|
The Unlife Aquatic posted:Just don't gently caress with owls, it seems like good life advice for anyone really. Well, actually, about that: https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/1215292344582451205
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 04:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 10:08 |
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:If you want two factions for this idea that are both invested in inflicting very similar forms of shared misery on the world and might occasionally cooperate despite not truly being friends or close allies, this is the Seers of the Throne and the angels of the God-Machine. I'm def going to avoid GMC stuff for the forseeable future, it's much much larger scale than the conflicts I'm looking for. I think they're going to start off trying to investigate a serial killer who turns out to be a strix riding a feral vamp, which might/might not be someone's sire. The Strix represent the immediate physical threats, the Seers are going to be the social conditions preventing things from getting better. Through fighting the strix they're going to encounter seers, and get a bigger idea of exactly how much is at stake here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 05:33
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:The owls are not what they seem Gotta light?
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 07:11
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Gotta light? This is the water... and this is the well...
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 07:33
|
|
|
The Unlife Aquatic posted:This is the water... Drink deep And descend Seriously though y'all who haven't should watch Twin Peaks the Return and steal from it for games. There's some excellent stuff there to work into a WoD/CoD game
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 16:26
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Well, actually, about that: https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/1215292344582451205 Everybody hates the guy who won't stop spouting movie quotes but for once "What are we supposed to use, harsh language?" is entirely appropriate.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 18:30
|
|
|
PHIZ KALIFA posted:Folks who know Chronicles of Darkness, tell me if this is feasible: A cabal of lovely Wizards are preventing beneficial social programs because they're growing powerful off of the shared misery they inflict upon this town. Unbeknownst to them, a nest of Strix are magnifying the spiritual shitstorm they both grow strong off of. I dunno about the mechanics of it but having some lovely mages use a chained Promethean as a conduit for Disquiet might be interesting. Forcing it to remain in one place to ruin it and the surrounding area while leeching off of it's misery might be a good first step.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 18:41
|
|
|
If anyone is interested in joining the Trailer Park Vamps game PM me, one of my other dudes has backed out so I'm looking for more folk. This is going to be presented primarily as a podcast, I'll be handling the sheets and dice so y'all can focus on RP.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 19:32
|
|
|
Can someone explain Revenants to me for someone not too versed in Vampire? Ghouls that died and self embraced somehow?
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 21:20
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Can someone explain Revenants to me for someone not too versed in Vampire? Ghouls that died and self embraced somehow? When you get tainted with vampire blood (either by bite or by ghoulification) there's a chance when you die it'll catch like a spark in the dying embers of your life, and suddenly you're a revenant - half-way to a real vampire.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 21:23
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Can someone explain Revenants to me for someone not too versed in Vampire? Ghouls that died and self embraced somehow? Occult collateral damage. Revenants sometimes rise spontaneously when vampires are careless with how they treat the living: when low Humanity vampires kill mortals through feeding, and when the ghouls of thick-blooded vampires die. Revenants are accidental walking misery for everyone around them, including themselves, due to how rising each night drains all their stored Vitae, leaving them filthy, starving, and close to frenzy at the beginning of every night. They can only learn basic Disciplines, can't make other people into ghouls or vampires, and can't blood bond others. Kindred can "take responsibility" for a revenant by "completing" their Embrace, at the same Humanity cost as the normal 2e Embrace, which transforms the revenant into an ordinary Kindred. Revenants can also get proactive about this and become ordinary Kindred through diablerie. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 23:07
|
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:thick-blooded vampires Never heard this phrase before and I love it. Will use it if ever I'm in a Vampire game again.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2020 23:23
|
|
|
for all the talk about the length of vampire lineages, its really the girth that counts
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2020 01:31
|
|
|
Does anyone know any good Mage the Awakening podcast or video series?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2020 18:50
|
|
|
We're still two weeks out from a V5 session zero and I'm all anxious about ST duties since it feels like there's not much I can do until I know the characters and agreed upon setting. Is there anything constructive I can be doing during the wait other than spitballing some interesting NPCs?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2020 23:44
|
|
|
Draw maps, make out "action cards" where it tells players how much dice to roll for so-and-so thing they're likely to do.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
If you haven't already, come up with a handful of "city/setting-building" questions to get everyone going, if you want it to be a group effort. Like: How old is the city, who founded it, and why? What are two or three major vampire-adjacent events from its past? What are the big "regions" of the city, like 'the Eastside slums, austere Downtown, bustling new ArtWalk/UpperMidClass Business district, and the Docks.'? What are two or three touristy, artistic or academic landmarks in the city? How nationally or internationally prominent is the city? What is the general social "tone" of the populace? Of course this can all emerge organically from just hashing out what everyone wants to play, but I find it's helpful to use modestly specific questions to jump-start people's ideas. You can also tailor your questions to elicit answers that tie in to mysteries you'll reveal later. You might have some hidden cabal of ancient blood sorcerers in mind, and it might be more emotionally satisfying and interesting if they wind up hidden beneath the local college everyone came up with together instead of some place you came up with by yourself that you might struggle to get the players interested in. Even "Oh yeah, the random neighborhood we came up with together in session 0" can be a pretty compelling hook that you shouldn't ignore. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jan 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 06:37
|
|
|
My Tremere-hunting cabal faced down one of their adversaries tonight - deep in the ruins below the city, inside the forest-body of their enemy's forest-spirit familiar (a very old German forest that eats children and souls, specifically). The Tremere is of House Seo Hel, and they'd previously destroyed her centuries-old viking axe, so she'd lured a hitman into the city to kill him and make his soul into an assault rifle. She also has enough Matter and Life to transmute herself into living diamond, which gave her significant armor - that plus Death Mage Armor and some matter spells on the magazine meant she was basically a tank spraying bullets at anything that moved while the forest-spirit used roots to trip and hold her prey. None of the cabal or their allies died (action economy is the greatest power of all) but almost all of them got shot up pretty badly at one point or another, and only their layered buffs and defensive spells kept them from being torn apart. In the end the crone limped off after being disarmed, and they're going to use a spirit familiar to follow her to the Tremere ritual deep in the heart of the ruins, so they can ambush their antagonists and finish them off. They Obrimoi are also setting the forest spirit on fire, since she broke its connection to her as a familiar as soon as it was clear the fight was lost. I'm mildly in shock that 'evil underground forest ambush by a diamond crone with a machine gun' is the most reasonable description of everything that went down.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 07:04
|
|
|
In the Nasuverse there is a Vampire Forest. https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Forest_of_Ainnash Always wanted to steal it for a game. Congrats! 
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 07:12
|
|
|
To be fair the forest was much less dangerous than the Thyrsus Tremere, since the party had a few layers of anti-spirit spells on them (they expected the spirit's previous form, a possessed fox called the Teumessian, to show up again even though they more or less destroyed it the first time).
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 07:18
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:We're still two weeks out from a V5 session zero and I'm all anxious about ST duties since it feels like there's not much I can do until I know the characters and agreed upon setting. Is there anything constructive I can be doing during the wait other than spitballing some interesting NPCs? Figure out who the major players of the city are. Who is the Prince (or Baron) and then who is their court. Also the random Vampire generator is pretty handy way to do this if you just need a batch of names with stats. Link https://chartopia.d12dev.com/collection/576/ I spent an afternoon rolling NPCs with that thing and ended up with something like 10 of each clan and built my court from there. joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jan 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 18:22
|
|
|
the idea of a centuries old viking axe with no other occult or spiritual significance (assuming that's what it was in game) gave me the idea for an Auspex-heavy Malkavian who works with antiques and Spirit Touches all the oldest stuff they can find, to use as creative fuel for their historical fanfiction. Like, imagine picking up an ancient egyptian urn rumored to hold the body of king such and such, only to instead realize it's a toilet and the entire academic concept of historical toilets is 100% wrong. i, uh. . . i think that would be fun.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 18:40
|
|
|
PHIZ KALIFA posted:the idea of a centuries old viking axe with no other occult or spiritual significance (assuming that's what it was in game) gave me the idea for an Auspex-heavy Malkavian who works with antiques and Spirit Touches all the oldest stuff they can find, to use as creative fuel for their historical fanfiction. Well, it was made from the soul of a Viking - Alder, the mage in question, is of House Seo Hel, a Tremere subsubsplat from Left Hand Paths, who use the souls of their victims to make grave-good tools that impart their previous owners’ expertise. Alder killed a Viking and took his soul to give herself vastly increased skill at arms, but otherwise it was just a really nice axe. Alder herself is something like 800 years old. (Like vampires, Tremere can go dormant and lose Gnosis/mystical power, so she was ‘just’ a terrifying multi-degreed mage with a mean streak, not an unstoppable Gnosis 8 beast.) Hence why, when it was destroyed by the player cabal in an act of excellent sabotage, she arranged to acquire a ghoul hitman’s soul to make an assault rifle.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 19:50
|
|
|
I can see how that would make for a better table story but the headcanon i'm writing where i have to falsify academic sources to prove what i know supernaturally and just over the years trying to subtly tweak academia towards a more accurate view of the past would make for a really fascinating 8 episode BBC miniseries inexplicably released over a 12 year span
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 20:03
|
|
|
posted on the bloodlines 2 thread and remembered "HEY THE WOD MEGATHREAD EXISTS" and can probably be very helpful So, some context first. I have a friend who runs games and really, really likes it, he is some sort of savant DM/Storyteller and has a tremendous knack for the gameplay and the "pushing parts" of the narrative (i.e. how to tie scenes one to the other, how to direct the whole of the campaign, create engaging alternatives, kickass at improvisation, etc) but laments the fact that he can't do worldbuilding, setting development and creation. He primarily likes the game, and preparing his sessions for different groups takes a lot of free time as it is. So he came up with an idea. "Hey, DGCF, I like the stuff you write, are you available for some side work?" and gently caress me, I haven't played World of Darkness in like... Eleven years? But he insisted and actually offered me some compensation for the trouble. Alright. My friend asked me to set up a few things for one VtM group he is running, and wants to try some heterodox approaches for this. It is a varied group of six players, two are older and are very familiar with the setting while the others are younger (late twenties) and have played every now and then but are more interested into a deeper sort of campaign. By heterodox, I meant to say he is homebrewing hard. For example, while the ruleset for the run of this group is for the 20th anniversary, he proposed some Requiem settings, particularly stuff such as the embrace rules (one point of permanent willpower, right?) and blood potency versus generation. Things like that. Where I come in is that he feels that doing all this gameplay revision and adaptation without fluff is kinda boring and potentially devaluing if it doesn't have a great presentation, a good creative justification to make the gameplay work for the narrative. The idea here is that if those changes work well enough, he wants to aggregate to a reference where he can promptly provide both custom rules and fluff for his players. So, here I am. After doing some general groundwork, I am doing some letter exchanges between two kindred of a more intellectual bent in order to talk informally-but-formally about potency, but I really want to not get into the trap of something like "turns out we were completely wrong about generation" and retroactively gently caress up a lot of things. My idea is to go about it like, well, Requiem itself goes: small and localized. Some commentary regarding that the new childer of elders are distinctly weaker nowadays in comparison to what history shows, etc. Open up spaces for storyteller fiat gradually, without taking a sledgehammer to task. What do you goons think?
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 20:08
|
|
|
Maybe Gehenna happened and it's what caused the changes from Generation to Blood Potency? As the Antedeluvians are no more and/or the connection ebtween them and their descendants grow weaker their power is no longer tied down by Generation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 21:35
|
|
|
Cain is dead. His punishment is rendered null. Now, the blood is its own curse, and its power is its own power. Distance from Cain does not matter. Alternatively, get into alternate explanations for what the generations of Cain meant rather than, like, literal generations. Distance from Cain mattered to some extent, sure...but only to the seventh generation. After the seventh generation, Cain's curse is done. He is avenged unto the seventh generation. After that...well, you can do something fun, because here's a Bible figure. Lamech, son of Methusael, son of Mehujael, son of Irad, son of Enoch, son of Cain. The first man to take two wives. Genesis 4:23-4 posted:And Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech. I have slain a man for wounding me, And a lad for bruising me. The Curse of Cain afflicted only those of 7th generation and above. Others have been afflicted by the Curse of Lamech, his mortal great-great-great-grandson. See, right before this passage, we learn that Lamech's children are the ancestors of civilization. Lamech's son by Adah, Jabal, is the father of nomadic herding. Lamech's son by Adah, Jubal, is the father of music. Lamech's son by Zillah, Tubal-cain, is the father of metalworking. Lamech's daughter by Zillah, Naamah, doesn't have her profession she invented listed. You can go wild with her, or with unnamed other children; pick one to be the true father or mother of the Blood. Blood Potency reflects one's closeness in demeanor and skill and power to Lamech's child and the Curse of Lamech, and is effectively able to go on forever - it functions differently to the Curse of Cain, and you have seventy-seven generations before it ends.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 21:50
|
|
|
What does it do to your whole society? What happens when suddenly the Ventrue neonate who could previously Dominate older vampires because he's the latest progeny of some low-Generation elder discovers that he can't just Tell people to do things anymore?
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2020 23:27
|
|
|
I like Mors' model. You could probably lean into the 90s zeitgeist and say that the elders lied to you - you could even say that, perhaps, some Methuselahs were putting out some major whammies, and now they were killed by Obama drone-striking them and their curse is eroding heavily and fast. Thanks Obama. I am not completely clear: is the project to justify a change in rules, or is the project to present a textual justification for why this is mostly Masquerade, including historical/metaplot elements of Masquerade, but reflecting a historical emergence/centering of Requiem-style mechanics? If I was king here, I'd be inclined to say that it worked like Requiem all along -- possibly removing the part where your memories get scrambled in torpor because part of the Masquerade setting is in fact that occasionally that little dude with the intense expression knew Julius Caesar and can accurately quote him. (Or is Julius Caesar.) The only hard-coded use for Generation seems to be Dominate, and you could probably finagle something along the lines of "the clans with intrinsic Dominate get an effective bonus to their Generation for dominating those without intrinsic Dominate." This is, I believe, the Tremere and the Ventrue. The Tremere can keep a secret; the Ventrue can lie to themselves.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 00:17
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:What does it do to your whole society? What happens when suddenly the Ventrue neonate who could previously Dominate older vampires because he's the latest progeny of some low-Generation elder discovers that he can't just Tell people to do things anymore?
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:28
|
|
|
Dracula from Requiem falls into a portal and ends up in Masquerade. He then teams up with Masquerade Dracula to recreate the Ordo Dracul. Two Draculas.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:30
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Dracula from Requiem falls into a portal and ends up in Masquerade. He then teams up with Masquerade Dracula to recreate the Ordo Dracul. Then 25 years later it's time for Vampire Metal Gear.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:51
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Dracula from Requiem falls into a portal and ends up in Masquerade. He then teams up with Masquerade Dracula to recreate the Ordo Dracul. What's Masquerade Dracula like?
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:52
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Dracula from Requiem falls into a portal and ends up in Masquerade. He then teams up with Masquerade Dracula to recreate the Ordo Dracul. Count loving Dracula wouldn't have time for that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:55
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:What's Masquerade Dracula like? Probably a fleshcrafter.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 01:58
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:Then 25 years later it's time for Vampire Metal Gear. The series mostly just kind of forgot about him but my favorite is still Solidus Dracula.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 02:04
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Probably a fleshcrafter. He's from that clan but the older part of it without the flesh crafting actually.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 02:07
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Dracula from Requiem falls into a portal and ends up in Masquerade. He then teams up with Masquerade Dracula to recreate the Ordo Dracul. Tag team Draculas. They can fight El Santo and Blue Demon
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 02:12
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:What's Masquerade Dracula like? He's pretty cool, he hunted vampires for their blood so he could have an army of ghouls while he was alive. Then forced a Tzimisce Elder to embrace him at swordpoint (IIRC good old punching bag Lambach). After which he fought a lot of vamps, faked his death when his realm crumbled and then joined the Inconnu. Then backstabbed the Inconnu because they were doing nothing and spread their secrets of Golconda to others. That's from memory.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 03:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 10:08 |
|
|
xanthan posted:He's from that clan but the older part of it without the flesh crafting actually. No, Vlad has Vicissitude. He does his own thing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2020 04:16
|
|