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Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
yeah I was hoping for something funky and weird instead of "ya, you all can see normal now" and that sounds really cool, just an amorphous inky blob writhing behind my the group whispering descriptions to the teens.

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Lord_Hambrose
Nov 21, 2008

*a foul hooting fills the air*



joylessdivision posted:

The song is called Kai Tangata by a Maori band called Alien Weaponry. If you like thrash their first album is pretty good.

https://youtu.be/5kwIkF6LFDc

To quote the video description which is :black101: af

The title literally translates to ‘Eat People’; and refers to the ancient Māori tradition of eating the flesh of their enemies after battle in order to insult them. It is also an ancient term for a war party.

poo poo, this rules.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Soonmot posted:

yeah I was hoping for something funky and weird instead of "ya, you all can see normal now" and that sounds really cool, just an amorphous inky blob writhing behind my the group whispering descriptions to the teens.
I was thinking like a floating reverse hologram they can quickly review. My inspiration was that episode of Star Trek where Geordi takes a holodeck image of a particular party and starts removing individuals and their shadows. Until he is left with no people, and one shadow.

e: but yeah this is definitely a "thing that suits the wizard's personal style"

Hillary 2024
Nov 13, 2016

by vyelkin

Soonmot posted:

Need some Mage advice. One of my players is using shadow sculpting to move the shadows in a pitch black basement behind the group before they enter it. They've already made a shadow lantern that I've ruled doesn't project light so much as allow them to see all the different shades of darkness perfectly, so they can make out shapes and objects like normal, but not see any color or what have you. What they're trying to do now seems really cool, so I want to have *something* happen, but what happens to darkness when you move away all the shadows?

You reveal a rather embarrassed Lasombra

cptn_dr
Sep 7, 2011

Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies


Hillary 2020 posted:

You reveal a rather embarrassed Lasombra pissed off Strix.

nofather
Aug 15, 2014

Soonmot posted:

Need some Mage advice. One of my players is using shadow sculpting to move the shadows in a pitch black basement behind the group before they enter it. They've already made a shadow lantern that I've ruled doesn't project light so much as allow them to see all the different shades of darkness perfectly, so they can make out shapes and objects like normal, but not see any color or what have you. What they're trying to do now seems really cool, so I want to have *something* happen, but what happens to darkness when you move away all the shadows?

Perhaps in the right place, it can act as a key, opening a Scar to a Lower Depth where lurks an Atlantean Tomb, or allow a certain book a mystagogue might be frustrated over (the Book of Unseen Shadows) to be read, which would guide them to an Atlantean Temple. From there, even temple guardians, ancient secrets and traps, and an artifact or two revolving around shadows. One of the artifacts, despite its power, encourages its user to find certain soul-stones in an attempt to resurrect the ancient evil mage from the Time Before who wants to get back into the world and climb that ladder before those others get to it. And in the tomb you have a beast of a Bound who, now unbound, is your responsibility.

nofather fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jul 9, 2020

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



nofather posted:

Perhaps in the right place, it can act as a key, opening a Scar to a Lower Depth where lurks an Atlantean Tomb, or allow a certain book a mystagogue might be frustrated over (the Book of Unseen Shadows) to be read, which would guide them to an Atlantean Temple. From there, even temple guardians, ancient secrets and traps, and an artifact or two revolving around shadows. One of the artifacts, despite its power, encourages its user to find certain soul-stones in an attempt to resurrect the ancient evil mage from the Time Before who wants to get back into the world and climb that ladder before those others get to it. And in the tomb you have a beast of a Bound who, now unbound, is your responsibility.
Crowded-rear end basement.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.
Hello, it's me, the tiresome lobster that rants about VTES non-stop again!

Today I want to talk about the new library cards revealed so far in 5th edition.

The first one is a potence card.



Ok, that's literally a Pushing the limit without a blood cost that can't be used with weapons. Well, pretty much everyone who enjoys combat in Vtes knows potence based combat is not exactly top-tier because it relies too much on long chains of card combos, for example torn signpost+immortal grapple+slam (for maneuvers)+ aditional attacks (with celerity), although it varies from deck to deck.

Most combat decks nowadays either use more efficient combat disciplines, like animalism or vicissitude, or just uses powerful combat vampires with innate bonuses that also have potence, like Enkidu, Matasuntha, "Smackdaddy"Lazverinus, Khurshid or Ghede, for example. The second weakness of potence is that's a really unflexible discipline, it neither helps you outside of combat nor does many things outside helping your vamp hit harder.

So, is this card good? It's fine, in the sense that it's an improvement of an already existing card and it's playable, but potence strikes that add nothing but more damage do not fit into the existing combat meta. My hot take: it will see some play in certain decks, mainly bruise-bleed decks, and maybe as one or two copies in other combat focused decks, at most. Treat it more like a slightly reworked old card that does not open new deck design than anything else.

Second one:



Ok, now that's what I call a new card, let's take a closer look. It's a reaction card that's only playable by primogens (remember, it requires the vampire to be unlocked) and it let's you either reduce a bleed against you by 3 or gain 3 votes during a referendum, also worth noting that this last option is only playable during a referendum called by another player.

This card is exciting because it opens up posibilities for new deck design that weren't widely used until now but without being overpowered pieces of garbage that breaks the game in half (talking about you Emerald legionnaire). The title of Primogen has never been much apreciated, because all the good powerful stuff that the Camarilla is known for requires either Prince or Justicar titles, like Parity Shift, Alastor, Second Tradition: Domain etc. The combination of the intercept&unlock of the Second Tradition and the wide access to votes and bleed bounce that some Camarilla clans have, like Ventrue and Toreador, is what makes "Royalty" Camarilla decks so solid defensively.

This is clearly a defensive card and really good at that, protecting you against bleeds and political actions, which are the most common ways of being ousted, intercept notwithstanding and it does so for free, with the possibility of playing multiple copies if you have more than one primogen. What makes it a really good design is that it's even better for the Camarilla clans that didn't have an easy access to bleed bounce disciplines, in other words, the Brujah, Gangrel and Nosferatu. My hot take: This card will see play in new decklists with crypts formed with either unused old vampires or the new vamps from groups 5-6. Who knows, maybe this is going to help a new Primogen archetype to be born? I really hope so, there are already decklist ideas floating around, for example, using the powerful ability of Weirich Waldburg, I look forward to see new decks and ideas in this old rear end game.

Angry Lobster fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jul 9, 2020

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Angry Lobster posted:

So, is this card good? It's fine, in the sense that it's an improvement of an already existing card and it's playable, but potence strikes that add nothing but more damage do not fit into the existing combat meta.


I'm way out of touch with the meta, but shouldn't this become a staple if you already run cards or vamps with bonus hand damage?

Pairing with something like Meat Cleaver or Torn Signpost seems like a no-brainer.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.

moths posted:

I'm way out of touch with the meta, but shouldn't this become a staple if you already run cards or vamps with bonus hand damage?

Pairing with something like Meat Cleaver or Torn Signpost seems like a no-brainer.

I'm not great at combat decks, however you must remember that Roundhouse is a hand strike card, so it can only be used once, in contrast torn signpost gives you a base three strength for the entire combat, so you can abuse it with cards that give aditional strikes and/or with presses to generate new rounds of combat. Also you can't use roundhouse with a weapon like with the old pushing the limit.

Generally speaking, multiple strikes are better than a single big strike for multiple reasons. For one, a strike:dodge will negate your strike completely, it's true that they are not that common but once in a while you'll encounter them, for example, Nana Buruku animalism combat decks usually play a couple hell-for-leather just for the dodge. Another reason to spread your damage around is that there are prevention cards that only work for a single strike, for example superior mettle or skin of steel at inferior, a rolling with the punches will still ruin your day but that's fairly common when two combat decks with fortitude clash. For example, an Enkidu entering combat and using just immortal grapple (to prevent combat ends and limit strikes to hand) and a blur (celerity, two additional strikes) is both terrifing and efficient.

Right now, combat decks that revolve around hand strikes try to use as fewer cards as possible, so using passive strength bonuses, either with strong vampires or cards that permanently gives strength bonuses (preternatural strength, heroic might) is all the rage now, because it saves you valuable deck slots, is more resistant to bad draws jamming your hand and it gives more value over time. For all these reasons potence strike cards that just add damage are just not what people are looking for in this kind of decks. If they added any other effect to Roundhouse, for example, a strike: dodge with 1 additional strike and some bonus strength, then it would have been a much more valuable card, because there are already a ton of ways to get damage with potence, but things like prevention or dodges are non-existant.

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Thanks for that writeup - that makes a lot of sense and puts it into perspective.

I was thinking it'd be better to load up all the eggs in one basket, but as you pointed out that's pretty suboptimal

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
I wanna play again. It's been so many years.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.

moths posted:

Thanks for that writeup - that makes a lot of sense and puts it into perspective.

I was thinking it'd be better to load up all the eggs in one basket, but as you pointed out that's pretty suboptimal

Take my words with a grain of salt, Vtes is a very nuanced and deep card game and there are tons of styles and approaches to the game, I covered just one of them. Honestly, if you play with a combat deck against non combat decks the only thing that really matters is to not get bled to death in the first five turns by your predator and have a way to deal with combat ends, either with cards or just raw number of actions. The quality and strategy of your combat module is significantly more important against other combat decks. I once saw a dude playing a weenie potence deck and his strategy was just that, send a small vampire in, make a big hit and repeat ad nausea, like small dumb guided missiles, and it worked fine in that game.

I'm trying to build a bruise and bleed deck with a combat module based around roundhouse+claws of the dead, just like that, you block me? here, take four aggravated damage. I doubt it's going to be competitive enough but it might be fun just for laughs.

MonsieurChoc posted:

I wanna play again. It's been so many years.

There's a group of people in the official Vekn discord who plays regularly on Lackey, maybe that would suit you?

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Angry Lobster posted:

Take my words with a grain of salt, Vtes is a very nuanced and deep card game and there are tons of styles and approaches to the game, I covered just one of them. Honestly, if you play with a combat deck against non combat decks the only thing that really matters is to not get bled to death in the first five turns by your predator and have a way to deal with combat ends, either with cards or just raw number of actions. The quality and strategy of your combat module is significantly more important against other combat decks. I once saw a dude playing a weenie potence deck and his strategy was just that, send a small vampire in, make a big hit and repeat ad nausea, like small dumb guided missiles, and it worked fine in that game.

I'm trying to build a bruise and bleed deck with a combat module based around roundhouse+claws of the dead, just like that, you block me? here, take four aggravated damage. I doubt it's going to be competitive enough but it might be fun just for laughs.


There's a group of people in the official Vekn discord who plays regularly on Lackey, maybe that would suit you?

Definitely, I'd just nee dto get off my rear end and make a deck in lackey and play.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Soonmot posted:

Need some Mage advice. One of my players is using shadow sculpting to move the shadows in a pitch black basement behind the group before they enter it. They've already made a shadow lantern that I've ruled doesn't project light so much as allow them to see all the different shades of darkness perfectly, so they can make out shapes and objects like normal, but not see any color or what have you. What they're trying to do now seems really cool, so I want to have *something* happen, but what happens to darkness when you move away all the shadows?

You could treat it like how auras work in Exalted with Abyssals. The portion of the room that had the shadows shifted to it gets darker. The rest of it becomes bright enough to read by. Good loving luck navigating the "shadowy" side of the room however without the lantern.

Then maybe insert a horrifying text that demonstrates why you shouldn't go wandering around spooky basements from there.


Alternatively: Describe it so that anything that would logically cast a shadow when light would otherwise be shined on it gains a certain uncanny valley wrongness to it. Things viewed through the lantern don't have shadows when they should. The darkness remains, however. IE: A table that would cast a shadow lacks it at all possible angles, with the shadow mirrored on the other side of the room (Or tangled up in a nightmarish mess depending on how the character did it.). Just some real "normative reality is out to lunch" stuff.

Be subtle about it instead of just coming out and saying why it is that everything looks so off. Maybe give them hints to figure out just what is off to them as they wander around this creepy as heck place if they don't pick up on it right away.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jul 10, 2020

Octavo
Feb 11, 2019





I see that there's a chronicles of darkness sale on DTRPG. Has anyone read Spilled Blood? I've not really cared for the Requiem material released after Secrets of the Covenants, so this one's not an automatic buy from me despite having bloodlines, extra clans, and the rebooted Belial's Brood, but if people here are enthused maybe I'll pick it up.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.
Another VtES/VtM related post , this time an update about the banning of racist/offensive cards that I posted some pages ago.

This was posted by Ben Peal (one of the co-founders of Black Chantry) in the official forums, adressing some criticism about this issue:

quote:

Hi Alain,

I direct your attention to statements I made on this same topic two years ago:

https://www.vekn.net/forum/generic-v-tes-discussion/76821-card-name-change-suggestion?start=66#89091

To summarize, with the exception of Tarbaby Jack (who came later), the cards with the strongest problems come from the beginning days of V:TES. White Wolf made a progression of changes with the Ravnos in later editions of V:TM and V:TES. So the process to improve things really started 19 years ago. I think it would be a mistake for us to not acknowledge those changes.

I think there are still problems with some later cards. There have been many improvements, yes, but it's still not great and we wouldn't write these characters or design these cards that way today. But I don't think the problems are as strong as they were in the beginning and I think we can respect and acknowledge the improvements.

So after two years, in the interest of valuing other communities, treating them well, and being more inviting and welcoming to this game, we made a decision on 5 cards. Not 10. Not 100. Not 1000. Not the entire Ravnos. 5 cards.

We reserve the right to continue to review cards and make decisions we feel are necessary. If such a decision needs to be made again, my expectation is that such a decision will also happen much later and will only affect a few cards - and only if a decision happens at all.

At the same time, please understand that we do not make these changes lightly or on a whim or because anyone is whispering in our ears. Please understand that we respect the content of this game and the intentions of the designers. Please understand that the decisions made on the cards are not a statement against the players of V:TES.

Regarding the concerns about replacement cards, in our public statement we said that we we will design new cards as replacements, where possible. There are behind-the-scenes reasons why this might not be possible or why replacing cards might not be as quick as we would like. These reasons can include (and are not limited to) the time it takes to get new artwork and getting approval from WW/Paradox. It is also an opportunity to make game balance improvements on the cards, and these changes need to be playtested. If you are part of the playtest team, you will see some of these cards very soon.

As for how we will make those cards available, we're working on a viable plan for that. It will probably be in the form of a promo pack, but I don't want to give 100% confirmation on that because we're still determining what is permissible for us. You'll probably see the cards available in upcoming starter decks (as that is what we will playtest soon), but they will not be exclusive to those decks.

I hope that what I have said addresses your concerns and calms your fears. I appreciate your passion and dedication to V:TES, as well as your friendship.


- Ben Peal

For context, there's has been some noise made by reactionary shitheads about this whole issue while another group of people are just afraid they are going to ban all the Ravnos cards.

Angry Lobster fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Jul 11, 2020

Warthur
May 2, 2004



Does anyone know if the intention is to do more splat-specific Dark Eras compilations like the one that's just come out for Changeling?

I really like the idea because I'm not keen on buying individual Dark Era writeups, and the Dark Eras books themselves feel like buying a whole bunch of material for splats I am not interested in to get some material for the splats I am interested in.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
Looking through werewolf because half my cabal is going up against a Claimed. It doesn't look like they have bans or banes?

EDIT: Also, if my acanthus wants to rewind a person to where they were a day ago, and make it stick, how do we handle duration? Just advanced and indefinite? Basically, they know the claimed was human yesterday and want to get back to that, so they can deal with the spirit before they merge.

Soonmot fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jul 15, 2020

nofather
Aug 15, 2014

Soonmot posted:

Looking through werewolf because half my cabal is going up against a Claimed. It doesn't look like they have bans or banes?

Yeah they have them, they keep the spirits (or whatever the entity is). 'The hybrid being that results has the entity’s Essence trait, Virtue, Vice, Ban, and Bane, but is a material being.'

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer

nofather posted:

Yeah they have them, they keep the spirits (or whatever the entity is). 'The hybrid being that results has the entity’s Essence trait, Virtue, Vice, Ban, and Bane, but is a material being.'
Thanks I must have glossed over that and the examples didn't list any bans or banes.

Baby Broomer
Feb 19, 2013
Werewolf the Forsaken 2e rocks, been having a blast running it, but holy poo poo we wouldn't have made a full pack if it wasn't only 2 players and 1 GM. For larger groups, I think I would alot each player 3-5 merit dots that go to 'Pack Merits', as a way to retain the feeling of being a member of an organization without needing to make 9 or more characters. I'm sure the stripped down character sheets for woof-blooded and human cohorts isn't heavy for anyone who reads this thread, but my 2 players let me know that they did not really enjoy the pressure of having to make 3 characters each. Anyone else had this issue with WtF 2e?

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
My players are giant nerds, so they loved it. What you can also do, especially if you're starting them as a new pack, is see which NPCs they're drawn to and have them join the pack during play. Pack merits are a great idea though, and I actually use that along with awarding pack beats when the group worked well together that they could use on merits that benefited the whole pack.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Baby Broomer posted:

Werewolf the Forsaken 2e rocks, been having a blast running it, but holy poo poo we wouldn't have made a full pack if it wasn't only 2 players and 1 GM. For larger groups, I think I would alot each player 3-5 merit dots that go to 'Pack Merits', as a way to retain the feeling of being a member of an organization without needing to make 9 or more characters. I'm sure the stripped down character sheets for woof-blooded and human cohorts isn't heavy for anyone who reads this thread, but my 2 players let me know that they did not really enjoy the pressure of having to make 3 characters each. Anyone else had this issue with WtF 2e?

I have definitely seen that fatigue. I’m not sure how to properly alleviate it without rewriting the pack system, tho.

Baby Broomer
Feb 19, 2013

Mors Rattus posted:

I have definitely seen that fatigue. I’m not sure how to properly alleviate it without rewriting the pack system, tho.

Right, which is why I think that letting the players take a group of shared social merits will maintain the feeling that they run a gang, without houseruling a mass combat subsystem or whatever.


Soonmot posted:

My players are giant nerds, so they loved it. What you can also do, especially if you're starting them as a new pack, is see which NPCs they're drawn to and have them join the pack during play. Pack merits are a great idea though, and I actually use that along with awarding pack beats when the group worked well together that they could use on merits that benefited the whole pack.

I feel like if I was going to induct new members into the pack that is handled better through Allies, Contact, Retainers, those merits. I think it would feel weird to give a player a lovely half-PC 4 sessions in. Ditto on thinking that something like Pack Beats would be neat though.

tokenbrownguy
Apr 1, 2010

I really want to run WtF. Unfortunately, one of my players has issues reading and has been fattened on a diet of storygames and breezy one shots. He'd rather die than read a sourcebook or do homework. I can't blame him, but I also can't help being old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud.jpg about him never having to put his time into reading obscure 3rd party splats that crack 300 pages just for a single feat.

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.
None of us ever had to do that. All we can hope to do is break the cycle.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
I still prefer WtF 1E, at least rules-wise. While the Uratha are now stronger, they are also a lot more unwiedly, with more stuff to keep in your head at all times.

I mean, that's my issue with nWoD 2E all over again: fixed a bunch of problems, but added new ones and in the end I'm more comfortable with the game I've run and played in for years.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Goon Project to make a "rules-lite" version of the 2e lines where you literally just state mechanics clearly and concisely in one place

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

Goon Project to make a "rules-lite" version of the 2e lines where you literally just state mechanics clearly and concisely in one place

Suppose Loomer'll need another Great Work once he's done with The Project.

Baby Broomer
Feb 19, 2013

tokenbrownguy posted:

I really want to run WtF. Unfortunately, one of my players has issues reading and has been fattened on a diet of storygames and breezy one shots. He'd rather die than read a sourcebook or do homework. I can't blame him, but I also can't help being old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud.jpg about him never having to put his time into reading obscure 3rd party splats that crack 300 pages just for a single feat.
Actually, both of my players are Never-Reading-That-poo poo types, and the game has run smoothly. Although, I prompt them on good moments to use their Gifts or shapeshift, usually under the guise of "spend the essence to control the scene?". I'll also ask them periodically if they want to shift their senses into the Shadow to read Resonance or get a read on what the local Shadow ecology is like. I've struggled with how many inherent powers the templates get in 2e a lot, though, and understand that some tables don't enjoy the GM giving their 2 cents.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

https://twitter.com/PlayRenegade/status/1283147632953765889

All it took for Martin to see WoD go multimedia was being pushed down and ignored!

paradoxGentleman
Dec 10, 2013

wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

I had an interesting conversation on Discord with my girlfriend on the subject of our favorite Changeling game. I fancy the Lost, but she prefers the Dreaming.

Her: Question? Why do you dislike CtD?

Me:The concept of "everything mundane is bad" doesnt appeal to me
Especially "everything technological is bad"
The Peter Pan philosophy of "never grow up, never accept the world for what it is" used to bother me a lot but now I can at least see a way it could be interpreted positively
If you take it as "dont let them get to you" instead of "you can afford to he a child forever "
Finally, after the soul crushing beauty of Changeling the Lost, the Dreaming just cannot compare
I think that about covers it
Thoughts?

Her: Makes sense
I disagree a little but. I can see your POV
I thought you might dislike how sprawling and confused it is, or the “liberal racisms”

Me:... there's racism as well?

Her: Like
"The native americans had faeries too. Let's, as white liberals, talk about them!"

Me: Ooooh man. Yeah. Thassa no good

Her:I still find the setting fascinating
It’s like a whole D&D setting, only it’s hidden away under the cracks
It’s got a lot of neat details and mysteries to explore, and like
It’s really queer
And it’s a horror about decay, and lost innocence

Me: CtL does that a thousand times better imo

Her: It feels different to me
It’s more monolithic, with a lot of ways to say the same thing

Me: Interesting
Because I feel like dreaming is sort of.. Dispersive?

Her: It’s also a lot less empowering
Which is totally not what one is sposed to get from a WoD game. XD
But that’s why it’s my favorite WoD game

Me: In its attempt to cover anything from living necklaces to folklore faeries, it pulls in a lot of directions without getting anywhere (1)

Her: It feels real to me that way

Me: How so

Her: The world is a huge mess with a thousand thousand cultures and subcultures
A world that’s just “we suffered trauma. We cope”
Is so small
There’s no real fight to be had against the True Fae
It’s like a zombie apocalypse story
“Eventually, we are all gonna die. Let’s see how long we can last!”
CtD has climate change instead of zombie apocalypse
It’s a fight you can struggle to do, that is needed for humanity to survive, that maybe just maybe we can win
It’s a setting about creativity and depression
It’s the Neverending Story and Sandman
And, yes, a little Peter Pan. But. Yeah
CtL is great and all, but it’s not a place where I can soar, the trauma metaphor aside

Me: I don't know. I'm not really convinced
If there are a thousand thousand cultures, how can you be so arrogant as to put them all under the banner of "faeries", how can you declare them all the product of wonder and imagination?
Also, the world of CtL is not as bleak as you paint it
Yes, it's about trauma, and the consequences thereof, but also about recovery, and how we deal with that
The True Fae are powerful but they are not invincible
The Summer Court's whole reason to be is kicking the rear end of the Fair Folk, and the Autumn Court is all about using the magic that they learned from their Keepers
... Would you mind if I shared this conversation with Something Awful? They are strong detractors of the Dreaming, and I'm curious to see how they'd react to your take on it

Her: Sure. Go for it
And like. They aren’t all Textbook Changelings
And culture Is of the mind
Idk. I just mean the sprawl is a strength
But. Ultimately. I won’t be convinced otherwise. I love the aesthetic too much

Me: That's okay
You're probably never get me to not love CtL more
:P

Her: CtD is a very particular blend you don’t find other places
That’s fine. CtL is good, objectively
Just not my cup of tea
...another way to phrase why I like it and not the other
Realizing you’re a Changeling reminds me of realizing I’m a girl
It doesn’t work that way at ALL in CtL

Me: That's true

Her:.....I’m digging this metaphor actually
It makes a little sense of Banality
It’s dysphoria
Or at least the triggers for it remind me of it
And it has that mind body disconnect too
“You know you’re not really a selkie, right?”
...I’m also oddly reminded of Rango

Me: The animated movie featuring a chameleon conman slash cowboy?
It is a very good movie

Her: Remember when the rattlesnake took down the true villain?
That was totally an Unseelie taking down a Banal person

(1) Later on I realized that Changeling the Lost kind of does the same thing by putting rakshasas, nuckelavees and aliens under the same umbrella, so I guess this particular point doesn't work.

Then the conversation drifted. What do you folks think?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



I think there's something to the idea that having that sprawl and random crap and groups and things instead of a monofocus on a single tight theme creates a more lived in 'world'.

The big difference I see is that it seems like the classic games were made to build a world around a gribbly type, perhaps with some core themes, while the newer games were made to evoke a particular theme and mood in a play group. So as your GF here said, CtL is fundamentally about dealing with trauma, or at least, it seems to be so; while CtD could have that as a focus but you could also create a character who is not centered in that way.

I don't think either is intrinsically good or bad or anything.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



There’s a parallel I want to raise but I also want to be clear, it’s only a very broad comparison and not meant to equate being into CtD with, well:

Back when the thread was discussing Beast, it came up that a number of people saw some element of their identities in Beasts, and that made them extremely fond of the game line despite it being objectively trash. CtD is very much not my thing and I’m not convinced by its concepts, but it’s not trash in any way comparable to Beast; nonetheless, I think there’s a similar complicated thing where people are going to search any work for what is applicable to their own human condition.

Some clearly have intentional metaphors, and sometimes the parallels people see are incidental to the express concept of the work - and I think ultimately it’s very hard to predict, or to argue that a thing definitely does or doesn’t have those parallels, given how subjective it is.

Except Beast which is sad trash and people who identify with it either need more self-esteem or need to be scrutinized generally.

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell

citybeatnik posted:

Suppose Loomer'll need another Great Work once he's done with The Project.

I'm a legal theorist. I'm literally the last person you want on a project trying to set out clear and concise rules.

paradoxGentleman
Dec 10, 2013

wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

...I've been struck by a thought.
Bluebeard is an Ogre, right? I know Keepers don't correspond 100% to Seemings the way changelings do, but, he's straight up an Ogre, right? What else could he be?

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
So I've just discovered that I lost one of the most tedious entries to a hard drive crash I had a while ago, but fortunately only one - the merged Garou data. Like a Smart I put the rest on backups and the cloud but forgot about that one. Fortunately, I still have the cleaned raws and needed to revisit it anyway to incorporate tribe novels, so it's annoying but not a total reduplication of effort - just a few tedious days of staring at name after name, which will be less painful now I'm better at automating excel to merge sources, though full automation is still a no go as I need to be able to judge reliability of source when two clash.

EDIT: Scratch that, like a True Smort Guy I found a back up copy under a completely arbitrary file name. I am have kept the Glass Walkers at bay this time (for those new to my nonsense, the project has been beleaguered by not one, but two, hard drive crashes with varying degrees of data loss. One wiped out two whole years of documentation for the Mage line so I've been blaming it on Virtual Adepts ever since.)

Loomer fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jul 19, 2020

Xinder
Apr 27, 2013

i want to be a prince
You are a saint

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Ironslave
Aug 8, 2006

Corpse runner

Joe Slowboat posted:

Except Beast which is sad trash and people who identify with it either need more self-esteem or need to be scrutinized generally.

I regularly spend more Internet Words than I should breaking down how Beast fails to accomplish what it sets out to do and the unpleasant and awful reads staring you in the face as a result, but the idea that anyone who finds some part of it that resonates with them must have problems or be monsters themselves is a hell of a disrespectful hot take.

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