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Just have people recognise that Pierce Deception is a thing and accommodate it. I had an NPC who as their signature always-on spell had a 'Mask Truthiness' spell because they wanted people to evaluate all their statements on their own merits instead of gut feeling. So they would be able to say "The sky is green", "I am nonexistent", "this sentence is false" and "I'm currently speaking a sentence" and it would all read as truth-neutral. This means that for any Pierce-Deception style effects it would be clashing constantly. The actual problem spell is Words of Truth because it allows you to challenge deeply held beliefs in an 'objective' sense. If a Muslim mage (chosen for succinctness of belief statement) casts words of Truth and says "there is no god but god, and Muhammad is his prophet", what happens? They deeply believe it to be true and consider it to be an objectively true statement. Either the spell goes off and confirms the statement, or it doesn't which means a whole belief system gets upended. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Sep 21, 2020 |
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Sep 21, 2020 01:10
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bewilderment posted:The actual problem spell is Words of Truth because it allows you to challenge deeply held beliefs in an 'objective' sense. Words of Truth, Mage Second Edition p168 posted:The spell only works on statements the mage knows to be true: She can’t use it to confirm or reject theories. It's not enough to be 100% certain of something, you actually need to have found sure evidence before the spell will work.
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Sep 21, 2020 01:35
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I Am Just a Box posted:It's not enough to be 100% certain of something, you actually need to have found sure evidence before the spell will work. Yeah, Words of Truth is significantly limited in application, and if you don't make a simple statement it is going to implode pretty brutally. If anything in the statement could be doubted, or if you're wrong about any detail, it falls apart. Heck, if you screw up the semantics of the statement, it won't go off. My players used it primarily to force people to confront things they were denying, and to convince doubting NPCs that no, we really do have evidence we didn't plan of a certain mage in Consilium being a secret soul-devouring murderer. It is also a great way to find out you have been tricked, when you attempt to use Words of Truth and it fails (but you have believe what's being said 100%, or else it could have just failed from lack of conviction).
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Sep 21, 2020 02:27
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I would let the player continue to use Pierce Deception if they wished, but also have NPC's react accordingly. Maybe non-cabal Guardians refuse to meet the players if that particular mage is present. Maybe introduce a cabal who has a mage who focuses on Pierce Deception so much it's been formalized into a roll within that mage's cabal, order, or consillium. Maybe have them pick up on a Mystery by what appears to be coincidence, but is actually a false mystery meant to lure that player into a compromised position. I feel like Mage is full of spells that seem obnoxious if relied on too much, and the best way to deal with those is to abuse the fact that Mage has the largest swath of bullshit to throw at PC's out of the entire CoD line. Just make something up that has some sort of resistance to or mutation of how Pierce Deception works, and let the players dig their own grave. On another note, how do you guys handle crossover material in your games? I personally never want to run a multi-splat game, but I love using any and all antagonists from across CoD to keep an air of weirdness. My current vampire game, just last session, had the players learn that the bioengineers targeting the All Night Society weren't other Kindred, but Reptoid cryptids from Demon who travel around the city in an upper floor of the Underworld that was colonized by The Machine a century ago. Do y'all go for the more political angle where PC's have to deal with the other splats in their wheelings and dealings?
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Sep 21, 2020 12:28
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If I’m running mage, the characters are on decently equal footing for powers, so I let it cross however it ends up crossing. If I’m running other lines, I’ll make it more social-political so that we don’t run into a “my toys don’t work” situation as quickly. I don’t do crossover between PCs because I think it’s more complicated than it’s worth. Granted, if it’s an antagonist from another line, I plan knowing there’s likely to be a fight.
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Sep 21, 2020 16:12
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I regularly used the local vampires as jobbers in my mage game. They just weren’t as established as the Awakened and there was a Bound blood god under the city calling to them so they were vulnerable in an occult sense. By the end of the campaign they were mostly either dust or weird mutants feeding on ichor, and hypothetical future games in the same city might deal with the Covenants trying to figure out what the hell happened here.
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Sep 21, 2020 16:39
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So I think it's fairly certain that the popularity hierarchy of WoD game lines is - Vampire: The Masquerade Werewolf: The Apocalypse Mage: The Ascension. ...And then the rest. At present, Bloodlines 2 is (hopefully) coming and there are several other more low key VtM video games. There's also 2 at my count, maybe a third I'm forgetting, Werewolf games coming. Bloodlines is what made me a World of Darkness fan and I love the VTM setting. But I feel like as time has gone buy I've become more of a Mage fan. Just everything about the main factions and ideas beyond the setting really fascinate me and I've been reading far more Mage as of late than anything else. But I'm just not much of a TTRPG kinda guy.... I'd love to see a video game of Mage and it would undoubtedly help get it even more exposure. Maybe it could even move Mage up at least one rank in that popularity hierarchy. But what are the odds....? Even if it won't happen, any ideas on how it might work?
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Sep 21, 2020 21:36
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NikkolasKing posted:So I think it's fairly certain that the popularity hierarchy of WoD game lines is - I really wonder what Justin Achilli is planning for Mage now that he's the creative lead. I have no idea what he thinks about Mage since he tends to just tweet about Vampire and WoD and Gothic aesthetics in general. He seems like a good dude though, so I'm not too pessimistic.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:43
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Octavo posted:I really wonder what Justin Achilli is planning for Mage now that he's the creative lead. I have no idea what he thinks about Mage since he tends to just tweet about Vampire and WoD and Gothic aesthetics in general. He seems like a good dude though, so I'm not too pessimistic. Yeah I just kinda wander in and out of paying attention to ongoing WoD stuff. Is this big news this guy taking over? There's no books on the way or anything, just a new lead writer? Is he taking over from the guy who did M20and has been around since the 90s?
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Sep 21, 2020 21:49
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Octavo posted:I really wonder what Justin Achilli is planning for Mage now that he's the creative lead. I have no idea what he thinks about Mage since he tends to just tweet about Vampire and WoD and Gothic aesthetics in general. He seems like a good dude though, so I'm not too pessimistic. I thought Justin Achilli was just the lead for Vampire: the Masquerade? Last I remember the development of each World of Darkness line was being separately licensed out of company. Am I wrong and they created a World of Darkness creative lead position in house again after it was eliminated along with Martin Ericsson?
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Sep 21, 2020 21:54
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Checking his Twitter profile it says he's "World of Darkness Brand Creative Lead." So yeah, looks like that job's been reinstated.
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Sep 21, 2020 21:56
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NikkolasKing posted:Yeah I just kinda wander in and out of paying attention to ongoing WoD stuff. Is this big news this guy taking over? There's no books on the way or anything, just a new lead writer? Is he taking over from the guy who did M20and has been around since the 90s? Achilli was the lead for a very well-regarded edition of Vampire which is responsible for re-habbing some of the more problematic clans (mostly) and is probably exactly the kind of person they'd need to get all the Swedracula stink out of the place. His first line developer gig was Werewolf: The Wild West which always amuses me for some reason.
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Sep 22, 2020 01:55
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bewilderment posted:Just have people recognise that Pierce Deception is a thing and accommodate it. EDIT: Also if you're using it on another mage, they now know you're snooping at them because they also know that their spell is Clashing
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Sep 22, 2020 11:14
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Dawgstar posted:Achilli was the lead for a very well-regarded edition of Vampire which is responsible for re-habbing some of the more problematic clans (mostly) and is probably exactly the kind of person they'd need to get all the Swedracula stink out of the place. His first line developer gig was Werewolf: The Wild West which always amuses me for some reason. Thanks for the information but which Clans are problematic? I've never heard anything about this. Is it some of the smaller or more are clans or bloodlines? Also I just found Mage: The Podcast which is really cool. I figured it be nice and helpful info about the books, which it is, but it also discusses the cultural context that went into the books like how they got an academic to write the Celestial Chorus book. Are there any comparable podcasts for other game lines?
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Sep 22, 2020 11:31
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NikkolasKing posted:Thanks for the information but which Clans are problematic? I've never heard anything about this. Is it some of the smaller or more are clans or bloodlines? The Ravnos were the worst on that front. "Gypsie clan that obsessively steals" is not a good look. The (then) Assamites weren't much better basically being "super-black Muslim killers".
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Sep 22, 2020 11:42
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CottonWolf posted:The Ravnos were the worst on that front. "Gypsie clan that obsessively steals" is not a good look. The (then) Assamites weren't much better basically being "super-black Muslim killers". The Malkavians aren't a great representation of mental illness, either. Especially with how so many folks treat it as twee fishmalk lolrandom.
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Sep 22, 2020 12:47
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I've argued for redoing the Malks as "prophets whose visions are inconsistently reliable and who it's difficult to persuade that other things might be more important than their visions" but Olivia Hill said that that's pretty much what she tried to do with the most recent version of Dark Ages and people hated it, so *shrug*.
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Sep 22, 2020 16:21
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Malkavians only really work if they come off as weird or loopy because they've seen too much and have a hard time getting it across to other people, not if each one is a random page of the DSM-IV.
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Sep 22, 2020 16:54
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Pope Guilty posted:I've argued for redoing the Malks as "prophets whose visions are inconsistently reliable and who it's difficult to persuade that other things might be more important than their visions" but Olivia Hill said that that's pretty much what she tried to do with the most recent version of Dark Ages and people hated it, so *shrug*. The DAV20 version wasn't very well written. It's very standard Malkavian "they're mad but also secret knowledge and seeing hidden patterns???", and it's an angle that we're told but not one necessarily informed by the rest of the text or the rules, and moreover, difficult to play. It basically tries to identify the entire clan with a troublesome, badly written 3-dot Discipline. This is limiting to character concepts (you need to have a specific character build to fit within the narrative space given to Malkavians; for all its flaws, the Clan Flaw is at least guaranteed) and can introduce difficulties in play because "get secret knowledge from apparently nowhere" is not a power that DAV20 has good structures to support. Without actually doing anything about the whole "oh and your Clan Flaw is that you have a Derangement that will define you and make you unstable so nobody likes you" thing. It just wasn't wasn't a very competently written fix to the problem.
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Sep 22, 2020 21:37
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CottonWolf posted:The Ravnos were the worst on that front. "Gypsie clan that obsessively steals" is not a good look. The (then) Assamites weren't much better basically being "super-black Muslim killers". There was something hilarious in the first Assamite book where it told you that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was bad representation (which, obviously) and then lean hard into 'also they're jihadist Muslim hitmen.' Revised - which was playing off stuff brought up in Dark Ages, fair's fair - brought up the rather breathtaking notion that it was only a minority of the Warrior caste who incorporated Muslim beliefs and an Assamite could be any religion or none at all. The Setites came out really well too, basing the clan around the worship of Set and laying the groundwork for the Ministry in 5E even if I don't think that was handled super good. The Giovanni... eh... at least they owned being terrible stereotypes from across the world? I dunno, it wasn't batting a thousand. Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 22:46
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I feel like Italian mobster stereotypes were extremely prominent IRL around the time the Giovanni were conceptualized. Making them vampire necromancers was a cool twist! The incest was not. Thanks, Godfather Part 3.
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Sep 22, 2020 23:39
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Pope Guilty posted:I've argued for redoing the Malks as "prophets whose visions are inconsistently reliable and who it's difficult to persuade that other things might be more important than their visions" but Olivia Hill said that that's pretty much what she tried to do with the most recent version of Dark Ages and people hated it, so *shrug*. Somewhere on the spectrum between Luna Lovegood and Maggie the Frog?
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Sep 23, 2020 02:03
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"Tortured weirdos with esoteric knowledge" isn't an inherently bad concept, but it's catnip to someone who wants to invoke the DSM while stealing the spotlight to talk to a stapler. One good Malkavian story: I like to do a pre- campaign "wish list" for players, where they each write down five or six themes or ideas or things they'd like to encounter. I had a player with a Dark Ages Malkavian character named Edvard. Edvard was a bard, wildly impractical, marginally skilled, but who loved entertaining (primarily by inflicting a good time on everyone.) He had a limited memory - it wiped every torpor, but he kept the same basic characteristics and was fixated on learning his past. My player wrote that he wanted to see what Edvard was up to in the modern day. Flash forwards to my 90s Werewolf campaign, where the party is in Hollywood trying to wrangle information about an upcoming Sabat / Seventh Generation collaborative terrorism. And in a lonely back studio lot, they met vampire Ed Wood. Which sounds enough like Edvard and the personality lined up perfectly and I think it was the thing I'm most proud of in that series. I guess the moral is to ask players what they want to see because it makes writing your games easier and more rewarding.
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Sep 23, 2020 02:27
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moths posted:"Tortured weirdos with esoteric knowledge" isn't an inherently bad concept, but it's catnip to someone who wants to invoke the DSM while stealing the spotlight to talk to a stapler. Malk Ed Wood sounds so delightful and hilarious. If he wasn't working on his magnum opus film, "Dr. Acula" I will be very sad.
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Sep 23, 2020 15:33
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So when and how did Old Clan Tzimisce split off from regular Tzimisce? When Goratrix and the others ate the two Tzimisce, were they still just one clan? I'm reading the House of Tremere book - which is clearly a bunch of fake news and anti-Tremere propaganda! - and it made me curious.
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Sep 24, 2020 10:26
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NikkolasKing posted:So when and how did Old Clan Tzimisce split off from regular Tzimisce? When Goratrix and the others ate the two Tzimisce, were they still just one clan? I think the split happens during the Anarch Revolt. Old Clan wasn't interested in the Sabbat or creepy flesh poo poo and that was that.
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Sep 24, 2020 11:35
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TheKingslayer posted:I think the split happens during the Anarch Revolt. Old Clan wasn't interested in the Sabbat or creepy flesh poo poo and that was that. Yeah. They're so old they didn't really care about this new-fangled 'sect' thing (or really, clans) and were far too focused on keeping their own domains to ever consider teaming up with anybody else - although some did, forming Oradea League to keep the Sabbat out - and they've never trusted Vicissitude, although a lot of them use koldunic sorcery.
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Sep 24, 2020 16:46
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm reading the House of Tremere book - which is clearly a bunch of fake news and anti-Tremere propaganda! - and it made me curious. Absolutely true but denied by a power-hungry demagogue? 
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Sep 24, 2020 19:15
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LatwPIAT posted:Absolutely true but denied by a power-hungry demagogue? Well the events might be as recounted but it's like one of those TV episodes where you get different perspectives of the same events. In one telling you see Goratrix sawing off his johnson out of a lust for power and in the other you see Goratrix nobly sacrificing his manhood for the good of the House. But yeah, I'm just joking around because everything is told from the perspective of some dead guy. Not sure how reliable vengeful spirits are. Also I have been operating under the assumption the Tremere's immortality was fading because Consensus was changing? This was the first sign of the magic going away. But I haven't actually read this anywhere so maybe I'm wrong. I dunno what else could be causing it, though.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:27
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joylessdivision posted:Malk Ed Wood sounds so delightful and hilarious. If he wasn't working on his magnum opus film, "Dr. Acula" I will be very sad. Sadly, his film days are behind him and it's all infomercials and AM radio ads now. Man that was a good campaign. I hate COVID.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:50
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One of the stock explanations for the whole scheme is "Tremere foresees the end of the mythic age and the waning of magical life-extension methods, settles on a radical plan, which doesn't go as expected." But honestly if your heart's desire is to live forever at the top of a pyramid of minions, elder vampire is a natural career choice. It doesn't have to be a mistake or elaborate scheme.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:54
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moths posted:Sadly, his film days are behind him and it's all infomercials and AM radio ads now. Some how that's even more delightful.
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Sep 24, 2020 22:26
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Requiem questions! Does the clan bane count for the penalties to detachment rolls? And does it count towards your three-bane maximum? I'm inclined to think "no" on both, but is there an official answer?
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Sep 25, 2020 12:03
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That Old Tree posted:Requiem questions! No on both. To the first I infer it from the following bit of errata: quote:Does the extra bane given by the Mekhet clan bane give a penalty to detachment rolls? To the second I think it can be safely inferred from this bit on page 103: quote:When the Mekhet reaches Humanity 6, choose a bane (see p. 108 for banes). This bane counts toward the three banes a vampire is allowed, so a Mekhet is less able to mitigate detachment. So it does count for the Mekhet, whose clan bane is mostly that they receive a detachment-bane, but they're an exception. Besides, if the three-bane maximum counted everything referred to as a bane rather than specifically the detachment banes in the section it comes from, the banes of fire and sunlight would really mess with that.
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Sep 25, 2020 20:48
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Demon session zero went well. We've got: - A suicide-destroyer angel that loves to kill but hates ending lives without a greater purpose. - A guardian who despised the humble goodness of the reverend he was protecting so much he snapped. - A messenger who really thinks the french revolution didn't go far enough. - And a psychopomp who was really frustrated that the God Machine doesn't really get art, you know? The psychopomp has been kidnapped by a cryptid, the destroyer is being targeted by another integrator that the psychopomp betrayed, the messenger accidentally arranged a job interview with an angel, and the guardian's congregation is being kidnapped. My players are super hyped for next session, incredibly enthused about the embeds and exploits, and I couldn't be happier.
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Sep 25, 2020 21:02
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tokenbrownguy posted:Demon session zero went well. We've got: love these character concepts
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Sep 25, 2020 21:21
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As usual for a WoD/CoD book I'm not interested in enough to buy, I'm nevertheless the first in my friendgroup to skip around in the copy someone else got and, uh…is there more crossover guidance in the Contagion Chronicle other than the section named as such? Because this seems, like, not technically bad, but definitely strenuously unhelpful. It's such a high-level, abstracted and detached view of narrative cohesion and (the total lack of) mechanical balance that it barely even actually signposts what you might need to look out for. And then there's this teamwork-boosting subsystem tacked on at the end? I'm sad this book doesn't seem to be very good, even if right from the Kickstarter it lost me. On a positive note, The Blood is pretty drat good. I really appreciate how much practical consideration it gives to all the weird idiosyncrasies of being a White Wolf-style vampire. I also got Requiem for Rome which I've heard good things about. I haven't started reading it yet, but it's a very nice-looking physical product. tokenbrownguy posted:Demon session zero went well. We've got: Fukken awesome. I Am Just a Box posted:No on both. To the first I infer it from the following bit of errata: Thanks
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Sep 26, 2020 04:40
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Contagion Chronicle is kind of aggressively terrible, yes.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:46
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Has any of the recently released nWoD stuff been good? I stopped following any of it after Beast.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:59
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It's basically only useful if you want to play a crossover game involving the God-Machine. Every scenario in the book is just the God-Machine has broken/stopped working in some way and now poo poo is happening. Go fix it. So if that is not what you are looking for it's basically worthless.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:59
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