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moths posted:I really don't know what that person's reasoning was, but I am pretty confident that they're wrong. Yeah, I could see it as literally the only way to rob the insult of its power. Zak seems like the type to get off sexually on hurting others or seeing others upset.
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# ? May 27, 2020 18:35 |
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# ? May 29, 2024 05:07 |
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Kurieg posted:Was that the transwoman vampire who drove an Uber, and would ask any conservatives she picked up if they wanted to suck her dick, and if they refused she'd Dominate them into doing it anyway? No, no, she ordered Ubers and asked the drivers about their thoughts on toilet access in North Carolina, then offer them handjobs. If they answered transphobicly but also wanted a handjob from her she would kill them and if they weren't transphobic they would, for whatever reason, always accept. LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 27, 2020 19:53 |
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Zak S. is garbage and my impression was the people in charge of the properties had realized that, at least partially because the people who'd vouched for him previously were also revealed to be garbage.
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# ? May 27, 2020 20:22 |
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Relevant Tangent posted:Zak S. is garbage and my impression was the people in charge of the properties had realized that, at least partially because the people who'd vouched for him previously were also revealed to be garbage. And/or actually Zak wearing a mask.
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# ? May 27, 2020 20:26 |
Relevant Tangent posted:Zak S. is garbage and my impression was the people in charge of the properties had realized that, at least partially because the people who'd vouched for him previously were also revealed to be garbage. 1. I imagine most of these people are already well shut of him as opposed to doubling down 2. He poo poo he pants at the Chick-fil-A
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# ? May 27, 2020 20:36 |
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How do people run Obsessions in Mage? It seems like it's meant to be a big, driving force for them as individuals. Obsessions can literally warp the world with the Rapt, they have a pretty decent impact on breaking points and social maneuvering, the game mentions repeatedly it's about obsession, and the definition of the word itself is pretty telling. But the descriptions for the little Obsession sections revolve around, 'Obsessions are like aspirations.' Saying 'Obsessions are like long-term Aspirations, but grant Arcane Beats and Mana when you resolve and make major progress toward them.' and 'Obsessions are just like long-term Aspirations, except they relate specifically to a mage’s compulsion to explore the mystical in her life.' Which seemed sort of weak, in comparison. What always bugged me was that there's also a Persistent Obsession Condition in the appendix, with no context for it since there's no spells or attainments that reference it at all. I always thought it was meant to be part of the default Mage, as it's a kind of carrot and stick for obsessions. Do people run obsessions as on the same level as an aspiration, in terms of how their PC follows them? Or do you encourage more of a compulsiveness with them? For people not interested in Mage at all: Do you think playing a zombie would be worth having its own gameline, or better and easier done by homebrewing something for an existing one? Cause outside of dragons it seems to be the 'go to' for people who want to homebrew new lines. nofather fucked around with this message at 02:03 on May 29, 2020 |
# ? May 29, 2020 01:57 |
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I found that Obsessions worked very well to drive my Mage players forward, even without any mechanics other than 'any time you pursue something for your Obsession, get an Arcane Beat (maximum 1/Obsession/scene).' It doesn't start off overpowering, and can even hide out in the background, but it will keep pulling them forwards. Make sure to have a list of player Obsessions you can look at, to remind them 'hey, you're Obsessed with stealing thunder from the gods, you would get an Arcane Beat for touching Zeus' lightning bolt while he's not looking.' After all, that's how Aspirations work, but Obsessions stick around. Also, as ST, you should be making sure content fitting their Obsessions is available, so that they have the opportunity to pursue them and arcane power.
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# ? May 29, 2020 02:11 |
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nofather posted:For people not interested in Mage at all: Do you think playing a zombie would be worth having its own gameline, or better and easier done by homebrewing something for an existing one? Cause outside of dragons it seems to be the 'go to' for people who want to homebrew new lines. If you want "the dead rise and feast on the living," you've got vampires already. If you squint, a Nosferatu bloodline that has to eat flesh to get Vitae is most of the way there. But if you want "ravening horde that slowly grows to take over a metropolis" it's a little harder to make playable. But if I did, I'd probably make it a contagious Deviant once that book's out. Also, Geist 2e the first two merits for Ghosts (Brain Eater and Dead Meat) are straight-up, take these and be in your (dead) body animating it, and capable of eating brains to gain memories. Chernobyl Peace Prize fucked around with this message at 02:28 on May 29, 2020 |
# ? May 29, 2020 02:25 |
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Dawgstar posted:I haven't kept up it on very much. The last chapter I read was an oddly exhaustive and long look at how the Technocracy view sex, gender and love and the TL;DR was they took pains to show how super inclusive they are. Also little things like how the NWO agents are the Black Suits now, no longer the Men in Black, which while is more in keeping with the times does mean they lose out on a Will Smith bop. I suppose as long as they don't then turn around and go in to great detail about how the Verbena or whatever suddenly have very rigid ideas about the exact same stuff. Suppose I still have my head stuck in the old view where they were The Man or whatever, stomping down on inclusivity because that was the best way to keep the Sleepers in line.
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# ? May 29, 2020 02:28 |
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nofather posted:For people not interested in Mage at all: Do you think playing a zombie would be worth having its own gameline, or better and easier done by homebrewing something for an existing one? Cause outside of dragons it seems to be the 'go to' for people who want to homebrew new lines. Broken record time: Sounds like you want Promethean.
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# ? May 29, 2020 02:35 |
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nofather posted:For people not interested in Mage at all: Do you think playing a zombie would be worth having its own gameline, or better and easier done by homebrewing something for an existing one? Cause outside of dragons it seems to be the 'go to' for people who want to homebrew new lines. To also be a broken record, Deviant could also work if you want to go for the "I've been reanimated and I'm very mad about it" kind of zombie.
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# ? May 29, 2020 03:40 |
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What do you want to explore with the zombie? Easiest way is Vampire template, replace Blood with Brains and remove the sun allergy. I'm assuming this isn't a long-term campaign so you're not going to have to worry about Brain Potency. Next problem is Disciplines. Give them Potence/Celerity/Vigor at one dot call it a day. Outside of exceptional circumstances that's all they get. Ignore Bashing damage completely, ignore bullets unless it's a head shot, get rid of electrocution rules drowning etc. Fire bad, limb loss very bad. No Beast, no Blush of Life, no regen.
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# ? May 29, 2020 04:12 |
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nofather posted:How do people run Obsessions in Mage? Obsessions should be something they can never realistically achieve, and should be crazy enough for them to actively want to pursue these things while playing. I explained them as central character traits. They're just as important to the mage as their virtue and vice when framing who they are and what they do. I've never found it necessary to write them down myself, because the players really took to the idea. Then because of how we play, they come up regularly via player input.
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# ? May 29, 2020 04:57 |
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My players generally had general concepts as Obsessions: "Materialization of my own soul" for a Proximus whose Dynasty centered on tools and artifacts left by an Ascended One in the past; "Sacrificial Symbolism" from a Guardian playing with fire; "Changing my Legacy" for a mage who got inducted into the first step in a Reaper Legacy before meeting the rest of mage society and realizing the problem; "Mystic Self-Deception" for a Silver Ladder Mastigos who made only the best, most bespoke decisions constantly. And then at Gnosis 4 they all got a second Obsession. I found that specific act Obsessions gave players more immediate direction, but conceptual Obsessions gave them angles to poke their noses into everything around them and every plot available trying to find relevance for their personal magical interests. Obsessions are good and don't need to be too unsubtle to drive a lot of hubris and character arcs.
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# ? May 29, 2020 05:45 |
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citybeatnik posted:I suppose as long as they don't then turn around and go in to great detail about how the Verbena or whatever suddenly have very rigid ideas about the exact same stuff. Suppose I still have my head stuck in the old view where they were The Man or whatever, stomping down on inclusivity because that was the best way to keep the Sleepers in line. That is one of the funnier bits about Tech20 in that they're all shocked and outraged suddenly people are only I loving Love Science when it comes to flying cars or personal jetpacks and voting for Trump and whatever. Like they want humanity placid and docile but it wandered off in a direction they didn't expect and they're all 'Hey, Wha' Happun?'.
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# ? May 29, 2020 15:54 |
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Hey Goons! You guys helped me make the Dicecord discord bot for chronicles of darkness a few years back! I'm using the pandemic to do a big revamp and one feature I'm looking into is calculations of rolls via stat names, so you can do something like "roll matter + gnosis" and it'd look up how much dice you need to roll. I think a cool addition for this would be to import a digital character sheet rather than having to manually declare a bunch of stats. What do people tend to use for digital character sheets these days? I saw there's a website linked in the OP but most of my group mainly use Mr Gone's pdfs.
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# ? May 30, 2020 02:38 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:I found that Obsessions worked very well to drive my Mage players forward, even without any mechanics other than 'any time you pursue something for your Obsession, get an Arcane Beat (maximum 1/Obsession/scene).' It doesn't start off overpowering, and can even hide out in the background, but it will keep pulling them forwards. Make sure to have a list of player Obsessions you can look at, to remind them 'hey, you're Obsessed with stealing thunder from the gods, you would get an Arcane Beat for touching Zeus' lightning bolt while he's not looking.' Yeah I haven't needed any mechanics but I use this kind of level of ST 'encouragement' about what obsessions are. I like the list idea a lot. quote:After all, that's how Aspirations work, but Obsessions stick around. Also, as ST, you should be making sure content fitting their Obsessions is available, so that they have the opportunity to pursue them and arcane power. Definitely. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think the question you have to ask yourself is, what do you want zombies for? I completely forgot about the stuff in Geist. I was thinking of having it as a vampire thing. Deviant makes obvious sense too, like that Monster Nation book. Tulip posted:Broken record time: This seems to make sense mechanically due to the being made from corpses aspect of some of them. And perhaps disquiet as the Virus? But would the strive to become human really fit? Just offhand the only story I recall that has zombies-becoming-human as a big part of the story was the wildly underrated (but still schmaltzy AF) Warm Bodies. Lurks With Wolves posted:To also be a broken record, Deviant could also work if you want to go for the "I've been reanimated and I'm very mad about it" kind of zombie. Yeah this is definitely winning Deviant over for me. Relevant Tangent posted:What do you want to explore with the zombie? Easiest way is Vampire template, replace Blood with Brains and remove the sun allergy. I'm assuming this isn't a long-term campaign so you're not going to have to worry about Brain Potency. Next problem is Disciplines. Give them Potence/Celerity/Vigor at one dot call it a day. Outside of exceptional circumstances that's all they get. Ignore Bashing damage completely, ignore bullets unless it's a head shot, get rid of electrocution rules drowning etc. Fire bad, limb loss very bad. No Beast, no Blush of Life, no regen. It does fit vampire well, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a fitting proto-vampire type in Night Horrors: the Wicked Dead. And certainly intent is the big thing. I was asking more as a feeling out about when people want an entire new gameline, as opposed to just altering an existing one (like this with vampire) and using zombies because it seems a popular monster for homebrews (and people keep refusing the use of existing games for it). The responses definitely seem to lean towards working off of existing structures, which was my preference too. Jhet posted:Obsessions should be something they can never realistically achieve, and should be crazy enough for them to actively want to pursue these things while playing. I explained them as central character traits. They're just as important to the mage as their virtue and vice when framing who they are and what they do. I've never found it necessary to write them down myself, because the players really took to the idea. Then because of how we play, they come up regularly via player input. I like the framing of them for the player, but never being realistically achievable seems a bit rough. Like figuring out a specific Mystery in your town seems like it should have an end, to use Joe Slowboat's example of stealing lightning from the gods, if you manage it, does the obsession go away? Or is there another god and another more figurative lightning? Further Reading posted:Hey Goons! You guys helped me make the Dicecord discord bot for chronicles of darkness a few years back! Hey that's really cool. I know a lot of people use diceord but I'm not sure what they use for character sheets, I'll ask. So far one for Google Docs. And another, specifically this one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1chbThbfGKScnql2Dhnago_bTuQlK2MW_prYzX0O7BZs/ nofather fucked around with this message at 18:49 on May 30, 2020 |
# ? May 30, 2020 18:20 |
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Dawgstar posted:That is one of the funnier bits about Tech20 in that they're all shocked and outraged suddenly people are only I loving Love Science when it comes to flying cars or personal jetpacks and voting for Trump and whatever. Like they want humanity placid and docile but it wandered off in a direction they didn't expect and they're all 'Hey, Wha' Happun?'. As long as they poo poo on the Syndicate for wealth inequality as well I'm cool with it.
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# ? May 30, 2020 18:42 |
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nofather posted:I like the framing of them for the player, but never being realistically achievable seems a bit rough. Like figuring out a specific Mystery in your town seems like it should have an end, to use Joe Slowboat's example of stealing lightning from the gods, if you manage it, does the obsession go away? Or is there another god and another more figurative lightning? Per the book you just replace it with something like you do Aspirations, but the most they've done in our game in three years is reframe them from time to time. So for the steal lightning example (which is a cool idea), I'd just make it a deeper mystery or push the story in a way where they're having to still deal with something related to that conceptual framework. So for steal lightning, I'd guide the story in a way where a good replacement is something like "Survive with the stolen lightning" or "Figure out how to use the stolen lightning", or something to that effect. Maybe it turns out that a couple of the regular antagonists are in a mystery cult devoted to Thor and they change tactics entirely in the next encounter with them. Maybe the thing posing as Thor gets really cranky and they start destroying the power supply chain while the group is doing something else and it becomes more difficult because they're having to fight on two fronts. But I basically use them as the individual mage's personal story fodder, which when you deal with bigger ideas makes it easy to keep it going and keep evolving for me. Maybe a better way to say it is I like them to be more open ended, abstract, or subjective? I hope that explains it well enough. A smaller obsession like figuring out a specific Mystery works too, but I'd still try to spin that into something bigger as they chip away at the milestones in it. It's probably a good obsession for an entire chapter, but it's not probably going to be big enough for the whole book (of the character's personal story). Really just depends on the goal and scope of the game you're playing. That would be perfect if the game was only going to last 4-5 sessions though.
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# ? May 30, 2020 19:47 |
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Jhet posted:Per the book you just replace it with something like you do Aspirations, but the most they've done in our game in three years is reframe them from time to time. So for the steal lightning example (which is a cool idea), I'd just make it a deeper mystery or push the story in a way where they're having to still deal with something related to that conceptual framework. So for steal lightning, I'd guide the story in a way where a good replacement is something like "Survive with the stolen lightning" or "Figure out how to use the stolen lightning", or something to that effect. Maybe it turns out that a couple of the regular antagonists are in a mystery cult devoted to Thor and they change tactics entirely in the next encounter with them. Maybe the thing posing as Thor gets really cranky and they start destroying the power supply chain while the group is doing something else and it becomes more difficult because they're having to fight on two fronts. Yeah, so - My group, the group that created the Obsession mechanics, had; "Attempting to coax the worthy into Awakening" - the Acanthus Guardian Strategos, whose job it was to look after two prospects "The Supernal nature of groups as an expression of shared humanity" - the Obrimos Arrow Perfected Adept who'd Awakened as a soldier in Iraq after realising the Lie of nation and creed. This guy would habitually infilitrate sleeper criminal orgs the cabal dealt with as a member, and once joined a werewolf pack by mistake. "Why do the Seers want my son" - the Thyrsus thearch who'd slept with the Tetrarch of Mammon before her Awakening "What's going on with my timeline" - the Moros Eleventh Question Libertine, who "should" have been a Harrowed Banisher only someone came back in time to fix him, but his alternate self kept trying to reassert itself. "How High Speech relates to human language" - the Mastigos Mystagogue, who was a giant nerd. None of them changed over the course of the game, though the way they went about chasing them frequently did. Every time Ibn went through another brutal initiation ceremony, every time Cowl decided someone wasn't worthy and would get stuck back into the Labyrinth or set up something to hopefully shock a Prospect into confronting the Lie, every time Herophilus was temporarily dead for the last six years, they got Arcane beats.
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# ? May 30, 2020 20:41 |
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In my case, ‘steal lightning’ is actually broadly the Obsession of my Neolithic Obrimos, who spends a lot of time on mountains being hit by lightning. My goal is to have the Obsession develop towards the idea of divine ownership and transgression; he doesn’t know what a ‘Prometheus’ is but in a society shaped by spirit bans and taboos he’s starting to understand the power that exists to be seized in transgression against gods.
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# ? May 30, 2020 21:19 |
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Yeah, the obsessions in my game are things like: Attack Faerie (the changeling one) Indoctrinate the Seers into following the Omnipresence Understand the soul WTF is justice These aren’t things that they’ll every really complete, and are really very instrumental to who the characters are. They haven’t change in word since we started three years ago, just in how they chase things down. It’s been a wonderful game and I’m sad that they’re getting closer to solving the central mystery of it all, but I really want it to have a good ending too.
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# ? May 31, 2020 01:18 |
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I love the idea of a mage accidentally infiltrating a werewolf pack thinking it's a criminal cult and just going "Whoops, my bad."
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# ? May 31, 2020 15:13 |
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Is there a good setting book for Awakening?
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# ? May 31, 2020 15:42 |
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Dawgstar posted:Is there a good setting book for Awakening? The Dark Eras ‘Sundered Age’ and ‘To the Strongest’ in the first Dark Eras collection are both great. The Mysterium, Seers of the Throne, Guardians of the Veil, and Silver Ladder books from 1e also have a lot of setting information, though they’re focused on their respective Orders. Left Hand Path and the 2e equivalent, Nameless and Accursed, provide a ton of antagonist options and ideas, and are also very good. Signs of Sorcery is primarily about Mysteries and magic, the practice and theory, but is also good. Astral Realms (1e) is pure setting and it’s very good, go explore the human oversoul. The 1e Imperial Mysteries book is primarily about playing Archmasters and how that all worked in 1e, but that whole space of extremely powerful magic makes for great setting material for playing normal Traveler mages as well. I’ve also read Boston Unveiled from 1e and while it has a lot of flaws (like all of the character writeups with a handful of exceptions being extremely Boston stereotypes with ‘also they do magic’ - it’s a fun read other than the occasional racism but I wouldn’t use it as a model for a Consilium at all) it does have a number of setting elements like a cannibalistic Abyss cult that’s extremely Stephen King, a Astral Realm of pirate freedom, and so on, that could be easily used in other Chronicles.
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# ? May 31, 2020 16:22 |
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Pretty decent price if you ask me.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 13:43 |
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Hopefully the v5 branding doesn't gently caress too much up, but I'm definitely interested at that price point. It would be hilarious if they changed the backs again.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 14:07 |
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It's a fair price, although the powerlevel and volume of juicy reprints is not even close as the Sabbath precons and the 25th anniversary pack. What I'm mostly worried about the V5 changes is how they will treat the changes in the clan especific disciplines and if the new disciplines are going to be compatible with their old counterparts, for example oblivion and necromancy.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 14:17 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:I’ve also read Boston Unveiled from 1e and while it has a lot of flaws (like all of the character writeups with a handful of exceptions being extremely Boston stereotypes with ‘also they do magic’ - it’s a fun read other than the occasional racism but I wouldn’t use it as a model for a Consilium at all) it does have a number of setting elements like a cannibalistic Abyss cult that’s extremely Stephen King, a Astral Realm of pirate freedom, and so on, that could be easily used in other Chronicles. I'm guessing Chicago's probably not a good reference book either? Admittedly I do own that one already because it looks like a good book on Chicago as a city and the Requiem stuff slaps.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 14:49 |
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Dawgstar posted:I'm guessing Chicago's probably not a good reference book either? Admittedly I do own that one already because it looks like a good book on Chicago as a city and the Requiem stuff slaps. WoD: Chicago was, if I remember correctly, partly written before Mage 1e was finished. It came out four months later, so knowing how production timescales match up that's either true or it was written before Mage came out and anyone played it. It's... Um... Yeah. Props for having local (to me) boy former pop-idol Robbie Williams on the cover. (Tim Bradstreet was in his photo-reference era, and this one's particularly obvious)
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 15:47 |
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Props for having local (to me) boy former pop-idol Robbie Williams on the cover. (Tim Bradstreet was in his photo-reference era, and this one's particularly obvious) Wait as in "I'm loving angels instead" Robbie Williams? Take That?
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 02:01 |
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Dave Brookshaw posted:WoD: Chicago was, if I remember correctly, partly written before Mage 1e was finished. It came out four months later, so knowing how production timescales match up that's either true or it was written before Mage came out and anyone played it. It's... Um... Yeah. Flipping through it I saw a cabal that was apparently dedicated to the White Sox and while I don’t think it is out of bounds a group of mages like baseball it did not really feel like a group of people who are pathologically determined to explore the nature of reality.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 03:11 |
Dawgstar posted:Flipping through it I saw a cabal that was apparently dedicated to the White Sox and while I don’t think it is out of bounds a group of mages like baseball it did not really feel like a group of people who are pathologically determined to explore the nature of reality. I could see "White Sox Fan Squad" being the like, social excuse and hook for a cabal though. However, this would be more along the lines of "this is our excuse for meetings, and possibly, matters related to our team are a recurring factor/focus in our sorcerous inquiries."
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 03:17 |
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It’s probably because Cubs fans are terrible and are probably a Seer run org. I wonder how many of the writers for that book (and by extension any city book) have lived in any of the cities for an extended period of time. It would be more difficult surely and it is fictional, but it does really read like stereotypes in a lot of places and not really what Chicago is like. Except for the corruption parts, you can’t really get that part wrong.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 03:44 |
I always figured Pittsburgh would be a good location for a WoD game. It's got all that grimy industrial decay and crap, and it also has the god drat skyscraper at the university.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 04:09 |
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Dawgstar posted:Flipping through it I saw a cabal that was apparently dedicated to the White Sox and while I don’t think it is out of bounds a group of mages like baseball it did not really feel like a group of people who are pathologically determined to explore the nature of reality. They find the magic in baseball in general, and not just the White Sox. They just also happen to be White Sox fans who claim the Stadium as their territory. The setting itself is mostly meh, but it has an okay hook with most older mages having murdered each other over an atlantean artifact in the 80s.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 05:28 |
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If not Robbie as photo reference, someone who looks incredibly like him. As for the Baseball cabal, Malcolm Sheppard brought them back in the 2nd ed fiction anthology, and had Khonsu beat them up. EDIT: The Game of Geometric Perfection. That's what they're called. Also, the Cubs are apparently the werewolves' team. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jun 2, 2020 |
# ? Jun 2, 2020 12:43 |
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With Chicago kind of a bust, I did try Boston Unveiled and the cabals there are... I guess at least inoffensive. The one Arrow group who are all horny for the Duel Arcane are fun, even if they kind of come off as nerds, especially the one woman who doesn't wear a shirt but instead just wears a cloth wrap around her chest during combat 'for mobility.'
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 13:22 |
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Boston Unveiled has literally no cabals or individuals who seem driven by a passion for magic or the supernatural in any way, or at least if there are any I can’t remember them. Maybe the Jewish mage who isn’t in an Order? One of the Free Council cabals is just that MIT card counting club but using Mind magic to win better, with no explanation of what motivates this other than making money. It just lacks wizardry, to a stupendous degree.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 14:17 |
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# ? May 29, 2024 05:07 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:Boston Unveiled has literally no cabals or individuals who seem driven by a passion for magic or the supernatural in any way, or at least if there are any I can’t remember them. Maybe the Jewish mage who isn’t in an Order? One of the Free Council cabals is just that MIT card counting club but using Mind magic to win better, with no explanation of what motivates this other than making money. Yeah, I just hit the group whose deal is 'they're pirate enthusiasts I guess.'
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 14:48 |