion about how the reason the Garou killed the Bunyip was because they were jealous of their massive marsupial dongs, immediately opposite an image of an aboriginal man fighting a massive white worm erupting from the ground. Or the fact that apparently Gaia itself is against the idea of Farming, which is why the Aboriginals never did it, and why they are so awesome and better than you. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 05:58
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World of Darkness Megathread: deeeeeeep sigh
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Jul 5, 2016 06:47
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Hello! I'm not sure if this is the wrong "flavor" of WoD for this thread, I don't see any mention of LARP, but I don't see any other WoD threads here. Apologies if this is the wrong place. I'm a total newbie to World of Darkness and larping, but this Saturday I went to a start-up meeting for a group that's starting. They're using the Mind's Eye Theater rules, which I think is maybe based on the old/classic world of darkness, but is a modification (sort of like what pathfinder is to 3.5)? I had a few concept ideas I sort of built a little of, using the quick-start book, and I was able to look through the book and talk a bit with the ST about concepts, but I got a bit overwhelmed with possibilities and ended up with only a partly formed character. I ended up buying the full book and working a little more. I guess I'm both afraid of doing a character I won't have the acting chops to preform (I admit, I am a little bit of a shy person, though I did do some improv acting before as exercises with an acting/puppet group) or one that's just me and boring. One of my concepts was a sort of insane Rav or Malk clown-like trickster who'd pull "pranks" and just love spreading chaos, but I don't know how well I'd pull off the character. My main character I'm working on is a Gangrel Curious archetype Scholar with lots of points in knowledge based skills (Academics: History, Science: Biology, Science: Chemistry, Investigation and Linguistics). Long post short, any tips for a new larper, and someone particularly new to vampire LARP and vampire lore as a whole? (I think the only vampire movie I've ever seen is Draciula with Bela Logosi. I did enjoy reading bram stoker's Dracula too.) Here's what I have so far for my Gangrel Curious Scholar E: Another concept I was toying with is a Tramere Alchemist (well, alchemy isn't in the MET version, but using might of the smith, and having him see it as all science and not magic. Though I think another playing is also going to have Thaumaturgy, and I feel like it's overlap, though there can be two Thaumaturgists. *shrug* Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 07:04
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Pope Guilty posted:World of Darkness Megathread: deeeeeeep sigh Not that I hate pimping my own work, but http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/rage-across-australia/ Rage Across Australia is bad. And one of the authors went on to contribute to Freak Legion!
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Jul 5, 2016 07:16
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Foolster41 posted:Hello!
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Jul 5, 2016 07:17
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Foolster41 posted:Hello! LARP can be a lot of fun! Here are a few quick before-work notes: - Have a good idea of what it is you want to do and accomplish. LARPs are full of people who stand around waiting for the next big event to happen so they can go 'chase the plot' or whatever local vernacular passes for 'doing nothing'. Having discrete, interpersonal goals/motivations is best ('I want to be the most respected Gangrel'; 'I oppose the Tremere'; 'I hate the Harpy') because it fuels a LARP's greatest strength, which is interplayer dialogue. -Take a game or two and keep expectations low while you get a feel for the LARP's culture, both in and out of character. Take my word for it that there is a lot of variation from game to game. Some groups riggedly adhere to stereotypes, others don't. Some groups are full of interesting self-motivated characters, others are not. Some groups are open to newcomers and others are more hostile. There are different levels of expectation about how often you can talk out-of-character. Play it by ear. - To go along with the above point, regular LARPers are used to 'tourists' who show up for a game or two and never come back. Don't be offended if most of the group treats you with a little distance at first. The storytellers, if they are good, will help mitigate this. - Don't sweat overlap.Most LARPs of any significant size are going to have overlap and that's without taking XP into account. Keep in mind that in LARPs, and in Vampire in particular, you aren't necessarily expected to be cooperating with all of the other players all of the time; the PvP nature of the game will ensure that it's good to have more than one person with Dominate, for instance, or Thaumaturgy. Have fun and remember not to take anything personal. Vampire can be pretty antagonistic but if you keep a low profile you can usually make a few friends in the first couple of games and that will substantially improve your enjoyment.
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Jul 5, 2016 13:24
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Foolster41 posted:Hello! As someone with some experience of oWoD and some experience of nWoD LARP, here's what I think. Your mileage may vary, etc. The trickster-type character is going to be very difficult to pull off imo - not that it's going to be hard to pull pranks or spread chaos, but it's going to be hard to do that and not have everybody hate you out of character. In character, vampire society is very hard on that kind of thing - one loose cannon messing things up for laughs can bring the whole house of cards down so a trickster-like character is very probably going to be murdered. And that person will be totally in the right to do it. The Tremere Alchemist is absolutely fine - the Tremere tend to think of their Thaumaturgy as more of a science than an art and there's a lot of hermetic alchemical lore bound up in their cultural identity. If the STs allow it, there is an actual literal Path of Alchemy for Thaumaturges to pick up. The Tremere tend to not be trusted but to, by and large, be too useful to ignore. Expect to spend a lot of time cliquing it up with the other Tremere and acting like the mad scientist advisor to other vampires. Gangrel Scholar is a good, classic inversion of the 'dumb Gangrel' stereotype. This one could be a lot of fun to play. There's an NPC in the tabletop game by the name of Beckett who is something akin to this archetype, so there's some lore backing you up. By the sounds of it, you'll be relying on your mundane skills and Backgrounds to get things done more than your supernatural powers - this is perfectly fine and will require more thought on your part, so will be a lot more satisfying if you can make it work. Overall, I'd say play the character that you'll have the most fun actually roleplaying. A huge part of LARP is the roleplay itself more than using your powers and trying to get plot done, so if you literally just don't enjoy being that person and treating other people how that person would treat them, it won't be a fun experience. I tend to play quite friendly characters because I honestly don't enjoy being an rear end in a top hat to people, even for pretend. The best way to have a lot of fun at a LARP, imo, is to find some people that you actually enjoy roleplaying with (and preferably like out of character) and form a group with them. In downtimes where there's not a lot going on, you can just chat in character and when there's stuff going on you're working as part of a team (teamwork is fun!)
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Jul 5, 2016 14:14
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Following from a DtD Roll20 game I just wrapped, one thing that I've continued having trouble with is determining the precise level of sensitivity that the God Machine's sensory organs exhibit w/r/t cover and cover violations. Because I could have rolled compromise a lot more than I did, and maybe I should have! But it seems like most of the things that could have triggered a roll presented too much of an (unfun) obstacle. Making players come up with cover justifications for doing something as mundane as being in a given place at a given time, or examining a broken phone booth when no one present has crafts. I don't want to impose a chilling effect on the characters doing cool poo poo, even if it feels good and right on paper to ensure that a demon who defends himself in a fistfight has some past in brawling, or living in rough neighborhoods. Basically there are two things here, both a little loosely defined, that affect compromise - there are the GM's instruments that can detect and track demons, and that's one thing. There's also the fabric of reality, which in many ways seems like an entirely different thing. One is acting strangely when an entity may be watching, the other is, more or less, the law of gravity slapping a pig down when it tries to fly. So I'm trying to decide which scenario is more copacetic - the WoD as a giant web with the GM in the center and demons as flies caught in it, trying not to disturb it and send it scurrying toward them (the more restrictive scenario), or the WoD as a churning pool with demons sending ripples through it, and the GM trying to track those ripples through the noise to their source (the more lax scenario). My gut instinct has always been to roll with the notion of the WoD under the God Machine as the latter, basically a liberal Western surveillance state, meaning that a large part of the GM's interest in hiding itself is realized through presenting a veneer of normalcy and freedom, which insurgents can use to their advantage. It gives a bit of leeway - if you think of demons as terrorists in this analogy, you can see how much their success is a balance of luck and the insensitivity / lethargy of law enforcement. It always seems obvious in retrospect, and in many cases authorities were alert to attackers - but the rigidity, workload, lack of focus and formal strictures (implemented to instill order on a wide scale, nonsensical in the small scale) of state agencies prevented them from recognizing threats in time. The GM in my mind works the same way. There's always risk of getting caught, and over time as you grow in prominence and the GM collects data and draws a bead, you probably will, but as long as you don't do too many ostentatious things in succession in the wrong places, you're likely to be fine. I suppose this problem is already mechanically represented in some sense by how hard it usually is to fail a compromise roll, but I admit to being leery of working the beat system so often. I suppose as GM (in both senses!) I can say that at a certain point a glitch is the only option, but one of my other weaknesses is keeping track of and incorporating small details such as glitch reactions from scene to scene (eg a demon contracts a glitch and nothing comes of it).
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Jul 5, 2016 17:06
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quote:"This is where the real story gets told: nothing is sacred, no one gets a pass, and all skeletons come out of the closet," said Luckyday CEO Henrik Johansson. If Paradox actually did this, it would be more than worth the sloppy blowjob they'll give themselves. I mean, just loving imagine it!
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Jul 5, 2016 17:20
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Will they feature an interview with Phl Brucato's actual human skeleton in the closet?
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Jul 5, 2016 17:31
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Basic Chunnel posted:Following from a DtD Roll20 game I just wrapped, one thing that I've continued having trouble with is determining the precise level of sensitivity that the God Machine's sensory organs exhibit w/r/t cover and cover violations. Because I could have rolled compromise a lot more than I did, and maybe I should have! But it seems like most of the things that could have triggered a roll presented too much of an (unfun) obstacle. Making players come up with cover justifications for doing something as mundane as being in a given place at a given time, or examining a broken phone booth when no one present has crafts. I don't want to impose a chilling effect on the characters doing cool poo poo, even if it feels good and right on paper to ensure that a demon who defends himself in a fistfight has some past in brawling, or living in rough neighborhoods. IMHO I think that you should be pretty restrained when it comes to making compromise rolls triggered by behavior. That kind of thing should only happen when it is literally impossible that the character could know or do something outside of their assumed role and even then it should be fairly dramatic; I wouldn't, for instance, trigger a compromise just because a Demon in the role of a lazy bank teller knows a thing or two about swinging a sword around even though that is deliciously out of character. After all, Frank the Bank Teller may actually know how to use an antiquated weapon! ErichZahn posted:If Paradox actually did this, it would be more than worth the sloppy blowjob they'll give themselves. You say this but I imagine we'll get 30 minutes of and here's where White Wolf made the terrible decision to kill the beloved World of Darkness.
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Jul 5, 2016 17:34
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Foolster41 posted:(I think the only vampire movie I've ever seen is Draciula with Bela Logosi. I did enjoy reading bram stoker's Dracula too.) One movie I can recommend for getting a feel for WoD vampires is Lost Boys. I'm sure the other posters here can give you many more (and better) movies to better understand how the world works. Underworld wouldn't be bad, either, tbh.
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Jul 5, 2016 17:44
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Mendrian posted:You say this but I imagine we'll get 30 minutes of and here's where White Wolf made the terrible decision to kill the beloved World of Darkness. I'm envisioning some serious MR*H apologia that paints the Weicks as the true villains who stole the World of Darkness away from him.
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Jul 5, 2016 17:47
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Kibner posted:One movie I can recommend for getting a feel for WoD vampires is Lost Boys. I'm sure the other posters here can give you many more (and better) movies to better understand how the world works. Underworld is basically the oWoD-iest movie.
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Jul 5, 2016 18:16
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Basic Chunnel posted:God-Machine stuff You probably don't want to lean all too heavily on that rule, because if a demon triggered a Compromise every time they met a shady character in a seedy bar there would be no such thing as techgnostic espionage. That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to tighten the screws a bit, especially when things are getting heated. Also make sure to warn players. I mean, not everything a demon does is either perfectly in line with or an egregious breach of Cover. Some things are merely "pushing it". One time is no time, but push too hard or too often and things break. And it's not always clear from the player's perspective exactly how odd or uncharacteristic you're being. Maybe just point out that, hey, meeting a priest and a cop in skeevy pizza place is kind of a weird thing to do. And is this your third night in a row hanging out with your peculiar friends and coming home late? What's your wife going to think about that? If somebody needs too many reminders, roll the dice. There's a good angle as well; reinforce it through the game world. Make the characters explain themselves to other people. Take notes. Tangle them in a web of lies. Let things come back and bite them in the rear end. Maybe nobody stopped Detective Merriman from snooping around that crime scene that wasn't his, but someone's bound to ask him about that supermodel-looking girl he was with. What, a lobbyist? Bobby said she told him she was a journalist. How queer. Mendrian posted:IMHO I think that you should be pretty restrained when it comes to making compromise rolls triggered by behavior. That kind of thing should only happen when it is literally impossible that the character could know or do something outside of their assumed role and even then it should be fairly dramatic; I wouldn't, for instance, trigger a compromise just because a Demon in the role of a lazy bank teller knows a thing or two about swinging a sword around even though that is deliciously out of character. After all, Frank the Bank Teller may actually know how to use an antiquated weapon! But he doesn't. That's the thing about Cover; it's not just a disguise. As far as the universe is concerned, a Cover is an actual person with an actual history and actual skills, and acting outside the bounds of that is what causes reality to do a double-take. I'd definitely argue that demonstrating a skill the Cover doesn't have is grounds for a Compromise, though there are of course degrees. Frank the Bank Teller clobbering an assailant unconscious with a nearby desk lamp can probably be chalked up to luck; Frank the Bank Teller fencing the Razor Beast of Hammond Hill to a standstill, not so much.
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Jul 5, 2016 19:20
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The Cover talk reminds of of how I set up my demon's cover: One human cover and on spirit cover via that one exploit. Said demon then established very strong hints that the human cover was actually just the spirit cover in disguise. Thus did they double-layer their cover and justify a lot of weird behavior for the human cover. Also, most people will stop digging once they find out about the spirit cover and not assume there's some sort of double disguise going on. Edit: It was a spirit of war and conflict, which basically justified poo poo stirring of all varieties. It also provides a very fun resource in that it's really easy to put together a giant mob of spirits to go beat something up. Just takes a bit of leadership and encouragement. Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 19:21
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Terrorforge posted:You probably don't want to lean all too heavily on that rule, because if a demon triggered a Compromise every time they met a shady character in a seedy bar there would be no such thing as techgnostic espionage. That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to tighten the screws a bit, especially when things are getting heated. I was more warning that too much of that kind of thing is Unfun and you have to be careful with how liberally it is applied. What might be fun is coming up with a game-level alert system whereby the GM scrutinizes you more or less closely depending on how much heat you've acquired (sort of like an average Cover rating for the group). Code Green? Don't do anything that explicitly triggers a compromise or do anything obvious directly in front of a sight organ/angel and you're good. Code Yellow? Now if you use out of character skills in public the GM will know (and you risk compromise). Code Red? Even acting out of character will trigger a compromise. Just spitballing I think it would fit nicely with the theme.
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Jul 5, 2016 19:44
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