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Loomer posted:Welp, I'm now actually working out a methodology for sorting conspiracy theories into categories of 'realness' (as in, is it actually real, is it outright impossible, is it just very implausible, or is it a blurring of real and possibilities), category (UFOs, NWO, Nazis) and meta-characteristics (Millenialist, Eschatological, Anti-Establishmentarianist, KGB-created, etc) so I guess that once the project is done I'm just going to wind up trying to do for conspiracy theories what Frazer did for their ancestor, and which someone else has probably already done infinitely better (like say, Walker) You've got a copy of Everything Is Under Control, right?
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Apr 12, 2017 12:27
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Spector29 posted:I think i figured out how to run Demon based on reading this thread. Pretty much. Do remember that you need to give your players a break from all the tension every now and then. Demon can down right oppressive with it without an outlet.
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Apr 12, 2017 12:33
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Pope Guilty posted:You've got a copy of Everything Is Under Control, right? Of course. RAW is a total boss. Spector29 posted:I think i figured out how to run Demon based on reading this thread. Heat, only with Angels, is pretty much correct yes.
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Apr 12, 2017 13:48
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Should be noted: not all Integrators are your enemy. Some may be your party members! You can probably trust them okay, most of the time. E: after all, 'I want to reprogram God to be actually benevolent' is an Integrator viewpoint.
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Apr 12, 2017 15:51
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Dark Matter, Delta Green, and 90s conspiracy-scifi in general is rad as hell, but definitely of a time that doesn't exist anymore. It's pretty weird to see something you can remember being contemporary evolve into a period piece like all those 1920s Call of Cthulhu games. It's like watching that early X-Files episode with the menacing eco-terrorist. Remember when eco-terrorists were a thing? Just barely!
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Apr 13, 2017 02:44
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Mors Rattus posted:Should be noted: not all Integrators are your enemy. Some may be your party members! You can probably trust them okay, most of the time. Yeah, I had Demon sold to me as 'cosmic Burn Notice' and Michael Westen is a pretty good example of how to do a heroic Integrator.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:46
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Dammit Who? posted:Dark Matter, Delta Green, and 90s conspiracy-scifi in general is rad as hell, but definitely of a time that doesn't exist anymore. It's pretty weird to see something you can remember being contemporary evolve into a period piece like all those 1920s Call of Cthulhu games. It's like watching that early X-Files episode with the menacing eco-terrorist. Remember when eco-terrorists were a thing? Just barely! I always thought it was spelled eso-terrorists. But I guess it's kind of an ecoteric word.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:51
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Dammit Who? posted:Dark Matter, Delta Green, and 90s conspiracy-scifi in general is rad as hell, but definitely of a time that doesn't exist anymore. It's pretty weird to see something you can remember being contemporary evolve into a period piece like all those 1920s Call of Cthulhu games. It's like watching that early X-Files episode with the menacing eco-terrorist. Remember when eco-terrorists were a thing? Just barely! Yeah, pretty much. It's one of those interesting things, the way the conspiracy world has evolved. I actually don't like it myself - these days there's a lot more partisans. There was always a conservative lean, but there used to be a much stronger population of universal cynics who were convinced both Gore and Bush would institute martial law because the UN instructed them to do so. Now, there's a lot more people who put blind or near blind faith in a political party, ideology or system. Not only is that much more dangerous, but it also dulls a lot of the best craziness and leads to things like Pizzagate. The write-up for that one is gonna be weird, since it's a classic case of internet paredolia but the underlying idea - there may be a highly-ranked and secretive pedophile ring - is distressingly possible and real, and until proof comes out, of course accusations look crazy. But when they do (e.g. England's recent scandal, the Tasmania boy's home abuse scandal (my family is friendly with the Children's Commissioner who was actually booted out of office for attempting to expose it at the wrong time, so as you might imagine we're just a little more 'open' to the underlying possibility)) come out, there are other cover-ups involved and the general tone of so much of the lunatic fringe reporting where the conspiracy theories to harvest actually are is so abrasive and off-the-mark that the underlying theory is still often brushed off the next time. Secret illuminati satan cult sacrificing children for John Podesta to feed to Marina Abramovic? Probably not. A child abuse ring in D.C? Quite possible. The best way might be to address it as part of a broader file on the whole 'secret pedophile elite' or 'satanic ritual abuse' subject, as a subtheory addressed point by point.
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Apr 13, 2017 03:00
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Dammit Who? posted:Dark Matter, Delta Green, and 90s conspiracy-scifi in general is rad as hell, but definitely of a time that doesn't exist anymore. It's pretty weird to see something you can remember being contemporary evolve into a period piece like all those 1920s Call of Cthulhu games. It's like watching that early X-Files episode with the menacing eco-terrorist. Remember when eco-terrorists were a thing? Just barely! Ecoterrorists were the FBI's attempt to keep the Cold War harassment of leftists going after the fall of the USSR. They still get bored and stitch up an Earth Firster once in awhile. Speaking of, has anybody read the By Night Studios Werewolf: the Apocalypse? I'm sloooowwwwly working my way through it (It's 762 pages! you can probably kill a person with the POD version!) and it's interesting what they've changed. They've brought the plot forward and instead of Vampire's "The Red Star came and went and now we're all kind of looking at each other like the paying Springfield Power Plant workers in the episode where Homer averts the meltdown", the servants of the Wyrm launched a huge series of attacks and also there's some kind of spiritual plague that killed all the caerns and now a big part of the plot is the creation of "shard caerns" (I'm not far enough in to tell what this actually means) and internal political tension between a Garou faction that wants to make nice with the Weaver and one that doesn't. Also the Fera and the Garou are trying to make nice. So far the big theme I'm seeing is "We're changing [thing we don't like about the setting] and using the ever-more-desperate slide toward the Apocalypse as the reason". Some of it's reasonably minor, like making it explicit that every tribe contains members of every ethnicity or putting the Fera up front and center. Some of it's more extreme, like how since about 2000 (nobody's sure exactly) Kinfolk who are bitten by a werewolf get really, really sick and if they survive come out the other side as a full-fledged, but sterile, Garou.
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Apr 13, 2017 03:40
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ZeroCount posted:Yeah, I had Demon sold to me as 'cosmic Burn Notice' and Michael Westen is a pretty good example of how to do a heroic Integrator. I'd say that Cosmic Person of Interest would do it even more justice.
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Apr 13, 2017 03:58
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Are there any supernatural spy movies or shows? In print I know about the Laundry Files (ugh) and Declare (which is good, but incredibly smug about Catholicism vs. Communism and not from the side that I bat for  ) but it seems like an untapped area on celluloid.I asked CineD and the only replies I got were "are you sure you don't want supernatural crime movies instead?"
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Apr 13, 2017 04:00
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I gave it a read a while back and posted a few rants in here about changes, good and bad. For instance, the combination of things they've changed should actually mean that Earth is hosed, all life will slowly die, and the Garou are rapidly hurtling towards extinction while the Changing Plague and the Bite are the exact opposite of what will preserve them. The actual apocalypse better come real soon for the BNS version or there won't be Garou around long enough to fight it. As a change, I don't know if I actually mind it - but it's a change that isn't actually recognized in the book itself, which suggests it isn't their intended direction of their changes and they maybe forgot a few things about what Caerns are. I dug up the links if you want to read me ranting and rambling. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=257&perpage=40#post466540287 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=258&perpage=40#post466541344 < Here be Apocalypses. TL,DR: We all gon die. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=258&perpage=40#post466543854 < Litany https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=259&perpage=40#post466568215 < Caerns and the death toll https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=259&perpage=40#post466574608 < when in-universe historians go bad https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=260&perpage=40#post466629899 < Tribe stereotypes https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3712435&pagenumber=260&perpage=40#post466634015 < Kitsune: Gaia's Greatest Mistake
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Apr 13, 2017 04:10
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Are there any supernatural spy movies or shows? In print I know about the Laundry Files (ugh) and Declare (which is good, but incredibly smug about Catholicism vs. Communism and not from the side that I bat for It's not supernatural, but Rubix mentioned Person of Interest for a reason. It's pretty much Demon: the Series, especially once you get towards the end of the first season and seemingly random things start coming together.
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Apr 13, 2017 04:28
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Likewise Rubicon. Not supernatural, but it really can't be beat for a spy thriller TV series.
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Apr 13, 2017 04:32
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Was there any change to the setting in the BNS version of Vampire that was as amazingly dumb as... well, pretty much anything of the Werewolf book? I know there's something where the Giovanni and Setites have joined forces but that's about all I know in terms of setting changes.
PantsOptional fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Apr 13, 2017 |
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Apr 13, 2017 04:44
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A lot of minor-to-major annoyances, but nothing as outright apocalyptic. I still need to actually do that book for the project so when I do I'll write up a change list like I did for METW20. A big one is that both the Cam and the Sabbat now have autocratic single rulers. While the Sabbat already did, even the Black Hand and the Inquisition are now outright loyal to the Regent on penalty of death. Oh, and the Camarilla now outright serve the Antediluvians and the Tremere and Gangrel are bestest buds ever. That one is a bad change but I'll be honest, I do want to see a vampire webseries called Wizard Dan and the Coyote Man so it could let that happen and that makes me somewhat okay with it.
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Apr 13, 2017 05:01
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Loomer posted:Likewise Rubicon. Not supernatural, but it really can't be beat for a spy thriller TV series. In terms of spy TV, nothing has surpassed The Americans. Its thriller aspects are slow burn at the best of times but the full weight of the show is in the stress of living undercover in hostile territory, questions of trust, the identity confusion of actually wanting to be who you're pretending to be, and becoming existentially alienated when you come to question the purpose and benevolence of the work you do as it ruins the lives of average people and people you care about both. It's about trying to build real things out of fake things. In that respect the only thing that distinguishes it from a particularly RP-heavy Demon chronicle is its lack of biomechanical horrors
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Apr 13, 2017 05:04
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We need to throw Demon the Descent to Jonathan Nolan or Netflix so we can have our biomechanical spy thriller shenanigans.
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Apr 13, 2017 06:04
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Rubix Squid posted:We need to throw Demon the Descent to Jonathan Nolan or Netflix so we can have our biomechanical spy thriller shenanigans. I've long wished for an American Horror Story anthology series where each season follows a different splat.
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Apr 13, 2017 06:47
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Rubix Squid posted:We need to throw Demon the Descent to Jonathan Nolan or Netflix so we can have our biomechanical spy thriller shenanigans. please Netflix, they don't have the budgets to even get tempted to show a Demon going loud
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Apr 13, 2017 08:32
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Pope Guilty posted:Speaking of, has anybody read the By Night Studios Werewolf: the Apocalypse? I'm sloooowwwwly working my way through it (It's 762 pages! you can probably kill a person with the POD version!) and it's interesting what they've changed. They've brought the plot forward and instead of Vampire's "The Red Star came and went and now we're all kind of looking at each other like the paying Springfield Power Plant workers in the episode where Homer averts the meltdown", the servants of the Wyrm launched a huge series of attacks and also there's some kind of spiritual plague that killed all the caerns and now a big part of the plot is the creation of "shard caerns" (I'm not far enough in to tell what this actually means) and internal political tension between a Garou faction that wants to make nice with the Weaver and one that doesn't. Also the Fera and the Garou are trying to make nice.
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Apr 13, 2017 11:53
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Does anyone have suggestions for paranormal or conspiracy podcasts? I'm looking for something for campaign inspiration.
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Apr 13, 2017 20:39
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Gumball Gumption posted:Does anyone have suggestions for paranormal or conspiracy podcasts? I'm looking for something for campaign inspiration. Last Podcast On the Left has done some paranormal stuff but on the conspiracy side it would be pretty weak unfortunately. Some of the serial killer episodes might give inspiration.
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Apr 13, 2017 21:44
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Kyle Kinane's The Boogie Monster podcast is ostensibly about conspiracies or paranormal things from time to time, but it's also equal parts about foods the hosts have or have not enjoyed eating. Real good Hunter inspiration regardless.
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Apr 13, 2017 22:46
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Kyle Kinane's The Boogie Monster podcast is ostensibly about conspiracies or paranormal things from time to time, but it's also equal parts about foods the hosts have or have not enjoyed eating. Real good Hunter inspiration regardless.
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Apr 13, 2017 23:12
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Yawgmoth posted:Hunter cell made entirely of Denny's cooks. That would be fun, never ever leave the Denny's. You and the other cooks are just constantly trying to figure out if a customer is or is not a monster while they eat their grandslam at 3 AM.
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Apr 13, 2017 23:43
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Gumball Gumption posted:That would be fun, never ever leave the Denny's. You and the other cooks are just constantly trying to figure out if a customer is or is not a monster while they eat their grandslam at 3 AM. Doesn't help that Arby's down the road is run by scelesti.
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Apr 13, 2017 23:47
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Der Waffle Mous posted:Doesn't help that Arby's down the road is run by scelesti.
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Apr 14, 2017 00:19
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I would unironically play in this Hunter game.
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Apr 14, 2017 01:01
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Your Denny's storage cellar sprawls for miles with multiple sublevels and has strange jars of pickled things with dates several decades expired. Sometimes you hear esoteric chanting when you go for more ham steaks, sometimes strange humming that resonates in your brain. At least it smells clean.
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Apr 14, 2017 01:04
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Tasoth posted:At least it smells clean.
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Apr 14, 2017 01:10
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How's the Mind's Eye Society doing? I just got an email looking for right people to try and get the Chicago domain (a local city-level chapter of the org) going again. How bad did we gently caress up that we couldn't keep a domain going in a city of two and a half million people?
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Apr 14, 2017 01:28
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Pope Guilty posted:How's the Mind's Eye Society doing? I just got an email looking for right people to try and get the Chicago domain (a local city-level chapter of the org) going again. How bad did we gently caress up that we couldn't keep a domain going in a city of two and a half million people? A couple problems emerged, one of which was deeply personal to some very involved people, and deeply dramatic and utterly inappropriate to talk about in a public forum. The other was that, for some godforsaken reason, people tried to run the Chicago LARPs at a community college out in the far reaches of the exurbs inaccessible except by car, for a city that prides itself on its exceptional (by American standards) public transit. I don't know anything about the wider operation of the MES, but that's what happened here.
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Apr 14, 2017 02:34
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Mister Olympus posted:A couple problems emerged, one of which was deeply personal to some very involved people, and deeply dramatic and utterly inappropriate to talk about in a public forum. Obviously I'm not gonna ask about the first one, but the latter's a problem elsewhere- there's a college town in my region that has apparently repeatedly got a domain going only to fold months later because they insist on holding the games at somebody's house outside of town. Nobody plays, the domain dissolves, and a few years later the cycle repeats.
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Apr 14, 2017 02:58
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You'd think, with the popularity of Twilight, True Blood, etc over the last decade or so that it'd be easier to find a good venue willing to host Vampire Night in exchange for a modest fee.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:16
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Loomer posted:You'd think, with the popularity of Twilight, True Blood, etc over the last decade or so that it'd be easier to find a good venue willing to host Vampire Night in exchange for a modest fee. You'd also think White Wolf would've been able to capitalize on all of that in some way other than releasing a sourcebook about paranormal romance novels, but then here we are.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:36
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For the record, towns in Denmark at pop<100k can hold regular games, though there's more of a culture of going to different cities to play.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:45
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Mister Olympus posted:A couple problems emerged, one of which was deeply personal to some very involved people, and deeply dramatic and utterly inappropriate to talk about in a public forum. The personal part is unfortunate. But if they're doing in the suburbs without transit, you may as well not even be in Chicago. It took me all of a couple weeks to get a bunch of brand new people together for a Awakening 2e game in the city, so I'd guess it's a combination of it being a vampire LARP and being way to far away for anyone to really want to schlep out there. I could easily talk people into trying a new game where you get to do crazy poo poo with magic. I don't think I could have convinced them to dress up and talk in character for a few hours. Edit: I'm still new to Chicago, but I can think of a handful of places that you could swing that in well populated areas close to transit.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:49
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Are these remote areas somehow full of cool play areas or relative privacy from the mundanes, or is it because transit accessibility is "sketchy" and "feels unsafe" because "there are black people on the train/bus"
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Apr 14, 2017 06:19
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They already made a demon TV show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Booth_at_the_End
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Apr 14, 2017 06:35
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