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There are some really cool lore implications of other splats existing alongside Demons, but not only does it require pre-existing investment in the lore of Demon: The Descent, often it even moreso requires investment in the lore of the other splat, which is a tall order. Like the Werewolf / Demon crossover stuff I've posted about before is incredibly weird and original, even more than Demon already is by itself, but most of it is buried in obscure Werewolf supplements. Actually including other splats in a game of Demon is also very tricky. Demon is a very focused game in terms of the tools it gives you and the risk/reward factors of overt or covert action -- you have to risk exposure to maintain your powers and advance your character, but direct attention is really bad for you, and all your powers revolve around hiding yourself or resolving situations in which you are exposed quickly and brutally. If you introduce allies (let alone other PCs) who can ignore this dynamic, it weakens the central theme of the game. You might be able to pair it effectively with Changeling or Mage if you made their antagonists especially active and existing splat-aligned power structures like the Courts or the Pentacle were locally absent, weak, or covert, but even that'd be tricky. Changeling / Demon has an interesting dynamic in terms of them being both natural allies and natural enemies, and Mages of course are hilarious dangerous to Demons by virtue of their nosiness, which make for interesting NPCs but less so mixed PCs.
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Apr 23, 2018 20:15
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Warthur posted:Your new thing sounds interesting. Do you intend to present it as a standalone game? Because as with Beast (and to a certain extent Demon, come to think of it) I'm not sure what having the other CofD splats present in that setting really adds. I think they'd make useful cross-splat antagonists, as a symbol representing the injuries the World (and players) inflict upon the vast swath of NPC mortals. Sort of like a trauma-numina, something more feral and self-destructive than an imbued hunter. A scab with spikes. It calls into question the righteousness of player violence, if injured bystanders can be compelled to evil as an act of self-defense. As characters themselves, it would be fun playing monstrous mortals in a world of Actual Monsters. You're the bully who bullies the bullies, extracting revenge on the thing that made you powerful. Do you struggle to defeat it by overcoming your initial trauma, or do you embody the worst aspect of human violence and drone bomb it into oblivion? With how involved I'm thinking the therapy aspect would need to be, it probably does run better as an independent game. FATE might be a barebones enough system, but I like how easy trauma monsters fits into a world of exploitative horror. I'd need to account for what makes these different from Hunters at the very least. Since I think y'all might be interested, here's the first crack I took at gamifying therapy. The Guide to the Tal'Mahe'Rah included one cult called the "Adoptive Childer of Malakai" which posited that Malkav (crazy vampire) had an even crazier sister out in the shadowlands who never created her own line but grants insight and wisdom to her faithful. The book mentions that the cult has the capacity to cure Malkavian insanity, so I thought of a way that might work: Sever the Net, Silence the Calling (lv 5) Taught only to Malakai’s most loyal, Sever the Net is whispered of as both a fatal curse and a transformative blessing, for only by Severing a Malkavian can they escape the perpetual torment of their illnesses. Though, this escape is not without cost. It silences the torment of the ill, but it strips access to both Dementation and the Cobweb, locking a member of Malkav’s chorus in their own, silent, mind. Among the unprepared, frenzy is common, for the only thing worse than hearing voices is silence. On the other hand, it’s theraputic uses have prevented more than one soul from falling to moral decay and indulgence. System: The roll for this ritual is Manipulation+Empathy. The difficulty is either subject’s Dementation+Cobweb rating, or their permanent Willpower, whichever is higher. For each derangement, generate two or more phrases which illustrate the thought patterns altered by the derangement. For Depression, “why loving bother?” or “worthless waste of space” are two possibilities, while Sanguinary Animism might have “secrets sleep in blood.” The phrases do not have to be factual or logical and may represent thought patterns the subject isn't even aware they have. Each phrase must be cured with a Manipulation+Empathy roll, exceptional successes lower the difficulty on the next roll. For each successful roll, subject alters a memory from their life where that phrase was confirmed or reinforced in some way. This is a therapeutic narrative device, but exceptional role-playing should be rewarded. The caster can choose which derangement to resolve first, and can resolve as many as they choose in a single casting. Incremental progress remains active between castings, and each actively resolved derangement reduces the difficulty of Empathy rolls in future Severings by 1. Should an elder ever have more than 10 Willpower or Dementation+Cobweb, the following restrictions apply: Only one derangement can be treated per caster per lunar cycle. The difficulty is 10 for all rolls, and each derangement gets 4 phrases. While active, the subject suffers no ill effects from their resolved derangements. If all their derangements are resolved, they cannot access their Dementation or Cobweb powers. Furthermore, all Auspex and Awareness rolls are made at +1 difficulty. If, at any time, the caster botches once, they gain the derangement they were attempting to cure. The ritual fails completely if there are two botches in a row, and all progress is lost. This power remains active for a full lunar cycle. At the start of each new cycle, character must roll Self Control or Conviction, at the initial difficulty, with the number of required successes equal to the number of completed cycles since casting. At each check, a player can attempt to will the Severing to end early by rolling Willpower, difficulty equal to caster’s Intelligence+Occult. When the subject accumulates a number of successes equal to the caster’s Willpower, the severing is broken. Either way, when the effect ends and the full force of Malkav’s blessing returns to the subject, frenzy is extremely likely. With ST approval, this power could also apply to some negative social and mental traits related to self-perception or confidence. For each point of trait, generate one phrase.
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Apr 23, 2018 20:33
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Saw this over on RPG.net in a summation of What We Know about V:tM 5E:quote:The vampires are undergoing a Second Inquisition, which is spurred by a govenmental organized purge, even beyond the activities of Project Twilight. It's apparently very brutal and effective. A lot of the Second Inquisition, based on how the plots ran in Berlin, seem to be spurred by Anarchs loving up, terror-bombing the Camarilla and drawing attention of the ABC organizations. There was some early-mention of the Technocracy being involved but this has not been referenced since. The pre-alpha scenario from WoD Berlin is explicit in it being a 'turning point' in the Anarchs loving up by terror-bombing the Camarilla and drawing more government attention than just 'dead bodies walking around'. When they say 'Berlin' do they mean Martin's home LARP?
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Apr 23, 2018 22:57
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They ran a Rules light 5e larp at the WoD Berlin convention, I think that's the one where MR*H got swirlied.
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Apr 23, 2018 23:04
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Is elder Thaumaturgy a Dark Ages thing? There's a few NPCs in the Guide to the Tal'Mahe'Rah with (i think) 7-8 dots in it. Is that main and secondary path, or am I missing something?
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Apr 23, 2018 23:11
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:There's a Shadow Over Innsmouth-style fan splat about playing Lovecraftian sea gribblies, but it didn't look great at a quick glance, and I don't think there are really any major commercial knock-offs that have you playing the monsters in that scenario. And yeah, I've never heard anyone say a kind word about Fireborn. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/pkfan2004/leviathan-the-tempest/ The themes are definitely not bad, though I can't say much about the mechanics. They fit an interesting niche. quote:A LEVIATHAN is an ostensibly human being with an old, old heritage. Deep within their blood is the blood of Gods, and they're just slightly lucky enough for that blood to be thicker than most people for them to be able to tap into that heritage. This is not always a good thing. A Leviathan is torn between three forces within themselves: the Beast, the Man, the God. There are consequences to giving in to one force over the others and they walk a very tenuous equilibrium. The themes are probably one of the better ones I've seen in a fanslpat. At least compared to Princess and Genius. Deviant actually seems like it could be tuned to do Magical Girls actually.
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Apr 24, 2018 00:12
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i remember liking the ideas in the Leviathan fansplat when i glanced through it years ago
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Apr 24, 2018 00:22
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Does anyone have the pre-alpha playtest for V5? I'm trying to describe how awful it is to someone who was considering buying it, and the file was freely available but all the links are dead
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Apr 24, 2018 00:34
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"Gay nightclub terrorist" kind of sums it up.
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Apr 24, 2018 00:41
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Mendrian posted:"Gay nightclub terrorist" kind of sums it up. No it doesn't. You left out the gay spartan cosplayers with wooden spears. I.e. the only good thing in the entire nuWW production to date.
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Apr 24, 2018 01:49
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Warthur posted:Likewise, UFO aliens are a gap, but don't really fit the more supernatural than science fiction underpinnings of the setting. UFOs are actually very thoroughly Changeling. Strange, otherworldly creatures abducting humans for weird experimentation, strange patterns on the ground which might be gateways to other worlds, etc etc.
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Apr 24, 2018 02:00
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zeal posted:i remember liking the ideas in the Leviathan fansplat when i glanced through it years ago Leviathan is the closest thing I've seen to a fan splat with a cohesive vision that actually is worth a poo poo. Unfortunately, the mechanics they've made are garbage. I've toyed on-again off-again with going back to do an overview of where the project's at since they restarted to make it CofD compatible, but the short version is that their primary power mechanics are a shambolic mess. Their main powers have different tiers of effects based on the condition of your character, akin to Atavisms and Nightmares (though they had the idea first, I will say!), but the problem is that it's tied to their shapeshifting...which has seven different forms, and innately does almost nothing except turn on the tiers of the powers you've bought. It feels like they had this idea, but they felt that five forms was too similar to Werewolf and that three wasn't enough, so they went with seven and backed it up with Babylonian numerology stuff. This in spite of the fact that mechanically, form 3 is recognizably an inhuman monster, so why not go all the way to form 6 if you're already a Street Shark? Seriously. Every single power they have to write has to have seven tiers you can theoretically move up and down at will (except the shapeshifting mechanics mean you're probably going to take three or four turns to actually hulk out, and I don't know about you guys, but I have NEVER been in a CofD combat where we went more than four, maybe five rounds). It's a balancing nightmare, and it also leads to a whole bunch of powers where the jumps between tiers are almost nonexistent so they can stretch the one idea they had out into seven effects. E: I do have to reiterate though, the high concepts at play in Leviathan actually have some serious backbone to them, the whole interplay of the Wake on everyone in the Leviathan's life is hosed up in a good way, the weird Astral ocean genetic memory zone they've got is extremely evocative, and it actually had one of the best sidekick NPC type pitches I've ever seen in the form of a psychiatrist who's immune to the Wake (automatic brain washing cult-making aura) and has to deal with every Leviathan in the tri-state attempting to monopolize their time because holy poo poo someone finally listens to me when I need help and doesn't just offer to slaughter a goat for me Daeren fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 24, 2018 |
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Apr 24, 2018 02:19
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Let's be fair though, it's a way better use of someone's time to fix Leviathan then fix Beast even though everyone and their loving brother trips over themselves to do the latter.
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Apr 24, 2018 02:27
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Mr. Maltose posted:Let's be fair though, it's a way better use of someone's time to fix Leviathan then fix Beast even though everyone and their loving brother trips over themselves to do the latter. Not gonna lie when I say I used the former as methadone for the latter when I was going through that part of the grieving process.
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Apr 24, 2018 02:28
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Honestly I might take a crack at that myself at some point, although "fix Leviathan" in my case would really just mean "astral-flavored squid shifters" and not much else in common. 
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Apr 24, 2018 02:30
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Desiden posted:No it doesn't. You left out the gay spartan cosplayers with wooden spears. I.e. the only good thing in the entire nuWW production to date. They came really close to being good, and then nuWW used them as a disposable powerup. They're inclusivity value it's massively outweighed by giving PCs a bonus for their massacre. Also releasing it nearly on the anniversary of the Pulse shooting, and including a jihadi masquerading as a refugee. gently caress this whole thing.
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Apr 24, 2018 02:34
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lol it looks like Modiphius is distributing V5:quote:V5 is a return to Vampire's original vision, moving boldly into the 21st century. …and always spinning, spinning, spinning into the future!
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Apr 24, 2018 02:43
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Mr. Maltose posted:Let's be fair though, it's a way better use of someone's time to fix Leviathan
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Apr 24, 2018 03:45
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That Old Tree posted:lol it looks like Modiphius is distributing V5: White Wolf really is just some weirdo's pet project now.
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Apr 24, 2018 04:22
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moths posted:They came really close to being good, and then nuWW used them as a disposable powerup. This was my point yeah.
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Apr 24, 2018 05:04
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moths posted:They came really close to being good, and then nuWW used them as a disposable powerup. wait, is there a world of darkness supplement where gay kids idolizing a society of slaving pederasts is played as a good thing at all
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Apr 24, 2018 05:53
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:White Wolf really is just some weirdo's pet project now. Is there some specific punchline I'm missing with Modiphius? Swedracula doesn't seem to care about anything but making his fanfiction canon. We've had two godawful mobile text adventures, a Werewolf game by Cyanide that doesn't have so much as a bullshot trailer to its name, a fanbook PDF program, and... that's it. All of the effort seems to have gone into European LARP events. The buyout was two and a half years ago and we are just now getting the finalized corebook.
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Apr 24, 2018 06:12
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I appreciate that it might be a good idea for gauging interest, but pre-orders seems like it's just Kickstarter but 'we're totally not doing Kickstarter.'
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Apr 24, 2018 06:54
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nofather posted:I appreciate that it might be a good idea for gauging interest, but pre-orders seems like it's just Kickstarter but 'we're totally not doing Kickstarter.' Preorders are kickstarter if kickstarter gave your zero incentive to invest in the product. Swededracula is bad and nobody should support this train wreck.
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Apr 24, 2018 06:56
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. . . More Gehenna plot? Really? The gently caress is there even left to say about that. Come on.
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Apr 24, 2018 08:06
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:. . . More Gehenna plot? Really? The gently caress is there even left to say about that. Come on. The whole pitch is a return to the ~personal horror~ that made the game so great in the early 90's. Which is why the Masquerade has been breached, there's a worldwide inquisition and a clash of civilizations between East and West, and poo poo like entire cities on lockdown with soldiers in black helicopters having action-packed fights with blood-drinking warriors.
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Apr 24, 2018 08:17
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Personal horror is horror that involves people, duh! Not the existential dread of losing yourself to a condition that you can exercise only partial control over.
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Apr 24, 2018 08:46
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:. . . More Gehenna plot? Really? The gently caress is there even left to say about that. Come on. The Gehenna and Second Inquisition stuff seems to be less interactable plot and more a heavy-handed justification for setting up the new Camarilla-vs.-Anarch status quo - the Sabbat and the Elders have hosed off over the horizon, vampires are largely restricted to single cities, and the slapfight between Camarilla institutional power and the Anarchs which 1st edition and very early 2nd edition focused on is back on. I can see the appeal of that style of game, but trying to reconcile it to the old canon rather than brushing it all aside and starting over inevitably leads to clumsiness like what we've seen.
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Apr 24, 2018 09:10
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I mean it seems like the easiest solution is to just gently caress off somewhere the Cam isn't if the Sabbat all left. It's not like there are infinite vampires to go around, if the Sabbat isn't an issue there's now a ton of space that the Cam can't police open for your little experiment in a new way of being stupid and terrible. How is that a fight?
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Apr 24, 2018 10:02
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To revisit VtM in its 'classic' era properly, just get blasted on grain alcohol and rewatch Lost Boys and Blade a couple of times. Or as it's also known, my average thursday night.
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Apr 24, 2018 10:07
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sorry if this question comes up all the time and i just didn't see the answer but is there a concise primer on the issues with new-old world of darkness and swedracula?
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Apr 24, 2018 10:19
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V:tES might be coming back? http://www.vekn.net/2-uncategorised/394-vampire-the-eternal-struggle-returns-to-print
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Apr 24, 2018 11:10
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Yeah, it's been in the cards (see what I did there? Fuckin' cutting edge humour over here) for a while now. It's good to see it back even if I won't be buying the new edition because of the White Wolf dimension. It was a far better game than it had any right to be.
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Apr 24, 2018 11:17
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Mulva posted:I mean it seems like the easiest solution is to just gently caress off somewhere the Cam isn't if the Sabbat all left. It's not like there are infinite vampires to go around, if the Sabbat isn't an issue there's now a ton of space that the Cam can't police open for your little experiment in a new way of being stupid and terrible. How is that a fight?
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Apr 24, 2018 11:19
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As we all know, the best way to avoid notice by terrifyingly well networked enemies in a modern era of smartphones, facial recognition, and always-on voice recognition software is to stay... concentrated around lots of those devices. As usual, the Gangrel living in the woods contributing to the Missing 411 books by making hikers and bears disappear has the right idea.
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Apr 24, 2018 11:21
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Interesting that they're only reprinting the two most recent expansions and (presumably) a crypt set. I could be wrong, but i think that was all the stuff produced under CCP.
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Apr 24, 2018 12:10
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Warthur posted:As I understand it, that's where the Second Inquisition comes into the equation - as I understand the details that have come out so far, because of their activities inter-city travel is difficult and vampires are in practice penned into cities where their local power base is capable of keeping them under the 2I's radar. So you don't have the option of just upping stakes and leaving. Which feels like needless justification when the old 'there are werewolves and also it's hard getting anywhere if you can't get there in a single night' did pretty well in my experience. It feels like the 'you paid for the whole seat but only need the edge' style edition.
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Apr 24, 2018 14:00
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Loomer posted:To revisit VtM in its 'classic' era properly, just get blasted on grain alcohol and rewatch Lost Boys and Blade a couple of times. Or as it's also known, my average thursday night.
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Apr 24, 2018 14:28
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Did they keep Generation? Gehenna worked in the old world because Generation provided an undeniable mechanistic proof of the diminishing power of the Embrace. Once you start hitting 14th and 15th, it's obvious the end times are around the corner because of how dilute the clan blood becomes. Generation is tied to the Antediluvian, is tied to Gehenna. What even is the apocalypse in a world where Gehenna fails? Why do any of this.
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Apr 24, 2018 14:58
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Loomer posted:As we all know, the best way to avoid notice by terrifyingly well networked enemies in a modern era of smartphones, facial recognition, and always-on voice recognition software is to stay... concentrated around lots of those devices.
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Apr 24, 2018 15:17
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