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occamsnailfile posted:It's interesting to me that the Cams are always portrayed as the hidebound, unable-to-adapt conservative faction but the major difference I saw with them and the Anarchs was just that the Anarchs didn't want to kowtow to literal bronze age regents and didn't like being blood bound slaves. The Anarch movement might be comparatively young against the long night of Vampire civilization but a vampire from the twelfth century is still going to have very different values and outlook from a modern reader (or 13th gen) The setting was inconsistent about it. Obviously the Camarilla supported neofeudalism but sometimes they've adapted their power structures to more modern kinds of control while other times they literally wear crowns and poo poo.
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May 1, 2018 20:58
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Mendrian posted:The setting was inconsistent about it. Obviously the Camarilla supported neofeudalism but sometimes they've adapted their power structures to more modern kinds of control while other times they literally wear crowns and poo poo.
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May 1, 2018 21:30
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Kurieg posted:I'm kind of curious as to how they're going to "Whoops NM Lol" the apocalypse the way they're apparently doing to gehenna.
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May 1, 2018 21:39
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The only potentially interesting twist to Werewolf would be if it's *just* the Garou that aren't having new births. Like all the other Changing Breeds just fine, Gaia is just officially done with the Werewolves poo poo.
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May 1, 2018 22:11
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That's a really clever idea! With how utterly universal shape-changers are in cultural mythology, it would be really cool to explore the mokole and even werecats in more depth. I'd be really curious what would happen if the ghouled bastet kinfolk were freed from Setite control, that would make for interesting dynamics. It would also be a sidelong nod to eurocentric imperialism, acknowledging how overwhelming the woofs got and how much of a metaphor for white cultural violence that was. Plus, that one breed of Scottish wildcat has been rediscovered, so that would be cool to work with. Edit- I had a fun player moment tonight. The characters were clearing out an abandoned Tremere bunker, which was generating power from a trapped lightning spirit to fuel this huge mysterious HAARP-like antennae system. As intended, they figured out a way to jury-rig the system such that they could entrap the spirit in an item, but couldn't decide what to choose. See, for atmosphere, I decided that since this place held 3-4 people who didn't leave for weeks at a time, boredom would be an issue. I mentioned that, in the small library, someone had left behind a box with a portable DVD player, and a bunch of 90s movies about cops working with dinosaurs. One player asked, "If we put a disk in the player, would the spirit be able to communicate with us through sound clips from the movie?" And that's how we ended up with a +3 copy of Theodore Rex. In my head, without consulting any of the W20 books on spirits, I had figured it was going to add +3 to a weapon's attack not damage, and subtract 3 from the target's action next turn, to represent stun. I know the RAW for Spirit Manipulation just says the fetish rating applies to attack and damage, but that's kind of boring and my players deal enough damage as is, so I wanted something different. Is that a fair trade? What other fun spirit effects have y'all used? PHIZ KALIFA fucked around with this message at 04:34 on May 2, 2018 |
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May 2, 2018 03:47
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Night Horrors: Enemy Action seems to be released. I like Demon, but I'm not really familiar with the Night Horrors line, what should I expect if I choose to pick the book up? Is it mostly just premade angels?
Crasical fucked around with this message at 05:57 on May 2, 2018 |
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May 2, 2018 05:25
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Crasical posted:Night Horrors: Enemy Action seems to be released. I like Demon, but I'm not really familiar with the Night Horrors line, what should I expect if I choose to pick the book up? Is it mostly just premade angels? It's all NPCs but they're not just angels, basically if it's something even vaguely Demon-related it has an entry or two -- angels, exiles, cryptids, demons, stigmatics, etc. Personally I wish Night Horrors were less just "a collection of NPCs" and more a broad exploration of the antagonists for a given splat -- kind of like some of the old 1E books were -- but as far as collections of NPCs go, Enemy Action is really good.
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May 2, 2018 05:29
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Crasical posted:Night Horrors: Enemy Action seems to be released. I like Demon, but I'm not really familiar with the Night Horrors line, what should I expect if I choose to pick the book up? Is it mostly just premade angels? Premade antagonists, for the most part. There's five chapters. The first has 10 demons, the second has 10 angels, the third has 6 exiles, the fourth 8 cryptids, and the fifth 8 'Stigmatics, Sleepers, and Cultists.' The preview on the DrivethruRPG lets you see the table of contents and the first part of the introduction (which very briefly introduces the demons and angels and some of the exiles).
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May 2, 2018 05:33
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Thanks for the info, guys. Changing topics a bit, I wanted to adapt the crocodile's bite as a Predatory Aspect for use with a Vampire's Protean, and I'm not super confident on the balancing aspect of it. The crocodile seen here has the following stats for its bite: quote:Type Damage Dice Pool The other 'natural weapons' Predatory Aspect gives you +1L mundane claws, so right off the bat I'm thinking I probably want to drop the damage modifier entirely and just focus on the secondary effects: A) You can bite without initiating a grapple B) As above, and Biting initiates a grapple C) As above, and Grappled victims take a -2 die penalty to counter grapple once bitten You can emulate A+B by Frenzying, but going all the way to 'C' seems like it might be too strong. Anyone with a bit more system mastery than me want to weigh in? I want to make a horrible catfish swamp vampire.
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May 2, 2018 05:58
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Look at urshul form in WtF. Basically does the same thing. Bites auto grapple, you can apply arm wrack, leg wrack, or knocked down once a scene.
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May 2, 2018 06:19
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Mulva posted:The only potentially interesting twist to Werewolf would be if it's *just* the Garou that aren't having new births. Like all the other Changing Breeds just fine, Gaia is just officially done with the Werewolves poo poo.
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May 2, 2018 06:32
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The Shadow Lords retreat to the Umbral Dark Web, rechristening themselves The Shitlords.
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May 2, 2018 06:37
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Working through the 14k vampire entries is a goddamn nightmare in so many ways. I made it really hard on myself with the initial formatting, and if anyone is considering replicating my madness for nWoD, take my advice: Don't, and if you do, definitely don't use this as your basic layout in a word document. Go right to excel or a database program, because cleaning it up was hell and there's so many legacy issues complicating it when you add in that some of these entries are like 5 years old and I have zero memory what they're on about. Sire (omitting generation and clan because you're an idiot and figure it'll be obvious because they're sire of <x>) -Childe (xgen [clan], embracedate, birthdate, date-of-death, misc and often cryptic notes, and if you're lucky it's in that order consistently.) --Grandchilde (same, but maybe omit clan and gen because you're an idiot) Oh, and don't, like I did, use the same notation for ghouls and factions if you want to be able to convert it to databases easily.
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May 2, 2018 08:31
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:The Shadow Lords retreat to the Umbral Dark Web, rechristening themselves The Shitlords. and giant neckbeards
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May 2, 2018 14:32
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Nessus posted:If you can thread the needle, make it so the other breeds' big problem is at this point not a steady gaining on the forces of the Wyrm, it's dealing with the Garou howling "it's all hosed" and trying to slaughter everyone while shouting something about being "Haranocel." PHIZ KALIFA posted:The Shadow Lords retreat to the Umbral Dark Web, rechristening themselves The Shitlords. Yawgmoth posted:werewolves in fedoras Stop giving NuWolf ideas.
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May 2, 2018 14:57
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Kurieg posted:Stop giving NuWolf ideas.
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May 3, 2018 10:13
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Another potential find as I chew through the work. There is a vampire in the southwest USA in Hunter called 'the name eater', who, well, eats names and ideas and makes people disappear by doing it. Malkavian lore includes a childe of [Malkav] called the Word Eater that feeds on true names, not blood, and consumes entire existences. The Eater is real, and he lives in Arizona.
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May 3, 2018 18:06
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Loomer posted:Another potential find as I chew through the work. There is a vampire in the southwest USA in Hunter called 'the name eater', who, well, eats names and ideas and makes people disappear by doing it. Malkavian lore includes a childe of [Malkav] called the Word Eater that feeds on true names, not blood, and consumes entire existences. Oh, nice. Well done. One thing I liked about Hunter (I actually like Hunter more than most) was when they'd throw curveballs at things we the reader 'knew' and threw in genuine surprises, and also how the worked hard (sometimes) to make the thing we 'knew' seem really creepy and strange from a half-informed Imbued's eyes when we could probably have it as a PC in another game.
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May 3, 2018 19:39
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Hunter was great except for the part where the central thematic point is you are stupid and broken and can't be a Hunter because you are supposed to instantly go insane and die like 5 seconds after you figure out how your powers work. Hunter 20th would be the most amusing of all the books to see, because it's the one [Even more than Demon] most dependent on the world ending. Like if Hunters actually had decades to get their poo poo together and actually figure some things out it's pretty much impossible to imagine them not packing the poo poo of quite a few supernatural groups. Their abilities used intelligently are simply that good at the job.
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May 3, 2018 19:50
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For all the weird inconsistencies, Hunter was really really well-written (one or two stinker books aside). All the problems are in the design, not the execution. I'd love to run a good H:tR game one of these days, but none of my players are remotely interested.
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May 3, 2018 22:25
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My two favorite bits of old fiction are "Right and Wrong", the bookend story from Time of Judgement, and the running story of Doctor Van Wyk. The dude too loving awkward to be a functioning person, but too drat empathetic not to be a hero.
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May 3, 2018 23:52
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My favourite fiction in a WoD book is still the opening fiction from Second Sight.
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May 4, 2018 00:07
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Mulva posted:My two favorite bits of old fiction are "Right and Wrong", the bookend story from Time of Judgement, and the running story of Doctor Van Wyk. The dude too loving awkward to be a functioning person, but too drat empathetic not to be a hero. Yeah, same. That scene in the H:tR corebook where he failed to save the young hunter's life stayed with me. I got his card! 
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May 4, 2018 00:35
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My favorite fiction from a WoD book is BvD because my brain is a wasteland.
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May 4, 2018 00:38
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MonsieurChoc posted:For all the weird inconsistencies, Hunter was really really well-written (one or two stinker books aside). All the problems are in the design, not the execution. Not sure if by design you mean just the game design or the art and such as well, but it should definitely include the latter in either case. The promotional material and art in the core was all about being a badass running around with double barreled sawed offs and having sword battles with zombies, while the game was basically the creeping paranoia of They Live. A lot of the mixed impressions of the game seemed to emerge right at the start with that disconnect. I always kind of wondered if the game might have been better received if it wasn't called "hunter". Something like "prophet" or "doom seer" but titled by someone more clever than me who can think of a decent X:the Y that captures H:tR's actual mood.
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May 4, 2018 01:24
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Mulva posted:My two favorite bits of old fiction are "Right and Wrong", the bookend story from Time of Judgement, and the running story of Doctor Van Wyk. The dude too loving awkward to be a functioning person, but too drat empathetic not to be a hero. That book also featured Crusader17 trying to take down Lucifer himself. It didn't work, but a creditable effort. In his first full appearance, the Avengers book, Crusader17 was an interesting character. A fundamentalist Christian who was, at the same time, still pretty nuanced. Sadly that didn't last past the first book or, I expect more aptly, when he wasn't being written by somebody like Greg Stolze. Hunter also gave us Wayward, which is still a fantastic book and made God45 a lot scarier than his initial impression of being a - wait for it - a fundie Christian. (He's not. He's so not. And I think he got his hands on a nuke during the Time of Judgement, so that was fun I'm sure.)
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May 4, 2018 01:48
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Desiden posted:Not sure if by design you mean just the game design or the art and such as well, but it should definitely include the latter in either case. The promotional material and art in the core was all about being a badass running around with double barreled sawed offs and having sword battles with zombies, while the game was basically the creeping paranoia of They Live. A lot of the mixed impressions of the game seemed to emerge right at the start with that disconnect. The Storyteller Handbook has art appropriate to the theme and it's loving great. It also has really good tips on how to run a game and build monster antagonists.
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May 4, 2018 02:18
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If an Osirian promethean becomes a real boy do their dicks grow back?
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May 4, 2018 02:46
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Wrapped up era demarcation for finer granularity. 619 are noted as having been active before the year 500. These figures do not include those who may have been, just those we can be sure were. 3700 are noted as having been active between 500 and 1450 - it's an unsatisfyingly broad swathe, I admit, but we don't know enough about pre-1000 or post-1250 to have them be meaningful categories of their own, so a whole 'middle ages' gestalt does the job. 1375 are noted as having been active between 1450 and 1800. 1624 from 1800 to 1900. 7889 from 1900 - 2004. This is the most suspect category - many off-hand entries with limited detail may have been miscategorized. 140 vampires are listed as being active/at least not dead through all 5 demarcated eras, not including antediluvians. The only possible way a vampire is active that long is as a methuselah - and a lot of vampires recorded specifically as methuselahs aren't in the ancient era note because the cut-off is 4th or 5th generation and no less than 1000 years, meaning that many are of uncertain antiquity but definite medievality. I'll try and get some fancy charts of this, then move into the reasonable assumptions, tracking down 'true generations' (e.g. if a 5th gen eats a 4th gen, his true generation is still 5. Expect the Tremere and Giovanni to be crazy high much of the time), figuring out probable nationalities, etc. From there I can get to the juicy stuff, with true accurate gen-by-clan breakdowns for the main eras, the real impact of diablerie on a lineage (it only takes one ancestor to throw your gen/true gen out of whack), spans of undead life where deaths and embraces are known, average age at embrace where known by era, average lifespan where known per sect and clan, number of ghouls per cainite, known lineages by length (and their impact on overall clan demographics), and best of all, descent charts made with genealogy software mapping those known lineages. For the moment, a teaser. The most fecund year for new cainites on the books was 1999, followed by 1991 and then 1944. 57% of known generations are canon as opposed to logical supposition (e.g. the sire of a non-diablerist 13th gen is a 12th gen), and there at least 59 historical, literary, or mythical figures that are also vampires, including Ambrose Bierce, Beowulf, and everyone's favourite, Jesus himself who as we all know is a Lasombra.
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May 4, 2018 13:47
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Doesn't that make Jesus an Abomination, since he was also a Child of Gaia?
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May 4, 2018 14:59
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Mors Rattus posted:Doesn't that make Jesus an Abomination, since he was also a Child of Gaia? Only a kinfolk, if he was even that. Also a sorceror! (This is why I laugh at people who whine that Demon made judeochristianity 'real' for the oWoD. Fuckin' Jesus is literally torpid under ephesus.)
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May 4, 2018 15:03
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And evidently a mage of Celestial Chorus too?
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May 4, 2018 15:05
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Christianity was true in oWoD from day one, with Vampire starting out with Cain mythology and an intensely Victorian Christian take on things like morality. (Explicitly Christianity, not Judaism, albeit a twisted and maltheist Christianity.) e: honestly, 'Cain is a vampire' is a pretty Christian mythological take, too, though prior to Dracula it'd be more commonly 'Cain is an immortal fae thing'.
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May 4, 2018 15:08
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Foglet posted:And evidently a mage of Celestial Chorus too? I don't think he was ever actually given outright mage status, from recollection. I'll check the file later.
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May 4, 2018 15:51
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I liked Silent Striders Revised's subdued take on the Lamb of Hosts. "Something was up. Wyrm stuff wouldn't within a mile of him. More than that..." *Shrugging of shoulders*
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May 4, 2018 16:36
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Loomer posted:Only a kinfolk, if he was even that. Also a sorceror! (This is why I laugh at people who whine that Demon made judeochristianity 'real' for the oWoD. Fuckin' Jesus is literally torpid under ephesus.) Maltheist quasi-Christianity being the explicit background of the oWoD is one of the best things about it. I like the nWoD's semi-ambiguous prehistory too, mind, and wouldn't change it since it suits what that setting's trying to do, but I miss the brazenness of going "God is real and he hates vampires."
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May 4, 2018 16:49
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I haven't studied it as much as some people, but I don't think you can really reconcile the cosmologies of the different oWoD games. The closest I've come to being able to do it in my own games is to assume a sort of Gnostic framework within a sort of Buddhist cosmology, where Vampire's Abrahamic God exists, but within the universe, and subject to change and entropy like everything else.
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May 4, 2018 16:54
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When you think about it, Lasombra Jesus rising from torpor to singlehandedly crush the blasphemous Cainite-riddled version of christianity in DA:V would be an amazing and probably super offensive game to run. "Archbishop Moncada? A fellow named 'Jesus' is here and he wants a very aggressive word. Something about 'shadow-whipping the moneylenders out of his house'?"
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May 4, 2018 16:55
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So wait, where is Jesus's write-up in oWoD?
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May 4, 2018 17:04
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I thought Jesus was a Risen.
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May 4, 2018 17:30
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