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Ouch, also seems weird that it costs humanity unless the idea is that on a metaphysical level you're giving them some of yours.
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May 3, 2017 21:44
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Terrorforge posted:Often, the loss of Vitae takes the form of sweating out their stolen blood as they sleep.
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May 3, 2017 21:55
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Kurieg posted:Ouch, also seems weird that it costs humanity unless the idea is that on a metaphysical level you're giving them some of yours. Embracing costs Humanity, but creating a revenant is merely a breaking point. Presumably the Humanity cost to "uplifting" a revenant is there to prevent people from deliberately creating revenants and then uplifting them instead of Embracing childer to get around the Humanity cost.
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May 3, 2017 22:16
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Kurieg posted:Ouch, also seems weird that it costs humanity unless the idea is that on a metaphysical level you're giving them some of yours. Creating another thing that's Cursed with a capital C like you is so fundamentally wrong, that the very act of doing so is a choice against Humanity on the deepest level. When you Embrace, you turn away from that which makes you human.
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May 3, 2017 23:15
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MC Smoke Sensei posted:Creating another thing that's Cursed with a capital C like you is so fundamentally wrong, that the very act of doing so is a choice against Humanity on the deepest level. When you Embrace, you turn away from that which makes you human. But you're taking a thing that's already cursed and making it slightly less of a blight on mankind?
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May 3, 2017 23:26
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On the note of Vampire, I just got done adding a Vampire character sheet to Dicecord. After playing some Mage I've decided that the next thing I'm gonna add is a spell helper. The general idea is you'll set rating, reaches, factors, etc of the spell and it'll calculate the dicepools for the paradox and cast rolls.
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May 4, 2017 00:10
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Kurieg posted:But you're taking a thing that's already cursed and making it slightly less of a blight on mankind? as opposed to just putting it to rest
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May 4, 2017 00:48
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Cease to Hope posted:as opposed to just putting it to rest Which is also a breaking point for humanity if you're not getting low on the scale. The embracing rule for revenants and larvae could probably be loosened up a bit assuming that embracing doesn't somehow deplete your soul or whatever. Barring some occult knowledge they're typically not a deliberate choice to make and in 2E I believe it's pretty heavily implied that just biting someone too many times might put enough vitae in their systems for them to come back from the dead as a revenant. So if someone else is poaching on you and that person dies for whatever reason that could very easily cause them to come back in one of the more hosed up undead states the setting offers. Embracing them is also an inarguable step up in the quality of their existence. They're both basically vampire_tragedy.txt on a scale that makes even other vampires quail when they think about what might have happened to them if they weren't so lucky. Larvae are literally mindless monsters with just enough humanity trapped in them that they can only manage a few words (Like the last words they said before they died. Incidentally "Please, no!" and "Where's mom...?" are mentioned as being example lines they might say.) before slipping back into mindless animal-like behavior. The one upside is that they won't remember all the horrible poo poo they did if they get advanced into a proper vampire. Revenants are just so utterly screwed that it's not even funny. They sweat out their blood every night which means they're always on the verge of a hunger frenzy. Also, unlike larvae they don't even have the ability to be unaware of the things that they're going to end up doing in this entirely hosed up state that will quickly drive them to periodic hunger induced madness. They're fully sentient and that means that they don't get the easy amnesia that larvae do when they're made into vampires of a clan. It kind of says something when the books mention that sometimes even vampires freak out and try to make the vampire take responsibility whenever one of them shows up. Archonex fucked around with this message at 01:17 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 01:00
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Are there any previews for Deviant stuff yet? I was trying to find all the information on it.
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May 4, 2017 02:19
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Part of me wants to get C20 when it hits that first sale. It was always the game line I wanted to know more about, but everything I did learn seemed off putting even as a teenager. I remember looking through the autumn people book in the game store and thinking it pretty crazy that being adult was this insane Soul Crushing Inevitability, unless you were actively mentally ill. But somehow some Changelings could lives for decades?
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May 4, 2017 03:45
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Part of me wants to get C20 when it hits that first sale. It was always the game line I wanted to know more about, but everything I did learn seemed off putting even as a teenager. I'm reading through its massiveness slowly, but so far my general impression is that C20 is Good. (It seems to have mostly dropped all of the elements about growing up in favor of a combination of "Life is Rough" and a re-enactment of the past ten years of politics starring the sidhe as the 1%.)
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May 4, 2017 04:01
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Kurieg posted:But you're taking a thing that's already cursed and making it slightly less of a blight on mankind? On a long-term scale, they're actually way more damaging than a revenant, who is much more likely to be destroyed in short order, given the precarious position in which their feeding requirements place them. That's my bullshit answer and I'm sticking to it, lol.
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May 4, 2017 04:36
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Archonex posted:Which is also a breaking point for humanity if you're not getting low on the scale. That's what makes Coil of the Voivode 5 such a big deal. It makes it a breaking point at 3, murder, instead of auto-loss. What that says about the loss of Humanity via Embrace is interesting to think about. Besides that, though, the Blood wants to spread. Indulging the Blood denies the Human, as it usually does. If nothing else, you're giving the Blood something in the way of your Humanity, which it kind of wanted in the first place. Spreading the Blood to another contamination vector is a perfect way to serve its will.
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May 4, 2017 04:40
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm reading through its massiveness slowly, but so far my general impression is that C20 is Good. Well, that last bit earns nothing but an eyeroll from me, anyway. What a disappointment to hear, bleh.
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May 4, 2017 04:56
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Dreams change. Noble lords and dukes aren't really a thing anymore. Trying to fulfill that role in the real world makes you look like an idiot, so you either hide in your little fairy enclaves.....or you adapt. It's the best place for them.
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May 4, 2017 05:12
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Weirdly enough, I think that the best placed Sidhe to adapt should actually be the Aesin. They're the ones coming from a historical background (or would be if Sidhe weren't near universally 'lol generic fantasy kingdom feudalism yay') where nobility was tenuous and not so much some inherent right of birth as something you won through skill, luck, craftiness, or sheer force of violence. Even if you got a title from your pappy, you had to be able to keep it, and this wasn't a society where 'Yeah no you suck, I'm taking over, try and stop me' was unheard of. So in a new world where this whole 'nobles are inherently pure and wonderful how dare you speak against them' schtick doesn't fly, the Sidhe whose mortal counterparts kept it a bit looser should really be the best to adapt. But nope, they spend all day in the woods hating their mortal flesh. Squandered potential. I'm still snatching bits and bobs on the toilet but I do mostly agree. It's a solid reworking of Changeling in the first 56 pages, even if I disagree with some of the choices, but it's sticking to themes it sort of has to that I'd totally cut out or rebuild from scratch. If you're a changeling guy it's probably like a 10/10, if you're not it's probably a 7.
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May 4, 2017 05:27
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I really feel that Requiem is kind of impaired by the (apparent?) regular series of implications that the best thing your character can do for the world is self-terminate. Masquerade had plenty of angst but that seemed pretty absent for the most part. God drat though am I hype for Wraith.
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May 4, 2017 06:42
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Nessus posted:I really feel that Requiem is kind of impaired by the (apparent?) regular series of implications that the best thing your character can do for the world is self-terminate. I mean it's true though. Better to wear it openly then just sort of conveniently ignore the fact that you're playing something that has to prey on humans just to survive and doesn't really enrich any part of existence in a meaningful sense. There's nothing wrong with establishing from the outset that this is a game about people who've had a terrible curse laid upon them but are, for whatever reason, unwilling to end it all. Are they too scared to? Are they holding out hope they can be cured? Are they enjoying what's happened, feeling empowered by it? That sounds like a pretty solid foundation for a game to me. The opposite end of this is Beast which says yeah, you're a horrible monster that lives to prey on people and isn't is so fuckin awesome?
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May 4, 2017 07:33
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Nessus posted:I really feel that Requiem is kind of impaired by the (apparent?) regular series of implications that the best thing your character can do for the world is self-terminate. Masquerade had plenty of angst but that seemed pretty absent for the most part. Nah, Masquerade was just less in your face about it. If you believed every fiction blurb about elders then vampires pretty much ruined the world across the span of history and couldn't stop loving things up. And never mind the whole "Gehenna" thing where that line originally ended at. Getting turned into a Tzimisce flesh monster for a godlike nightmarish hive mind is probably worse on the scale of grim dark than anything Requiem can offer. Requiem at least loosens things up so that you could theoretically live your life decently. Aside from the Beast and your hunger there's no real rule that says you have to be a murderous jackass. It's just that vampiric society is so utterly corrupt and geared towards creating nothing but sociopaths (before eventually getting them killed) that most people higher up on the humanity scale don't associate with it unless they're forced too. Of course that's boring as hell for most games, so that never really gets explored. Another part of it is that Requiem spent a lot of time explaining just why it is being a vampire sucks. The extra fluff content means that it's a lot harder to blunder into "superheroes with fangs" territory since there are so many books pointing out just how hosed up everything is once a person gets dragged back from the grave. Frances Black from the Mekhet book is pretty much a great example of what I mean. She's a perfectly decent person that ends up incredibly hosed in the head by the end of that part of her story arc due to every other vampire she meets trying to mess with her head or just trick her into being a monster. Archonex fucked around with this message at 08:57 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 08:46
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To be fair being haunted by yourself is probably going to eventually loving destroy anyone, so that's quite a hole to have to climb out of to try and be vaguely normal. It's just that all the other vampires didn't make it any easier too.
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May 4, 2017 09:36
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Barbed Tongues posted:Terrorforge is correct about the fear Revenants should put on anyone with a Hunting Ground. They need a lot of blood every day. Most neonates need a lot of blood whenever they go adventure, but revenants are a constant drain and a constant risk. I also love the adoption vs. natural child themes that creep in. It takes a humanity to uplift a revenant into a full Clan. It also takes a humanity to embrace. Why would a Sire pay that cost for a random reject/accident when they could hand-pick a childe? There's also the fact that they have a huge incentive to diablerize true vampires. They usually don't, because they don't know it's possible - but it's only a matter of time before your enemy gives them a few helpful hints through a proxy.
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May 4, 2017 09:39
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Archonex posted:Requiem at least loosens things up so that you could theoretically live your life decently. Aside from the Beast and your hunger there's no real rule that says you have to be a murderous jackass. 
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May 4, 2017 09:50
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I dunno, I've met Masquerade larpers.
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May 4, 2017 11:02
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Nessus posted:This seems equally true about Masquerade though. I guess there is the nebulous question of animal blood (and eventually, human blood) not "doin it for you" any more but that seemed to involve truly heroic periods of time. In Masquerade you also aren't a barren emotional wasteland! I thought the whole barren emotional wasteland thing was only a 1e thing though? And they veer back and forth on it in the books. The core book went on about it as a callback to Masquerade (See, the unable to make art thing as another thing that more or less got dropped in 2e.) but then later books went on about how a vampire perceives themselves. Which made it seem like the emotional deadness tends to come from having to eat your fellow human beings to survive from night to night. That'd make most people shut down and get a bit sociopathic in short order. Frances is a good example of that. Both she and the character from the Gangrel book are newbie vamps and get into what they mean by "vampires are emotionally dead inside". At certain points it comes off more as them trying to force themselves not to care about preying on people than anything else. In fact the Mekhet book literally states this as the reason why Frances won't relate to people any more. She has to feed on people, and she considered herself a compassionate and decent person in life. Thus, because she has to prey on people to survive she tells herself she can't relate to them to avoid the issue of dealing with the horror of what it is she's doing... until it eventually ends up being true. Between those two points are a number of private freak outs as she realizes that she's going to spend the rest of her life as a monster quarantined at the edge of society. Said freak outs infer a lot of emotion in the text too. TL;DR: They veer back and forth on it according to what fits the narrative best. Edit: There's also the fact that one of the ways you can end up with a dhampir in 1e (And it's implied in a 2e book.) was true love, which implies the ability to have emotions. Also, there was an entire book about running romance stories with Vampire as a setting. But i'd have to track that down to comment on it. Mulva posted:To be fair being haunted by yourself is probably going to eventually loving destroy anyone, so that's quite a hole to have to climb out of to try and be vaguely normal. It's just that all the other vampires didn't make it any easier too. Yeah, and they're not just haunted by themselves. They're haunted by a vengeful version of themselves that wants them to suffer forever for having the better deal. It's no wonder Hollow Mekhet are pretty much extinct by the time the modern setting rolls around. It's a sucky existence all the way around. Pretty much all of the clans have some mental issue that can potentially them into sociopathic assholes though. Hollow vampires just add a whole extra layer of crap on top of the mix. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:00 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 12:27
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The deadened emotion thing never really gets much play, and I've never actually seen a game roll with it except in the sense of 'often, vampires are real good at intellectualizing murder so they can stop caring about it.'
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May 4, 2017 12:54
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Mors Rattus posted:The deadened emotion thing never really gets much play, and I've never actually seen a game roll with it except in the sense of 'often, vampires are real good at intellectualizing murder so they can stop caring about it.' It sort of makes sense that a vampire would completely lose the normal, healthy human reaction to blood and violence, though. They wouldn't find it disgusting at all, on the visceral and physical level. Losing that visceral antipathy for the shedding of blood could have really nasty knock-on effects for someone's psychology.
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May 4, 2017 14:02
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deadened emotion doesn't have to mean NO emotion. It's just that it mostly feels like lovely imitation emotion that you're crudely aping from what you remember, it might be real, but it probably doesn't feel that way.
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May 4, 2017 14:11
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Obligatum VII posted:deadened emotion doesn't have to mean NO emotion. It's just that it mostly feels like lovely imitation emotion that you're crudely aping from what you remember, it might be real, but it probably doesn't feel that way. That's basically just depression anyways
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May 4, 2017 14:28
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See, this may just come from me watching the Spike episodes of Buffy and letting the mind wander but I always saw the whole "Deadened Emotion" thing as less something that was true, and more something that they wanted to be true so they could justify their own justifications vis-a-vis not walking into sunlight immediately and being a parasite. Then again I also like to sum up Vampire society as Petty Dicks doing Petty Dick Things for Petty Dick Reasons so that probably influences my outlook on the whole thing.
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May 4, 2017 15:45
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One of the things that always bothered me with Changeling was that they had this super cool and evocative map of the Changeling world and then never done anything with it.
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May 4, 2017 15:53
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Neopie posted:That's basically just depression anyways For real. Apparently depressed people are kin to soulless monsters in the world of darkness. Clearly they all need to be feeding on people doped up on prozac. quote:Then again I also like to sum up Vampire society as Petty Dicks doing Petty Dick Things for Petty Dick Reasons so that probably influences my outlook on the whole thing. This is pretty much what vampire society is. Have you read the Stolze novels about Chicago? It's pretty much just petty assholes scheming with each other either to ignore what they've become, because they need more power to survive in the hosed up little communities they build, or because they've spent so much time in the political system that they've convinced themselves that what they're doing to other people actually matters. There's characters that stay out of that and just get on with their lives. But they don't make for interesting reading so they get near zero screen time. Since who wants to read about the guy who gets up at sundown and spends his eternity partying and trying to avoid killing anyone or causing any trouble? Also we need more novels about the Chicago setting. And more Frances Black. And more rousing adventures of Count Motherfucking Dracula and his probably two-faced friend Felix. VtR easily has some of the most entertaining fiction and characters of the NWoD/CofD. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:48 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 17:45
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Kurieg posted:Ouch, also seems weird that it costs humanity unless the idea is that on a metaphysical level you're giving them some of yours. Or, since vampirism is an inherent byproduct of humanity's degradation, you need to wound your own humanity to pour the resultant vampirism into the revenant.
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May 4, 2017 20:17
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The new Bundle of Holding is V20. $15 for V20, Dust to Dust, V20 Companion, and V20 Ready Made Characters, $26.57 to add Anarchs Unbound, Hunters Hunted 2, Dread Names: Red List, and Children of the Revolution. The blog post mentions more titles to be added later.
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May 5, 2017 02:58
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So, they changed the Shadow Court up a little in C20. Now it holds mass protests against prominent nobles, in protest of the mass glamour starvation the commoners are enduring. Sounds good, right? Well... "Their only goal is to force a response from those capable of alleviating some of the suffering. They take inspiration for their tactics from, and inspire in turn, the protests of similar groups in human society — the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter to name a few." Still not bad, maybe a little on the nose, and you could read it to suggest that they're inspiring BLM which is a bit 'ehhhhh'. Buuut they're secretly controlled by the Thallain now, with the explicit goal of shattering Kithain society to permit a takeover. So the Occupy and BLM analogue is now more-or-less a smokescreen for violent extremism, utilizing an engineered social conflict to destabilize the regime and bring it down. On its own, it's not so bad, but in combination with those express parallels and links there's a bit of a subtext there that echoes some right-wing conspiracy theories pretty nicely. And then there's this. "In the United States alone, wages haven’t mean-ingfully increased in decades. Some fae scholars trace this trend of the ultra-wealthy consolidating their fortunes to the influence of the returned sidhe. They claim that the dreams of the nation were slowly moving towards true equality when the “nobles” returned, but with that extra burst of noblesse oblige that the Shining Host bestowed, the nation is seeing a new feudalism emerge, in which the masses are bound in servitude not by martial force, but by debt, lack of employment options, and cultural norms..." The comparison to the whole 99% v 1% thing wasn't far off. This is about as blatant as it comes, and I really dislike it. The consolidation of wealth is nothing new to human society and it's happened repeatedly over the last three centuries without the Sidhe. It's a corruptive and bloated process that undermines the entire point of capitalism as an economic system, and it is a human evil that doesn't need magical elves to kick it into gear. Now that statement isn't an authoritative 'also this happened 100%', but it's enough (especially with the whole 'thallain secretly control fairy-BLM to break down society for their Sinister Masters') to make an eye twitch.
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May 5, 2017 09:26
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you always have to be careful about trying to use real-world conspiracy theories for your urban fantasy game because a significant number of people legitimately believe those theories and the reason is almost always because they're huge bigoted assholes
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May 5, 2017 09:31
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Can't wait to hear about the faerie world reflection of Pizzagate.
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May 5, 2017 09:44
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Well to be fair it's not so much that the Shadow Court runs things like BLM, it's that they are taking advantage of the zeitgeist to perform acts similar to them in public. Which in turn gets noticed as part of the general "gently caress the authority" thing going on, and people take notes on each other. The irony is that it's not Occupy and such that are being controlled by secret masters, it's the Shadow Court. I find the Thallain connection amusing because the Shadow Court fell to outsiders, basically instantly, because they were too stupid to realize recruiting the even more evil version of you to your evil cult is not going to end well. Like these are the people that existed before your kind, and require nothing you do to survive, and were by definition sworn to your utter destruction. Why the poo poo would you think they would ever work for you? It's one of the stark endings to long running plot points in Changeling that just happens. Like David is gone, what will we do! Oh, wait, he's back and still not that useful a ruler. Well drat, guess it's time for Plan B. Really the book is about a million times better than I'd thought it be, keeping M20 at the bottom of the 20 heap. e: vvvvv That's literally all it is though, the book doesn't actually pretend the sidhe had anything to do with it. It's just some bullshit some commoners think to give them another excuse to hate the sidhe. Mulva fucked around with this message at 10:18 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 10:04
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an alternate version of that take that saves most of the source material: the sidhe didn't do it, they just delight in it. all that nonsense about personal freedom and a social contract, and respecting and supporting others... ugh! it seemed like people were actually starting to believe that! but luckily money serves money, power serves power, and lately things are returning to the way they should be. and the extra layer of hypocrisy? that's just marvelous that way you still have sidhe rubbing elbows with corporate sharks and sniffing around anyone who might not be missed after getting arrested at a protest, but you don't have the insulting and frankly boring OWOD idea that everyone who does anything important throughout history did it because they're a literal supernatural monster.
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May 5, 2017 10:07
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Loomer posted:So, they changed the Shadow Court up a little in C20. Now it holds mass protests against prominent nobles, in protest of the mass glamour starvation the commoners are enduring. Sounds good, right? Well... "Their only goal is to force a response from those capable of alleviating some of the suffering. They take inspiration for their tactics from, and inspire in turn, the protests of similar groups in human society — the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter to name a few." Still not bad, maybe a little on the nose, and you could read it to suggest that they're inspiring BLM which is a bit 'ehhhhh'. It's amazing to me that the tabletop series of games that pretty much defined attracting nerdy outsiders has become a hub for the worst sort of people in gaming. If this poo poo showed up back then it'd be wholly a negative in how it was represented and not the wink wink nudge nudge crap that keeps popping up in the various redone games. I mean, the OWoD had Pentex for fucks sakes. Who were just comically evil and were basically a parody of every greedy corporate structure out there. It's kind of like how Warhammer 40K started off as a parody only to get deadly serious about the fascism once the lunatics took over the asylum. Granted, I guess if you're secretly a right wing crypto-fascist you're pretty far in the outsider category nowadays. But drat. That's just depressing. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:50 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 11:41
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Archonex posted:It's amazing to me that the tabletop series of games that pretty much defined attracting nerdy outsiders has become a hub for the worst sort of people in gaming. If this poo poo showed up back then it'd be wholly a negative in how it was represented and not the wink wink nudge nudge crap that keeps popping up in the various redone games. I mean, the OWoD had Pentex for fucks sakes. Who were just comically evil and were basically a parody of every greedy corporate structure out there. That's the thing. Pentex were written as a parody, then corporations went on to demonstrate that the writers hadn't gone far enough.
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May 5, 2017 11:53
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