World of Darkness Megathread: Curse of the Were-Poster

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Sanzuo: May 7, 2007

Night10194 posted:

If they actually went whole hog, the Exalted showing up and showing the pampered little jackasses of the oWoD what *really* dysfunctional and insane assholes can do would've been kinda funny.

imagine if goku fought a bunch of vampires and werewolves

# ? Nov 17, 2016 09:30

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# ? May 13, 2024 06:42

Mulva: Sep 13, 2011; It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

NutritiousSnack posted:

a solar exalted just uses his perfect defense and then brain washes a lowly syndicate grunt, within the week essence two solars control north america

Counter: There is no Essence in the world now, nor the ability to generate it, so he stands in a nuclear hellstorm for a few turns before mote tapping and being obliterated.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 09:41

Cabbit: Jul 19, 2001; _{Is that everything you have?}

Mulva posted:

Counter: There is no Essence in the world now, nor the ability to generate it, so he stands in a nuclear hellstorm for a few turns before mote tapping and being obliterated.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Technocracy has more than enough nukes to keep hucking them until the guy runs out of essence, to say nothing of the NWO's ability to counter-mind control poo poo.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 09:57

citybeatnik: Mar 1, 2013; You Are All
WEIRDOS

Loomer posted:

I'm starting to chew my way through MET:Werewolf20, and there's already some 'oys' above and beyond the artwork. At one point, it has the Garou nation reduced to a grand total of 13 caerns. Good job, BNS - you literally broke the Garou Nation to reflect the games of a minority.

To start, it supposes that all Garou globally are bound by The Council of Tribes in real terms - and that Council is newly introduced in this book, but stretches back into ancient history. It takes the concept of the Garou Nation and takes it at face value like an actual organized nation, as opposed to its real meaning - a collection of related peoples loosely bound together by a common culture and working towards a similar end. Then we get the actual decision, which more or less turns its back on the prevailing theme of what happens when Garou meets Vampire by making it now a Garou-wide interpretation of the tenet. Before, you had a lot of tension rising from 'is this going to be a strained and rare alliance, or a bloodbath?', while now at least on paper all Garou are to just shrug and move on if they find a vampire. This happens again and again in its section on the Litany: this 'council' issues binding determinations, like a Garou High Court. It renders any hope I had of putting out a collection of jurisprudence on the Litanies as a LARP prop, since there's now a higher court that overrides it all. Ugh.

If this is the direction of Werewolf that passed nWW muster, I do not have high hopes for Werewolf 5e. Many of the changes made are barely comprehensible to people who weren't a part of the LARP scene that had storylines related to it, which means all the minor LARP organizations now have a book that in no way reflects the game they've been playing. Others strain credulity, or are quite literally apocalyptic in their ramification in a way that isn't addressed in the text. Like METV20, it's a really bad setting update, and as a non-LARPer I can't comment on any mechanical changes. I can, as the oWoD loving lunatic I am, talk about setting clashes, and I'll write up a full effortpost about it as I go through the book. I don't care about minor inconsistencies or changes made to reflect 'wow, that was a terrible idea to put in originally, let's deal with that' or even metaplot advancement, but there are basic and fundamental changes to foundational setting elements that seem to go too far by, well, far.

I assume that it is still in perfect keeping for someone LARPing as a Bone Gnawer to go "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and keep doing their own poo poo, right?

# ? Nov 17, 2016 09:58

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Loomer posted:

Others strain credulity, or are quite literally apocalyptic in their ramification in a way that isn't addressed in the text.

Please explain all of these and why they're apocalyptic when you make that effortpost you mentioned. :allears:

# ? Nov 17, 2016 10:04

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

citybeatnik posted:

I assume that it is still in perfect keeping for someone LARPing as a Bone Gnawer to go "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and keep doing their own poo poo, right?

That is always appropriate for a Bone Gnawer no matter what game version. It is also appropriate for the Bone Gnawer to get distracted from fighting the Wyrm by a pinball machine - especially if he has a dollar on him.

Zereth posted:

Please explain all of these and why they're apocalyptic when you make that effortpost you mentioned.

Of course.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 10:09

citybeatnik: Mar 1, 2013; You Are All
WEIRDOS

Loomer posted:

That is always appropriate for a Bone Gnawer no matter what game version. It is also appropriate for the Bone Gnawer to get distracted from fighting the Wyrm by a pinball machine - especially if he has a dollar on him.

Ah, excellent. It continues to mystify me why on earth anyone would play another Tribe.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 10:12

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

Here's the quick, from a skim, take on how this is actually seriously apocalyptic in a couple of ways.

For their 2004 Apocalypse, By Night Studios went with what I assume was a LARP-world narrative of the Storm Eater breaking its chains. A little anticlimactic, but hey, maybe they don�t want to actually break the world in half. And then immediately they state that Hurricane Katrina was the first manifestation of the Storm Eater, and that all the ecological disasters while it was active was due to it. I dislike this � it more or less throws out a real horror (which is that we humans have utterly hosed ourselves with climate change) and replaces it with something you can literally beat back into submission. If the worsening weather patterns up until the last few years were all down to the Storm Eater, it being defeated means the world is about to heal itself. That�s optimistic � but it also means that the major environmental message of Werewolf is basically discarded.

The Weaver, in response, calcifies reality and thickens the Gauntlet. You may recall this from the Apocalypse write-ups, but if not: It�s a bad thing, because in Werewolf basically everything is reliant on spiritual forces maintaining it. As a result of the thickening, the oWoD should now have lower fertility rates, impaired crop production, and slowly withering creativity. To go with it, a �gnostic plague� kills virtually every Caern on earth within a couple of years, with survivors being destroyed by the �Dark Brigade� of the Wyrm. This is also extremely bad, because the Caerns aren�t just pools of gnosis and angry werewolves punching each other. Caerns are spiritual nodes that tie the landscape together and help to regulate the local spirit world � and if they all die, that means that control fades. Couple it with a very big Bane and the calcification and again, the end result is frankly terrifying in a way the book never addresses. Crop failures, disease outbreaks, homicides, etc should all spike as a result from what we know happens when similar things have happened.

Then, the ties of the material world to �reality� rip. How exactly that works is unclear, but we can probably guess it means that even with the Calcification lots more spiritual activity starts to happen. Only there aren�t caerns to control it and the Garou are busy. So there�s strike three on our apocalypse checklist, since every other time that happens it causes a lot of devastation, even more disease, even more homicide rates, etc. And the calcification never goes away, even with the end of the �apocalypse�. So this isn�t a total planet kill issue � but it is an issue all the same, in that the ability of spiritual forces to influence the world is limited with its negative effects. No new �proper� Caerns can be built, the Umbra is being torn apart, and the Gaia Celestine either dies or goes into dormancy. And that�s the real apocalypse right there � Gaia�s spiritual self is the wellspring of the spirits that keep the world working right. And she�s gone. And that means that everyone is going to die, because not only is reality more closed off from the spirit world that keeps everything going, but the wellspring of the spirits that make the rains come and the plants grow right is gone. They might be replaced by spirits direct from Wyrm, Weaver and Wyld, but those spirits aren't geared to work in conjunction like those stemming from Gaia, which necessarily balance aspects of all three Forces to achieve the 'correct' outcome.

And for the Garou, they can now bite kinfolk to turn them into other Garou. But that has a high death rate, and they�re doing it anyway, and you know what that means? It means they�re going to burn out their main source of new Garou, because they�re idiots who want more frontline soldiers NOW NOW NOW at the cost of any in the next years. Because when Garou mate with non-Kin, they can only produce Kin, and worse still, Bitten become sterile. So your Kinfolk, who might have over his lifetime helped to produce three or four Garou and plenty of more Kin, is suddenly a single Garou who will never produce another Kinfolk or Garou. To boot, even those who survive are often stuck in permanent frenzy, which means they might kill the rest of a pack and have to themselves be put down.

It�s not, as the game treats it, the great salvation of the Garou Nation after their decimation in the War. It�s the final deathblow as treated, because suddenly everyone is biting Kinfolk, and once they go, so go the Garou. We have a world plagued by lower birth rates and failing crop fertility (which even with a whole 'mankind is too big' schtick is a horrifying event because it means we're going to desperately resort to much heavier use of fertilizers with the resulting runoff, nitrogen and phosphate depletion, etc, and the societal destabilization famine creates leads to poo poo like ISIS forming IRL without the influence of the Wyrm), and the Garou are busy literally eating their own reproduction base alive while conducting terror attacks on global corporations.

None of it is apocalyptic in the sense of the volcanos all going off at once or every human being falling asleep for a week. But it's definitely far more serious than the book treats it - which is almost as something unnoticed except by Garou, impacting on the human population only in the form of ecological disasters. It never digs into what actually happens when you calcify reality, even though we know what happens, and it ain't pretty. Then you add that there's the beginning of a second Impergium forming, only now mankind is capable of wreaking terrifying amounts of damage on its way down - and like I've posted before about the Changeling events, is liable to cause even if it doesn't mean to unless the Garou are somehow able to keep all of our infrastructure from imploding in our absence. On the way there, there's going to be resource wars over failing crop yields, political destabilization, and so much human suffering that more banes than you can shake a stick at will be born.

That's the heroic new setting. But at least they named it right: The Age of Apocalypse. I'll still do a bigger effort post about how and where they're deviating from the setting for good or ill, but I wanted to dig into this earllly.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 11:12

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

citybeatnik posted:

Ah, excellent. It continues to mystify me why on earth anyone would play another Tribe.

Stargazers have the best gifts.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 11:47

citybeatnik: Mar 1, 2013; You Are All
WEIRDOS

MonsieurChoc posted:

Stargazers have the best gifts.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that they had access to Hoedown as well.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 11:52

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Loomer posted:

Here's the quick, from a skim, take on how this is actually seriously apocalyptic in a couple of ways.

For their 2004 Apocalypse, By Night Studios went with what I assume was a LARP-world narrative of the Storm Eater breaking its chains. A little anticlimactic, but hey, maybe they don�t want to actually break the world in half. And then immediately they state that Hurricane Katrina was the first manifestation of the Storm Eater, and that all the ecological disasters while it was active was due to it. I dislike this � it more or less throws out a real horror (which is that we humans have utterly hosed ourselves with climate change) and replaces it with something you can literally beat back into submission. If the worsening weather patterns up until the last few years were all down to the Storm Eater, it being defeated means the world is about to heal itself. That�s optimistic � but it also means that the major environmental message of Werewolf is basically discarded.

The Weaver, in response, calcifies reality and thickens the Gauntlet. You may recall this from the Apocalypse write-ups, but if not: It�s a bad thing, because in Werewolf basically everything is reliant on spiritual forces maintaining it. As a result of the thickening, the oWoD should now have lower fertility rates, impaired crop production, and slowly withering creativity. To go with it, a �gnostic plague� kills virtually every Caern on earth within a couple of years, with survivors being destroyed by the �Dark Brigade� of the Wyrm. This is also extremely bad, because the Caerns aren�t just pools of gnosis and angry werewolves punching each other. Caerns are spiritual nodes that tie the landscape together and help to regulate the local spirit world � and if they all die, that means that control fades. Couple it with a very big Bane and the calcification and again, the end result is frankly terrifying in a way the book never addresses. Crop failures, disease outbreaks, homicides, etc should all spike as a result from what we know happens when similar things have happened.

Then, the ties of the material world to �reality� rip. How exactly that works is unclear, but we can probably guess it means that even with the Calcification lots more spiritual activity starts to happen. Only there aren�t caerns to control it and the Garou are busy. So there�s strike three on our apocalypse checklist, since every other time that happens it causes a lot of devastation, even more disease, even more homicide rates, etc. And the calcification never goes away, even with the end of the �apocalypse�. So this isn�t a total planet kill issue � but it is an issue all the same, in that the ability of spiritual forces to influence the world is limited with its negative effects. No new �proper� Caerns can be built, the Umbra is being torn apart, and the Gaia Celestine either dies or goes into dormancy. And that�s the real apocalypse right there � Gaia�s spiritual self is the wellspring of the spirits that keep the world working right. And she�s gone. And that means that everyone is going to die, because not only is reality more closed off from the spirit world that keeps everything going, but the wellspring of the spirits that make the rains come and the plants grow right is gone. They might be replaced by spirits direct from Wyrm, Weaver and Wyld, but those spirits aren't geared to work in conjunction like those stemming from Gaia, which necessarily balance aspects of all three Forces to achieve the 'correct' outcome.

And for the Garou, they can now bite kinfolk to turn them into other Garou. But that has a high death rate, and they�re doing it anyway, and you know what that means? It means they�re going to burn out their main source of new Garou, because they�re idiots who want more frontline soldiers NOW NOW NOW at the cost of any in the next years. Because when Garou mate with non-Kin, they can only produce Kin, and worse still, Bitten become sterile. So your Kinfolk, who might have over his lifetime helped to produce three or four Garou and plenty of more Kin, is suddenly a single Garou who will never produce another Kinfolk or Garou. To boot, even those who survive are often stuck in permanent frenzy, which means they might kill the rest of a pack and have to themselves be put down.

It�s not, as the game treats it, the great salvation of the Garou Nation after their decimation in the War. It�s the final deathblow as treated, because suddenly everyone is biting Kinfolk, and once they go, so go the Garou. We have a world plagued by lower birth rates and failing crop fertility (which even with a whole 'mankind is too big' schtick is a horrifying event because it means we're going to desperately resort to much heavier use of fertilizers with the resulting runoff, nitrogen and phosphate depletion, etc, and the societal destabilization famine creates leads to poo poo like ISIS forming IRL without the influence of the Wyrm), and the Garou are busy literally eating their own reproduction base alive while conducting terror attacks on global corporations.

None of it is apocalyptic in the sense of the volcanos all going off at once or every human being falling asleep for a week. But it's definitely far more serious than the book treats it - which is almost as something unnoticed except by Garou, impacting on the human population only in the form of ecological disasters. It never digs into what actually happens when you calcify reality, even though we know what happens, and it ain't pretty. Then you add that there's the beginning of a second Impergium forming, only now mankind is capable of wreaking terrifying amounts of damage on its way down - and like I've posted before about the Changeling events, is liable to cause even if it doesn't mean to unless the Garou are somehow able to keep all of our infrastructure from imploding in our absence. On the way there, there's going to be resource wars over failing crop yields, political destabilization, and so much human suffering that more banes than you can shake a stick at will be born.

That's the heroic new setting. But at least they named it right: The Age of Apocalypse. I'll still do a bigger effort post about how and where they're deviating from the setting for good or ill, but I wanted to dig into this earllly.

This sounds like it was written by someone who has absolutely no idea how Werewolf works and just wanted to tell a very specific kind of story, but rather than just running a game they had access to the setting bibles so now they're changing it for everyone.
I'm surprised the new council of tribes didn't change the first tenet to "Garou shall mate with Garou as often as possible because it's totally hotttttt"

# ? Nov 17, 2016 14:33

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Ancient Garou democracy doesn't even make sense. oWolves have never been democratic. They don't operate that way. oWerewolf society has always been built on physical and spiritual domination of other werewolves. It's a set of many, many small dictatorships, theoretically all overseen by an over-dictator in the form of a king, but in practice governed by werewolves beating each other up and shouting a lot.

Voting is a new and generally laughed-at practice performed mostly by Children of Gaia. (Bone Gnawers are excepted, but still don't vote, they just tend to kind of hubbub and huddle and operate by consensus and annoying the angrier werewolves by being so un-dominant that beating them up makes everyone else laugh at you.)

# ? Nov 17, 2016 14:42

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

Let's run through the tenets. They're actually one of my favourite parts of the game setting - I'm in the law business by trade, and my major focus is actually on legal anthropology and philosophy, so a bunch of shared 'laws' between wildly cultural distinct groups with distinct interpretations that borrow from each other is basically My Jam to begin with (likewise the Vampire takes on the Traditions), and that's part of why I'm annoyed there is now suddenly a supreme juristic body governing them.

1. Garou shall not mate with Garou.
This supreme juristic/legislative group has, in its wisdom, decreed that 'the tenet�s true purpose is to caution against making Metis Garou, not merely the act of intercourse... While its title remains the same, the tenet�s common interpretation is now to take no action that will lead to the
birth of a Metis child.' So that's the liberal tribe philosophy taken. The Children of Gaia must be dancing with joy. And then we get a change that I can get behind, which is that they have decreed that the law does not apply to the victims of rape. Previously, only the hardest line tribes thought it did, so it's actually something I could see being forced on them not by any supreme council, but simply by the weight of other tribes opinions manifesting in the form of a bunch of very angry Children of Gaia, Black Furies, and Bone Gnawers turning up at a sept's bawn with very large guns and klaives in loud protest at any plan to punish the victim. Sort of 'Hi, we hear you're about to be absolute cunts, so we're just going to collect that woman and be on our way unless you object.'

2. Combat the Wyrm wherever it dwells and whenever it breeds.
I posted this earlier, but it is no longer 'wherever' and 'whenever'. It is now only when the Wyrm has been 'taken into the hearts' of say, a Vampire, and second to that the vampire has 'gained an affinity to its ways' that they should do so. Obviously there's enough wiggle room an angry Red Talon could argue all human beings have taken the Wyrm into their hearts. What this indirectly means is that there is no longer a Litany duty to say, try and fight to minimize human suffering that occurs purely as a result of mundane occurences, even though this is exactly where the Wyrm breeds best: When there is great human or animal suffering. In addition, Vampires are now almost explicitly off the table as automatic targets because some Gangrel helped fight the Wyrm one time (of course, the Gangrel methuselah who did so does not appear in the database and is almost certainly someone's PC) and that means all the tribes should like, chill out on the vampire killing unless they're really bad dudes.

It's a bad interpretation that forgets much of the Wyrm's strength comes not from things you can bite and claw, but from suffering, pollution, and other Negative Vibes. With the only required targets necessarily being sentient and thoroughly wyrmbitten, anything else is purely elective and can no longer be compelled by a stirring argument to the Litany.

3. Respect the Territory of Another
Unchanged.

4. Accept an Honorable Surrender
No change.

5. Submission to Those of Higher Station
No change yet, but talk of it.

6. Respect Those of Lower Station, for All are of Gain
No change.

7. The first share of the Kill to the Greateest in station
No change.

8. Ye shall not eat the flesh of humans
Affirmed.

9. The Veil shall not be Lifted
No formal change, but affirmed and emphasized.

10. Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness
Formally no change, but affirms the harshest perspective, right down to it being the duty of Garou to kill their crippled.

11. The Leader may be Challenged at Any Time during Peace
No change.

12. The Leader may not be Challenged during Wartime
To be interpreted as 'during active combat or crisis, do not voluntarily change leadership or challenge your leader.' Fine and dandy.

13. Ye shall take no action that causes a Caern to be Violated
T'he Council of Tribes has decreed that this tenet strictly applies to any who have failed to do everything in their power to protect the caerns they swore to safeguard.' No useful change is given, only an affirmation of strictness.

So yeah. Basically the only meaningful changes are 'sure, Garou can gently caress, just use a condom and/or go for the backdoor' and 'please don't keep murdering every vampire who turns up, it's really hampering cross-line LARPing.'

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:07

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

You'd really enjoy Ars Magica. The Order of Hermes there has the Code of Hermes, which is a strict set of laws, and does have an official democratic rule over the whole Order...but it's one built on the fact that wizards are argumentative sons of bitches that are willing to rules lawyer the Code as far as they can to get what they want. So while the primary tenets of the code seem clear, the sourcebook on House Guernicus, the Order's judges, lawyers and cops, goes into detail on how absolutely every one of them except, like, one has been argued and interpreted and counter-interpreted, to say nothing of the 'peripheral code' built on side rulings and votes and precedents that can be argued in so many different ways.

For example, one of the core tenets of the code is 'I will not interfere with the mundanes, lest I bring ruin upon my sodales.' But because wizards actually do want to gently caress with normal people, there have been literally centuries of argument over what counts as interference and whether the operative clause is 'interfere' or 'bring ruin upon' - because if it's the second, you can do fuckin' whatever as long as it doesn't come back to bite the Order.

(That sourcebook also provides a list of example cases to cite, for either direction on several issues.)

Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Nov 17, 2016

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:13

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

I did enjoy reading Ars Magica, but sadly I never could get a group together to play it IRL.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:19

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

I think my favorite is the one with the Bonisagus who claimed seven apprentices and got them all killed doing her research (Bonisagus magi have priority claim on apprentices under the Code over anybody else, and potential apprentices with the Gift are super, super rare).

Ultimately this turned out to be legal because apprentices, like everybody else who isn't a magus, don't have any rights under the Code of Hermes, which is more of an inter-magus dispute system than an attempt at formal government. Bonsagus magi can claim any apprentice they want as their own, and nobody else has property rights in the apprentices to dispute, not even the apprentices themselves until they're full magi.

The end result was her being hit with a Wizard's War and hunted down by the master of Apprentice #1. This is also totally wizard-legal, which explains a lot about Hermetics.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:22

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ars Magica is like the only older WW thing I'm interested in. Where can one get a copy of it? Grumpy wizard academics having to navigate social demands while fiddling with things they probably shouldn't is extremely my jam.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:29

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

You can get PDFs of the latest edition (4 and 5 are the best editions, 3 is the last WW edition and is awful) at e23 or Paizo's online store. It's pretty great, and easily my favorite RPG despite being extremely mechanically fiddly.

E: Also, another fun one is 'I will not molest the fae.'

Because now we have a bunch of medieval wizards arguing over the definition of molestation.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Wait, the 4th and 5th ed aren't even made by WW?

Excellent.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:33

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Yeah, they broke free of WW and got bought by Atlas Games. This resulted in a lot of changes - most notably, House Tremere went and killed every vampire that had infiltrated the House. All at once.

House Tremere's schtick, you see, is not being corrupted by vampires - it's being a literal army of wizard fascists.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:34

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Ars Magica's House Tremere is awesome, by the way.

They had a church built on their lands by magic and then had it consecrated, because they wanted to see if it fell apart. If it did, they were going to weaponize consecration against their enemies.

(It didn't, so they're still using the church.)

EDIT: I think they're less fascists and more "they would probably immediately become fascists if it weren't for the fact that everybody else in medieval Europe is even less reasonable than them." The books do tend to minimize the possibility of corruption in their power plays, probably because they felt they needed to push in the other direction to get people to like them.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:36

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

They have also accidentally discovered modern economics after this one time they decided to try and fund the Order by turning the entire interior of a mountain into gold and selling it all off.

They ended up with a heavily mined-out mountain and an area in which gold was entirely valueless for like fifty years before they managed to get all the gold back and stuff it it into a vault.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:38

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Rand Brittain posted:

they were going to weaponize consecration

This is the best thing and makes me want to at least try this game.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 15:56

citybeatnik: Mar 1, 2013; You Are All
WEIRDOS

Mors Rattus posted:

They have also accidentally discovered modern economics after this one time they decided to try and fund the Order by turning the entire interior of a mountain into gold and selling it all off.

They ended up with a heavily mined-out mountain and an area in which gold was entirely valueless for like fifty years before they managed to get all the gold back and stuff it it into a vault.

there's a joke in there somewhere about economics being magic as opposed to a science. or literal voodoo economics.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 16:00

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Ars Magica is both the most historically accurate game there has ever been, and also full of goofy-rear end poo poo like that where a bunch of wizards try to follow the logical conclusions of medieval physics.

One thing they have discovered is that you can't raise a skeletal warrior or a ghost from a corpse buried in a consecrated burial of any monotheistic faith.

House Tremere actively hides the corpses of its servants and prevents them from being given consecrated burials and seeks out ancient pagan battlegrounds because they like having spectral armies.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 16:01

Desiden: Mar 13, 2016; Mindless self indulgence is SRS BIZNS

The funniest part about that whole litany change about combatting the wyrm is that its completely unnecessary. You already had plenty of precedent for ignoring vampires who weren't actively evil; most of the poo poo in the cities, including things like fast food and cigarettes, have some wyrm taint in them. Interpreting that tenet of the litany strictly would mean having to spend all your time burning down every O'Tolley's you came across with all the humans inside (and there's one like, every block). Garou have always had to sort out priorities, because they're too few to deal with all the creatures actively and intentionally serving the wyrm, let alone all the stuff not consciously trying to fuel metaphysical corruption.

This whole interpretation only makes sense if the werewolves are acting like the most rabid and stupidly myopic factions of the Red Talons AND their setting is treating the presence of the wyrm as an unusual thing reserved for bad guys. Which given that its for LARP, is probably true in both cases, but still...

# ? Nov 17, 2016 16:22

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Loomer posted:

1. Garou shall not mate with Garou.
This supreme juristic/legislative group has, in its wisdom, decreed that 'the tenet�s true purpose is to caution against making Metis Garou, not merely the act of intercourse... While its title remains the same, the tenet�s common interpretation is now to take no action that will lead to the
birth of a Metis child.' So that's the liberal tribe philosophy taken. The Children of Gaia must be dancing with joy. And then we get a change that I can get behind, which is that they have decreed that the law does not apply to the victims of rape. Previously, only the hardest line tribes thought it did, so it's actually something I could see being forced on them not by any supreme council, but simply by the weight of other tribes opinions manifesting in the form of a bunch of very angry Children of Gaia, Black Furies, and Bone Gnawers turning up at a sept's bawn with very large guns and klaives in loud protest at any plan to punish the victim. Sort of 'Hi, we hear you're about to be absolute cunts, so we're just going to collect that woman and be on our way unless you object.'

10. Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness
Formally no change, but affirms the harshest perspective, right down to it being the duty of Garou to kill their crippled.

Right so what I'm getting here is "Metis are bad and dumb so we want to affirm that we don't like them, and that Garou should kill them at birth even though we need every single warrior we can muster and are actively hurting ourselves to do so. But crinos sex is awesome so here's this awakened condom fetish."

This is loving stupid.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 16:55

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

Funny thing is I met quote a few people who liked Apocalypse LARP specifically because sex and romance were mostly off the table. They found it liberated them from creeps and cheese.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 17:41

long-ass nips Diane: Dec 13, 2010; Breathe.

Not to continue the derail, but I'm really looking forward to the Gumshoe Ars Magica game that's coming out since the biggest hurdle for getting people to play it with me has been getting them to learn the intricacies of the magic system (same reason we don't play Mage), and they already know gumshoe.

Plus, as mentioned above, the Quaesitors of House Guernicus are super dope

# ? Nov 17, 2016 17:56

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

This all but screams to be a plot hook. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37997640

# ? Nov 17, 2016 18:20

Barbed Tongues: Mar 16, 2012

Mating with another Garou makes metis that have weird physical/mental flaws and are sterile. Illegal!

Biting Kinfolk so we can turn them into new-Garou with mental problems and are sterile. Legal!

The Council has spoken. Awoo.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 18:50

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Barbed Tongues posted:

Mating with another Garou makes metis that have weird physical/mental flaws and are sterile. Illegal!

Biting Kinfolk so we can turn them into new-Garou with mental problems and are sterile. Legal!

The Council has spoken. Awoo.

Mating in ways that don't make Metis is 100% A-OK and encouraged though. You know, since they're basically slaughtering their kinfolk stock by the dozens in order to make new garou warriors and...

No wait it still doesn't make any loving sense.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 19:20

Cabbit: Jul 19, 2001; _{Is that everything you have?}

Werewolves are idiot murder machines so this all seems consistent. Of course their laws are stupid and contradictory; they're morons.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 19:59

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Metis are bad from a spiritual standpoint because if werewolves can just mate with each other, why bother having a bond to the world of man and nature? The obsession with purity is an aspect to it but it's a larger spiritual question in setting and the Children of Gaia being cool with it was part of their failing as a tribe by missing the point of what they are and what their job is. You just don't really get this because it was all poorly written and turned into Captain Planet meets Street Sharks.

The whole kinfolk thing is just dumb and poorly executed.

Most people who play larp games rarely read rulebooks outside of the power descriptions in my experience.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:00

citybeatnik: Mar 1, 2013; You Are All
WEIRDOS

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Metis are bad from a spiritual standpoint because if werewolves can just mate with each other, why bother having a bond to the world of man and nature? The obsession with purity is an aspect to it but it's a larger spiritual question in setting and the Children of Gaia being cool with it was part of their failing as a tribe by missing the point of what they are and what their job is. You just don't really get this because it was all poorly written and turned into Captain Planet meets Street Sharks.

The whole kinfolk thing is just dumb and poorly executed.

Most people who play larp games rarely read rulebooks outside of the power descriptions in my experience.

While I usually side with the Bone Gnawers on most things I actually preferred the Shadow Lords' take on this, mostly because their take on the Litany comes across as wise rabbinical decrees crossed with realpolitik.

It basically boils down to "this is not just about schtupping other Garou, it's a reminder to not get too focused on ourselves but to pay attention to both our human and wolf kinfolk. Ceterum censeo Silver Fang esse delendam."

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:04

Baby Broomer: Feb 19, 2013

CofD has the optional rule, introduced in GMC, of being Beaten Down & Surrendering. Has anyone used this in a game? If so, how did it go over? On paper it reads like a great idea to move away from Trench Coats and Katanas, but what about players who want to play Gangrel bikers, or Blood Talon bikers, or crack smoking bikers?

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:47

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I have not, but on the topic of bikers and other brawler types - this is perfect for them. They can assert dominance without murdering everyone. And if they want to kill a guy who's surrendered?

Let them.

They just have to do so deliberately, rather than accidentally, because it is actually fairly hard to accidentally beat someone to death with your bare hands.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:50

Basic Chunnel: Sep 21, 2010; Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

In LARP? Idk. But down and dirty would presumably not apply to lines beyond the core / mortals and possibly Hunter. The idea is that killing is not really in people's nature, hence all the training that cops and soldiers have to go through to ensure they don't hesitate when they draw down on someone. And even they're shaken / drained when they kill. In Demon, murder has no mechanical penalty, beyond the fact that it's a cover violation precisely because it's not something humans effortlessly do

Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Nov 17, 2016

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:52

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Basic Chunnel posted:

In LARP? Idk. But down and dirty would presumably not apply to lines beyond the core / mortals and possibly Hunter. The idea is that killing is not really in people's nature, hence all the training that cops and soldiers have to go through to ensure they don't hesitate when they draw down on someone. And even they're shaken / drained when they kill.

Actually, Werewolf uses at as part of the rules. Gauru combat is automatically Down and Dirty against all non-supernatural targets. All of them. Period. No matter what. Werewolves are fuckin' terrifying.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 20:53

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# ? May 13, 2024 06:42

Nomadic Scholar: Feb 6, 2013

I think I may start reading me some ars magica. Everything in this page about it sounds hilarious and amazing.

# ? Nov 17, 2016 21:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > World of Darkness Megathread: Curse of the Were-Poster

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