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Mors Rattus posted:Conditions are great and you should use them, though. I like the general idea but I don't like that the incentive for completing them is XP.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:19
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Blamestorm posted:Hey, let me know if this is better for another thread. I’ve been thinking about running a Mage game at work but I have no experience with the CoD systems. I haven’t bought the books yet, but I’m trying to work out how difficult this stuff would be to run, particularly if my players are RPG newbies and probably aren’t the types to go heavy into buying/reading the books (as in I will need to explain the setting and mechanics at the table, maybe with some basic stuff in emails in advance). To add to what others have said, the core system for Chronicles of Darkness is pretty solid and simple (Attribute + Skill, +dice for bonus, -dice for penalties and difficulty). It can get complex, specially when you are adding supernatural powers and they all have a bunch of purple prose taking up text space. What I've taken to using is printing out for each player a cheat-sheet with all their powers, and it's helped the less system-savvy ones keep up. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Also designing NPCs / enemies for Chronicles of Darkness games is a lot of work. The tools you're given for creating unique monsters are honestly very limited, and while there's much more support for creating supernatural NPCs (of the same type as the players, or other kinds), mechanically speaking, they're often fully-fledged characters just like the PCs. If you want to have a Werewolf in your Vampire game then you either need to come up with a good simplified approximation of the Werewolf rules (this exists in at least one book, but I forget where) or use a fully statted Werewolf (which is cool and mechanically distinct, but now you have to understand how two game lines work!) I completely agree with you on beats being a bad implementation (I just give everyone flat XP per session), but I think you are making that more complicated than it has to be. In my first campaign for Vampire: The Masquerade I literally did the character sheet for every single NPC, but after that I just took to giving every NPC a dicepool appropriate for their level of competence at thing. 4 dice for average, 6 for good, 8 for elite, 10 for top of the line, 12+ for supernatural horrors. That spares me from worrying about giving everyone attributes and skills and I just use the dice amount appropriate at this case (e.g.: the SWAT dudes have 8 for shooting and police work, but they roll a mere 4 at bluffing or taking part in the tap-dancing competition). For powers just figure out one to three cools things they are likely to pull out in a given encounter and that's it, done. Naturally also give them drives if they are recurring. NPC's should by all means not have the same level of detail as PC's. I blame the books statting out NPC's in full detail, but it seems that Onyx Path is finally learning not to do that with Scion, where NPC's/Antagonists are simplified by default. [edit]Can someone link again that doc with "what each splat can do"? I forgot to save it last time. ZearothK fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jul 19, 2018 |
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Jul 19, 2018 15:39
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ZearothK posted:[edit]Can someone link again that doc with "what each splat can do"? I forgot to save it last time. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fs94M6KRp-_TTNMByhjnRLHSWYJNjN5KBtabg2-gyEE/edit This thing really needs to be in the OP already.
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Jul 19, 2018 16:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I like the general idea but I don't like that the incentive for completing them is XP. I have to think about them as just Adjectives that modify the core experience of reality. It makes it easier for me to pass out conditions and bonuses for all the exceptional successes that constantly show up in my mate game. They’re a great idea, but I honestly could use a chart of things that make some sense as conditions to just pull them off quickly. Otherwise I have to split my brain mid-scene to come up with something and it can easily ruin the flow. E: yes, I know there are a bunch in the books, but I find them too specific for situations that don’t often arise.
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Jul 19, 2018 17:19
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Slimnoid posted:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fs94M6KRp-_TTNMByhjnRLHSWYJNjN5KBtabg2-gyEE/edit Thanks! And yeah, I checked the OP to see if it was there, definitely should be.
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Jul 19, 2018 17:32
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Personally I've found Aspirations and Obsessions in Mage a really nice addition to my group's playstyle, with the one player for whom they absolutely don't click just not using them.  Obviously use group beats if you do use beats, though. In particular, Arcane Beats in Mage have made my players extremely happy and willing to play into their Obsessions getting them into stupid trouble, because the fundamental structure of beats is that they reward bad ideas and make it clear that the game is ok with bad decisions. I really like that for the genre- especially since I can use offering beats to players to signal 'if you do this thing you're considering but think is OOC too risky or vicious or obsessive, I promise it won't be the end of the world and ruin the game.' I've been trying really hard to get two of my more worry-prone players to relax about winning every encounter, and beats have really helped soften enemies escaping or bad decisions not panning out. Similarly, my players have been happy to get negative Conditions both for the RP opportunities but also, the beats sweeten it and make clear OOC that this is the game moving forward as it should. Regardless, it is slightly more complicated than just handing out EXP every session, though now that I've made a cheat sheet with every obsession and aspiration and a space to write conditions, as ST I've found it very easy to basically deal with them. Sometimes my players will say 'does this count for my Obsession with Sacrificial Symbolism' or 'this is my aspiration Alienate Someone With My Weird Legacy' but mostly I just have a list in front of me. Obsessions clearly matter way more than Aspirations in this context due to Mage, but Aspirations are a fun spice. As for new players, I think beats/Aspirations might be something to phase in rather than start with, just as Mages are something to phase in. Possibly you could get your players on board for playing normal humans (sleepwalkers, though, i.e. Rare people who can stand to see Magic without bleeding from the eyes, figuratively) and have some Mage-related adventures and monster investigating, and then have them Awaken as mages one by one (or all at the same time- Magic in Mage has a real narrative and symbolic lean, so it could happen) to introduce the Mage plot? Obviously if you do this, talk it over OOC with your players to figure out what magical path is right for their character once that's on the table. Good luck!
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Jul 19, 2018 17:47
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How is Beckett's Jyhad Diary? I've been tempted for a little while. Did it have any of nuWW spitting up on it like other anniversary books?
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Jul 19, 2018 17:50
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Dawgstar posted:How is Beckett's Jyhad Diary? I've been tempted for a little while. Did it have any of nuWW spitting up on it like other anniversary books? It’s a really good roundup of updated metaplot material, plus some new stuff like Rasputin being chased around South America by undead nevernudes. It’s pretty good on the respectful use of material, and includes stuff like Sascha Vykos being “they” and not “it.”
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Jul 19, 2018 18:06
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Jhet posted:I have to think about them as just Adjectives that modify the core experience of reality. It makes it easier for me to pass out conditions and bonuses for all the exceptional successes that constantly show up in my mate game. yes thissssssssssssssssss Maybe a cheap pdf of conditions? I can't imagine it'd sell any worse than the pregen character packs.
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Jul 19, 2018 19:13
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I just have my players tell me when they should be getting beats for Aspirations/Obsessions at this point. It's already right there in front of them and I'm of the ilk at the table where I trust my players to tell me how their abilities are supposed to work. At this point, they're 100% in charge of what they do, and that leaves me the brain space to worry about NPC motivations and the setting in the scenes they're moving through. The NPCs have gotten more complex, because I'm doing less book keeping and more narrative thinking. Granted, it took a little while to get things sort of ironed out to where everyone is pretty comfortable with spell casting and even CT for the most part. But definitely leave your players to be adults and take care of their own characters if they can be. Soonmot posted:yes thissssssssssssssssss Maybe a cheap pdf of conditions? I can't imagine it'd sell any worse than the pregen character packs. I'm the sort of idiot who even bought the condition and tilt card packs. I would shell out for it, but I can't see it being particularly well selling as a peripheral, so it will never happen. I'd settle for a spreadsheet that people just add things they've used successfully.
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Jul 19, 2018 22:16
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My only reason for using the obsession/aspiration cheat sheet is that we previously had players taking charge of pinging obsessions and aspirations, but keeping track of them to set up scenes where players would have a chance to shine in them required constant checking back in with players, and they didn't really keep track of them consistently, which people were getting frustrated at themselves over. So I centralized them on one sheet for refence and it turns out that's worked very well for keeping track of stuff in a centralized manner as well.
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Jul 20, 2018 04:24
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Joe Slowboat posted:My only reason for using the obsession/aspiration cheat sheet is that we previously had players taking charge of pinging obsessions and aspirations, but keeping track of them to set up scenes where players would have a chance to shine in them required constant checking back in with players, and they didn't really keep track of them consistently, which people were getting frustrated at themselves over. So I centralized them on one sheet for refence and it turns out that's worked very well for keeping track of stuff in a centralized manner as well. I use a whiteboard, and designate one of my players Keeper of the Dry-Erase Marker.
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Jul 20, 2018 08:14
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I use a whiteboard, and designate one of my players Keeper of the Dry-Erase Marker. The proud and revered position of Blackboard Monitor is a mighty task: to destroy and create words is no small thing. Unfortunately, we play by Skype, so it's not particularly practical for my group.
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Jul 20, 2018 08:16
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Joe Slowboat posted:The proud and revered position of Blackboard Monitor is a mighty task: to destroy and create words is no small thing. Google Docs? But then you're screen sharing with skype and I get that would be a pain. Your solution is definitely a good one, and I'd do it myself with another group or an online group. I think I also don't worry about if they're having access to fulfilling their aspirations/obsessions regularly because the first thing we do is ask what they want to do tonight. I have an email that I bounce off them in between, so our scene list is usually fairly full and I generally can know what I need to be ready to pull out. Except one time when someone couldn't make it and they decided to steal a Sue, the dinosaur, from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and then visit the place it was found in South Dakota to try to postcognition when it died. Didn't work in the end, but I did not see that one coming.
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Jul 20, 2018 14:32
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Hi goons, I've been lurking a bit and wanted to ask for advice. I've been considering running a CtL 1E game for a little bit and most of my experience comes from V20. One aspect of Vampire I like a lot is feeding. It shows a lot about the character from their methods, how they handle the risk, where they go, etc and serves as a great way to throw out plot hooks and drive home some of the themes of vampires as predators. I'm struggling to envision those same types of challenges and struggles associated with harvesting glamour. It seems a lot less challenging and engaging. Am I looking at this from the wrong perspective, given that changelings are ofc not vampires? Do any other storytellers have experience in creating engaging harvesting scenes that dont boil down to just hanging out somewhere and sponging up emotion?
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Jul 20, 2018 16:46
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Commissar Budgie posted:Hi goons, I've been lurking a bit and wanted to ask for advice. I've been considering running a CtL 1E game for a little bit and most of my experience comes from V20. One aspect of Vampire I like a lot is feeding. It shows a lot about the character from their methods, how they handle the risk, where they go, etc and serves as a great way to throw out plot hooks and drive home some of the themes of vampires as predators. Harvesting is, in fact, considerably lower impact and difficulty. It is not comparable to feeding in pretty much any sense unless you go for a full ravishing. I'd suggest, for trying to focus on the themes of abuse and struggle with coming home again, focus on interaction with the fetch. Your fetch is, after all, not necessarily a bad person, and may be a better one than you. Or it might be a total monster - but it's still been living your life while you were gone, getting horribly tortured by the Gentry and being changed into what you are now to survive the experience. (I'd also heavily suggest checking out Changeling 2e, if you can find the KS text for it, incidentally.)
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Jul 20, 2018 16:49
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Commissar Budgie posted:Hi goons, I've been lurking a bit and wanted to ask for advice. I've been considering running a CtL 1E game for a little bit and most of my experience comes from V20. One aspect of Vampire I like a lot is feeding. It shows a lot about the character from their methods, how they handle the risk, where they go, etc and serves as a great way to throw out plot hooks and drive home some of the themes of vampires as predators. How directly involved a Changeling is in harvesting is definitely something to consider- other than real dramatic outpourings of emotion- sports contests, funerals, dance floors, haunted houses- being 'in the area' will result in dribs and drabs. This makes material the choices as a changeling. Moreover, vampire-esque feeding is one of four different ways for CtL to get go juice- Pledges, Goblin Fruit, and Dreams are also options. Ultimately I think glamour harvest in itself isn't the core game for CtL as it is for vampires.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:00
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Gerund posted:How directly involved a Changeling is in harvesting is definitely something to consider- other than real dramatic outpourings of emotion- sports contests, funerals, dance floors, haunted houses- being 'in the area' will result in dribs and drabs. This makes material the choices as a changeling. Changelings can be hellaciously predatory if I remember the courts and how they handle glamour right. A changeling that provokes fights to get anger flavored glamour off the cuff is definitely predatory. A spring court changeling that keeps a bunch of doped up prostitutes around to feed off of any glamour they get from doing their job is also definitely predatory. An autumn court changeling that haunts a nursing home and scares the poo poo out of the inhabitants for glamour is definitely predatory, and outright evoking Beast-like themes to boot. There's even examples in some of the books. Like that spring court changeling that managed to traumatize the local Ashwood Abbey hunter group at a party with her fetishes/glamour harvesting operation. It's just that most games where i've seen stuff like this didn't focus on the harm like Vampire does. Vampire tends to be much more focused on interpersonal relations with normal people as a fundamental theme. The big difference is that changelings tend to inflict a sort of tertiary harm instead of a direct harm by feeding as vampires do. poo poo happens and it may cause harm as a result of it as opposed to "This undead dude ate someone and now he's dying of blood loss.". There's a reason why that one Underworld dominion considers harvesting glamour as a "dark hunger", after all. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 02:39
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Does anyone have any idea whether or not Dark Ages Fae actually sells at these $100+ listings? I still have a copy, which I know will never see play, and I've always thought about selling it but have no idea if the market actually supports those prices.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:20
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The Changeling posted:Does anyone have any idea whether or not Dark Ages Fae actually sells at these $100+ listings? I still have a copy, which I know will never see play, and I've always thought about selling it but have no idea if the market actually supports those prices. I always assumed it was due to Amazon's goofy algorithms.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:27
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It won't. You can buy it POD on DriveThru.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:35
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If you look at the other sellers, someone's listing a copy for $774. Always figured things like that were minor attempts at laundering or moving money online for people who didn't use ebay or things like Clash of Clans.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:53
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MollyMetroid posted:It won't. You can buy it POD on DriveThru. That's basically what I figured, once they originally announced POD would be a thing for these games however many years ago that was.
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Jul 21, 2018 05:10
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Harvesting, IMO, is best used as a chance for your character to connect to their court / their way of dealing with their own trauma. It's more personal and less predatory than vampire, but you'll still want scenes of your player's Summer rage monsters starting bar fights or Spring coke heads partying to excess to forget their sorrows. It can be brutal, but it should always be partially brutal to the character harvesting. Less "Dexter needs a kill of the week" and more "Don Draper can't help being a manipulative rear end in a top hat, again."
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Jul 21, 2018 06:27
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Quick question regarding the new edition of Geist for those who know. Do Haunts still function on the old binary system, where you get different effects based on what Key is used with a Haunt? Do I get a different power from using the Primeval Key with the Shroud then with using the Tear-Stained Key with the Shroud?
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Jul 21, 2018 13:51
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Nope. Haunts use the traditional Discipline structure, where each dot in the Haunt adds an additional power it can wield (although if I'm reading this right, you can wield multiple powers of the Haunt in one action as long as you can spend all that Plasm at once). They roll Haunt + Synergy as a dice pool (note that Synergy now begins at one dot, not seven, and acts more like the Bound's power trait than like an Integrity trait, replacing the old Psyche trait), but you can unlock a Haunt with one of your Keys to roll Key Attribute + Haunt + Synergy instead, and to draw upon additional Plasm, at the cost of courting the Key's associated Doom. If you're using the Haunt in a manner that resonates with the unlocking Key, you also benefit from a lower threshold for exceptional success. I'm a little sketchy on why you would ever not want to unlock a Haunt at a skim, given that you can circumvent your Doom with a point of Plasm, and unlocking the Haunt gives you back at least that point and probably more.
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Jul 21, 2018 14:37
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Most dooms aren't too bad, so I can see deciding they are worth a plasm when you are hard up. Most Haunts do have a little twist in that the first dot is mostly gain a condition with charges equal to spent plasm, then use the plasm for various effects. It provides a nice baseline suite of appropriate powers.
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Jul 21, 2018 14:45
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Also, at least one of the methods of navigating the Underworld in the most recent preview requires being Doomed for the appropriate Key, so depending on what you want to do later in the day it's even better to unlock without the plasm.
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Jul 21, 2018 15:48
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Right, but those are reasons to sometimes accept the Doom when you unlock, not reasons to forgo the unlocking. Unlocking a Haunt is presented in the layout as a separate benefit you can choose rather than a default thing you're expected to do every time, but I don't see why you wouldn't do it every time.
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Jul 21, 2018 22:29
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I Am Just a Box posted:Right, but those are reasons to sometimes accept the Doom when you unlock, not reasons to forgo the unlocking. Unlocking a Haunt is presented in the layout as a separate benefit you can choose rather than a default thing you're expected to do every time, but I don't see why you wouldn't do it every time. Or maybe if your unlocking attribute sucks so bad that it's a net-neutral on the Plasm front (as in, +1 from the unlocking attribute, spent to avoid the doom), but even then you'd be getting a +1 to the roll itself. Chernobyl Peace Prize fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 23:07
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I think the main reason to not use Keys is you've already done so, my understanding is each instance of a Key you have can only be used once per scene, or possibly some other length of time.
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Jul 21, 2018 23:47
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Pope Guilty posted:Like the Morbus? I was referring to the Kuei Jin. Are they similar? (I know jack poo poo about NWoD)
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Jul 22, 2018 08:15
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Well the Kuei Jin aren't vampires so.....no. There's nothing exactly like the Thousand Devils in the nWoD, but you could probably make something arbitrarily close with various monsters here or there.
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Jul 22, 2018 10:48
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Pope Affidavit IX posted:I was referring to the Kuei Jin. Are they similar? (I know jack poo poo about NWoD) ChronD tries harder not to make racist caricature creature types. That said, there is a vampire clan that gets weird and gross and semi rotten if they gently caress up taking care of themselves properly. Jiangshi. They’re originally Chinese but one of their main populations is, for no clear reason, in North Carolina.
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Jul 22, 2018 11:10
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Mors Rattus posted:ChronD tries harder not to make racist caricature creature types. This is a wild guess but I seem to recall that North Carolina actually has an Asian-American population that’s growing incredibly quickly (and if I had to guess it’s probably weighted more toward Chinese-Americans), so maybe that’s why.
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Jul 22, 2018 15:10
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Mors Rattus posted:I think the main reason to not use Keys is you've already done so, my understanding is each instance of a Key you have can only be used once per scene, or possibly some other length of time. Skimming the draft section on keys I don't see any limit like that on it, I think so long as a key isn't doomed you can use it.
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Jul 22, 2018 16:54
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Thank you for the advice. I thought the part about the level of involvement by the Changeling is a very good touch - I will definitely be using that.
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Jul 22, 2018 20:10
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PantsOptional posted:This is a wild guess but I seem to recall that North Carolina actually has an Asian-American population that’s growing incredibly quickly (and if I had to guess it’s probably weighted more toward Chinese-Americans), so maybe that’s why. This is true, but they're not originally Chinese, to be fair. They're scattered all over the world, with most of them in Iceland. The entry on them mentions that them being attributed a Chinese name suggests that there was a major masquerade breach there. 'The fact that they have a name at all points to some kind of catastrophic breach in East Asia in the past.' Bloodlines of Asian descent are pretty common, though, since they tend to spread from a regional covenant or family. The Amara Havana, Ansam, Kinnaree, Burakumin. First edition had a lot of z-splats and went all over with them. nofather fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 22, 2018 23:10
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Just signed up for my first larp, a Vampire all-nighter in Stockholm in 2 months, wish me luck
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Jul 23, 2018 00:13
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Probably a dumb question answered years ago, but as of CofD, what's the explanation for vampires who start at BP 1 (which is still the default) then getting a weird bloodline that suddenly radically changes them? Handled more on a case by case basis for the story, or is there also a more generic "yeah as you increase in blood potency there can be some weird effects as the blood awakens" explanation?
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Jul 23, 2018 02:13
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