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One neat little bit from Bite Me was an observation on the Carthian Movement (from Greg Stolze) and how they're not the 'nice' covenant towards people: "Vampire communists who see humanity as the proletariat are very different from vampire communists who see humanity as the means of production."
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Apr 3, 2019 22:28
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Yeah I always liked the idea of somebody who was a communist before the embrace who hates the Carthians because he's absolutely furious at seeing the politics of liberation he pursued in life being used as a scheme to make preying on the proletariat easier.
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Apr 3, 2019 23:47
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Pope Guilty posted:Yeah I always liked the idea of somebody who was a communist before the embrace who hates the Carthians because he's absolutely furious at seeing the politics of liberation he pursued in life being used as a scheme to make preying on the proletariat easier. I'm playing this character in VtR2e game rn, anarchist who got embraced in the early 20th century. She just insulted the local prince to his face and gives zero fucks about neckbiter social conventions, been a blast to see the other players just put their heads in their hands.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:11
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One character I played once in a one-shot and wish I could re-use was basically The Dude as a Mekhet fascinated with all the weird stuff happening in the city. Like, did you know all the ravens in the city gather at this park between 4 and 5 am? No ideas why. That's just... wild.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:17
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I'm actually surprised at what goody-goodies my Mage players are. One of my PCs was absolutely on track to be the "does shady things to try and make Awakening easier" guy, but the instant he heard the Guardian doctrine that paradox strengthens the Abyss (he isn't even a Guardian) he was like "oh no I better never risk that if it makes Awakening harder!"
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Apr 4, 2019 01:40
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It shouldn't be that surprising that such a heavily Gnostic game attracts Idealists. 
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Apr 4, 2019 03:11
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I'm pretty sure the thread knows which side my bread is buttered on as regards playing idealistic, if obsessive gnostic revolutionaries: Your players sound great, and I wish them luck in the Ascension War.
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Apr 4, 2019 03:18
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:I'm playing this character in VtR2e game rn, anarchist who got embraced in the early 20th century. She just insulted the local prince to his face and gives zero fucks about neckbiter social conventions, been a blast to see the other players just put their heads in their hands. This character is a blast to play (who hasn't) but it's always important for there to be a reason why they haven't been disappeared yet. Usually it's because at least somebody important thinks they're cool.
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Apr 4, 2019 07:02
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Mendrian posted:This character is a blast to play (who hasn't) but it's always important for there to be a reason why they haven't been disappeared yet. Yep, she has a powerful patron in the Carth and a fortune large even by Kindred standards. I generally find VtR really unfun and this has been the best way to squeeze something out of it. Vampires just don't fit well into everything. The Invictus is the GM if it was incompetent, and they don't really get anything special. The read of Vampires as Economic Parasites is super boring, stale, and facile at this point.
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Apr 4, 2019 07:09
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I'm pretty sure the Doug Peterson City Council scene in tonight's What We Do in the Shadows must happen on a regular basis in both WoDs.
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Apr 4, 2019 11:23
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My goofball Mekhet is only around because Paris is going to poo poo and it's anarchy
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Apr 4, 2019 15:42
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It shouldn't be that surprising that such a heavily Gnostic game attracts Idealists. It also attracts a lot of folks with proto-fascist leanings. And the intersection between folks who think Mages are the good guys fighting the good fight against tyranny and the folks who think Mages should be running things because they're "smarter" and "better" is far more so than might be thought or liked (ironically proving the point while missing it).
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Apr 4, 2019 18:39
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Ironslave posted:It also attracts a lot of folks with proto-fascist leanings. And the intersection between folks who think Mages are the good guys fighting the good fight against tyranny and the folks who think Mages should be running things because they're "smarter" and "better" is far more so than might be thought or liked (ironically proving the point while missing it). ...Ascension right? I thought they were talking about Awakening.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:32
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Awakening also has hierarchical and authoritarian tendencies in the Pentacle. I'd call them Stalinist more than proto-fascist, beca- (is dragged away before magechat can really get off the ground) So how about werewolves, fellow posters?
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Apr 4, 2019 20:37
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Joe Slowboat posted:Awakening also has hierarchical and authoritarian tendencies in the Pentacle. I'd call them Stalinist more than proto-fascist, beca- (is dragged away before magechat can really get off the ground) Can I just introduce my group to werewolf poo poo in order of immediate relevance? Like first: you can shape shift and there are spirits, then: we do a sacred hunt and go in the spirit world, then: also something, something Pangaea, father wolf, the moon is a spirit-god, but don’t worry about it to much.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:44
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I was referring to players. I spend a lot of time in a few ChroD servers and am one of the admins for the unofficial one for Mage. It's been... difficult, sometimes seeing people basically miss the point and nod along with monstrous ideas because they're presented through the lens of their preferred game or faction.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:44
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Frankly I think the most ~realistic~ part of any of these games is there's no Designated Good Guys, just a spectrum of how far outside themselves different groups show altruism.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:45
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Ironslave posted:I was referring to players. I spend a lot of time in a few ChroD servers and am one of the admins for the unofficial one for Mage. It's been... difficult, sometimes seeing people basically miss the point and nod along with monstrous ideas because they're presented through the lens of their preferred game or faction. Yes but this is... them just not reading the book? There is literally no part of Awakening that isn’t always talking about spiritual leftist revolution. I don’t know if you could prevent those people from reading literal anarchist political philosophy and not come away with a fascist reading. Edit: I mention Ascension because I could see a fascist reading of Ascension, even if I don’t think it was intended by its authors, but I am unable to comprehend what a fascist reading of awakening would be.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:47
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Frankly I think the most ~realistic~ part of any of these games is there's no Designated Good Guys, just a spectrum of how far outside themselves different groups show altruism. I mean there are outright unambiguous good guys in the sense that some groups have better goals than others, even if that doesn’t make the individuals in those groups good people necessarily. Like the seers of throne are outright worse than the pentacle. The Forsaken on he other hand are only *generally* better than the Pure, and even if the Pure’s goals are inimical to humanity, that doesn’t make the Forsaken particularly benevolent, they just oppose genuine “Bad Guys”. Edit: And vampires are either actively working against almost all other vampires or pretty much evil loving bastards.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:53
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Awakening uses the aesthetics and specific styles of a variety of occult traditions that have deeply elitist versions; the Seers are the expression of the reactionary, Julius Evola side of occultism. But because occultism and gnosticism are deeply steeped in this concept of the elect, the elite, the true scholars in a darkened world, the various factions can be (badly) interpreted as that kind of thing. Of course, this also requires ignoring the fundamental ideological dedications of the entire Pentacle and declaring that those are just excuses for taking power for oneself, which is a deeply conservative reading applied to many revolutionary groups in order to defang them. This reading is actually present in various ways in the text, so, I can't blame readers for sometimes seeing it... even if I find it deeply unpleasant in a way I wouldn't describe as 'personal horror,' just 'exhausting.'
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Apr 4, 2019 20:55
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Joe Slowboat posted:Awakening uses the aesthetics and specific styles of a variety of occult traditions that have deeply elitist versions; the Seers are the expression of the reactionary, Julius Evola side of occultism. But because occultism and gnosticism are deeply steeped in this concept of the elect, the elite, the true scholars in a darkened world, the various factions can be (badly) interpreted as that kind of thing. The absolutely worst thing writers have done with Awakening is trying to turn “everyone is evil!” into horror when the horror of the game is supposed to be “you are trapped, blinded, outgunned, and wildly overconfident”.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:00
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I mean were the Gnostics the Scientologists of antiquity?? The answer to that mystery… can only be revealed to true seekers
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Apr 4, 2019 21:04
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Basic Chunnel posted:I mean were the Gnostics the Scientologists of antiquity?? The answer to that mystery… can only be revealed to true seekers The pentacle aren’t actually Gnostics, just gnostic (or Neoplatonists actually). There is no ladder of knowledge (unless you join the wrong diamond order, and even then they aren’t revealing to you cosmic truth, you’ve just joined a religion) you either know the truth or you don’t, and the goal is for everyone to know. Edit: Actually the orders aren’t Gnostic at all, we just use that word to mean “privy to the secret truth of the world”, rather than anything to do with Gnosticism. jakodee fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 21:06
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The Pentacle mages are like, gnostic materialists. It’s like, okay, gnosticism is provably true. What is our rational response to this incontrovertible reality? Well, obviously, it’s to awaken EVERYONE and murder the demiurge and create heaven on earth, in whichever order proves the most practical. The people who confuse vanguardism for fascism are ultimately doing fascism a favor.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:30
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The Mysterium is pretty gatekeeper-y, though in a different way than the Guardians are, and it's explicitly called out that more defectors to the Seers come from the Mysterium than any other. As Ferrinus says, they all share an eventual desire to see the entire world ascended, but disagree strongly on how fast that would be, or what one must do to become worthy to reach those heights.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:58
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Ferrinus posted:The people who confuse vanguardism for fascism are ultimately doing fascism a favor. Quoted for truth. I'm pretty critical of vanguardism as an approach, but there's still and always a difference between Pentacle and Throne. Of course, I'm also running a game that's about hunting down Reapers who have more or less thoroughly ensconced themselves in the local Pentacle Consilium- a major theme is the capacity of individuals who use the revolutionary framework as a means to abuse others being a massive danger to the overall project, as well as to those around them. I also accidentally made the lead Tremere basically identical to Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts but I only learned this when my players pointed it out, since I've never played the games. So it goes!
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Apr 4, 2019 22:03
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Ferrinus posted:The Pentacle mages are like, gnostic materialists. It’s like, okay, gnosticism is provably true. What is our rational response to this incontrovertible reality? Well, obviously, it’s to awaken EVERYONE and murder the demiurge and create heaven on earth, in whichever order proves the most practical. Murder the gods and topple their thrones.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:11
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jakodee posted:Can I just introduce my group to werewolf poo poo in order of immediate relevance? Like first: you can shape shift and there are spirits, then: we do a sacred hunt and go in the spirit world, then: also something, something Pangaea, father wolf, the moon is a spirit-god, but don’t worry about it to much. That should be fine. Like, maybe you learn the basics of what your tribe hunts ("A Blood Talon? Congrats, you get to worry about other werewolves") and keep it to the bare bones. The nice thing about nWoD is that while there are a lot of  being thrown around about tribes and covenants and kiths and whatever Geist do, you only engage with them as much as you want to since it's the PC group relationship that trumps everything else. Whatever higher values your splat may hold is all well and good, but they probably don't help too much keeping your territory running night to night.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:15
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I appreciate the Werewolf advice thus far on the thread btw. I think a lot of it is just gonna have to wait for when I get folks in the room and talk it over with them, though definitely if anyone knows of any good cheat-sheets for all the fiddly Werewolf powers, I'd sorely appreciate it.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:16
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Tricky Dick Nixon posted:I appreciate the Werewolf advice thus far on the thread btw. I think a lot of it is just gonna have to wait for when I get folks in the room and talk it over with them, though definitely if anyone knows of any good cheat-sheets for all the fiddly Werewolf powers, I'd sorely appreciate it. I think I got almost all of them.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:20
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Mechanical magechat: Can someone give me, or link me to, some examples of how temporal sympathy works in terms of actual play? Especially a 'casting back in time' spell, since the book says "some spells will note you can do this" and then... they don't. Is it literally "I cast mind control on you, but a week ago" if you have both Mind and Time?
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Apr 4, 2019 23:00
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Joe Slowboat posted:Awakening uses the aesthetics and specific styles of a variety of occult traditions that have deeply elitist versions; the Seers are the expression of the reactionary, Julius Evola side of occultism. But because occultism and gnosticism are deeply steeped in this concept of the elect, the elite, the true scholars in a darkened world, the various factions can be (badly) interpreted as that kind of thing. Yeah, this is exactly it. Mage is a mixture of three things: actual revolutionary leftism, academia, and a valiant attempt to synthesize a fictional Gnostic tradition out of the relatively less-Christian historical ones, mostly Neoplatonism. The first category actually are, in fact, the good guys. This is where a lot of the side-eye comes in when people start talking about how mages are inherently awful and about "looking down" on games where Mages aren't monsters that just happen to be a little bit more human-shaped than the rest, because it comes off as dismissing all revolutionaries as self-interested frauds or people who are going to destroy society by trying to improve it. (Which, to be clear, is conservative fear-mongering and bullshit, and a game that had this as its main theme would be garbage.) The second category is simultaneously an incredibly elitist, self-defeating, and paradoxically conservative institution that also happens to be the one space in which the first category survived decades of suppression (in real life, in the US), with all the internal power struggles and grudges that go along with that. This, in my opinion, is where all the fun and interesting criticisms of Mages and the Pentacle come from, because they're about trying to improve something that has the right goals but is mired in an extremely hostile reality (just like Mages.) The third category is where a lot of the coolest flavor and imagery comes from, but at the same time, most Gnostic sects* were incredibly elitist, with some of them asserting the existence of a pre-determined "elect" who would ascend to the true heaven and that everyone else is one stepped removed from being sub-spiritual automata. This type of outlook is explicitly rejected by the Pentacle and the game is very clear about that, but it does use the same framework in a lot of ways, and sometimes concepts from this framework get smuggled in by association. This creates some really weird internal tensions like "how can you have a game about democracy, equality, and liberation that is also about some people wielding secret, absolute power over the common herd?" that aren't necessarily bad but sometimes muddy the water, and weaken the other two metaphors even as they arguably strengthen the themes of the game as a whole. It is also the source of the most impenetrable aspects of Magechat. * I'm generalizing super broadly here; keep in mind there is no such thing as a religion called "Gnosticism", and the word "Gnostic" was mostly used as a way for the church to categorize certain kinds of heresies. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 23:04
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If you want a pure expression of the Seers of the Throne, by the way, you'd do worse than this: " The only ones who elude ... the eternal sleep ... are those who in life are able to orient their mind toward the higher way. The initiates, the Adepts, are at the edge of that path. Having achieved memory, anamnesis, in the expression of Plutarch, they become free, they proceed without bonds. Crowned, they celebrate the "mysteries" and see on earth the throng of those who are not initiated and are not "pure," those who are crushed and pushing one another in the mud and in the darkness. —Julius Evola, La tradizione ermetica, Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1971, p. 111" Which is quoted before chapter 75 of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. A book which has a deep influence on the current mage devs iirc, and which considers occultism a fundamentally ridiculous and elitist, even fascist pursuit.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:20
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bewilderment posted:Mechanical magechat: Only Time spells can be cast using temporal sympathy and their spells do mention temporal sympathy, so no casting fireballs or mind control spells on subjects in their past. Citation Mage Errata: "Time 2: Temporal Sympathy: Only works on Time spells that call for it, or other spells Combined with a suitable Time spell." Note that Combined spells are not the same as Conjunctional spells. Example: Postcognition. A robbery has been committed in the local Lorehouse last night, and I want to look back in time to see whodunnit. So, I pull out all my yantras, build my dicepool and then get ready to cast the spell. Since the building hasn't changed much in the past day, the current status of the building has a strong temporal sympathy to its status last night. Therefore, I will need to raise my potency to at least 2 since strong connections are withstood at 1 per the chart on p 186. I'll also have to pump up the duration to cover the period when we think the robbery happened. Then, to save on time, I'll have to reach so I can scrub through the footage magically. Ah ha, it was that sneaky Reclaimer from the local Athenaeum! I was sure it was a Censor. Greedy SOB needs to learn to find their own Mysteries and leave our Lorehouses alone, goshdangit! Octavo fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 23:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:Which is quoted before chapter 75 of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. A book which has a deep influence on the current mage devs iirc, and which considers occultism a fundamentally ridiculous and elitist, even fascist pursuit. occultism is to magic what capitalism is to the means of production
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Apr 4, 2019 23:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:occultism is to magic what capitalism is to the means of production In practice occultism just means the belief in hidden methods; there's no magical practice that isn't 'occult' because any overt method got moved out of 'magic' into 'religion' or 'technology' or 'I don't think that works.' But in the moral sense I mostly agree with you, especially since the early modern period saw both evolve in part as a response to existing systems of power and authority - the Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasons, and various other occult clubs being incubators for the bourgeois revolutionary sentiments.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:54
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I think the best blow to strike against vampires is that you can probably describe the best faction of the least inimical covenant as 'benign'. They are at their best of no particular value to humanity. I do like that almost every covnenat has liberal or at least more progressive factions tho, intracovenant variation is like my favorite thing about Requiem.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:57
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Octavo posted:Only Time spells can be cast using temporal sympathy and their spells do mention temporal sympathy, so no casting fireballs or mind control spells on subjects in their past. Citation Mage Errata: "Time 2: Temporal Sympathy: Only works on Time spells that call for it, or other spells Combined with a suitable Time spell." Note that Combined spells are not the same as Conjunctional spells. Thanks for the example, but that's the easy kind. What's the other column in the Temporal Sympathy table for?
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Apr 5, 2019 00:03
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This is where a lot of the side-eye comes in when people start talking about how mages are inherently awful and about "looking down" on games where Mages aren't monsters that just happen to be a little bit more human-shaped than the rest, because it comes off as dismissing all revolutionaries as self-interested frauds or people who are going to destroy society by trying to improve it. Okay, but... One of the people saying how Mages are largely a bag of dicks is the lead developer. quote:Mages are very human monsters, but yeah, they're monsters. They're the sort of monsters you get in the real world only amplified and made fantastical by the setting; people so consumed by their own business that they lose sight of the impact they have on others. It's just that instead of being the 1% rich, they're wizards. From here. I hate to be That Guy posting links like this but, if we're discussing the themes that actually went into the game, it's worth referencing authorial intent here. The archetypical example of a Mage is John Constantine burning everyone he knows and loves. Mage's tagline isn't "Rage against the Heavens", it's "Addicted to the Mysteries". You definitely can - and, if you want to, should - play Mage as a game of revolution, but the reason there's an entire Order dedicated to ideas like radical democracy is because they saw the magical in the political, not the other way around.
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Apr 5, 2019 00:28
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Axelgear posted:Okay, but... One of the people saying how Mages are largely a bag of dicks is the lead developer. Joe Slowboat posted:Personally my favorite phrase involving the word 'monsters' is "the old dies and the new struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters."
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Apr 5, 2019 00:38
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