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Axelgear posted:I admit, I like the idea of the Gentry having a "territory", and that there might only be one or a handful stalking a given region; it lets you build up how awful and terrifying they really are when everyone is afraid of the same thing. When everyone knows what they're talking about when they mention the Three-Faced Hag's lash, or the terrible meaning of the Grimmhound's broken-toothed smile, it helps create a common culture. Doesn't the multiple titles and such help with this? So you can have people traumatized by different aspects of the same Fae.
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Nov 29, 2017 16:46
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I think multiple Titles are a difference that makes no difference, since each Title can be completely disconnected from the rest. You can say that the Bell Wolf who feasts on frightened children fleeing through his woods, and the Stickman who walks amid shadows to steal your senses, are the same entity, but, unless they are working together, a Changeling tormented by one and a Changeling tormented by another are going to have totally different experiences. I doubt they'd even be aware that they're the same Keeper.
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Nov 29, 2017 19:03
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The book implies they are fully aware, but that this matters only insofar as killing one of them drastically weakens the others and so they'll come for revenge.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:00
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First few times I ran Changeling I had each player create their Keeper and that was that, I rarely used more than one. In my last game, all PCs (and most NPCs) had been taken by the same three Fae, and it worked a lot better, since you could tie all of that together and was easier to keep their threat relevant and in theme.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:01
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Read through the Bridge Burner's section myself and ultimately I dislike it for what it is and the metatextual goal it is trying to achieve by rekindling the Banality motif. It is good that they flipped the way it is expressed, that it isn't a permanent fixture of the game but rather a motivation for the ISIS-terrorist analog that apparently you have to include in a roleplaying game in 2017. However, you still result in this incredibly boring and insipid Zizekian combination of art critique and cultural critique laying at the center of the argument, with a character written from one very specific writer's point of view being landed into a game where the core appeal of Changeling the Lost is how it centers the point of view of individual players first. Is Brutalism not art? Has none of them suffered a Durance where the core expression was one of drudgery and a flattened isolated loneliness? How do you talk out of one side of your mouth about expressing science without wonder yet turn around to punch up the Ufology of Keepers running experiments on captured mortals? I have nothing against throwing a(n antagonist) game faction in that is utterly incorrect in how it sees the world, if that is the goal. But the writing strains to fit within the semiotics of the old Banality first, and backseats serving any players that left CtD behind. Gerund fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Nov 29, 2017 |
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Nov 29, 2017 20:40
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So, it struck me on the walk to work that given game lines based around monsters and a title like Contagion, that the Contagion Chronicle could be built around zombies? Is there any information other than the TBA entry on the Onyx Press path about CC?
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Nov 30, 2017 04:38
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The Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook dropped today. It's kind of making me want to run a near-future Werewolf game, mixing Incorporated into it. If any of you haven't seen it but are running Pentex/Syndicate games any time soon, it's a good watch for inspiration - especially the scene in episode 3 with the feeding ritual.
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Nov 30, 2017 05:16
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Tasoth posted:So, it struck me on the walk to work that given game lines based around monsters and a title like Contagion, that the Contagion Chronicle could be built around zombies? Is there any information other than the TBA entry on the Onyx Press path about CC? Very little, I think most of it is in the thread on the forum, though some might have dropped tidbits on 4chan or discord or whatever. The Monday Meeting list doesn't have it anywhere on the development status so it might still just exist in ideas-before-first-draft form.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:01
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my only problem with only having a few keepers in an area is like... say you have a city of a few hundred thousand, or a million. You're probably going to have 1+ thousand changlings in a city of 400k or bigger, if it's the focus of your game, right? So... that seems like very little to have come from 4 or so keepers.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:11
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Loomer posted:The Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook dropped today. It's kind of making me want to run a near-future Werewolf game, mixing Incorporated into it. If any of you haven't seen it but are running Pentex/Syndicate games any time soon, it's a good watch for inspiration - especially the scene in episode 3 with the feeding ritual. I love the deep cut against CCP.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:16
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I'm going to have to fairly extensively revise the Corporate World of Darkness graph now.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:25
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Neopie posted:my only problem with only having a few keepers in an area is like... say you have a city of a few hundred thousand, or a million. You're probably going to have 1+ thousand changlings in a city of 400k or bigger, if it's the focus of your game, right? So... that seems like very little to have come from 4 or so keepers. Where do you get that number from? I'd expect it to be way lower. Maybe about 100/million, at the absolute highest level.
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Nov 30, 2017 06:34
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cptn_dr posted:Where do you get that number from? I'd expect it to be way lower. Maybe about 100/million, at the absolute highest level. I think it would be lower, too. But even with, say, 30 changelings, if they're all being hunted by the same 3-4 Keepers with a few titles between them then you have a weird situation, and the changelings would be similar, wouldn't they? Would the Bell Wolf have that much variety in its creations? And if it's a territory thing, you have a strong incentive to just up and leave, as then your Keeper is much less a problem, even though you may have to deal with Huntsmen. Mind that this isn't a bad thing, it should expand the number of Keepers who have kept changelings in a region. But realistically the only Keepers and Huntsmen that are going to have an impact in a game (beyond the changelings they made and their potential aspirations) are going to be those linked to special NPCs and the PCs. nofather fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 06:58
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100 per million seems especially low to me, since that implies only the largest cities would have a functional Changeling court system (Since, with seasonals, you need enough people to form four political bodies, plus however many make it through the hedge without the ability to meaningfully participate, but who are still looked after by local changelings). Meanwhile, we have four courts in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, a town of about 15,000 people. 100/million might be a decent estimate globally, but there's probably going to be demographic clumps of changelings that spike that in certain cities.
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Nov 30, 2017 11:58
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nofather posted:I think it would be lower, too. But even with, say, 30 changelings, if they're all being hunted by the same 3-4 Keepers with a few titles between them then you have a weird situation, and the changelings would be similar, wouldn't they? Would the Bell Wolf have that much variety in its creations? The text talks about how you can, in fact, get a variety of Seemings and kiths with each example, at least, and seems to imply that Keepervterritories aren't strictly geographic, but rather thematic.
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Nov 30, 2017 12:25
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Mors Rattus posted:The text talks about how you can, in fact, get a variety of Seemings and kiths with each example, at least, and seems to imply that Keepervterritories aren't strictly geographic, but rather thematic. Unless my section on Keepers changed in the big development reshuffle (which it very well might have), the intent was never to say that all or even most changelings in a given area have the same Keeper or few Keepers, but to illustrate how you can have a whole motley with the same Keeper without them all being Darkling Antiquarians or whatever.
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Nov 30, 2017 14:02
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I don’t think it’s changed much from that. I may have been reading into it things not strictly present. That said, I’ve always liked smaller Keeper numbers in an area just for ease of gming.
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Nov 30, 2017 14:42
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Honestly, I do feel having a specific cadre of Keepers threatening a Freehold works better (and you can definitely have several different Seemings from the same Keeper, even without Titles being involved) than almost everyone having different ones. This means that the Freehold has a specific set of threats that all characters, PCs and NPCs alike, can relate to, and it also adds another bridge to build connections to NPCs with, they can relate their experiences with the Knife-Throated Prince or whatever and might even have shared memories of their Durance, hell, they might have escaped together even. If everyone has different Keepers then the threat is a lot less personal and can more easily devolve into a monster of the week scenario. Also, I don't think the Keeper will stop considering a given Changeling their property just because they moved from Strassbourg to Pindamonhangaba. Staying with the local Freehold means you can count on the support of Changelings who have managed to evade your Fae for a good while. Re: Population chat, I feel this is a historical problem with WoD and CoD games since Vampire, whose archetypal setting was a decaying metropolis capable of supporting large populations of every clan and sect, which set the precedent for the social structure of most splats since, but it's not really a supernatural social model that makes sense if you're not running a game in a city with a population in the millions. It's another personal preference, but I generally prefer to have smaller supernatural populations to avoid the WoD effect of every meaningful character being something spooky, and it helps the PCs feel more special, even if they're baseline starting characters.
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Nov 30, 2017 14:49
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Supernatural populations are a spectre that haunted my games for years. Having smaller supernatural populations - at least of the major splats - helps the PCs (and magical NPCs) feel special; it makes connections more intimate and emphasizes the contrast of the magical and mundane (and makes the magic more special in the process). It's so nice, and I wish it was something that'd been outlined long ago to me. The Demon: The Descent Storyteller's Guide was actually a pretty great book for exploring themes and styles, and I'd really love it if there was a general CofD book that outlined "Hey, here's some setting assumptions we don't touch on much; here's how tweaking them might affect your games". Honestly, Contagion Chronicle would be the perfect place for it but I don't think that's happening.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:08
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In most CoD games I want the supernatural population to be really low. Major population centers with a lot of vampires have maybe 100 or so, give or take a few. There will be maybe three or four packs of werewolves in a large city, including Pure. Maybe a few dozen mages,and who knows how many demons because they're all hiding as hard as they can. On the other hand, I kind of like the idea that there are a whole lot of changelings out there. It makes the threat of the Fae a lot more broad and wide-ranging, and lets you have Courts with a large cast of weirdos and Goblin Market scenes like the one in Hellboy 2. And unlike most other splats, Changelings can really just be people trying to deal with their lives. They don't need to eat people, they don't need to Hunt things, they're not addicted to mysteries, they're just people who have been through some weird, bad poo poo and have to deal with it.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:21
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The abuse metaphor makes it more sensible for a lot of Changelings to exist--abuse victims are everywhere, after all. Also, like regular abuse victims, they may seek out the comfort and company of others who have been through similar, but they might not. There are a whole host of possible responses to that sudden freedom. Of course, if one is running a chronicle in a less-populated area, it'd make sense for the PCs to be the primary supernatural group. A smaller town might be sort of vaguely aware of the evil lurking in the hedge nearby, and refusing to talk about it, much like any other abusive local figure that is simply accepted because of their power, and tribal loyalty.
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Nov 30, 2017 18:50
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I'm not there yet in my reading of the draft but in 1e Changelings could sort-of live in the Hedge as small groups or isolated loners. So it can bump the population up a few notches. We'd have the Freehold and then those outsiders in the nearby Hedge and the question of if they are part of the community or no.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:02
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Unrelated to anything Changeling: Half-Damned dropped yesterday. It's a decent Vampire book. Dhampir eat the lion's share of both word count and coolness. Their hooks: They can spot vampires, they all have Thief of Fate, they all have some grand destiny to fight or accept, and they get magic powers built around destiny, fate and vampirism. These come in two types: Twists and Malisons. Twists let them use broad powers, but are limited by the dots they have in Themes - essentially, areas in which the power applies, three of which are associated with each clan, and which they are best at using by the clan of their parent. Malisons are slightly grander sorceries - divinations, curses, that kind of thing - that require the dhampir to sacrifice their own blood (and so their own health). The revenant and ghoul sections are nice, with some expanded discussion of life as a revenant or ghoul, some new merits, a revenant-only Discipline, and some variant ghoul types. It's good, not overwhelming, but good. Some misses, but most of them are, at worst, a bit bland.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:04
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I always liked the idea that different cities had vastly different supernatural populations and it caused weird social clashing issues within loose groups. One city has werewolves and vampires clashing violently in an ongoing war, whereas a nearby city thinks all vamps from the first city are absolute wusses because they have the twelve or thirteen wolves in town almost on complete lockdown. A small town that's just on the edge of being rural has almost no supernaturals but dozens of Demons, since there's tons of gears and projects for the God Machine in the area...and the demons' presence is making it snowball. Changeling populations spike wherever there's a sense of wonderment or a focus on stories - Disneyland loses far more customers a year than it would like to admit, but the town built around an old paper mill doesn't take fairy tales like that seriously. You want to stay away from the clinic there, though - something about the receptionist there seems off, and it's just not right for a place of healing to have so many dead plants and flowers all around the building. I do like to have basically shitloads of mages everywhere, though - after all, most Orders would actively like to awaken Sleepers and have people working towards that goal pretty much all the time, and mage lends itself really well to the kind of "hell is other people" stifling bureaucracy that benefits from dozens of NPCs at every power level all vying for their own objectives.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:17
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One of the most enjoyable vampire games I was in was set in Marquette, MI. there were only about 20-30 vampires there, half of them either on the run from a bigger city's covenants or just sick of them. So you had some trying to be the big fish in a small pond and playing politics and others going "ah poo poo not again" or just flat out ignoring the mandates given. Also lead to things like "I'm the mekhet primogen because I'm one of two in the city, and the other guy is too busy developing coils to give a poo poo."
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Nov 30, 2017 19:31
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:here will be maybe three or four packs of werewolves in a large city, including Pure. That is very few, but I'm guessing this isn't in werewolf games? I'm pretty ambiguous with things, I don't give players a list of every character in the game, that seems to be a thing people do now. 'Alright you wanted to be in the Circle of the Crone? You're part of Krystal's covey (description of the gorgeous and mysterious Krystal), there's several other members of it, most noteworthy are Carmella, who disappeared recently, and Erika, Krystal's childe. There's a few other members not part of any covey, like Vancer and Mia, and another covey that monopolizes a lot of the Circle's political clout, led by the powerful elder Mother of Scales.' Then depending on the character's interest or who shows up where they'll meet more in one direction or another, and I can add in another vampire if I need because I haven't stated 'These are the vampires, there are no more than these.' And they start knowing some characters, again without me having to describe them unless they're interested. There's assorted VIPs, too. nofather fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 21:11
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To be fair, werewolves tend to take up more space. I imagine Protectorates tend to cover a bit more ground ('the entire county' rather than 'the entire city') compared to other societies, with the possible exception of mage consiliums.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:15
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, werewolves tend to take up more space. I imagine Protectorates tend to cover a bit more ground ('the entire county' rather than 'the entire city') compared to other societies, with the possible exception of mage consiliums. I thought in bigger cities werewolf territories tended to be like "Brooklyn between 7th and 54th".
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Nov 30, 2017 21:28
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, werewolves tend to take up more space. I imagine Protectorates tend to cover a bit more ground ('the entire county' rather than 'the entire city') compared to other societies, with the possible exception of mage consiliums. Yeah and territory (and knowing it) is more of a thing. But if I wasn't running werewolf or focusing another game around werewolf I'd probably just have scattered rando werewolves. Running it I'd probably let the players know who their neighboring packs are, as well as whoever the big shots in the area are (this guy wants to form a protectorate, that pack killed a massive helion dihim, those guys are part of a crazy cult so don't get on their bad side, etc). You can do a lot with cities, though. It would be cool to have some sort of megatropolis game where territories could be narrowed down to single (but large) buildings. Kurieg posted:I thought in bigger cities werewolf territories tended to be like "Brooklyn between 7th and 54th". They can, there's a lot more going on in cities and they tend to have more z levels. But if you have 3-4 packs for a large city, they're probably going to have huge expanses of territory. Or very little territory and utterly cowed by rampant spirits.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:28
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CtL: 116.8k New goal: 119k, special CtL dice for the Onyx Path dice app.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:58
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Finally got a chance to start chewing into the Jyhad diary. Nice to see that Chicago continues to scare the poo poo out of Beckett. There's a brief direct mention that I picked up on my skim through of his last visit to the place in 2001(? I think, anyway. Possibly '02) and his encounter there with another sleeping methuselah, but the scarab amulet is a nice little allusion as it was in the Year of the Scarab novel trilogy, if my memory serves correctly.
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Dec 1, 2017 03:01
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Loomer posted:Finally got a chance to start chewing into the Jyhad diary. Nice to see that Chicago continues to scare the poo poo out of Beckett. What's scary about Chicago? Aside from it being Chicago, I mean.
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Dec 1, 2017 03:28
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nofather posted:What's scary about Chicago? Aside from it being Chicago, I mean. black people e: oh you meant in game and not why it keeps being used as a horror trope, that was a wrong read sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Dec 1, 2017 |
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Dec 1, 2017 03:33
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nofather posted:What's scary about Chicago? Aside from it being Chicago, I mean. Full of active/semi-active methuselahs that like to take over the minds of everyone in the city to play out their tired melodramatic war against each other. That and a legion of 1E fanboys who insist that 1E was like, soooo deep man.
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Dec 1, 2017 03:36
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Changeling: 119k. Stretch goal: 123k, a Changeling jumpstart will be made and everyone who has backed at PDF level or higher will get it.
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Dec 1, 2017 18:43
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Loomer posted:Full of active/semi-active methuselahs that like to take over the minds of everyone in the city to play out their tired melodramatic war against each other. That and a legion of 1E fanboys who insist that 1E was like, soooo deep man. There was also that big war with Garou that resulted in the death of the sitting Prince.
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Dec 1, 2017 20:09
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Mors Rattus posted:Changeling: 119k. This is a really good add-on for any kickstarter. Its one thing to sell to the choir but another to make an add-on product to expand your base.
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Dec 1, 2017 20:25
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On the project front, I think I'm going to abandon hope of finishing the remaining novels, etc, off and just try to clean and publish the data I have. I may or may not keep it updated going forward but I'm finding I have less and less time for it between university, the esoteric and fraternal orders, romance, and the tabletop games.
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Dec 3, 2017 08:47
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I just hit a brick wall running session 1 of Promethean and had to make poo poo up after holding up the game for 15 minutes going up and down the book. There are plenty of things that affect dicerolls for creating and festering wastelands. There is nothing in the book that explains what that diceroll is. Do I just roll Azoth? Why isn't this explained anywhere in the book? e: I got dicerolls for Disquiet and Firestorms, so I think I just assumed I also saw dicerolls for Wastelands when I originally read through the book but apparently I didn't because I can't find them now.
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Dec 3, 2017 19:17
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I've been doodling some High Speech runes for my game of Mage: The Awakening. (Well, so far one has been for the game, a fragment of the Seal of the Nemesis, while the other two have been just doodling and an Atlantean rendition of the Summoning Dark from Thud!) All of them end up looking kind of like cubist elephants. I'm not sure if this is something I'm doing wrong or if high speech contains vast and secret implications of elephants, but I thought it was funny.
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