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Just make them repeat to themselves 'I'm a goddamn wizard' before you acknowledge any action they take. "I cast fireball at the yakuza." "I can't hear you." "...I'm a goddamn wizard, I cast fireball at the yakuza!" Eventually it'll sink in.
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Nov 7, 2016 02:33
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Two demon questions for the thread: First is about compromise. The core book says you trigger a compromise if a human learns something about a demon's true nature and believes it. How does this work with someone who has Alzheimer's or dementia? Can they really trigger a compromise if they also believe that it's 1967 at the moment and will forget what they heard after fives minutes? What about someone who is tripping balls on DMT? On the other end, how old does a human have to be to trigger compromise? Do they have to also understand what they've heard, can a 6-week old infant trigger compromise in this way? Is object permanence a requirement for triggering compromise? Second, could a mage, in one way or another, use a demonic soul pact to make a soul stone?
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Nov 7, 2016 06:20
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First: I think those cases fall under the "and believes it" clause. Ask whether the human will remember and hypothetically be able to act on the information. If Agent Smith knocked on their door the next week and asked the human what they know about Mr. Steel, would the human be able to tell them something significant, even if they swear they wouldn't snitch? Second: soul stones only work if the creator is Awakened, and I'm pretty sure you can only make soul stones from your own soul. That being said, if a demon made a soul pact with a mage, it seems more interesting to let other mages use the physical pact as a soul stone than to say "nothing happens."
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Nov 7, 2016 06:25
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I'll admit to not being totally versed in all the things a mage might do with a human soul, but I know that stealing someone's soul is something sufficient dots in Death can do, and also a big taboo. This may also have been something that changed between 1e and 2e. As for the compromise, let's think this through: If someone believes in UFOs or Lizard People living in the center of the earth, that shouldn't stop them from trigger compromise; believing something that isn't true doesn't stop you from believing something that is. By that same token, a five year old who still believes in Santa Claus should be able to trip it as well, yes? So at what age does a human start to trigger compromise? When they first begin to understand language?
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Nov 7, 2016 06:36
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ZiegeDame posted:Two demon questions for the thread: I would rule that they have to be able to comprehend what they've been told and it has to stick in their memory long enough for a routine scan to pick it up. However if an angel were to be combing through the person's memory in great detail it probably should cause compromise. This creates the best atmosphere for the spy drama that Demon runs on it as far I'm concerned. ZiegeDame posted:Second, could a mage, in one way or another, use a demonic soul pact to make a soul stone? I love doing/allowing crazy poo poo but even I would say that requires archmastery to pull that off.
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Nov 7, 2016 10:08
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ZiegeDame posted:Second, could a mage, in one way or another, use a demonic soul pact to make a soul stone? Unlikely. Only an Awakened soul can create a soul stone - and it's not actually your soul, just a fragment of your Awakened potential. Mages don't lose their souls when they create soul stones. Additionally, a soul pact with an Unchained can only take the completely mundane parts of someone's life, so they by definition couldn't take the Awakened part of the soul and it still couldn't be used for a soul stone.
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Nov 7, 2016 17:31
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I don't know a ton about Mage but "soul" (in terms of soul loss conditions, etc) in core CoD seems to conceptualized as an inherent vitalic fuel source, without which a person becomes terminally anhedonic. In that context a CoD Demon "soul pact" is a bit of a misnomer. The terminology is drawn from well-known folklore to make the concept intuitive, but for the most part Demon doesn't concern itself with mystical dualism. All the supernatural stuff in Demon proceeds from the God Machine's reality-defining code and the manipulation of it, with little concern paid to the spiritual dualism of regular CoD. A soul pact doesn't claim ownership of spirit, it changes a demon's reality privileges from "read-only" to "copy/paste" over the file directory encompassing the entirety of a human's life. The implications of what happens to all the other layers of a human existence when it's pasted over by a reality virus are left intentionally unclear. Given that it's WoD, it's probably very bad for someone somewhere. You could run a pretty trippy Demon campaign modeled after Planescape: Torment with the mystical detritus of all the humans wiped out by a high-level demon's soul pacts.
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Nov 7, 2016 18:57
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Yeah, "make a soul stone out of a soul pact" doesn't really make sense as a sentence because soul stones are objects imbued with a mage's own soul while a soul pact is a standing agreement which, once called due, allows a demon to usurp someone else's mortal life.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:14
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It is fun to think of what might happen if a Mage were to fully grasp reality programming as demons perform it. They would probably never be able to do it the way demons do as native plugins to the system, but boy the trouble they'd get in if they could even try!!
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Nov 7, 2016 19:19
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Pretty much, yeah. In Mage terms, a soul stone is a piece of your mystical potential and numinous nature turned into a physical object to better let you shoot lightning. That numinous nature lives inside a metaphysical organ referred to as a soul. In Demon terms, the soul is a bit of dross that is attached to the identity, and which the demon has no actual interest in except insofar as 'I am buying your soul' is the easy terminology for 'I want to purchase the rights to inhabit your identity and selfhood as a protective skin suit'. The soul-organ doesn't even survive the transition from soul pact to cover, and the pact itself is merely a document that enforces the mystic link rather than the soul itself in the first place.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:22
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So what I've learned is that I really had no clue what a soul stone actually is.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:43
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The other thing is no one can force you to make a soul stone, period. It is always your choice and decision to do so because something something your mystical potential is inviolate something something Awakened will.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:57
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What you could do is turn a physical pact contract into a soul stone by cutting off one of your ten magical fingers and shoving it on in there, although to be fair, why would you do that
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Nov 7, 2016 20:17
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ZiegeDame posted:First is about compromise. The core book says you trigger a compromise if a human learns something about a demon's true nature and believes it. How does this work with someone who has Alzheimer's or dementia? Can they really trigger a compromise if they also believe that it's 1967 at the moment and will forget what they heard after fives minutes? What about someone who is tripping balls on DMT? On the other end, how old does a human have to be to trigger compromise? Do they have to also understand what they've heard, can a 6-week old infant trigger compromise in this way? Is object permanence a requirement for triggering compromise? So if a discombobulated hobo sees a career dentist cutting through the fence around an army garrison, the gestapo wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between the hobo reacting to an unreal hallucination and an actual weird occurrence. The hobo would still be a loose end, especially if the state apparatus were alerted that the facility was being infiltrated. But whether it would be caught in the moment would largely come down to luck, which feed the policeman was watching when the disturbance went down. As for being able to pass it on and risk further compromise, that would come down to willingness of the listener to believe the story (afaik, the book covers both initial and secondary reveals under the same rules). So you'd be in a better position, but still - a risk. Probably better to roll compromise for the grossly out-of-character murder of a vagrant than risk what his knowledge could to you. As for children, as a GM I'd probably say that you wouldn't roll a compromise for a pre-adolescent learning something weird about you, but it makes for a murkier and more tense setting if there was some possibility that those memories could be brought to the fore in later years, through dreams or by accident during hypnotherapy or via direct God Machine exploitation, and used against you. So a 3-year old, no first compromise, but potential for later compromise. Kids 5-8, you could actually go either way on - was it CoD that introduced the idea that mortal minds reflexively put in effort to rationalize the impossible? If so, pre-adolescents might be more dangerous to cover as they will readily accept quite a lot, especially if it seems exciting or cool. And their natural guilelessness makes them more likely to share their experiences with others. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 22:18
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Basic Chunnel posted:Kids 5-8, you could actually go either way on - was it CoD that introduced the idea that mortal minds reflexively put in effort to rationalize the impossible? If so, pre-adolescents might be more dangerous to cover as they will readily accept quite a lot, especially if it seems exciting or cool. And their natural guilelessness makes them more likely to share their experiences with others. Yeah but who's gonna believe the 7 year old when they say their bus driver is actually a fallen angel. I mean, an angel, sure, but if angels are interrogating the kids on your school bus route it's probably time to ditch that cover anyway.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:50
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A demon's cover comes apart at the seams as he realizes some kid is telling the neighbor kids about the crazy stuff he saw this morning
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Nov 8, 2016 03:26
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ZiegeDame posted:Two demon questions for the thread: Witnesses being intoxicated is a -1 penalty to compromise. The God-Machine is aware that drunks, dementia patients, etc are poor sources for information and that there are numerous Demonly things around. Actions are being taken to ensure that this is remedied. God is in Heaven, all is well. That said, The Machine is everywhere. God is in His Heaven. Hell is a dream. But cities are odd, sinful places, with odd, sinful people who defy easy categorization. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 18:07
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Goddamn it, turns out I had two competing versions of the timeline document without realizing. One, which I've been putting all the new poo poo from shattered dreams etc in, is old and only 83 pages. The other, the proper one, is 156 pages long. I get to go through each and compare! Weeeeeee!
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Nov 10, 2016 07:34
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Well the oWoD's setting is suddenly being prescient again. To scoop this back in to being on topic: are there additional 1e Atzlanti deities listed elsewhere in the books? Or will they need to be kitbashed?
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Nov 10, 2016 07:39
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Props to whoever quoted 'cattle and the creeping things' by the Hold Steady. I think that was in this thread. That song and album were very cool. To be on topic, I could see it being good inspiration for a mortals game.
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Nov 10, 2016 11:36
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citybeatnik posted:Well the oWoD's setting is suddenly being prescient again. There was a website run by an actual Master of... Religious studies, I think? That had a whole lot of really cool stuff. It's down, but I could find you the PDFs they put out? That includes expanded pantheons and greater accuracy to the actual myths, as well as several new pantheons
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Nov 10, 2016 13:57
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Loomer posted:Goddamn it, turns out I had two competing versions of the timeline document without realizing. One, which I've been putting all the new poo poo from shattered dreams etc in, is old and only 83 pages. The other, the proper one, is 156 pages long. I get to go through each and compare! Weeeeeee! Make sure you use some actual tool to help you--maybe KDiff? And with a project that size, it might be worth setting up an offline or private online git repository for version control.
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Nov 10, 2016 14:27
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Definitely looking into some source control, but the actual compare was quick once I figured out when and where the problem arose. Only some V20 and W20 content wound up in there, and as I footnote all sources for the Timeline it was easy to round them up. The timeline aspect is probably what I like most about the Project now. It's the most comprehensive out there, and neat patterns emerge. I've posted a few earlier, but for another good one, in 1962 the RED teams of the Technocracy got mixed up in a struggle between communist and capitalist technocrats, with a lot of murders. Then in 1963 and 1964, there was a major purge of the Technocracy - not from the same book, but from a different one. So suddenly the pattern becomes the campaign of murder by the RED-3 teams together with the 1961 acceptance of the VAs into the Council sparks the Panic of '63. In 1964, as the Panic continues, the Void Engineers build Station Yemaja in the Kuril Trench - also unrelated, but as part of the broader stream of events, Yemaja begins to look like a good refuge for Communist VEs and Progenitors. Sometimes the links go against what we're told is the direct cause of things. We all know the Sidhe returned in 1969 because of the moon landing (because it was the 90s, okay? It made sense at the time in the same way that the video for What Is Love wasn't totally ridiculous back then.) but we actually have a pattern of Wyld-aligned spirits disrupting major Weaver infrastructure since at least 1955, taking the form of aliens and goblins and cryptid sightings. So there, it becomes less and less 'it was the moon landing!' so much as 'the moon landing was the final straw that let a powerful Wyld-force slam back into a Weaver-dominated world'. On its own, it makes zero difference to either line whether this version or the official version is what happens, but it makes for some very interesting possibilities. Imagine playing a Glass Walker Theurge investigating the Mothman only to discover that not only is it real, but it's actively working to try and tear apart the vision of the world you've been fighting for. Better still, imagine having a Black Fury packmate who then has to decide whether or not to turn on you or betray tribal principle, or a Fianna who shits themselves in fear at the idea of the Sidhe returning because he knows the bad as well as the good of them. This way, the return of them can be less of an unambiguous cosmic 'good thing' and more of a powerplay in the struggle between the three triatic forces with hugely unforeseen consequences, simultaneously tying Changeling more closely to two of the other lines without diluting its own themes.
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Nov 12, 2016 08:39
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I really like that approach, Loomer. I'm a big fan of analysis like this that finds interesting patterns and meanings that weren't intended by the writers. If it were intentional and there were some detailed master timeline, it would actually be a great implementation of the WoD unreliable narrator schtick. Especially with Changeling, where the big starting premise of "the moon landing brought magic back!" looks more like an oversimplified and comfortable story the fae tell themselves, when the reality is more complex in ways that aren't obvious to them. I like a setting where most characters don't have the whole picture and believe things that just aren't true. I've been having fun with that in my Awakening game lately. The PCs have been looking into Free Council history in LA as an aside to a more personal Mystery, and progressively finding out that the Nameless War and the Great Refusal are more complicated than they thought. "The Nameless rejected the Seers with one voice!" "Well...some of them wanted to join the Seers. But we purged those guys before they got anywhere." "Well...we purged most of them." "well...there's this little Ministry called Pantechnicon..."
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Nov 12, 2016 10:34
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So I wrapped up Shattered Dreams, and while I liked a lot of it, I wanna bitch a little about how it treated Australia. The big one is the central conceit that Australia is fundamentally different from everywhere else in the world because it is 'timeless'. In and of itself, that's actually not too far from how the Dreaming (which is a really loose catchall term that doesn't actually fit what it talks about that well) is usually conceived of - sort of an overlapping and underlying 'layer' of reality that maps to our reality and contains mythic stories that happened in the past while happening in the present and also happening in the future, in which people and animals still participate on a day-to-day basis by the process of their existence (whether or not whitefellas can slot into it is a subject of some controversy, to say the least. On the one hand it's consistent with the concept, on the other, the whitefella as a rule is disconnected from the basic spirituality and law/lore that permit participation in it). Shattered Dreams makes Uluru the central hub of all the world's time, which flow through Australia via the song lines and were shepherded by the Bunyip. I'm not sure what I think of it, as on the one hand it's actually a respectful take on the Dreaming. On the other, the way it's written sets off some of my alarms, and its treatment of Uluru as the central hub of the song lines is actually pretty offensive - Uluru means roughly jack and poo poo to 99% of the indigenous tribes in Australia except as a nationally recognized symbol of genericized Indigenous Spirituality. My local people have no teaching of Uluru, because we live thousands of miles from it and even nomadic tribes tended not to wander quite that far as a rule. In itself, it's not a problem to make a single place central to a continent's spiritual landscape, but when you make that place the most recognizable and genericized symbol of Indigenous spirituality, it starts to get a little weird. But then you couple it with yet another complete rejection of the growing evidence for blackfellas having had longlasting agricultural practices and large towns. Th extent of that practice still a matter of debate among academics so it's somewhat excusable, but to not give it any mention at all is irritating, especially when you're pairing it with a narrative that focuses on an unchanging and hunter-gatherer lifestyle. I've written a little about it before, but the basics are this: When whitefellas first turned up, they found an incredibly lush and fertile landscape. They assumed it was nature's miracle. It wasn't, and we immediately hosed it up by kicking the land's traditional custodians off their property and interrupting their cycles of management, while also importing animals and crops that hosed up those cycles badly. Early explorers found 'abandoned' villages and small towns with granaries (a lot of indigenous populations were in fact nomads who primarily lived by hunting and gathering - but they gathered what they'd sown earlier in a cycle of migration between permanently settled sites with permanent buildings, storing the excess so they could return to earlier sites in times of stress) and marvelled at huge fields of native grain in very arid areas that seemed suspiciously cultivated or were sometimes outright found cut and piled into stacks. We've got huge archaeological evidence for sophisticated fisheries and fishtraps. This was not a land, as we whitefellas have deliberately cultivated a popular image of, 'unsophisticated' hunter-gatherer lifestyles. This was a land where people had figured out how to combine a nomadic lifestyle with cyclical cultivation of their tribal lands, which avoided overstressing reserves in any one area and kept the place fertile. We have ample evidence for it, and more and more of it is coming to light - and crucially, has come to light before the writing of Shattered Dreams. There's not one mention of it in Shattered Dreams, or none that I picked up on. So the end result gets a little... Awkward. You've got writers ignoring the sophistication of a people, talking about the timelessness of the continent and its inhabitants, and making a central element of its spiritual landscape a landmark that features in the myths of only a few of the tribes (which on its own would be fine if a little eye-rolly), which all together start to look a little 'noble savage' from where I'm sitting. There's also the minor gripe of stating that all tribes had what are known as skin-names - this is false (most, but not all, subdivided into skins, but some remained with a bicameral division). All tribes we have records of had a moeity system, but skin names are a subset of moeity, not the whole thing, so this again goes to the complaint about genericizing.
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Nov 12, 2016 17:37
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Thanqol posted:Also Dr. Strange was pretty much the only Magelike movie I've seen stand up for the Mysterium's point of view. Doctor Strange, poo poo, more like Doctor Mastigos. Astral combat, extrasensory projection, wide-scale application of spatial manipulation for offensive and defensive purposes, constant use of portals, lies, personal demons, ego, manipulation, compromised morals-- poo poo, the end of the movie is literally endless self-flagellation for the greater good. If anyone ever asks you how to play a Mastigos, make them watch Doctor Strange.
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Nov 13, 2016 02:47
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Cabbit posted:Doctor Strange, poo poo, more like Doctor Mastigos. Also, every drat character has Platonic Form as a rote.
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Nov 13, 2016 03:11
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I'm trying to imagine what a changeling antagonist would be like for a Hunter group. Any ideas? (I've never played changeling)
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Nov 13, 2016 04:31
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Well, some changelings seek and feed on fear. Others accuse your buddy of being a soulless clone made of sticks and repeatedly try to kill them. Just because someone is a fetch doesn't mean they aren't your friend of the past decade. And sometimes, the fetch is the better person.
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Nov 13, 2016 04:37
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Sanzuo posted:I'm trying to imagine what a changeling antagonist would be like for a Hunter group. Any ideas? (I've never played changeling) you can't go wrong with a classic bridge troll
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Nov 13, 2016 04:46
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Sanzuo posted:I'm trying to imagine what a changeling antagonist would be like for a Hunter group. Any ideas? (I've never played changeling) Patrick O'Brennan, loyal dues paying member of The Union, remembers what happened to his brother. And so he keeps watch every night over his new born with a bottle of whiskey and a heavy cast iron skillet.
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Nov 13, 2016 04:50
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Sanzuo posted:I'm trying to imagine what a changeling antagonist would be like for a Hunter group. Any ideas? (I've never played changeling) Do you want a Changeling or do you want Changeling themes? The first category, just take a splat and roll with it - Bridge Troll, or a Leechfinger just doing what they do. For the second? Huntsmen. The True Fae. A walk home at night only to see the gateway to the local park warp into mist-shrouded thorns and a terrified homeless man stagger out vomiting bees, begging for help because The Thing In The Park has his son, and he couldn't save him when he went in after it.
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Nov 13, 2016 05:09
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Loomer posted:Do you want a Changeling or do you want Changeling themes? The first category, just take a splat and roll with it - Bridge Troll, or a Leechfinger just doing what they do. For the second? Huntsmen. The True Fae. A walk home at night only to see the gateway to the local park warp into mist-shrouded thorns and a terrified homeless man stagger out vomiting bees, begging for help because The Thing In The Park has his son, and he couldn't save him when he went in after it. Yea, going with themes is fine for me. I'm not too concerned with sticking with how a group of mortals would perceive a changeling-themed monster, rather than going by the actual book line. Seems like I should look towards real fairytale monster stuff ala Pan's Labyrinth.
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Nov 13, 2016 05:43
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Sanzuo posted:I'm trying to imagine what a changeling antagonist would be like for a Hunter group. Any ideas? (I've never played changeling) Goblin markets, the unpredictable gatherings of otherworldly merchants who barter to buy and sell weird trinkets and abstract concepts. The Horror Recognition Guide contains a nice story illustrating how the Market can be an antagonist of its own, or it might simply be a complicating factor allowing the hunters to get in over their heads seeking the resources to pursue another hunt. Fetches. When the Good Folk steal away a person to carry with them into Faerie, they often leave behind simulacra, doppelgangers breathed into life using sticks and leaves and trash, and a ragged scrap of the stolen person's soul. Sometimes the fetch is much like the person they replaced, such that no one ever notices any change ever happened. Often the fetch is a little off, hollow in feeling or cheerily callous or just different in demeanor from how they're "supposed" to be. Occasionally the fetch is a monster to itself, sharing nothing with its predecessor except appearance and memories. The fetch itself is usually not very supernaturally puissant, so a broken fetch could make for a less intense, human-scale enemy (perhaps one focused more on cunning and hiding in plain sight), amplified by the disorienting horror of someone you know very well suddenly ceasing to be recognizable, without explanation. Those lost who want to go home. Changelings, stolen to Faerie and returned from their Durance, are seldom entirely comfortable with having a faerie double living in their house and sleeping with their spouse. But the fetch isn't always intrinsically a problem, and it's not uncommon for changelings to return affected by their journey themselves. A fetch might well find itself turning to a cell of hunters for protection from a folkloric murderer who melts into the crowds, a double of their charge with Contracts and Oaths that may punish uncautious hunters for poetic turns of phrase and figures of speech they had no reason to suspect would be binding. Sanzuo posted:Seems like I should look towards real fairytale monster stuff ala Pan's Labyrinth. If it's in a word or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook.
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Nov 13, 2016 06:21
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Fetches are such a good idea generally. Nicely creepy and they give the players a great "you can never go home again (but that's kind of okay)" motivation to go all in on their new fairy life.
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Nov 13, 2016 20:43
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My first CtL game that I ran had a fetch as the main villain. I was worried that my players would mock the idea of their Evil Twin being the core threat, but I suppose anything you can blast with a shotgun makes for happy players.
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Nov 13, 2016 21:34
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If a player can't find a way to beat any enemy using a shotgun, that player needs to go back and finish their prep-work before playing. EDIT: So I have a conundrum. If Arthur Basingstoke is at all close to accurate, we now have a possible figure for the time of the Second City - between 4000 and 7000 years before the beginning of 'accepted human history'. The conundrum is this: Do we count prehistory, or do we interpret strictly, where only written history counts? The latter is neat, by the by. If we take the lower end figure of 4000 years before 3500BC, then we get a figure that coincides with the founding of Alamut. The higher end, 10,500BC or so, puts us at the First Age of Osiris, and the two together make me think whoever wrote the line intended it to be interpreted this way. Other possible figures include -14,000 and -17,000 for the 10,000BC neolithic settlements, which don't line up with anything of special note. Loomer fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Nov 14, 2016 |
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Nov 14, 2016 08:14
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Doublepost, but the first part of my dataset is finished to where I can poke at it some. Technically Hunter was first but it has much less useful data for simple chart form, as few hunters ever had explicit creeds and could have fit into more than one in many cases.   That last one is dogshit but Excel's people graph pisses me off and I'm too lazy to fix it until I do the final infographics for the whole setting. Loomer fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Nov 15, 2016 |
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Nov 15, 2016 14:37
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You should have photoshoped in a statue for the Earthbound one.
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Nov 15, 2016 16:42
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Nah, a lamppost.
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Nov 15, 2016 16:46
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