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Warthur posted:Arguably, by taking on the job of destroying an evil cult themselves the PCs will *be* Hunters by the end of the arc. Especially if they've decided to devote more time to taking down other threats.  My understanding is that, by refusing to close their eyes and look away, but instead taking up arms, the PCs are already Hunters.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:19
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ive decided to go all in on kobe ministry to maximize hissing and mamba mentality
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Feb 8, 2020 01:17
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Tacky as it would be to make Kobe a vampire, he should be from a clan with Protean because we know he can Earth Meld.
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Feb 8, 2020 01:59
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Jesus christ
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Feb 8, 2020 02:42
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Hey, so what's the deal with Changelings and mirrors? A couple things reference a mirror world and mirror people but I always glossed over it.
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Feb 10, 2020 06:51
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Soonmot posted:Hey, so what's the deal with Changelings and mirrors? A couple things reference a mirror world and mirror people but I always glossed over it. Short answer is alice and the looking glass, long answer is the use of mirrors and the idea of a reflected world's place in various mythologies and folk tales and horror stories. Plus the fact that changelings have all be altered, physically (even if sometimes just to a tiny degree) by their Durances, which is only visible to themselves, other changelings, and people they make an effort to reveal themselves to, while they look like their normal selves to everybody else, so looking in a mirror is somewhat more involved, psychologically, for them than for most other folks in the WOD. So it's kind of a thing that will resonate, thematically, and since Contracts (their primary form of magic, literal 'making deals with aspects of reality') are often built upon thematics and ephemeral things...
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Feb 10, 2020 08:21
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WoD and tabletop games in general just have a weird fixation on mirrors. Malkavians had a bunch of rituals involve mirrors, there was a thaum ritual for an IRL Bloody Mary ghost, and i think both WoD and D&D had a full on "mirrors are portals to a world of Evil Living Silver" type subplot. i don't think it was explored much in either game. edit- sources for WOD are the old thaumaturgy books, evil silver creatures are in the 3.5 Fiend Folio.
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Feb 10, 2020 08:29
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Soonmot posted:Hey, so what's the deal with Changelings and mirrors? A couple things reference a mirror world and mirror people but I always glossed over it. Sometimes mirrors don't actually show you a reflection, but glimpse a world of doppelgangers. There are Hedgeways that go there, not that going there is a particularly good idea. That's honestly mostly it; it seems like an idea seed meant to run wild with. See also: the chapter fiction in the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook, and its page with stats for Mirror People, hidden away on page 267 between the God-Machine Chronicle and the Appendices.
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Feb 10, 2020 08:47
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Oh yeah, Fetches, too. Most Changelings had a doppleganger of themselves made by their kidnappers to replace them when they were taken, so the whole 'look into a mirror and see 'yourself'' thing has some extra weight there, too.
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Feb 10, 2020 10:12
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I Am Just a Box posted:Sometimes mirrors don't actually show you a reflection, but glimpse a world of doppelgangers. There are Hedgeways that go there, not that going there is a particularly good idea. That's honestly mostly it; it seems like an idea seed meant to run wild with. Funnily enough, the CoD corebook thing happened largely because two of us writers independently wrote chapter fiction stories with "spooky poo poo involving mirrors" motifs, and rather than rejecting one outright the developer had us make a few tweaks to imply a connection between them. Though I have no idea how the Mirror People ended up in a sidebar at the very end of the book and not with the other Horrors.
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Feb 10, 2020 11:47
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GimpInBlack posted:Though I have no idea how the Mirror People ended up in a sidebar at the very end of the book and not with the other Horrors. I assumed it was a layout kludge where putting them in the sensible place would have pushed left pages into right and vice-versa, whereas somehow there was exactly one page of blank space to fill that wouldn't require any work to reflow the text. Is that the correct usage of layout this time, Rand? Am I getting closer?
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Feb 10, 2020 12:45
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Okay, so there wasn't a more involved section on mirror people/mirrorland somewhere I missed, just a neat idea for the ST to develop.
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Feb 10, 2020 17:29
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There's a group of vampires with Mirror powers in IIRC Danse Macabre. Also Bloody Jack in Mythologies.
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Feb 10, 2020 20:16
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Is it just me or is the 2e Cheiron Group about 30% wackier? Like, it almost feels like a comedy game now?
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Feb 10, 2020 21:02
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Soonmot posted:Okay, so there wasn't a more involved section on mirror people/mirrorland somewhere I missed, just a neat idea for the ST to develop. There's also a 1e NWOD books called "Mirrors" but I'm not sure if it's more "Here's some alt-realities to try" or if it has anything useful you can use.
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Feb 10, 2020 21:16
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Rand Brittain posted:Is it just me or is the 2e Cheiron Group about 30% wackier? Like, it almost feels like a comedy game now? I haven't read Hunter 2e, but everytime Cheiron came up in play in 1e for me it always ended up being crazy mad-scientist org and people seem to have had fun with that. I mean sure, you're putting a werewolf part in you or something, but it was always pretty wacky in my playing experience. Did it go full ham this time around? I can see that as being fun to play.
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Feb 10, 2020 21:17
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Jhet posted:I haven't read Hunter 2e, but everytime Cheiron came up in play in 1e for me it always ended up being crazy mad-scientist org and people seem to have had fun with that. I mean sure, you're putting a werewolf part in you or something, but it was always pretty wacky in my playing experience. Did it go full ham this time around? I can see that as being fun to play. The writeup mostly focuses on how monster implants are nonvoluntary, your body is now company property, and you aren't allowed to quit.
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Feb 10, 2020 21:20
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weird how they'd just plagarise that whole section from the Amazon Warehouse Employee Handbook.
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Feb 10, 2020 21:26
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joylessdivision posted:There's also a 1e NWOD books called "Mirrors" but I'm not sure if it's more "Here's some alt-realities to try" or if it has anything useful you can use. Nah, it's all alternate setting and playstyle stuff.
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Feb 10, 2020 21:42
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It's the Big Book of Optional Rules, with a few alternate settings. Requiem also got one. Did the other gamelines also get one?
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Feb 10, 2020 22:07
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That Old Tree posted:Nah, it's all alternate setting and playstyle stuff. Ah gotcha. I remember skimming it and "Bleeding Edge" at one point but couldn't remember if both were alt setting books or just BE.
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Feb 10, 2020 22:41
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Rand Brittain posted:Is it just me or is the 2e Cheiron Group about 30% wackier? Like, it almost feels like a comedy game now? I'm pretty disappointed by how the most interesting thing about the Cheiron Group, which fueled its irony and the human nature of its monstrocity, has almost completely fallen by the wayside: the fact that Thaumatechnology is a side business for applying failed research, and the actual reason the Cheiron Group hunts monsters is in fact to mass produce high quality medications. MonsieurChoc posted:It's the Big Book of Optional Rules, with a few alternate settings. Werewolf and Mage got Chronicler's Guides in similar styles. The Mage one was really good, although the improved overhaul of 2e mechanics obsoletes a lot of it. The Werewolf one was extremely hit-and-miss. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Feb 10, 2020 |
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Feb 10, 2020 22:42
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Edit: no, i didn't mean to double post
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Feb 10, 2020 22:44
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I’ve run a few 2e games in the past but I’m building a new group after moving and I wanted to run a Mortals GMC game. Is it worth buying the Chronicles corebook if I only want the story seed ideas? Follow-up: are any of those story seeds good for a town of ~50k or are they all assuming a big city? I want to set this in the town we’re living in for flavor. I’m interested in getting this because I’m not sure about figuring out appropriate god-machine things for mortals to deal with.
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Feb 11, 2020 09:43
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Xinder posted:I’ve run a few 2e games in the past but I’m building a new group after moving and I wanted to run a Mortals GMC game. Is it worth buying the Chronicles corebook if I only want the story seed ideas? Most of them seem to be generalized enough that you could at least start them there.
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Feb 11, 2020 15:28
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Xinder posted:I’ve run a few 2e games in the past but I’m building a new group after moving and I wanted to run a Mortals GMC game. Is it worth buying the Chronicles corebook if I only want the story seed ideas? Really depends on how you want to run the game. Have you found success in finding story ideas in the chronicles books in the past? Then you might have some luck. I've always ended up going different directions than any of the hooks in the books, so aside from mechanics they've been less useful for me (except Geist, I'm just starting in on the hardcover copy that has shown up from the KS, this one is giving me story ideas). For low power, weaker monster things, I've always just pulled from folklore and places like the Twilight Zone and monster-of-the-week episodes of the X Files and Supernatural. When I start there, I can start to tailor the game to the players because I can easily react to how they've dealt with the problem and the strengths/weaknesses they have. It's better than starting a mage game all about the spirit world, but where you don't have any players who have invested any dots in Spirit. Sure, it's possible, but it just leads to frustration when the Moros is going... "why couldn't it have just been about ghosts?"
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Feb 11, 2020 15:37
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I think the Chronicles rulebook is worth it for the adventure hooks and getting into the spirit of the God-Machine. The GMC adventure hooks have some juicy ideas that fire the brain, even if you don't necessarily use a specific hook. Some of the seeds assume a larger city, but not all, and even a couple that assume a larger city in the text, like Do-Over, require basically no effort to run with a small town. There are also some story seeds that explicitly assume a smaller town.
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Feb 11, 2020 20:21
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Thanks for the advice! I’ve definitely used story seeds from other chrod books in the past, so it sounds like this is worth picking up for me. I also gave it more thought today and realized having a book i can share with my players so they can reference it themselves without having to say “ignore that pyros thing” would be pretty helpful to have around.
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Feb 11, 2020 21:00
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Some buddies and I started a new Changeling:tL campaign and wow, the 2nd edition rules really do shine. I like how the contracts are pitched such that Changelings are generally quite powerful at their schtick, but their powers aren't so wide-ranging as to give rise to decision paralysis (a la Mage).
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Feb 11, 2020 23:21
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Warthur posted:Some buddies and I started a new Changeling:tL campaign and wow, the 2nd edition rules really do shine. I like how the contracts are pitched such that Changelings are generally quite powerful at their schtick, but their powers aren't so wide-ranging as to give rise to decision paralysis (a la Mage). Has your group been getting much out of the oneiromancy/hedgespinning rules? Those, and to a much lesser extent some of the example Clarity attacks, are the only things that really felt off for me in Second Edition, with how expensive it is to buy shifts. (Well, that and the new ephemeral entities that explicitly don't have a Twilight Form despite their immateriality, and that of the Helldiver and one of the Shield Contracts, works almost exactly like having a fae "phase" of Twilight. But that's a real nitpicky nerd issue.) Second Edition's not perfect but it's really solid overall, I'm pretty happy with Lost 2e. Definitely one of the better Second Editions.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:35
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I play with other people who'll post here with even stronger opinions than mine but: CtL 2e feels much better than 1e in just about every way that matters (contracts, breaking kith/seeming apart for better mix-and-matching, better mantle rules, feels like a slightly higher starting power level), but its intersections with CoD combat, for me, took some getting used to, and RAW hedgespinning feels like a brutal punishment from an actively hateful god for engaging with half of the setting. But it mostly punishes the ST.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:43
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I Am Just a Box posted:Has your group been getting much out of the oneiromancy/hedgespinning rules? Those, and to a much lesser extent some of the example Clarity attacks, are the only things that really felt off for me in Second Edition, with how expensive it is to buy shifts. (Well, that and the new ephemeral entities that explicitly don't have a Twilight Form despite their immateriality, and that of the Helldiver and one of the Shield Contracts, works almost exactly like having a fae "phase" of Twilight. But that's a real nitpicky nerd issue.) I'm about twenty sessions deep in a C:tL 2E campaign I'm running, and my general rule on Hedgespinning is to only use it much when the Hedge is "awake" and rowdy, usually when the motley is deep in the thorns, or once as an abstract roll that gives me a pool of successes to play with during, say, a tracking roll by the motley's Hedge hob-nobber to get them from point A to point B, mostly for weather effects, weird terrain twists, and etc. The book seems written to want you to be Hedgespinning all the time no matter what's going on, which honestly gets pretty tiring if your concept of the Hedge is something other than "it's trying to actively kill you all the time;" if it's not doing that, then I as ST can abstract a lot of the details just fine. For our table we wanted a Hedge experience that was still dangerous and needed to be respected, but was a lot more hospitable to like, poking around and seeing the sights/sites. For onieromancy, on the other hand, I do enforce Hedgespinning constantly stuff, but try not to make dream setpieces take up the entire session if possible. We play over IRC so there's a lot of typing and back and forth involved whenever a mechanics question comes up; like with combat, I try to have Hedgespinning stuff wax and wane as is dramatically appropriate.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:48
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I play with other people who'll post here with even stronger opinions than mine but: CtL 2e feels much better than 1e in just about every way that matters (contracts, breaking kith/seeming apart for better mix-and-matching, better mantle rules, feels like a slightly higher starting power level), but its intersections with CoD combat, for me, took some getting used to, and RAW hedgespinning feels like a brutal punishment from an actively hateful god for engaging with half of the setting. But it mostly punishes the ST. Eh, that guy's an rear end in a top hat anyway.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:48
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I know the old thread had a discussion on how hedgespinning and orienomancy were pretty hosed up RAW, but I don't remember if we came up with a fix. I LOVE CtL, and I cannot wait for my ST to rev up our game again so I can play my spider mob doctor cannibal.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:12
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My copy of the Geist 2e hardcover came in. It's really nice! It creaks a little when it opens, and I know it's because it's brand new, but I'm secretly imagining that it's haunted.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:15
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Slimnoid posted:My copy of the Geist 2e hardcover came in. It's really nice! It creaks a little when it opens, and I know it's because it's brand new, but I'm secretly imagining that it's haunted. We've come so far from "Glow in the Dark" wraith cover to haunted core book.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:21
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Slimnoid posted:My copy of the Geist 2e hardcover came in. It's really nice! It creaks a little when it opens, and I know it's because it's brand new, but I'm secretly imagining that it's haunted.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:24
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joylessdivision posted:We've come so far from "Glow in the Dark" wraith cover to haunted core book. Glow in the dark covers need to make a comeback.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:38
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Slimnoid posted:Glow in the dark covers need to make a comeback. Wraith 20th Anniversary Edition actually did have a glow-in-the-dark button on the spine.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:42
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Slimnoid posted:My copy of the Geist 2e hardcover came in. It's really nice! It creaks a little when it opens, and I know it's because it's brand new, but I'm secretly imagining that it's haunted. Just got mine too, and it’s a beaut! Makes me sad I can’t get a similar copy of the other (older) 2nd ed CofD cores I like. The DTRPG PoD option seems lovely, judging from reviews.
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Feb 12, 2020 03:00
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