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Fuzz has pretty much predicted the main problem of his game idea already, which is that there’d be less cool stuff to buy with XP. nWoD 2E is better on this front than 1E was because there are many more scaling merits available to mortals but if you don’t find enough material in Hunter you might want to just take Werewolf Gifts or Mage Rotes and just pretend they’re psychic powers that “gifted” humans can learn with time.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:34
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There's Second Sight and a whole bunch of other one-offs for 1E too.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:36
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I’d actually say the main problem is that running WWII combat in Chronicles seems like a pretty serious mismatch; you could do Hellboy/BPRD style special deployments but I can’t imagine extended military firefights in CoD.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:42
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Dawgstar posted:Which is a shame, as the Sabbat are as a valid lens to explore vampirism as the Camarilla, but Swedracula didn't care about them so out they go. Idk, I feel like the Anarchs are a better counter to the Camarilla. Well when they're not being written as Camarilla light.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:I’d actually say the main problem is that running WWII combat in Chronicles seems like a pretty serious mismatch; you could do Hellboy/BPRD style special deployments but I can’t imagine extended military firefights in CoD. Hellboy type of secret mission stuff is exactly what's planned, not Patton style warfare. Nessus posted:You will need to define what constitutes a "regular human" for the answer to have meaning, because (for instance) Sin-Eaters and Mages seem as though they would qualify. This misses the entire point of my post and is needlessly pedantic when I figured it was clear enough that I don't want to dip into lines outside of the base CoD style mortals core. Ferrinus posted:Fuzz has pretty much predicted the main problem of his game idea already, which is that there’d be less cool stuff to buy with XP. nWoD 2E is better on this front than 1E was because there are many more scaling merits available to mortals but if you don’t find enough material in Hunter you might want to just take Werewolf Gifts or Mage Rotes and just pretend they’re psychic powers that “gifted” humans can learn with time. Yeah, this is the problem I foresee. They could all grab a supernatural merit at the start, hopefully with some good variety across the team, but then where do they go from there? Granted it would mostly be a story campaign so they'd start with above-starter exp but there would be obvious chapter breaks where they could spend more exp and up their stats across the three major acts of the campaign, but some may feel like just increasing their mundane stats instead of supernatural stuff wouldn't be enough. Star Wars Edge of the Empire, for example, is just regulars people in Star Wars and as you progress they just get better at doing things and that's basically enough, but the very fact that this is nWoD rules and they'd be starting with some level of "other" power means you've already opened the can and it's a fine line to tread to keep the players' attention captured while also making sure they have fulfilling character growth. Alternative is to make the supernatural powers something they gain later, but that sorta flies in the face of the underlying plot idea. As it stands, my plan was to put them through boot camp as the prologue using starter rules, then at the end they get some exp to up stuff and can also take supernatural abilities at that point (but entirely optional... you want to play a regular guy, that's totally fine too). Might need to look at alternative systems to find what I'm looking for.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:54
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Fuzz posted:(Gifted soldier squad in WW2 deployed to Europe on a top secret mission is the current leading possibility, for me) I hate to ignore the premise and swerve on you, but honestly? Deviant: The Renegades is perfect for this. (If you missed the Kickstarter, there should be a Backerkit somewhere you can still buy into where you can get the full preview manuscript.) This is the kind of situation where you can get heroic Devoted (to the Allied Powers, with Loyalty Touchstones among your comrades and superiors) fighting villainous Devoted of a rival "conspiracy" (Axis Powers). If you keep your players from taking Scars (and thus Variations) that are too big, their powers will still stay down in the manageable range and they won't be too hosed up, leaving them around a similar place to mortals with Supernatural Merits.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:28
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The half splats are good for this too, playing ghouls or wolfblooded. You can reflavor things if you don't want vampires as needing to inject supersoldier drugs to power disciplines or whatever. But otherwise yeah, hunter and hurt locker are good places to look.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:28
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Archonex posted:As a side note to the above post I made (Since I didn't want to write a wall of text.), keep in mind that I think even the Inconnu have only gotten like one or two lines worth of mentioning so far. And that's the usual "Well, I heard on the grape vine that they're actually the true masters of the Jyhad/faking Golconda for ~evil~ reasons/are actually Rasputin in disguise." rumor mongering you'd expect out of some of the OWoD and most of Vampire in the NWoD. Lilith cults were mostly backgrounded, yeah. They came up here and there as factions of various conspiracies, focuses for Sabbat inquisitions, an NPC here and there, but never really got much focus other than Revelations of the Dark Mother and a couple of chapters. They were one of the few relatively unexplored areas left by the close of the original run so it's no surprise it's somewhere they're expanding now.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:34
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) seem to have taken an even greater focus than in prior editions. I think a fairly big section of several of the books focused on them. Which is funny, since I don't recall them getting that much focus in the prior OWoD versions.
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Wiccan Wasteland posted:Idk, I feel like the Anarchs are a better counter to the Camarilla. Well when they're not being written as Camarilla light. That makes the Camarilla too monolithic for me. Threats from within and without are best.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:25
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Kurieg posted:The thing that's weird about Conquering Heroes is that almost all of the presented Heroes were portrayed as Sympathetic, decent people who's lives were ruined by Beasts. And all of the example beasts Save one were terrible monsters that should probably be put down for the world's net good. It's just so incredibly bizarre and tonally inconsistent with the rest of the line. I have to admit that if I was playing a Beast, I'd be inclined to approaching most of the "Conquering Heroes" with the idea of sitting down with them and just talking things out. Hell, with the Silversmith, I'd be aiming toward some kind of limited partnership with the idea of hunting down Blitz Twerp and ending his evil little child-eating rear end. I think one of the problems with Beasts is their self-centeredness. Not so much selfishness, exactly, but the idea that they really don't seem to care much about anything outside of themselves. I can believe that a Beast would fight for and even die for someone he cared about, but that's still kind of about him, about who he loves. Beasts kind of need some kind of greater cause or opposition. Changelings have the True Fae. Werwwolves have the idagim. Mages have the Fallen World and the idea of Awakening humanity as a whole. As goofy as the "insatiable" are, I'd kind of like to see that thought developed a little more. Maybe there's a Typhon along with Lilith acted as a Dark Father. A war within the Primordial Dream.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:30
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Fuzz posted:This misses the entire point of my post and is needlessly pedantic when I figured it was clear enough that I don't want to dip into lines outside of the base CoD style mortals core.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:42
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I Am Just a Box posted:I hate to ignore the premise and swerve on you, but honestly? Deviant: The Renegades is perfect for this. (If you missed the Kickstarter, there should be a Backerkit somewhere you can still buy into where you can get the full preview manuscript.) This is the kind of situation where you can get heroic Devoted (to the Allied Powers, with Loyalty Touchstones among your comrades and superiors) fighting villainous Devoted of a rival "conspiracy" (Axis Powers). If you keep your players from taking Scars (and thus Variations) that are too big, their powers will still stay down in the manageable range and they won't be too hosed up, leaving them around a similar place to mortals with Supernatural Merits. This actually sounds cool, though it looks like there's no ETA on when it will actually come out so that doesn't really help me in starting a campaign in the next month or so. 
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Mar 2, 2020 00:50
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Fuzz posted:This actually sounds cool, though it looks like there's no ETA on when it will actually come out so that doesn't really help me in starting a campaign in the next month or so. I'm trying to figure out if you get access to the preview manuscript from the Kickstarter when you preorder on Backerkit. A preorder itself definitely won't come in time for next month, but if you get the preview manuscript, that's the full text of the book (prior to a little errata here and there). It lacks fonts and backgrounds and illustrations but it is in fact enough to run the full game, and I'm in a (very slow moving) Deviant game slated right now using it.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:58
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Everyone posted:Beasts kind of need some kind of greater cause or opposition. Changelings have the True Fae. Werwwolves have the idagim. Mages have the Fallen World and the idea of Awakening humanity as a whole. As goofy as the "insatiable" are, I'd kind of like to see that thought developed a little more. Maybe there's a Typhon along with Lilith acted as a Dark Father. A war within the Primordial Dream. Werewolves have their entire society organized by what kind of enemy they kill on top of idigam and maeljin (even the Pure are largely organized by what way they want to kill Forsaken and gently caress up humanity). I agree though, one of the things that hurts Beasts the most as a World of Darkness game on top of all it's other issues is the lack of polities or other greater organizations beyond local level. I mean even Changelings have Entitlements, Demon's have Agenda's, you can see how these groups end up with a shared vocabulary, a shared understanding of what they are. Beast has the same issue as Geist first edition had, despite the text's insistence there's no actual greater context in which these guys can understand themselves existing, I mean if you woke up as an Anakim or whatever one day you'd think you were the only one of your kind. Seriously, where does that name come from? How do Beast's know it? Also it limits the kinds of tales your able to tell. The only way for Beasts to get involved with something of great significance is riding along with another supernatural. Just a really lame splat.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:12
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I would say either make your game centered around Second Sight or just poach Mage stuff (let them buy Rotes, for instance around a certain theme but not use capital M 'magic') just to save yourself the hassel of coming up with stuff on your own. Also Hunter is a good chassis for this, add stuff on top of that.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:42
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Mendrian posted:I would say either make your game centered around Second Sight or just poach Mage stuff (let them buy Rotes, for instance around a certain theme but not use capital M 'magic') just to save yourself the hassel of coming up with stuff on your own. This is a great idea. You could focus it along the lines of popular thematic supernatural archetypes. So pyromancers should buy forces rotes about fire. Telepaths stick to mind stuff, and things like that. Shapeshifters using some of the life spells, etc. And while this would definitely work for me, it might be everyone’s ideal, but you’d be better served with the 1e Second Sight book in that case. Or probably even a different gameline depending on the core story of your game. I would stay away from half templates as written though. They just don’t have enough cool things to use that aren’t more splat specific than is probably useful.
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Mar 2, 2020 02:08
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Yeah, I'm thinking you're right. The goal was to make a Dirty Dozen style game with a band of random powered and imported but hard edged soldiers, all infiltrating into the Reich ahead of D-Day to get crazy poo poo done and stop a Nazi project deep in Europe. The odd powers and whatnot was to give them a leg up over the basic Inglorious Basterds kinda vibe and add some fun Metal Gear Solid style weirdness to it all. (It's actually set in the MGS universe)
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Mar 2, 2020 03:20
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There's the Proximi, bloodblines of humans descended from atlanteans who have a bunch of rotes they can buy but also get a weird curse. Perfect if you wanna play Ryougi Shiki.
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Mar 2, 2020 04:06
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Fuzz posted:Yeah, I'm thinking you're right. The goal was to make a Dirty Dozen style game with a band of random powered and imported but hard edged soldiers, all infiltrating into the Reich ahead of D-Day to get crazy poo poo done and stop a Nazi project deep in Europe. The odd powers and whatnot was to give them a leg up over the basic Inglorious Basterds kinda vibe and add some fun Metal Gear Solid style weirdness to it all. (It's actually set in the MGS universe) I'm really hoping I can find a way to get you Deviant in time, because seriously, just glancing down the list of Deviant powers, I'm thinking: that's Fortune, that's Decoy Octopus, that's The End, that's both flavors of Volgin. I think you could even come pretty close to making The Pain, complete with his bee grenades.
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Mar 2, 2020 04:20
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Well poo poo, now I want to run Slashers-powered Inglorious Basterds / Dirtiest Dozen.
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Mar 2, 2020 04:33
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moths posted:Well poo poo, now I want to run Slashers-powered Inglorious Basterds / Dirtiest Dozen.
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Mar 2, 2020 04:42
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Archonex posted:Admittedly the idea of some awful Siren-esque nightmare getting cornered, preparing to unveil their secret powers as everyone braces themselves, only to whip out a car battery to bludgeon everyone into submission with is so hilarious it kind of turns around back to being awesome. It's the sort of nonsensical poo poo you'd see in Sealab 2021 or AQTHF. But it's Beast so i'm sure it wasn't intentionally designed that cleverly. Exactly! ...also exactly, on that last sentence.
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Mar 2, 2020 06:15
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Everyone posted:Beasts kind of need some kind of greater cause or opposition. Changelings have the True Fae. Werwwolves have the idagim. Mages have the Fallen World and the idea of Awakening humanity as a whole. As goofy as the "insatiable" are, I'd kind of like to see that thought developed a little more. Maybe there's a Typhon along with Lilith acted as a Dark Father. A war within the Primordial Dream. I'm working on a homebrew splat which may (eventually) be of some interest to you.  The super-short version is that any splat intimately connected to the Astral stands directly between humanity and the Abyss. Werewolves hunt because they're compelled to, because they were bribed, guilted, and semi-voluntarily assumed the role of spirit cops; my concept is that mermaids and Innsmouth Folk are basically stuck guarding the liminal spaces between humanity and the Astral Sea whether they like it or not, because it's home and the neighbors kind of suck. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 2, 2020 |
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Mar 2, 2020 07:31
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Got a copy of Deviant and it actually does work perfectly for the campaign idea and video game-y setting. Thanks for the heads up, thread! Will be running it on here via Discord PBP eventually, assuming there's interest.
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Mar 2, 2020 18:13
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Quick question on lore regarding magic and stuff: has it always been around? I assume it's something like just tapping the primordial essence of the universe or whatever, but I'm not sure. I've got some characters who are going to be meeting an ancient human, one of the first to contact this supernaturally powerful being from beyond dimensions, and while they're likely not going to be asking any questions about magic or stuff, if there's any actual lore about what magic was like thousands of years ago, or if there even was magic (if there wasn't I'll just uh gloss over that), it'd be neat if I could tie some in-world stuff to that.
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Mar 2, 2020 19:20
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Morpheus posted:Quick question on lore regarding magic and stuff: has it always been around? I assume it's something like just tapping the primordial essence of the universe or whatever, but I'm not sure. I've got some characters who are going to be meeting an ancient human, one of the first to contact this supernaturally powerful being from beyond dimensions, and while they're likely not going to be asking any questions about magic or stuff, if there's any actual lore about what magic was like thousands of years ago, or if there even was magic (if there wasn't I'll just uh gloss over that), it'd be neat if I could tie some in-world stuff to that. It's complicated because there was an ancient "original" state of magic before wizards ruined everything, but it retroactively changed history so that things had always been the way they are now, with the only survivors being various weirdos who weren't affected by causality for one reason or another. We have very little to go on re: the state of pre-Fall of Atlantis magic beyond the Pentacle's myths and legends. The Mage core book, Dark Eras, and possibly Signs of Sorcery are your best bets for more info.
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Mar 2, 2020 19:24
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Morpheus posted:Quick question on lore regarding magic and stuff: has it always been around? I assume it's something like just tapping the primordial essence of the universe or whatever, but I'm not sure. I've got some characters who are going to be meeting an ancient human, one of the first to contact this supernaturally powerful being from beyond dimensions, and while they're likely not going to be asking any questions about magic or stuff, if there's any actual lore about what magic was like thousands of years ago, or if there even was magic (if there wasn't I'll just uh gloss over that), it'd be neat if I could tie some in-world stuff to that. It existed. The supernatural has always been present and part of the world. For Mage magic specifically it actually has existed longer than our current reality, because timeline fuckery means the period in which it was at its strongest and highest ebb got written out of history.
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Mar 2, 2020 19:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's complicated because there was an ancient "original" state of magic before wizards ruined everything, but it retroactively changed history so that things had always been the way they are now, with the only survivors being various weirdos who weren't affected by causality for one reason or another. This. Mages sometimes find ruins, temples, and other less-classifiable structures from the Time Before. They sometimes find human or almost-human inhabitants in pocket dimensions that seem descended from it. The thing is, though, they all appear to be from different Time Befores. Atlantis wasn't an island, it's an easy name for a cascade failure of reality. Magic in the current timeline goes back to the hunter/gatherers, and probably the nearest pre-homo sapiens humans.
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Mar 2, 2020 19:27
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This is why we gotta build another ladder and storm the heavens.
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Mar 2, 2020 20:20
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MonsieurChoc posted:This is why we gotta build another ladder and storm the heavens.
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Mar 2, 2020 20:32
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MonsieurChoc posted:This is why we gotta build another ladder and storm the heavens.
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Mar 2, 2020 20:35
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MonsieurChoc posted:This is why we gotta build another ladder and storm the heavens. Even the heavens shall burn when we are gathered 
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Mar 2, 2020 20:43
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Sounds like, lore-wise, I have pretty much free reign for this then, sweet. Next campaign we're running, I am 100% being a Mage.
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Mar 2, 2020 21:26
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Morpheus posted:Sounds like, lore-wise, I have pretty much free reign for this then, sweet. If you care about lore and your ancient human is merely from the long-distant past, you could look up The Sundered World in Dark Eras for ideas, which depicts Awakened sorcerers in a Neolithic society that already exists in the temporally distorted ruins of a destroyed ancient Time Before. More importantly, if the primordial being you encounter is from the Time Before and not merely the long-distant past of history as it currently exists, you are encouraged to go loving crazy. Most glimpses the lore presents of the Time Before suggest it to have been a bizarre and alien world, with prehuman ancient servitor peoples and psychic pyramid creatures who communicate over radio waves, and possibly a class divide between the wizard-kings of the Awakened City and "barbarian" sorcerers from "primitive" outlands.
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Mar 2, 2020 23:45
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Well remember that there are many Times Before, which need not have been in any agreement. When reality Fell, it fell hard down the entire flight of stairs. So there’s a whole plethora of ancient golden age timelines that now exist as ruins, regardless of whether there may or may not have been just one. (I personally like the idea that the Star Ladder was chronologically in the Time Before equivalent of the Bronze Age but mostly for aesthetic reasons regarding Time Before artifacts)
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Mar 3, 2020 02:14
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It occurs to me that the wraith of Herodotus never canonically ascended or went to oblivion. Risen Herodotus (and why not Thucydides for the ultimate tagteam?) rampaging through schools and attacking history professors who let their agendas colour their work to an unacceptable level, anyone? "So you see, the cause of the war was State's Rights - " Thucydides bursts through the door in a mouldering corpse and a hatchet and starts yelling about the real history of the world while Herodotus is fistfighting the anti-postmodernists
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Mar 3, 2020 04:15
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I would really not pick Herodotus as the guy against making poo poo up or having an agenda in historical reporting. He’s, uh, kind infamous for doing both himself, all the time.
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Mar 3, 2020 04:19
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Mors Rattus posted:I would really not pick Herodotus as the guy against making poo poo up or having an agenda in historical reporting. He’s, uh, kind infamous for doing both himself, all the time. Yes, but he would also write anything down from basically anyone, so I'll stick to imagining him fistfighting people who want to make selective cuts for political purposes.
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Mar 3, 2020 04:55
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Loomer posted:Yes, but he would also write anything down from basically anyone Do you really want to bring this guy back in the age of Infowars and Facebook news?
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Mar 3, 2020 04:59
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If it came up in a Mage game, I would definitely establish that everything Herodotus wrote down was basically true. It’s just more fun that way!
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Mar 3, 2020 05:00
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