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Night10194 posted:Getting closer to SMT is usually a good idea. I've been thinking of how to do SMT using the nWoD rules. Something like use the Mortal power stat from Mirrors and use it as a cap on the Rank of spirit that can be summoned, have a new resource called Magnetite used to summon them, something like that. This got me thinking about how the various nWoD factions would act in the usual SMT apocalypse. Guardians of the Veil would join the Law faction, what with the Hieromagus stuff, while the SIlver Ladder would be Neutral as gently caress. Dracula would merge with some huge Dragon Demon (Azhi Dahaka?) and go full Chaos.
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Sep 23, 2016 06:47
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I'd honestly use a crunchier system for SMT. It just wouldn't feel right without ridiculous power combos and exploitable mechanics for victory.
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Sep 23, 2016 06:56
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Night10194 posted:I'd honestly use a crunchier system for SMT. It just wouldn't feel right without ridiculous power combos and exploitable mechanics for victory. Just Press Turn and Smirk.
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Sep 23, 2016 09:02
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Kai Tave posted:I'm probably reaching but this: I don't think its a reach, but to be fair to OP most of their non-exalted kickstarters have been solid and do seem to learn from any missteps. How much exalted can get segmented away form the rest of OP I don't know. It doesn't help though that all these "totally ready to go once core drops" exalted follow on books have been sitting in 2nd draft limbo for quite a while. That's just perpetuating the idea that exalted hasn't really learned much from its missteps.
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Sep 23, 2016 14:51
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Bedlamdan posted:Then what the heck is first, second, and a home run? What the heck is a home run First is second And Beast is first
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Sep 23, 2016 16:58
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Loomer posted:Usually it's acceptable enough that it isn't worth complaining, but enough of a ding it may not qualify as perfectly mint. Quite often they only pack one side with packing material, so the book is still sliding around a little in a cardboard box, being jostled about. That's a shame. The one physical book I kicked in for was Mage 20 and it was impeccably packed, like 3 or 4 layers of protection on the book.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:02
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Bedlamdan posted:Just Press Turn and Smirk. Admittedly, TTRPGs have a really bad track record with any system that grants extra actions and turns.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:12
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Okay Scion's change in setting makes it roughly a hundred times more interesting than just wholesale ripping off American Gods
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Sep 23, 2016 17:27
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I'm looking forward to their explanation of how Abrahamic faiths work and exist, because the troll antagonist sample flat-out says Christians exist in our implicitly polytheistic world.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:32
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm looking forward to their explanation of how Abrahamic faiths work and exist, because the troll antagonist sample flat-out says Christians exist in our implicitly polytheistic world. When I first read this I was afraid that you meant internet troll. Like one of the sample antagonists was a Checkmate Theists! guy and I had horrible Beast flashbacks.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:45
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Not unless someone has made a computer keyboard sizes for a hand capable of wrapping around a whole tree trunk.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:51
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm looking forward to their explanation of how Abrahamic faiths work and exist, because the troll antagonist sample flat-out says Christians exist in our implicitly polytheistic world. It's entirely possible that it works by the fact that you have provable, obvious 'real' Gods that are also obviously not omnipotent and thus people might worship something above them as well. Depending on how destructively jealous they are (and let's face it, they're probably immensely so) I'd expect Christian, Muslim, and Jewish people to be much less common, though.
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Sep 23, 2016 19:11
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They mention that the Eleusinian Mysteries remain a practiced faith in the modern day, and the Cult of Dionysus is an underground, rather persecuted religion (due to, y'know, the bacchanals and frenzies). Also: modern climate change and basically everything since whaling started has pissed off Poseidon and the only thing keeping him from destroying every coastal city he can get to is Zeus holding him back.
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Sep 23, 2016 20:21
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Night10194 posted:It's entirely possible that it works by the fact that you have provable, obvious 'real' Gods that are also obviously not omnipotent and thus people might worship something above them as well. Wasn't there an Abrahamic "Pantheon" in one of the companions with the Angels as patrons rather than parents or was that something I hallucinated or read as fanwork like ten years ago? Really digging the new actually existing setting.
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Sep 23, 2016 22:00
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Fanwork on the scion wiki. I remember reading it too
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Sep 23, 2016 22:03
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ZearothK posted:Wasn't there an Abrahamic "Pantheon" in one of the companions with the Angels as patrons rather than parents or was that something I hallucinated or read as fanwork like ten years ago? There were monotheists in the Scion Companion iirc Mors Rattus posted:Not unless someone has made a computer keyboard sizes for a hand capable of wrapping around a whole tree trunk. That's all of us here.
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Sep 23, 2016 22:06
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I've never played scion, backed anyway 
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Sep 23, 2016 23:22
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Mors Rattus posted:Side note: even in the modern day, engineers perform rituals to honor Hestia, because they have noticed an empirical improvement in power plant performance when they do. She considers them to be hearths. Wow. I never really cared about Scion but this made me go from ennui to loving sold in 30 words. Good job.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:09
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Kurieg posted:When I first read this I was afraid that you meant internet troll. Like one of the sample antagonists was a Checkmate Theists! guy and I had horrible Beast flashbacks. Atheists in an explicitly Deific setting are pretty fun. I mean, They can't send you to all the bad Afterlives simultaneously, can They?
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Sep 24, 2016 08:18
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New Scion stretch goal announced for 150k: Cults.quote:Heroes, in ancient Greece and Rome, were often venerated after death because their deeds in life had given them special power to protect and defend the living. Your Heroes don't have to die to be venerated or interact with groups of followers all their own, though. At this big stretch goal, we delve into Cults, and how to handle large groups of followers or religious worshippers dedicated to Gods and Scions at the Hero level. We'll cover how to create tutelary deities as well - specific gods with or without pantheons who are dedicated to an area. Lastly, we'll cover how to apply Purviews to a larger scale than a normal Scion game.
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Sep 24, 2016 16:24
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I was thinking about shoving the system from Godbound into the game so it's nice that they're doing their own take.
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Sep 24, 2016 16:28
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You know, I just had the thought of the logical conclusion of the Marduk's Throat ritual. Eventually you hit a point where you can no longer advance because there simply isn't suitable blood in circulation, or at least that's the intent - but that blood is actually acessible to the Assamites, just very difficult to actually get to. Getting it'd be absolutely absurd and gonzo as gently caress, but that has an appeal of it's own. The problem with trying to advance beyond the break point is that getting your hands on enough blood of the third generation is impossible. The Third are all missing, very well hidden, or dead, right? Except for Tremere and Augustus Giovanni.. Their locations are relatively static and aren't extraordinarily secret (just, y'know, very secret) to the point it's impossible to find them. It's even a known fact for many members of their clans that they're chilling in Vienna and Venice respectively. So, the obvious fix is to storm those cities and capture one of the imposter Thirds, keep them staked (as neither possesses a power suitable to eject stakes from their body like the gangrel etc), and then forcibly feed them and drain them over and over, dumping more and more of their blood into the ritual pit until you have a lake to boil down into the single draught. And then there's two third generation Assamites in play. And then, if you like, there's three. And four. Obviously not something to have happen in a normal game, but it'd make for a hell of a one-shot - the massive Assamite Raid on Venice. Capture Augustus at all costs! Fight wraiths and giovanni and zombies! Die horribly for the chance to force the bloated necrophiliac to spend the rest of his existence bound by magic chains in a deep pit!
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Sep 24, 2016 17:29
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Mors Rattus posted:New Scion stretch goal announced for 150k: Cults. I'm sure Japan would be a hoot with all of their Kami running about. Also I expect there to be cults for at least one group of Hero or Demigod level idols and they're relatively powerful since their cults are super devoted to then and their worship.
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Sep 24, 2016 18:21
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Loomer posted:Obviously not something to have happen in a normal game, but it'd make for a hell of a one-shot - the massive Assamite Raid on Venice. Capture Augustus at all costs! Fight wraiths and giovanni and zombies! Die horribly for the chance to force the bloated necrophiliac to spend the rest of his existence bound by magic chains in a deep pit!
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Sep 24, 2016 18:37
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Loomer posted:From Marduk's Throat I always thought it was weird that you could just keep a bound newly-embraced cainite around for shenanigans like this, I think more low-level discipline powers / weird Wight abilities with some kind of "Caged / Cornered Beast" aesthetic would have been nice to include somewhere so it didn't end up just coming down to ST fiat or similar for why no Dan you can't get "Lugoj" to embrace a random human for you to gently caress with after he's done diablerizing Tzimisce he doesn't feel like it okay? Grim fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 23:52
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Yeah, I agree in terms of powers like that being a nice addition that further heightens the terror of the game, since you can no longer exploit the mechanics if you're so inclined without running a massive risk of The Thing in Room 19 stirring, tearing out its stake despite the impossibility of such an action, and rampaging through the entire hotel to get at you. I tend to use a variant of the willpower rules from VtR whenever I run a game so that embracing isn't a casual matter, with some rituals being able to negate it so you can still have mass embraces at a serious but not impossible cost. EDIT: On the front of my slowly devolving sanity and the plunge into qabalistic noddism, there's a neat coincidence. Mekhet - the antediluvian, not the clan, though the value would be the same - has the gematric value of 69 (reducing to 15, which is interesting on its own.) We know very little of Mekhet, other than that he was banished from Enoch alongside Set, delighted in playing 'shadow games' with the mortal population (manipulating mortal affairs, presumably), was a great liar, and in the single appearance he makes in Gehenna, that he is a proto-Egyptian blood sorcerer. That's not the neat part. The neat part is that Set shares the same gematric value going by the most common approach to transliterating his name into Hebrew and converting that into numeric values. We also never see Set in Gehenna, so the logical conclusion is that Set is Mekhet and vice versa. 69 is the same value as sin, strife, 'to seek the shade', 'exile', all of which fit with the Set narrative in the setting as well as parts of the Egyptian deity's tale, while dovetailing nicely with the Setite weakness - they must seek the shade to a degree above and beyond all other vampires. This is a softball, though, compared to others. Some of the reductions are interesting, as they can suggest a shared root or force involved. Mekhet and Set of course share 15, but so do Malkav, Ravana, Absimilliard, the unknown Al-Mahri (al meaning above, over, or upon; mahri meaning quick or energetic. The name instead may refer to the Mahri language or to the Mahara tribe, but if not would suggest some involvement with Celerity), and ultimately to Enoch. While Enoch or Ynosh is usually identified as the sire of Ventru and co as ruler or with the seer-lineages of Saulot, Malkav and Arikel, there is a distinct strain of similarity running through these other clans. Setites, Malkavians, Ravnos and Nosferatu all possess powers hinging on illusion; either Obfuscate or in the case of the clan of Ravana, Chimerstry. Enoch may not be the progenitor of the seers but of the hidden ones, who seek the shade and who are all subject to great strife or outright exile (e.g. many of the Ravnos, who fled their homeland into Europe, and the Setites, who actually suffered a similar exile for a while, being driven from their homes not unlike they drove the Striders out.) All hypothetical, all based on nothing more than some absurd mysticism, but potentially an interesting twist to introduce to a game focusing on unravelling the mysteries of vampirism. Other notable shared reductions are 12 (Dracian, Lilith, and Ennoia, though how exactly to transliterate Ennoia is difficult as Hebrew does not have vowels other than Aleph, which is not normally used to transcribe the sounds involved in Ennoia), 13 (Irad, Nergal, Ventru, the unknowable Mehujael, Haqim with Sofits (which are where certain letters, when ending a word, have a different value than if they occur within the word) and Ravana without sofits), 16 (Saulot, Lucian/Lucien, and the Tal'mahe'ra). Loomer fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 07:59
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Loomer posted:On the front of my slowly devolving sanity and the plunge into qabalistic noddism, there's a neat coincidence. 
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Sep 25, 2016 16:47
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Loomer posted:Yeah, I agree in terms of powers like that being a nice addition that further heightens the terror of the game, since you can no longer exploit the mechanics if you're so inclined without running a massive risk of The Thing in Room 19 stirring, tearing out its stake despite the impossibility of such an action, and rampaging through the entire hotel to get at you. I tend to use a variant of the willpower rules from VtR whenever I run a game so that embracing isn't a casual matter, with some rituals being able to negate it so you can still have mass embraces at a serious but not impossible cost. I'm saving this rant, my Sabbat character doesn't worship Cane so much as have an intense academic obsession with Nod, so I'm gonna try and melt an inquisitor's head with this.
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Sep 26, 2016 00:04
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Scion update: passed 135k, there will be a fiction anthology.quote:In Second Edition, we're expanding Scion's setting in terms of both scope and verisimilitude, without locking Storyguides and players out of playability. While we present a default setting that has gods moving behind the events of much of history (who’s to say they didn’t?) and prime ministers half-heartedly denying the existence of troll preserves, we also present a lot of options for the Storyguide to perfectly tailor the sentiment and revelations of the World to their players. Our goal is for the change to be additive, not reductive: to create more stories than it closes off. Despite the World, Scion doesn’t need to be presented one way.
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Sep 26, 2016 04:44
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quote:Four and a half billion years ago, a ball of molten dust and raw, sun-forged elements coalesced into a planet. Yet the World is Tiamat, carved into shape and form by Marduk. It is Rangi and Papi, locked in their embrace while their children war within them. It was created by a wagtail swimming upon an infinite ocean, and by Q’uq’umatz and Tepeu speaking the word “earth” when floating upon a similar infinite ocean. Atum existed within a very similar ocean, containing all the World within himself, taking the definitions and limits of existence from the Primordial Deities and granting stewardship to the Ennead until he was named. The sons of Burr lifted the World out of another infinite sea, fashioned from the bones and flesh and maggots of long-dead Ymir. quote:In broad strokes, the history of the World is easily recognizable. All the major wars happened just as our world remembers them. All the geological and geographical shifts are familiar. Electricity still powers technology, Hollywood still produces multi-million dollar films, and people still commute back and forth to work on traffic-clogged roads. It's in the details where the World starts to look more varied and strange. It's in the motivations behind significant events and the heavier hand of Fate in all things. Some events had different outcomes, where the gods' more direct influence shifted a few pieces on the board here and there, and the dominoes fell in different patterns when the dust cleared. Far fewer people in the World believe in mere coincidence, and even randomness has meaning in a universe where Chaos is a demonstrable Purview of divine power.
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Sep 26, 2016 04:47
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Isn't Marduk the planet the Altherians believe was where humans actually started and was responsible for the asteroid belt?
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Sep 26, 2016 05:15
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Welp, Kung-Fu Harpy is dead, he got killed by a Bratovitch Tzimisce wielding a magic axe and soaked only 5 out of 14 agg damage to the face. RIP I'm now a Toreador outlaw from the 19th century with a pair of Colt Dragoons who is secretly a highly accomplished poet who writes all his work under a pen name That's my cool story
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Sep 26, 2016 05:59
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Did Kung Fu Harpy at least manage to punish a few social infractions with spin kicks or righteous throat punches?
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Sep 26, 2016 06:38
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Well, one of the Nos players broke into someone's domain and stole some poo poo from them so Kung Fu Harpy got to bestow some negative status and get him banned from Elysium for a year That's like a metaphorical throat punch
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Sep 26, 2016 06:47
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Mors Rattus posted:Literally none so far. Even Aphrodite. (The description of her focuses instead on fashion, cosmetics, the movie industry and so on.) This is actually a step too far to over correct, there is difference between being respectful of sex workers and just ashamed of them, denying their role in history/importance. You can make a game where loving Hera isn't a secret dominatrix for hire, but acknowledging sexuality and spiritually are intertwined, and some Goddesses/Gods govern or that ritual/communication. This isn't Zeus turning into a rape swan aspects of mythology, you can cover this without being a creep or it turning into a farce. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 08:55
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I dunno. I can get why you'd want to cut them from the tabletop game, but at the same time the prostitution aspects of the old near eastern and greek fertility gods is a pretty big deal.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:34
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On the other hand how many people writing elfgames do you actually trust to handle that sort of thing in a tasteful and actually mature as opposed to "mature" fashion? Answer honestly.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:49
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Kai Tave posted:On the other hand how many people writing elfgames do you actually trust to handle that sort of thing in a tasteful and actually mature as opposed to "mature" fashion? Answer honestly. Not enough to put it in the game book. Anyone capable of doing it right are probably doing their own research or already knowledgeable about Ancient Greece and its myths.
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Sep 26, 2016 09:56
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And that's exactly why I'm on the fence and get why they're leaving it well alone.
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Sep 26, 2016 10:41
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Yeah, I think the best answer is leave it out of the game book with maybe a small blurb explaining ways you could include it and if your group can handle it you add it in.
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Sep 26, 2016 13:25
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