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Rubix Squid
Apr 17, 2014

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

I've been running a D&D game for a group of young adults (18-25ish) with depression/anxiety/whatever, set up by their group therapist to help them socialize. A few of them dropped out, and now we're down to three, and they've asked me to run Vampire. I'm going to do Requiem 2e. I'm pretty familiar with it but I haven't really run it before. What are some good resources for setting up a chronicle? Are there any published adventures that are good for new players and also, well, good?

Also, I'm planning to start them as mortals and have them embraced in the first session. I'm having a little trouble thinking of reasons three people would be turned at once, probably by three different clans. I'm thinking someone looking to turn them loose to make trouble and misdirect attention away from something else. Does the thread have any other ideas?

Kurieg's idea is pretty good but you also need to consider the politics of the city they're in. Most princes aren't going to take kindly to that sort of thing and the stereotype is that they'll be more than happy to take it out on the newly embraced. So you're going to need a reason as to why they're going to tolerate such a blatant violation of the traditions and what not. This is a good place to insert vampire politics if you're looking to play up that angle, so if they all have a covenant they're leaning towards that's a good place to have them step up to bat for them.

Though its for 1E, Damnation City is a pretty good book when it comes to figuring out how vampires lord over a place.

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Clever Moniker
Oct 29, 2007




joylessdivision posted:

That's some serious :black101:

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

I've been running a D&D game for a group of young adults (18-25ish) with depression/anxiety/whatever, set up by their group therapist to help them socialize. A few of them dropped out, and now we're down to three, and they've asked me to run Vampire. I'm going to do Requiem 2e. I'm pretty familiar with it but I haven't really run it before. What are some good resources for setting up a chronicle? Are there any published adventures that are good for new players and also, well, good?

Also, I'm planning to start them as mortals and have them embraced in the first session. I'm having a little trouble thinking of reasons three people would be turned at once, probably by three different clans. I'm thinking someone looking to turn them loose to make trouble and misdirect attention away from something else. Does the thread have any other ideas?

Basically, when a vampire really fucks up and goes pretty much insane it becomes a draugr, which is a vampire but with absolutely no morals or goals beyond self-preservation. Draugr kind of half-Embrace the living as puppets and slaves, but another Kindred can take one of these weird half-Embraced people and turn them into a real Kindred. Draugr are also a giant threat to other vampires and the Masquerade in general, so the city's Kindred would want to destroy said Draugr immediately. Kindred go after the draugr, find your PCs as half-Embraced, Embrace them just to make dealing with the Draugr easier (giving them different clans and sires), and the PCs are suddenly neonates left in the lurch with a ton of fear and shame attached to them but no one really wants to poke the spooky hosed up Draugr anthill, so they'll leave them alone to make their own trouble.

This is in one of the Night Terrors books, and I think it's in the 2e Requiem core as well.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

joylessdivision posted:

It's the Paris Opera house.

He's a Nosferatu. Named Erik.

Under the Paris Opera

:3: he's the actual Phantom of the Opera with a line about the local Toredor community admitting he does have a lovely singing voice :allears:

There seems to be a running gag that Nosferatu are better artists and performers than the clan whose whole deal is art and performance.

AmiYumi
Oct 10, 2005

I FORGOT TO HAIL KING TORG

Kavak posted:

Same.

Sounds "interesting", can I have a link?
Awful App ate my post and now I’m grumpy AF.

Click this one for the relevant vid: https://youtu.be/nKic0LVGfC4

If you’re interested in more, I recommend their episode on the art of D&D’s Oriental Adventures 3E: https://youtu.be/Ksf1-tz5iNI

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


joylessdivision posted:

It's the Paris Opera house.

He's a Nosferatu. Named Erik.

Under the Paris Opera

:3: he's the actual Phantom of the Opera with a line about the local Toredor community admitting he does have a lovely singing voice :allears:

I love little nods like this. My favourite one though is in the Chronicles of the Black Spiral, which makes reference to a 15th century Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh being a black spiral kinfolk, with his descendents popping up through history..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZKItYdgrcA

Loomer
Dec 19, 2007

A Very Special Hell
I really am stunned there was never a one-off setting book for the Black Death. Like... Not only do you have the vampire courts being devastated by both the plague and the inquisition, you have the fae at war with another as they scramble desperately to escape a spiritual death wave, Ratkin actively working to spread the disease and coming into violent conflict with Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers, the Hierarchy struggling not to collapse under the sudden influx, waging war on the Shining Ones, and the Second Great Maelstrom igniting, the War of the Dust Witch and Screaming Ghost Purge, the first years of the full-bore Ascension War, the slaughter of the Anda, all in the span of two decades. That's an incredibly dense range of ways to run games.

Loomer fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jul 11, 2021

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
I'm guessing that draugr came about because they really liked the "Snowman " variant on the Beast from the Requiem Chronicler's Guide?

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

There seems to be a running gag that Nosferatu are better artists and performers than the clan whose whole deal is art and performance.
I always thought that the Toreador are consumers of the arts rather than creators, being the "wealthy patron" type more than the artist themselves.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Loomer posted:

I really am stunned there was never a one-off setting book for the Black Death. Like... Not only do you have the vampire courts being devastated by both the plague and the inquisition, you have the fae at war with another as they scramble desperately to escape a spiritual death wave, Ratkin actively working to spread the disease and coming into violent conflict with Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers, the Hierarchy struggling not to collapse under the sudden influx, waging war on the Shining Ones, and the Second Great Maelstrom igniting, the War of the Dust Witch and Screaming Ghost Purge, the first years of the full-bore Ascension War, the slaughter of the Anda, all in the span of two decades. That's an incredibly dense range of ways to run games.

100% agree. The 1e WoD book does mention the black death briefly in the section on the UK and how it turns out, it hosed up Vampires too because whoops, maybe don't feed on plague victims you dumb assholes.

I assume they never did a book because that might require a lot of research and effort when just tossing a few lines in various books about it was probably easier.

Yawgmoth posted:

I always thought that the Toreador are consumers of the arts rather than creators, being the "wealthy patron" type more than the artist themselves.

From what I've gathered from the above mentioned 1e book and I think Coteries of NY, Toredor tend to embrace artists and while they can create art, it lacks true creativity because that comes from the soul. So a Toredor could paint a technically perfect painting but it would lack any real creativity.

Benoit from Coteries and Shadows of NY complains about this a bunch in Shadows if you ask him about his sire, the redhead Toredor from Coteries.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:

It’s very rote but my favorite oWoD lore is still that Dracula is real, he’s a rogue tzimisce who forcibly got himself embraced for kicks, and the novel Dracula was part of his ongoing centuries-long campaign to troll the the greater vampire community for, as far as anyone can tell, no reason whatsoever

Requiem wins here. He's no Count loving Dracula. :colbert:

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer

Halloween Jack posted:

I'm guessing that draugr came about because they really liked the "Snowman " variant on the Beast from the Requiem Chronicler's Guide?

I haven't heard of this? What is it?

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


Soonmot posted:

I haven't heard of this? What is it?

In 1st edition, reaching low Humanity meant you were a more animalistic, "insane" killer, to the point that Humanity 0 was (mildly paraphrased) "a mindless killing machine, like a shark, with only enough self-preservation instinct to avoid the sun or flee from overwhelming threats." The Chronicler's Guide contained variant rules for many things, one of which was fleshing out what the Beast is as not just a mindless killer, but a cold, at least semi-rational villain. The in-universe slang term for this was being a "snowman," because *of Darkness game. In either case, you're a 100% NPC total monster that even in the "snowman" version can't convincingly engage in social interactions for very long, if at all.

2nd edition strikes a balance where reaching Humanity 0 can result in anything from a ritualistic serial killer stereotype to an uncaring, semi-feral beast, depending on the character in question. A genius Mekhet schemer who reaches Humanity 0 doesn't necessarily enter permanent beast-mode if they become a draugr. It's a little at odds with the way the preceding low-Humanity entries are written, which still focus on becoming more and more of just a straight-up animal monster. In 2nd edition they also throw in a sentence to hint at the unlikely prospect of redemption.

That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 11, 2021

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Loomer posted:

'GURPS is a tool of the weaver'.

Pardon?

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

That Old Tree posted:

In 1st edition, reaching low Humanity meant you were a more animalistic, "insane" killer, to the point that Humanity 0 was (mildly paraphrased) "a mindless killing machine, like a shark, with only enough self-preservation instinct to avoid the sun or flee from overwhelming threats." The Chronicler's Guide contained variant rules for many things, one of which was fleshing out what the Beast is as not just a mindless killer, but a cold, at least semi-rational villain. The in-universe slang term for this was being a "snowman," because *of Darkness game. In either case, you're a 100% NPC total monster that even in the "snowman" version can't convincingly engage in social interactions for very long, if at all.

2nd edition strikes a balance where reaching Humanity 0 can result in anything from a ritualistic serial killer stereotype to an uncaring, semi-feral beast, depending on the character in question. A genius Mekhet schemer who reaches Humanity 0 doesn't necessarily enter permanent beast-mode if they become a draugr. It's a little at odds with the way the preceding low-Humanity entries are written, which still focus on becoming more and more of just a straight-up animal monster. In 2nd edition they also throw in a sentence to hint at the unlikely prospect of redemption.

Yeah, the Night Horrors book I was referencing was Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead for 1e, with draugr and larvae (the half-embraced) in it. 2e would supersede it, but it's late enough in 1e (has modern Strix details even) that they likely don't conflict much.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




joylessdivision posted:

There's also a Malkavian in LA who believes he's Dracula (he may or may not be Lugosi) and he's right behind Erik up there as "Best side character in WoD"

If i recall correctly the entirety of the LA anarchs, whether they be rivals or enemies, have agreed to land like a ton of bricks on anyone that tries to gently caress with him just because he's a decent, harmless dude. Surprisingly heart warming.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



citybeatnik posted:

If i recall correctly the entirety of the LA anarchs, whether they be rivals or enemies, have agreed to land like a ton of bricks on anyone that tries to gently caress with him just because he's a decent, harmless dude. Surprisingly heart warming.

:3: that rules. I'll eventually end keeping an actual list of great NPC's that pop up because Erik and Bela are just so adorable and I know a few others like them got slipped in here and there. Gentle Anne is another cool monster, and Baba Yaga sounds like a nightmare lol.

When you've got the Inconnu making GBS threads themselves at the idea that you're up and kicking while they're also busy spying on the Tremere (because apparently no one likes the loving Tremere in 1e) you know that's a monster not to gently caress with.

Baba Yaga is cool and good.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




joylessdivision posted:

:3: that rules. I'll eventually end keeping an actual list of great NPC's that pop up because Erik and Bela are just so adorable and I know a few others like them got slipped in here and there. Gentle Anne is another cool monster, and Baba Yaga sounds like a nightmare lol.

When you've got the Inconnu making GBS threads themselves at the idea that you're up and kicking while they're also busy spying on the Tremere (because apparently no one likes the loving Tremere in 1e) you know that's a monster not to gently caress with.

Baba Yaga is cool and good.

There's plenty of one-off, not too-try-hard characters scattered about. EL DIABLO VERDE, undisputed king of the squared circle, is hands down one of my favorite VtM NPCs. Up there with Count Motherfucking Dracula.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer

Arivia posted:

Yeah, the Night Horrors book I was referencing was Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead for 1e, with draugr and larvae (the half-embraced) in it. 2e would supersede it, but it's late enough in 1e (has modern Strix details even) that they likely don't conflict much.

I know 2E has a rule where sometimes, very rarely, if a vampire kills a mortal by drinking them to death, they can rise as a vampire later on.

midwifecrisis
Jul 5, 2005

oh, have I got some GREAT news for you!

Yeah, those are Revenants and iirc they wake up frenzying every night? Or they at least don't retain their vitae during the daysleep. So they tend not to last long. They can be "fully" embraced by any other kindred though.

Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

joylessdivision posted:

So I've decided to take on the dumb project of reading and reviewing old WoD books for shits and giggles.

I'm trying to focus on the games I'm less familar with (basically everything other than Masquerade) to start, but I'm not sure if the "A World of Darkness" books (technically VtM books) would be a good place to start this dumb project or if I should just grab a 1e core book of something and start there.

The plan is to turn the reviews into deep dive podcast reviews of the books so I'm thinking that those might be a solid introduction to the setting and then jumping into 1e core books from there.

Start with Blood Dimmed Tides, explain nothing, and open with one of the Mermaids having a Technocrat come within a mile of them and instantly turning into a regular person deep underwater in a cave.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Relevant Tangent posted:

Start with Blood Dimmed Tides, explain nothing, and open with one of the Mermaids having a Technocrat come within a mile of them and instantly turning into a regular person deep underwater in a cave.

I'm already too deep into the first WoD sourcebook to switch up what I'm doing for the first episode, but Blood Dimmed Tides is 100% on the list of books to cover maybe even the next book I tackle (I'm counting the WoD 1/2nd edition sourcebooks as one).

To give an update, I'm about 93 pages into the WoD sourcebook 1e which is about 135ish pages. The first....30 or so are all about the UK, the first 15 of that being pretty dry historical information and then a whole bunch of stuff about London and its importance to the Kindred of '92.

There is some good stuff in the book, although the cover claiming that the book can be used for "Other Storyteller system games" seems like a crock considering how heavily this thing leans into VtM metaplot dumping (and it includes an ad for Apocalypse being released later that year).

And here's what I've learned so far from this 1st edition Masquerade book:

-Nobody likes the Trememe like at all. They are poo poo on left right and center in this book.

-Assasamites have a really gross "Ewww Muslims" vibe to them in most of their mentions through the book not to mention being linked to an actual terrorist attack in 1985 as well as the assassination of the ruler of Jordan in 1951. Classy.

-Nobody likes the Giovanni, which is hilarious

-Ravnos are racist as poo poo and they make sure to hammer home how racist this clan is at least twice so far explicitly calling them out as thieves and how they are hated for being such :cripes:

-The chapter on Jordan is shockingly not as racist as I was expecting, but it's still not great, although more on the cringey side than "THATS RACIST AS poo poo" Mostly because of Talaq and his lost tribe hanging out in Petra have some...questionable writing. Also the PLO has werewolves, but the book makes clear that Yasar Arafat is not a werewolf. But he probably knows who they are in the group :psyduck:

-Hong Kong........Just........the picture I posted above I think sums up Hong Kong so far. I actually stopped yesterday about a page or two into the Chapter on Hong Kong because I needed to take a break before the overwhelming "Mysterious Asian Kindred" poo poo made me claw my loving eyes out.

As for the project itself, I've got a pretty good idea of how I want to split up the reviews, with a focus on the good, the bad and the WTF of the book I'm covering, which this book has an abundance of WTF floating around in it. Also some really cool poo poo that I've really enjoyed like Gentle Annie in the UK, Baba Yaga in Russia and Erik over in Paris.

The whole chapter on Hunedoara Castle has probably been my favorite bit of metaplot expansion and storytelling, basically a group of 12 Inconnu have taken up residence here and have done a yearly blood sacrifice ritual to Baphomet to keep the wards on the castle so they an spy on the Tremere in Vienna because of that whole 'Diablerized Saulot" thing (which I'm pretty sure gets expanded on in later books) while also having a chamber in the basement of the castle that is meant as a test for Kindred attempting to reach Golconda, which these 12 assholes can't do because they're committing blood sacrifices to a demon every year. I believe the note I made about that chapter was a quick summary of what I wrote above followed by "Lol Dumbasses".

I'll probably end up finishing up the first sourcebook today (depending on how painful the Hong Kong chapter ends up being) and then jump into the 2nd edition book from '96 and pray that it's less flagrantly racist and stupid. it probably won't be :negative:

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS

Ghost Leviathan posted:

There seems to be a running gag that Nosferatu are better artists and performers than the clan whose whole deal is art and performance.

I mean, the whole point of Toreador is that they’re poo poo artists and it pisses them off, and the whole point of Nosferatu is “beauty destroyed.”

AmiYumi
Oct 10, 2005

I FORGOT TO HAIL KING TORG
Hunedoara Castle is actually never mentioned again until one of the lead-in books to Time of Judgement.
:eng101:

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
The notion that Toreador are fake artists, or artists who lack some spark of creativity, is the kind of stupid idea that I'm sure was fun to write. Go write a novel about that, White Wolf.

Why would I want to roleplay a bad artist? I already don't know how to paint.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



AmiYumi posted:

Hunedoara Castle is actually never mentioned again until one of the lead-in books to Time of Judgement.
:eng101:

No poo poo? At least someone remembered it was there lol.

I think that may have been my favorite chapter of the book so far. Solid bit of history about the place, some neat 1e mechanics to keep players out (one trap increases difficulty to resist until it hits TN10 lol) and then all the fluff about the Inconnu and what a bunch of dumbasses they are. Really powerful but dumbasses none the less. And apparently not so powerful that Baba Yaga doesnt make Cret the only named Inconnu in the book poo poo his pants at the mere thought that she's up and moving around.


1e is wild, and the sense of the world being wide open for exploration and weird poo poo going on is heavy through the book, despite it being heavily focused on Kindred poo poo with mentions of the other supernaturals.

Like the Mossad Mage and him basically being the reason Jordan leaves Israel alone :magical:

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

2E World of Darkness gives us the bit about Mithras being diablerized by Monty Coven after being nearly mauled to death by werewolves so they at least run with that plot hook (although amusingly it takes ages and may not even be referenced much until the OPP post-Revised stuff). Whenever London gets mentioned as I recall it mostly talks about Queen Anne, like her helping fund the War of New York.

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

AmiYumi posted:

Hunedoara Castle is actually never mentioned again until one of the lead-in books to Time of Judgement.
:eng101:

The book in question, though, Lair of the Hidden, is entirely dedicated to Hunedoara Castle, and if I recall correctly continues to go all in on the Inconnu there being giant dumbasses.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Dawgstar posted:

2E World of Darkness gives us the bit about Mithras being diablerized by Monty Coven after being nearly mauled to death by werewolves so they at least run with that plot hook (although amusingly it takes ages and may not even be referenced much until the OPP post-Revised stuff). Whenever London gets mentioned as I recall it mostly talks about Queen Anne, like her helping fund the War of New York.

Yeah in 1e book Mithras gets talked about and statted out (pretty sure he's broken as gently caress) but they say he's either in torpor in one of his hidden havens since the blitz or he's awake and just keeping it on the dl because Vampires.

I'm sure I wrote some notes about it, but I tried to avoid making my notes nothing but vampire metaplot poo poo unless it was actually interesting to the larger WoD universe. If I'd focused on metaplot I'd probably be at 10 pages of note just on London and another 10 on Jordan and the metaplot fuckery going on there.

As it is I'm at 5 pages of notes with the more interesting bits of metaplot detailed. Like the previously mentioned castle, Baba Yaga and Gentle Anne.

And every time something really racist has jumped out. Which has been a few times. I want to get to the weird vampire hating cats but I have to get through the hell that is Hong Kong.

They wrote a whole source book on Hong Kong didn't they? God that's going to suck.

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




I've gotta say, switching my thought process re Touchstones from CoD to V5 is a drat headache. I kind of get what they were going for but tying things in with a specific mortal which is almost impossible to replace leaves me scratching my head.

Like, in CoD one of the touchstones a PC had was a local minor league team. Just a bit of harmless fluff that led to things like having to go after someone trying to fix games and poo poo like that, coupled with things like "gently caress this rookie is great i'm gonna make sure they get scouted". Now if the touchstone is said rookie and you try to do good by them you take Stains and lose the Conviction. Am i just misunderstanding the system?

YaketySass
Jan 15, 2019

Blind Idiot Dog

Halloween Jack posted:

The notion that Toreador are fake artists, or artists who lack some spark of creativity, is the kind of stupid idea that I'm sure was fun to write. Go write a novel about that, White Wolf.

Why would I want to roleplay a bad artist? I already don't know how to paint.

Mostly I dislike the idea that they've lost the spark of creativity or whatever. Not only does it raise all sort of questions about their mental capacities, it's also just arbitrarily limiting. I much prefer the idea of having Toreador artists who still have potential for innovation, it's just that their alienation from humanity eventually betrays them, so that a human audience will have a hard time connecting with art done by a creature that's not been human for decades or centuries.

Babysitter Super Sleuth
Apr 26, 2012

my posts are as bad the Current Releases review of Gone Girl

Dawgstar posted:

Requiem wins here. He's no Count loving Dracula. :colbert:

CFD is cool and all but OWoD Dracula is great because he’s very clearly some sort of freak of fate, somehow immune to blood bonds, who was such bad news that when he first tried to get embraced, it caused the tzimisce cathedral of flesh to wake up and go all Akira on the carpathians just to stop it from happening.

Lord_Hambrose
Nov 21, 2008

*a foul hooting fills the air*



Halloween Jack posted:

The notion that Toreador are fake artists, or artists who lack some spark of creativity, is the kind of stupid idea that I'm sure was fun to write. Go write a novel about that, White Wolf.

Why would I want to roleplay a bad artist? I already don't know how to paint.

Bring a Vampire is... A curse? Like, you are literally cursed by God. Someone who loves art that wants to make art forever but can't recapture that spark is fantastic personal horror.

I mean, if you are just playing the standard spooky superheroes that is almost every vampire game go nuts making cool art.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
If there's one clan where they've consistently done a poor job of making them interesting or nuanced, it's the Toreador. The stereotype other clans have of Toreador is "they're useless spoiled snobs" and both Toreador clanbooks were like "Yeah, we sure are."

Digital Osmosis
Nov 10, 2002

Smile, Citizen! Happiness is Mandatory.

Toreadors are so boring they didn't even give them a clan novel

GNU Order
Feb 28, 2011

That's a paddlin'

citybeatnik posted:

I've gotta say, switching my thought process re Touchstones from CoD to V5 is a drat headache. I kind of get what they were going for but tying things in with a specific mortal which is almost impossible to replace leaves me scratching my head.

Like, in CoD one of the touchstones a PC had was a local minor league team. Just a bit of harmless fluff that led to things like having to go after someone trying to fix games and poo poo like that, coupled with things like "gently caress this rookie is great i'm gonna make sure they get scouted". Now if the touchstone is said rookie and you try to do good by them you take Stains and lose the Conviction. Am i just misunderstanding the system?

What is the wording of the Conviction you're going for? I'm not really following what exactly your problem is but there should be enough leeway to figure out how to make both your Conviction and Touchstone work.

In summary the system works where, your coterie shares some kind of Chronicle Tenets, and you have some personal Convictions. They're typically a value or virtue that you're meant to uphold. Violating them in some way will cause stains (although violating a Chronicle Tenet to uphold a Conviction will result in fewer or maybe even no stains incurred, up to your GM). Each one of your Convictions has an associated Touchstone, which is a human embodiment of that Conviction.

I think what you're describing is some kind of scenario where you take a touchstone of a promising young rookie on a minor league team, and you take him under your wing, help him get better, and he eventually moves away to go play professionally somewhere else. As a ST I'd probably game out a couple options. The first is that you keep the Touchstone and Conviction, but you'd have to make efforts to keep in touch with them. There's no reason you can't have a long-range relationship, other than it slowing down your sessions and generally making it harder to interact with them. The other option I'd give is that you consider this a grand culmination of your efforts, lose the Touchstone naturally, and you pick a new human to fixate your Conviction on. The rules for losing a touchstone not-destructively are kinda hidden in the book but here's an excerpt

quote:

If, by contrast, your Touchstone dies peacefully or just in the normal course of things, you may be able to transfer your fixation to another human connected to them: their child or sibling, their successor in the position, etc. This change requires a Humanity test (Difficulty 4) while meeting or observing them, and likely requires further story action. Unless you manage to transfer your attention to a new Touchstone, your Conviction connected to the destroyed Touchstone is lost.

I think this is what you're lookin for

e- actually poo poo there's a bit in the book in that same section that talks about literally this scenario

quote:

A Touchstone is also damaged if they change in a way the vampire doesn’t approve of: their widow remarries, the priest leaves the parish, the ballplayer moves from the White Sox to the Twins. By trying to prevent the Touchstone from changing, of course, the vampire may make things bad enough to damage the Touchstone anyway.

That makes it a bit harder to referee, and would depend on what your Conviction is. If it's something like "Always strive for excellence, never accept second place" or something about winning/being the best, I probably wouldn't punish you. If it was something unrelated (see: anything else), I probably would drop Stains. It sucks that your Touchstone is stuck in the minors but the Conviction is more important. But either way at that point you'd probably want to find a new Touchstone to focus your weird obsession on. It's ultimately a game about tragedy, isn't it?

GNU Order fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 12, 2021

citybeatnik
Mar 1, 2013

You Are All
WEIRDOS




GNU Order posted:

e- actually poo poo there's a bit in the book in that same section that talks about literally this scenario

That makes it a bit harder to referee, and would depend on what your Conviction is. If it's something like "Always strive for excellence, never accept second place" or something about winning/being the best, I probably wouldn't punish you. If it was something unrelated (see: anything else), I probably would drop Stains. It sucks that your Touchstone is stuck in the minors but the Conviction is more important. But either way at that point you'd probably want to find a new Touchstone to focus your weird obsession on. It's ultimately a game about tragedy, isn't it?

My Ravnos' Convictions are "debts are meant to be honored", "family is what you make of it", and "men build, monsters destroy" at the moment, with the last two making me wish a Touchstone could be something larger than just one person. Because i like the idea of a nomadic wanderer trying to build up a larger community around himself.

The minor league thing was an example that my group tossed out while we were grousing about the system since it was a good example of A Thing that a vampire could look to as a means to ward off the Beast - connection to a greater community, teamwork, taking simple pleasure in something that's not monsterous. My Ogre from a CtL game had his weekly anger-management support group as something similar and there i fully expected the ST to gently caress around with the group as a whole.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the difference is all and the notion of just up and losing a Conviction. I know there's an Hecate advantage where your Touchstone is a corpse you poke at which leaves me scratching my head but what you cited is at least a starting point.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Digital Osmosis posted:

Toreadors are so boring they didn't even give them a clan novel

They didn't get a trilogy like some but Toreador kicked off the Clan Novel, uh, 'saga.' Mostly I remember how much it liked to talk about how hot Victoria Ash is and how the notorious former Confederate Malkavian Prince of Atlanta fought side by side with a Brujah of African descent who I think was a Archon in a scene that I'm sure was to Really Make Us Think but was just kind of bad like the rest of the book.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I feel we're missing the clear opportunity of playing a drama queen 'creative'. Imagine Toreador TikTok.

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Digital Osmosis
Nov 10, 2002

Smile, Citizen! Happiness is Mandatory.

Dawgstar posted:

They didn't get a trilogy like some but Toreador kicked off the Clan Novel, uh, 'saga.' Mostly I remember how much it liked to talk about how hot Victoria Ash is and how the notorious former Confederate Malkavian Prince of Atlanta fought side by side with a Brujah of African descent who I think was a Archon in a scene that I'm sure was to Really Make Us Think but was just kind of bad like the rest of the book.

This was a dumb joke about Leopold, the main character of Clan Novel: Toreador and the dude who kind of incites the incident that "saga" is about. He's actually secretly a Tremere!

Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 13, 2021

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