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Popping in with the high thought of the night. But hall and oates maneater was totally about a toreador they met in 80's right? Edit: awful drunk snipe
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Mar 11, 2022 08:28
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Now I'm picturing a plot hook of supernaturals being the inspiration for artistic works Pickman's Model style.
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Mar 11, 2022 11:49
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Ok, so I'm a bit overwhelmed and I don't know where to start to find some of this information. I'm trying to get back into Hunter: The Vigil, but my previous experience with this game was only as a player, and it was also over 12 years ago. Now, I'm going to have to be the Storyteller, because no one I know plays these games and I'll need to take the lead, but I'm not sure HOW I'm supposed to create monsters. It doesn't help that these books hide the actual crunch under layers of flavor text (thank god for the fanmade cheat sheets on DriveThroughRPG), but I don't see where there's any kind of rules for different types of monsters. Like, take for example the Spinal Vampire I talked about earlier. I want some basic rules for how Vampires work, but I don't really see that in the Hunter 2e book anywhere (I'm waiting for my paper copy to arrive to read it closely, but I've skimmed the pdf). There's just basic Dread Powers, but no templates? So I bought and downloaded Hunter 1e's "Night Stalkers". This, again, appears to be entirely flavor text, and story suggestions, but no list of things Vampires can do and the rules for running them. I guess I need to read Requiem? I'm totally green at this, and I'm probably approaching this from a wrong angle of being a DM for years in D&D and Pathfinder, but where the heck are lists of things different monsters can do?
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Mar 12, 2022 10:20
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Night Stalkers has rules for constructing vampires in chapter three, after the section with new Endowments. It presents Blood Potency as a "Merit," but like how it models points of blood as "Willpower," do note that this is a system abstraction and not an actual addition to the list of Merits characters can buy. (Matters less for vampires, but Witch Finders does it too and you get wonky results if you treat those systems like hunters can pick up witchcraft at those dot costs.) Hunter doesn't really have prepackaged templates for types of monsters, running on the assumption that every monster is at least a little different. You really are just supposed to eyeball a set of Dread Powers that makes sense and skin them accordingly. The 1e corebook had a chapter in the back on Philadelphia as a sample setting and did have a sample antagonist written up for each major type of monster you could crib from, but it looks like that's gone from the 2e corebook to make room for Mysterious Places and a travelogue of stranger, more miscellaneous monsters. Unfortunately, the list of Dread Powers in the 2e book suffers similarly, and I've seen at least one post from someone frustrated that there wasn't a Dread Power to drink blood (or other sources of life or energy) for power, like Drain from the 1e corebook. I didn't say for nothing that I kind of recommend first edition Vigil as more coherently put together than second. The Mortal Remains supplement, released before second edition was made, provides rules patches to bootstrap Vigil 1e content to the 2e core systems, in addition to an impressively long list of new Dread Powers. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 13:04
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Ok, so I'm a bit overwhelmed and I don't know where to start to find some of this information. I'm trying to get back into Hunter: The Vigil, but my previous experience with this game was only as a player, and it was also over 12 years ago. Now, I'm going to have to be the Storyteller, because no one I know plays these games and I'll need to take the lead, but I'm not sure HOW I'm supposed to create monsters. It doesn't help that these books hide the actual crunch under layers of flavor text (thank god for the fanmade cheat sheets on DriveThroughRPG), but I don't see where there's any kind of rules for different types of monsters. Like, take for example the Spinal Vampire I talked about earlier. I want some basic rules for how Vampires work, but I don't really see that in the Hunter 2e book anywhere (I'm waiting for my paper copy to arrive to read it closely, but I've skimmed the pdf). There's just basic Dread Powers, but no templates? So I bought and downloaded Hunter 1e's "Night Stalkers". This, again, appears to be entirely flavor text, and story suggestions, but no list of things Vampires can do and the rules for running them. I guess I need to read Requiem? I'm totally green at this, and I'm probably approaching this from a wrong angle of being a DM for years in D&D and Pathfinder, but where the heck are lists of things different monsters can do? With the qualifier that I have not read Hunter 2e but did write the rules for creating Horrors in the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook, there generally speaking aren't "templates" per se. You pick some Dread Powers that fit what you want your monster to do, and depending on exactly how detailed you need it to be you either build it with Attributes, Skills, Merits, etc. like a character or (my preferred option, despite writing the rules for giving Horrors full character sheets I basically never use them except maybe for a major long-term antagonist) pick a few descriptive traits they're notably good at and notably bad at, assign dice pool values to those and an "everything else" dice pool for, well, everything else, and go. Those rules are all on pp. 140-148 of the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook--I don't know if they're included in some form in Hunter 2e but I feel like they must be. You definitely do not need to read Requiem to run Hunter--a big part of Chronicles of Darkness is that there is a ton of weird poo poo out there in the shadows--just because something is dead and consumes human life force in the form of precious bodily fluids does not mean it has to be a "vampire" in the Requiem sense. Hell, there's a fair bit of evidence scattered throughout various Requiem books that the five clans aren't even the same kind of monster, but rather a weird case of occult convergent evolution. And conversely, even if you are building a Requiem-style vamp for your hunters to gank, there's absolutely no need to bust out the Requiem rulebook, which is after all designed for the level of depth and mechanical granularity you'd need for running a game focusing on vampire PCs. I Am Just a Box posted:Unfortunately, the list of Dread Powers in the 2e book suffers similarly, and I've seen at least one post from someone frustrated that there wasn't a Dread Power to drink blood (or other sources of life or energy) for power, like Drain from the 1e corebook. In 2e, we generally model feeding as an Aspiration the monster has--since Dread Powers are generally fueled by Willpower and Aspirations restore Willpower for NPCs, a specific power isn't usually necessary. That said (and again, this is CoD Rulebook stuff, maybe some stuff got cut for space in Hunter), Drain is a Numen available to ephemeral entities and one of the Horror Dread Powers is "take a Numen," the option is still there if you really want a power for it. (Why yes, ephemeral entity Numina and Dread Powers for other monsters really should have been consolidated into a single system--another casualty of the weird half-steps progression from 1e to 2e.) GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 13:30
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GimpInBlack posted:Those rules are all on pp. 140-148 of the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook--I don't know if they're included in some form in Hunter 2e but I feel like they must be. The long-form has-all-the-PC-traits version is in Hunter 2e, but the Brief Nightmares with simple dice pool traits aren't.
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Mar 12, 2022 13:38
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I Am Just a Box posted:The long-form has-all-the-PC-traits version is in Hunter 2e, but the Brief Nightmares with simple dice pool traits aren't. That's... interesting. Personally I would have done it the other way, not just because it's my preferred method but because the Brief Nightmares version is so, so much shorter, it would save a lot of word count.
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Mar 12, 2022 13:41
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Looks like Deviant hardcopy is on its way to backers. Congratulations on another cool release, DaveB and team.
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Mar 12, 2022 23:54
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Thanks for the replies guys, I think I have a lot more reading to do. I guess I also need to buy Mortal Remains as that keeps coming up as the definitive transition point between 1e and 2e. On that note, I'm having a hell of a time finding examples online of people running Storyteller games. Onyx Path appears to have their own Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath), but all of the videos are inexplicably locked for subscribers only (buh?), so no luck there. I finally visited my local gaming store and was talking with owner about WoD, and he told me the system had been dead for 20 years (false), and that no one played it anymore, so LOL to him. I joined the store Discord anyway, but got muted for being off-topic because I started talking about Hunter in the "D&D" channel. LOLI Am Just a Box posted:Night Stalkers has rules for constructing vampires in chapter three, after the section with new Endowments. It presents Blood Potency as a "Merit," but like how it models points of blood as "Willpower," do note that this is a system abstraction and not an actual addition to the list of Merits characters can buy. (Matters less for vampires, but Witch Finders does it too and you get wonky results if you treat those systems like hunters can pick up witchcraft at those dot costs.) Yup, thank you! This was what I was looking for. It was buried in the middle of that chapter, so I completely missed it while skimming the pdf.
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Mar 13, 2022 09:54
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Man, I hate that it took me so long to start on reading The Horror Recognition guide because these stories are so good. I've only made it to maybe the third one but I'm hooked.
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Mar 13, 2022 13:24
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GimpInBlack posted:You definitely do not need to read Requiem to run Hunter--a big part of Chronicles of Darkness is that there is a ton of weird poo poo out there in the shadows--just because something is dead and consumes human life force in the form of precious bodily fluids does not mean it has to be a "vampire" in the Requiem sense. Hell, there's a fair bit of evidence scattered throughout various Requiem books that the five clans aren't even the same kind of monster, but rather a weird case of occult convergent evolution. I do love hinted stuff like this. Any particular details that come up to support this? Also, wondering how you'd have actual aliens pop up in Changeling. Like no poo poo abducting aliens that the Gentry stole ideas from.
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Mar 13, 2022 14:22
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I do love hinted stuff like this. Any particular details that come up to support this? 
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Mar 13, 2022 15:18
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I'm quite aware of that. Just like the idea of throwing a curveball. Alien mythos are fun but tricky to play with.
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Mar 13, 2022 16:18
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I vaguely recall Demon the Fallen having some lines tying in with ancient alien theories as well but I might be misremembering. I *did* play a Devil with a low Legacy stat that was convinced that everyone were actually from beyond the stars with the whole infernal torment thing being screen memories.
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Mar 13, 2022 16:41
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I do love hinted stuff like this. Any particular details that come up to support this? The Requiem 1E clanbooks each have origin stories that are mutually exclusive with one another. Nosferatu claim descent from a paleolithic worm creature. Mekhet claim to be from some sort of sentient shadow, IIRC. And so on. These are all in-universe so unreliable narrator and all that, and CoD are toolboxes where you take what you want to be canon, but the implication is that the Kindred are results of convergent evolution.
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Mar 13, 2022 22:48
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IIRC this isn't so much contradictory as it is that vampires in the nWoD are the consequence of a particular type of supernatural wound to the human soul, something that has happened at multiple times, in multiple places, and whose victims have experienced a certain degree of convergent evolution since then (possibly due to Strix meddling) but in a way that still allows all those origin stories to be (at least potentially) true
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Mar 13, 2022 23:10
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Everything Counts posted:The Requiem 1E clanbooks each have origin stories that are mutually exclusive with one another. Nosferatu claim descent from a paleolithic worm creature. Mekhet claim to be from some sort of sentient shadow, IIRC. And so on. These are all in-universe so unreliable narrator and all that, and CoD are toolboxes where you take what you want to be canon, but the implication is that the Kindred are results of convergent evolution. Similar callback to where in OWoD, in modern times with less* magic etc. etc., the only way to be immortal was to become a vampire, and this had happened at least twice (Tremere, Nagaraja). I do also like it as the "vampirization" equivalent of our world's carcinization.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:25
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Everything Counts posted:The Requiem 1E clanbooks each have origin stories that are mutually exclusive with one another. Nosferatu claim descent from a paleolithic worm creature. Mekhet claim to be from some sort of sentient shadow, IIRC. And so on. These are all in-universe so unreliable narrator and all that, and CoD are toolboxes where you take what you want to be canon, but the implication is that the Kindred are results of convergent evolution. The 1e Wicked Dead book and the 2e Requiem corebook pair up for the strongest in-world evidence for this. Wicked Dead is a collection of "vampires that aren't Kindred and Kindred that aren't vampires," with the former including Jiang-shi, written as being sorcerers who sought immortality by stealing an innocent's heart, and became flesh-eating vampires who have no Embrace nor Vinculum, but suffer no harm from sunlight beyond paralysis. Requiem 2e follows this up with a writeup of an American metropolitan area that has a sixth recognized local clan of Kindred: the "Jiang-shi," who do have the Kindred features that the Wicked Dead sorcerers didn't, but whose Embrace requires stealing an innocent's heart and who have some weird niche powers that resemble things the sorcerers do. In other words, we have snapshots of convergent evolution in action, as the acolytes and successors of the Jiang-shi grow closer to the Kindred state.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:43
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Did Longinus have his own line?
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Mar 14, 2022 02:33
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Dawgstar posted:Did Longinus have his own line? Longinus is treated as a mythic figure, and the surviving manuscripts and testaments to his existence are fragmentary, filtered through the beliefs and theological arguments of the early Sanctified, or both. The Testament of Longinus asserts him to have had childer and grandchilder, with his only direct childe, the Monachus, being probably a more important figure in the history of the Sanctified than Longinus himself. They disappear back into the fog of history, though. The books present few bloodlines that claim lineage back to Longinus. A subset of the Mortifiers of the Flesh claim it, but the claim isn't taken seriously either by the book nor by most vampires within the book. The other spontaneous Embrace claimed by the Requiem 1e core, Vlad Tepes, has an autobiographical account of his Embrace in the Rites of the Dragon. Read between the lines, it's written to suggest that blood from a fallen vampiric enemy might have seeped into him without his knowledge, and the descriptions of his powers given are consistent with the Discipline spread of Clan Gangrel. Of course, the 2e core presents a setting where the spontaneous Embrace is suggested to simply happen, a whole lot more often than twice in all of history.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:16
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citybeatnik posted:I vaguely recall Demon the Fallen having some lines tying in with ancient alien theories as well but I might be misremembering. I *did* play a Devil with a low Legacy stat that was convinced that everyone were actually from beyond the stars with the whole infernal torment thing being screen memories. lol, Scientology ulmont posted:Similar callback to where in OWoD, in modern times with less* magic etc. etc., the only way to be immortal was to become a vampire, and this had happened at least twice (Tremere, Nagaraja). I do wonder if it might be related to the way supernatural forces work in the WoD; distinct effects but often in some ways intercompatible, and perhaps tapping into certain archetypes and traits grants both power and further influence. Also possibly some self-directed evolution, especially considering the Jiang-shi that coexist alongside Kindred start to resemble them- consciously or otherwise taking influence from them, perhaps. Could go the other way around, too. Heck, nearly every WoD splat has at least one speciality that implicitly or explicitly revolves around studying other supernatural beings, Refinement of Silver comes to mind.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:24
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Waiting for the day a new splat series of books releases based on xcom ufo defense with a night horrors based on terror from the deep and another book tackling xcom apocalypse In other words, aliens from space, aliens from the depths, and aliens from another dimension
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Mar 14, 2022 06:59
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Chapter 2 of Hunter: The Parenting is out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_WkWhpdATU (Chapter 1 can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Kc0xuYnfQ )
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Mar 14, 2022 09:32
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FirstAidKite posted:Waiting for the day a new splat series of books releases based on xcom ufo defense with a night horrors based on terror from the deep and another book tackling xcom apocalypse I've been wanting a "blue book" nWoD Aliens since 2003 lol.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:45
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Do vampire authorities get mad if you kill humans? Not so much because you kill humans but because you leave behind corpses? I was just reading Guide to the High Clans which mentions the Lamia has this problem: quote:Weakness: The Lamia’s bite carries a virulent disease. Anyone the Lamia feed on must make a Stamina roll (difficulty 6 for women, 8 for men) or contract a fever much like the Black Plague, fatal within several days. So if you have a certain type of vampire in your neighborhood who causes this kind of problem just by feeding, what do?
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Mar 14, 2022 14:32
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NikkolasKing posted:Do vampire authorities get mad if you kill humans? Not so much because you kill humans but because you leave behind corpses? The local power structure kills them because they're a Masquerade threat. Seems like the simplest and most direct solution to that problem as far as other Kindred are concerned. Or a group of hunters figure it out and now there's hunters in the neighborhood, is that what you wanted Typhoid Vlad?!
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Mar 14, 2022 15:02
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NikkolasKing posted:Do vampire authorities get mad if you kill humans? Not so much because you kill humans but because you leave behind corpses? Vampire Society in general is going to get mad if you do poo poo that makes humans start to go "hmm, there is something weird about this string of deaths...GASP! VAMPIRES!" with the exact severity of response depending on where on the "hmm, something weird" to "GASP! VAMPIRES!" spectrum it falls. It's probably safe to assume that any vampire with really obvious feeding markers like this is going to be unpopular. Whether that means "kill on sight" or "ask them politely yet firmly to leave" is going to depend on a lot of factors, like how powerful they are, how powerful you are, local Kindred laws, etc.
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Mar 14, 2022 15:07
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NikkolasKing posted:Do vampire authorities get mad if you kill humans? Not so much because you kill humans but because you leave behind corpses? The Lamia got nuked from orbit when the Giovanni took over - in fact, the cause of the Giovanni's painful Kiss is a holdover from the disease the Lamia carried following their rampant diablorie. That's not to say that a handful didn't survive to the modern ages (hell, the Ebony Kingdom has some Cappadocians there). They tended to kill their prey and dispose of their corpses by handing them off to the Cappadocians so if any Lamia are still kicking around they might be feeding from corpses or in active conflict zones. The game I ran set in Austin had one serving as the sheriff of the Prince with most folks assuming she was just a really reserved Brujah or Caitiff. She fed from hospitals controlled by one of the Prince's childer so any bodies could be disposed of, and the Sabbat siege got kicked off by a pack "catching" her disease and spreading it about. Was a real "holy poo poo!" moment for the players once they put two and two together since the really rules knowledgeable one was *convinced* she was Laibon.
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Mar 14, 2022 17:15
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The most important thing about Exalted being the secret prehistory of the World of Darkness is that 1 point of Vitae, Mana, Glamour, etc. is definitely exactly equivalent to 1 mote of Creational Essence, and the fact that power points are both accrued and spent in such smaller numbers in the modern world (but also to much more relatively efficient effects, e.g. it only costing 1 Vitae rather than 5 or 10 motes and maybe some Willpower to produce an agg damage attack) demonstrates the way that various supernatural beings have evolved to survive in a much more magic-scarce environment.
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Mar 14, 2022 21:00
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I have *got* to share this... So, the V5 game that I'm playing in is getting off the ground. It's specifically set in contemporary Los Angeles and follows on to the previous v20 game I've talked about before that ranged from the late 1940s to early 1980s. The cotorie went from neonates trying to survive to ancillae that started the Free States early, fighting off both the Camarilla and the Technocrats before they realized that it was hopeless and just destroying the city. Jodi Blake the Mage NPC was involved. Well, our ST made some custom Loresheets for the game. And here's one of them. quote:New Coke
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Mar 15, 2022 13:46
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citybeatnik posted:I have *got* to share this... Hahaha this is amazing. Loresheets are one of the best things in 5th edition, they're so good. Up to you guys, but I made a Loresheet collection specifically for LA that you may be able to adapt, I dunno how many of the Bloodlines NPCs you even have floating around, and I'd guess you're not following LA by Night at all, but hey, it's free if you want, so feel free to reskin it. https://www.storytellersvault.com/m/product/385930
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Mar 15, 2022 13:55
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citybeatnik posted:I have *got* to share this...  tell your ST that loving rules lol.
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Mar 15, 2022 14:54
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joylessdivision posted:
I'll pass that along! This is a group I've been playing with ever since I first clicked the "yeah sure I'm 18+" on the New Bremen account creation page as a high school sophomore. Two of them were vampire STs on there.
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Mar 15, 2022 15:01
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citybeatnik posted:Well, our ST made some custom Loresheets for the game. And here's one of them.  that's really good!(Eagerly awaiting what the gently caress was OK Soda now)
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Mar 15, 2022 15:02
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Does the ST who's running this have a good amount of experience already? Like it's very funny but I worry about things getting out of control in terms of chronicle complexity when the Loresheet is for you being a vampire and then incentivizes you to fight both Wyrm-tainted Garou AND mages.
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Mar 15, 2022 15:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:I've been wanting a "blue book" nWoD Aliens since 2003 lol. Gotta wonder which would be more interesting 1. a game where you're a survivor of an abduction and the way your mind has been changed is related to whatever the purpose behind your abduction was. It'd be similar to deviant and changeling but with emphasis on being the victim of a galactic plot you can never possibly understand your purpose in, so like being a sleeper agent who isn't sure what purpose their abduction was supposed to serve, and the alienation from society of now that you carry knowledge of the stars and that nobody will ever believe you except fellow abductees. 2. Playing as the aliens who have to perform all kinds of stealthy hit and runs on earth in order to achieve some complex goal with an emphasis on how you handle the task of prepping earth to be brought into a larger galactic society as a colony. 3. Just Men in Black and/or X-COM.
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Mar 15, 2022 15:18
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FirstAidKite posted:Gotta wonder which would be more interesting I'll buy all there.
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Mar 15, 2022 15:48
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Arivia posted:Does the ST who's running this have a good amount of experience already? Like it's very funny but I worry about things getting out of control in terms of chronicle complexity when the Loresheet is for you being a vampire and then incentivizes you to fight both Wyrm-tainted Garou AND mages. The group's made up of people that have been playing together off and on since 2000. Like I said before, the guy STing it now was an ST for New Bremen the online chat that White Wolf moderated. The guy that ran the chronicle that led into this one was also an ST on there, and I was his Assistant ST for a while. Both the Technocrats and Pentex played a major role in the Hollywoodland game. As did Walt Disney, Hugh Hephner, Capital Records, and Woodstock. This is the same game where my Malkavian kickstarted the Satanic Panic, laid the groundwork for the 1990s swing revival which later contributed to the destruction of the Vienna Chantry, and drove off in the Weinermobile to do pirate radio at the end. poo poo got buck wild but it was also a two+ year long game.
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Mar 15, 2022 16:13
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drat, I wish I could find an ST like that. I've been coming up empty trying to find WoD gamers in my area. The guy running the local gaming store literally told me it was a dead system and no one on that Discord had any interest. I'm going to have to find an online community or try and convince my D&D gamers to give me a chance, but I'm not going to be a good ST right now because I'm only just getting back in.
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Mar 15, 2022 16:43
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Anonymous Zebra posted:drat, I wish I could find an ST like that. I've been coming up empty trying to find WoD gamers in my area. The guy running the local gaming store literally told me it was a dead system and no one on that Discord had any interest. I'm going to have to find an online community or try and convince my D&D gamers to give me a chance, but I'm not going to be a good ST right now because I'm only just getting back in. I don't know quite what your DnD group is like but tbh I think being a good GM is less about experience/system mastery than it is about attitude and grace. Which is not unteachable. I recommend this always - read the MC chapter from Apocalypse World. Very little of that chapter is system specific, instead it's advice for how to facilitate an RPG group in general, and gives good tricks for overcoming roadblocks that GMs frequently encounter. "Disclaim decision-making" is bluntly the most powerful and useful tool I've ever gotten as a GM, learning to get comfortable with that tool has been by far and away the biggest difference between me being a shameful GM and an OK one. And of course some of the system specific stuff applies pretty readily to at least CoD - CoD moves pretty much always have a description of what happens on dramatic/failure/success/exceptional, which is ammo for the GM.
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Mar 15, 2022 17:07
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