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I Am Just a Box posted:My "favorite" layout decision is that the Antagonists chapter opens with a section on Amkhata, which are a new type of ephemeral entity. Then it introduces the actual rules for ephemeral entities, presenting ghosts and shades. Then, in the middle of the chapter on Storytelling, there's a sidebar introducing the rules for fiends, which are a fourth type of ephemeral entity. I'll be honest this sounds in desperate need of a F&F but I don't have the strength of will to read Mummy 2e. My mind is not prepared for nonlinear temporality in TTRPG rules writing.
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Apr 14, 2021 18:43
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Joe Slowboat posted:I'll be honest this sounds in desperate need of a F&F but I don't have the strength of will to read Mummy 2e. My mind is not prepared for nonlinear temporality in TTRPG rules writing. I'm like a zillion pages behind on F&F so maybe it got reviewed already.
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Apr 14, 2021 21:58
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm like a zillion pages behind on F&F so maybe it got reviewed already. According to the archive, Daeren tried and quit 4 years ago, nothing since.
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Apr 14, 2021 22:05
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Kavak posted:According to the archive, Daeren tried and quit 4 years ago, nothing since. This is our curse we must RETURN THE SLAB
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Apr 15, 2021 00:42
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Loren posted:I did this write up as an introduction to the Chronicle I'm preparing to run with 4-5 players starting at the end of the month. If anyone cares to read it and give me some feedback I would sincerely appreciate it. It's good but from a player perspective it might work better to only send the very last paragraph. The deep-lore historical setting stuff isn't terribly relevant to a new character and also that lore could be really interesting if it was learned in-game! Especially if learning the setting lore is also giving the players context to understand/act on a current plot point better than they would otherwise. Unless the characters were all vamped by 1975 just drop the history from the intro, it's not relevant, do the intro as thematic/narrative/cool like your last paragraph is, highlight themes you think would be good but let them learn the secret histories in-character.
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Apr 15, 2021 22:27
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Vitamin P posted:It's good but from a player perspective it might work better to only send the very last paragraph. The deep-lore historical setting stuff isn't terribly relevant to a new character and also that lore could be really interesting if it was learned in-game! Especially if learning the setting lore is also giving the players context to understand/act on a current plot point better than they would otherwise. That's a great point! I wrote this mainly as a 'proof of concept' for the game. I can write up a separate one for the players themselves so that they uncover the sordid history of the Prince of Cleveland's domain. The idea of a down on his luck schlub of a Ventrue Prince who has called in every boon he was owed, pawned away all his items of significance, and has a very tenuous grasp on the region is really amusing to me. It also kind of fits with our regional sensibility in Northeast Ohio. The players are expecting Prince Lacroix but instead they are gonna get Paul Giamatti. It's a great excuse for a bunch of neonates to be sent out to deal with a bunch of bullshit and get in way over their heads. Their sires will be in hiding and spending their time learning how to use computers but maybe occasionally popping in to save the night, tell the kids good job, or disapprove of the way that they are conducting themselves. Something I'm struggling to decide on is how I'm going to portray+handle the werewolves. My understanding is that combat between werewolves and vampires favors Werewolves so heavily that it shouldn't even be on the table(especially for neonates). In that case, is it possible for a coterie of vampires to negotiate with a pack of werewolves? I have an idea for a story involving the Teamster's union and truckers+semi trucks being attacked by werewolves at night but I don't know how the players could reasonably solve that problem. My current answer is that it IS impossible for them to deal with and the best option is to get the truckers to change their route, distract the woofs by burning a forest down somewhere else, or simply giving up on the problem as a waste of time.
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Apr 17, 2021 06:09
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yeah since you stuck with WoD over CoD, vamps stink of the wyrm and are more or less kill on sight, except for some of the glasswalkers. Doesn't mean you can't fudge things around though.
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Apr 17, 2021 15:58
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Loren posted:That's a great point! I wrote this mainly as a 'proof of concept' for the game. I can write up a separate one for the players themselves so that they uncover the sordid history of the Prince of Cleveland's domain. You're the storyteller, the werewolves don't have to go murder crazy on the Coterie. Maybe one of their sires did a solid for the pack back in the day leading to some tenuous peace. Or maybe the wolves have more important poo poo their worrying about then a group of neonates asking them to kindly stop loving with truckers. Setting a fire to distract them sounds like a great way to send a pack of pissed off death machines storming into the city to rip poo poo up. Which would be hilarious and definitely make for an interesting game considering the rest of the drama swirling around. I'd say you don't need the wolves to be "Murder every vamp on sight" if you want them to be part of the story early on. Also remember the players will probably come up with some bonkers plan that you couldn't have prepared. I'd suggest maybe have an NPC warn the group that wolves are you know, loving dangerous, but since the game is taking place in current day, you can absolutely mess around with what the wolves in the area are doing and why. If you're using 5th ed Masquerade meta with the Inquisition and such, take into consideration that the Inquisition is *probably* aware of the wolves or maybe they aren't. Hell, a common enemy might be enough to squeak out a truce between the tribe and the Coterie.
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Apr 18, 2021 16:01
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joylessdivision posted:You're the storyteller, the werewolves don't have to go murder crazy on the Coterie. Maybe one of their sires did a solid for the pack back in the day leading to some tenuous peace. These are great ideas. Thanks! I love the idea about working with the garou against the second inquisition. A major theme in what I've got so far is, "we're a lovely podunk domain suffering from rust belt decay even during normal times, but right now everyone is hurting so we have to work with entities we normally wouldn't tolerate or try to approach. Northeast Ohio is the kind of place where a small rogue Sabbat pack living out their Lost Boys fantasies in a semi rural town is pretty plausible. Getting tipped off to this by one of the more conservative Sabbat factions and then acting as a cleanup crew in exchange for some other group of Sabbat relocating their hosed-upittude into another Prince's domain is something that I could present my players with. I also appreciate the person who reminded me that my players will likely come up with some batshit plan of their own so preparing for likely outcomes might be a waste of time.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:58
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Soonmot posted:yeah since you stuck with WoD over CoD, vamps stink of the wyrm and are more or less kill on sight, except for some of the glasswalkers. Doesn't mean you can't fudge things around though. Most bone gnawers also don't give a poo poo up until you 1) gently caress with their kinfolk, 2) gently caress with the disenfranchised, or 3) get within spitting distance of a caern.
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Apr 19, 2021 16:42
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Loren posted:These are great ideas. Thanks! I love the idea about working with the garou against the second inquisition. A major theme in what I've got so far is, "we're a lovely podunk domain suffering from rust belt decay even during normal times, but right now everyone is hurting so we have to work with entities we normally wouldn't tolerate or try to approach. Glad to offer some ideas! Your game actually sounds like it has a pretty interesting backdrop for basically any and all crazy poo poo you may want to throw into it. My rule when running a game is figuring out which bits of metaplot to acknowledge or ignore and then build from there. Especially running WoD it's baked in that there's a whole bunch of creepy poo poo lurking in the dark, who says every splat has to be 1:1 to how they appear in their own games? Basically the Golden Rule of keep the poo poo that works, chuck what doesn't, and mix and match as needed to make the best story possible.
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Apr 20, 2021 01:18
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hey wodchat. im going to be running a geist 2e game for some friends. ive never run geist or any nwod/cod game before. and on top of that im a relatively inexperienced gm. any pointers for a newbie for the core system or geist?
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Apr 21, 2021 21:16
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Misandry Cannon posted:hey wodchat. im going to be running a geist 2e game for some friends. ive never run geist or any nwod/cod game before. and on top of that im a relatively inexperienced gm. Make reference cards for all the Geist-specific conditions and a handout version of that one flowchart that outlines the progression between them. It's stupid complex because somebody in the dev process decided to staple all the ghost stuff to conditions even though it doesn't fit the point of what conditions are for at all.
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Apr 21, 2021 21:35
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Roadie posted:Make reference cards for all the Geist-specific conditions and a handout version of that one flowchart that outlines the progression between them. It's stupid complex because somebody in the dev process decided to staple all the ghost stuff to conditions even though it doesn't fit the point of what conditions are for at all. This is the most important thing!
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Apr 21, 2021 22:28
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Don't forget that all of your powers are also conditions.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:29
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Misandry Cannon posted:hey wodchat. im going to be running a geist 2e game for some friends. ive never run geist or any nwod/cod game before. and on top of that im a relatively inexperienced gm. Never done geist but have done a ton of COD - Combat is more lethal than you expect Keep an open mind about your plot - your players are very liable to go off the rails and it's best to try to roll with what they think is going on than to deflate them The experience system is contentious as hell, I think nearly everybody here uses some sort of homemade fix for it because by default it's incredibly slow to progress. Think about it and talk about it with your players Figure out early on what level of horror your table is comfortable with. The system can get incredibly dark if one of your players is willing to push it in that direction, which can very easily make everyone else at the table uncomfortable. Put some thought into which other supernaturals are 'canon' to the campaign. I don't know Geist for poo poo but Promethean explicitly expects at least one other supernatural to exist, and having "all of them" is really too much to keep track of. Don't make people roll if there's no interesting consequence to failure. It utterly sucks the joy out of a game to get stonewalled by failed investigations, or have rolls that have the same result from success or failure.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:32
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Tulip posted:
This is another good one, Geist doesn't really require the other splats to be prevalent and stuff like Demons, Changelings, or Prometheans can be a big distraction that doesn't really tie into what the game is about. Of the big three, Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages, vamps make the most sense to have around. The political intrigues that make the living world a corrupt mess that mirrors the underworld. Immortal puppet masters who will murder with ease can spawn plenty of ghosts. Werewolves don't really cross over, but they kind of mirror geists only with spirits instead of ghosts and may be fun to mix it up. Mages are a headache if you're going to run them as a full splat, but if you streamline them into weirdos who see and know things and can make strange things happen, they work pretty well.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:51
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I'm reading Mariame Kaba's We Do This Til We Free Us and tripped right over a familiar Beast: the Primordial sample PC:
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Apr 21, 2021 23:03
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In defense of Prometheans, "growth" and "death" are basically its two largest themes. In not-defense Prometheans are very good at sticking to their own stuff and once the Promethean antagonists start coming into play, they rapidly spiral because Alchemists and Pandorans just introduce so much bullshit. Changelings are very compelling at a base level so if the campaign specifically touches on their themes that's cool. Demons, probably a low pick. Mage as a rulebook is at least as much a headache as any other 3 combined so yeah unless you want to use them in a role that's probably more like Alchemists or just "eccentric powerful mortals," they'd be only slightly ahead of Mummy and Beast. (Kinda tangential but my running belief is that Mages as PCs can interact meaningfully with basically every other splat, but it's not very reciprocal and they don't add a lot as NPCs)
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Apr 21, 2021 23:08
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Tulip posted:(Kinda tangential but my running belief is that Mages as PCs can interact meaningfully with basically every other splat, but it's not very reciprocal and they don't add a lot as NPCs) This is the correct decision. Mages love sticking their noses where they don't belong*, but that's most useful as an antagonist or when you're playing mage instead. If I were playing Geist though I'd want to interact with the underworld and ghosts and dead things. Vampires maybe, but there'd need to be a good reason for the distraction. *Relative to if you're a mage or not.
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Apr 21, 2021 23:12
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Soonmot posted:This is another good one, Geist doesn't really require the other splats to be prevalent and stuff like Demons, Changelings, or Prometheans can be a big distraction that doesn't really tie into what the game is about. Of the big three, Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages, vamps make the most sense to have around. The political intrigues that make the living world a corrupt mess that mirrors the underworld. Immortal puppet masters who will murder with ease can spawn plenty of ghosts. Werewolves don't really cross over, but they kind of mirror geists only with spirits instead of ghosts and may be fun to mix it up. Mages are a headache if you're going to run them as a full splat, but if you streamline them into weirdos who see and know things and can make strange things happen, they work pretty well. It would be kind of fun to swat down a mage who is trying something like, "But Moooooom, I'm trying to build a ghost army!"
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Apr 21, 2021 23:23
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Roadie posted:Make reference cards for all the Geist-specific conditions and a handout version of that one flowchart that outlines the progression between them. It's stupid complex because somebody in the dev process decided to staple all the ghost stuff to conditions even though it doesn't fit the point of what conditions are for at all. oh that sounds like it could get messy very quickly without knowing that. Tulip posted:Never done geist but have done a ton of COD - the integration of other supernaturals is something i was considering at least for flavor, but i dont know what the "power rankings" are to speak of so i dont know if any would generate much of a threat. in 1e i know that sin eaters were very broken so id need to get a better consensus on that in case the players actually get into an adversarial encounter with them.
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Apr 21, 2021 23:45
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In COD the power curve across supernaturals is relatively flat. Which isn't saying a ton, pretty much any of them can drop you straight from full to incapacitated with just mild combat capability if they get the drop on you. Go with your gut on whichever ones you think would add something to the campaign, just with the awareness that you're not really committed until one becomes an NPC that players think about, but once that happens they're going to get integrated into most player's notions of the campaign pretty fast.
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Apr 22, 2021 00:25
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Misandry Cannon posted:the integration of other supernaturals is something i was considering at least for flavor, but i dont know what the "power rankings" are to speak of so i dont know if any would generate much of a threat. in 1e i know that sin eaters were very broken so id need to get a better consensus on that in case the players actually get into an adversarial encounter with them. You should at minimum double check the "things everyone can do" from the OP for a listing of the baseline powers of every supernatural if you're mulling over which other ones to include. Even if you don't use a supernatural, it's somewhat helpful to have a baseline of comparison for what other supernaturals can theoretically do by default just to get a little sense of the style of the world. And since you're playing Geist as a newcomer with newcomers having a list of baseline universal powers is just handy in terms of reference material. Often if players are at an impasse over what to do in your game having a list of stuff they can definitely just do on hand can help provide inspiration for them. Also, remember that you can shuffle things around if need be in your campaign when it comes to other supernaturals. If you want to say that Vampires in your game are allergic to silver or can be distracted with apple seeds then go right ahead. That's not in their book, but who cares? You're not playing Vampire, you're playing Geist.
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Apr 22, 2021 02:28
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Yeah even if you include other supernaturals in your campaign, you'd want to use simplified rules for them instead of digging up the ludicrously complex rules for another class of PCs and trying to juggle those along with everything else you're doing as a GM.
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Apr 22, 2021 09:29
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Kavak posted:Mage the Ascension Victorian Sourcebook up on Indiegogo Literally thinking the title of this thread. Where is all the mage chat? Where all those posters purged? I haven't been in this thread in a year or two, but it used to be wall to wall mage chat, and this news barely got a peep out of people. Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 07:19
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Is anyone here particular enthused for Victorian Mage? Wasn't there also going to be a Mage the Ascension: Extremely Rich Wizards sourcebook? I can't imagine too many people are excited for that, either. So maybe it's just not the corner of Mage that gets chat.
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Apr 26, 2021 07:23
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Joe Slowboat posted:Is anyone here particular enthused for Victorian Mage? Maybe it's just the places I post at, but people seem more into it than regular Mage? Frankly, the Victorian era is a better setting for Mage and Vampire. Yeah, haven't seen much interest in the latter.
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Apr 26, 2021 07:32
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Joe Slowboat posted:Is anyone here particular enthused for Victorian Mage? As for the very rich wizards, do you mean the Syndicate? (I recently read their Revised book and when I realized that, first, they were actually supposed to be True Believers in this poo poo, and second, apparently they can literally create physical matter out of bitcoins or some poo poo, they became far weirder than just "Capitalism! The Technocracy club.")
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Apr 26, 2021 10:02
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Nessus posted:I don't care about Victorian Mage, but I think it makes sense as to why it would be appealing, even leaving aside the Zeroth Law of "ooh! cool clothes!" -- you have the appeal of steampunk poo poo to that crew, and you have "it's basically modern, in that you can do many of the things you could think of doing in the modern day (or invent the Intercontinential Cellulose Telephone as an act of Magick), but it's also slow enough to add tension, and you could in principle avert the various horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries." Original gothic horror, steampunk, political, labor and industrial revolutions, utopian movements, imperialism, war, genocide, foundational civil rights movements...there is just so much you can get involved with during the long 19th century. Try to stop it. Trying to take advantage of it. Just trying to survive it. Also, a lot more opportunity for different reality zones and public use of magic Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 10:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:Is anyone here particular enthused for Victorian Mage? I would play a game where some mages are trying to overthrow the East India Trading Company. From the looks of the kickstarter ad, the writers are at least aware of the tremendous atrocities of the era, so I'm hoping that play will be focused on the horrors that were unleashed by man's inhumanity to man and how to stop them, and not "haha look I'm rich and exploit workers" Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Apr 26, 2021 |
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Apr 26, 2021 13:11
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Strange Cares posted:I would play a game where some mages are trying to overthrow the East India Trading Company. Well, unfortunately the Order of Reason/Techocracy remain a playable faction.
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Apr 26, 2021 14:04
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Charlz Guybon posted:Well, unfortunately the Order of Reason/Techocracy remain a playable faction. Here's how it's handled: quote:Are We The Baddies? I do wonder whether this sidebar will make it to the final print version.
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Apr 26, 2021 20:35
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I meant this one: quote:Rich Bastard’s Guide to Magick: A Mage 20th Anniversary Edition sourcebook that expands on the mystique of the elite with an exploration of how the REAL movers and shakers operate when you throw magick into their world as well. Mansions, high-ticket toys, expanded Backgrounds for wealthy wizards, Technocrats, and other high-resource types. 120 pages. PDF/PoD.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:06
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pospysyl posted:I do wonder whether this sidebar will make it to the final print version. Hopefully it does. Lore-wise, why does the Order of Reason go from "Let's protect mankind as a whole from wizards, who have no sense of right and wrong" to "Haha Irish peasant stomach goes grrrrr"?
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Apr 26, 2021 21:08
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Kavak posted:Hopefully it does. Lore-wise, why does the Order of Reason go from "Let's protect mankind as a whole from wizards, who have no sense of right and wrong" to "Haha Irish peasant stomach goes grrrrr"? Because they invented 'ideological conformity and paradigmatic standardization' as the tool to control wizards, and also they are The Enlightenment, with all the rationalizing philosophy and straightforward imperialism that the European Enlightenment philosophers themselves engaged in as part of the critique that is the dialectic of Enlightenment. And, like the historical Enlightenment, the high goals have become a shibboleth invoked by people who absolutely disdain to apply the self-critique and desire for change that characterized the Enlightenment. There doesn't have to be a secret lore reason, it's the same historical reason people writing about "We believe that all men are created equal" also owned slaves.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:16
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Once you convince yourself that you personally know what's best for humanity it's really easy to give yourself a pass on basically anything.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:20
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The Order of Reason was originally the coming-together of a bunch of diverse magic-users with very different abilities and political views, from the working-class, extremely leftist Craftmasons to the neutral Celestial Explorers to the extremely rich High Guild and the religious Cabal of Pure Thought. Eventually the High Guild and the Cabal of Pure thought, who were a bunch of real bastards, got into position to shank the Craftmasons, and did. Anyway, just got the backer PDF of Technocracy Reloaded, which sadly took the cowardly route and does not call out the modern Technocracy as the villain, unless they seriously changed things.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:23
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Blockhouse posted:Once you convince yourself that you personally know what's best for humanity it's really easy to give yourself a pass on basically anything. That makes sense. The Banishers are right, aren't they?
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Apr 26, 2021 21:24
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It's not about "thinking you know best" or whatever, it's about the material basis of your power. The Order of Reason could only prosper insofar as capital did, and capital has certain appetites.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:44
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