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Mors Rattus posted:What ultimately makes her work for me is that explicitly a ton of other Predator Kings loving hate her and she's only not become a target for them because she has an elder backing her up in her 'no, guys, it's okay if I continuously violate the tribal oath as long as I feel really bad about it' thing. Yeah definitely. She’s bad at being a Pure, and a bad person, and much fun will be had.
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Mar 5, 2020 21:36
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Kurieg posted:I find "Supernatural Cops who want to do right by the supernatural community" VASCU infinitely more than "Secret shadowy non-governmental organization that does shadowy things for shadowy reasons." Like I legitimately do not know what you can do with a new private security group that you couldn't do with VASCU, and conversely I don't know how you'd do the majority of the things VASCU did with a private security group. The badge is, thematically, a big deal. It makes you more explicitly a force of Order ["But the actual FBI is kind of lovely and terrible a lot of the time." you might say. Yes, this is what we call inherent conflict and it's a great thing to have built in to a concept.] and it makes what you are doing have a different meaning. In a sense a rando picking up a shotgun and jumping a vampire is easy. You don't have to build off that, it doesn't have to be anything more than some person trying to make sense of a senseless world. Badge McCourtcase trying to put the cuffs on mechanical Satan and read them their Miranda rights is explicitly trying to say "You are not senseless, you are not beyond justice, you are not special" to things that, manifestly, actually are those things. A shadowly cabal has fundamentally given up on that reality, and is just a jumped up version of the guy with the shotgun. TFV is all you need is kill, it's just burn squads for days. It's not an answer, it's a silencing of discussion. It was interesting to have a group that wasn't about acceptance of the otherness of the supernatural, but just dealing with it like they would the mundane world....with some rather horrific tricks. And I don't see what you gain for giving that up.
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Mar 6, 2020 02:31
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God, I forgot how annoying the Kli Kodesh bullshit is.
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Mar 6, 2020 03:07
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Loomer posted:God, I forgot how annoying the Kli Kodesh bullshit is. You can't just leave it like that. Who or what is a Kli Kodesh?
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Mar 6, 2020 03:31
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Omnicrom posted:You can't just leave it like that. Who or what is a Kli Kodesh? Nosferatu Judas who was Jesus's lover and drank his blood, transforming him into a perfect marble statue that doesn't need to eat, sleep, and can walk in the sunlight, who goes around stirring poo poo to keep from getting bored while waiting for the Second Coming.
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Mar 6, 2020 03:41
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Loomer posted:Nosferatu Judas who was Jesus's lover and drank his blood, transforming him into a perfect marble statue that doesn't need to eat, sleep, and can walk in the sunlight, who goes around stirring poo poo to keep from getting bored while waiting for the Second Coming. I have several questions but they all boil down to "WHY" and "please go on?" Big one though, Jesus Jesus or Vampire Jesus? Knowing White Wolf I would be surprised but not that surprised. Fantastic Alice fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 04:05
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xanthan posted:I have several questions but they all boil down to "WHY" and "please go on?" David Niall Wilson thought it was a good idea at the time while writing the low quality (by WoD fiction standards) Grails Covenant Trilogy. It was kinda clever to have the Grail be a vampire but the rest of it boiled down to his love of vampires who can do anything (every character involved has disciplines from across the clans, which isn't a bad thing exactly, but is part of the same pattern) and act as living macguffins designed to move the plot along for no reason other than a love of intrigue. He's basically a bad DMPC whose main reason for doing things literally boils down to 'I dunno, I was bored?' The GCT was part of a double trilogy with the Blood Curse trilogy, which was near incomprehensible in parts but fortunately only featured Kodesh in a couple of spots. ED: Regular Jesus. Vampire Jesus is in another book.
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Mar 6, 2020 04:14
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God OWoD is a loving trip. Hobo werewolves, General Lee from Dukes of Hazard as a totem for werewolf packs, vampire Judas who was also Jesus's lover, inbred vampire mafia, I love this stupid setting.
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Mar 6, 2020 05:13
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Even Regular Jesus doesn't mean anything. Is that the Regular Jesus that was a Child of Gaia Kinfolk, the Regular Jesus that was tutored by the devil, what flavor of Jesus are we talking about here?
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Mar 6, 2020 05:29
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Shadow Jesus, the elusive new leader of FOXHOUND.
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Mar 6, 2020 05:43
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Mulva posted:Even Regular Jesus doesn't mean anything. Is that the Regular Jesus that was a Child of Gaia Kinfolk, the Regular Jesus that was tutored by the devil, what flavor of Jesus are we talking about here? Son of God Jesus, in this case, rather than Devil Sorceror Kinfolk Lasombra Jesus.
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Mar 6, 2020 06:18
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the glass walkers have their Supply Side Economics Jesus totem.
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Mar 6, 2020 06:22
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Looks like it's time for us to have a good old fashioned CHRIST-OFF.
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Mar 6, 2020 06:29
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Calgary has three crosses for a reason
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Mar 6, 2020 06:39
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Loomer posted:Son of God Jesus, in this case, rather than Devil Sorceror Kinfolk Lasombra Jesus. I don't know, fangbanging some nobody doesn't really sound like Son of God Jesus, I think that guy might have known Kinfolk Jesus at best.
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Mar 6, 2020 07:30
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MonsieurChoc posted:Maybe the privatisation of VASCU is ebcause they wanted to go for the Millenium group and the Millenium tv shows as inspirations? My rule of thumb for a good conspiracy for Vigil is that its full extent and long-term agenda should be arcane, even to members. Supernatural societies in nWoD are opaque and sinister (even vampires don't really know what the deal is with vampirism, etc.), and a conspiracy ideally serves as a potential threat to its own hunters. VASCU is great, and definitely should just be in the core set, but never fit the conspiracy mold for me - it's only a "conspiracy" because you "have" to be tier three to have an endowment. It would work fine as a compact whose members have some signature supernatural merits. With stuff like Owls and Roosters and The Hand of St. Sebastian, a direct ripoff of the Millennium Group would be a better genuine conspiracy than "psychic detective agency with uncertain funding source but no apparent sinister motives or agenda."
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Mar 6, 2020 09:02
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So remember when I bitched about the art in the V5 core book? How I said a lot of it outside of Swedracula and friends cosplaying looked like concept art? That's because it was. It literally was concept art from the early alpha of the cancelled WoD MMO. There was a bunch of unreleased footage back in 2018 that had it shown. They just reprinted it in the core book because no one would know the difference.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSqAKlT71kI You can see a few of the concept art pictures for Toreador in that video showcasing some of the unreleased footage. Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 09:25
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Five Eyes posted:My rule of thumb for a good conspiracy for Vigil is that its full extent and long-term agenda should be arcane, even to members. We'll have to differ on that. Conspiracies in Vigil do tend toward the greyer end of the spectrum than smaller organizations, partially because acquiring and controlling Endowments is fraught with compromise, and partially because larger organizations of people just generally tend towards being more faceless and self-propagating. But making your hunt be undermined by default is not a good way to pitch a Hunter game to players, and conspiracies have appeal beyond murky intrigue. The fundamental appeal of a Malleus Maleficarum priest isn't to get hosed around by self-serving cardinals, it is actually to be a priest who is trying to fight the shadows. The appeal of the Aegis Kai Doru isn't to be lost in Foucault's Pendulum, it is to seek out artifacts of power and keep them safe from misuse. Even conspiracies where being hosed around by uncaring superiors is part of the core pitch aren't all a bunch of secretive mystery cults. As amazing as Ten Photographs of Philadelphia is, the Primary Development Plan and the shocking secret behind the identity of the Board of Directors are the least interesting thing about how compromised the Cheiron Group is. The Cheiron Group is not cool because surprise! monsters are colonizing the universe through pharmaceuticals, it's cool because it is a natural extension of capitalism and how systems make monsters of us. The coolest intrigue about the Cheiron Group isn't secret at all, it is staring you in the face from the moment you sign up: your employer views you as an asset item on a budget list. I'll agree with you that the idea that only "conspiracies" can have Endowments is arbitrary and not particularly useful. But if the Lucifuge, who number less than a thousand worldwide and whose murky intrigue revolves around the motives of one person, fits the bill as a conspiracy (and their connections and jet-setting resources do make a solid case there), it is hard to argue that the American government's Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit, overseen by high-level FBI officers and staffed by latent psychics activated by a chemical treatment derived from MK-ULTRA experiments, doesn't.
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Mar 6, 2020 09:51
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I don't think "arcane agenda" necessarily means "undermined by default." 1e Vigil's supplements did overplay the idea that various conspiracies were pawns of what they hunted, but that's a separate issue from having secret societies have layers of mystery, secret plans, and unrecorded degrees of initiation - some of which are part of the moral compromise necessary to secure real power, sure, but also just as a matter of genre. In most media they're an integral part of stories about, say, secret orders of Catholic vampire slayers, or double-plus-top-secret government black ops programs. What does VASCU's leadership "conspire" to do?
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Mar 6, 2020 10:10
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On the one hand, just because they're named "conspiracies" doesn't mean they all literally have to be conspiring on levels their own operatives can only guess at. Carthians don't sign covenants, Extempore don't trace back lineages, and there are a lot of krewes that don't celebrate Carnival. On the other hand, you're asking me how high-level leaders with classified clearance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation might be complicit in secret, potentially underhanded plans? I did mention they developed the Wintergreen Process from MK-ULTRA, didn't I? Just because the player characters are idealized, by-the-book television cops doesn't mean there's no room for any of their bosses to be Cancer Man.
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Mar 6, 2020 11:55
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Why wouldn't OWoD Jesus have True Faith in, uh, himself?
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Mar 6, 2020 12:05
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moths posted:Why wouldn't OWoD Jesus have True Faith in, uh, himself? Clearly he was just so eager for that gnarly Nosferatu D that he lowered his True Faith score to get some.
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Mar 6, 2020 12:19
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moths posted:Why wouldn't OWoD Jesus have True Faith in, uh, himself? In most Christian readings Jesus could be considered to have True Faith, but Jesus also famously showed several signs of doubt (you can find a copy of this book pretty readily). The Islamic interpretation of Jesus would have the same level of True Faith as Muhammad, I presume.
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Mar 6, 2020 12:31
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I want Gnostic Troll Jesus, where he teleports some other dude onto the cross in his place and sits on a nearby hill, laughing at all the jerks around him.
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Mar 6, 2020 13:54
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Honestly, from a Jewish perspective, he was a relatively normal Pharisee. His preaching was only significantly divergent from the Pharisaic camp he was part of where it went into his own Messianic stuff, and he was far from the only Messiah running around at the time.
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Mar 6, 2020 13:55
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Nessus posted:Well it depends which Jesus you're talking about. Most religions would tend to attribute a considerable quantity of super-powers to Jesus, unless you want to go with the Jewish interpretation, which I believe is "if such a man existed, he may have been a good man, but he wasn't a great rabbi." In Islam, Jesus would have more True Faith than Muhammad. Muhammad couldn't perform any miracles, Jesus very much could. Jesus is talked about in the Quran more than any other prophet, in fact. Muhammad is important in Islam in the fact that he's the last prophet. Even by his own admission in Hadith and whatnot, he did not achieve even remotely the greatest testaments to the "will of God" compared to several other prophets. And yes, Jesus faltered a bit. There are a few stories in the Quran about Jesus' childhood where honestly he seems like a bratty little poo poo until Joseph wises him up, dad style. (In Islam, Jesus isn't the son if God because there are no demigods, God is singular. That said, Joseph was also not his father and the immaculate conception did happen, just, you know, God made Mary pregnant, he didn't impregnate her like Zeus or something)
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Mar 6, 2020 14:09
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Mulva posted:Like I legitimately do not know what you can do with a new private security group that you couldn't do with VASCU, and conversely I don't know how you'd do the majority of the things VASCU did with a private security group. The badge is, thematically, a big deal. It makes you more explicitly a force of Order ["But the actual FBI is kind of lovely and terrible a lot of the time." you might say. Yes, this is what we call inherent conflict and it's a great thing to have built in to a concept.] and it makes what you are doing have a different meaning. In a sense a rando picking up a shotgun and jumping a vampire is easy. You don't have to build off that, it doesn't have to be anything more than some person trying to make sense of a senseless world. Badge McCourtcase trying to put the cuffs on mechanical Satan and read them their Miranda rights is explicitly trying to say "You are not senseless, you are not beyond justice, you are not special" to things that, manifestly, actually are those things.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:20
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I always liked the story of Lasombra elder who tried to make Muhammad a puppet and ended up converted to Islam instead. IIRC he's still around, leading what's left of the Ashirra.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:21
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The Ashirra, poor bastards.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:25
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moths posted:Why wouldn't OWoD Jesus have True Faith in, uh, himself? 
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Mar 6, 2020 15:25
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Warthur posted:Agreed. The really big thing the badge does, for me, is that it makes the situation Officially Your Problem. Passing the buck is no longer an option because the buck specifically lives on your desk. There is nobody you can delegate to who is better-placed to deal with it than you. There is no legitimate higher authority you can turn to for help or who will take the burden off you. If you do not deal with it, then either a) nobody will or b) some shady vigilante or shadowy conspiracy with less oversight and public scrutiny than you will deal with it, and neither of those are good things. I also always wedded it to a government social program for monsters. Like, yes, of course we have FBI serial killer hunters going after a vampire serial killer. And they also have the adjunct from the Department of Health and Human Services who wants to tell you about the blood bank program they've set up and - oh, yeah, there isn't one in this city, the budget wouldn't allow it, but if you're willing to drive halfway across the state and - well, no, there will be two weeks of waiting time while we process your application, and we'll need photo ID, too. But I have here a pamphlet about how you can get the services you need, and let me show you how you can get around this part of the system and - yes, I know it's obtuse and difficult. I didn't design it.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:26
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protecting myself from the dark ministrations of Christian Science Jesus by forming a protective circle of asprin around my bed
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Mar 6, 2020 15:29
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(Obviously, the supernatural support programs with the HHS are drastically and chronically underfunded. No one is going to pour money into this. But they would definitely exist, and the beleaguered group of people managing them would be the most depressed Hunters in the world.)
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Mar 6, 2020 15:33
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Mors Rattus posted:I also always wedded it to a government social program for monsters. Like, yes, of course we have FBI serial killer hunters going after a vampire serial killer. The best part about VASCU is definitely that, implicitly, there is at least one Public Defender's Office that specializes in Dracula crimes. But this? This right here is the best form of shadow government: the shadow social services.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:37
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GimpInBlack posted:The best part about VASCU is definitely that, implicitly, there is at least one Public Defender's Office that specializes in Dracula crimes. But this? This right here is the best form of shadow government: the shadow social services. Basically, I've interacted with Social Services enough myself to understand that this both has to exist and would be incredibly frustrating to deal with and be part of.
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Mar 6, 2020 15:43
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The detail of requiring that vampires have a photo ID is great, gonna use that a lot. E: Mors Rattus posted:Basically, I've interacted with Social Services enough myself to understand that this both has to exist and would be incredibly frustrating to deal with and be part of. I'm sitting in a seminar on immigration and Medicaid, it's agonizing. Tulip fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 15:51
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Angry Lobster posted:The Ashirra, poor bastards. Oh poo poo, I've just realized that with the Sabbat and all the elders loving off to the Middle-East, the Ashirra are pretty much hosed. 
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Mar 6, 2020 15:53
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Tulip posted:The detail of requiring that vampires have a photo ID is great, gonna use that a lot. would they use bite-prints for vamps who otherwise cannot be photographed or biometrically databased?
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Mar 6, 2020 15:58
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:would they use bite-prints for vamps who otherwise cannot be photographed or biometrically databased? No, those vampires would just be poo poo out of luck. Photo ID and proof of citizenship (social security number, generally) is standard for a lot of government stuff and folks who don't have them are, in fact, often just hosed.
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Mar 6, 2020 16:01
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well, okay, but can we at least say nice things about how clever of an idea that was?
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Mar 6, 2020 16:06
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