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Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Xinder posted:

Had a good start to my Hunter game today. I overestimated the danger a lone werewolf poses to a pair of gun-toting ladies. I should have maybe gone with my original idea and had them fight two werewolves but I was afraid of killing a player in the first combat encounter of the game. Three bullets before it even gets to move. Dead.

Things will get harder on them from here on out.

I had a similar experience in my Demon game a while back. I used the stats of a Rank 3 hunter angel from the book (The Brilliant, for anyone who's curious) for the guardian of a Deva-controlled hospital, and just looking at the stats I thought I was gonna have to pull my punches to avoid just brutally slaughtering all of them.

Only it turns out that 4 PC demons have a lot more combined stats than a Rank 3 angel plus a massive action economy advantage, so they ended up stunlocking it and pounding it into the dirt.

Three shots, though? Were they using silver bullets?

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cptn_dr
Sep 7, 2011

Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies


Yeah, I had something similar happen with a bunch of gnosis 1 Mages fighting a rank 3 spirit. I wasn't super surprised, since they'd worked out it's ban, but it was still a lot faster than I expected.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Terrorforge posted:

I had a similar experience in my Demon game a while back. I used the stats of a Rank 3 hunter angel from the book (The Brilliant, for anyone who's curious) for the guardian of a Deva-controlled hospital, and just looking at the stats I thought I was gonna have to pull my punches to avoid just brutally slaughtering all of them.

Only it turns out that 4 PC demons have a lot more combined stats than a Rank 3 angel plus a massive action economy advantage, so they ended up stunlocking it and pounding it into the dirt.

Three shots, though? Were they using silver bullets?

No, actually. One of them was an experienced player who wasn't feeling very creative so she min/maxed a combat character (5 dots of combat marksmanship + quick draw for starters), the other just got bullshit lucky with rolls. Plus I let her get her first shot in before people even rolled initiative because she rolled an exceptional success to resist lunacy so i described that as her being so blase about it that she whipped out her gun and shot it mid-transformation. This was before I realized how easy it was actually going to be. I'm going to be less generous with those handouts in the future.

Two of them then fell through a verge and interacted with a rank 4 spirit (who will be their final boss of this game) who was staring at them curiously as they tried to interact with it. Then it got bored, used howl to make them run away and gave chase ready to murder.

At which point I revealed that the fourth person there wasn't just a bystander and he whipped out his mage character sheet and ripped open another verge to rescue them from the Shadow. (a few liberties were taken with the timing of the spell to make the dramatic reveal work better) He's going to be a sort of "guest" character for this because I figured they might need a bit of a nudge every once in a while dealing with spirits.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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One of the secrets to allowing a single enemy to be a credible threat is that they need to have either extremely good defenses or - more ideally - good regeneration. That lets the PCs land hits that feel powerful, but keeps the thing standing. It should also have some resistance or immunity to stunning.

Multiple actions are very dangerous for PCs but in the hands of a giant monster they're also probably okay.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Rand Brittain posted:

There's also probably a lot of people asking themselves "what stops nuWW from expanding these decisions I hate to Onyx Path licensed products" and correctly concluding that the answer is "absolutely nothing, if they feel like it."

At least they'll have Scion et. al. to fall back on.

Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Xinder posted:

No, actually. One of them was an experienced player who wasn't feeling very creative so she min/maxed a combat character (5 dots of combat marksmanship + quick draw for starters), the other just got bullshit lucky with rolls. Plus I let her get her first shot in before people even rolled initiative because she rolled an exceptional success to resist lunacy so i described that as her being so blase about it that she whipped out her gun and shot it mid-transformation. This was before I realized how easy it was actually going to be. I'm going to be less generous with those handouts in the future.

Two of them then fell through a verge and interacted with a rank 4 spirit (who will be their final boss of this game) who was staring at them curiously as they tried to interact with it. Then it got bored, used howl to make them run away and gave chase ready to murder.

At which point I revealed that the fourth person there wasn't just a bystander and he whipped out his mage character sheet and ripped open another verge to rescue them from the Shadow. (a few liberties were taken with the timing of the spell to make the dramatic reveal work better) He's going to be a sort of "guest" character for this because I figured they might need a bit of a nudge every once in a while dealing with spirits.

It takes, what, 22 damage to kill the average werewolf? Jesus. Min/max or no that's some serious rolling.

Then again, that Demon game also had a moment where the players somehow managed to not roll a single success on 22 dice worth of consecutive Compromise rolls, so I've seen some poo poo.

Mors Rattus posted:

One of the secrets to allowing a single enemy to be a credible threat is that they need to have either extremely good defenses or - more ideally - good regeneration. That lets the PCs land hits that feel powerful, but keeps the thing standing. It should also have some resistance or immunity to stunning.

Multiple actions are very dangerous for PCs but in the hands of a giant monster they're also probably okay.

Yeah, I discovered that a Defense score I thought would make the enemy borderline invincible wasn't that big of a deal between penalties for multiple attackers, situational penalties for being slammed to the ground and Willpower expenditure on the part of the players.

Also worth noting especially in the case of ephemeral entities is that massive combat pools aren't all that threatening without the weapon modifiers to back them up. This critter was rolling ~15 dice to hit but got consistently outdamaged by demons with half as many dice because they used weapons. It hardly did anything to them until I whipped out Blast.

nofather
Aug 15, 2014

Rand Brittain posted:

There's also probably a lot of people asking themselves "what stops nuWW from expanding these decisions I hate to Onyx Path licensed products" and correctly concluding that the answer is "absolutely nothing, if they feel like it."

At that point they wouldn't bother licensing. Because it would require hiring specific writers to write specific stuff, in which case they might as well not license it out to Onyx Path in the first place. But White Wolf Entertainment is clearly trying to focus on White Wolf stuff, the old World of Darkness. Making Chronicles stuff more like it would be detrimental to their overall goal, getting the World of Darkness as popular as it was in the 90s, except take advantage of the opportunities no one was sure would pan out or would be available in the 90s.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Terrorforge posted:

It takes, what, 22 damage to kill the average werewolf? Jesus. Min/max or no that's some serious rolling.

Then again, that Demon game also had a moment where the players somehow managed to not roll a single success on 22 dice worth of consecutive Compromise rolls, so I've seen some poo poo.

Oh, yeah. This werewolf only had 14 health. I've never run or played werewolf so I went into our shared dropbox and picked a werewolf at random to use the stats of. I guess maybe I picked a weak one :v:

Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Xinder posted:

Oh, yeah. This werewolf only had 14 health. I've never run or played werewolf so I went into our shared dropbox and picked a werewolf at random to use the stats of. I guess maybe I picked a weak one :v:

Oh no, the average woof only has 11 health in war form. It's just you gotta do 22 points of lethal damage before it wraps to aggravated and kills it.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Terrorforge posted:

Oh no, the average woof only has 11 health in war form. It's just you gotta do 22 points of lethal damage before it wraps to aggravated and kills it.

oh gently caress

you just reminded me of that fact. i completely just filled out its health and was like "yeah sure, dead." whooooooops. that's on me then.


e: on the bright side, i can get away with it because i was playing the woof as really pathetic and transformed because it was being stressed by an old man's interrogation.

Xinder fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jul 16, 2017

Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Xinder posted:

oh gently caress

you just reminded me of that fact. i completely just filled out its health and was like "yeah sure, dead." whooooooops. that's on me then.

Hahah. It's a pretty easy mistake to make, given that most creatures are put out of commission by a health track full of lethal, but werewolves are absolute combat monsters and dealing that much damage will mostly just make them angry. I mean, not only would that not kill it, it would heal every point of damage that didn't wrap around to Aggravated when its turn rolled around.

It's fine, though. Just spin it as your hunters getting lucky and blowing its brains out before it had a chance to fully transform, then give them a taste of what Rage really looks like when its packmates come knocking.

e: bonus points if you give them plenty of hints that they're being hunted by werewolves that they fail to take seriously because hey, we killed that last one pretty easy, right?

Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 16, 2017

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Terrorforge posted:

Hahah. It's a pretty easy mistake to make, given that most creatures are put out of commission by a health track full of lethal, but werewolves are absolute combat monsters and dealing that much damage will mostly just make them angry. I mean, not only would that not kill it, it would heal every point of damage that didn't wrap around to Aggravated when its turn rolled around.

It's fine, though. Just spin it as your hunters getting lucky and blowing its brains out before it had a chance to fully transform, then give them a taste of what Rage really looks like when its packmates come knocking.

As overconfident as it should have made them, when I had a couple "shirtless, cigarette smoking guys" coming down the path and shouting the now dead woof's name like 20 minutes later they cleared out of there fast. I might give them another taste of werewolf fury at another time, but I think I'll let this one sit for a while. Better to have the revenge come once the party has gotten wrapped up in something else and has more or less forgotten about this.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Either that or it shows up leading the pack on them itself because it crawled away.

Don't Masks just have a Slasher power that is "lol I only take 1HL from anything"?

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince
I'm okay with being a little bit nice to this party because two of the hunters are new to WoD in general. I had to remind one of them not to use etheric rounds on a werewolf, and the other to use his etheric goggles if there's something unexplainable happening. Also I had to have them roll intelligence+streetwise to realize that the person he said would hurt him was "Alph-Albert!" and that wasn't likely a real person but was him correcting himself from trying to say "Alpha"

Not that I'm going to baby them forever but, I'm not too upset about accidentally making the first session too easy. They'll face real danger later on.

Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

citybeatnik posted:

Either that or it shows up leading the pack on them itself because it crawled away.

Don't Masks just have a Slasher power that is "lol I only take 1HL from anything"?
Yeah, Masks take only one bashing damage from any damage source that isn't, like, environmental damage.

Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Hostile V posted:

Yeah, Masks take only one bashing damage from any damage source that isn't, like, environmental damage.

My book says one point of damage, unqualified. Which presumably means whatever damage type the attack deals.

Still absolutely bananas.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince
I've got a week now to design two hunter npcs for next session, which I'm very excited for. Gonna have their TFV CO give them the okay to use lethal force and then sick them on fellow Hunters. I have no idea how the party will actually react though.

Terrorforge
Dec 22, 2013

More of a furnace, really

Xinder posted:

I've got a week now to design two hunter npcs for next session, which I'm very excited for. Gonna have their TFV CO give them the okay to use lethal force and then sick them on fellow Hunters. I have no idea how the party will actually react though.

I imagine it'll depend on how you characterize the targets. If you send them after some borderline-Slasher lunatics I doubt they'll feel much remorse, but give them sympathetic villains not unlike the PCs and you have yourself a quality abyss-staring session. If the group contains characters whose loyalty to TFV is sufficient for there to be actual conflict, you could even go for the full tinfoil experience and make the "enemy" hunters competent and wholly blameless - except that they've stumbled onto sensitive intel and the brass wants the leak sealed quickly and with extreme prejudice.

One way or another I'd make sure to contrive a reason for the PCs to talk to the targets. The horror of hunting your fellow man is rather diminished if you can just crack their heads from 400 yards with a sniper rifle.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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That one's easy.

These are citizens. They aren't obvious terrorists. You can't make this look like inexplicable murder, that'll just lead back to the Company.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Terrorforge posted:

I imagine it'll depend on how you characterize the targets. If you send them after some borderline-Slasher lunatics I doubt they'll feel much remorse, but give them sympathetic villains not unlike the PCs and you have yourself a quality abyss-staring session. If the group contains characters whose loyalty to TFV is sufficient for there to be actual conflict, you could even go for the full tinfoil experience and make the "enemy" hunters competent and wholly blameless - except that they've stumbled onto sensitive intel and the brass wants the leak sealed quickly and with extreme prejudice.

One way or another I'd make sure to contrive a reason for the PCs to talk to the targets. The horror of hunting your fellow man is rather diminished if you can just crack their heads from 400 yards with a sniper rifle.

Oh yeah, I absolutely need to make them talk. Luckily the other hunters are Network Zero so they love to talk already. They're also not going to even be close to the party's skill or resources. This is planned top to bottom as a moral quandary/loyalty test. I'm eager to see how they react.

The kill order comes directly from their CO who even gives them a good reason (at least to shut them down, maybe not such a good reason to kill them): he was shot at by ghouls who were tipped off by a N0 broadcast. So he's pissed that they're giving away sensitive intel to everyone with an internet connection and wants them shut down with extreme prejudice.

e: Thinking about it, I expect the two newcomers to try to toe the company line a bit more even if they're conflicted. It's my experience that players trained on video games have a bit harder time seeing how many choices are in front of them in situations like this. They'll likely have a hard time seeing that I'm totally okay with them disobeying orders and going rogue if I don't tell them.

But if they do go rogue, I feel I need to make sure these N0 NPCs are at least somewhat compelling. They'll have to become recurring characters to make such a decision feel meaningful.

Xinder fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jul 16, 2017

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'
what's a swedracula

someone fill me in

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Milky Moor posted:

what's a swedracula

someone fill me in

Martin "Swedracula" Ericsson is the creative lead at new White Wolf. Not sure what his exact title is but most of the blame for the poo poo they do can be aimed directly at him and you wouldn't be wrong.

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Xinder posted:

Martin "Swedracula" Ericsson is the creative lead at new White Wolf. Not sure what his exact title is but most of the blame for the poo poo they do can be aimed directly at him and you wouldn't be wrong.

what's he done? spare no details.

i've been away from this hobby since GMC came out and my group disintegrated

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

Terrorforge posted:

I had a similar experience in my Demon game a while back. I used the stats of a Rank 3 hunter angel from the book (The Brilliant, for anyone who's curious) for the guardian of a Deva-controlled hospital, and just looking at the stats I thought I was gonna have to pull my punches to avoid just brutally slaughtering all of them.

Only it turns out that 4 PC demons have a lot more combined stats than a Rank 3 angel plus a massive action economy advantage, so they ended up stunlocking it and pounding it into the dirt.

Three shots, though? Were they using silver bullets?
In fairness I'm pretty sure you didn't factor in armor against our attacks. There's really no reason why physically attacking an angel should be easier than using an embed, and all our embeds tend to bounce harmlessly off angels.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Milky Moor posted:

what's he done? spare no details.

i've been away from this hobby since GMC came out and my group disintegrated

This was summed up a page ago pretty well so I'm just gonna quote that:

Yessod posted:

Swedracula is desperately moving back to the 90s, and doing a great job reminding me how far our culture has come in the last 20 years.
The new edition he's working on intends to have the "struggle with islam" be a vampiric plot.
In response to MES banning rape as a plot element, their spokesman Shane deFreest poo poo talked them in the keynote, saying stuff along the lines of "if you don't want rape in your games maybe white wolf is not for you".
White Wolf hired Zak S, who outs trans folks, to write a game including a transwoman who lures straight men into sexual encounters, rapes or kills them, and named that transwoman after one of his trans critics.
They published a draft with random encounter tables for gay nightclubs and nightclub tragedies on the anniversary of the Pulse massacre.
They published a draft with the immigrants as thieves and isis agents posing as syrian refugees.
They apologized for those things by saying people who were offended just weren't mature enough to get it.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Milky Moor posted:

what's he done? spare no details.

i've been away from this hobby since GMC came out and my group disintegrated

A lot, it's kind of a long story but it can be summarized as 'he is attempting to bring the World of Darkness through his time tunnel into the 90s, complete with lovely 90s political views and lovely 90s edginess'

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Xinder posted:

This was summed up a page ago pretty well so I'm just gonna quote that:

oh no

Mors Rattus posted:

A lot, it's kind of a long story but it can be summarized as 'he is attempting to bring the World of Darkness through his time tunnel into the 90s, complete with lovely 90s political views and lovely 90s edginess'

oh noooo

i'd heard about zak s. these two sound like a horrible pair.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

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

Milky Moor posted:

what's he done? spare no details.

i've been away from this hobby since GMC came out and my group disintegrated
Martin Elricsson, the lead storyteller for the One World of Darkness and White Wolf. We call him Swedish Dracula (Or Swedracula) because he's sweedish, and was the photo model for Dracula for Vampire 20th anniversary edition.



He's become a focus of ire for this thread because he seems to want to drive the World of Darkness back to the way it was in 1st edition, while also moving it past the apocalypses (Gehenna, Apocalypse, etc) so that the gamelines can move forward. This has led to some rather confusing things like the Black Furies becoming insular hyper-feminists who hate humanity because they haven't achieved the gynotopia yet. And the declaration that werewolves will be "Crypto-fascists again". And in his first interview after taking over the white wolf brand he dunked on the old guard of white wolf for not addressing 9/11 in new york by night (The final printing of new york by night was on september 14th, 2001, by the way meaning that it had been written months before hand).

His first actual white wolf product? A Vampire: The Masquerade themed slot machine.

quote:

Foxium continues to strengthen its position as an up and coming slot production studio. Foxium earlier today struck a deal with White Wolf Publishing for its IP rights to the mega brand World of Darkness. The deal will give Foxium access to one of the biggest IP in the RPG world and is expected to have the first game out in the market sometime later this year.



White Wolf Publishing was founded in 1991 and was acquired by Paradox Interactive in Nov 2015. White Wolf Publishing has several strong brands in its umbrella based from the world of darkness such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension and V:TES TCG to mention a few. This is the first deal for White Wolf Publishing that brings them into the online gambling market.

Foxium is a fast growing young talented production studio founded in 2015 with offices in Tallinn, Estonia and Umeå, Sweden. Foxium slot games are built around storytelling in order to give the end consumer a better game experience. Together with innovative game play, unique and modern game graphics it’s very easy to recognize games from Foxium.

Tobias Sjögren, CEO at White Wolf Publishing, commented, “We have the greatest respect for Foxium and Åke and what convinced us to enter into this agreement was their great passion and experience of our brand. We love working with passionate people who delivers great quality and that is what convinced us that Foxium will deliver a product that is true to our brand and to broaden our audience.”

Åke André, Co-Founder and CEO at Foxium, said, “Since my early teenage I have been a huge fan of White Wolf and the World of Darkness. This is a massive opportunity as we combine an amazing IP like World of Darkness and a talented studio like Foxium. I feel confident that Foxium can deliver games based on World of Darkness that will compel and amaze the “normal” online casino player and yet stay very true and honest to the brand itself so that the millions of old-school hard core fans will not be disappointed.”

There was also an edgy as gently caress european larp that basically all but said "Please come and be naked and have hot vampire sex please" and also had some language that was very rapey about consent and "Don't come if you're going to say no."

Oh I forgot that they republished a fiction anthology from the mid 90s, with a new story written by Swedracula.

quote:

Screaming in lust from the concentrated spunk in my groins-blood, the Akalia started to wriggle out of its dirty jeans, still gagging on my bleeding junk. It let go only to suck in air, preparing to turn its centuries- dormant sexual organs into full rear end-rape stiffness.
Oh and I forgot the grand masquerade Q&A where he basically blamed female gamers for their own oppression in gaming communities for not being mature enough to handle themes like slavery, racism, and rape.
And he wants to write a new "Gypsies" book.

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince

Kurieg posted:

the photo model for Dracula for Vampire 20th anniversary edition.

i actually didn't know that's where it came from. that's hilarious

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

Kurieg posted:

Martin Elricsson, the lead storyteller for the One World of Darkness and White Wolf. We call him Swedish Dracula (Or Swedracula) because he's sweedish, and was the photo model for Dracula for Vampire 20th anniversary edition.



He's become a focus of ire for this thread because he seems to want to drive the World of Darkness back to the way it was in 1st edition, while also moving it past the apocalypses (Gehenna, Apocalypse, etc) so that the gamelines can move forward. This has led to some rather confusing things like the Black Furies becoming insular hyper-feminists who hate humanity because they haven't achieved the gynotopia yet. And the declaration that werewolves will be "Crypto-fascists again". And in his first interview after taking over the white wolf brand he dunked on the old guard of white wolf for not addressing 9/11 in new york by night (The final printing of new york by night was on september 14th, 2001, by the way meaning that it had been written months before hand).

His first actual white wolf product? A Vampire: The Masquerade themed slot machine.


There was also an edgy as gently caress european larp that basically all but said "Please come and be naked and have hot vampire sex please" and also had some language that was very rapey about consent and "Don't come if you're going to say no."

Oh I forgot that they republished a fiction anthology from the mid 90s, with a new story written by Swedracula.

Oh and I forgot the grand masquerade Q&A where he basically blamed female gamers for their own oppression in gaming communities for not being mature enough to handle themes like slavery, racism, and rape.
And he wants to write a new "Gypsies" book.

well that's what i get for saying spare no details :gonk:

did this dude walk out of some time portal from the 90s?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

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

Milky Moor posted:

well that's what i get for saying spare no details :gonk:

did this dude walk out of some time portal from the 90s?

Yes. It's called "the European Larp Scene".

Precambrian
Apr 30, 2008

Xinder posted:

i actually didn't know that's where it came from. that's hilarious

I remember when he was first announced and the thread first found his photo. There was a sort of cautious optimism of "well, if you're going to put someone in charge of Vampire, that's what he probably should look like."

Man, the optimism after the Paradox buy crumbled fast.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

Milky Moor posted:

well that's what i get for saying spare no details :gonk:

did this dude walk out of some time portal from the 90s?

Actually you were spared the details of the aforementioned short fiction piece.

The term "groin's blood" features in it.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
Swedracula presents: Full rear end-Rape Stiffness.

FARS. Like GURPS, but so much, much, much worse. That's what I'm going to call V^2 I think. FARS.

neaden
Nov 4, 2012

A changer of ways

Kurieg posted:

Oh I forgot that they republished a fiction anthology from the mid 90s, with a new story written by Swedracula.

A fiction anthology edited by a pedophile.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

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

Precambrian posted:

I remember when he was first announced and the thread first found his photo. There was a sort of cautious optimism of "well, if you're going to put someone in charge of Vampire, that's what he probably should look like."

Man, the optimism after the Paradox buy crumbled fast.

My understanding is that he was basically a vampire superfan and was really good friends with the OPP people. It just turns out that 'being a superfan' doesn't mean that you should inherit the reins of your favorite game line.

Even more it almost definitely means you shouldn't convince your boss to buy the reins for you like Veruca Salt.

Mendrian posted:

Actually you were spared the details of the aforementioned short fiction piece.

The term "groin's blood" features in it.

no he wasn't, it just wasn't included when he quoted my quote.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
I won't lie. The way nWW is taking things, I'm finding it hard to find the enthusiasm to finish out the project because I honestly don't want them using the fruits of my labour. That's how bad it looks.

Zeroisanumber
Oct 23, 2010

Nap Ghost

neaden posted:

A fiction anthology edited by a pedophile.

Is that the sex one? I remember that being the point where I decided that Justin Achilli had lost his loving mind.

Blockhouse
Sep 7, 2014

You Win!
but hey on the bright side: exalted and scion!

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Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
No, the sex one was Eternal Hearts. The re-release was of a 1995 story anthology that contained multiple stories with nothing at all to do with the actual oWoD, edited by Jerry Kramer. On the whole, it's actually a perfectly acceptable selection of stories - a couple of them are downright good and others are goofy fun that's perfect oWoD, so if that was all, it might get a pass as 'well, he wants to bring back the old school,and you know what, it was kind of gonzo fun!'. Unfortunately, there's the whole 'edited by a pedophile and thus potentially giving him more money in the reissue' (and without making a mention of Kramer's crime. It's completely ignored in the new intro by Karim Muammar. A simple statement of 'look, Kramer did horrific things and we don't stand by it, but for legal reasons we can't take his name off, and here's the situation on whether this book will put money in his pocket or not' would really help to be honest) and the story added to it by Swedracula himself.

Let me quote a few segments that show how this is actually worse than Eternal Hearts, which at least had prose that you could mostly parse and comprehend. "Supposedly this was one of the builders Emelie had that long concerned call with last Friday. The Akalias. We were having teen dinner. Rare treat these days. On the sofa the nineteen year-old depressive was talking less and less, getting dizzy and empty as I drank from his armpit. Stubble against lips. Tender tension of thin skin. The release of canine penetration. Sip slow. Pleasant downer blood. I saved him for my childe. The one I killed and gave birth to.

. Dark Destiny (Kindle Locations 9142-9145). White Wolf. Kindle Edition. "

"The siblings arrived in Stockholm by way of Marseilles and a thousand degradations over the course of a long transit-year they never spoke about. Not even to each other. Emelie said they met and bonded in a freight-container filled with their own poo poo and the charred remains of their little brother. Now they were doing saferooms for the undead in Lidingö. Not that they knew who we are. What we are. No one does. No one alive at least. So their public non-existence was useful. They were nursed and protected and meticulously confused. One of us was probably making sure they stayed on the immigration department’s Islamist watch-list so they stayed permanently scared and never talked to the cops.

. Dark Destiny (Kindle Locations 9167-9172). White Wolf. Kindle Edition. "

At the time the thing came out, it hadn't become apparent that human trafficking and islamism was a recurring theme in VtM: FARS. It is now apparent that it's going to be a constant refrain, and one that - as you can tell - is going to be treated with great sensitivity.

"So we whiled away the long gloom of anticipation before the hunt pretending to gently caress like a suburban couple, red satin sheets and plastic tarps under the mattress hiding the blood-cum stains. We made a point of being seen sometimes. Not when we went all the way of course. Not when we drank from each other. That we did in the walk-in. She screamed as I sucked and threw me straight through the solid pine wall as she came. That’s why she worried so much. We had each other’s blood inside. We were one and I wasn’t safe.

. Dark Destiny (Kindle Locations 9183-9187). White Wolf. Kindle Edition. "

And now... I haven't actually posted a big chunk of this, since again at the time we didn't know quite as much as we do now. It's more rapey than I remember, right down to the use of dominate.

"The Akalia coughed out a harsh Semitic sentence for each blow. Unfamiliar, old words. The soft look in its blood-whet eyes as it finally got me pinned was unmistakable. Satisfied relief. Its peaceful expression was a mirror of my “victory face”. This was what I looked like all those times I closed with a blood doll and put him in the cab. When my whole being knew I’d made it through one more night. Peace. Expectation. Lust. I had always imagined this was a shared feeling. That my partner was just as excited as me, that they shed their blood in my mouth willingly. Eagerly. Only human shame and guilt made them protest and struggle. Deep inside, they really wanted it. Horny little animals. It was a lie, of course, but a necessary one. A self-deception I believed right up until that moment. The warped reflection of myself in the Old Thing’s bearing made further self-delusion impossible. Insight hit me full force as I felt the first stirrings of lust in my dead groin.

My will was no longer my own. I tried to break away from those wet brown eyes, but it was useless. I already loved the disgusting thing that was killing me. I loved the way its tongue slopped my juice off the polished concrete, the way it crawled patiently towards my almost bloodless form, legs twisted in impossibly arachnid angles. I was ready to surrender this long night to my surprise lover. The Blood was not. I willed my most sensual feedings back into my mind, the ones that made me push precious blood straight to cock. The memories that came flooding back were not my own. They belonged to my victims, still half alive in my undying bloodstream. Sara Johansson’s shameful memory of the one time she drunkenly consented to gently caress her best friend Magnus. Six years of complete trust broken as he clumsily came in her aching rear end. Johan Edenborg in sixth grade, hiding his erection from his hairless showering soccer-team. I willed myself to take a deep breath, blood springing to fake life. Hemoglobin pushing out with the oxygenated blood, heart spasming with the force of an engine piston. Hot blood squirted into my groin, all the tattered dead memories of my horniest victims bursting into necrotic erectile tissue. The Akalia sniffed it out in a second and launched itself at me. The metal bars through my chest held me. The loss of blood made me slow. I could only watch as the dead inhuman chewed through my Zegna suit-trousers and 2( x) ist boxers to get to the good stuff. The breath I took to push the blood came out in a gurgling high-pitched horny scream as crooked sharp brown teeth chewed into the base of my hard cock. It looked at me with pleading wet eyes, suddenly just as horny as I was. A sick reminder of the abuse-porn me and Emelie made a decent living off in the late 90’ s. Screaming in lust from the concentrated spunk in my groins-blood, the Akalia started to wriggle out of its dirty jeans, still gagging on my bleeding junk. It let go only to suck in air, preparing to turn its centuries-dormant sexual organs into full rear end-rape stiffness.

. Dark Destiny (Kindle Locations 9188-9209). White Wolf. Kindle Edition. "

And finally...
"Emelie. Deep down I was sad she had failed. All the things I would have to do to her now. It was sickening. Correction: how I felt about what I would do made me frightened. The blood stirred in all the wrong places as I put pedal to metal, gunning down the E20 towards Slussen, towards an old city falling rapidly into the late summer night.

. Dark Destiny (Kindle Locations 9220-9222). White Wolf. Kindle Edition. "

Depending on how you read that, our protagonist just popped another erection thinking of torturing and killing his childe.

Yeah. Eternal Hearts is classy and well-written by comparison.

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