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Oct 4, 2021 15:25
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Just had a friend point out that the biggest event in the sabbat calendar, the palla grande, means a big ball, not a big ball. blood ball: it's like blood doll, but all the blood is stored in the balls
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Oct 4, 2021 20:16
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Arivia posted:blood ball: it's like blood doll, but all the blood is stored in the balls That sounds extremely uncomfortable.
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Oct 5, 2021 00:05
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Just had a friend point out that the biggest event in the sabbat calendar, the palla grande, means a big ball, not a big ball. "Well I'm upper generation, high society Caine's gift to ballroom notoriety..."
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Oct 5, 2021 00:51
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Was watching a recent vampire thing and got thinking: where does the oWoD idea of "generation" come from? I mean I understand it logically as like, decent from Cain, but I can't think of it being used in like any other vampire fiction. Old vampires are almost always portrayed as frightening and powerful, and there is the whole "kill the head vampire and all the vampires he created die" thing, but that's about it. I don't think I've seen anything be like "Oh, your sire is a thousand years old? You're OP as gently caress then." Usually the new childe of a thousand year old vampire is just as dumb as any other neonate. Is it an Anne Rice thing? I never read her and only saw Interview once a while ago.
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Oct 7, 2021 05:37
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Digital Osmosis posted:Was watching a recent vampire thing and got thinking: where does the oWoD idea of "generation" come from? I mean I understand it logically as like, decent from Cain, but I can't think of it being used in like any other vampire fiction. Old vampires are almost always portrayed as frightening and powerful, and there is the whole "kill the head vampire and all the vampires he created die" thing, but that's about it. I don't think I've seen anything be like "Oh, your sire is a thousand years old? You're OP as gently caress then." Usually the new childe of a thousand year old vampire is just as dumb as any other neonate. Is it an Anne Rice thing? I never read her and only saw Interview once a while ago.
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Oct 7, 2021 06:21
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Yeah, I'm not sure if Vampire Blood Quantum was a thing before WW either. The closest was 'your sire is ancient, and therefore can teach you many things' in a few novels as far as I know.
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Oct 7, 2021 08:33
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I think there's a pretty obvious line of descent—heh—from Rice's Queen of the Damned (1988) and the concept of Generation. The curse is strong and unbearable in the OG vampires, literally they can't stop just killing people they're so hungry, until they figure out that turning other people disperses and dilutes the curse. They also possess such potent blood that it empowers and enthralls those who drink from them. Lestat spends most of the novel getting wrecked on Ancient Egyptian Queen blood. The Queen is pretty uniquely potent in the story, but there's still a fairly clear indication that the oldest vampires as a group are more physically and mystically powerful than their descendants. So on top of Generation, we've also got blood bond, and Middle Eastern-ish origins for vampires here. Not that they're exactly the same, Masquerade didn't just lift stuff directly and unedited from Rice, but it's hard to believe it wasn't close to an A->B relationship of inspiration. There's even a parallel to diablerie, as the Queen who is the Ultimate Original Vampire obviously is too evil to not kill, but killing her would also kill all vampires. The two women she abused back in Ye Olde Nile days who cursed her in the first place and were some of the first set of turned vampires, solve this by drinking all her blood and becoming the new head vampires. I can't remember if they sort of share it, or if it's just one of them that gets it. Hell, the "I'm so ancient and powerful my skin is literally like marble" Fortitude Discipline is right there in the book too. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 10:37
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It's kind of interesting then that it's relatively unique to a role playing game, considering RPGs are often very much about The Numbers Going Up and your characters eventually getting swole enough to punch God in the face. Maybe it's a response to that-- a worry that playing V:TM that way is Badwrongfun and that having a rule like "no amount of XP will make you able to kill a methuselah" will stop that before it happens.
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Oct 7, 2021 17:40
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OWoD was extremely all about making sure you knew that there's exactly one right way to play the game and playing any other way was wrong and shameful. I've been reading some of the old books and the number of sidebars filled with petulant whining and passive-aggressive insults over wanting things like game stats for NPCs is astounding.
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Oct 7, 2021 17:56
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Digital Osmosis posted:It's kind of interesting then that it's relatively unique to a role playing game, considering RPGs are often very much about The Numbers Going Up and your characters eventually getting swole enough to punch God in the face. Maybe it's a response to that-- a worry that playing V:TM that way is Badwrongfun and that having a rule like "no amount of XP will make you able to kill a methuselah" will stop that before it happens. Probably also part of the punk aspect that faded away when Vampire became more a game of intrigue within the Camarilla than anarch neonates versus the Camarilla establishment. If old vampires are the machine to rage against, they have to be oppressive. If you're to rage against that machine, then they also have to wield enough power that you can't just brush them off as irrelevant grouches. I tend to think they overshot the mark.
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Oct 7, 2021 18:15
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Yawgmoth posted:OWoD was extremely all about making sure you knew that there's exactly one right way to play the game and playing any other way was wrong and shameful. I've been reading some of the old books and the number of sidebars filled with petulant whining and passive-aggressive insults over wanting things like game stats for NPCs is astounding. Yes, how dare you want to spend anything less than 20 hours writing up NPCs and specific setting information. What are you, a normie? :v The most useful thing a game can do is provide a bunch of basic stat blocks so that you can just pick the one you need to throw at your players when they do something crazy. I’m not even talking monster manual. Just entirely generic sets of blocks with basic descriptions to make it easy to just improvise without accidentally killing someone for dumb imbalance reasons.
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Oct 7, 2021 18:29
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Jhet posted:Yes, how dare you want to spend anything less than 20 hours writing up NPCs and specific setting information. What are you, a normie? :v I'll never forget how absolutely mindblowing it was to read the advice on antagonist design in VtR's Chronicler's Guide and just having it say "use similar numbers to your PCs, add a few for the stuff they're especially good at to challenge the players." I'd pretty much only read 3e D&D before that, realizing there were ways to create challenge that weren't following pre-existing class/level/challenge charts was looking into a whole new world.
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Oct 7, 2021 19:31
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Yawgmoth posted:OWoD was extremely all about making sure you knew that there's exactly one right way to play the game and playing any other way was wrong and shameful. I've been reading some of the old books and the number of sidebars filled with petulant whining and passive-aggressive insults over wanting things like game stats for NPCs is astounding. Although of course the favorite is still Aberrant and the sputtering outrage of "You want to play THE AVENGERS?"
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Oct 7, 2021 19:47
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Dawgstar posted:Although of course the favorite is still Aberrant and the sputtering outrage of "You want to play THE AVENGERS?"
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Oct 7, 2021 19:53
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Writing this remains one of my favourite moments of open development: http://theonyxpath.com/the-end-of-screw-you-hippie-game-design/
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Oct 7, 2021 23:44
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Arivia posted:I'll never forget how absolutely mindblowing it was to read the advice on antagonist design in VtR's Chronicler's Guide and just having it say "use similar numbers to your PCs, add a few for the stuff they're especially good at to challenge the players." I'd pretty much only read 3e D&D before that, realizing there were ways to create challenge that weren't following pre-existing class/level/challenge charts was looking into a whole new world. Yeah, it's really an experience that opens up so many more options for the game you're running. I understand why monster manuals exist, and they can be really useful. Unless you use them to say that only those exact things exist in the world, and then it's limiting in the other extreme. A good game should give you all the tools you need to play and run a game and that includes ways to make good antagonists to balance the game to challenge the players. Not give you all the precise rules for every situation necessarily*. Not give you limits on your story, or limits on a player's experience. If you want that, there are hundreds of great video games out there to play. And yeah, no more screw you hippie game design please. That stuff was always terrible. And for a game all about the counter-culture punk and raging against the machine, original WoD was very controlling in how you were allowed to do that. I was really happy when the nWoD stuff started coming out and it opened up so many options. Saying that, my group is playing a game from the late 80s/early 90s right now and there's none of that "play this way, or lolsnope" game design in it. It's still very cumbersome in a lot of ways, but it's 30 years old and still plays really pretty well. *I don't count wargames as part of this. Those went a different evolution and that's fine, but they're not role playing games in the same way.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:03
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So the sabbat book is legit introducing paths of enlightenment? *edit* Game update: the chronicle is slowly grinding to a close, the Syndicate is busy taking over LA, the anarch movrment is collapsing into petty infighting, the cotorie is starting to fall apart after decades of working together... And my malkavian has repurposed a defunct Weinermobile to serve as his pirate radio station as he works towards letting his "main" personality/conciousness slip into the Cobweb along with the elder that's been mentally femdomming him since the 50s, letting the pirate radio personality free to Wolfman Jack his way around the WoD. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 05:01
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Unsure whether to post this here or in the GM advice thread, but it's a WoD question he here goes. Over the coming christmas period I'm planning to run a few sessions of WoD games, probably Mage and Vampire, to give my players a chance to see some systems other than D&D. The players have expressed interest in these so they seem like good bets. I've never actually ran games in the settings before and I'm a little worried about running vampire. Rather than beating about the bush, I'll just ask: how do you handle the need to feed on humans without basically making it sound like the players are doing metaphorical sexual assaults every night? One of my players is a sexual assault survivor, and I'd like to have an idea of how to allay concerns they might have when I talk to them about it, as well as allay some of my own concerns about hurting them inadvertently. I really love the setting and I've always wanted to run it, but when I sit down and think about the reality of running a game I'm deeply concerned about sounding like a creep if I have to narrate the feeding process. Do you just elide over it and say something like "you spend some time among the kine, and drink your fill", or is there a way to handle and narrate it that doesn't sound like it has deep Unfortunate Implications?
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Oct 8, 2021 10:40
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Honestly if you think someone might be uncomfortable you can just skip it. I used to do feeding scenes only if players are in some kind of emergency and imho outside that "you spend some time among the kine, and drink your fill" seems fine. It also depends on what your players want to do. Some themes like "descent into monsterhood" or "keeping ties with your mortal life" kinda want you to at least put some focus on feeding, as it is important to the mood of the whole thing. If your team wants to do "cloak and dagger/investigation" or "play politics while looking fancy" it can be ignored.
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Oct 8, 2021 11:02
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Feeding scenes are something you should do a few times just to set tone. It's a good way to establish how characters tick and what their norm is but once you get that down it should be glossed over there after so long as things are normal. When there's a chance something could go wrong, then you pay attention to it again especially if you can make it dovetail with some other plot point you want to hit.
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Oct 8, 2021 11:31
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This is all good advice, I just want to tag onto this and say to talk to your player! Ask them about how much detail they want to go into, what they feel comfortable with, and what the things you're worried might trigger them are, and work with them to come up with what feeding scenes should look like from there.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:51
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If you're a Nosferatu without the right disciplines the way you feed matters a lot. Ditto if you're a Giovanni or one of the other bloodlines/clans with unusual restrictions. If you're a Toreador, assuming you're willing to slum it, the way you feed is walking into a bar and walking out again with a mortal wrapped around your finger. It is ultimately a violation though, there's no equality so there's no consent. If it's hard for the players to separate themselves from the undead monster they're playing Mage might be a better game.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:55
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Yeah, the effects of having to violate innocent people regularly or die is a big part of Vampires whole deal. I try and do a feeding scene for each player in the first session or two just to set the tone, and then down play them for the most part afterwards. A PC struggling against violating others as just the most expedient way to feed is some Vampires 101 stuff.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:35
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Basically, feeding is a metaphor for kind of abusive or coercive relationship. The thing is though there are an almost unlimited number of ways humans can be lovely to each other, so you can try and find a metaphor that isn't so painful for your player. If you have a friend who had religion used to justify some kind of abuse, having a character who runs a cult where they convince mortals they are a blood god is probably not a great idea (unless, of course, they wanted to explore that intentionally.) If you had a friend who had to sell plasma to pay rent, having a character who's rich and bribes blood banks for bags of blood might not be a great idea. But maybe if you have those two at the table they'd be okay with switching it up, and if not there's still a thousand other ways you can explore the lovely parasitic relationships vampires have with humans. Basically talk to your players, tell them they shouldn't be comfortable with feeding scenes but that you have no intention of provoking their trauma either, and work with them to find a way that they're ick-ed out by but not re-traumatized by. I think V5 has something called "feeding styles" which might offer some examples. I personally really enjoyed the feeding scenes in "VtM: Night Roads," a text-game that offered a lot of examples for a lot of different ways to feed in a number of sometimes rather extreme situations.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:53
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Digital Osmosis posted:I think V5 has something called "feeding styles" which might offer some examples. I personally really enjoyed the feeding scenes in "VtM: Night Roads," a text-game that offered a lot of examples for a lot of different ways to feed in a number of sometimes rather extreme situations. They do. One is called 'Consensualist' who only feed if given permission to do so (which I think is not unlike the Salubri's old weakness) but while it might take a load off one's conscience you're also violating the Masquerade like every time you do it, so there's room to play around if you like.
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Oct 8, 2021 18:55
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Dawgstar posted:They do. One is called 'Consensualist' who only feed if given permission to do so (which I think is not unlike the Salubri's old weakness) but while it might take a load off one's conscience you're also violating the Masquerade like every time you do it, so there's room to play around if you like. In 20XX it's probably far easier to just tell people it's just something you're really into rather than telling them vampires are real.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:11
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To echo others, feeding can as easily be a back-alley mugging or a landlord coming around to collect rent as it could be some other exploitative exchange. Vampire is a big game and contains multitudes.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:11
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With Obfuscate, you can just slip in and put the bite on while they're asleep, although this is its own flavor of traumatizing.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:21
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Nessus posted:With Obfuscate, you can just slip in and put the bite on while they're asleep, although this is its own flavor of traumatizing.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:22
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Thanks all for your advice.  This is definitely something I'm intending to talk to the player about first before we do anything and it's perfectly plausible they'll have absolutely no concerns at all (or equally, something they don't want to even consider, meaning I drop Vampire as an option), but I wanted to have some views from experience first so that I have some suggestions of how to approach it if we need to handle it carefully. I'll be taking direction on this from that player, I just didn't want to put all the onus on them to come up with a workable solution.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:22
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Defenestrategy posted:In 20XX it's probably far easier to just tell people it's just something you're really into rather than telling them vampires are real. The instant you start draining blood and it's better than any drug or sex they've ever had they're probably going to realize you weren't lying.
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Oct 8, 2021 23:16
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Defenestrategy posted:In 20XX it's probably far easier to just tell people it's just something you're really into rather than telling them vampires are real. They have that one, too! It's called like Scene Queen/King I think, where you have your cute little nascent blood cult. Fun!
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Oct 8, 2021 23:51
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Relevant Tangent posted:The instant you start draining blood and it's better than any drug or sex they've ever had they're probably going to realize you weren't lying. Surprise they're just really into it too and soon Cosmo is running an ad for top ten ways your man loves to get bit on wrist.
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Oct 9, 2021 01:23
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https://twitter.com/TheOnyxPath/status/1446645637987160068 There's a Venn diagram I didn't think I'd find myself in the center of, but sure, why not.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:30
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Every game I've been in that has lasted more than three sessions has had a humor style very akin to MST3K so this is less surprising to me.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:36
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Time for some brand synergy!! Vampire scenario based off of Samson vs. The Vampire Women Changeling: the Lost scenario based off of Manos: the Hands of Fate Mage scenario based off of Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders Werewolf scenario based off of…
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Oct 9, 2021 03:07
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The many shadow names of David Ryder
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Oct 9, 2021 03:16
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You definitely have the makings of a goofball Hunter campaign in The Final Sacrifice.
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Oct 9, 2021 04:51
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"This episode of MST3K brought to you by 'It Came From Beneath The Sea.' Play out your own Atlantic Rim or Devilfish adventure with fine Onyx Path products!"
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Oct 9, 2021 05:57
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