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xanthan posted:Looked it up and you at exaggerating the hell out of what they do. They mess up the part of someone's brain that let's them do psychic things or magic. Or is giving someone a brain injuy magic now? You are essentially saying there can not be a chunk of brain related to the ability to use magic or if there is normal people can't touch it. Well, that's the thing. Dualism is true in Justin Achilli's Darkplace, so this either represents an inconsistency, or Hunters can do things that are normally impossible (and the description of the Tactic is that you're delivering repeated electrical shocks to the brain, so even when used against Second Sight and Witch Finders-generated magicians and psychics, it's still unbelievable that they can come out of it a functioning human being), and Tactics in general, which are Hunter-only, represent that ability to do things more effectively than a normal human being could, just like Willpower wagers and 1e Profession Merits. Like, when we look at the Domestication tactic in Spirit Slayers, we can either assume brainwashing is impossible for non-Hunters, or that Hunters are capable of doing it much more effectively than a group of ordinary people could. Which is entirely in line with Reverend Harry Powell, who is very heavily implied to be something supernatural but still goes down to a shotgun and is taken away to be executed at the end. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Oracles gummed up the works, human body is remarkably resilient, a program of mass lobotomization of mages would probably ruffle some feathers. I mean, this would be very inconsistent with how Mage presents Awakened magic I Am Just a Box posted:It's in a book about witches where not all of the witches are those Awakened to the Supernal Realms, but mostly, I kind of think the most parsimonious solution to the dilemma posed here is that White Wolf development oversight is not always the most circumspect and occasionally a bad or incoherent idea gets through in what is often otherwise a good book? I mean, were you a fan of multiple action Fighting Styles in 1e? Okay, but if we start saying bad ideas are not part of the text, we are abandoning analysis of the text itself for rewriting it. Which is fine and good but ancillary to discussion of the text itself. I mean, this is simply an extreme, overtly supernatural example of brain surgery allowing you to cut into the soul if a Hunter cell is doing it. Senior Scarybagels posted:Clearly the best group is VASCU. They actively are trying to protect humanity and were trench coats in the rain. It's like the X-Files but better. VASCU are 1) cops and 2) all of their agents are accepted because they've demonstrated they think like supernatural serial/spree killers.
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Feb 19, 2017 16:42
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xanthan posted:Looked it up and you at exaggerating the hell out of what they do. They mess up the part of someone's brain that let's them do psychic things or magic. Or is giving someone a brain injuy magic now? You are essentially saying there can not be a chunk of brain related to the ability to use magic or if there is normal people can't touch it. Reminds me of that Superman story "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?" where he stops Manchester Black from being able to use his powers by giving him brain surgery to remove the blood clot in his brain allowing him to use his powers.
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Feb 19, 2017 16:55
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VASCU is less X-Files and more Law & Order: Supernatural Victims Unit, except every character is Det. Stabler.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:00
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citybeatnik posted:Reminds me of that Superman story "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?" where he stops Manchester Black from being able to use his powers by giving him brain surgery to remove the blood clot in his brain allowing him to use his powers. Now in convenient youtube form
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Feb 19, 2017 17:04
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Brainiac Five posted:VASCU are 1) cops and 2) all of their agents are accepted because they've demonstrated they think like supernatural serial/spree killers. If I remember right they're chosen more because they can be made psychic, not because of any inherent talent at profiling. In fact based on Mor's writeup of slashers people can get into VASCU even if they couldn't get into the FBI proper.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:25
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unzealous posted:If I remember right they're chosen more because they can be made psychic, not because of any inherent talent at profiling. In fact based on Mor's writeup of slashers people can get into VASCU even if they couldn't get into the FBI proper. The Wintergreen Process works on everyone, but Teleinformatics relies on your ability to think like the person you're using it on, so they screen prospective agents for their ability to think like a Slasher, or, in practical terms, their propensity to become a Slasher. Which is why they recruit people who can't possibly pass muster as FBI and transfer agents from within the FBI to leaven things out a bit.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:34
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hangedman1984 posted:Honestly I find Vigil to be much better at humans fighting off monsters, seeing as in Reckoning the Hunters are just as supernatural as the things they fight. I actually liked that was a thing your character had to think about. Especially once you had books like the Wayward creed book. The idea that Hunters could be way worse than the monsters was neat.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:46
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Brainiac Five posted:The Wintergreen Process works on everyone, but Teleinformatics relies on your ability to think like the person you're using it on, so they screen prospective agents for their ability to think like a Slasher, or, in practical terms, their propensity to become a Slasher. Which is why they recruit people who can't possibly pass muster as FBI and transfer agents from within the FBI to leaven things out a bit. The Wintergreen Process doesn't work on anyone, latent psychics and potentially actual psychics. And the reason they are willing to recruit people that don't past muster is because it's fairly irrelevant if someone can traditionally read a crime scene when they can psychically view what happened in the crime scene. The reason they keep actual agents around is because psychic power only goes so far, and it's nice to have someone that can actually make a case and fire a gun straight too. Magic police good, people against the magic police are bad.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:51
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IIRC the Imbued aren't supernaturals, but rather vanilla mortals who have had supernatural power grafted onto them by the Messengers. Their powers are separate from them.
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Feb 19, 2017 18:23
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Tiny Deer posted:Trying to 'prove' Hunters are supernatural is like trying to 'prove' that vampires are technically alive: you can make a case for it, but only if you deliberately ignore why Hunters are framed as normal human beings and vampires, despite moving around, needing to eat, and being able to reproduce, are dead. Well, (and this is less disagreement than elaboration) I think the standard appeal of something like vampires - or many of the other things that have gamelines written about them - is that they're liminal: vampires are both alive and dead. Wolfmans are both wolf and man. Ghosts exist, but not as much as the living do. Prometheans and demons are artifacts that can strive to become people. For Hunters, I think the useful tension of "heroes and/or monsters?" is really orthogonal to their being supernatural, and is best expressed through the extent that diving deep into the Vigil requires cutting ties with normal human society and its rules, doing terrible things (and either becoming your own judge/jury/executioner or consciously choosing to hand over responsibility for that to some creepy organization,) playing up the obvious parallels w/r/t hunting as an activity, &c.
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Feb 19, 2017 18:31
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Pope Guilty posted:IIRC the Imbued aren't supernaturals, but rather vanilla mortals who have had supernatural power grafted onto them by the Messengers. Their powers are separate from them. How does this make them any different from ghouls, apart from who is doing the grafting?
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Feb 19, 2017 18:55
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Mulva posted:The Wintergreen Process doesn't work on anyone, latent psychics and potentially actual psychics. And the reason they are willing to recruit people that don't past muster is because it's fairly irrelevant if someone can traditionally read a crime scene when they can psychically view what happened in the crime scene. The reason they keep actual agents around is because psychic power only goes so far, and it's nice to have someone that can actually make a case and fire a gun straight too. Magic police good, people against the magic police are bad. All cops are bastards, Boogaleeboo.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:08
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Magic police aren't. That's what the magic references, the fact they are cops that aren't bastards.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:15
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"unceasing, hideously disproportionate violence"? Is the argument here that The Punisher is actually a Slasher? Obligatum VII posted:Late to the party, but my favored interpretation of Cheiron is that the board is absolutely a bunch of lovecraftian gribblies, but they're actually well intentioned refugees from some other place where something bad went down. However, their decision to start up a company as a cover, because it seemed like a good idea at the time, has kind of gotten away from them. They actually have very little control over the company due to the bureaucratic mess that the company has become. All the really evil poo poo that Cheiron does in 100% normal humans, who have basically usurped control of the company from the Cthulus that supposedly run it.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:09
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Zereth posted:"unceasing, hideously disproportionate violence"? Have you read the Ennis run?
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Feb 19, 2017 20:21
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Vanpires aren't dead.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:37
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Ennis is, from all I've heard, a good guy IRL but in his work he's the godfather of edgelord pulp and he hangs pretty heavily over oWoD in a lot of respects. His influence comes out quite heavily in what I've seen of the Prelude games. The severed rear end could easily have been a sight gag in Preacher. You could make an argument for Frank Miller being the antecedent to basically all the reactionary elements of modern nerd culture, but Garth Ennis was the one to really marry Miller's aggression to an ironic sensibility. The man has published Bill Hicks fan fiction. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 20:37
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Zereth posted:Is the argument here that The Punisher is actually a Slasher? The interpretation of Punisher as an implacable force of vengeance devoid of human empathy would certainly lead towards that interpretation in the context of Hunter: the Vigil. The Ennis interpretation has him essentially as a serial killer, using the death of his family as an excuse - or even just as a liberation - to get to the part he actually enjoys, killing people. That isn't the only interpretation of the character, of course. Long-term comic characters are flexible and mutable. But it's one take on him.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The interpretation of Punisher as an implacable force of vengeance devoid of human empathy would certainly lead towards that interpretation in the context of Hunter: the Vigil. The Ennis interpretation has him essentially as a serial killer, using the death of his family as an excuse - or even just as a liberation - to get to the part he actually enjoys, killing people. He's literally one of the sample characters for the Avenger template I thought.
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Feb 19, 2017 21:18
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So on the plus side, while Swedish Dracula and nuWW may be totally cool with claiming Zak S. is a great dude, Asmogee Digital is a little more concerned: https://twitter.com/AsmodeeDigital/status/833360637451436032
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Feb 19, 2017 21:57
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Desiden posted:So on the plus side, while Swedish Dracula and nuWW may be totally cool with claiming Zak S. is a great dude, Asmogee Digital is a little more concerned: What do Asmodee have to do with this?
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Feb 19, 2017 22:13
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spectralent posted:What do Asmodee have to do with this? Asmodee digital are the publishers for the phone apps (dunno about steam, but I assume that as well?).
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Feb 19, 2017 22:24
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The Steam versions are published directly by White Wolf Entertainment.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:34
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Plot twist: Asmodee buys out WW like they did with FFG and publishes CofD/nWoD under the FFG banner
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Feb 19, 2017 22:35
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Lord_Hambrose posted:I actually liked that was a thing your character had to think about. Especially once you had books like the Wayward creed book. The idea that Hunters could be way worse than the monsters was neat. But I think it is much more interesting in vigil, where you could still become worse than the monsters you hunt, but you are very much a human monster (assuming you aren't playing as one of the obvious supernatural hunter groups). Pope Guilty posted:IIRC the Imbued aren't supernaturals, but rather vanilla mortals who have had supernatural power grafted onto them by the Messengers. Their powers are separate from them. ZiegeDame posted:How does this make them any different from ghouls, apart from who is doing the grafting?
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Feb 19, 2017 22:52
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Alright, so I got bored, and spent an hour or two smashing together a rough fix for Beast. It jettisons most of the (atrocious) world building and "no, beasts are the good guys! really! really!" in favor of a more "rebellion against genre and destiny" thing. Many sections and much needs expansion. Obviously a rough draft, but what the hell? Might go back to it, might not. Might turn it into something completely different. It's an interesting variation on Beast's theme of tales and such. Fwiw, trying to fix Beast is such a gut job that it's almost like making a new gameline. There's only a few core concepts that can really be salvaged and even then it's little more than scraps of ideas that were largely present from its initial pitch. I've considered my own reimagining myself as "Beast: the Nightmare" except the Beast/Hero duality remains and one of the splats defines their relationship (i.e. Tyrant/Savior, Predator/Prey, Collector/Thief, Destroyer/Guardian, Rival/Rival or Star-crossed). Abilities that Beasts get always have a tradeoff in that either their respective Hero receives their own boon or the Beast acquires some weakness, vulnerability, or exception to that ability that their Hero is destined to learn. Beast being the crossover splat is amended via Beasts being able to follow other Supernaturals as they go about their business as Beasts are largely a reflection of those other monsters albeit simplified to its platonic ideals in a sense. By following or even joining with others, they can learn their methods of monstrousness (albeit inheriting their weaknesses as they begin to embody them). It's also not limited to Vampires and Changelings and so forth, but also with the Strix or the Seers or other antagonist groups. Beasts feed through their existence imprinting itself in those they affect and eventually appearing in Astral Space. The cosmology and connections to Astral Space are retained and the Dark Mother is similarly, explicitly ambiguous except that it has a hand in creating Beasts and exists in a part of the Anima Mundi called the Primordial Dream (my WoD cosmology knowledge is relatively poor but I feel like it'd "sit" somewhere there or at the furthest edge of the Temenos). Beasts are compelled to embody their role though their human portion can at least direct it in a way that can be either benign or malevolent. Similarly Heroes can equally be as malicious or benevolent with their newfound abilities as they please, but they're always drawn to face the Beast and defeat them. Beasts and Heroes are created through an emanation from the Oneiros from a number of individuals all collecting and reaching the Dark Mother who then sends down a Nightmare which takes hold of one of those from which one of the emanations came from. These emanations are usually caused by some sort of significantly traumatic or emotionally affecting event. Just as a Nightmare is sent, another component is sent which also creates a Hero. Because the collective unconsciousness believes in a Just World, Beasts are destined to fall. Once a Beast dies, the Hero loses all that made them a Hero and returns to being a mortal. Both sides know this at least somewhat consciously, but the story must be told whether they want to or not.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:55
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Alright, so I got bored, and spent an hour or two smashing together a rough fix for Beast. It jettisons most of the (atrocious) world building and "no, beasts are the good guys! really! really!" in favor of a more "rebellion against genre and destiny" thing. Many sections and much needs expansion. Obviously a rough draft, but what the hell? Might go back to it, might not. Might turn it into something completely different. In any character-driven story, the fuel that powers drama is a conflict between a character's goals and their motivations - goals being things that the characters must accomplish, and motivations being the desires that drive and fulfill them. In a basic story, these two things must be held in opposition to one another, and one must prevail over the other. You deny yourself the fulfillment of desire to accomplish your goal, or you turn away from your mission to get what you want. The question that propels a reader through the story is which will win out. For example, The Lord of the Rings. Frodo's goal is to destroy the One Ring and save Middle Earth from Sauron. But his motivations are very different: His initial desire is to live a quiet life in the shire, and then later on as the Ring exerts influence on him, he develops a desire to keep the Ring for himself. In the end he accomplishes his goal of destroying the Ring, but the Ring has changed him, and the war has changed the shire. Completing his goal costs him the ability to live as he wanted to, and he leaves his old life behind, forever. Broadly, all of CoD's lines contain the fundamental building blocks for their character stories. For goals and motivations they provide the line's unique facet of (or explanation for) the evils of the world, and the unique existential condition of the player characters. A CoD line's elemental evil ultimately provides a character goal in a straightforward way - it provides the problem of a story, which is to say, an opportunity for the characters to accomplish something. The goal of a character is what they want to make of this opportunity. To help you along, the game gives you broadly archetypal character perspectives to choose from, which generally point to how the character deals with problems. I'll use Demon as an example: As with any CoD line, there is an aspect of character, the "agenda" in Demon's case, which classifies how the character relates to their adversary and what they plan to do about it. Say the goal of a Demon game is dealing with a hotbed of God Machine cult activity that has sprung up in a town, undertaking a project for the GM. The goal of a demon with a Saboteur agenda may be routing the cult and loving up the GM's plan, straight up. The goal of a demon with an Inquisitor agenda may be to observe the cult and uncover the mystery of what the GM is trying to accomplish. The goal of a demon with the Tempter agenda might be turning the cult against the GM and claiming their project for herself. And the goal of a demon with the Integrator agenda might be using the cult's project to make contact with the GM and negotiate a way to get back in Its good graces. Obviously, these goals can and do conflict with one another, which provides one point of drama if they're nominally working together. Beyond that, the characters will have personal, internal motivations that introduce complications. The Saboteur may discover that the cult is actually keeping a natural disaster at bay, and scuttling their project will kill thousands. A human who the Inquisitor values may be ensnared as the cult's blood sacrifice, and she can't learn anything unless that human is killed. The Tempter might learn that in order to claim the cult's project as her own, she'll have to complete it, which requires destruction and cruelty. And the Integrator? He's asked to surrender himself, and as much as he wants to go back to the GM, he wants to be free just as much. So, all of this is to say, if you're going to rebuild Beast, you need a strong antagonistic force that the characters are compelled to fight against, a set of templates for how characters might relate to and oppose that force, and given that this is CoD, a broader sense of how Beasts may find themselves inevitably complicit in evil, powerless against it, or making things worse when they make things better. You'll also want to dangle a carrot of shirking responsibility and succumbing in a literal or metaphorical sense. First ask, who are the Editors? If what they want is a mystery, what do they do and how do they do it? Why does it matter to Beasts? How are they seductive? What about them can cause Beasts to turn against their own ends, or doubt their own righteousness? Then ask, what is the relationship of a Beast to the Editors? What power do Beasts wield, and how can they use it against them? How can they relate to this power? What are different dreamed-of end goals for a Beast? How do those goals conflict? What horror is there in Beasts failing? What horror is there in Beasts succeeding? Once you've answered these questions, you'll be able to construct the most basic story that most Beast games will resemble. You'll have a ready made goal and conflict, and you can go from there. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 00:00
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To put it all succinctly: In your standard Beast game, what action will Beasts be performing? What do they want, how can they get it, and what's stopping them?
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Feb 20, 2017 00:16
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Basic Chunnel posted:To put it all succinctly: In your standard Beast game, what action will Beasts be performing? What do they want, how can they get it, and what's stopping them? Getting killed by Demons (and others), to be complete assholes, by existing, and the aforementioned getting killed by Demons, respectively.
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Feb 20, 2017 01:56
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Roland Jones posted:Getting killed by Demons (and others), to be complete assholes, by existing, and the aforementioned getting killed by Demons, respectively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQIx5jiTsg
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Feb 20, 2017 02:07
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Zereth posted:"unceasing, hideously disproportionate violence"? Oh, definitely, their difficulty in understanding humans is why the whole company basically slid out from under them in the first place. Pretty much all the foundation for the grafting techniques that Cheiron uses came from them, and a lot of it is questionably ethical from the get-go.
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Feb 20, 2017 02:20
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Roland Jones posted:Getting killed by Demons (and others), to be complete assholes, by existing, and the aforementioned getting killed by Demons, respectively. One of the best games I played in had an ex-hunter demon who hunted beasts for sport, she was a fun NPC.
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Feb 20, 2017 02:25
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Xelkelvos posted:It's an interesting variation on Beast's theme of tales and such. Fwiw, trying to fix Beast is such a gut job that it's almost like making a new gameline. There's only a few core concepts that can really be salvaged and even then it's little more than scraps of ideas that were largely present from its initial pitch. Yeah, basically. All the fluff and some of the crunch is gone, and then refilling all the conceptual space is more than a slightly large task. Basic Chunnel posted:It's a solid starting point in terms of divorcing Beast from its odious foundations, but that in itself is just a starting point of the larger work. A CoD line is going to be differentiated by distinct premises and themes, and at present you've got nothing distinct (as you yourself have noted). Thanks very much for the long write up! Now I feel obligated to turn this from a "I was bored and felt like working on something until I was tired enough to sleep" into something at slightly more functional. I'll work up some antagonists and motivations for y'all's consideration.
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Feb 20, 2017 02:46
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Yeah, what you've started sounds like a game I'd want to play!
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Feb 20, 2017 04:13
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Brainiac Five posted:All cops are bastards, Boogaleeboo. All I am hearing is "Blah Blah Blah X-Files in WoD Doesn't sound fun".
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Feb 20, 2017 04:13
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So speaking of all the different Onyx Path products are there any release dates for the various projects that are coming down the pike? Cavaliers of Mars, Trinity Continuum, Deviant, and even new Scion all look good but I feel like it's been quite a while since we've heard anything about any of them. Is there any news that I've missed?
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Feb 20, 2017 06:33
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I have never been really big into playing fantastical, magical games where you are simply Human+ (odd as I used to love Exalted) but can someone explain to me the appeal of Mage, in either WoD, over the other gamelines when there are lots of choices that aren't human at all to explore playing? Or humans at their most basic, desperate and cunning level (Hunter)?
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Feb 20, 2017 06:57
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Strength of Many posted:I have never been really big into playing fantastical, magical games where you are simply Human+ (odd as I used to love Exalted) but can someone explain to me the appeal of Mage, in either WoD, over the other gamelines when there are lots of choices that aren't human at all to explore playing? Or humans at their most basic, desperate and cunning level (Hunter)? What if God was real and he hated you and you couldn't tell anybody but other deranged obsessives?
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Feb 20, 2017 06:59
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Strength of Many posted:I have never been really big into playing fantastical, magical games where you are simply Human+ (odd as I used to love Exalted) but can someone explain to me the appeal of Mage, in either WoD, over the other gamelines when there are lots of choices that aren't human at all to explore playing? Or humans at their most basic, desperate and cunning level (Hunter)? What if you were able to literally change the world with nothing more than the raw force of your own willpower? What if you were a god?
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Feb 20, 2017 07:19
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Strength of Many posted:can someone explain to me the appeal of Mage, in either WoD, over the other gamelines when there are lots of choices that aren't human at all to explore playing? Or humans at their most basic, desperate and cunning level (Hunter)? Hunter (the Vigil)'s appeal is "sure they are faster and stronger and have fancier tricks, but like hell we're going down without a fight (oh, and sometimes we got our own tricks)." (Any) Mage's is "go watch/read Doctor Strange and imagine all power levels raised up to eleven."
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Feb 20, 2017 07:29
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