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Archonex posted:From what i've seen first hand Geist is honestly a pretty good game that's hamstrung by the fact that most of it's antagonists and things to do are located in other books. Which is a shame, since what content we got was pretty neat. More content would be great to help fix that though. I thought the correct way to run Geist was to simply reflavor some things and run Persona?
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Jul 16, 2017 08:18
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I remember there being some kinda balance thing with Geists but I have no recollection what it was. But yeah, more then anything else, with Geist, you kinda have to set up some kinda plotline in advance with your players. Geist is cool as gently caress... but there's really just not much of a conflict there to resolve.
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Jul 16, 2017 08:28
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Do any nWoD books give much details on any rank 8+ spirits?
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Jul 16, 2017 09:09
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Do any nWoD books give much details on any rank 8+ spirits? Imperial Mysteries goes into them a little and gives you a framework to stat them up, though in the context of Mage and its arcana.
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Jul 16, 2017 09:23
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Mendrian posted:Actually you were spared the details of the aforementioned short fiction piece. For bringing that up again you are going to have a timeout in the corner, lying in your own smear. Mulva fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 10:03
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ProfessorCirno posted:I remember there being some kinda balance thing with Geists but I have no recollection what it was. iirc I think it had something to do with Boneyard Manifestation being broken as poo poo.
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Jul 16, 2017 14:32
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Slimnoid posted:iirc I think it had something to do with Boneyard Manifestation being broken as poo poo. - Boneyard making it easy to become effectively omniscient and capable of using any powers that aren't Rage (more on that in a second) on people within a radius that, even at chargen, is usually as big as where the meat of any given conflict could take place. Oh and you get a bonus equal to your successes on the roll to establish your Boneyard, to any rolls of Manifestations using the same key (so if you use your spooky water powers after setting up spooky water area). - Plasm (their pool-stat like Vitae) starts at 14 at power stat 1 and goes up to 30 at power stat 5 and 100 and stat 10. This is important because they can downgrade any damage to bashing-you-take-at-the-end-of-the-scene 1:1 with Plasm expenditures at the time; which wouldn't be SO strong except they have two separate defensive manifestation types (Caul and Shroud) - Rages are super low investment to get a versatile ranged attack with such possible qualities as "completely undetectable and leaves no mark" or "inflicts [Rage rating] as a penalty to some stats, up to and including Defense or Physical rolls" - Speaking of penalties, Curses are resisted by the lower of the target's Resolve or Composure, and at even a single dot can do things like "inflict half activation successes as a penalty on all rolls" for one day per Curse rating Now the biggest thing to all this being broken is: What does loving any of this have to do with solving ghost mysteries, or stilling the unquiet dead? Not a lot out of the box. But it does make them insane murder machines (in 1e at least).
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Jul 16, 2017 16:43
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There's a reason my most effective Geist is just an undead Hunter continuing her work, but is even better at it now.
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Jul 16, 2017 16:57
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Geists are really good at a) ghost poo poo b) loving other people up all to Hell and back c) not dying. They are not very good at anything else, but they are ridiculously good at those three things.
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Jul 16, 2017 17:10
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Also their morality scale makes things like going to the Underworld a sin despite that being exactly what a Sin-Eater should be doing.
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Jul 16, 2017 17:39
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Rand Brittain posted:Geists are really good at
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Jul 16, 2017 21:48
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Pope Guilty posted:Also their morality scale makes things like going to the Underworld a sin despite that being exactly what a Sin-Eater should be doing. Whereas things like completely ignoring your resident death-wraith's constant whispers that it wants to see more car crashes, and in fact directly contradicting them, are no problem for your Synergy. Geist 1e has a lot of problems, but I kind of think that's the chief one inhibiting the basic pitch's potential. You've got this cool copilot you're encouraged to customize, which is the source of your power, and there's nothing in there to give it story presence.
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Jul 16, 2017 22:43
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I Am Just a Box posted:Whereas things like completely ignoring your resident death-wraith's constant whispers that it wants to see more car crashes, and in fact directly contradicting them, are no problem for your Synergy. Yeah this exactly. The little fucker can't compel you to do anything, doesn't meaningfully impact your personality and really serves no purpose except to give you superpowers. I mean you can roleplay it and I guess I always did but it was some wasted potential. Then there's this whole sub-chapter on constructing your krew's mythology that was also kind of weird and probably should have been used to build your individual Geist instead.
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Jul 17, 2017 02:43
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Mendrian posted:Yeah this exactly. The little fucker can't compel you to do anything, doesn't meaningfully impact your personality and really serves no purpose except to give you superpowers. I mean you can roleplay it and I guess I always did but it was some wasted potential. Yeah, I think I kind of forgot how much I made up compared to how little is actually in the book. I played it hardcore that the geist and the person's soul were merging together to the point where they affected each other's personalities on a deep level. For instance, the undead hunter I mentioned early was becoming more violent and brutal as the geist egged her on, but it was becoming more regal and less bestial at the same time as she believed it was some holy entity so it was started to take on the affectations of holiness in response as it began to believe it too. I preferred to see it as a two-way street.
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Jul 17, 2017 02:54
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Yeah I am really looking forward to Geist second edition
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Jul 17, 2017 03:24
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So is, "Building a Legend" something I need to hate-read now, or is it like the Dark eras thing where it's merely non-offensive but not fantastic.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:05
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Welp, looks like my Mastigos is going to need to build up an army of goetic servants to go toe to toe with ANOTHER army of goetic servants being controlled by the local head Seer. Keep in mind that this was the same Thearch that decided that summoning a Rank 4 Demon God-King of Charity from the Astral to throw at this same Seer was a smart idea. I see no possible way that this could go wrong.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:34
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Goetimon, gotta bind em all!
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Jul 17, 2017 04:37
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Kurieg posted:Goetimon, gotta bind em all! Possibly. I've got up to Mind 5 at this point so it's not QUITE as stupid as the last event was.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:41
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Kurieg posted:So is, "Building a Legend" something I need to hate-read now, or is it like the Dark eras thing where it's merely non-offensive but not fantastic. It promises some cooperative world-building stuff applicable to more than just Beast. That might possibly be legitimately okay. It's also only 60 pages.
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Jul 17, 2017 06:10
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citybeatnik posted:Welp, looks like my Mastigos is going to need to build up an army of goetic servants to go toe to toe with ANOTHER army of goetic servants being controlled by the local head Seer. A future veteran of the psychic wars.
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Jul 17, 2017 06:22
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I have skiped ahead dozens of pages because I felt the need to remind you that Scion is wonderful.
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Jul 17, 2017 13:10
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anglachel posted:I thought the correct way to run Geist was to simply reflavor some things and run Persona? Now i'm picturing some angsty teenager summoning up the tortured soul of an ancient axe murderer to go slay a vampire or something. Seeing some LARPers explain that one to the public when the cops get called would be entertaining. Mendrian posted:Yeah this exactly. The little fucker can't compel you to do anything, doesn't meaningfully impact your personality and really serves no purpose except to give you superpowers. I mean you can roleplay it and I guess I always did but it was some wasted potential. Correction: He can't compel you to do anything up until you die again. At which point it starts getting progressively more hooks into you from that point onwards. Also, if you've been neglecting your weird headmate then he's probably going to be pretty pissed at you. Also, see that one piece of fiction that shows what happens when a Geist just hates it's owner and wants control. It doesn't need to be able to puppeteer your body to drive you mad. And it has more than a few ways to do that outside of just feeding you bad advice. Like forever by singing the same verse of a song over and over again in your head at a volume loud enough to keep you from sleeping. This actually gets mentioned in one of the books. And the affected person just starts repeatedly blowing their brains out with a pistol to make it stop. Pope Guilty posted:Also their morality scale makes things like going to the Underworld a sin despite that being exactly what a Sin-Eater should be doing. I'm divided on that one. On one hand, they're geists. On the other hand, they're loving geists. If vampires get dinged for contradictory things like watching a human eat a meal when they're supposed to work at staying human then it makes sense that at least some of the Bound would consider going back to Underworld as a somewhat stressful experience that'd distance them from humanity if they weren't careful. Archonex fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 14:49
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You're talking about the fiction. The mechanics do not replicate the fiction; mechanically your ghost headmate has no weight.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:52
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I love the ideas that fiction brings and those are extremely useful, but yes. They need mechanics to back them up.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:53
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Mors Rattus posted:You're talking about the fiction. The mechanics do not replicate the fiction; mechanically your ghost headmate has no weight. The fiction is pretty much representative of what they were going for though. If the mechanics are hosed then that's a problem. But it's pretty obvious that Geists were intended to have some weight. Most people would just house rule it if they're hosed. And there's enough material there to do that, I think.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:54
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Congrats, you have grasped the point that people who bring up that the mechanics give the ghost headmate no weight have been trying to make. e: 'People can houserule' is not a solution - the solution is to make a good game in the first place. Which hopefully Geist 2e will do. (and also get rid of the part where a Geist can accidentally be able to murder loving anything out the box, or that chargen rules are spread across three different chapters with poor cross-referencing. Did you know that Geists get a free Geist artifact? It's not in the chargen chapter, but they do!)
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Jul 17, 2017 14:54
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It would also help if the main characters of the game had a decent name, so that people don't keep calling them "geists" when that isn't what they are. (I think my understanding is that "sin-eater" is going to become a standard title rather than something that may or may not be true of any given Bound.)
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Jul 17, 2017 14:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Congrats, you have grasped the point that people who bring up that the mechanics give the ghost headmate no weight have been trying to make. Yeah, I get that. I wasn't disagreeing with that point. I guess my point is that Geist is actually a pretty neat concept that's hamstrung by a few flaws in the core book. I've pointed out a number of them in past posts, in fact. I don't feel like it ruins the potential the game has however. It just makes it a royal pain in the rear end to run it if you don't have an experienced GM compensating for the issues. Though I think it should get an update to fix the crap that's wrong with it at some point. Rand Brittain posted:It would also help if the main characters of the game had a decent name, so that people don't keep calling them "geists" when that isn't what they are. They actually do. They're called the Bound, from what I recall.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:59
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Archonex posted:They actually do. They're called the Bound, from what I recall. People don't often use that because it's silly and a little bit overwrought.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:00
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Yeah, Fog Men is much more evocative, if unfortunately sexist.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:01
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Rand Brittain posted:People don't often use that because it's silly and a little bit overwrought. The WoD is filled with ridiculous overladen and overwrought terminology like that. Not that i'm disagreeing with you. Calling the conspiracy to stay hidden the masquerade is a bit over dramatic. Ditto for calling your life as a vampire the requiem to your living life. Or referring to yourself as the Lost because you got abducted by an extra-dimensional lunatic. Or like maybe a fourth to half the stuff in the Werewolf and Mage lines. Honestly, given how much of it there is it's a bit surprising we haven't gotten a fiction piece from a Network Zero hunter that does nothing but roll their eyes at how bombastic the lingo unique to each supernatural is. Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 15:04
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, Fog Men is much more evocative, if unfortunately sexist. I don't really think that's an improvement. I feel like the "base" name of a splat needs to be something they might conceivably use in casual conversation among themselves, not a Capitalized Letter Word.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:06
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Sin-Eaters are always going to have trouble there because there frankly isn't a snappy, casual term that is actually used by people to refer to 'I was dead and then brought back by a ghost.'
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Jul 17, 2017 15:07
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"Revenant" isn't perfect, but it's close. They're corporeal ghosts who are reanimated by their purpose; a revenant's purpose is traditionally just revenge but you could stretch that definition a bit, it's not as if Demons or Changelings haven't. e: or call them Draugr Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 15:09
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Mors Rattus posted:Sin-Eaters are always going to have trouble there because there frankly isn't a snappy, casual term that is actually used by people to refer to 'I was dead and then brought back by a ghost.' i throw around the words "undead" and "zombie" and "cohabiting with a ghost" when it comes up in-character
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Jul 17, 2017 15:13
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Xinder posted:i throw around the words "undead" and "zombie" and "cohabiting with a ghost" when it comes up in-character The thing to remember tho is that they're not. Undead, that is. A Sin-Eater is very much alive, they just have ghost powers and a ghost headmate.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:14
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Mors Rattus posted:The thing to remember tho is that they're not. Undead, that is. A Sin-Eater is very much alive, they just have ghost powers and a ghost headmate. Technically, yeah. But in-character I figure most people aren't going to draw that distinction. Realistically most people are going to go for the simplest term that kinda fits even if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny of the definition. Helps that it hasn't come up around a more intellectual character in any of my games yet.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:16
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"Revenant" isn't perfect, but it's close. They're corporeal ghosts who are reanimated by their purpose; a revenant's purpose is traditionally just revenge but you could stretch that definition a bit, it's not as if Demons or Changelings haven't. What I'm getting from this is that Vampire stole all the good terminology for what they're trying to do.
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Jul 17, 2017 16:55
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Bound is like Awakened or Kindred - an awkward term of art the makes no sense outside the fiction and mainly serves to as a way to say "this exact splat", i.e. "mages" could refer to any number of hedge witches and two-bit sorcerers, but "the Awakened" refers specifically to human gifted with Supernal insight as presented in Mage: The Awakening. Except Geist doesn't really need it for the because who can just intuit what it means to be a Sin-Eater?Tuxedo Catfish posted:"Revenant" isn't perfect, but it's close. They're corporeal ghosts who are reanimated by their purpose; a revenant's purpose is traditionally just revenge but you could stretch that definition a bit, it's not as if Demons or Changelings haven't. "Revenant" is already in use as a term for both a kind of feral vampire and a ghost possessing its own body. Not that that's necessarily a hard no since there's like half a dozen different types of entities referred to as "demons", but it does muddy the issue. Draugr is probably out though because at this point I don't think anyone can hear that word and not think of Skyrim.
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Jul 17, 2017 17:00
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