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Having just to grips with the text adventure engine I was using, I'm ditching it for something more robust that can handle non-player directed factional disputes. I couldn't get it to make a werewolf and a vampire fight without coding it specifically to their names, which would require either a, very limited NPC interactions or b, script bloat with every relevant NPC object name being included in every other NPCs combat scripts for very, very little gain. EDIT: The exact scenario I have in mind is one I could do with the limited NPC interactions easily enough, though. I have a set piece in mind where a PC lures a Sabbat pack into a known Bone Gnawer hangout, then tries to escape in the chaos, so I could just set the combat scripts up specially around it. But I'd also like to be able to have more flexibility so that things like that can emerge dynamically, not just statically. I might be getting too far ahead of myself though. Loomer fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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Jun 21, 2018 05:15
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Semi-related but Loomer, I was thinking of ways of adapting Dawn of Worlds for use in generating social cityscapes in the World of Darkness. Basically a stripped-down version where you take an existing city map and divide it up between domains of various player-created factions and what have you, setting the stage for the game proper. In the headgame I'm setting this for, the players would each control a whole coterie, probably ones from different sects, for maximum plotting and counterplotting. Anyway that just struck me as something you might like
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Jun 21, 2018 06:03
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It's a neat idea. It'd be very fun to do a wildly different oWoD game using that or Microscope to generate the sect struggles as well. EDIT: I'm going to need to find some decent 2d assets for this if I move away from strict text adventure to a more Sunless Sea (but in Chicago) route. gently caress. Loomer fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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Jun 21, 2018 08:32
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Loomer posted:It's a neat idea. It'd be very fun to do a wildly different oWoD game using that or Microscope to generate the sect struggles as well. There are tons of maps for Chicago, but I just use google maps for the game I'm running set there. It might work fine for doing something like Dawn of Worlds, but there would be less geography (which is fine, Chicago is flat and has like two rivers). Even if you don't do it Dawn of Worlds style, google maps is pretty good for it. There are some maps floating around out there from 1931 that are probably a great style for what you'd want. Doesn't come close to the full south, north, or west sides being included, but is cool. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-chicago-gangland-map-sale-20180530-story.html Another good way to do it would be by using a neighborhoods map. The city is pretty loyal to neighborhoods being important, and they're mostly sort of organized in that way for commerce and residential. There are some exceptions of course, but once you're not in the loop you're looking at neighborhood rivalries. I have the vampires here segmented with those lines, as the Prince thought it would be useful to award domains that way. There are tons of neighborhood maps, because it's an important thing here. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-Chicago-neighborhoods-including-Bronzeville-and-Pilsen-Note-Map-retrieved-from_fig1_258198427
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Jun 21, 2018 15:50
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Oh, that part's easy. It's the direct interaction maps that are trickier, unless I really do go Sunless Chicago style and just have different parts of the map open up a text box rather than a topdown sprite based thing.
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Jun 21, 2018 16:10
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
You're like the only other person I've heard recommend Person of Interest as a Demon-inspiration show, but I totally agree. The usual action hero superhuman gunplay and TV techno-handwaving work quite well as Embeds and it explores similar themes of absolute surveillance, paranoia, and ends justifying means. Just yeah, nobody transforms into a shivering horror with eight eyes and ten wings and glowing spikes. Mage is a very explicitly gnostic-themed game but so is Demon, and the God-Machine is as good a rendition of a demiurge as any. quote:
Hunter is also getting a new release though it is further out than Geist. I want to play Hunter pretty badly as an excuse to make myself read the books instead of just F&F reviews, but the setting postulates quite a number of interesting human responses to awareness of the supernatural. It is totally a game one could play to be all "no it is MAN who is the true monster" if one wanted, but it also supports many other levels and tones of weekly monster hunting.
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Jun 21, 2018 17:41
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Loomer posted:Oh, that part's easy. It's the direct interaction maps that are trickier, unless I really do go Sunless Chicago style and just have different parts of the map open up a text box rather than a topdown sprite based thing. Google Hangouts already has integrated dice roll mechanics, how much work would it be to setup a Google Maps API where you "claim" terrain by drawing translucent shapes on it?
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Jun 21, 2018 18:34
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occamsnailfile posted:You're like the only other person I've heard recommend Person of Interest as a Demon-inspiration show, but I totally agree. The usual action hero superhuman gunplay and TV techno-handwaving work quite well as Embeds and it explores similar themes of absolute surveillance, paranoia, and ends justifying means. Just yeah, nobody transforms into a shivering horror with eight eyes and ten wings and glowing spikes. It is literally cited by the Demon core.
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Jun 21, 2018 19:10
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occamsnailfile posted:You're like the only other person I've heard recommend Person of Interest as a Demon-inspiration show, but I totally agree. The usual action hero superhuman gunplay and TV techno-handwaving work quite well as Embeds and it explores similar themes of absolute surveillance, paranoia, and ends justifying means. Just yeah, nobody transforms into a shivering horror with eight eyes and ten wings and glowing spikes. I wrote Demon's corebook opening fiction to a loop of Person of Interest's soundtrack. It's one of the inspirational materials listed in the book! (I *think* it's also where Travis got the naming style of demons calling themselves "Mister Rock", etc from - Travis did that for one of the chapter opening fictions and everyone else then copied him, because it's cool.)
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Jun 21, 2018 19:20
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Dave Brookshaw posted:(I *think* it's also where Travis got the naming style of demons calling themselves "Mister Rock", etc from - Travis did that for one of the chapter opening fictions and everyone else then copied him, because it's cool.) Nah, I stole that shamelessly from Dark City.
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Jun 21, 2018 20:49
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occamsnailfile posted:Mage is a very explicitly gnostic-themed game but so is Demon, and the God-Machine is as good a rendition of a demiurge as any. Mage's gnosticism is one of the reasons I kind of dislike it so when you compared demon to it I got irrationally offended. I mean, you're RIGHT, but it annoyed me.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:44
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I wrote Demon's corebook opening fiction to a loop of Person of Interest's soundtrack. It's one of the inspirational materials listed in the book! I didn't read the inspirational section obviously--I just happened to watch the show and make the obvious connection. So uh, good taste in inspiration I guess! Crasical posted:
If it's any consolation Demon's interpretation is pretty starkly different. For one thing, there's not really any guarantee at all that breaking the God-Machine's power over material reality would accomplish anything whatsoever.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:56
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The New WoD always make me think of John Carpenter, especially Prince of Darkness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWbFni6_25Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY-QBvy3lR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYZIU1uIS2w
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Jun 21, 2018 23:18
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What's wrong with Gnosticism?
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Jun 22, 2018 01:14
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MonsieurChoc posted:The New WoD always make me think of John Carpenter, especially Prince of Darkness. gently caress yes. I really love Prince of Darkness, possibly the weirdest movie Carpenter has ever made.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:57
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MonsieurChoc posted:The New WoD always make me think of John Carpenter, especially Prince of Darkness. I always got a whole horror section feel. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there, and vampires, werewolves and sorcerers are the most well known but you pick up Facial and there's some dude whose basement has grown a face and is asking for human sacrifices and offering gold in exchange for them, and somewhere a college student is staying on campus for the break and being chased by an organization of wannabe killers who have decided they're going to spend the night killing every Kristy they can find. Like the gamelines are just a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that's out there.
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Jun 22, 2018 03:09
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nofather posted:I always got a whole horror section feel. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there, and vampires, werewolves and sorcerers are the most well known but you pick up Facial and there's some dude whose basement has grown a face and is asking for human sacrifices and offering gold in exchange for them, and somewhere a college student is staying on campus for the break and being chased by an organization of wannabe killers who have decided they're going to spend the night killing every Kristy they can find. Like the gamelines are just a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that's out there. Yes, exactly.
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Jun 22, 2018 03:49
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Google Hangouts already has integrated dice roll mechanics, how much work would it be to setup a Google Maps API where you "claim" terrain by drawing translucent shapes on it? I don't know, I don't have any coding experience. It'd probably be very easy though since it's a natively supported feature and all that.
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Jun 22, 2018 12:31
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nofather posted:I always got a whole horror section feel. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there, and vampires, werewolves and sorcerers are the most well known but you pick up Facial and there's some dude whose basement has grown a face and is asking for human sacrifices and offering gold in exchange for them, and somewhere a college student is staying on campus for the break and being chased by an organization of wannabe killers who have decided they're going to spend the night killing every Kristy they can find. Like the gamelines are just a drop in the bucket compared to everything else that's out there. That was a thing I enjoyed in Reckoning. They'd throw these curve balls at you when talking about something so the reader could not pat themselves on the back and be very clever indeed recognizing a Brujah antitribu. Or even a vampire as the WoD knows it. I love that they ramped that up in nWoD. Even Chicago, mixed bag that that book was, had a great 'weird stuff' section.
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Jun 22, 2018 13:08
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I definitely mix weird poo poo from the nWoD in when I run oWoD games. Cymothoa sanguinaria and the ragged-men are a particular favourite.
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Jun 22, 2018 13:14
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Sometimes the amount of worldbuilding nWoD expects you to do for yourself gets on my tits (looking at you, Demon) but I quite like its steadfast refusal to explain exactly how and why things came to be the way they are. Gives you room to slot random weirdness into your game and helps preserve the msytery.
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Jun 22, 2018 13:47
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Terrorforge posted:Sometimes the amount of worldbuilding nWoD expects you to do for yourself gets on my tits (looking at you, Demon) but I quite like its steadfast refusal to explain exactly how and why things came to be the way they are. Gives you room to slot random weirdness into your game and helps preserve the msytery. It gives away a lot more than people think, and I'm glad because mystery is overrated and you can always change the things you don't like anyways.
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Jun 22, 2018 14:07
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The same is true of Reckoning, incidentally. While they do a great job of making it not too obvious, there are only like three things that I couldn't identify for you with at least 2:1 odds of being correct. A lot of the mystery can be assembled into a cohesive whole but it requires you to have no life.
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Jun 22, 2018 14:19
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It gives away a lot more than people think, and I'm glad because mystery is overrated and you can always change the things you don't like anyways. It does? I'm mostly thinking of the one-off stuff, like that guy from Skinchangers who has dogs willing disembowel themselves to keep him from freezing to death on the streets. Got his stats, his story and notes on how to use him in a game, but barely even hints at what's actually happened to him. Then again, flipping through the book I think that one example (along with VtR's "choose your own clan origin" gimmick) may have colored my perception of the whole line. Many other examples are more forthcoming with their weirdness, from offering a vague hint to straight up stating "on January 5th 1889, Jebediah Badman made a deal with the demon Baal'sereth to reclaim his fortune in return for human sacrifice".
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Jun 22, 2018 15:42
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Vampire is probably highest on the list of "doesn't explain anything about its backstory" but that's also my least favorite thing about Vampire. Mage and Werewolf on the other hand provide an absolute mountain of information you can use both to get a pretty extensive idea of the history of the nWoD in general and especially as it relates to those specific splats. Doubly so if you start pulling in 1E material (which I generally do unless explicitly contradicted by 2E materials). This is probably not quite the same thing you're talking about, which sounds more like open-ended adventure hooks, which, sure, I've got no problem with that. But I don't buy gigantic glossy hardcover books just for rules (and in nWoD's case it certainly isn't for the art); I want a setting where someone's done the work of creating an interesting cosmology and history, a sandbox for me to play in and extend, not create from scratch. I'd play a more generic game if I wanted to do that. I also personally don't mind having to dig for it because I get a kick out of that, but I wouldn't turn down a setting bible either. (Imperial Mysteries comes close to being one and I love it for probably the same reasons its authors have called it a mistake.  )
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 16:40
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On reflection I probably have this view because I've only ever read the "hey here's some stuff" supplements like Second Sight, never the "hey let's flesh out an aspect of the setting" ones like Tribes of the Moon. I guess that would lead someone to believe the nWoD canon consists entirely of disjointed choose-your-own-backstory gribblies to plop down wherever
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Jun 22, 2018 17:12
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I was noodling with going back to the other, less flexible but already there engine and library set (quest, if anyone was curious. I'm now that idiot trying to replicate half its perfectly fine functions in unity for the sake of scripts I could probably do in quest if i was competent!) only to find the vampire adventure scripts have been corrupted. It's a sign from the VAs again.
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Jun 22, 2018 17:44
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Hey, thinking of running a game of Requiem after a long sabbatical from CoD. It's actually very, very hard to read the corebook. Any janky rules I should know about? Good houserules to recommend? General tips and tricks? Also, I remember someone made a bunch of 'Things X Can Do' for all of the different splats, can anyone link me to that?
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Jun 23, 2018 06:46
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Down With People posted:Hey, thinking of running a game of Requiem after a long sabbatical from CoD. It's actually very, very hard to read the corebook. Any janky rules I should know about? Good houserules to recommend? General tips and tricks? Also, I remember someone made a bunch of 'Things X Can Do' for all of the different splats, can anyone link me to that? Use 2e, it's objectively better. If you're sticking to 1e, get rid of the frenzy-upon-meeting-vampires rule. Might offer some hand-picked bloodlines to the players too. If using 2e, have some of the Conditions in the back of the book written out on index cards (or a piece of paper) makes it easy to pass off to players if they get them. And since vampires don't get Willpower back by sleeping, Mask and Dirge are pretty important and something to think about. The game was made with the expectation that people would be using Willpower a lot (and their characters acting appropriately when exhausted, tired, hungry). Before you put any NPC or antagonist in the game you might want to look at the potential combat dicepools the PCs will have, as well as their Health. Creating mechanically equivalent challenges can be tricky but that's an easy way to get off on the right foot (if PC A dicepool+weapon > BBEG Health, need new BBEG). Either edition, there's a ton of NPCs scattered across the books you can use, even if you're playing them separate from their 'given' backstory. The mechanics for them don't need much in the way of conversion outside of bloodlines and adding Athletics to Defense. Someone (I think Gentleman Gamer?) once gave the advice of having just a list of names with brief descriptions, like two sentences, in case you get to a point where the players want to start talking to NPCs you didn't expect them to talk to. It's an easy place to give them aspirations, too, so they have some wants of their own.
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Jun 23, 2018 09:21
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Down With People posted:Hey, thinking of running a game of Requiem after a long sabbatical from CoD. It's actually very, very hard to read the corebook. Any janky rules I should know about? Good houserules to recommend? General tips and tricks? Also, I remember someone made a bunch of 'Things X Can Do' for all of the different splats, can anyone link me to that? Here you go. As for tips: use group Beats. Lean on the side of giving your players too much information rather than too little. Do the name list thing, and structure your story in the vein generally. We all know that no plan survives contact with the players, so I find it useful to just keep track of who's involved and what their motivation is and detail plan at most one session in advance so I can react to the players and their actions rather than be like "whoops I guess all the relevant things happened somewhere else while you were dicking around". And don't be afraid to change what you do detail plan; if the PCs are "supposed" to meet the sympathetic Mekhet pariah when she's being humiliated at the Prince's ball but they decide they don't want to go to a stupid ball and prowl around the back streets, maybe she's there being victimized by the prince's thugs instead.
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Jun 23, 2018 11:31
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https://twitter.com/wwpublishing/status/1010509440829669377
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Jun 23, 2018 15:12
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nofather posted:And since vampires don't get Willpower back by sleeping
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Jun 23, 2018 16:56
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Yawgmoth posted:uh, what? You are the second person I've heard say this and the first guy was an idiot who thought the Herd merit was broken. Is this actually explicitly written out anywhere? It's not, but it's also not explicitly written out (or even implied) anywhere that they do; VtR 2e is completely silent on the matter for both mortals and vampires. Apparently it's the intended reading, though. e: this is a recurring problem with the CofD books, actually. something that was in 1e/the core but isn't in 2e/the splat but the only clue that it was removed is that it isn't there any more, which is easy to miss and even if you do notice you never know if it was a deliberate change or an accidental omission Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jun 23, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 17:18
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Terrorforge posted:It's not, but it's also not explicitly written out (or even implied) anywhere that they do; VtR 2e is completely silent on the matter for both mortals and vampires. Apparently it's the intended reading, though. Where did Rose clarify that? Specific overrides general; in the absence of a specific rule, you assume the general rule. I respect it if that's the writer's intent but the RAW is clear in this case.
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Jun 23, 2018 17:29
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Let that cat usurp the position of lead writer on all oWoD books. 
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Jun 23, 2018 17:41
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Mendrian posted:Where did Rose clarify that? Here. I didn't bother tracking it down earlier, but it turned out to be easier than expected. Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jun 23, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 17:42
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Hostile V posted:Let that cat usurp the position of lead writer on all oWoD books. Then the Cat Vampires will invade Pugmire while defending the World of Darkness from the Skaven. Do it.
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Jun 23, 2018 17:55
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ZearothK posted:Then the Cat Vampires will invade Pugmire while defending the World of Darkness from the Skaven. I... I would play this unironically
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Jun 23, 2018 20:47
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Mendrian posted:Where did Rose clarify that? Yeah, so because vampires don't regain willpower through sleep, the rule that anyone does isn't in vampire. werewolf, beast, and promethean have the omission, because they do but their books don't say that they do. Mage onwards realised that it'd been left out, so Mage does say that mages do. But no, vampires don't regain wp through resting.
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Jun 24, 2018 01:31
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Man I am so glad that none of the vampire games I've been in have followed that because I think I've seen mask/dirge (or virtue/vice in 1e) come up a grand total of maybe three times, ever. Probably because if we spent as much time on feeding scenes for blood, mask/dirge for willpower, and aspirations for individual beats as the book expects, we wouldn't have any time left in a session to have a plot.
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Jun 24, 2018 02:06
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