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You know there's a thread in ADTRW about Magical Girls right? That might be a better place to take this discussion.
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Sep 8, 2019 14:29
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Mulva posted:Yeah but people want a game that's actually good at dealing with that theme. From the point of view of a mage, there is pretty much no point. It's not that vampires are the worst thing that abuses humanity – the Exarchs, followed by the God-Machine, leave little competition. You could even argue their presence may be beneficial in the long run, as an encounter with them could theoretically provide the push for someone to Awaken.
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Sep 8, 2019 21:27
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Also I think trying to convince mages that vampires (or whatever) are the real baddies is going to cause a lot of pulled collars and yikes faces. Mages are like a 1/4 chance of being as dangerous if not more so to humans as the average vampire. Consider paradox, abyssal summonings, casual hubris, left handed paths, and so on. Vampires on the whole are a net negative for humanity but I think you'd have a hard time convincing mage society, which tends to run a bit in the navel gazing direction, that they all deserve to die.
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Sep 8, 2019 23:27
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Mendrian posted:Also I think trying to convince mages that vampires (or whatever) are the real baddies is going to cause a lot of pulled collars and yikes faces. Mages are like a 1/4 chance of being as dangerous if not more so to humans as the average vampire. Consider paradox, abyssal summonings, casual hubris, left handed paths, and so on. Vampires on the whole are a net negative for humanity but I think you'd have a hard time convincing mage society, which tends to run a bit in the navel gazing direction, that they all deserve to die. Hey now, let's not be too harsh on the vampires. They bring one immense benefit to humanity that no other supernatural force provides. They act as hate sinks for the Strix. An act that typically keeps them from directly loving with humanity on a larger level.  Edit: To be serious though, I feel like a low wisdom mage might be able to talk themselves into going after vampires while avoiding a "Hans, am I the baddy?" moment. It does seem like it'd mostly be a local effort though. Of course if a mage is willing to go after vampires then this also begs the question of why they wouldn't inevitably just go full on Punisher meets banisher against other mages too. Since like you said --- they're way more dangerous to your average person when matched up against some bloodsucker that usually just wants to keep existing. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 00:15
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Why does it need to be a big noble Crusade thing? Just play a mage who thinks Vampires are bad in a pretty general abstract way, and just spends a spare weekend here and there exterminating then with his power. Just kind like you and your buddies going deer hunting a few weekends out of the year.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:45
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Mendrian posted:Also I think trying to convince mages that vampires (or whatever) are the real baddies is going to cause a lot of pulled collars and yikes faces. Mages are like a 1/4 chance of being as dangerous if not more so to humans as the average vampire. Consider paradox, abyssal summonings, casual hubris, left handed paths, and so on. Vampires on the whole are a net negative for humanity but I think you'd have a hard time convincing mage society, which tends to run a bit in the navel gazing direction, that they all deserve to die. It's not much of a contest between your average Mage and average Vampire. Your average Mage, at worst, is Constantine, which'll maybe provoke some issues, but they're still not an aristocratic parasite. But on a broader scale, Mages are probably responsible for the most near-misses with various apocalypses.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:51
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Lol aristocratic parasite
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Sep 9, 2019 14:22
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I’m back, I want to thank you all for the advice, I won’t be returning to that group until things change. I feel like perhaps I can contribute to the discourse! Taking a macro, broad stroke approach to whether or not vampires or mages are better or worse for Humanity is not very helpful. It is entirely based on an individual basis. Some vampires are great with Humans, or want to protect Humans. They might feed on them but many go out of their way from killing them. Of course there are bad examples of them out there, but the exact same thing can be said of Mages. Neither or better or worse than the other unless they explicitly decide to be.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:55
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I feel like any amount of predation, even from a Humanity 10 Salubri or whatever, still imposes a cost upon the mortal population that you just don't see from a Mage. Granted, the mage might instead unleash a Nightmare Monster from Beyond Hell's Horizon, but on a case by case basis I think Mages would inflict less deliberate violence than your average vamp. Granted, you can do a lot with the metaphysical ramifications of feeding to change that. Jhonen Vasquez had this idea in one of his earlier comics (the one about being a serial killer?) where some people act as a "sewer" where they are the end point for all of humanity's negativity, if you had humans feeding mostly on negativity with blood as a carrier medium, that would tilt the moral scales a bit more. Like, maybe the Kiss is an ecstatic feeling because you're getting the evil squeezed from your psychic anal glands. Vampires then can only feed on those who deserve it, and the subjects subconsciously seek out this kind of release. A blood tithe little different than a catholic indulgence. Anyway, that's why I think equating feeding with sex is a boring cop out, it could be weirder.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:24
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The moral choices you go through with feeding can be fascinating, too. Greg Stole wrote the first Reqiuem novel, and the main character noted that to make sure she kept feeling like a 'good' person that at first she only fed on people she thought of as bad. The ones she saw being abusive, or hateful, or even just jerks. Then that went awry when she lost it and drank one of them dry and felt horrible about herself so then she only picked people she liked because she thought it would encourage her not to drain people to a husk and I believe this worked until it didn't.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:37
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It feels weirdly liberating to be not attached to an awful DM either, really having an open kind of communication with your entire group is so nice. Especially if they understand my point of view. The DM was getting desperate to keep me attached to the campaign, he apologized profusely in front of the group offered me his unlimited pasta pass as a sign of goodwill while we were pregaming at Olive Garden. While I think the prospect of delicious breadsticks and pasta was appealing and I appreciated the goodwill gesture, I had my own mental health to worry about. Thank you all for the help! Is tabletop in Discord any good? I imagine quality of gameplay is more all over the place.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:43
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Apologies for the double post, but I should add my take on mages and vampires being entirely on an individual basis is not based on any reading. I’ve only done tabletop which is explicitly a player driven medium.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:45
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I get the impressions that earlier systems had intended much more time to be spent on the role play of feeding, but I guess player groups breezed over it so much V5 has abstracted it to a single roll more or less? Interesting how the audience shapes the designer's vision.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:46
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Naoto Shirogane posted:
Yeah my group uses discord for voice and roll20 for the dice and it works wonderfully
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Sep 9, 2019 15:47
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:I get the impressions that earlier systems had intended much more time to be spent on the role play of feeding, but I guess player groups breezed over it so much V5 has abstracted it to a single roll more or less? Interesting how the audience shapes the designer's vision. Feeding takes many rolls if you don't have a herd
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Sep 9, 2019 15:51
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Pretty much all my gaming is over Discord. There's good dicebots for it, and chat or pure-text asynchronous play for a PBP-like experience are both doable real easily.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:51
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Naoto Shirogane posted:
I'm running one and playing in another game through Discord and it works great. My biggest struggle has been not being able to use facial expressions and body language to emote, so I've had to work on getting more expressive with my voice. That's been a fun challenge.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:54
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Naoto Shirogane posted:
All platforms have pros and cons, I'm pretty much exclusivly play by post since I work evenings and weekends and my gaming friends are scattered all over the world. So basically, we just make private facebook groups for our games and run them through there.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:55
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Wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off for Brujah or playing a hoodie-wearing Nos is extremely fun when everyone skypes and acts the part. Helps you get into character
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Sep 9, 2019 16:30
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Blitz7x posted:Wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off for Brujah or playing a hoodie-wearing Nos is extremely fun when everyone skypes and acts the part. Helps you get into character Play a Hollow Mekhet by pointing a camera at an empty chair, having no mic and communicating entirely in text. e: occasionally step on camera and use your mic to represent your reflection loving around with you and everyone else Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 16:31
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Play a country singer toreador in jorts at bulge level for the camera
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Sep 9, 2019 17:16
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Naoto Shirogane posted:Is tabletop in Discord any good? I imagine quality of gameplay is more all over the place. I think WoD games work well with just Discord because you don't need a live map for combat. I've been running a V5 game since April on Discord with no problems. I do use an outside app for relationship mapping and putting down points of interest in the city.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:40
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Mors Rattus posted:Play a Hollow Mekhet by pointing a camera at an empty chair, having no mic and communicating entirely in text. Holy poo poo this is an amazing idea.
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Sep 9, 2019 18:14
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GimpInBlack posted:Holy poo poo this is an amazing idea. It always sticks with me because one of my favorite details from Clanbook Mekhet was the author remembering that Frances can't use phones because her voice doesn't show up on recordings.
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Sep 9, 2019 18:42
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:I get the impressions that earlier systems had intended much more time to be spent on the role play of feeding, but I guess player groups breezed over it so much V5 has abstracted it to a single roll more or less? Interesting how the audience shapes the designer's vision. Every table I've been a part of has done some mix of abstracted rolls and very personal asides. It depends on the pace of the story. Of course I don't advocate for running the game as a vampire simulator so I maintain it's not always appropriate to run long feeding scenes that almost never directly involve other player characters but it's nice about a half or quarter of the time.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:30
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I loving Love the Mekhet, and it'S 100% because of their clanbook.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:33
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Naoto Shirogane posted:Is tabletop in Discord any good? I imagine quality of gameplay is more all over the place. I exclusively run text TTRPGs over Discord and it's a great experience. You can be super choosy about who you play with in ways you might not be able to IRL, like I can go pick out a totally LGBT crew and know they're all solid.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:36
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I don't recommend trying to actually play out feeding because it runs you head-long into the problem of how the gently caress the masquerade works for people who don't either subsist off animals or have three dots of Dominate.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:39
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MonsieurChoc posted:I loving Love the Mekhet, and it'S 100% because of their clanbook. I love them for their original clan logo which featured a sun, moon, spider's web, and hourglass all together.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:43
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Gobbeldygook posted:I don't recommend trying to actually play out feeding because it runs you head-long into the problem of how the gently caress the masquerade works for people who don't either subsist off animals or have three dots of Dominate. Eh, the Geek and Sundry V5 game I've been watching handles feeding pretty well, although I feel like they spend a ton of time on feeding scenes when they could be moving poo poo along. But I also find their storyteller kinda dry in general so there's that too.
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Sep 9, 2019 20:21
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Gobbeldygook posted:I don't recommend trying to actually play out feeding because it runs you head-long into the problem of how the gently caress the masquerade works for people who don't either subsist off animals or have three dots of Dominate. ......... feeding is an important part of being a vampire
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Sep 9, 2019 21:23
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Gobbeldygook posted:I don't recommend trying to actually play out feeding because it runs you head-long into the problem of how the gently caress the masquerade works for people who don't either subsist off animals or have three dots of Dominate. Agreed but the opposite. V5 asks you to base your vamp’s personality around their feeding habits. Sure it generally ends up being a solo scene but they’re usually relatively short and can be fun character-building moments (recently my atheist hedonist Toreador DJ has been going to a church group early and “confessing their sins” to the pastor). Plus, if you’re cultivating resonance you can get some RP bonuses for not just breezing over the neck drinky part. The game is called Vampire the Masquerade, it’s in the title, it’s like playing Dungeons and Dragons but skipping the dungeon to just get to the loot at the end GNU Order fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 21:33
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Okay, so I got some confirmation from DriveThru about the new PDFs: 1) These are the PDFs they got from Paradox. 2) There aren't going to be any more. 3) They didn't send any PoD files, so these books won't go PoD. 4) There are no plans to go back to any of the existing books and fix the full-bleed issue.
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Sep 9, 2019 21:36
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Feeding is...an important part of the vampire experience. If it goes well yeah it tends to be filler but if it goes poorly? It’s a very interesting moment for character growth that leads to conflict or even the forming of a new touchstone or stain depending on how it goes. I disagree with the idea of cutting it out.
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Sep 9, 2019 21:43
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Metapod posted:......... feeding is an important part of being a vampire Eating is an important part of being a human, but it's also boring AF to watch other people do. GNU Order posted:Agreed but the opposite. V5 asks you to base your vamp’s personality around their feeding habits. V5 does a lot of dumb poo poo.
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Sep 9, 2019 21:44
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Alternatively feeding where there are cameras adjacent and a crack CSI team can leave your ancilla Brujah headless so ymmv
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Sep 9, 2019 21:49
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moths posted:Eating is an important part of being a human, but it's also boring AF to watch other people do. ¿¿¿Watching people eat and review things is a very popular genre of video have you never watch robert Dyer??? Ah its because it's a v5 mechanic not because it's a bad mechanic that you think it's bad I see
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Sep 9, 2019 21:51
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Attention paid to feeding being a dial you can crank between "just pass this roll okay done" to "good luck formulating and executing on a winning strategy in this elaborate multi-character scene I've set up for you (OPTIONAL: and by the by I've riddled it with landmines that will get your character executed if you step on them)" surely dates back to VtM Revised at the very least. I don't get why people think doing one or the other represents some kind of modern game design innovation.
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Sep 9, 2019 21:54
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It’s generally the job of the player to really embrace being what they created to make it interesting. That’s not the fault of v5 as a system, it’s the fault of the player and DM for not making the feeding scenario entertaining.
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Sep 9, 2019 21:55
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Gobbeldygook posted:I don't recommend trying to actually play out feeding because it runs you head-long into the problem of how the gently caress the masquerade works for people who don't either subsist off animals or have three dots of Dominate. Go to the Rack, hit a crowded club. Jump in a crowded dance floor, take some sips while grinding all up ons your fellow dancers. It's not super hard. Except when it is.
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Sep 9, 2019 22:01
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