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FirstAidKite posted:Time for "kite asks stupid questions again" What kind of story are you looking to tell? If the cenobites are meant for direct antagonists, and potentially something for PCs to punch, I would say crib concepts and powers from the Night Horrors 'The Tormented' book focused on Promethean: The Created. Maybe somehow they collect [power/magic substance] from having people experience extreme sensations. If they are meant to be more of a complication and 'untouchable' maybe Hunter's Dread powers combined with the spirit rules would work.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:19
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Oh I don't tell stories, I just post dumb white noise questions e: like lol I don't have the discipline to sit down and play anything Apparently hunter is much different than what I'm thinking of if hellraiser can be applied to it, the hell is going on with hunter? I thought it was just regular people going after supernatural beings. FirstAidKite fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 21:23
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FirstAidKite posted:Oh I don't tell stories, I just post dumb white noise questions Oh, it is. Just, the bloody corpse of your creepy uncle and the BDSM angel-demons who want him back (or similarly weird horrors) are all supernatural beings you could suddenly have to deal with if you wanted to.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:33
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Loomer posted:Anyway, bottom line: Expect a link to v0.9 sometime either this week or the next. At the moment I'm excising the cruft columns and the ones that are just no use. This is one of the prophecied signs of Gehenna, right?
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Jan 5, 2022 22:00
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Oh, it is. Just, the bloody corpse of your creepy uncle and the BDSM angel-demons who want him back (or similarly weird horrors) are all supernatural beings you could suddenly have to deal with if you wanted to. Or the Cheiron Group brings in 'outside consultants' for your latest assignment. Just make sure you aren't part of their deliverables...
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Jan 5, 2022 22:41
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Loomer posted:Stuff Hot take: the best thing V5 did was shove most of the metaplot behind the sofa.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:00
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FirstAidKite posted:Time for "kite asks stupid questions again" Book Cenobites are Mages, no question. They're an order of monks seeking enlightenment in the ultimate extremes of sensory experience and only take Frank because he basically asks them to -- all the supernatural horror in the novella is the result of him having second thoughts and trying to run away from his initiation, essentially. Movies, True Fae is probably the way to go, but they make pretty credible God-Machine Angels as well, with Frank as a Demon. (nWoD Demons were never human, admittedly, and making Frank one weakens the themes of the novella. But it's no worse than a million other things the movies did, and taking over his brother's life until Kirsty tricks him into giving his true identity away so the Cenobites can come collect him is 100% the dynamics of a Demon obtaining Cover.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 01:24
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Fuzz posted:Hot take: the best thing V5 did was shove most of the metaplot behind the sofa. I don't know, I feel that's a bit of a strange thing to say when Loresheets are direct plug-ins to metaplot elements, a significant amount of the V5 adventures follows up on or continues elements of it, and, most importantly, it's still hugely important on how the game's run. I'd say it's less shoved behind the sofa and more approached like actual gameable setting material. The defection of a significant portion of the Lasombra to the Camarilla and the consolidation of the necromantic splats into a single Clan are straight up Pure 90s White Wolf Metaplot moves, they're just more palatable thanks to the general unlocking of Clans from default setting Sects with the former and a Requiem-inspired toolbox approach to the latter. It's very much the right approach, all the goofy history throwing its shadow on the present is honestly one of the biggest appeals VtM specifically has, especially now that the system and play style's taken more than a few pages from its younger sibling.
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Jan 6, 2022 01:52
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I'd rather read a hundred pages by Loomer about old setting than a single post about V5 for what it's worth
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Jan 6, 2022 02:11
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Fuzz posted:Hot take: the best thing V5 did was shove most of the metaplot behind the sofa. That's not actually true, they just brought up different parts. I'm not trying to snark, but what do you think the stuff like the Gehenna War and Second Inquisition are? The Sabbat book is entirely a progression of metaplot.
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Jan 6, 2022 03:15
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I'd rather read a hundred pages by Loomer about old setting than a single post about V5 for what it's worth Loomer is pure gold
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Jan 6, 2022 03:15
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Rubix Squid posted:Loomer is pure gold
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Jan 6, 2022 03:45
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cptn_dr posted:This is one of the prophecied signs of Gehenna, right? As Loomer closes the final splatbook, a great wailing and gnashing of keyboards rises. I can't wait to flip through it. I've been burning time at work just reading random Wiki articles about all the different metaphysical beings/planes in classic lately, there's just something so fun about it though I'll probably never get around to the books themselves these days.
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Jan 6, 2022 05:35
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I'd rather read a hundred pages by Loomer about old setting than a single post about V5 for what it's worth Not emptyquoting
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Jan 6, 2022 06:34
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I agree with that and I don’t even have anything against V5, I just love loomer posting
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Jan 6, 2022 06:41
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Guys, as much as I enjoy the jokes, the project's release really isn't that exciting a thing. It's basically just a database of all the supernaturals and their linked entities, not a proper splatbook, and v0.9 now probably won't even have all the fancy graphs I was doing because I have again taken ill unexpectedly (if it wasn't for trying to duck the plague, I'd be hospital posting right now, I think). I don't think flipping through it will hold that much interest in itself because, really, it's a bunch of excel sheets. It's coming out not because its really ready, but so that the data, at the least, is out there for anyone who wants to do stuff with it. Save the excitement for the knitted timeline or the Big Book of Demographic Charts! Also I really appreciate it all the same. It's been a wonder sharing the neat connections and tidbits I've stumbled across or had pareidolic moments over with you all, and nice being able to act as a community resource for questions like 'hey are there any technocracy fronts in Oaxaca?'.
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Jan 6, 2022 10:25
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think that's the conclusion of the great work isn't it frantically starts looking for Orbs of True Knowledge
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Jan 6, 2022 11:17
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Free Cog posted:I don't know, I feel that's a bit of a strange thing to say when Loresheets are direct plug-ins to metaplot elements, a significant amount of the V5 adventures follows up on or continues elements of it, and, most importantly, it's still hugely important on how the game's run. I'd say it's less shoved behind the sofa and more approached like actual gameable setting material. The defection of a significant portion of the Lasombra to the Camarilla and the consolidation of the necromantic splats into a single Clan are straight up Pure 90s White Wolf Metaplot moves, they're just more palatable thanks to the general unlocking of Clans from default setting Sects with the former and a Requiem-inspired toolbox approach to the latter. It's very much the right approach, all the goofy history throwing its shadow on the present is honestly one of the biggest appeals VtM specifically has, especially now that the system and play style's taken more than a few pages from its younger sibling. Dawgstar posted:That's not actually true, they just brought up different parts. I'm not trying to snark, but what do you think the stuff like the Gehenna War and Second Inquisition are? The Sabbat book is entirely a progression of metaplot. In the sense that almost all the immovable object Elders are now Beckoned away, a bunch of iconic NPCs (Mithras, Lucita, etc) are dead/presumed dead/don't have reams of badly written poo poo about their many adventures no one cares about, the sects are looser and clans generally less married to them, Giovanni were essentially nuked from orbit and all the scraps of them and the 20 Capp Bloodlines are now all consolidated into one clan that's actually cool; the comically one sided and (speaking as a brown, Muslim person) terrible stereotyped and oft-vilified in a casually racist way clans were both heavily revised right down to having their names changed; Caine is no longer enshrined lore and there are heavy overtures to look at the creation of vampires more like Requiem - vague; the Sabbat were nuked from orbit as a comically monstrous sect that somehow still held huge swathes of territory and tied up two main clans in bullshit, instead being relegated to what is ultimately a terrorist organization you can safely ignore, if you want... Everything about it basically blew up the heavily entrenched "fictional world" aspects of the game which were obstacles STs and players had to navigate around or remove/rewrite and just made it more open and flexible actual RPG setting to play the drat game in, like Requiem. The vast majority of cities are just undefined and up in the air - you want DC or Munich or Marseilles to be Anarch or at least not 100% entrenched Camarilla/Sabbat? Go for it. You want to make up your own roster of elders and primogen? Go for it, whatever was there was Beckoned away. It's all Good Changes, lore and gameplay wise. nrook posted:I agree with that and I don’t even have anything against V5, I just love loomer posting Oh, me too, and Loomer knows this from the many discussions we used to have. It's great from a "let's see how bad this trainwreck gets" academic perspective. It sucked rear end for actually playing the drat game, though. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 14:22
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Fuzz posted:It's all Good Changes, lore and gameplay wise. I'm well aware of the more open setting, I enjoy playing around with it quite a bit in my campaign. I can do stuff and allow character concepts that...well, I'd do and accept them anyways, but now it's not a headache to do. Now I can focus on the fun, new ways running the game gives me a headache! The point though, is that all of those changes your talking about? That's metaplot, baby. While it shoves some NPCs to the background, it raises others to a higher narrative importance or shift them into a different place with the same narrative importance. Early V5 even tried to get some NPCs onto that level (Hi Fiorenza! Hi Rudi!), it just had the good sense to give them Loresheets, not statblocks. Many of the changes that led to the open setting are either continuations of plotlines set up in Beckett's Jyhad Diary, the big huge V20 metaplot book, or are brand new but eventually written as connected to elements of the metaplot. A VtM that was actually interested in hiding the metaplot behind a sofa wouldn't have an entire adventure with the fate of Mithras as a plot point, have the new antagonist faction formed in part by a character from 1992's Hunters Hunted, or still have the Capuchin of all people be a major player. Using metaplot for a more game-friendly setting is still using metaplot! You're still playing in a big old 25+ year old storyline! The big lore changes aren't all that different in spirit or function than previous metaplot bombshells, even if they're ultimately more accessible to the table. Free Cog fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 16:08
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Free Cog posted:I'm well aware of the more open setting, I enjoy playing around with it quite a bit in my campaign. I can do stuff and allow character concepts that...well, I'd do and accept them anyways, but now it's not a headache to do. Now I can focus on the fun, new ways running the game gives me a headache! Yes, and that's really splitting hairs. The metaplot is behind the sofa as background now, is my point, not in your face also being the sofa, the table, the loveseat, the dining table, all of the chairs, the lamps, the TV, and the 20 people standing around eating finger foods and making small talk. It's a backdrop rather than all of the set dressings and half the cast.
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Jan 6, 2022 16:30
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Fuzz posted:Yes, and that's really splitting hairs. The metaplot is behind the sofa as background now, is my point, not in your face also being the sofa, the table, the loveseat, the dining table, all of the chairs, the lamps, the TV, and the 20 people standing around eating finger foods and making small talk. It's a backdrop rather than all of the set dressings and half the cast. But it's still very much in the foreground! The Conclave of Prague and its consequences, the Sabbat's descent back into a shadowy 1e style death cult, the possible expiration of the Promise leading to the Hecata, the rise of House Carna, these are very blatant, very in your face changes either justified by story elements pre V5 or tied into said story elements after the fact. If you're coming into the game as a veteran player, most of these changes are pretty blatant, and tied into the greater narrative. If you're new or don't really care it doesn't matter as much, but that's always been true with each VtM edition launch. These changes don't seem like in your face metaplot for a few reasons. The first is that the big deal metaplot bombshells are mostly in the core, which is a different feeling than a sudden change in a sourcebook you didn't get. The big non-core changes are either giving express permission to something tables were doing anyways (Cam Lasombra, wow!) or gives you plenty of options to keep on in spite of the changes (the alternate Discipline spreads for playing the individual Hecata member factions), so even those feel softer. The second is that the biggest presences of the metaplot, the pre-written adventure and the specific splatbook, aren't really around in this edition. Unless you really care about London or Chicago, nothing's changing things up in those adventures/books, and the other sourcebooks are more coffee table or antagonist books. The original One World of Darkness plan, if I recall correctly, was that the major narrative changes would occur in video games, blockbuster LARPs, and the ever promised TV series, all of which would reflect into the tabletop games later. Therefore there'd no longer be a need for an adventure or a section of a splatbook to fulfill that kind of metaplot purpose, which makes the tabletop game feel more stable when it's metaplot is actually going at a similar speed as previous editions. That plan's dead for a lot of reasons, of course, but it still plays a factor. The last reason is that, well, you like the current metaplot and the changes it brings. For the most part, I do too! But, for example, a dedicated Sabbat player would never say it's not in your face, not after the V5 antagonist book. I don't care for the Sabbat gameplay style, never have, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, but that doesn't mean that Sabbat player would be wrong. And yeah, they have a different game to play, plenty, but that's not the point. The point is that metaplot is still there, still blatant, and still changing the game dramatically. All I'm saying is that metaplot is still very much a big deal in V5, even with its more modern approach. There's a lot of mechanical, tone, and aesthetic changes, but underneath all that it's still very much a VtM game. But that's enough words out of me!
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Jan 6, 2022 17:57
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Fuzz posted:Yes, and that's really splitting hairs. The metaplot is behind the sofa as background now, is my point, not in your face also being the sofa, the table, the loveseat, the dining table, all of the chairs, the lamps, the TV, and the 20 people standing around eating finger foods and making small talk. It's a backdrop rather than all of the set dressings and half the cast. This is not even remotely accurate. It doesn't stop being metaplot just because you like it!
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Jan 6, 2022 18:00
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To torture the metaphor further, it's metaplot as jammed-under-the-carpet-like-that-one-Simpsons-episode. It's there, roiling and shifting, and every single thing you do requires navigating it in some fashion and feeling it under your feet, but because you aren't looking directly at it one can attempt to argue it's not technically visible.
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Jan 6, 2022 18:14
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As a minor point it's also wrong to say Paradox isn't talking about very established characters like Mithras because the Fall of London is all about Mithras' return to power. (It's even mostly written for the book's pre-gens. Very odd design choice.)
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Jan 6, 2022 19:25
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Of course, every metaplot change of V5's that has people singing the game's praises is just something that moves it closer to Requiem in tone and scope.
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Jan 6, 2022 21:18
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Ferrinus posted:Of course, every metaplot change of V5's that has people singing the game's praises is just something that moves it closer to Requiem in tone and scope. Basically, and that's the best thing about it. Requiem was great. VtM was fun and had a cool setup and plot, for sure, but Requiem was just a better game to actually play.
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Jan 6, 2022 21:48
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I'm sorry I'm dumb but if I want to read the current rules for Vampire, do I want V:tM - Revised Edition, V:tM 20th Anniversary Edition, or Vampire: the Requiem?
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Jan 6, 2022 23:08
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Dragonshirt posted:I'm sorry I'm dumb but if I want to read the current rules for Vampire, do I want V:tM - Revised Edition, V:tM 20th Anniversary Edition, or Vampire: the Requiem? 5th edition is the newest version of Masquerade being produced currently.
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Jan 6, 2022 23:33
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Dragonshirt posted:I'm sorry I'm dumb but if I want to read the current rules for Vampire, do I want V:tM - Revised Edition, V:tM 20th Anniversary Edition, or Vampire: the Requiem? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/256795 Although they're coming out with WoD Nexus in like a month which is basically gonna be D&D Beyond.
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Jan 6, 2022 23:45
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Dragonshirt posted:I'm sorry I'm dumb but if I want to read the current rules for Vampire, do I want V:tM - Revised Edition, V:tM 20th Anniversary Edition, or Vampire: the Requiem? Requiem and Masquerade are pretty bifurcated lines, both are current and parallel, worth noting that Requiem is in its 2nd ed
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Jan 6, 2022 23:46
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Thanks, goons! Ordering the 5th ed. rules and the Sabbat book!
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Jan 7, 2022 00:05
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V5 managed to also salvage the Ravnos which is impressive as all get out. Now that our 1940s/60s/80s V20 LA anarch game is winding down our next one's going to be V5 set in modern LA dealing with the aftermath. Seeing as how our last session involved stealing the Lakers' 1984 trophy for Tass *and* my Malkavian accidentally letting the shard of the elder he ate use the effort to set up a cockroach hivemind for its own nefarious ends. I may or may not have laid the groundwork for the WoD equivalent of Mimic.
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Jan 7, 2022 00:23
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citybeatnik posted:V5 managed to also salvage the Ravnos which is impressive as all get out. Technically that was done in Revised.
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Jan 7, 2022 00:38
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The thing about the metaplot is that it sucks to try and deal with when you're actually playing the game and its current and new, and you have to navigate that boundary between doing your own thing and negotiating with players/DMs who want the game to more closely resemble the source material. But once its over and finished, it just becomes plot and narrative - and some of it is kinda amazingly stupid fun. I don't have an opinion on V5's metaplot because I genuinely haven't bothered to keep up after the horror show that was the first year or so, except that what I'd seen I was unimpressed by. One of my favourite things generally is using the skills I've learned as a legal philosopher and as an amateur historian to dig into fictional worlds. The Timeline struggle is part of that, as is the Wraith: the 30 Years War era-book I'm slowly working on - and, for that matter, some of my academic works (the rapidly growing field of law and literature studies is great fun. You get an excuse to say, play MGSV for a week straight 'as work', and to read a bunch of amazing articles on the cult of special forces and its psychological and ideological underpinnings. So long as you present at a conference, its work! Those conferences tend to be magnificently diverse in choice of nerd-stuff) and a handful of first-up articles for a blog(s) I'm noodling with dealing with the logistics of fantasy magic (you know all those Effortposts people make about Ethical Utilitarianism Necromancy? One of them is about driving a truck through all the problems in those arguments and unargued assumptions they make) and Fantastic/Sci-Fi war crimes and crimes against humanity (is it a war crime to drop an asteroid on a colony? Could it be? What about using magic to suborn the will of politicians?). My approach to the metaplot is in no small part built out of that approach - I wouldn't necessarily want to play it out in an actual game (especially without knowing its coming - that's one of the big problems with a 'live' metaplot, the way it can completely diverge the setting with five minutes notice from what you've been working with previously. If you do a metaplot-compliant mega-game now, starting in 1990 and going through to say, 2015, you know what's coming - you know the Ravnos are mostly collapsing in 1999, you know Hunters are coming, you know the underworld is going to collapse into madness and invade reality, etc. That's fun to work with.), but looking at edition differences and metaplot changes and trying to reconcile them or come up with explanations is good fun.
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Jan 7, 2022 06:19
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In general I would say that metaplot is not good or bad so much as it is difficult to execute well.
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Jan 7, 2022 07:01
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I'd rather read a hundred pages by Loomer about old setting than a single post about V5 for what it's worth
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Jan 8, 2022 16:17
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I think part of the problem I have with V5 is that its metaplot is a big dump of fifteen years of plot that feels like a much larger shift than we see from 2nd to Revised or even Revised to v20/Beckett's Jyhad Diary; it really feels like a homebrew setting by somebody who didn't want to think about the Sabbat and everybody's just still rolling with it. There's definitely stuff I like, but it seems like it's stuff that was already in motion in previous editions, like the Banu Haquim defection to the Camarilla. (Also that rename is great; pity they couldn't come up with anything more interesting or evocative than "The Ministry".)
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Jan 8, 2022 18:33
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I associate Masquerade with the 1990s so much that it almost feels incongruous to update it to today, especially given that smartphones etc. make the whole Masquerade thing even more of a headache than it was in the game's original run. You see this in M20 even worse, where the attempts to update the setting both to a) modern day society and b) modern day values and mores makes the whole thing look awkward because it's very obviously still the old Ascension setting, it's just that a bunch of the factions and ideas have had band-aids slapped on them to try and cover up the awful. You end up in a horrible bind where either: - You burn the old poo poo down and completely redesign the setting from scratch. In which case it's no longer a new edition of the older game, it's the start of a third World of Darkness distinct from CWoD and NWoD/CoD. - You just keep the old stuff and flavour and update nothing, and accept that you are basically selling to a nostalgia market which sees nothing wrong with repackaged stuff which includes moments of utter bigotry which were wrong-headed then and entirely unacceptable now. It is a ballsy move, but not one which will grow your audience much. - You work really, really hard to update everything, which ends up requiring so much work that the effort you have to put into revising old bits of setting which have become horrible/incongruous in retrospect takes time and resources away from making the current setting actually good and interesting. It's demoralising, miserable work, because it's way more fun to try and make a new thing which fits your current vision from scratch than it is to try and salvage the best of a thing which is showing its age. - You sort of try and do all three at once but half-rear end all of the approaches, ending up with an awkward mess which it's hard to get a handle on, which is pretty much what V5 did.
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Jan 8, 2022 18:46
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Pope Guilty posted:I think part of the problem I have with V5 is that its metaplot is a big dump of fifteen years of plot that feels like a much larger shift than we see from 2nd to Revised or even Revised to v20/Beckett's Jyhad Diary; it really feels like a homebrew setting by somebody who didn't want to think about the Sabbat and everybody's just still rolling with it. There's definitely stuff I like, but it seems like it's stuff that was already in motion in previous editions, like the Banu Haquim defection to the Camarilla. You should check out the V5 Sabbat book. It's actually sort of awesome and really veers them back from the whole "mindlessly sadistic bogeymen" vibe they had by the time Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (ugh, that book) came out and back to being a more counter-culture pseudocult whose goal is to tear down the Elders and all the vestiges of enshrined vampiric power in an effort to destroy the Antediluvians and stave off their own extinction. It was always supposed to be about that, but holy poo poo did the Sabbat get lost in the weeds big time with the Black Hand, and then the TRUE Black Hand, and then stupid bullshit like True Brujah, etc.
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Jan 8, 2022 20:37
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Why not just use the name Cappadocians for all the Cappadocian spin-offs? Or something mroe thematically appropriate than Hecate?
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Jan 8, 2022 21:03
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