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NikkolasKing posted:I dunno, I just prefer oWoD and most of its lines. I dunno why exactly. Given I'm a 40k fan, maybe I just like grimdark. In a separate WW thread elsewhere they were talking about how the CoD Vampire Clans are portrayed a lot more sympathetically than the Vamp Clans in oWoD. The world isn't as hosed in Chronicles of Darkness, apparently. If you haven't, you should check out the VtR clanbooks, the throughline story in those in the fiction isn't necessarily capital-L Lore but it's definitely some real good poo poo. And to the broader point of oWoD being a hopeless fight, yeah, look at the original historical context: everyone's thinking that the world won't REALLY end in the year 2000, but also, they're kinda maybe sorta fingers-crossed wishcasting that maybe it might? So having gamelines about how not only are things getting Worse, but things are going to get so bad that they End, is big. Whereas CoD is taking place in a time period where the cultural zeitgeist is much more "well yeah things are moderately lovely on a sliding scale that gets shittier the lower your socioeconomic status is" but there's not necessarily the urgency of a zelda-style Dawn Of Final Day sign for everyone to wake up to. At least, not so far. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the last couple months and the next couple years.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:02
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Five Eyes posted:That's an interesting assessment - I would consider the oWoD to generally be more hopeful than their nWoD counterparts. Humans never felt important in oWoD, except as a means of pro-creation for the various supernatural splats. Mankind is not, for the most part, running the world--it's all secret schemes done by secret societies full of creatures that can't really be considered human anymore, if they ever really were. In oWoD, as a human you're either a pawn or food, or very rarely a vessel in waiting for supernatural powers. Life's real lovely, and death isn't even a release from that. nWoD/Chronicles isn't any strictly better when it comes to overall tone and theme, but it's also not crushed under the weight of its own metaplot. Some of the splats even give a sense of hope, that there's an ability to change all this (Geist especially, but Mage too). Granted, we're comparing oWoD's world-spanning conspiracies vs the smaller, more intimate stories of nWoD, so there's an apples to oranges thing going on here, but nWoD feels more like the PCs can have an actual impact on the world, and maybe even a positive one.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:05
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NikkolasKing posted:I dunno, I just prefer oWoD and most of its lines. I dunno why exactly. Given I'm a 40k fan, maybe I just like grimdark. In a separate WW thread elsewhere they were talking about how the CoD Vampire Clans are portrayed a lot more sympathetically than the Vamp Clans in oWoD. The world isn't as hosed in Chronicles of Darkness, apparently. Yeah, this makes sense from what I know about 40k. Not because of the grimdark, which both Worlds of Darkness have in spades, but because of the kinds of evil they present. 40k, and often the oWoD is about eldritch, unknowable, cosmic evil - the Wyrm or Chaos or even the Antediluvians. The CoD games are extraordinarily humanistic, and their evils tend to be fundamentally human evils. Even the Seers, who answer to literal platonic ideals of oppression, believe that those platonic ideals used to be human and operate on an almost entirely human registrar. In oVampire your biggest scariest oldest vampires are basically minor Lovecraftian horrors, in nVampire they're hosed up people who've been conditioned by circumstances to be complete assholes and have terrifying powers -- but they're still basically people. oWoD has cosmic forces as it's big bads, nWoD has people as it's. I prefer the later but understand it's a personal preference. And anyway, they both have both, really. The True Fae aren't people, the God-Machine is an eldritch unknowable cosmic evil. Most elders in oVampire are not Antediluvian level cosmic horror and are just hosed up evil people. But yeah at the core in the lore the CoD / nWoD is fundamentally humanistic in a way that the oWoD is fundamentally anti-humanistic.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:12
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I think extremely high blood potency vampires also get weird and gribbly in CoD, but most vampires prefer being able to feed easily and will go have a big nap to lower their BP occasionally.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:28
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NikkolasKing posted:Really? I was going off Reddit threads that said to read it when asked which edition of Mage to use. I don't understand this at all, because for me it was the worst TG-related disappointment during the last several years. I expected a game that will be Mage: the Ascension, but that actually could be played in 201x. Instead I got a rewrite of 2ed and Revised with the end of the world retconned and another faction of protagonists added. And it wasn't even consistent – you got a memo that some Traditions changed their names to better fit the new times, but the rest of the book would still refer to them as they were in the 90s.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:34
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Five Eyes posted:Outside of some more soteriological elements in nMage, Chronicles doesn't really imagine any sort of justice or reason behind the alien and inhospitable world and humanity. The world's just hostile and full of terrors. Being a Requiem vampire isn't about seeking one single moment of forgiveness or poetic justice in the weary final nights of the world, it's about managing an addiction every night for the rest of forever. This isn't true at all. Geist and Promethean have explicit, unconditionally positive win conditions. It's outside the core book, but Demon has a high-level NPC who has a credible plan to destroy the God-Machine outright (well, as credible as anything can be in a game about paranoia and "what if we're just being set up?"). Plus Demons generally stand as testament to the fact that even the most omnipresent oppressor isn't actually all-powerful or all-knowing. Werewolf's entire gameplay loop is about seeking forgiveness through community service and busting nazifur skulls.  Changeling is similar to Mage except that it takes a more defensive posture, but it still largely posits that community organizing and support networks is a more-than-adequate defense against oppression and trauma. Hunters aren't necessarily healthy and balanced people and they're dangerous to relatively-innocent supernaturals, but by and large, given the background lore of the setting, they're fighting the good fight. Really, the only lines that have no real hope of redemption or triumph are the ones that are inseparably part of the reason the nWoD sucks, like vampires and beasts.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:37
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Digital Osmosis posted:And anyway, they both have both, really. The True Fae aren't people, the God-Machine is an eldritch unknowable cosmic evil. Most elders in oVampire are not Antediluvian level cosmic horror and are just hosed up evil people. But yeah at the core in the lore the CoD / nWoD is fundamentally humanistic in a way that the oWoD is fundamentally anti-humanistic. Sort of. If you strip a True Fae of all its "the living, narcissistic embodiment of narrative" trappings -- which the game has rules for achieving -- the final kernel that gets spit out is basically a person (and, somewhat alarmingly, almost indistinguishable from a Changeling). The God-Machine is an unknowable cosmic evil, but it's also very explicitly a material one. It is, at the end of the day, just a really big machine. It isn't the fundament of reality, it isn't actually God, it has no metaphysical significance -- it's just very powerful, and very firmly established.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:40
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The God-Machine is an unknowable cosmic evil, but it's also very explicitly a material one. It is, at the end of the day, just a really big machine. It isn't the fundament of reality, it isn't actually God, it has no metaphysical significance -- it's just very powerful, and very firmly established. Easier said than done, of course.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:47
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Gantolandon posted:I don't understand this at all, because for me it was the worst TG-related disappointment during the last several years. I expected a game that will be Mage: the Ascension, but that actually could be played in 201x. Instead I got a rewrite of 2ed and Revised with the end of the world retconned and another faction of protagonists added. And it wasn't even consistent – you got a memo that some Traditions changed their names to better fit the new times, but the rest of the book would still refer to them as they were in the 90s. a lot of owod grogs are just that--grogs like any other, but in goth makeup
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Apr 29, 2020 19:52
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Digital Osmosis posted:Care to elaborate on this a bit? CtD was my all time favorite as a literal child, but I feel like CtL does everything so much better. I grabbed Dreaming 20 when it was free on DriveThrough but haven't really perused it much. Someone here said that they redefined Banality as "anything that takes away your joy" and that seems like a smart move -- what are the other headline differences that make it smarter or more playable than the first two editions? At this point honestly Dreaming and Lost are two entirely different games with some of the same terminology, not unlike Apocalypse and Forsaken. All of the cWoD games are a struggle over resources, (well, Hunter maybe, but bear with me) be it blood or Gnosis or Pathos and I feel in C20 they finally codified that by taking the stance that if you can take wonder in something it can make Glamour and if you let the world beat you down it's Banal and the game is about what you do to keep that Glamour coming, and not unlike in Vampire there are nicer ways to do it and in a pinch there are some absolutely awful ways to do it with Rhapsody and Ravaging. It also brought in stuff from the later parts of the run that not many people read, like the return of the Dark-kin and the rise of the Fomorians giving you that good "other" threat like you'd have with your Black Spiral Dancers and etc. I wouldn't say they did anything groundbreaking - certainly not to the extent of Changeling: The Lost - but Dreaming 20 feels worlds more gameable now than before. (Taking passes at updating the Arts and whatnot didn't hurt.)
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Apr 29, 2020 20:05
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Dawgstar posted:Also just Garou in general because they love having Gangrel hang out with them, don't you know. I could see a lot of interesting stories coming from a pack of Bonegnawers or Ratkin trying to help a Gangrel towards Golconda. They're both pretty pragmatic but the first time the Gangrel eats someone they shouldn't it's probably over. Vancouver by Night had a city where it seemed like it might work but most wolves are probably just going to slice and dice most vamps on general principles. I did love that anyone who was following a Path just reeked of the Wyrm though.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:17
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Dawgstar posted:All of the cWoD games are a struggle over resources, (well, Hunter maybe, but bear with me)) PTC isn't, or at least not in the same way that VTR is. Pyros is, for Prometheans, a solidly renewable resource. It isn't for Alchemists and Pandorans, which is why Alchemists tend to and Pandorans always hunt Prometheans. There isn't really a 'resource' that Prometheans are managing. They need to be continuously driven to the next steps on their Pilgrimage, because the alternatives are Getting Stuck, which blows, and Centimanni, which is basically a lose-state. I suppose you could say that Prometheans need "drive" or "direction" or "motive," but that's a metamechanical means of abstracting out the actual mechanics, which consists of taking steps on the Pilgrimage. (PTC is really good, more people should give it a shot)
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Apr 29, 2020 20:30
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Tulip posted:Pyros is, for Prometheans, a solidly renewable resource. It isn't for Alchemists and Pandorans, which is why Alchemists tend to and Pandorans always hunt Prometheans. I'd argue that still counts as a conflict over resources, just an asymmetrical one.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This isn't true at all. I think the oWoD proposes a world which is hurting and broken and on its way to a singular, climactic moment of destruction (or renewal) - but also that the inciting injury which puts us on this trajectory is knowable and either reparable or something you can come to terms with. Even if the final conflict isn't something which might be won (both in the specific sense of PC accomplishment and in the more general sense of is-it-possible.) If, say, the Wyrm can't be beaten, it's a judgment rendered on humanity's behavior towards itself and our relationship with nature, and it was worth fighting anyway. Stuff is "our fault" but also there are aspirational, finished states which we can aim for to "make things right." Often this involves some pre-laspe state of grace to try to reclaim, or some Deserved Punishment - because the oWoD is very Christian even outside of Masquerade. It doesn't seem to me like, for example, nWolf is proposing humanity (literally or in the metaphorical sense) created the conditions of play. We didn't somehow break faith with the spirit world and cause spirits to become assholes, or create the rift which nWolfs police - it's just how things are. And how they will apparently continue - there's no Day of Judgment looming where things will either be Set Right or End Forever. The prize for defending your territory with the sacred hunt is you get to go on the hunt next month. Spirits are how they are, and the only thing to be done is to keep the peace. There's no apology to offer to make Father Wolf make things right - in fact, we know about the pre-fall settings, and they weren't paradises. That's not closing the door to stories of hope and triumph or personal redemption, but the nWoD isn't proposing a silver bullet for our problems, or that they are somehow "just." We didn't do anything to "deserve" the True Fae, and blowing up the God-Machine or a Promethean completing their Pilgrimage doesn't herald in the Second Coming. I take the oWoD as more "hopeful" because it imagines there is a "right way" to be or return to, which will bring a just or merciful conclusion to the current broken state of the world. Nobody's going to show up to Forgive or Punish All of Us in the nWoD (and if anyone did, it would be an Exarch or something.) The (new)world just is, and people get on with the business of trying to live in it and manage their problems. And that's great! That's part of the maturity of the new game line, but it's also about acknowledging stuff doesn't end, and that there are no panaceas.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:40
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The oWoD has much more Christianity in its bones than the nWoD is most of what I'm getting out of this.
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Apr 29, 2020 21:25
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This isn't true at all. Even vampires have hope of redemption. It's all but implicitly stated that their condition is manageable given what organizations like the Yuri Group can do and the fact that being a vampire is less an immutable curse passed down from a sadistic (and probably evil) god like in the OWoD and more a thing that probably is just a part of the world. Their descent into monstrosity is also as much the fact that that they're forced to hide, isolate themselves into, and participate in an extremely dysfunctional society that conditions them to be monsters over time as anything else. Ironically, probably the best thing for vampires would be for the masquerade to end in a way that didn't lead to mass purges, with only the really nasty sorts that are willing monsters getting done in. It's the fundamental precept of the setting that the masquerade needs to stay intact. But by that same token the fact that vampires are forced to stay out of sight --- and as a result out on the fringes of society --- when they have a condition that demands a pretty intensive system of training and assistance for most to safely deal with (something that that could only be done using an actual civilization's resources and not whatever social-club-meets-gang that wants to use them to their own nefarious ends) means that more often than not they get looped into the covenants. Which are really just different ways to submit to being a monster. Or they just go bugfuck insane or commit suicide. I mean, touchstones literally all but say this with how they work. Vampires need to interact with people and find worth in living to help ward off the beast. But they're part of a toxic hosed up society that is full of greedy old assholes at the top. It's also a society that will also straight up kill them if they so much as step out of line or spill the secret. Cue dysfunction. The redemption scenario for vampires in the NWoD isn't necessarily golconda or something like that. It's that all the schemes, all the horrible mind games, and all the back biting politics just end. Someone or some group busts the established power structures up, sorts out the monsters from the victims, and everyone that wants too goes back to being a part of society with dedicated institutionalized support so they don't collapse into slavering monsters. Meanwhile, everyone that wants to continue perpetuating the same sick cycles of abuse gets put to the sword in the same way that they've been doing to all the people that crossed paths with them and their predecessors for thousands of years. Now, how you'd get there would probably be a story. And it'd probably go wrong. But it's pretty clear that even vampires have something like a happy ending at least in the theoretical. Beasts are just hosed all around, really. I can't see that working for them since it seems like they're pretty much willingly assholes and monsters from the first few days after their transformation. Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 21:51
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Archonex posted:Beasts are just hosed all around, really. I can't see that working for them since it seems like they're pretty much willingly assholes and monsters from the first few days after their transformation. The redemption arc for Beasts is them willingly jumping into an active volcano and dying a horrible fiery death.
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Apr 29, 2020 22:18
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The easiest thing to do is say that Beasts just do not exist. You don't have to use all the books. Your World of Darkness doesn't have these assholes, end of line
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Apr 29, 2020 22:36
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Five Eyes posted:I take the oWoD as more "hopeful" because it imagines there is a "right way" to be or return to, which will bring a just or merciful conclusion to the current broken state of the world. Nobody's going to show up to Forgive or Punish All of Us in the nWoD (and if anyone did, it would be an Exarch or something.) The (new)world just is, and people get on with the business of trying to live in it and manage their problems. And that's great! That's part of the maturity of the new game line, but it's also about acknowledging stuff doesn't end, and that there are no panaceas. Nessus posted:The oWoD has much more Christianity in its bones than the nWoD is most of what I'm getting out of this. Which explains why we're talking past each other, because I don't actually see that framework as positive or hopeful at all compared to the nWoD's humanism. My point is largely that the nWoD has room for humanity and human-adjacent supernaturals to remake a hostile world, whereas in the oWoD it's both out of our hands and in the hands of unassailable, inhuman gods. Or literally God, depending on exactly how you resolve the tension in primacy between the August Personage in Jade vs. the Triat. e: I think the distinction I was trying to make (noting that I was just waking up when I wrote that and didn't read your post as carefully as I should have, because I see now that you were acknowledging the humanism in your point, which I didn't at the time) is that most of the game lines really do have final, world-transforming goals they could achieve, sometimes even with religious or mystical overtones -- it's just that those goals are largely self-defined. Like, yeah, Mage has the Hieromagus, but in Geist you're basically playing a potential Hieromagus-for-ghosts, and there are rules for achieving the mass salvation of the dead and the remaking of the Underworld, to the point where it's almost the default conclusion for a campaign that makes it that far. You can immanentize the eschaton in the nWoD (and in fact the attempt is central to, at least, a significant minority of game lines), it's just that there's no higher authority to validate your accomplishment. Salvation in the mystical sense is possible, but by your own hands. It's un-Christian, but not irreligious. I'm kind of rambling but hopefully that's a little closer to addressing your actual point.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 22:46
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:e: I think the distinction I was trying to make (noting that I was just waking up when I wrote that and didn't read your post as carefully as I should have, because I see now that you were acknowledging the humanism in your point, which I didn't at the time) is that most of the game lines really do have final, world-transforming goals they could achieve, sometimes even with religious or mystical overtones -- it's just that those goals are largely self-defined. But in NWOD there was never anybody In Charge. I guess the Exarchs or whatever come close, or the God-Machine, but they're just (incredibly enormous and powerful) entities, not something exterior to the system with intrinsic Authority over it.
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Apr 29, 2020 23:08
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There were gods once! The Exarchs dethroned them and hijacked fundamental metaphysics. Whoops, sorry gods. The possibility of some kind of higher deity or deities is raised but is a constant uncertainty at best, so I think 'agnostic, but there's a lot of gods' would be a not unfair way to describe the CoD cosmology.
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Apr 29, 2020 23:23
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Joe Slowboat posted:There were gods once! The Exarchs dethroned them and hijacked fundamental metaphysics. In Vampire this is... God. In Werewolf it is Gaia. In Mage it is a lot more obscure but there is still the really strong implication that there was some specific author of reality and that even the people who follow what is at least sort of like modern scientific understanding have to deal with underlying implications. Wraith tacks away from this but specifically addresses the Underworld, and in the original metaplot it's all literally destroyed anyway. As I do not know much about changeling I cannot comment. The unnamed secondary books can only salivate.
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Apr 30, 2020 00:09
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Nessus posted:I don't mean gods, basically, I mean: God. Like, big-G God. The Creator of All Things, as distinct from "an extremely powerful supernatural entity." Yes, and in the Chronicles there are things like the Principle, possible interpretations of some secret divinity in the Supernal hidden by the Exarchs, etc. That's what I meant by 'agnostic but there's plenty of gods' - there's many entities of great power and perhaps even moral significance that are deities, many of which are the antagonists of gamelines, but the idea of a higher power is treated as an open question. The Old Gods in the Supernal were the closest, in that they were literally the underlying framework of the universe and (potentially, it's unknowable) its creators, and now the Exarchs have created a second version of the world, since they are demiurges.
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Apr 30, 2020 00:54
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Nessus posted:As I do not know much about changeling I cannot comment. The unnamed secondary books can only salivate. It doesn't particularly concern Changelings. When they talk about being created by anything, it's the Dreaming.
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Apr 30, 2020 00:58
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It really does need emphasizing that some of the whimsy of Changeling is actually sad and terrifying if you look at it from an outsider's perspective. I know I said this before, but there's another example played in the books for laughs: Gangs of childling redcaps chasing pet dogs to eat them. For the changelings that's a good ol' time, so long as it isn't their dog. Now consider for the mortal watching. A gang of dirty street children chase down a small dog, pick it up still alive, and tear it apart with their bare hands and teeth to feast on its innards. Whimsy. A gang of changelings goes to rescue one from a mental hospital where the banality will destroy her faerie essence. They fight the horrible guards without pity or mercy, with their fists and with actual, physical weapons, and smash the gates on their way out. To everyone else, a bunch of people broke into a mental hospital to abduct a patient, violently attacking nurses and orderlies with axes and kung fu before demolishing the gates on the way out with their car. Whimsy. Loomer fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 01:46
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What's it like being a new mage in nMage? Continuing the theme of which series is more hosed, oMage books I've read and accounts I've heard of others casually note that a Mag'e Awakening in oMage is often catastrophic. Magic is cool and wondrous...if you survive. You often kill others around you during your Awakening and you might blow yourself up within a week of manifesting your powers. Orphans got it rough. I guess there are rough counterparts in all the lines, though. Kinda like how the Bloodlines PC would be totes hosed if they didn't have Jack there and/or weren't a PC.
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Apr 30, 2020 03:01
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NikkolasKing posted:What's it like being a new mage in nMage? Imagine being an alcoholic communist locked in a rich dude's wine cellar.
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Apr 30, 2020 03:10
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but also you're a wizard
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Apr 30, 2020 03:11
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NikkolasKing posted:What's it like being a new mage in nMage? It's pretty rare for an Awakening to directly harm the mage and rarer to directly affect other people - this is covered in Signs of Sorcery, where 'metamorphic' Awakenings that change reality beyond 'you're a mage now' are a rare and fascinating mystery. And of Metamorphic Awakenings, the most common is for an Awakening to cure or heal the mage of the consequences of the Awakening's mystery play events, and maybe longstanding issues as well. However, Awakenings are revelations of higher truth. They can be traumatic or empowering on a psychological level, though from what examples I can remember, most non-banisher Awakenings that are traumatic are pretty much the fault of the Exarchs. Mages definitely experience a higher reality that absolutely blows their mind, and it's usually telling them that they now have the cosmic power of the Forms in their grubby human hands. However, when the Exarchs show up, the Awakening Mage has a much worse time, because the Kings of the Lie are terrifying cosmic forces that seek our subjugation. A lot of those who experience Exarchic Awakenings (a subtype of Metamorphic Awakenings) become Seers, because they saw the face of God and God told them to kneel. So they did. However, if an Awakening goes very wrong, like doesn't-take wrong, you get a Banisher of the inherent kind. This is a mage who either still has Integrity rather than Wisdom, so their magic causes their soul to twist and break whenever they experience it - or who were so unable to accept the higher truth that they snapped and decided magic had to die. Nameless and Accursed has a great sympathetic-but-also-awful Banisher in the Minotaur, someone so used to lies, deception, and hidden manipulation that he interpreted the Supernal Itself as merely another layer of lies, and believes the only truth is 'the powerful gently caress with the weak at their whim.' So Awakenings can go wrong. They can go more wrong than Banishers, but Banishers are the most common kind of Going Wrong. (I mostly don't care for Banishers as story antagonists but that's the canon)
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Apr 30, 2020 03:47
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An nMage's Awakening is also "not the best" but the bigger thing is that now you see the world differently. You always see (or hear, or feel, depending on how it manifests for you) magical poo poo happening near you, and if you activate your Mage Sight, you get your own They Live glasses with different filters based on what path you awoke into: for example, a Thyrsus (Life/Spirit) can tell how healthy anyone they see is and any manifested spirits nearby (along with weaknesses in the Gauntlet and the spiritual resonance of everything around you); basically you get to see lifebars and NPCs in different phases of reality. While a Mastigos (Mind/Space) detects the presence of any thinking being, can tell when people gain/spend Willpower, and judge the exact distance measures of everything nearby; basically you get to highlight all interactable creatures and get gridlines and measurements for every object in your field of view. Which can gently caress you up! Even if it's something you have to turn on. (Except Banishers, whose Mage Sight broke on Awakening and hurts to use. It sucks to be a Banisher!)
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Apr 30, 2020 03:55
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I'm looking at running a nWoD/CoD one-shot/short adventure. Are any of the demos or SAS modules particularly good/notably bad? e: maybe the ctl 2e quickstart? Arivia fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 04:02
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Arivia posted:I'm looking at running a nWoD/CoD one-shot/short adventure. Are any of the demos or SAS modules particularly good/notably bad?
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Apr 30, 2020 04:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Imagine being an alcoholic communist locked in a rich dude's wine cellar. But enough about high school
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Apr 30, 2020 06:14
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There's a cool thing about mage awakenings in nMage that comes from the fact that they touch the realms of platonic truth. While some of the hosed up things (especially banishers) absolutely can happen the overwhelming majority of the time someone starts and aweakening and isn't ready to handle that poo poo they just... don't awaken. Probably remember the events as a weird dream or brief psychotic break or something. It's sorta - if you're ready to handle having limited access to the realm of pure truth-forms then you're kinda definitionally ready to handle having access to the realm of pure truth-forms. What happens afterwards is more socialization than anything - one of the orders swoops in, gives you the down-low on wizard society, tries to sell you on their particular take on it, hands you off to someone who might do better. Even the Seers basically operate this way, they'll treat you like you just got a job in one of those junior management training programs where you work in a few different departments for a year while you work with them to find the best place you fit in the organization, or whatever. Awakenings that occur in places where none of the major orders reach, which are pretty rare these days, tend to go pretty okay! New mages there tend to kinda mash up whatever their culture tells them about wizards / wise men / witches / whatever with what they can plainly see is true about the Supernal and kinda get on with helping people or becoming more successful or whatever they want to use their magic for absent wizard-politicking. My favorite thing about the "Supernal is truth so almost all awakenings are successful" is what happens if you fail crossing the threshold to go from mage to archmage. See, archmages are able to briefly, with a lot of effort, actually physically enter the Supernal and become essentially symbols within it. So if the first time they try that they don't have what it takes to withstand it, they basically get erased. From the realm of pure truth. While they were in symbolic form. Which means there basically aren't anyone who's tried to become an archmage and failed - failing means you've written yourself out of existence retroactively.
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Apr 30, 2020 06:31
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That also means there's no point in actually making archmage-aspirant PCs pass a save-or-die to see if they actually succeed in establishing their lustrum, because they obviously did or else the entire previous chronicle featuring them as a player character wouldn't have happened.
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Apr 30, 2020 07:14
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So here's a weird question. Once upon a time I was given a brief history of White Wolf/World of Darkness and as I recall they folded at some point. What we have now is thanks to Paradox being rich and reviving WoD, I think? Or maybe it was Onyx who brought them back and then Paradox bought Onyx? I forget all the details. The point is, Paradox is huge and rich and they run the show. So why are all the books crowdfunded? This seems like such an inefficient business model. I look back at the previous editions of WoD and there were dozens of books in each edition and for each line. Look at Mage 20, there's barely anything. That seems like the fault of the crowdfunding format which means a lot of waiting and hoping. True, the hopes seem well-founded as all the books get funded and even reach stretch goals right away but am I wrong to link the sparse number of books to relying on crowdfunding which WW never had to do back in the day and so they pumped lots of books out there?
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Apr 30, 2020 08:52
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NikkolasKing posted:So here's a weird question. Once upon a time I was given a brief history of White Wolf/World of Darkness and as I recall they folded at some point. What we have now is thanks to Paradox being rich and reviving WoD, I think? Or maybe it was Onyx who brought them back and then Paradox bought Onyx? I forget all the details. Paradox owns all of the World and Chronicles of Darkness IPs, plus Exalted, which they bought from CCP who in turn bought out the original White Wolf Publishing. They have not, AFAIK, Kickstarted any books, but did publish, in conjunction with Modiphius, the 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. Onyx Path is a wholly separate company created by former White Wolf employee Rich Thomas, which licenses the IP rights to Exalted and W/CoD for the purposes of publishing tabletop RPGs based on those IPs. (They also bought outright the rights to Scion and the Trinity lines.) They are a small, independent publisher, and they are the ones who Kickstart their books; they don't receive any money from Paradox and in fact have to pay Paradox licensing fees. That's why they crowdfund. EDIT: Also, the "supplement treadmill" you remember from the 90s is no longer a sustainable business model. It's not the fault of crowdfunding, it's the fault of "dozens of books in each edition and for each line" simply being a) not profitable and b) no longer necessary, since online sales and distribution means there's less need for constant new product churn to keep your physical shelf space in brick-and-mortar bookstores like there was back then. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 09:10
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Lord_Hambrose posted:
I downloaded for free during that "week of free" at drivethru, though I still haven't read. Wasn't that the one where the character example was some kind of smelly homeless teenage girl mage that the author really kind of wanted to gently caress?
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Apr 30, 2020 10:58
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Everyone posted:I downloaded for free during that "week of free" at drivethru, though I still haven't read. Wasn't that the one where the character example was some kind of smelly homeless teenage girl mage that the author really kind of wanted to gently caress? Oh Brucato...
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Apr 30, 2020 11:39
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GimpInBlack posted:Paradox owns all of the World and Chronicles of Darkness IPs, plus Exalted, which they bought from CCP who in turn bought out the original White Wolf Publishing. They have not, AFAIK, Kickstarted any books, but did publish, in conjunction with Modiphius, the 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. Fair enough. That all makes sense. Thanks. Well, it makes sense apart from the fact that people who don't even own WoD are responsible for writing most of the stuff for it. That sems pretty dumb.
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Apr 30, 2020 11:47
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