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Dave Brookshaw posted:Deviant is about isolation versus human connection, with mutation as a metaphor for isolation, and about how Catharsis is a lie and stewing in anger breaks you. We need four, no, five different Onyx Path game lines about supernatural creatures that fight crime in New York City and are mildly to moderately better at punching people.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:36
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Just drop a dollar on the KS to be able to read the manuscript for the first two chapters.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:52
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I'm glad the subtext is subtext again and that the seasonal courts are back. Courts should be based on steady flows of time or firm geographies, things alien to the Fae. This is less of a problem now that each Court has its own big-rear end Bargain it enforces, but I also think giving STs a completely blank canvas isn't always a good design choice.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:55
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Kavak posted:I'm glad the subtext is subtext again and that the seasonal courts are back. Courts should be based on steady flows of time or firm geographies, things alien to the Fae. This is less of a problem now that each Court has its own big-rear end Bargain it enforces, but I also think giving STs a completely blank canvas isn't always a good design choice. What I remember being teased on the Onyx Path forums should strike a good balance, i.e.: the seasonal courts are up front as Changeling's thematic default, but the city settings chapter provides examples of alternate courts. I hope it will be more Hototogisu and less Bureau of Childer, to use Vampire 2e as an analogy, with enough mechanical detail not only to flesh out but to provide an example.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:24
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Deviant is about isolation versus human connection, with mutation as a metaphor for isolation, and about how Catharsis is a lie and stewing in anger breaks you. God, I can't wait for Deviants. 
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Nov 15, 2017 18:33
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I'm echoing those who are excited for Deviant.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:41
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Warthur posted:OPP really need to get into the habit of asking the question "Does this concept really, honestly need to be its own splat, with its own dedicated game line?", and maybe also the broader question of "Can we keep coming up with new Chronicles of Darkness game lines ad infinitum or should we just consolidate what we have at this point?"
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Nov 15, 2017 19:20
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Dave Brookshaw posted:If Changeling is Jessica Jones, Deviant is Daredevil and Punisher
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Nov 15, 2017 19:21
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Exalted is naturally Iron Fist.
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Nov 15, 2017 19:37
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Basic Chunnel posted:I thought you were supposed to be hyping this game I would rather be clear about things - that this is a game where your loneliness kills you, and you cling to your anger as it kills you slightly slower, and what that does to you - than sell a copy to someone that doesn't want that. It's like, Promethean is a humanist game. It will never be anything other than that, and although you *can* go off-piste with it, it isn't set up for it. When games *don't* have that strong idea of what they're about... Well, we've all seen what happens then.
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Nov 15, 2017 19:38
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I will never understand the phenomenon of people who really want to play World of Darkness games stripped of that heavy thematic stuff, all the way back to people who played V:tM exclusively on non-Humanity paths and treated it like urban fantasy DBZ Why use a system like this for that?
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Nov 15, 2017 19:57
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wizard on a water slide posted:I will never understand the phenomenon of people who really want to play World of Darkness games stripped of that heavy thematic stuff, all the way back to people who played V:tM exclusively on non-Humanity paths and treated it like urban fantasy DBZ
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Nov 15, 2017 20:31
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Yawgmoth posted:It is a selling point that you can dive deep into the subtext of Line X and be Hamlet 2: Soliloquy Boogaloo or you can go punch a cosmic horror in the face every week, and if you're really spicy you can alternate the two on a weekly basis with the same character. This is exactly why I run and play the nWoD/CoD lines. Especially because we can do so many different things in parallel that I never really had the easy space to do with D&D and most other fantasy game lines. We can do theoretical Mage physics one minute, then they can go punch some actual faeries in the face the next. There's not pressure to have combat every single time, and because conflict can be so varied we don't ever get burned out on politics or social or combat. In other words, the conceptual space is a great because it's reliant on so many different branches.
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Nov 15, 2017 20:41
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To apply my boots to a dead horse, my take from what I've seen of Deviant isn't really the same as Promethean. Deviant seems like it's about getting rad superpowers at the same time as the part of you that would know what to do with those rad superpowers dies. And now you got a choice; have someone tell you what to do with those rad superpowers or find the one person, place or thing that inspires you to use your rad superpowers to draw a line in the sand and throwdown with anything that crosses it. Deviant struck me as being stuck being a superhero in a world that neither wants nor would accept them. Also, your nemesis may in fact be a group of shapeshifting murderlords that can strike from the spirit world.
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Nov 15, 2017 20:49
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Promethean is Frankenstein and Deviant is Deadpool.
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Nov 15, 2017 21:27
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re: CTL, I suppose I should be clear that I am glad that that stuff is there, but I think that any game where the right and sensible thing to do is to cut off contact with the setting elements, ought to go and look at what can be done to adjust that. By contrast, and probably by accident, most of the oWoD games provided you with clear-cut antagonists and a route towards them to accomplish characterful goals. (The immortal tropes of Vampire vs. Older Vampire, Mage vs. Cyborgs, and Werewolf vs. Fear Clown.) wizard on a water slide posted:I will never understand the phenomenon of people who really want to play World of Darkness games stripped of that heavy thematic stuff, all the way back to people who played V:tM exclusively on non-Humanity paths and treated it like urban fantasy DBZ Nowadays, there are alternatives, but they may not be fit to purpose. You may also want to play in things nearer to other genres, or have the ability to crib from real life for inspiration more easily than you could for D&D. Nessus fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 15, 2017 |
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Nov 15, 2017 21:59
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Changeling is a game I adore because I can, will, and do go to the bat over how it handles the trauma narrative/subtext, but at the same time, it is pretty easy to remove or downplay that aspect (or use it simultaneously) in favor of general dark fantasy, baroque storytelling, drunk tall tales simulation, or just leaning into the innate absurdity of the Fae existing alongside the modern as hard as you can while keeping a straight face. The best game of Changeling I've been in had my PC both have a months-long arc about learning to forgive himself for abandoning dozens of people to die a horrible death in Arcadia when he couldn't have saved them anyway... and on the other end of the scale of tone, as the end result of a poo poo-ton of minmaxing, desperate schemes, dumb luck, and sheer chutzpah in and out of character, rolled 14 successes on an Intimidation roll and terrified a True Fae by hamming it up as hard as a giant lobster-person in a rubber Richard Nixon mask and a Captain Morgan halloween costume could.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:19
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Daeren posted:and on the other end of the scale of tone, as the end result of a poo poo-ton of minmaxing, desperate schemes, dumb luck, and sheer chutzpah in and out of character, rolled 14 successes on an Intimidation roll and terrified a True Fae by hamming it up as hard as a giant lobster-person in a rubber Richard Nixon mask and a Captain Morgan halloween costume could.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:20
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My main complaints about 1e were always 'okay so why is Fae Mount so bad, why can't I have a cool magic motorcycle' and 'okay so what do I do at base,' and making it so the Court Bargains exist and actually, y'know, get enforced as a result of keeping up the traditions goes a long way to fixing B, just by virtue of combining 'okay, what do we have to do this month to keep the place running' and 'oh yeah we're under constant siege by the True Fae, aren't we'
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Nov 15, 2017 22:30
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Changeling is the perfect game for all the silly and absurd jokes you can think to throw into it, right alongside the bloody and tear-stained horror of it all, because it is very much a fairy tale. I've run games where one PC is still dealing with his strongest memory before his Durance being playing a game of chess with his future Keeper to try and save his little sister, and losing, and had this same PC be rescued from nasty goblins by a young boy named Ditch. His father was named Ditch, his grandfather was named Ditch, his great-grandfather was named Ditch, and all of them were famous escape artists who helped people out when they were doomed. Sadly, they'd all retired because the effort was too much, and, with all other options gone, he was the last Ditch.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:32
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Axelgear posted:Changeling is the perfect game for all the silly and absurd jokes you can think to throw into it, right alongside the bloody and tear-stained horror of it all, because it is very much a fairy tale. I've run games where one PC is still dealing with his strongest memory before his Durance being playing a game of chess with his future Keeper to try and save his little sister, and losing, and had this same PC be rescued from nasty goblins by a young boy named Ditch. His father was named Ditch, his grandfather was named Ditch, his great-grandfather was named Ditch, and all of them were famous escape artists who helped people out when they were doomed.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:35
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Yawgmoth posted:This poo poo right here is why I play nWoD games. Rubix Squid learned a valuable lesson that day: when you give the player with the most familiarity with the system a heads up that a nigh-unstoppable threat is coming at a specific time, they will go into loving overdrive to figure out how to rig things in their favor as much as possible in the time they have. I don't know if I've ever hustled quite as hard as I did to defend Lobster Island from the Wild Hunt. Scarecrow Ministry token, Hedgespun clothing, Contracts of the Den, Contracts of Fleeting Autumn, an army of hob lobster spies (or as we called them, Hobsters - they also helped set the mood via guerilla warfare in the Hedge), spreading rumors back to Arcadia via known privateers/loyalists overhearing things at the right time, leveraging my mythos I'd created as a Scarecrow Minister to scare people from the Trod on the island... All of this led to some grand and terrible Feanor lookin' motherfucker walking out of the Hedge expecting a cowering hermit, and instead finding a swarm of hundreds of dog-sized lobsters led by a drunk, angry Pirate Nixon with lobster claws for fingers, angrily demanding to know why the gently caress Prancibald over here was stepping on his metaphysical street corner like he didn't know who ran the show around these parts. Cue the Wild Hunt skidding to a stop and stammering apologies in abject panic to what appears to be a fully empowered True Fae still functioning on the human side of a Trod, bidding good day and good hunting, and beating feet at top speed back to Arcadia intent on never crossing paths with whoever the gently caress that crazy son of a bitch was again. The downside of this is that stories have power in Arcadia, and when you make an argument that convincing that you're Fae...well, that starts to rub off on you a bit more than you'd like. I had to deal with the fallout of that for the entire rest of the game. And it was still totally worth it.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:36
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Der Waffle Mous posted:Exalted is naturally Iron Fist. Yet another reason to wish for a crossover one day. 
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Nov 15, 2017 22:48
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gently caress all this talk is making me really excited for 2e to come out so i can run a changeling game again. About half my players are relatively new to the setting so I've been easing them in. I feel like at this point I'm better off waiting for the 2e version so that they're not learning and then relearning when it comes out.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:53
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Daeren posted:The_Terrible_Wrath_of_Lobster_Island.txt This is loving great by the way. How badly did you wreck your character by pretending to be all Fae? Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 15, 2017 |
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Nov 15, 2017 22:59
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Though Iron Fist wasn't great, it would also be a solid inspiration for an Adamantine Arrow chronicle.
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Nov 15, 2017 22:59
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Archonex posted:This is loving great by the way. How badly did you wreck your character by going all Fae? Well, I was stuck with a quasi-Title, "The Borderless Baron," that I could use/be hosed with kinda like a FATE aspect. It was more narrative, though, as I leaned into him getting a bit more unstable and paranoid about himself, and other people around him being cautious and reserved, waiting to see if he was really just going to go completely Mad. Near the end of the game the whole party had a near-death experience (more accurately, we actually just plain died and then Time poo poo happened), and Lobsterman met the Reaper, Patron of Autumn in his "life flashing before my eyes" vision and had a nice, long, remarkably quiet and supportive chat about a lot of things, including getting the last bits of closure on his Durance. Autumn quietly pointed out that I got the title for seemingly being a True Fae doing impossible things. Having a Title defined by defiance of expected norms for the Kindly Ones means that if you're brave, clever, and tactically stupid enough, you can lean into the skid and come out the other side as a True Fae defined by impossible traits - like lucidity and retention of even a bit of empathy. And that's how in the postgame, a drunk, bitter changeling living on a Trod, intent on protecting humanity by keeping the neighborhood kids off his lawn, survived a time loop and came out the other side a weird offshoot True Fae that, because of a dimly remembered original life, decided to continue to keep the neighborhood kids (True Fae) off his lawn (the city.) Local abductions slowed to a crawl, as you may imagine.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:15
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Daeren posted:...an army of hob lobster spies (or as we called them, Hobsters - they also helped set the mood via guerilla warfare in the Hedge).... An awesome story overall, but I am so glad that someone else's game ended up having Hobgoblin Lobsters, or Hobsters in it. My players were always idly talking about if it would be a good idea to eat one or not... I've been itching to run another C:tL campaign. By the time the 2nd edition stuff is good to go, I'm sure I can get a nice city laid out and some structure going. I really like what I'm seeing about the Courts now having reasons other than being splat sub-categories. That's going to be a lot of fun to use.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:17
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FeatherFloat posted:An awesome story overall, but I am so glad that someone else's game ended up having Hobgoblin Lobsters, or Hobsters in it. My players were always idly talking about if it would be a good idea to eat one or not...  Lobsterman had a giant hobster pet as a Hob Friend, named Polly. She didn't actually talk coherently - none of them did - but it quickly became a running joke that Lobsterman was able to perfectly understand her and all hobsters, and that their chittering was invariably them cursing like unfathomably profane sailors, and properly translating what they said would make the average courtier's ears bleed. As the game went on, Lobsterman's small ring of allies/pets kept growing until the local Hedge was overrun with them, and they'd even begun to sneak into the real world and cross-populate with the lobsters in the bay, confusing the holy hell out of local biologists. (The bay population of lobsters was also thriving, because Lobsterman built his Scarecrow Ministry myth as a giant lobster-esque bigfoot that attacked lobster trawlers, and over the course of a decade or so before the start of the game, had successfully killed the lobster fishing industry of a small town in Maine out of sheer terror.) As said, Changeling can be a fantastic exploration of trauma and abuse and recovery, but instead (or at the same time) it can be the goofiest poo poo you'll ever run in the World of Darkness. I recount the tales of Lobsterman with pride and a full, loving awareness of how dumb as hell they are.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:22
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So is it a power thing, or a special thing? The Chronicle games do a good job of giving you power, or making it accessible, but not necessarily a good job at letting you use it. There's Masquerades and rules, mummies lose their Power Stat by time and even Awakened magic gets eroded away. But World of Darkness didn't really have a lot of those restrictions, so it doesn't really fit that you would have to get rid of clan and sect to punch cosmic horrors. On the other hand, even since Masquerade, the games have started off with 'your character is a small fish in a big pond, and everyone else is a shark.' And attempts to become special and the highlight of the world are few and far between, and usually fraught with peril. Being a Prince in either vampire game is more work than pleasure, and you are basically waiting to be ganked. Even consilium bosses aren't above 'everyone is an enemy and the world is a cage.' That said, punching cosmic horrors doesn't really stand out among tasks, but one of the big draws of Changeling for some is that it is effectively all about individual, with a foreign entity so obsessed with you they kidnapped you, changed you, and are willing to risk death to get you back.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:23
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Daeren posted:
As you well should. The Lobsterman is the hero we all deserve. (For some reason my phone suggests Lobstermen as an autocorrect, but not Lobsterman)
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Nov 15, 2017 23:26
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I really wanna know if Hobsters go good with butter now. That was an amazing story. A player doing all that build-up and effort totally deserves the reward.Yawgmoth posted:I'll bet he had someone constantly digging at him. There were certainly people shoveling it on.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:35
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Daeren posted:As said, Changeling can be a fantastic exploration of trauma and abuse and recovery, but instead (or at the same time) it can be the goofiest poo poo you'll ever run in the World of Darkness. I recount the tales of Lobsterman with pride and a full, loving awareness of how dumb as hell they are. Oh yeah all this is great and rules. I think my post made me seem more uptight than I am about theme and tone. I just think WW's better-written games are so dedicated to handling interesting themes and metaphors that aren't particularly common in gaming that it's a shame when entire groups just saw those things off.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:40
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The last time I played Changeling we never established what was really going on with my durance, but there was a vague implication that I didn't so much -escape- as get thrown out for unionizing the workforce in a Keeper's realm called "The Dark Satanic Mills". (It was set in Atlantic City and my character had 'disappeared' in the 1970s for organizing a grass roots campaign to try and keep the casinos out, with the vague implication that some local mobsters had a privateer pipeline.) I really hope that game picks up again for 2E because I want to see what sort of custom court setup we could get going against that backdrop.
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Nov 15, 2017 23:44
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Yawgmoth posted:Because some of us like the setting and system and broad strokes/elevator pitch of a game but don't really enjoy getting all "deep" or "philosophical" with games because oddly enough that poo poo is really not fun to think about when you want to unwind. For my money, the non-RPG thing which captures what I want out of World of Darkness the most is the Underworld movie series. It's campy ridiculous action in a world where stepping out of line will get the powers that be coming after you like a ton of bricks, stuffed with ancient conspiracies and constant mashups of occult nonsense with techno-thriller garbage. It's light entertainment at its finest.
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Nov 16, 2017 00:08
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Axelgear posted:I really wanna know if Hobsters go good with butter now. That was an amazing story. A player doing all that build-up and effort totally deserves the reward. They taste like regular lobster but better. They're a lot harder to catch though since most of them are smart enough to get out of traps. You'd have better luck wrestling it into submission. They still show up in my games since then if I have even the slightest excuse for it, cause they're all set in the future of the game Lobsterman is from. And yes, I couldn't not reward Daeren for everything he set up there and I've kind of made it a thing I do in general in all my games. He's the one that most benefits from it since he knows so drat well what he's doing but he's not the only one that's done crazy poo poo like that.
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Nov 16, 2017 03:03
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Rubix Squid posted:They taste like regular lobster but better. They're a lot harder to catch though since most of them are smart enough to get out of traps. You'd have better luck wrestling it into submission. They still show up in my games since then if I have even the slightest excuse for it, cause they're all set in the future of the game Lobsterman is from. The other great thing from their repeat appearances is that they've adopted a sort of "charming regional fixture" trait in the future of that setting, kinda like those hot springs monkeys in Japan, except much like a lot of those human-acclimatized monkeys, hobsters are clever, thieving, violent, manipulative little shits that are just smart enough to recognize the concept of using that PR as an advantage. Imagine armored, wingless seagulls that can plan on the level of a six year old child, and will deliberately play cute until they steal your wallet and go pawn it off at a Goblin Market for booze. Lobsterman was a horrible influence on them, and I love my horrible little bastard children every time they show up.
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Nov 16, 2017 03:13
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Warthur posted:This. Goofy over-the-top gothic nonsense is fun and there's several WoD games which I greatly prefer if you just take the silliest vampions-esque extremes of them. Werewolf: the Apocalypse taken seriously is... well, risible, for several reasons. Werewolf: the Apocalypse as an edgier take on Captain Planet is great fun.
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Nov 16, 2017 05:26
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I do hope that when Deviant comes out, they start going back to the other lines to round them out or readapt material from 1e source books. Or even books regarding the interactions between splats and things like Spirits and the Gauntlet or Ghosts and the Gauntlet or the God Machine or something of the sort.
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Nov 17, 2017 00:01
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I'm a huge fan of Changeling because I love stories about stories, and of all the cWoD lines Changeling was almost perfect for it. My favorite character was an Autumn Court Beast using the myth of the Black Dog to turn himself into a modern day urban legend, spreading tales throughout the city to make everybody constantly on edge. He was responsible for several curfews and at least one national crisis when he kidnapped the prime minister, and wound up becoming the game world's version of Insanity Wolf and eventually Autumn King. This was also the same game where he turned his Hollow into a Victorian Mansion version of The Crimson Permanent Assurance because Changeling is also incredibly goofy.
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