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MonsieurChoc posted:We know weebs infiltrated White Wolf, since pretty much everything they did about asia was super anime (Wraith excepted, it was mostly driven by Grabowski's hatred of Qin Shi Huang). Demon Hunter X is so weird to revisit now. They talk about what I always remembered were sentai dynamics but instead is really just Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman dynamics. One of the roles is The Girl and how The Leader and The Hot-Head fight over her.
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Nov 22, 2021 23:16
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MonsieurChoc posted:We know weebs infiltrated White Wolf, since pretty much everything they did about asia was super anime (Wraith excepted, it was mostly driven by Grabowski's hatred of Qin Shi Huang). I spoke to one of the KotE authors. Big Trouble in Little China, HK cinema, and 90s anime and video games formed the bulk of their inspiration for a lot of stuff.
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Nov 23, 2021 03:01
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Fuzz posted:I spoke to one of the KotE authors. So many Big Trouble in Little China quotes. Also a lot of references to Chinese Ghost Story.
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Nov 23, 2021 04:04
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Omnicrom posted:Also Ronnie James Dio and Marlon Brando and Roy Batty from Bladerunner. Jojo is literally full of musical reference names to the point where official translations have to change some of them for copyright reasons. Like, the guy named Speedwagon.
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Nov 23, 2021 06:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Jojo is literally full of musical reference names to the point where official translations have to change some of them for copyright reasons. Like, the guy named Speedwagon.
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Nov 23, 2021 10:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Jojo is literally full of musical reference names to the point where official translations have to change some of them for copyright reasons. Like, the guy named Speedwagon. Ironically, Speedwagon is one of the few names that went unchanged, because the band doesn't own the rights to that name either
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Nov 23, 2021 11:41
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Jojo is literally full of musical reference names to the point where official translations have to change some of them for copyright reasons. Like, the guy named Speedwagon. Yep (which is why the sub is better since the dub has to remove all the copyright names), but the point with Dio was that the name was chosen first and then when it was like "well what are his powers" Araki went back to weird middle eastern mythology because Japan was obsessed with that stuff in the 80s (see also: every freaking monster in Final Fantasy) and it was a convenient play on the name.
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Nov 23, 2021 12:49
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Every freaking monster in Final Fantasy is derived less "from weird Middle Eastern mythology" and more "cribbed straight from the Monster Manual because it was literally an unlicensed D&D video game." Dunno if you're thinking of Dio's powers as what he does as a vampire or his time powers. His time powers were a kludge added extra-later when Araki realized his initial idea of Dio's Stand powers being "every Stand power he had introduced up to that point simultaneously" was way too hard to write coherently and tried to think of a suitably intimidating final boss power to have to surmount.
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Nov 23, 2021 15:28
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I'm just going off an old interview with him from like the late 90s where they asked him what his inspiration for all the crazy stuff was and he said, "rock and roll and mythology!" And then talked at length about the epic of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamia.
Fuzz fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 17:34
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I mean you go long enough and Jesus Christ is just a character in later JoJos. Also a bro. Jesus Christ is a real bro.
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Nov 23, 2021 17:52
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I've got a Night Road question, figured this might be a place to ask: anyone know the most named vampires you can kill or get killed? I know you can work with the Second Inquisition but have never done that but now I'm thinking a replay where I just end up murking as many kindred as possible might be fun. Bonus points if you get to off your own sire, or any suggestions on what I'd need to do to spill the most vitae.
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Nov 23, 2021 17:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:So many Big Trouble in Little China quotes. In one of the entries for the 1E Mage Book of Chantries, one of the Nephandi Chantries is pretty much just Lo Pan.
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Nov 23, 2021 17:57
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Dawgstar posted:In one of the entries for the 1E Mage Book of Chantries, one of the Nephandi Chantries is pretty much just Lo Pan. "Pretty much" nothing, they flat out call him Lo Pan in his write-up! 
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Nov 23, 2021 18:49
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That Old Tree posted:"Pretty much" nothing, they flat out call him Lo Pan in his write-up! Guessing that was before they invented the Wu Lung, cause lol at Lo Pan being an Akashic.
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Nov 23, 2021 22:47
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Write up says 'once served the Nephandi' - were Nephandi more of a formal organization 1e Mage? Because the version of the Nephandi I am familiar with is more of a descriptor of mages who have spiritually corrupted themselves in a more or less specific way.
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Nov 23, 2021 23:26
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Pakxos posted:Write up says 'once served the Nephandi' - were Nephandi more of a formal organization 1e Mage? Because the version of the Nephandi I am familiar with is more of a descriptor of mages who have spiritually corrupted themselves in a more or less specific way. They were more of 'the evil mage group' previously, yeah, before they had division between what exactly kind of evil they worshipped (Wyrm, Oblivion, ancient Things). Of course now we are imperiling ourselves talking about them according to Satyros Phil Brucato.
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Nov 24, 2021 00:09
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I still can't get over my dm telling us we need to read How do you DO that? and saying it's great. Mind for moving things. MIND FOR MOVING THINGS!
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Nov 24, 2021 02:43
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MonsieurChoc posted:I still can't get over my dm telling us we need to read How do you DO that? and saying it's great. Yeah cause telekinesis, what else would it be, Forces? 
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Nov 24, 2021 02:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:I still can't get over my dm telling us we need to read How do you DO that? and saying it's great. Conceivably, you need to combine Forces with Mind to set up a continuous effect that grants you the power to move things with your mind, which for the spell's duration you can proceed to exercise as casually as you might normally move things with your hand.
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Nov 24, 2021 03:30
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Fuzz posted:but the point with Dio was that the name was chosen first and then when it was like "well what are his powers" Araki went back to weird middle eastern mythology because Japan was obsessed with that stuff in the 80s What power is associated with daeva myths? Because Dio's original powerset was the ability to vaporize water in his body in order to suction away moisture and flash freeze anything in contact with him as well along with the ability to raise the dead, fleshcraft the dead together, and the ability to expel fluid from his body's orifices at high enough speed to slice and pierce, and it wasn't until part 3 where he gained a separate power set so instead of freezing people with ice, he just froze time instead
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Nov 24, 2021 04:14
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The muddiness of just what the Nephandi were started right in the 1E core in 1993, where "Nephandi" meant just, like, evil extradimension-toucher. At the front of the book the source of all this overt evil is characterized as singular and "the Dreamspeakers call it by its werewolf name, the Wyrm." Werewolf 1E was barely a year old at this point, it was probably wrapping up and its first few supplements underway when the Mage corebook was getting started. In the antagonists section at the back of the book, the section "Nephandi and their ilk" included a Nephandus who ?accidentally? corrupted herself by summoning a demon, a blob of anti-reality that Nephandi can summon from the Outer Darkness, and the Zigg'raugglurr who are exactly as they will remain in all future appearances, i.e., totally unrelated to the Nephandi except that they're extradimensional weirdo antagonists. In the foreword to Ascension, the end-of-the-world final supplement for oMage, Bill Bridges reminisces that he tossed off the Zigg at the last minute to fill out the chapter and almost never bringing them back made them ideal mysterious antagonists for one of the world-ending scenarios. Anyway, barely six months after the 1E core came out, right at the start of 1994, Book of Chantries was released, one of the very first supplements for Mage, with Lo Pan the regretful Nephandus. A little later we get Book of Shadows where they lay down the main details of Nephandi-specific life, the Labyrinth and Caul. Later but still that same year Book of Madness comes out and expands on the stuff in Book of Shadows, including providing almost no wiggle-room for not just being 100% pedal-to-the-metal evil, though there are asides here and there that hint at it. It's also the book where they're like "the spirit rules in the core suck and we want to crossover more with Werewolf, so here are the basic spirit rules from Werewolf." Book of Madness is where they really differentiate the Nephandi into their three overarching castes, the Infernalists who summon pretty conventional demons for power, the Wyrm-tainted who get down with the Maeljin Incarnae of the Wyrm, and the K'llasshaa who search for power outside the mage-known universe and worship super-nega-Cthulhu. In this introduction to them, K'llasshaa are a pretty boring "what if Marauders, but they all like gore and rape?" They remain that way even into Mage core revised, until finally in Book of Madness revised they're sort of tempered into the tippy-top edgiest of the edgelords who even other Nephandi fear but are still normal enough to have plans and minions, instead of, uh, this: quote:[voice reverberating as though from end of long corridor or bottom of deep pit] Order? Ha! Chaos? HaHa! Ascension? Nyah-hah! Darkness Corruption Oblivion Hai! Carkness Horruption Doblivion Harktion Dorrivness Cobluption Hai-Yai!! Bwahahahahahahaaugh![trailing off into coughing, gurgling, chortling noises…] Lo Pan's very mild waffling on selling his soul for ultimate dark evil power notwithstanding—he still loves having evil power, he just doesn't want to be eaten by Azathoth when he finally kicks it—there's barely any hint at ~nuance~ in the antagonist factions in 1E. They were pretty uncompromisingly evil most of the time, with the Technocracy as evil and the Nephandi as EVIL. The Progenitors splat book came out before any other (a couple months before Virtual Adepts), and later that same year Iteration X too (around the same time as Verbena), and both were all-in with the "we have to solve the world using [favored method] in order to exert total control over all the stupid people we are burdened to rule with an iron fist." The Technocracy books were all presented in a superficially favorable tone by a narrator, but it was some very ham-handed "I am enjoying the bland nutrient paste my overlords programmed me to moderately enjoy" type stuff. One of the minion archetype examples in ItX were "Cyber Fascists", a bunch of same-faced goons who would beat up your political enemies (but they don't like being called Cyber Fascists, it's a nickname they hate). Anyway, the Jade Demon is only "formerly" a Nephandus in the sense that he wants to call a take-back, which makes him pretty unique until Book of Madness revised seven years later, and even then he's fairly singular compared to the rest of Nephandi just getting the "sometimes people think they're doing good things when they're actually being evil" treatment. MonsieurChoc posted:Guessing that was before they invented the Wu Lung, cause lol at Lo Pan being an Akashic. Well, yes, at the time the Akashics were the only "the Oriental ones", but his backstory is pretty straightforward and thin, allowing it to make sense for any faction. He was an upstanding and beloved mage who was cool and good, but the people he loved were beset by so much trouble that he eventually gave in and made a bargain with dark powers that inevitably corrupted him.
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Nov 24, 2021 04:22
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That Old Tree posted:Anyway, the Jade Demon is only "formerly" a Nephandus in the sense that he wants to call a take-back, which makes him pretty unique until Book of Madness revised seven years later, and even then he's fairly singular compared to the rest of Nephandi just getting the "sometimes people think they're doing good things when they're actually being evil" treatment. Cool beans. The only thing that stuck out to me about the Nephandi (aside from the overwrought M20 warnings about them corrupting your soul irl) was the tainting your reincarnations bit, so that the fact that was was done later and sounds like it might only apply to certain Nephandi kinda makes sense.
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Nov 24, 2021 04:44
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Pakxos posted:Cool beans. The only thing that stuck out to me about the Nephandi (aside from the overwrought M20 warnings about them corrupting your soul irl) was the tainting your reincarnations bit, so that the fact that was was done later and sounds like it might only apply to certain Nephandi kinda makes sense. Oh, widderslainte show up in the first Book of Madness in 1994. If you complete the process of becoming a Nephandus by going through the Caul, you've basically guaranteed that all future incarnations of your Avatar will be "dark triad" lovely little kids who will grow up to be lovely adults and Awaken directly into being Nephandi again. The revised core revisits this briefly in the antagonist write-up for them and notes that sometimes, for some reason, a reincarnating Nephandus' Avatar goes back to normal in the following life, but that doesn't come up again in Book of Madness revised as far as I can recall or find by skimming. M20's Book of the Fallen dabbles a little in the concept that widderslainte can actually be saved, but it also piles on the "this is nearly impossible and no one ever tries and for all practical purposes established by the narrative and rules in these books if you find someone with a poisoned Avatar you should just go ahead and destroy their soul instead of trying to save them." Basically trying to have its cake and eat it, too, by declaring that no one's truly born bad, but in-universe it's impossible to tell that's true so I guess it's time to murder some children with emotional problems.
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Nov 24, 2021 05:05
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I remember the story of the widderslainte that Old Man Senex was trying to redeem. And how ultimately it didn't matter if it was successful or not because she stayed loyal to Senex.
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Nov 24, 2021 05:05
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Mulva posted:I mean you go long enough and Jesus Christ is just a character in later JoJos. Fun fact, his actual name would have been Joshua, son of Joseph
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Nov 24, 2021 08:55
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Senex is one of the few mage NPCs with his head screwed on even vaguely straight, really.
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Nov 24, 2021 09:38
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That Old Tree posted:Oh, widderslainte show up in the first Book of Madness in 1994. If you complete the process of becoming a Nephandus by going through the Caul, you've basically guaranteed that all future incarnations of your Avatar will be "dark triad" lovely little kids who will grow up to be lovely adults and Awaken directly into being Nephandi again. The revised core revisits this briefly in the antagonist write-up for them and notes that sometimes, for some reason, a reincarnating Nephandus' Avatar goes back to normal in the following life, but that doesn't come up again in Book of Madness revised as far as I can recall or find by skimming. Ah yes, the “abuse is terrible, so let’s shred the souls of problem children” book. Ghost Leviathan posted:Fun fact, his actual name would have been Joshua, son of Joseph Yeshua bin Yousef.
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Nov 24, 2021 13:15
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MonsieurChoc posted:I remember the story of the widderslainte that Old Man Senex was trying to redeem. Wasn't that the character Kathleen Ryan (who was like the good WW fiction writer) wrote about a lot?
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Nov 24, 2021 14:22
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I vaguely remember that character being the first exposure to the concept I had which didnt read as 'these are irredeemable monster people!' to me at the time.
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Nov 24, 2021 15:45
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Dawgstar posted:Wasn't that the character Kathleen Ryan (who was like the good WW fiction writer) wrote about a lot? I think so! The 2e corebook (my first mage book) opened with her big fiction.
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Nov 24, 2021 19:37
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Re-reading the relevant chapter of Reign of the Exarchs for my game tomorrow and came across 
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Nov 27, 2021 06:11
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rereading some stuff for fun, gotta say that voormas is incredibly insufferable and a mary sue through and through another evidence in favor of MtAw
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Nov 27, 2021 08:06
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dead gay comedy forums posted:rereading some stuff for fun, gotta say that voormas is incredibly insufferable and a mary sue through and through As I've heard it, Voormas kinda sorta lives on in MtAw as the Old Man of the Abyss deep in the dream.
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Nov 27, 2021 12:35
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bewilderment posted:As I've heard it, Voormas kinda sorta lives on in MtAw as the Old Man of the Abyss deep in the dream. It's a joke, and one never spelled out in the books. The Old Man looks like Voormas because he's the Aeon of the Abyss. The Aeons take the form of famous beings that symbolise their purview, and the Abyss' purview is everything that doesn't exist, so he looks like the most famous villain from the wrong gameline.
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Nov 27, 2021 14:09
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Dave Brookshaw posted:It's a joke, and one never spelled out in the books. The Old Man looks like Voormas because he's the Aeon of the Abyss. The Aeons take the form of famous beings that symbolise their purview, and the Abyss' purview is everything that doesn't exist, so he looks like the most famous villain from the wrong gameline. okay, that's clever haha
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Nov 27, 2021 17:13
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Can I just add that I love that every description of the Old Man is just deeply chill? It's unsettling having a creature that powerful and embodying something that platonically wrong just be a friendly, patient, relatively kindly dude. It gives off serious heat-death-of-the-universe vibes. "I don't need to be actively malicious, because in the long run the Abyss is going to win."
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Nov 27, 2021 17:49
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That's why I kind of don't like the notes that the Old Man looks monstrous out of your peripheral vision or sounds spooky when your back is turned. I'd actually prefer that there was simply nothing unsettling about him except for the context in which you find him (and the fact that you can't see into or return from his hut).
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Nov 27, 2021 22:43
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Working on creating a setting/potential chronicle for VTM and stealing the best ideas from V20, V5 and VTR. Decided to work on the Sabbat, i.e the main 'opposing', faction and see if I can make them easier for PCs to engage with. Their 'sect' is now The Gidim, formed pretty much the same way as the Sabbat, but with a greater emphasis on allowing an individual to control their own territory, and (Tziminzie hardliners excepted) scattered in the face of the Camarilla consolidation, becoming a patch-work of oaths and support against the Tower, falling into the following sub-factions, flourishing whenever a Prince weakens: Sabbat: Mostly run by Lasombra elders, blood and fire fanatics but more bound to their pseudo-catholic leanings and hierarchy. Only group that still uses the Shovelhead method, except now anyone who claws their way out with their mind intact is clearly blessed by god. Lilith's Brood: Catch-all term for those of the bahari following, koldons, abyss mystics and stranger clades working to hone unnatural powers. To the extent they have leaders, it would be Tziminzie well advanced down the Road of Metamorphosis. Black Hand: So far as anyone knows, the warriors of Caine, led by those still burning from old betrayals, annoyingly good at killing elders, even if they come up short on a strategic scale, and acting as the last refuge of the Warrior Salubri. In the game, if you run into a Gidim member, PCs would have to do some investigation to suss out which flavor they are dealing with, as well as having easy to understand goals and tension points outside of 'raving rear end in a top hat'. If anyone has used Sabbat successfully in a game or made their own tweaks, I'd love to hear them.
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Nov 27, 2021 23:38
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Pakxos posted:Working on creating a setting/potential chronicle for VTM and stealing the best ideas from V20, V5 and VTR. I'd say grab the V5 Sabbat book, because while it's not meant for PCs, it has a lot of really cool ideas to make them less cartoonish and lovely.
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Nov 28, 2021 18:59
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Fuzz posted:I'd say grab the V5 Sabbat book, because while it's not meant for PCs, it has a lot of really cool ideas to make them less cartoonish and lovely. That's good to know. For some reason I thought it wasn't out yet.
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Nov 28, 2021 21:53
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