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Soonmot posted:What did they do to willpower? Willpower is a tracker, which represents a sort of 'mental health'. It's also a powerful resource, as you can spend a WP to reroll up to three non-Hunger dice of your choice, so you can turn failures into successes. You can also use it to do things like, reverse a messy crit by rerolling the non-Hunger crit (assuming it's a single Hunger crit) to remove it. Basically most players use it when they're down and need an extra success or two, or to fix a crazy messy critical. WP can also be used to ignore the Dominate commands of someone of higher Gen than you.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:21
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joylessdivision posted:I got the email from Modiphius yesterday and my first thought was "But why?" I know this is fairly heterodox, but I've long thought that there are two innovations WoD should steal from D&D: 1. Simple statblocks of NPCs designed without using the complex PC creation rules, and with thought given to how to tune them to mechanically challenge groups of players without accidentally turning player characters into dogmeat on round 1. 2. Miniatures. Theater of the mind is fun and easy, but running CofD games on Roll20 has shown me that players really like to actually see what's going on when they get jumped by vampires in an alleyway.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:39
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Simple Stat Blocks definitely are the way things exist from Onyx Path.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:44
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I honestly don’t know who I’d trust to write the Get. Or the Fianna. Or any of the North American tribes. Or the Stargazers. E: wait, as think about it...were there ever any werewolves in South America
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Oct 23, 2019 00:19
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The Uktena got written as South & Central American during the time the writers were talking about the Shadowlords doing a lil innocent genocide upon the bat folk
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Oct 23, 2019 00:27
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Simple Stat Blocks definitely are the way things exist from Onyx Path. Onyx Path experimented with simple NPC rules in the Chronicles of Darkness 2e core with listed dicepools for actions rather than fully statted out with attributes, skills, and powers that reference rules elsewhere in the book, but in everything published afterwards, including Deviant, NPCs are built the same way player characters are.
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Oct 23, 2019 00:28
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The By Night Studios rules feature Stock NPC rules. Stock NPCs have a rating from 1-5 and get one Specialization and one health level per point. Specializations are skills, though supernatural beings may have access to various Disciplines (at one level of Discipline per Rating). A Stock NPC's pool is 2xRating, plus 5 if using a Specialty- so a Rating 3 Stock NPC with specializations in Firearms, Dodge, and Athletics has 3 health levels and a pool of 6 on all tests except for Firearms, Dodge, and Athletics tests where they'd get 11. Super simple, you can write it as easily as Dr. Bob, Stock NPC Rating 2, Medicine, Academics and you're good to go.
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Oct 23, 2019 02:13
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Octavo posted:Onyx Path experimented with simple NPC rules in the Chronicles of Darkness 2e core with listed dicepools for actions rather than fully statted out with attributes, skills, and powers that reference rules elsewhere in the book, but in everything published afterwards, including Deviant, NPCs are built the same way player characters are. That goes back to the 1e corebook, I'm pretty sure.
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Oct 23, 2019 02:43
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I just use a modified version of the rule of six from Shadowrun. Mundanes get six dice on things they're supposed to be good at, subtracting dice the farther away from their concept they're acting. Supernaturals usually start at eight or more, depending on power level.
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Oct 23, 2019 03:25
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Ferrinus posted:That goes back to the 1e corebook, I'm pretty sure. I checked and you're right, although the 1e core just used simple dice pools for non-combatants. The 2e core's NPCs are also statted out more thoroughly than I remembered, although they have a few actions with dicepools added together. Ultimately what I'd like for future books (maybe night horrors books) would be NPC statblocks designed more like the ones in D&D 4e, where you didn't have to refer to much outside the statblock to remember how to run them.
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Oct 23, 2019 04:04
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As someone who has recently gotten somewhat of an interest in W/CoD after talking to a friend who used to write for white wolf, wow is it impressive how bad everything with beast was handled.  I feel bad for having been interested in it after hearing about the basic ideas and that nebulous Bad Things were going on during it's development. I guess Vampire sort of would work for a similar idea (suddenly being thrust into the supernatural and being a nightmare monster battling with supernatural cravings), as imagined by someone who wasn't a manipulative rapist? Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 07:06
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Your friend got any oWoD offcuts that aren't under NDA? I'm always curious about ideas that got cut for space reasons.
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Oct 23, 2019 07:10
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I don't know offhand, but I can try asking.
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Oct 23, 2019 07:12
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Cuntellectual posted:I guess Vampire sort of would work for a similar idea (suddenly being thrust into the supernatural and being a nightmare monster battling with supernatural cravings), as imagined by someone who wasn't a manipulative rapist? Vampire is good for being able to tell the story of "I am a powerful monster, in a community of monsters, but my power inevitably comes at least some extent from the suffering of the innocent, and I now juggle my old and new lives while my fellow monsters jockey for position, some working hard to assemble moral justifications for their continued use of monstrous power, others revelling in it as a source of superiority." That was one of the many glaring problems with Beast observed from very early on, before we even knew the underlying backstage problems: "To the extent that there's a type of story in this game, isn't it the same story Vampire already tells, but with the metaphor made more explicit?"
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Oct 23, 2019 07:20
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I Am Just a Box posted:That was one of the many glaring problems with Beast observed from very early on, before we even knew the underlying backstage problems: "To the extent that there's a type of story in this game, isn't it the same story Vampire already tells, but with the metaphor made more explicit?" As good games with variously overlapping elements and themes continue to come out, my conviction only strengthens that few if any of Beast's problems stem from "but another game did something similar." Demon, Changeling and Promethean have a lot of stuff in common but are also extremely distinct. Beast just makes me tired and sad at this point.
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Oct 23, 2019 10:48
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You know, something was bothering me earlier. Magical and synthetic blood is commonplace in the oWoD - there's even a vampire-owned company that distributes it globally (in exactly one short story, which would really gently caress up the entire premise if it ever got out of its box which is why everyone else ignores it.) So why isn't it available easily? What's stopping a whole True Blood deal unfolding? And then it struck me that the explanation that fits best is that the Camarilla doesn't want it to be, out of fear, which is great thematically. A world of peace is open to all vampirekind, if they'd but take it! But fear and the need for control by a handful of old bastards keeps the final nights awash in innocent blood. The very act of feeding is, then, an act of structural violence not only between vampire and prey, but between fledgling and elder, for it is open to the fledgling to feed on no one at all without the enormous list of disciplines of Mulva's route. In this way the theme of neonate against elder, dynamic against static, is preserved even with the existence of synthetic blood, but it also gives an anarch game a potentially tremendous end-game scenario: Release the synthetic blood formula. Fight to end Caine's curse - not by ending vampirism, but by ending the violence it entails, the symbolic nightly representation of the Original Murder. One can even go so far as to have it end vampirism if one wants a true endgame - perhaps if they succeed it triggers the End, and Gehenna is but the passing of ancients who fear the way of human progress, withering into dust as the curse ebbs away without the nightly sympathetic magic that reinforces it being supported by the suffering of millions of victims. This latter dimension of the curse is underconsidered. It is not merely a private torment - indeed, for many vampires it is no such thing - but a collective torment of humanity. Every night the vampire must repeat the fateful act to survive, and in doing so, they produce tremendous magical energy, both because there is power in the blood and because the curse is inherently linked to repetition, to stubbornness, and to the wild-eyed grief of shed blood. That energy must go somewhere, and while the conventional answer is that the vitae is quintessence, why not into one ongoing rite, one binding reinforced with each and every feeding, each and every time that the murder is symbolically re-enacted thanks to the stubbornness of kindred who can choose to never again re-enact it (not by feeding only morally, but only by not feeding on any living thing - every such act, willing or not, is symbolically the first murder. Caine's great crime was not merely murder but his refusal to make good and beg for forgiveness, and so the only way out is to stop feeding entirely, to shrink into torpor or meet the End. In this way it is open to every vampire to pursue the end of the curse if they can but accept their own deaths.) The second alternative, of course, is that the Technocracy keeps blocking it because it'd really gently caress up the paradigm, but that route is less interesting. Either way, it's given me material for a Connections sidebar in the timeline document, which is going to be one of the value adds - ways to link unrelated but thematically appropriate events together or spin a seemingly minor point of lore into a fascinating arc of a chronicle.
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Oct 23, 2019 10:50
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True Blood MIGHT work, but only because vampires would be consuming the stolen life-force of the workers slaved to and exploited by the massive industrial process such a product would require.
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Oct 23, 2019 16:07
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Vampires have been capitalists all along?!
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Oct 23, 2019 16:36
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Bogart posted:Vampires have been capitalists all along?! I mean part of the original pitch was "You've been forcibly brought into this system that literally eats up lives to preserve the power and wealth of those at the top. Now you have to find a place in it when you're at the bottom of the pecking order if you want to survive.". Which is pretty anti-capitalist in theme. So yeah? Ferrinus posted:True Blood MIGHT work, but only because vampires would be consuming the stolen life-force of the workers slaved to and exploited by the massive industrial process such a product would require. True Blood is entirely doable in both settings. The problem is what happens when your average The Lance alone really ought to have pretty much every legit version of Christianity declaring a freaking crusade on vampires. It's like someone's idea of a heresy decided to spawn a heresy specifically designed to degrade the teachings of the book itself. Basically an ultra-heresy. And don't even get me started on the Sabbat. Ironically the only one that could probably stick around is the Carthian's. Something 1e partially acknowledges by having their "What if they were the Camarilla equivalent in the setting?" segment having their main goal to be to enact a True Blood type coming out (albeit in a fairly inept sort of way) to humanity. Meanwhile the Invictus's Camarilla equivalent mostly spends their time jerking off about how great they think they are while screwing each other over, the Circle is possibly unwittingly working to start an apocalypse for the Mother of Monsters, the Lancaea et Sanctum tops their usual heretical state of being by deciding that God is simply too slow in his works and are working to try and kick start the apocalypse themselves to force him to judge humanity, and the Ordo Dracul is...Uh...Just kind of there and doing  really? I mean, it's really loving monstrous science that anyone with even a bit of decency would be horrified at. So that's bad too. Basically, what i'm saying is that in a True Blood type setting most of the covenants and groups as they are gotta go. Which is also probably why there isn't a True Blood type setting in the main game lines. Because like Loomer said the reason why being a vampire sucks in these settings is that other vampires with way more influence than you tend to be awful bastards. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 16:43
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That Old Tree posted:As good games with variously overlapping elements and themes continue to come out, my conviction only strengthens that few if any of Beast's problems stem from "but another game did something similar." Demon, Changeling and Promethean have a lot of stuff in common but are also extremely distinct. Vampire engaged with the main premise of feeding by straight up acknowledging that it was hosed up. Feeding was bad and the best you could hope for was informed consent from someone, and even then the act of feeding is still harmful. The game forces you to acknowledge that you are a monster and decide for yourself how far you're willing to go to perpetuate that life. Beast alternately treats it's means of feeding as either "the victim deserved it" or "the victim is better off afterwards" despite the fact that Beast Feeding inflicts breaking points. And the game never deals with the "Do we have a right to exist" Question because it straight up answers it in the text. "Yes, You do, because you're actually awesome."
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Oct 23, 2019 16:56
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Archonex posted:True Blood is entirely doable in both settings. The problem is what happens when your average Nah, no one will care. It'll just get folded into the already-open secret that we're ruled by an international cabal of satanic pedophiles IRL. The discourse, and more importantly the global mode of production, will smoothly absorb and adapt itself to public vampires.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:55
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7th Generation, or a completely new pedophile cabal?
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Oct 23, 2019 21:54
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Kurieg posted:Vampire engaged with the main premise of feeding by straight up acknowledging that it was hosed up. Feeding was bad and the best you could hope for was informed consent from someone, and even then the act of feeding is still harmful. The game forces you to acknowledge that you are a monster and decide for yourself how far you're willing to go to perpetuate that life. Doesn't it also 'teach someone a lesson?' Although I guess that can fold into the victim is better off afterwards.
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Oct 23, 2019 21:58
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Dawgstar posted:Doesn't it also 'teach someone a lesson?' Although I guess that can fold into the victim is better off afterwards. Yes that's what I meant. But even the book seems to imply that the only reason Beasts were ever able to successfully teach lessons was because reframing Beasts's actions into a positive narrative was, apparently, the historical role of Heroes before some of them decided to ask "Should we have to put up with this?" It doesn't help that several Beast books were being written at the same time and Matt didn't seem too concerned on making sure that everyone was adhering to the new narrative so things are just confusing and disjointed.
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Oct 23, 2019 22:31
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Kurieg posted:Yes that's what I meant. But even the book seems to imply that the only reason Beasts were ever able to successfully teach lessons was because reframing Beasts's actions into a positive narrative was, apparently, the historical role of Heroes before some of them decided to ask "Should we have to put up with this?" So beasts NEVER taught poo poo and instead it was just heroes trying to find meaning in tragedy? That honestly makes infinitely more sense.
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Oct 23, 2019 22:40
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Beast "Society" invented the teaching of lessons as a way to make themselves feel better about who and what they are. There's nothing that forces them to do it beyond the fact that the dark mother seems to hate it when Beasts don't torture people enough before killing them. She doesn't care about lessons or murder, she cares about cutting open wounds in the collective unconscious through inflicting mental trauma on humans.
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Oct 23, 2019 22:54
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The problem with Beast is incredibly banal, and it's that it feels like the draft of 4 different games smushed together and it never commits to any of them.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:08
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Mulva posted:The problem with Beast is incredibly banal, and it's that it feels like the draft of 4 different games smushed together and it never commits to any of them.  Right, that's the problem and not that it's super loving gross or anything.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:16
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xanthan posted:So beasts NEVER taught poo poo and instead it was just heroes trying to find meaning in tragedy? That honestly makes infinitely more sense. I mean, the thing about teaching lessons was also backfilled into the manuscript after a lot of people reacted to the Kickstarter preview text with shock and disgust and they did an emergency partial rewrite. The original draft of Beast shown to the public didn't have beasts attempt to morally justify their feeding at all. They have to feed, therefore it's not wrong to feed. Thus the lessons thing is just kind of loosely pasted on, and a lot of Beast material forgets it's even a thing, because originally, it wasn't.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:18
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joylessdivision posted:
So's vampire in a lot of ways. So are a lot of the elements of a lot of the games. You can absolutely tell a story about playing as an abuse elemental and have it work. It's not the themes, exactly, because they are present in a lot of other games that also turned out fine. The actual problem is that it's trying to do so many different things with it's various elements that it never really comes together in a clear package. The various people working on these things from WW on have done works where you flat out play an unrepentant monster, it's worked before. I'd certainly put Freak Legion as generally better written than Beast, and that's pure schlock splatterpunk gaming. That literally has a power that is "Put a dick on the end of something". The actual thing that sinks Beast is that it's just badly managed, and doesn't really know what it's trying to execute. e: Although even taking the strongest of the concepts at play in the books I think they'd be working at a disadvantage trying to make a good end product. Mulva fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 23:23
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I Am Just a Box posted:I mean, the thing about teaching lessons was also backfilled into the manuscript after a lot of people reacted to the Kickstarter preview text with shock and disgust and they did an emergency partial rewrite. The original draft of Beast shown to the public didn't have beasts attempt to morally justify their feeding at all. They have to feed, therefore it's not wrong to feed. Then it was replaced with "I chose to be a monster therefore it is both right and just for me to inflict suffering on others." which is just.... what?
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Oct 23, 2019 23:25
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Wouldn't the Thirst of Ages still be an issue eventually?
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Oct 23, 2019 23:35
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Mulva posted:You can absolutely tell a story about playing as an abuse elemental and have it work. It's not the themes, exactly, because they are present in a lot of other games that also turned out fine. The actual problem is that it's trying to do some many different things with it's various elements that it never really comes together in a clear package. The one thing that got me is that aren't Beast's supposed to feed off of fear? I may be mis-remembering it but it seems like they could have gone with a better interpretation of how they do that if so. Of course this means abuse in the current write up, but if you go off of that theory that they're basically to make people afraid of the unknown then it's entirely possible they could have been written to not be so incessantly poo poo. I mean, there's a difference between Johnny Dragondicks the child-eating monster abusing and terrorizing his way through the neighborhood and some random Beast who gets their fix by scaring people away from that alley where they're 99% liable to get beaten/mugged/raped/eaten alive by whatever is lurking in that area. Hell, I even remember that an earlier draft got into this. The old thread had people that were cracking up about one of the Insatiables (The really weirdo antagonists, no less!) that are supposed to be worse than Beast's. Said Insatiables had at least one write up where they had their needs fulfilled by literally just being an internet troll loving with people online. Basically writing Creepypasta tier stuff and pissing people off online is how they depicted as being a horrible person. That's it. That's their great crime against humanity. Meanwhile, Beast's literally have a variant based around racism and fear of the other in one of the books. Of course a good chunk of the line was written by a sexual predator. So I guess it'd make sense that to him the people that find a non harmful use for their urges would be even bigger bad guys. Kinda makes it even squickier when you consider that though.  Edit: Now I want to see a parody write up where you've got Beast's feeding in hilariously underdone ways as part of trying to get by as what they are. We're talking, the safety inspector that teaches people about the value of OSHA by organizing non-harmful accidents. Or the DARE instructor that turns into a loving gryphon in the middle of his "This is your brain on drugs, kids!" speech to scare them straight.  Ferrinus posted:Nah, no one will care. It'll just get folded into the already-open secret that we're ruled by an international cabal of satanic pedophiles IRL. The discourse, and more importantly the global mode of production, will smoothly absorb and adapt itself to public vampires. Yeah, that's possible. I feel like having actual no poo poo carnivores that need to feed off of humans would make for one hell of a scapegoat though. And that's when they aren't actually mucking things up. Because you know that the Invictus or Lance wouldn't be able to resist going with the whole "I am superior to you, bow to me mortals!" shtick they're so fond of. Plus you gotta factor in corporations like Cheiron. Which would absolutely be up for farming vampires for their blood or whatever for (insert horribly illegal experimental product here). Though maybe the fact that they're capable of super powered feats of strength and all sorts of crazy blood magic would mitigate this. Historically people that have wanted to denigrate and oppress minorities got a whole heck of a lot less enthusiastic about it on average when they could fight back. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 23:53
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Archonex posted:The one thing that got me is that in earlier drafts weren't Beast's supposed to feed off of fear? I don't remember when it got down to Hungers, but I thought it was pretty early in the discussion. As it is now they feed [Beyond side powers and the like where they can feed off other monsters doing their feeding thing] off Hungers. These are largely based on emotional resonance from people. So if it's Horde, you feed off taking from someone. It's not the taking but the reaction that feeds you. Power feeds off expressing power over others, stuff like that. Prey is amusing, because if you are actually hungry you can feed off animals. You literally never need to feed off a human being, ever. The key point is that Horrors are totally amoral. They don't care how you express their Hunger, just that you do. Whatever moral judgement you want to apply to the act is entirely on you, reality doesn't care. Or to the degree that it cares it's response is Heroes, the folks made to kill you. You are not a moral force in any direction. Some Hungers are profoundly likely to be horrific, like Ruin or Transgression, but you could feed Transgression by getting a Neo-Nazi to kick the poo poo out of a racist and date a minority or something. Your Horror isn't in this to be EEEEEEEEVIL, it just wants to eat. If you end up a monster it's because you decided that's what you want to be. Which is where the "4 separate game" thing comes in, because any of the flaws you want to come up with about the game [Other than who made it] can easily be countered by aspects in the game, if you played them up or downplayed them to various degrees. All the parts are there, they are just aren't integrated well.
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Oct 24, 2019 00:30
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Hardestadt was on the Epstein flight logs.
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Oct 24, 2019 01:40
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YaketySass posted:Wouldn't the Thirst of Ages still be an issue eventually? Unless the end of feeding ends vampirism through sympathetic effect, yes. It's less of an issue when the main feeding population is on synthetics, however, as either similar synthetics can be made for elder substitutes or, if not, then the amount of human suffering involved remains nil. In the latter event, this can even extend to the vampires using the same distribution framework to resolve the issue by having those who can still feed on fake blood donate, anonymizing it, and then shipping it out of the regions it came from and into distant ones, preventing elders from becoming blood bound to anyone they know. Said result would probably interfere in ending vampirism via sympathetic magic, though.
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Oct 24, 2019 02:20
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Archonex posted:Yeah, that's possible. I feel like having actual no poo poo carnivores that need to feed off of humans would make for one hell of a scapegoat though. And that's when they aren't actually mucking things up. Because you know that the Invictus or Lance wouldn't be able to resist going with the whole "I am superior to you, bow to me mortals!" shtick they're so fond of. Plus you gotta factor in corporations like Cheiron. Which would absolutely be up for farming vampires for their blood or whatever for (insert horribly illegal experimental product here). The bourgeoise already exist. Vampires would simply not be a big deal unless they challenged the ruling order, which they don’t, because they mostly reproduce and represent it. I’m much more interested in whether a “True Blood” product could work on the individual level - like, whether it could satiate a vampire. And the answer, clearly, is that it only could if producing a bottle of the stuff was as physically and metaphysically draining to the worker(s) involved as actually being bitten and fed on. Fortunately, under our mode of production, it is, so maybe we CAN bottle human life-force and sell it to the kindred but we certainly won’t be reducing the harm the kindred do or curing the kindred curse thereby.
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Oct 24, 2019 03:28
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Ferrinus posted:The bourgeoise already exist. Vampires would simply not be a big deal unless they challenged the ruling order, which they don’t, because they mostly reproduce and represent it. This is only the case if the curse is fuelled by abstract suffering rather than the direct symbolic repetition of the first murder.
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Oct 24, 2019 03:31
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Loomer posted:This is only the case if the curse is fuelled by abstract suffering rather than the direct symbolic repetition of the first murder. thus,
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Oct 24, 2019 03:54
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Archonex posted:The one thing that got me is that aren't Beast's supposed to feed off of fear? I may be mis-remembering it but it seems like they could have gone with a better interpretation of how they do that if so. Of course this means abuse in the current write up, but if you go off of that theory that they're basically to make people afraid of the unknown then it's entirely possible they could have been written to not be so incessantly poo poo.
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Oct 24, 2019 04:11
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