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Mushika
Dec 22, 2010

Loomer posted:

Bone Gnawer in a t-shirt that reads "I fought off a Nexus Crawler and all I got was a caern full of used methpipes and hobo urine." Though that may not be that different to before it fell for some Gnawer caerns, actually.

I'm going to have to silkscreen some shirts with this. Thanks!

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Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

#OccupyUmbra: The Modern Bone Gnawer War on the Wyrm - A Documentary

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

It was the opposite. If you took the implant, which gave you a tribe wide version of pack speech and some other perks, you were on the path to being calcified by the Weaver. After it was done and the Weaver tainted people were dealt with, the tribe renamed itself because Cockroach had fallen and I think Clashing Boom Boom became the tribal totem.

I'm.. just... There is so much wrong with that. But just on one point. If Clashing Boom Boom became the tribal totem they sure as gently caress wouldn't have called themselves the SIlicon Sentinels, that's for sure, because that would mean that the Dies Ultimae camp is now in charge and what remains of the Glass Walkers are now effectively a Werewolf PMC.

Also that's basically the entire plot of what happened with the Cyber Dogs except this time it was even bigger and somehow took down cockroach with it.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Kurieg posted:

I'm.. just... There is so much wrong with that. But just on one point. If Clashing Boom Boom became the tribal totem they sure as gently caress wouldn't have called themselves the SIlicon Sentinels, that's for sure, because that would mean that the Dies Ultimae camp is now in charge and what remains of the Glass Walkers are now effectively a Werewolf PMC.

Also that's basically the entire plot of what happened with the Cyber Dogs except this time it was even bigger and somehow took down cockroach with it.

My anecdote comes from an earlier iteration of the Camarilla chronicle, when it was still called the Camarilla and before Chronicles of Darkness briefly took over.

RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Nov 18, 2016

Desiden
Mar 13, 2016

Mindless self indulgence is SRS BIZNS

Kurieg posted:

Seriously what the gently caress? I'm assuming one of the Lead STs just really really wanted all the Glass Walkers to go full cyberpunk and turned it into a org wide storyline, loving over everyone who didn't?

I'd still take that over the whole "mafia" camp. Way back when when I larped all the glasswalker players seemed to latch on to that, and somehow interpret it as the full on stupid trenchcoats and dual desert eagles, plus fedoras.

It was every bit as awful as that sounds.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

And the thing is, I kind of like the idea of a werewolf mafia...in nWoof. But they'd likely dress like...actual mafiosi, which is to say, in suits. Sometimes poorly tailored suits, because something about being muscle means never having a suit that truly fits you right, but still.

Or, you know, in street clothes. Jacket, t-shirt, jeans.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Mors Rattus posted:

And the thing is, I kind of like the idea of a werewolf mafia...in nWoof. But they'd likely dress like...actual mafiosi, which is to say, in suits. Sometimes poorly tailored suits, because something about being muscle means never having a suit that truly fits you right, but still.

Or, you know, in street clothes. Jacket, t-shirt, jeans.
nWoof pack that dresses entirely in track suits and gold fake silver chains.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

My anecdote comes from an earlier iteration of the Camarilla chronicle, when it was still called the Camarilla and before Chronicles of Darkness briefly took over.

Alright, I'm just generally getting the feeling that everything Larp related to Werewolf is best to be avoided, and I'm becoming increasingly glad that I've transferred most of my "Caring about Werewolf" to nWoof stuff.


Desiden posted:

I'd still take that over the whole "mafia" camp. Way back when when I larped all the glasswalker players seemed to latch on to that, and somehow interpret it as the full on stupid trenchcoats and dual desert eagles, plus fedoras.

It was every bit as awful as that sounds.

And the Walkers transferring over to a Dies Ultimae camp in the same way the Random Interrupts took over wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, and judging by their gift list that might have been what happened seeing as how most of their gift list now consists of "Holy poo poo guns" and the Dies Ultimae aren't a "Silicon Sentinels" camp.

It's just that them taking over because most of the tribe did something incredibly stupid and then deciding that they need to pick an absolutely idiotic name to represent that makes no sense.

Tasoth
Dec 13, 2011
It's been a long while since I read any WW stuff, especially Werewolf. But it seems like you could do a lot of interesting things involving nature/the world adapting and the thickening of the gauntlet. Having a waking spirit world crop up as everything cut off from the spirit world tries to remake it on the material side of the gauntlet would be terrifying and interesting.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

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.

Pretty sure that's not entirely true, is it? OWoD Mages are basically mini-exalts in capability and the resources they use (It's even referred to as quintessence I think.). It's just that it's a lot harder for people to get access to essence in the old World of Darkness since non-Exalted can't respire essence like the Exalted can.

Granted, just dropping nukes on a Solar until they die is entirely doable provided they don't know Abyssal defense charms. Abyssal perfect defense charms let you just re-materialize behind the person who launched the attack.

Picture an increasingly frustrated Technocracy agent playing tag with the smug immortal supergod via dropping nukes across the globe until they could run their energy reserves down and you've pretty much got the situation down pat. :v:


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.

There was talk of an Exalted and World of Darkness crossover book happening years ago. But given that there's not been anything heard about it for so long I assume it's been taken off the table.

Funny thing is, the Exalted probably exist in both settings as either broken remnants or the tier 4/top tier beings in the case of NWoD. Laws of Ascension actually had a limited run printed that had an in character blurb from a OWoD era Sidereal. On top of that it's confirmed that there's "heavy weight" versions of each game line hiding out and doing something important in the NWoD/Mage Imperial Mysteries book. They're apparently the reason why some arch mage can't just say "I want all the vampires/hunters/werewolves to not exist.".

In the OWoD's case there's all but literal shouting-it-from-the-rooftops confirmation of it. And the NWoD/CoD is built so you could say they were the "tier 4" beings that were kept intentionally vague since they were so powerful they'd break pretty much anything over their knee. Which jives with a bunch of other things. It's not like NWoD isn't positively littered with hidden references to Exalted too.

Edit 2: Oh holy poo poo. I found the story. Turns out at least one Sidereal in the Old World of Darkness basically admitted they hosed up the world by murdering the Solar Exalted. Only he or she then goes on to decide that hey --- since what they did was so horrible they'll make amends for their deeds by siding with the Neverborn and becoming super-powered Nephandi.

http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Laws_of_Ascension_Rulebook_(limited) for those that want to read it.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Nov 19, 2016

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

Since the diminishing of the creative energy of the world is a running theme throughout the World of Darkness, I'd guess if you just teleported the Exalted into the WoD, they'd face a dilemma familiar to the mages and the (yugh) kuei-jin: to recover essence, they'd need to either cultivate and harvest from places of power or parasitize the world around them in some subtle way. They'd probably develop techniques over time to grow more efficient or generate it in specific other ways.

Archonex posted:

It's not like NWoD isn't positively littered with hidden references to Exalted too.

It isn't? I'm open to hearing any you could run down. I mean, I'm sure there might be a borrowed term here or there, but if you exclude cases where both Exalted and CofD are referencing back to something originated in the World of Darkness, it's a real desert compared to Exalted links in the WoD, to my knowledge. The only particular parallel that comes to mind is how Exalted Third Edition's Liminal Exalted are mildly reskinned Prometheans, but even there, it's the Prometheans that came first, and Exalted which followed after.

(Also, curiously enough, Prometheans existed in a little corner of the World of Darkness briefly before the CofD was ever a thing. But the actual Promethean: the Created added in basically all the detail that the Liminals crib from.)

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

I Am Just a Box posted:

It isn't? I'm open to hearing any you could run down. I mean, I'm sure there might be a borrowed term here or there, but if you exclude cases where both Exalted and CofD are referencing back to something originated in the World of Darkness, it's a real desert compared to Exalted links in the WoD, to my knowledge. The only particular parallel that comes to mind is how Exalted Third Edition's Liminal Exalted are mildly reskinned Prometheans, but even there, it's the Prometheans that came first, and Exalted which followed after.

(Also, curiously enough, Prometheans existed in a little corner of the World of Darkness briefly before the CofD was ever a thing. But the actual Promethean: the Created added in basically all the detail that the Liminals crib from.)

Similarly, Lunars were loosely cribbed from Werewolves, Abyssals from Vampires, Sidereals from Mages, and Dragonblooded had some vague ties to Kindred of the East, Infernals crib a bit from Demons. Pretty much the only things that don't seem to have some reference to WoD are Solars and Alchemicals.

Also do Prometheans have the power to slot body parts in and out to gain/lose abilities? That's gonna be a Liminal thing.

Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Nov 19, 2016

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Bedlamdan posted:

Pretty much the only things that don't seem to have some reference to WoD are Solars
Solars are the Exarchs. :getin:

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

I Am Just a Box posted:

It isn't? I'm open to hearing any you could run down. I mean, I'm sure there might be a borrowed term here or there, but if you exclude cases where both Exalted and CofD are referencing back to something originated in the World of Darkness, it's a real desert compared to Exalted links in the WoD, to my knowledge. The only particular parallel that comes to mind is how Exalted Third Edition's Liminal Exalted are mildly reskinned Prometheans, but even there, it's the Prometheans that came first, and Exalted which followed after.

(Also, curiously enough, Prometheans existed in a little corner of the World of Darkness briefly before the CofD was ever a thing. But the actual Promethean: the Created added in basically all the detail that the Liminals crib from.)

There's a whole bunch of stuff. I mentioned a few earlier in the thread. A few are really explicit like the whole "Green Sun" cult that reads like someone found a Malefactor's study texts. The rest pretty much are little hints and winks of the eye that require intimate knowledge of Exalted's backstory and the NWoD's hosed up metaphysics to pick up on.


It's late and I feel like poo poo but let me try to see if I can remember some offhand:

The Underworld has a few areas that are basically cribbed from Exalted. The most memorable one I can remember offhand is the Ocean of Fragments. It's an area that's pretty much at the bottom of the Underworld and is basically the devouring void you could find towards the bottom of the Underworld in Creation. Only something or someone put a giant magical ocean on top of it to plug it up and mitigate it's effects so it doesn't eat everything. It acts the same way as the Void in Exalted mechanically, only slower since there's a fuckoff huge magical ocean in the way between anyone stupid enough to dive into the thing and Oblivion. Go down too deep to try to see what the ocean is resting on top of/what it leads too (The underworld is a nigh infinite series of domains ruled by godlike beings, ancient ghosts, or transcended mortals that were strong enough or lucky enough to take one over. So logically there should be an exit or something there instead of the one or two exits and features above the water line.) and you cease to exist even if you are a living being.

Some of the Lunes seem to range back and forth between slightly insane spirits (Which fits with Luna in both settings, actually.) and some sort of super beings that seem more in line with the Exalted depending on the writer. Hell, some of the artwork depicting them shows them as half animal half humanoid beings that are all tatted up like the Lunar Exalted are. There's also artwork showing a bunch of different Lunes with the different caste marks Lunars have hovering over their heads.

A number of the older Cruac write ups were literally weaker Abyssal charms that couldn't be performed on the fly like how Charms could be. Amusingly, they also have a top tier ritual that temporarily turns them into a "seemingly godlike being" at the cost of giving them many of the visual effects/drawbacks of the alternate resonance mechanics for modern settings depicted in Shards of the Exalted Dream. IE: The same rewritten resonance mechanics that helped fix a lot of what was wrong with Abyssals in their 2E form.

The Strix are literally the Nemissaries from Exalted. Like, literally in every way, shape, and form. The only big difference is that they're viewed and fought from the point of mortals in the NWoD instead of a bunch of supergods. That and they don't get to bling out the corpses they possess any more due to not working for some fabulously rich and powerful entities like the Abyssal Exalted or a Deathlord (Which is actually a term that gets thrown around to refer to a bunch of largely yet-undefined beings that rule over the deepest parts of the Underworld. They're one of the "tier 4" beings that Arch Mages can bargain with that I mentioned before.) any more. The religious groups that dealt with the Underworld in some of the oldest vampire related "ancient past" settings that have been released also described them as the Nemeses or Nemesis.

The True Fae/Fair Folk operate and read like some sort of hosed up/mutated version of the Raksha from Exalted. Heck, the Raksha are even called the "Fair Folk" in Exalted. They're actually far less dangerous than the Fair Folk of Exalted too. In the NWoD they're seemingly only interested in kidnapping people to reproduce and amuse themselves instead of kidnapping them to eat their souls, reproduce, and make way for the total dissolution of reality.

From what we know of them so far Prometheans are the basis for Liminals in the Exalted setting. Also the strongest versions of Promethean/Promethean-like beings out there in the NWoD don't even use the same sort of power source the rest do. They use extremely powerful Numina. Which run off of essence.

As an added bonus some of the core terminology to make a Promethean can be found in parts of 3E Exalted's literature in relation to Exigent Exalted. The Divine Flame comes up as something gods can call on to empower someone at the cost of their own power or health.

One of the creation myths for Mages is that a bunch of dragons (IE: The thing elemental start to turn into visually as they get older and more powerful in Exalted. Also the beings that the Dragonblooded in Exalted are related too.) basically came swooping in and gifted it to humans prior to skittering right out of existence for currently unknown reasons.

Arch Mages have to start working with Quintessence to do the higher tier spells. Only now the Quintessence reads like Tass instead of the immaterial Quintessence from OWOD. IE: The Quintessence is altered to a physical form and hidden away from general usage for most mages so that it's even more of a nightmare to get your hands on. Have fun bargaining with a Deathlord or other insanely powerful tier 4 being to get your hands on the resources for that imperial level spell if your ST feels like making things interesting!

One of the in setting creation myths for one of the vampire clans has them basically being the result of humans mating with beings in a "borderlands" type reality similar to the Shadowlands in Exalted.

It's not a big indicator of anything big but the Midnight caste symbol shows up as a plot point in one of the Hunter supplements. I forget where though since it's been a really long time since I played anything Hunter related. Also this post took way too loving long and i'm sick as hell so gently caress looking it up. I think maybe it was Cheiron related? Don't quote me on that though.

And finally, an Exalted-WoD crossover book was at one point something the writers said they wanted to do. Unfortunately there's been nothing on that end for a long time so it's probably off the table despite the ground work going in for it.


All that being said, keep in mind that the NWoD is very toolkit in its design. It was built so that you can basically choose what you want to be canon. That means that for each explanation for a thing they describe an alternate one exists that you can optionally take if you like it more. So it's entirely doable and proper to say it's a setting independent of Exalted if you want it to be that way.

But if you do choose the option to say they're linked it looks a lot like a more positive version of a post-Creation existence that's gotten hosed up by a few huge mistakes early on in its history on the mortal end of things (Atlantis and the Exarchs going all "A god am I!" and promptly breaking reality over their knee, the poo poo that went down in Irem coupled with whatever the thing posing as Ammut and the judges in Duat wants to do to the world, etc, etc.) and doesn't have the Neverborn or Malfean Primordials around to perpetually turn everything into a nightmarish hellfest for living beings.



Edit: Holy poo poo that was longer than I intended.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Nov 19, 2016

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
I've grumbled about it before, but I really can't get over my distaste for how Werewolf declares agriculture to be the root of all evil. To be fair, sometimes it's presented as a purely in-universe thing - but then you get poo poo like the wheat-spirit being a servant of the wyrm in other books and it's like, welp. The modern system of agriculture is definitely not exactly natural or 'wyld', but the concept itself - let us make the land strong and fertile so that it can be more fruitful - is actually perfect for what human beings are meant to be doing for Gaia. It involves using all three triatic forces in balance to achieve a result of steady growth until a threshold is met, and then stopping and letting it stay where it can and should be.

There's a lot of confusion in the books about whether agriculture is bad in and of itself or purely because it let us become more populous, but that also doesn't reflect on agriculture itself so much as settled, high-intensity agriculture, which is definitively not the only form of agriculture. It just gets tiresome reading it again and again.

Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

It's worth noting that the Fera (and especially the Garou) are terrible pretty specifically because they're so out of balance. They're a cancer that got introduced to fight another cancer. Mankind is the pinnacle of Creation and all the splats are devolutions who've convinced themselves otherwise. It's why the World is so Dark.

*edit* What I was trying to say there is that of course Agriculture is bad. Literacy is probably a rank 4 Wyrm spirit.

Relevant Tangent fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Nov 19, 2016

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

That's mostly just a mix of the exception clause I cited, where it's not CofD referencing Exalted so much as both CofD and Exalted deriving from concepts in the World of Darkness, plus some stuff that's just really vague and unsurprising to see crop up in different works. Exalted doesn't have ownership over the ideas of magical dragons, associations between the moon and madness and between werewolves and pictures of the phases of the moon, and a messily drawn black circle. Also some odd misapprehensions – I'm guessing you were thinking of qashmallim there for these "stronger Prometheans," but they're explicitly not Prometheans and they're one of the ephemeral exception cases in that they don't use Essence.

None of that is to dump on the idea of running a game where you link the CofD and Exalted settings thematically; all power to you. But I was wondering if you'd noticed something I'd forgotten.

Bedlamdan posted:

Also do Prometheans have the power to slot body parts in and out to gain/lose abilities? That's gonna be a Liminal thing.

Probably not to the extent that Liminals will eventually have it? But they're unliving people conjured from patchwork bodies or other generative rituals by obsessive demiurges, with physically expressive magical powers given rise by occult bodily humours, who can rise back to life even from a bloody death by dismemberment, and one of the Promethean types does have access to a power to sew on replacement body parts for situational needs. Promethean's fingerprints are all over the Liminals.

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Loomer posted:

I've grumbled about it before, but I really can't get over my distaste for how Werewolf declares agriculture to be the root of all evil.

It's certainly reading like someone read a primer on Marxist theory of societal development and then fell from a very high ladder, hitting their head on every rung on the way down.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Daeren posted:

It's certainly reading like someone read a primer on Marxist theory of societal development and then fell from a very high ladder, hitting their head on every rung on the way down.

Rage Across Australia is basically a distillation of everything that is horrible about 1st edition Werewolf. I mean there's even a picture of a black man in a loincloth fighting a ludicrously phallic looking white worm, and several pages about how cereal grains are literally the worst thing ever and that the world would be better if we just killed all the white folk.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
I've been re-reading the Dark Tower books lately, and I got this weird idea in my head of a dimension-jumping chronicle where the God-Machine replaces the Tower as the thing that is broken and must be fixed, with the Principle as either the unbroken part of it's brain or a mysterious force that could be or not be a God/It's Creator.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

I Am Just a Box posted:

That's mostly just a mix of the exception clause I cited, where it's not CofD referencing Exalted so much as both CofD and Exalted deriving from concepts in the World of Darkness, plus some stuff that's just really vague and unsurprising to see crop up in different works. Exalted doesn't have ownership over the ideas of magical dragons, associations between the moon and madness and between werewolves and pictures of the phases of the moon, and a messily drawn black circle.

None of that is to dump on the idea of running a game where you link the CofD and Exalted settings thematically; all power to you. But I was wondering if you'd noticed something I'd forgotten.

The idea of White Wolf (And now Onyx Path) using similar concepts for each of their settings has been a thing for awhile now, yeah. Hell, OWoD basically established the trend back when it was directly linked to Exalted. If you're expecting Onyx Path to come out and say "Hey, they're connected settings!" outright then...Uh, i'm not sure what to tell you. They've been playing the whole "they could be connected if you want them to be!" card on and off since the latter days of the original OWoD line.

That's especially true for a line of games like the NWoD/CofD games. Which were designed to be at least partially be a pick and choose your setting elements sort of game line. Declaring that the NWoD was related to Exalted would have flown directly in the face of that.

That being said there's a lot of similarities there. Those same similarities are thematically the ones used to hint at stuff related to Exalted in the OWoD too. There's a difference between "Okay well both settings have dragons and the same symbols." and "Okay, they're using the same fantastical power sources, the same sort of mythical characters in a narrative, and even some of the symbols in relation to that.". So I hope it's not hard to see how someone could make the conclusion that they were dropping some of the same old winks and nods. Especially in light of some of the rumors and comments by the staff.


I Am Just a Box posted:

Also some odd misapprehensions – I'm guessing you were thinking of qashmallim there for these "stronger Prometheans," but they're explicitly not Prometheans and they're one of the ephemeral exception cases in that they don't use Essence.

The power the Qashmallim use definitely has some relation to the powers essence users have. They also are created and kept around by the same power that Prometheans use. I don't think any of the lines ever went into the intimate specifics of what Pyros is however. The closest we got to that was one chapter in Pandora's Box and it basically was just a really long form way of saying "It's inexplicable dude!".

The Qashmallim's powers are explicitly stated to fall under the category of Numina though. Numina are only for essence using beings like spirits, ghosts, angels, etc, etc. However, you're right that they aren't explicitly essence users. However the Qashmallim can basically breach game lines and use different essence related powers with Pyros. Given that it almost seems like the Qashmallim use some sort of super-charged version of essence. That's what I was getting at.

quote:

Powers of the qashmallim take the form of Numina. A qashmal can use any Promethean Transmutation as a Numina, as well as spells, Gifts, and any Numina avaliable to spirits, as well as qashmal-specific Numina. Lilithim can also use Flux and its related powers as well.

Granted, the Qashmallim are pretty much written to be a deus ex machina that can help spur a game onwards. So trying to explain why the hell they can do things that only essence users are supposed to be able to do is pretty much a fool's errand.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Nov 19, 2016

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
Time for a dose of World of Darkness stats, because nothing says Gothic-Punk Horror like starin' at charts. We already did the raw numbers for Hunter and how at a low end, there is 1 Imbued hunter for every 1.3 million people and how they're basically hosed (and how it doesn't fit basically any presentation of the Imbued in the game setting so we can be fairly certain it's a larger population than that in actual terms), though for an absolute low end by raw numbers and not using the American population and extrapolating out, there's only 1 Imbued for every 6.8 million people. The reason I lead with the extrapolated figure is that we know for a fact that the primary source of Hunter mentions - Hunter-net - has limited penetration in Africa, India, and Asia and so the setting's representation is disproportionately American and European. For now, have the other statistics I've prepared from the Hunter dataset that aren't stupid like 'what proportion of Hunters are part of a larger cell'.



Some explanatory notes on that HN ones. There are actually only 82 identified Hunter-net IDs (there are some more that may be but cannot be IDd with certainty), but the highest number is 386. So for the first chart, I have added 302 entries to the database. It makes it somewhat arbitrary, but I feel it's worthwhile. The alternative is to proportionately assign HN/non-HN status and that was too much of a hassle at this preliminary stage. The reason I'm not including raw numbers is that I don't actually feel they're that helpful compared to the relative proportions we see. They're interesting, but limiting - but knowing that 'oh, so and so amount of hunters are confirmed KIA' or 'About 33% of the Imbued population is on Hunter-Net' is actually helpful for designing Hunter games.

Loomer fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Nov 19, 2016

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Loomer posted:

Glorious insanity.

I would like to take a moment to thank you for making me feel slightly less nerdy for sperging over the lore of a game.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
Speaking of spergin' over lore, massive effortpost (and rant) about METW20 incoming.

The Black Furies have joined the orthodox/conservative faction. At the same time, they now tolerate male children, turning their back on tradition, which here extended not just to infanticide but to ritual sacrifice of their male young. On a welcome note, they also now openly accept transwomen. Weirdly, it’s treated as a new development that they seek out oppressed women from other Tribes kin and Garou, but they’ve been doing that since like, 1E. Overall, it's a mixed bag and I can understand why they've opened up membership to men, but I'm also not necessarily a fan of it like I am the inclusion of transwomen.

During the big war, apparently all the Children of Gaia did was… Surround the fallen with their own bodies as human shields. That’s funny, I thought the Children of Gaia were Garou, and last I checked, only their most fringe elements had any issue with killing Fomori and banes for the sake of Gaia or in the defence of others, unless it’s slaughter for slaughter’s sake. Even the Clan quote is ““Do not make the mistake of equating pacifist with passive. I may not seek your death, but I will fight to the last breath to defend others from you, should you seek theirs.”” Oh well, at least they still understand that Rage is kind of a problem if you’re letting it run wild. Kind of silly that their big contribution to the War was to be human shields, though – I’m going to guess that the groups who ran this big apocalypse storyline had the CoG players who didn’t get the ‘by the way, not all violence is literally unthinkable for a CoG’ memo.

Oh, and for some reason they now want to ally with the Weaver to bring balance to the cosmos. Which is loving lunacy. The reason the cosmos is unbalanced is because the Weaver hosed it up when she got tired of the Wyrm eating her creations when their time is up. Half the Garou nation is now so hosed in the head it wants to outright ally with the Weaver. Not ‘hey guys, can we try and heal the Weaver first and then it can help us?’ but ‘let’s ally with the Weaver as it is now. Y’know, the spiritual entity that just tightened the gauntlet and is literally strangling life from the world.’ Even the Glass Walkers half the time weren’t about ‘hey guys how awesome is the weaver? So awesome right’ but about trying to unfuck the weaver and prevent the Wyrm from exploiting the openings it was creating in the web.

The Fianna have lost most of their young men and women in the fighting and they all have Harano now, and also, they all have a Fae curse too. So basically the Fianna are now a fractured remnant of a tribe, riddled through with Werewolf PTSD and suicidal depression. Fun.

The Get no longer give a poo poo about race or gender, which puts them roughly on a level with, oh, most of Revised era’s presentation of them. It’s not an unreasonable reiteration, though, and it does address the usual ‘but the old hard liners…’ response by going ‘no, they all died.’ There is one problem though, which is treating Pure Breed as equivalent to the mundane racism and it being a good thing the Get can no longer track most of their ‘pure’ lines. This is actually a terrible thing, as it means the lines with the best chance of producing new Garou are lost.

So while it’s great that the Get aren’t racist, it’s silly to celebrate that they can’t track their longstanding kin lines because that means potential cubs will be born and stolen by the BSDs or remain Lost for the rest of their lives. Pure Breed also doesn’t need to be related, at all, to the race of the human kinfolk – there’s nothing preventing the most Aryan German Poster Boy Purebreed Get from siring a new purebred kin line with say, a Sudanese woman, so long as she isn’t kin to another tribe.

Also, the Valkyries of Freyja camp is now gender-neutral and accepts men, which I’m honestly not sure how I feel about – in part because the change is because a gay man demanded entrance to a circle of women. There’s an argument to be made about the ergi, etc, but it still somehow strikes me as not quite right, both from the stance of ‘wait, did they just indirectly state gay men are women?’ and from the stance of ‘this is a women’s organization, sanctified and consecrated as such’. I think it may just be my inner ergi coming out in protest though, as well as the part of myself that belongs to a few male-only ritual groups rebelling against transgression in sacred gender-exclusive spaces, whether it be men in female circles or women in male circles.

The Glass Walkers have now completely drunk the Weaver kool-aid, rather than just mostly as in previous editions. It is the promised machine messiah that will restore balance to the triat. See above for my thoughts on that. They’re also now the single strongest tribe, and the CyberDog camp is on the rise again – you know, the guys who forcibly experimented on lupus Garou with cybernetics. But they’re good guys now, apparently, because how cool was Ghost in the Shell? Like, so cool.

The Red Talons now have their Winter Packs killing people indiscriminately in Mexico and Africa under cover of the wars raging in those areas. Weirdly enough I can actually buy that they might do so in parts of Cartel controlled Mexico – it’s vicious enough that it might actually slip under the radar. However, the big takeaway is that they’re getting Lupus Wendigo and Black Furies on board, and are literally about to restart the Impergium whether the other tribes want to or not. Because as we all know, the best time to take on 7 billion people with access to tanks and nuclear weapons in open warfare is when your kind’s population has been sharply reduced and 95% of your strongholds lie in ashes and ruins – though it would make sense as a kind of ‘we do it now, or we die and we never manage it’ last ditch, but of course it isn’t presented that way.

The Shadow Lords are back to being defined by ‘we want to usurp the Silver Fangs’, which is a real shame. Yuri Konietzko was a great character simply because he didn’t actually give much of a poo poo about that given he was living in what he thought was the final days before Armageddon, so there wasn’t time to gently caress around with stupid rivalries when an army needs building, and if no one else is up to the task, he’s going to build the goddamn thing no matter what it takes. But BNS have offed him and replaced him with his son, ‘a wise leader’ who nonetheless is right back to the Shadow Lord stereotype of ‘it should be US!’ Oh, and he wants to learn how to use modern technology so he can turn it on mankind.

Here’s another great example of the tone shift in here. The tribe write-ups are meant to be real, authoritative, and not overly biased. Silver Fang write-up’s second sentence? “They raised the first known caern, led the tribes to fulfill Gaia’s will in the Impergium…” First off, they didn’t raise the first caern – that was the Gurahl. Second, apparently the Impergium is now unambiguously the will of Gaia, which is funny as it more or less hosed everything since up. Doubly concerning is that the Silver Fangs lead the traditionalist orthodoxy.

A quarter of all the Stargazers are dead, Shigalu is permanently lost, and they’ve rejoined the Garou Nation. They’ve got new kinfolk they found, remnants from the Mongols (which can’t actually happen – five generations will breed out the Kin blood in any population, so unless there’s been zero infusion of new blood into those pockets – in which case they’re extremely inbred at this point – those pockets are the scantest bit of kin around), and they’re part of the pro-Weaver camp now.

The Uktena are now members of the pro-Weaver camp, and were defenders of the Camazotz. Which I don’t recall them actually being, but I may be wrong. They’re still the tribe of ‘anyone who’s ever been oppressed’.

The Ajaba are back to killing people, but that’s actually not so insane as if the others do. It is, afterall, their job – and they have the appropriate gifts to actually decide when and where it’s merited. It’s still a somewhat ugly prospect, but it isn’t the full insanity of the Red Talons and the Silver Fangs relaunching an indiscriminate Impergium. It’s also part of why I roll my eyes whenever someone says the Garou were only killing the weak, old, and sick during the Impergium. At that time, the Ajaba were still doing their job, which means the Impergium must necessarily have been far more expansive. There’s a few posters over at OPP who are convinced that the Impergium wasn’t a brutal and violent slaughter ala our modern system of wolf culling, but a nice, pleasant favour to humanity, so it comes up more often than you might expect. The Ajaba also have a new Auspice, which spontaneously arose after killing Black Tooth – Galliards.

For some reason the Garou almost universally despise the Ananasi now (specifically for their dedication to the Weaver – which is false, as they are actually dedicated to Queen Ananasa and at this point most of them want to free her so she can literally kill, eat, and replace the Weaver proper), despite half the Garou nation being on board the pro-Weaver bandwagon. This is both a bad idea in-universe (if you’re going to go pro-weaver, you want to get in bed with the Fera who can help you both understand and possibly fix the Weaver) and out, because it reduces the potential complexity of politicking that the pro-Weaver camp and the Ananasi players can do. To be fair though, the Ananasi are pretty loving terrible so distrusting them is almost always a good choice.

I just spotted, reading the Bastet entry, that they’ve literally copy-pasted a few lines into multiple places. “Egypt, Algeria, and Libya had always harbored undead, but now with war and strife rampant, the inner continent became vulnerable, and wild vampires made their homes in Niger, Chad, and even the Sudan.” Appears at least twice verbatim, and with one variation I can remember, that takes it to at least three times virtually verbatim.

The Bagheera kin are the leopards and jaguars of India and Thailand. Can you spot the problem? There are no jaguars in those countries, and in fact, there have never been any. Now this is the World of Darkness which has wolves in Japan still, but even so. Bagheera are traditionally werepanthers/wereleopards, and apparently they’ve dropped the panther aspect even though that’s what their Forms are.

The Balam are now leopards and jaguars too, but were only ever jaguars because there are no leopards in South America. The Ceilican – the fae-cats – are back, which is a good thing. Which is funny, because the Ceilican actually fell to the Wyrm. To be fair, that happened only in one book, so it can be forgiven, but it still isn’t necessarily a good thing they’re back. They did at least get the rest of the Bastet mostly right.

On the Gurahl, they sat out the fight in the big War except in their own backyards, which is insane. The Gurahl, though healers, love Gaia deeply and don’t want her to die. They invented the Caerns. They rose to fight off the Storm-Eater the first time – and now they do nothing the second? Nonsense. Then the Mokole ask them to help out and suddenly they’re onboard. Even worse, the Okuma are back now – somehow.

Most of the Umbral Nuwisha are dead or lost now, which means most of that breed is gone. They’ve lifted their 100 on earth at a time edict because if you’re going to do a worldwide LARP community that’d get in the way if you ever become truly big, though it makes sense. If the umbral storms of the apocalypse killed most of the umbral ones, suddenly there’s more pressure to make sure you have more than a tiny handful safe from them at a given time. They’re also actively engaged in open fighting with the Wyrm, which is a terrible decision for a fragile breed that just lost most of their numbers, but at least makes sense if they think ‘this is it, this is the last shot we have’. Oh, and coywolves are a sinister Wyrmish plot bred by Pentex now. That’s… something.

The best two breeds come last: Rats and sharks. Everyone remember that the Ratkin’s job is to kill humans with disease to keep them from getting too big, right? It’s another part of why ‘the garou were just doing the right thing with the impergium!’ line is silly, because there were two whole breeds whose whole job was to manage the human population’s size and another breed in charge of breeding them up. Ratkin also now have a formal treaty with the Nosferatu, stretching back centuries – and despite coming quickly to the Garou’s aid in the War, still hate the Garou with a passion. Even though this is basically Their Time, they’re written as doing roughly gently caress all at this stage.

The Merfolk are now extinct, and the Rokea are pissed. All their grottos are gone and their young are being born stillborn. They no longer hunt the Betweeners because the shard caerns, which Betweeners brought back, are the only thing keeping their breed alive. It’s an alright change and it makes sense from a LARP facilitation perspective. A camp of them now wants to outright serve the Wyrm, which is insane because a, they don’t actually have the Wyrm underwater (they have Qyrl), and b, the Weaver doesn’t really care about water pollution except where it interferes in order while the Wyrm actively seeks it.


Going deeper into the book, we open the rules section with a quote. ‘The only golden rule is there are no golden rules.’ Which is… Something. I’m actually a fan of the usual RPG golden rule even if it doesn’t need to be restated in every single book and game. BNS evidently are not. But the real meat! Apparently Garou births are on the decline in a big way with the Age of Apocalypse. Now they were already steeply declining, so I’m guessing they are now very rare. For hard numbers, before it was roughly 1 in 10 children of Garou (with Kin) would be Garou, and while we have no new figure, the exact word is a ‘rare occurrence’, so we can probably cut it in half to be 1 in 20. Instead, there are more Lost Cubs rising spontaneously, which is great – except it isn’t, because they’re almost universally near feral, totally ignorant of Garou society (which may actually be a good thing), and have no skills or tools to survive as warriors of Gaia.

The problem here is obvious, right? We’ve got a massively devastated population that is now experiencing a period of extreme reproductive difficulty and stress. The only ways that are even close to reliable to make new Garou are now to go around attacking random people in hopes that they turn out to be Garou, or biting your kinfolk. As we covered earlier, The Bite is dangerous and leaves its victims sterile – both in terms of offspring and an inability to give The Bite themselves. The only semi-reliable way to make Garou now, in real terms, is also taking multiple potential Garou out of the mix over the long term. At the moment the Council of Tribes frowns on willy-nilly Biting, but Werewolf is a game with spectacularly high attrition. As numbers dwindle and new Garou aren’t born fast enough to replace them, I don’t think their resistance to the idea is going to last, and it may be the end of the Garou as a viable fighting force.

The Council of Tribes has, as written, the authority to alter the Litany. That’s not ‘alter the interpretation of the litany’. It literally grants them the authority to alter the Litany itself. They can also alter the interpretation. An individual councilor can ‘alter the fundamental doctrine, law, or customs of the Garou Nation’ and are immune to all authority except the High King – who at present does not exist and who, if he did, can only remove one councilor in his term. Oh, and they can vote to dismiss him and elect a new one. For the ‘ultimate sovereign’, he’s a toothless oval office surrounded by 13 scheming dictators.

The Wheel of Ptah Caern is now held by the Shadow Lords for… Reasons? The iconic Silent Strider sept got handed over to them for no apparent reason other than ‘silent striders don’t like to stay in one place’.

The leader of the Silver Fangs is now openly calling for the leader of the Glass Walkers to be killed for being old and infirm. So yeah. Apparently that’s a good thing for the leader of one of the two major factions in the Nation to think, and not a diplomatic clusterfuck on a massive scale. Her faction is also growing more and more fond of the idea of another Impergium, want to more-or-less enslave the kinfolk and farm them for Bite-fodder, and want as close to a total reversion to ancient ways as possible.

The other faction is, as previously written, a bunch of Weaver nuts. There’s a pretty clear and forced ‘good guy bad guy’ dichotomy between them. The traditionalists want to tear everything down, kill esteemed leaders for the crime of being old, and seek to enslave their kinfolk. The Weaver lot want to integrate Kin into their societies as true partners, seek alliance with all the Fera and the other supernaturals, and try and manage and nurture humans to think the right way about Gaia. They’re also meritocratic and make a big thing of ‘we don’t go by inheritance!’, which is hilarious given that their leader is the Margrave who is only a Margrave because his dad was. They think the Wyrm needs to exist, and just needs to be cured, which is what all Garou used to think, but apparently the other faction now think you can outright destroy the concept of destruction.

The essential problem with this dichotomy is that one side wants to ally with the Weaver, and I already outlined why you maybe don’t want to ally with the spiritual entity literally choking the life from the planet with the gauntlet, so to make them seem good, they had to make the other side start getting real evil.

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

Not even once

Jhet
Jun 3, 2013

Mulva posted:

LARPing:

Not even once

LARPing would be great if it weren't for all the other people who've been doing it for 15 years with the same characters.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Loomer posted:

The Glass Walkers have now completely drunk the Weaver kool-aid, rather than just mostly as in previous editions. It is the promised machine messiah that will restore balance to the triat. See above for my thoughts on that. They’re also now the single strongest tribe, and the CyberDog camp is on the rise again – you know, the guys who forcibly experimented on lupus Garou with cybernetics. But they’re good guys now, apparently, because how cool was Ghost in the Shell? Like, so cool.
No. Seriously MET, no. The entire point of the cyber dogs camp was to prove that diving into imbalance with the Weaver to combat the Wyrm is a capital and bolded BAD thing, not that they just didn't have the right leadership to do it.

quote:

The Uktena are now members of the pro-Weaver camp, and were defenders of the Camazotz. Which I don’t recall them actually being, but I may be wrong. They’re still the tribe of ‘anyone who’s ever been oppressed’.
loving what? The Weaver is a tool of oppression, the weaver wants to you stay where you are in the social chain and never move.

quote:

A quarter of all the Stargazers are dead, Shigalu is permanently lost, and they’ve rejoined the Garou Nation. They’ve got new kinfolk they found, remnants from the Mongols (which can’t actually happen – five generations will breed out the Kin blood in any population, so unless there’s been zero infusion of new blood into those pockets – in which case they’re extremely inbred at this point – those pockets are the scantest bit of kin around), and they’re part of the pro-Weaver camp now.
Nope

Nope Nope Nope

loving Nope

The only tribe that hates the weaver more than the Stargazers do is the loving Red Talons. Their tribebook goes over that in laborious detail.



Also where the poo poo are the Mokole, Nagah, and the Kitsune?

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Loomer posted:

The Fianna have lost most of their young men and women in the fighting and they all have Harano now, and also, they all have a Fae curse too. So basically the Fianna are now a fractured remnant of a tribe, riddled through with Werewolf PTSD and suicidal depression. Fun.

And nothing of value was lost.

What are the Bone Gnawers up to? Or are they back to being treated as comedy relief and not, you know, down and dirty fighters that specialize in urban warfare?

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
The Nagah aren't listed as playable and the Mokole, for some reason, are in an entirely different chapter. They're both 6 point merits to play because they're exceptionally rare (rarer, apparently, than the newly decimated Garou, the Gurahl (whose whole schtick is 'we are basically extinct, assholes'), the recovering-from-outright-genocide Ajaba, Ceilican, Bubasti, and the Nuwisha, who literally lost most of their population over the last decade.) Kitsune are a 4 point merit, and do get a write-up in the main chapter. My eyes glazed over reading them, as they usually do.

They're doing the same poo poo as always, only now they act as diplomats between the Garou Nation and the Hengeyokai. Bai Mianxi, the very first Kitsune, is back from Heaven and is yelling at everyone that the Final Age of the world is here (which... doesn't fit Hengeyokai or KOTE cosmology at all. There is no final age per se, as it is part of a great cycle, and even if there was - we are nowhere near it.) Oh, and there are new native populations of vulpine Kitsune anywhere in the world that has foxes, though that isn't true exactly because while the book says that, it also then says they only exist in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Arctic. I guess the imported foxes down here in the land downunder can get hosed, as can the African foxes - which is crazy because fennecs are adorable and unlike those of south America, actually part of the fox species vulpes. If she's right about the Final Age, then this is actually fantastic news because the only 'final' age is the 12th age, the pinnacle of our ascent back to the Age of Heaven, in which all things are set right under the Celestial Bureaucracy and the universe exists in perfect harmony within Gaia, undifferentiated. But hey, why bother getting your terminology right - or maybe I'm wrong here. Hengeyokai stuff was never my strong suit as my eyes tend to glaze over with KoTE and related content as a defence mechanism against terrible font choices and rampant weeaboo orientalism. If anyone really wants to know, I'll dig out my copy of Hengeyokai to confirm.

They do have a new camp, which... Let me post it. "One of the newest camps to appear in the Age of Apocalypse, Rusty’s Rumspringa is a camp populated entirely by young, American foxes who have surrendered themselves to the joy of living and loving life. Led by one of the first American foxes to awaken, they argue this is their time to be young and drat all rules and duties—obligations are for those who have already had centuries of fun. These indulgent foxes reject the Laws of Heaven in theory, concerned only with their own needs. In practice, most rivately hold those mandates close to their hearts. Those outside the camp prefer to think of this group as an exercise in extended adolescence." Or in other words, 'hey guys, Gaia just activated us as her sleeper cell soldiers and final, last ditch effort to unite all the Fera and Garou into one solid force to fight off what is literally The End of the World and the ascent of the Demon Emperor. Let's get drunk and play ping pong instead. Also, we should probably have sex, and and since we aren't that big on the Laws of Heaven, we're also free to massacre humans, lie, and not give a gently caress about our jobs.' Yeah. It's like they took the worst aspect of the Kitsune breed and turned it into its own camp. Why hasn't one of the older Kitsune beat the poo poo out of these kids if this is the 'Final Age', exactly?

The Mokole are doing gently caress all. They stay on the fringes because werewolves hosed them up in the War of Rage. You may recall that the Mokole are why the Gurahl helped out in the first place, but let's ignore that. They're too busy sitting on the sidelines now to be player characters. A handful are coming out to help, but most are sitting around waiting for another Wonder Work of the Wyrm to just kill everyone. At least they're deliberately letting everything end, as opposed to the Rumpsringa Kitsune, who are just too drat busy getting high.

The Nagah aren't listed at all in the book except for their role in triggering the War of Rage. They don't even merit an entry in the index. As far as I can tell, the Minds Eye Society does not permit people to play Nagah period, and By Night Studios have decided to make that part of the rulebook. Their Kickstarter suggested it might be lack of funds - they were going to add Fera if they got more money - but they added every other breed, including ones with stretch goals well in excess of the Nagah, so. Who knows. We can only presume the Nagah are all dead or are too busy trying to remember how this whole 'judging' thing works to do their jobs during the Apocalypse.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell

citybeatnik posted:

And nothing of value was lost.

What are the Bone Gnawers up to? Or are they back to being treated as comedy relief and not, you know, down and dirty fighters that specialize in urban warfare?

Bone Gnawers are now a top-tier tribe because, being the hardest survivors the Garou have, they took very light losses in the War and basically single-handedly saved the other tribes refugees. They also got advance warning of the onslaught from the Weaver, and are now in the pro-Weaver camp, but that isn't a big surprise. I don't like it, but it at least makes some sense. They hold one of the surviving 13 original Septs. It's actually a good edition for them in characterization, even as it shits on other tribes.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Loomer posted:

They're doing the same poo poo as always, only now they act as diplomats between the Garou Nation and the Hengeyokai. Bai Mianxi, the very first Kitsune, is back from Heaven and is yelling at everyone that the Final Age of the world is here (which... doesn't fit Hengeyokai or KOTE cosmology at all. There is no final age per se, as it is part of a great cycle, and even if there was - we are nowhere near it.) Oh, and there are new native populations of vulpine Kitsune anywhere in the world that has foxes, though that isn't true exactly because while the book says that, it also then says they only exist in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Arctic. I guess the imported foxes down here in the land downunder can get hosed, as can the African foxes - which is crazy because fennecs are adorable and unlike those of south America, actually part of the fox species vulpes. If she's right about the Final Age, then this is actually fantastic news because the only 'final' age is the 12th age, the pinnacle of our ascent back to the Age of Heaven, in which all things are set right under the Celestial Bureaucracy and the universe exists in perfect harmony within Gaia, undifferentiated. But hey, why bother getting your terminology right - or maybe I'm wrong here. Hengeyokai stuff was never my strong suit as my eyes tend to glaze over with KoTE and related content as a defence mechanism against terrible font choices and rampant weeaboo orientalism. If anyone really wants to know, I'll dig out my copy of Hengeyokai to confirm.

They do have a new camp, which... Let me post it. "One of the newest camps to appear in the Age of Apocalypse, Rusty’s Rumspringa is a camp populated entirely by young, American foxes who have surrendered themselves to the joy of living and loving life. Led by one of the first American foxes to awaken, they argue this is their time to be young and drat all rules and duties—obligations are for those who have already had centuries of fun. These indulgent foxes reject the Laws of Heaven in theory, concerned only with their own needs. In practice, most rivately hold those mandates close to their hearts. Those outside the camp prefer to think of this group as an exercise in extended adolescence." Or in other words, 'hey guys, Gaia just activated us as her sleeper cell soldiers and final, last ditch effort to unite all the Fera and Garou into one solid force to fight off what is literally The End of the World and the ascent of the Demon Emperor. Let's get drunk and play ping pong instead. Also, we should probably have sex, and and since we aren't that big on the Laws of Heaven, we're also free to massacre humans, lie, and not give a gently caress about our jobs.' Yeah. It's like they took the worst aspect of the Kitsune breed and turned it into its own camp. Why hasn't one of the older Kitsune beat the poo poo out of these kids if this is the 'Final Age', exactly?

Right so basically "The kitsune are awesome when written by a good writer, that isn't what's loving happening here."

Whenever I allowed a Kitsune in my game I put to death their unearned superiority complex and basically said "You're nowhere near as strong or hardy as the other Fera, yet you're still expected to be a frontline soldier. So yes you get all sorts of crazy magical gifts, but that's neither a good or bad thing, it's just a thing."

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Loomer posted:

Bone Gnawers are now a top-tier tribe because, being the hardest survivors the Garou have, they took very light losses in the War and basically single-handedly saved the other tribes refugees. They also got advance warning of the onslaught from the Weaver, and are now in the pro-Weaver camp, but that isn't a big surprise. I don't like it, but it at least makes some sense. They hold one of the surviving 13 original Septs. It's actually a good edition for them in characterization, even as it shits on other tribes.

I suppose the old "yeah there's like one bone gnawer per ten that's actually active with a sept" thing works out in your favor when the other nine will show up armed with shivs and nailbats the moment anyone threatens a caern.

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

citybeatnik posted:

I suppose the old "yeah there's like one bone gnawer per ten that's actually active with a sept" thing works out in your favor when the other nine will show up armed with shivs and nailbats the moment anyone threatens a caern.

It also makes for an extremely easy answer to "where's your character been that you're only now showing up?"

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
Well, this thread over at OPP promises to be interesting. 'Just for fun, what would the black furies think of the ghostbusters 2016 remake?'

quote:

...In the Context of the Old World of Darkness? Paul Feig's (a self admitted Feminist who hates his own gender) slap-in-the-face-remake REEKS of either:

1) Him being a Black Fury Kinfolk trying TOO hard to promote Feminism through man-hating cinema

Or More Likely.

2) Him being an EX-Black Fury, now Black Spiral Dancer turncoat who deliberately made an exaggerated piece of defamation, used to destroy the positive image of Feminism in the popular consciousness in the name of The Wyrm.
...

(Full disclaimer: I haven't seen the remake so for all I know it actually is a horrifying piece of 'feminist' film, but a post this eye-rolly does little to convince me.)

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Loomer posted:

(Full disclaimer: I haven't seen the remake so for all I know it actually is a horrifying piece of 'feminist' film, but a post this eye-rolly does little to convince me.)

SPOILER: it isn't

It's a pretty okay comedy that relies a bit too heavily on improv work by the actors but will keep women dressing up as Holtzmann for Halloween for years to come.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
But rand, I heard it has girls in it who don't perfectly fit gender roles and idolise feminine virtue. That makes it bad and anti feminist, right? Right?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
It's a pretty good comedy that makes some good jokes ("Oh god I'm so sorry this is way grosser than I thought it was going to be") but leans way too heavily on others. Like the fact that their male receptionist is a complete and total moron and only there for eye candy is kind of out of place considering his counterpart in the first movie was surprisingly competent but bored and desperate for work.

Judging it in the light of the first movie is unfair to both of them.


And yes people are going to be dressing like Holtzmann for a good long while and I hope it replaces the lazy Harley Quinn outfits sooner rather than later.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Pope Guilty posted:

It also makes for an extremely easy answer to "where's your character been that you're only now showing up?"

If anyone can get away with claiming that they took down a Nexus Crawler on their own in a desperate fight only to have no one believe them it'll be a Bone Gnawer Ahroun.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I ran out of Criminal to listen to, so I turned to Thinking Sideways, a podcast on unsolved mysteries.

Which includes, I have learned, the McCormick Cipher. A poor black man named Ricky McCormick was murdered in 1999, and three to five days after he disappeared, hsi body was recovered in a cornfield, highly decomposed. No clear cause of death as a result of that heavy decomp, but the FBI, 12 years later, begins to release information on the case. Specifically, the only object that was on his body was a note in his pocket containing 30 lines of ciphered text.

Ciphered text that has not yet been translated, despite the internet's best efforts. The FBI has said that they have no idea how the cipher works. At all.

McCormick himself was a repeat sex offender and not particularly bright - his family does not think he could even write more than his name.

Now, there's an open question about whether the document is in fact a code or just a near-gibberish note by a man who may or may not have had brain damage or something else entirely.

But hey!

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Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Here's another one! There's a place in China called Baigong. It's a rural mountain area that is widely considered completely uninhabitable by humans. In this area, there are a number of cleanly cut iron pipes. These pipes run through the mountain, under the lake there, all over the place. The clean cuts and the chemical makeup of the pipes says that the pipes are entirely manmade. They're iron pipes primarily, but with 30% silicon dioxide - similar to manhole covers, actually.

These pipes have been dated to be roughly as old as, uh, human-made fire.

Of course, China's government claims to have done a number of studies on the pipes, but won't release the information to any outside scientists.

Now, in the US, we've found similar but naturally occurring structures...made of sandstone, not iron. The pipes are heavily embedded in the stone of the mountain, under the lake, etc. They are all connected, and each pipe is about four to sixteen inches in diameter. The mountaintop lacks sufficient oxygen to support constant human habitation, and the top of the mountain is claimed to vaguely resemble a pyramid, but that may or may not have any meaning.

The local government promotes the pipes as a tourist attraction now.

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