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Siivola posted:Funny how everybody keeps writing down solutions that are not this in their rulebooks. Nobody has ever once accused a world of darkness rulebook of being good.
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Jun 26, 2022 08:39
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Giving everyone the same amount of XP just works. It's less bookkeeping, accepts that players don't all have equal time, energy, ideas and opportunities for personal contributions and side things, removes the perverse incentive to hog the spotlight to get more XP, allows for more flexibility overall and even keeps a level of elusive balance. Punitive and adversarial DMing doesn't work, and has never worked.
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Jun 26, 2022 10:07
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My erstwhile New York game I was playing in used Discipline exp before it folded. Was actually a good system: - Everyone got a baseline 2 and 1 of regular exp and discipline exp per session - Good RP or pulling off something cool would net bonus exp for EVERYONE, regardless of who did it - If the bonus exp was accomplished via mundane means and not using disciplines, we got discipline exp - If we got it via judicious discipline use, it was regular exp Worked out well even though it was counter intuitive from the "use thing to make it better" because it stressed using varied approaches and not just relying on, say, Dominate constantly. The exp for EVERYONE was nice because no one fell behind but also it incentivized doing cool poo poo and trying to set each other up for team poo poo since it was a group effort for group gain. Worked well for a game of plucky weirdos running an Elysium in the neutral area between Sabbat and Cam controlled areas of NYC. Edit: also regular exp could be used to get Rituals. Discipline exp was basically the only way to raise disciplines.
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Jun 26, 2022 12:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Punitive and adversarial DMing doesn't work, and has never worked. it doesn't work if your goal is 'everyone enjoys the game' but it does work if your goal is 'dm gets to have a little power trip'
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Jun 26, 2022 12:52
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Thea Bell? Theo's adopted daughter? (And also Willa Holland's name on Arrow, which is a neat coincidence if so.)
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Jun 26, 2022 13:19
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Dawgstar posted:Thea Bell? Theo's adopted daughter? (And also Willa Holland's name on Arrow, which is a neat coincidence if so.) No relation to Theo as far as I know, the reference to her character on Arrow was intentional from the guy, though.
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Jun 26, 2022 13:23
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thatbastardken posted:it doesn't work if your goal is 'everyone enjoys the game' but it does work if your goal is 'dm gets to have a little power trip' It's so weird that it's treated as the default. Adversarial gaming can be good fun! People still like chess and warhammer and Overwatch. The thing is that with adversarial GMing is that the GM is explicitly above the rules. They're the ref. Who wants to fight the ref? There's a sort of meta-rules that the GM is bound by previous commitments so the adversarial game is the players trying to catch the GM making rules commitments that the GM comes to regret, like in a story about the old fae. But like...IDK feels bd to just beat every game on the planet into that shape.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:13
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I will say that this conversation has me reevaluating my “no exp if you don’t show up” policy. It doesn’t really work anyway.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:44
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Speaking of binding people like old fae...I had a question about Hunter 2e breaking points and Code violations. The Code section of the book is very vague, but a guy on Reddit described something that seemed interesting to me. The way he described it, a hunter could avoid a breaking point roll by adding a line to their "Code" that would then bind their future behavior and how they could respond to similar situations. The example he gave was a hunter encountering a human who was reprehensibly helping a monster for some reason. The hunter responds by killing that human, but killing a person usually triggers a breaking point roll. To avoid this the hunter adds a line to their code that says: "Humans that help monsters deserve to die." So, now their code allows them to kill humans that help monsters, BUT if they then encounter a human that helps monsters and DON'T kill them, then they've committed a Code Violation and have to make a breaking point roll. The idea behind it is that the hunter is making excuses and moral concessions to keep on the Vigil, but if they then fail to kill that second human then they are forced to confront the idea that they killed the first one not because of the Vigil, but because they WANTED to kill them (forcing a breaking point). I personally think this idea seems pretty cool, but I don't actually see it anywhere in the text of the book. Did they just make that up whole cloth, or did I miss it from the book?
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Jun 26, 2022 20:14
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I think that's from 1e, and was kinda a patch to have Morailtiy exist but not have Hunters fall down the ladder incredibly fast from just doing normal hunting things. 2e uses Integrity instead.
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Jun 26, 2022 20:36
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Zereth posted:I think that's from 1e, and was kinda a patch to have Morailtiy exist but not have Hunters fall down the ladder incredibly fast from just doing normal hunting things. 2e uses Integrity instead. 2e tells you up front that it uses Integrity instead, but then you actually read the rules and you realize they wrote something more like 1e Morality or 2e Wisdom and mostly unlike 2e Integrity, with a list of situations and actions that always cause breaking points, but gave it the same name as non-hunter Integrity anyway. 2e also sections off the ability to replace breaking points to tier two and three hunters. You get to replace one breaking point (and there are breaking points that say they can be replaced and breaking points that say they cannot), and the replacement tenet has to reflect the motives and biases of your compact or conspiracy. I'm not a fan.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:07
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Berkshire Hunts posted:cptn_dr how did your PC cabal get together? Just apprenticed under the same mage? Yeah, that's right. They all Awakened at about the same time, and all gravitated towards the Free Council. And, speaking of the Free Council... The next session begins with something every player loves -- a long meeting with a dozen NPCs. I won’t list all of the NPCs because that’d be a long boring list, but I’ll mention them when they’re important. But before the entire Free Council crams themselves into a rented community hall in Greenlane, Rose pulls Equinox aside and gives them some good and bad news. The good news is that Mal has Awakened, but the bad news is that it was a pretty traumatic Mastigos awakening and they're not handling it super well. She asks if Mal can go stay with the cabal for a couple of days. A cabal-wide Older Sibling instinct immediately kicks in, and they agree. By this time, everyone has arrived, so Equinox take their seats (and Mal comes to sit with them) while Rose gets the Assembly under way. This is the first time the Free Council Assembly has got together since the PCs have Awakened. The first item of business, as always, is the Signalmen’s regular proposal that the Assembly secede from the Southern Cross Consilium and take up a war footing against the Seers. The Signalmen are a cabal of hardliners who never really got over being ordered by the Consilium to stop fighting the old war, and resent that they have to keep their heads down. Most of the Assembly just sort of rolls their eyes and votes against it, but Fortune likes the cut of the Signalmen’s jib, so votes Aye along with them for the hell of it. With that out of the way, the rest of the Assembly can get on with business. All the Cabals have a chat about what sort of stuff they’re working on, which was a very non-subtle way of showing the new Mage players the sorts of things that Mages spend their time doing. Before long, everyone’s said their piece (people are generally impressed by Equinox’s success in finding the old Dawn Watch sanctum and fascinated by the Shambling Bee Ghost) and everyone cracks open some beer and gets down to socialising. Fortune hangs out with the Signalmen for a little while. Nightingale (Mastigos) explains that they don’t really trust the Southern Cross to do the right thing by the Free Council. “Symbols are important, and there are only four stars in the Southern Cross. What does that tell you about how they see us?” Fortune isn’t convinced, but keeps chatting anyway. The Signalmen leave before too much longer, because they’re not really comfortable in the company of so many other people. Eventually things wind down, and the cabal (and Mal) head back to Wellington. Mal is no longer the happy-go-lucky teenage dork the cabal remembers. They’re moody and withdrawn, jumpy, and wracked by nightmares filled with twisting labyrinths and swarms of flies. The cabal goes to great efforts to make Mal feel as welcome as possible, and Ariadne (whose Awakening was also pretty rough) does what she can to help Mal through the worst of it. After about a week, Mal goes back to Rose, feeling a little more like their normal self. Over the next couple of weeks, Equinox set out to really improve the resonance of their territory, trying to shift the symbolism of the area to something that’s much less grim and hopeless. Heliotrope starts figuring out the dynamics of the local spirit ecology, and Iosefka does what they can to help any local ghosts move on to what comes next. While he’s out skulking, Fortune starts spotting people whose fates seem to have been pretty shoddily messed with. It’s not always negative, but it’s amateurish and glaringly obvious that something’s been done to them. Likewise, someone who Ariadne follows on Instagram posts about having a really extreme lucky streak, and one of her simps complains endlessly on her posts about how he thinks he’s been cursed. They realise that the one thing all these people have in common -- other than having had their fates messed with -- is that they all live in a reasonably new apartment building on the outskirts of the suburb. They head off to investigate. When they reach the apartment, everyone cracks out the ol’ wizard eyes and starts scrutinising the place. As expected, the whorls of fate around the building are proper hosed up. Iosefka notices there’s a reasonably fresh ghost hanging around near the vehicle entrance, so they go and talk to it. Their conversation reveals that he died in a very improbable car accident after he got in an altercation with someone in the garage. Having got all the information they need from the ghost, Iosefka releases it from its anchor and sends him off in the direction of the nearest Avernian Gate to pass on to the Underworld. Iosefka has a couple of dots in Forces as well as Death/Matter, and gets the cabal through the front doors without needing a card or a code. Through a combination of Mage Sight and casual hallway conversations, they try to track down the source of the hosed up fates. Fortune pretends to be working for a telecommunications infrastructure company and starts knocking on doors as an excuse to use fate sight on as many people as possible. He casts “Serendipity” and the cabal takes the elevator straight to the 9th floor. Before long, they knock on a door and it swings open to reveal Ricardo, a skinny 30-something dude who scowls at being disturbed. Annoyed at being bothered in his home, he tells Fortune to piss off, then casts a low-level Fate spell at him, trying to give him bad luck as a punishment for daring to interrupt his important goings on. Fortune counterspells it, and Ricardo is very unpleasantly surprised. Those of you who’ve read Nameless and Accursed will recognise Ricardo as the lovely Acanthus who Awakened without anyone noticing, and has decided that he’s now the god of his apartment building, doling out blessings and curses as his whims dictate. A brief scuffle ensues, but it turns out that a self-taught Acanthus with delusions of grandeur isn’t much match for four competent Mages, even if they’re still only gnosis 2. And it ESPECIALLY doesn’t go well if you’re wracked by paradox conditions because you’ve got no idea how the Abyss works. Ricardo is very put out at learning that not only is he not a god, he’s not even the only person in the world with magic. Fortune scrutinises Ricardo closely, and learns that he’s got a pretty heavy doom bearing down quite quickly -- if he doesn’t get sorted out soon, he’s going to get possessed by the Abyss and bring something horrifying into the world. Iosefka checks his soul out using their Eye, and confirms that his soul is riddled with paradox. Ricardo refuses to listen, no matter how hard they try to talk him around. No amount of explaining can convince him that he doesn’t actually have the right to play god and casually mutilate the destinies of his neighbours. They push too hard, and Ricardo lashes out, causing paradox to start spilling across into reality. Heliotrope uses life magic to knock him out, buying them some time. The cabal decides that they don’t really want to just kill a defenseless unconscious dude, no matter how awful he is, but, actually, this is probably still way above their paygrade. They give Wakefield (the Herald) a call, and he gives them a number they can call to get in touch with the Guardians of the Veil. They ring the number, and a couple of minutes later a portal opens up and out steps a young woman wearing a black suit, who introduces herself as Raine. They quickly explain the situation to Raine, who thanks them for calling her in. She quickly casts a couple of spells, confirms that they definitely did the right thing by calling her, and black-bags Ricardo. Another portal opens, and a mask-wearing Guardian steps through, grabs Ricardo, and takes him away. Raine thanks them again, and prepares to leave. Iosefka, who is very taken by Raine, assures her that it was their pleasure and that it was a pleasure to meet her. Everyone returns home, and Equinox discuss whether it was a lovely thing to do to call the wizard cops or not, and all agree that it’s probably best to not think too hard about what’s likely to happen to him. But it turns out that just because you’re now a wizard with vast cosmic power at your fingertips, it’s not actually easy to kill someone in cold blood. I have to admit I wasn't expecting them to just call the cops, so to speak, but I actually think it's a good sign that, in a game with an established society that they PCs are a part of, they actually engage with those structures. Last session they made some friends in the Mysterium, and now this time they met a Guardian. I was really happy that, even this early in the campaign, they were starting to build connections across the Consilium. One of the arcs I'm going for is a rebuilding of the bridges between the different Orders, and they were getting that underway without too much prompting from me, which is very gratifying. Next time: Someone tries to kill the cabal in cold blood! cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Jun 27, 2022 |
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Jun 27, 2022 11:40
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I mostly lurk here, but I’ll share the VtM campaign I’ve been running for my friends online since January. It’s set in New York in 2018 (I was very, very inspired by Coteries & Shadows). None of us has played VtM before, but most of us are at least vaguely familiar with the setting through video games. I had ran the two quickstart stories (Beast(s) and The In-Crowd) to get the players familiar with the setting, the rules and the themes. I should also note that we’re all Finns, so don’t be confused if it’s not the most accurate depiction of the Big Apple. Our coterie consists of three young fledglings, Camarilla associated but not actual members yet, with no more than several years of unlife behind them. Benedict Montresor, Ventrue, old school Republican from Louisiana, who still maintains some GOP connections. Connected to Fiorenza Saviona and sired by the local Ventrue Clan Whip, still very much in the game of politics. Very good at making connections and talking through problems, mostly useless in any other situation. Thomas Kang, Tremere, born in Hong Kong, used to work as a doctor for the local triads involved in organ trafficking. After Embrace relocated to NYC, and still works for the triad, but also works for Circulatory System. Considers disobedience to be dishonour, so I as a GM enjoy a character who is inclined to obey everything any NPC with any authority tells him to do. Augustus Stolze, Banu Haqim, member of the Amish Community, had come to New York to reconnect with his son, who had left the community previously. Unfortunately he was Embraced just as he had arrived, and his sire disappeared. Sheriff Qadir al-Asmai taught him the basics of unlife before ditching him onto the other two characters to take care of Augustus. Player with the least knowledge of the setting, so it’s suitable to play a character with minimal knowledge of the setting. We started with Power Prey from Let the Streets Run Red, so spoilers for that I guess. The following covers three sessions of playtime, so apologies for the length. The night started with touchstones being harassed and Benedict’s sire assigning the coterie to take care of a boon owed to someone else. The boon in question was owed to one Walter Nash, a Ventrue talking like a 1920’s gangster. He was also a pariah to the larger kindred community of NYC, Nash explains it’s due to him opposing the current Prince decades ago, but it’s mostly because he’s a creep . Nash had become the victim of blackmailing and wanted the coterie to make his blackmailer disappear. He had fed on a young girl (Nash claims she looked a lot older) at a bar called Honored Drinks and this incident had been caught on film, and now the blackmailers wanted Nash to confess everything vampires had ever done and name all the names. Which would be bad for the Masquerade as well as Nash’s continued existence. After sharing all the details, Nash decided that now that they had bonded over troubles they should bond more by hunting together, and invited the coterie to a college dorm party. All the player characters felt out of place at the party, being way too old to be students. Nash on the other hand was very much in his element, constantly surrounded by young women. Then at some point the coterie lost sight of Nash, before he returned, bloated and wiping blood from his mouth, informing the coterie that it was time to leave. The players hadn’t quite picked up on all the red flags, so I had Thomas roll medicine to realize that Nash had drunk way too much for it to be safe for the victim. So Thomas took a quick detour to find a young woman, unconscious and in desperate need of medical aid. Taking her to a hospital felt like a possible Masquerade breach, so Thomas gave her plenty of vitae to help her recover. (I decided that since this was Tremere blood, she would recover without issues, but wouldn’t be bloodbound or a ghoul. Possibly feel some sort of connection to Thomas when they meet again, but that hasn’t happened yet.) Thomas’ touchstone, Horatio, a friend and a triad boss, had been threatened with vague blackmail, by someone who clearly had very little idea of the line of work he or Thomas were in, but with too much information about Thomas’ vampiric nature. Horatio had also been pushed down and landed awkwardly breaking his wrist. Horatio gave a description of a nervous teenage girl, and asked Thomas to keep this downlow since it wouldn’t be good for his gangster image to get his hand broken by a tiny teenager. Augustus received a distressed call from his son and touchstone, who had been assaulted and threatened in the basement of his apartment building. The assaulter had also threatened to reveal Augustus’ vampiric nature to the world. Later investigation of the crime scene found a laminated ID card, revealing the culprit to be a Steve Jensen from Darkhour Security, and a business card for a website called verumdetenebris.com (The book doesn’t tell you this, but it means truth from darkness, I hadn’t realised one of the player characters knew latin so I had to quickly refresh my high school latin studies) The coterie now had three clues to begin investigating. - Honored Drinks Bar on Coney Island, where Nash had been filmed - Darkhour Security, where one of the touchstones’ attacker worked - verumdetenebris.com, also possibly linked to the attack - (They also could have tried to learn more about Walter Nash, but like I said, hadn’t quite picked up on all the red flags. Also since it’s a new campaign, there’s a certain element of doing what’s told without questions, which they’ll eventually unlearn) Researching the website brought up a fancy geocities page with all your favorite spinning gifs, dedicated to fringe conspiracy theories and most of the posts by just one user. Darkhour Security’s website seemed to use the same template. Unfortunately, none of the characters is particularly skilled at technology, so trailing the internet trail had to be outsourced to the local information master Kaiser (yes, that Kaiser from CoNY and SoNY). The players hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that the people blackmailing Walter Nash and the people blackmailing them through their touchstones might be connected or the same people, so the choice of where to next was based on geographical convenience. The first stop was a nondescript warehouse in the Bronx, which supposedly was the location of Darkhour Security. Approaching the warehouse, they saw three goons in a car, spying on them. The coterie decided to investigate them and two of the goons got out of the car and beat the coterie with baseball bats. These guys were from Darkhour Security, but didn’t believe in vampires, at least until it became obvious that they were unable to harm their opponents, at which point they jumped back in their car and bailed, scared but mostly unharmed. The Darkhour Security office had very clearly been empty until recently, and the interior had only the barest of furniture: one table, one computer, a few chairs and a minifridge. There were also surveillance notes on the touchstones who had been assaulted, as well as printed emails from someone called Redwood, who had hired the security company for some PI work. Redwood was clearly aware that the players were vampires, was paying good money, and disappointed that the touchstones had come to harm, warning that the player characters were on their way. They also found a jacket with the logo of Honored Drinks Bar. They were then ambushed by the fourth member of Darkhour security, one Steve Jensen, the only one who believed Redwood’s ramblings about vampires. Jensen attacked with a teargas grenade, which did nothing since vampires don’t need to breathe, and was quickly subdued. He was interrogated, and after learning some more details and flavor, Augustus drained him. Now Augustus’ conviction is to never kill, but this was in revenge against someone who had harmed his touchstone, so the number of stains was reduced. Next up was the Honored Drinks Bar on Coney Island. Some domination was required to get past the bouncers and into this apartment-turned-heavy metal bar. The place was full of tough looking folks proudly wearing patches with a sword through a skull, and everyone was armed. Knives, handguns… Even some stakes. Turns out this bar was the favored drinking hole of a group of hunters, called the Night’s Cross. And none of the locals were feeling like talking to some unknown faces. They were pointed towards Josephine Habermann, owner of the bar and leader of the group. Unfortunately she was surrounded by fans and the first challenge was getting her attention. Thomas, having the obvious predator flaw, was guided to stay away from this situation. Benedict took the lead and just randomly blurted “Hey, my Amish friend here knows some really cool occult stories, you should listen to them!” Unbeknownst to the other players, Augustus actually did have some points in occult and could tell interesting anecdotes for as long as required. At first Habermann didn’t seem to know anything about Nash or any attack around here, but after providing some details she suddenly remembers that Nash used to come here, and attacked a girl nearby, before clouding Habermann’s memory. She’s about to organize a vampire hunt, when the players get galaxy brains. Deciding that this is a risk to the Masquerade and that the coterie needs to fix it, Benedict dominates Habermann, ordering her to follow them to an alley. Unfortunately I can’t remember what they told the other hunters, to explain why their leader is blankly following these three strangers outside, but many successes were rolled and no one stopped them. Then things dramatically stopped going according to plan. Having been told to follow to “an alley” Habermann stops at the nearest corner, and having previously been dominated by Nash, figures out immediately what’s going on. Then she pulled out her pistol which they had previously failed to spot, and started praying for divine vengeance. At this point both the characters and the players learned that True Faith is a thing, and couldn’t do anything except get shot at point blank range, before fleeing. They were mostly uninjured, except Benedict who took most of the hits and was hindered. I loved the exclamation of “The WHAT?!” as a bunch of dice with the words True Faith appeared in the game log. After this, Kaiser’s ghoul approached and gave the coterie a folder containing information on Redwood online, as well as informing the coterie that they now own a minor boon to Kaiser. The folder contained flavor about a datamining company he had founded and how little information there is online about him, description of his family (wife, 15yo daughter and 13yo son), and most importantly, his address. And shortly thereafter they received an untraceable and distorted call from Redwood, letting the coterie know that he too had been busy working, and taken something important from them. So, let’s move onto the finale! Just as they enter Redwood's house, they get ambushed by the Night’s Cross hunters! This was a pretty rough fight, even though I decided that because the players had antagonized them earlier, the hunters wouldn’t patiently wait for the most opportune moment but strike as soon as they saw the player characters. Some hunters assumed that stakes and holy symbols would be suitable weapons and were dealt with easily, but other trusted good ol’ assault rifles and caused a lot more damage. Two out of three characters ended up with just one superficial damage away from torpor. The players believe that this is the Second Inquisition. I’m eager to see how they’ll react when they encounter actual government agents. Searching the house, they learn about Redwood and figure out what’s going on. Redwood is a conspiracy buff and liked to hang out with vampire hunters, to learn more. Nash also liked to hang out with hunters, excited by the danger and feeling of superiority. Eventually Nash meets Redwood, and more importantly, his daughter, who he then proceeds to groom and drain so much blood that the daughter ends up in a coma. Redwood figures out what happened, and starts to blackmail Nash and eventually other Kindred. Also Redwood kidnapped a player’s touchstone, who manages to get stabbed before the coterie stops Redwood. Who at this point is completely broken and ready to die. I gave the players plenty of time to think what they would do with Redwood and his family. I also allowed them to roll some politics rolls to be given basically all the choices (though not the consequences). Their choice would have plenty of consequences down the line, and I wanted them to really think about it and make an educated decision. Basically their options were as follows: - Killing Redwood, the easiest choice, just requiring them to commit murder and live with the stains - Ghouling Redwood, gaining his resources but having to take resposibility of him (Redwood would have not been a loyal ghoul) - Delivering Redwood to the Prince (this would have led to a bloodhunt being called on Nash for breaking the masquerade) - And finally delivering Redwood to Nash, which the players did. Nash then gave the characters a Major Boon and as soon as they had left, murdered Redwood. Didn’t even bother to hide the body. And in the epilogue, I informed the players that Redwood had set up a dead man’s switch which released all the blackmail material he had on his website. Now the good thing is that it’s a fringe website barely seen by anybody. The downside is that it’s very likely that whoever sees it knows exactly what to do with the information. Other consequences I didn’t mention to the players. Redwood’s surviving wife and son will start hunter training and will return eventually. Also, the mortal side of the investigation has been moved from the local police to the FBI, specifically the Special Affairs Division. One of the characters is a known blankbody and Redwood’s home surveillance system has just provided some very juicy evidence. Finally, Nash is trying to get back to Kindred society and as part of his redemption tour, he is very vocal about the coterie’s support. Other kindred will judge the coterie for this association. And that was an abridged retelling of our run of Power Prey. I felt it was a neat little story for my needs, mainly I don’t know how to start a campaign. It gave plenty of interesting situations and future plot hooks. I also thought it was great for starting a new campaign, since its themes include a reversed prey-predator relationship and the dangers of not knowing enough of what you’re up against. The next recap will be shorter and cover just one session, this one covered three!
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Jun 27, 2022 18:32
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Lord Hypnostache posted:The next recap will be shorter and cover just one session, this one covered three! This ruled and you should make them as long as you want, because this campaign sounds rad and fun. Glad your players are enjoying it! Sounds like you're playing online and live? Discord, Roll20, Foundry?
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Jun 27, 2022 20:06
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Jun 28, 2022 01:05
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I will believe it when it has been released. Until then it is a trickster creature created by the old man to torture those that know that all is not as it seems in the world.
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Jun 28, 2022 01:15
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I repeat,
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Jun 28, 2022 01:29
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Jhet posted:I will believe it when it has been released. Until then it is a trickster creature created by the old man to torture those that know that all is not as it seems in the world. I handed in some revisions on this a few months ago so I can confirm it's in active development.
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Jun 28, 2022 01:50
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Fuzz posted:This ruled and you should make them as long as you want, because this campaign sounds rad and fun. Glad your players are enjoying it! We're using Discord for talking, music bot, some flavor handouts and communication between games, Roll20 for everything else. Oh and kumu.io for the relationship map.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:02
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Jhet posted:I will believe it when it has been released. Until then it is a trickster creature created by the old man to torture those that know that all is not as it seems in the world. I know Kith and Kin, which is the book outstanding for Lost, had to get a new developer to finish things along so God only knows what happened to this book.
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Jun 28, 2022 19:19
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Dawgstar posted:I know Kith and Kin, which is the book outstanding for Lost, had to get a new developer to finish things along so God only knows what happened to this book. Yeah, I don’t blame the developer person for these, or the writers really either. If the decision makers wanted it to have been done, they would have done something to push it down the pipe sooner than half a decade past expected. If there’s no one at the top prioritizing the books that have been promised, then they just won’t ever get done. It’s the decision maker that gets all the other pieces rolling.
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Jun 28, 2022 22:00
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Our adventures in New York continue. We had a period of three sessions, where a different player had to skip and we got to experience how the group dynamic changes when certain characters are absent. Augustus, the Amish Banu Haqim, had to skip (in-universe he was chilling with sheriff Qadir al-Asmai, learning the ropes). So we had a small session studying some aspects of Benedict, the GOP Ventrue, and Thomas, the Triad Tremere, backstories. Benedict was asked to visit his sire, Leonard Tarasov, the Clan Whip of Ventrue. Benedict works for him as a glorified messenger and the two had a small discussion on the nature of power and ambition. But Leonard also had an actual issue he wanted to bring to Benedict’s attention. There was a possibility that Benedict had a problem, which meant that Leonard had a problem. After the previous session, Leonard had been pulling strings and calling favors to make sure that police investigation into the Redwood case wouldn’t find anything. After all, there were several dead hunters at Redwood’s house (some nigh unrecognizable due to messy critical in melee) and Redwood himself had also been found dead. Surprisingly, Leonard had found out that the NYPD was no longer investigating the case. Now why would that be? Benedict’s player was quite stumped by this, so a successful politics roll revealed that the most likely causes were that someone else had shut down the investigation (if so, who?) or that the investigation had been transferred to a federal agency. Clearly someone was following the coterie’s trail. Leonard advised caution and also asked a personal favor. Should Fiorenza Savona be in contact with Benedict, his sire Leonard would like to. In Benedict’s backstory, we decided that he personally knew and had impressed Fiorenza Savona while still mortal, and had been sired by Leonard in an attempt to gain influence on Fiorenza. Benedict is quite aware that he is a pawn between those two, but doesn’t know what their plans are. Meanwhile, Thomas was visiting his touchstone Horatio in the hospital. In the previous adventure Horatio had had his wrist broken and gotten stabbed in the gut, so he was not feeling too well. On the way to his friend, Thomas happened to pass by a room where a young student was sleeping. This was the very same young woman who Walter Nash had assaulted and Thomas had saved. She seemed to be recovering just fine, and Thomas decided to leave her alone. Horatio on the other hand was not just fine. Not only the physical injuries, but he had heard a rumor that one of his underlings was planning something. Edison, a capable second-in-command with too much ambition and not enough understanding of how things work, was planning a heist. The target was a van, which Edison believed contained something valuable for the Russian Mafia, actually belonged to Circulatory System. This was an issue. Not only would this risk gang warfare between the Russian and Chinese mafias, it would disrupt the blood infrastructure of the city. Thomas and Benedict met up and started searching for ways to stop Edison’s plans. They learned the route the van was taking, what the van looked like and a vague timetable, but couldn’t find Edison or his crew of loyal goons. They did receive a tip, that they should pay a visit to a Kindred both involved in Circulatory System’s blood trade and connected to the Russian mafia: Ivan Kuthka, the Caitiff Primogen. I explained this concept with a clumsy metaphor, that what if the government had a minister who no one voted for, represented no political parties, and hangs around criminals, that’s probably someone powerful. The players took a cab to Little Odessa, but just as they reached the outskirts, their cab was stopped by Ivan Kuthka himself. Ivan played up to the stereotype of a Russian gopnik, with a thick accent, prison tattoos, Adidas tracksuit, the whole shebang. He gave the cab driver a stack of cash and told them to leave, this was now Ivan’s car. Then, Ivan took the players for a drive and informed them Little Odessa was home to several independent Kindred who don’t like outsiders, probably shouldn’t enter uninvited. The characters informed Ivan of Edison’s plan to rob the van. Ivan was not surprised nor concerned. In fact, he already knew of the plan. Some Kindred he hadn’t recognised had told him that the coterie was going to rob him (“Some young fledgling who introduced themselves by listing their ancestors all the way to Czar’s time, so probably Ventrue”). Ivan has no reason to trust the unknown kindred, nor has he any reason to trust the coterie. To him, it all sounds like some Ventrue pissing contest, and he does not care. But he gives the coterie a chance to prove themselves. They shall meet at JFK Airport and transport the van together. Now who is this mysterious Ventrue who had spoken to Ivan earlier? Thomas’ player assumes it must have been Walter Nash, since he is a Ventrue and a piece of poo poo (I mean, true, but Nash likes the coterie). Benedict’s player has an idea, but doesn’t share it out loud. He has the enemy flaw, and created a rival Ventrue of a similar age, Valerie Bachman. It was she who spoke to Ivan. Also a fun twist, Benedict’s player had miscalculated how powerful an enemy should be based on the dots taken, but instead of correcting him on this, I decided that Valerie is a much older and stronger Kindred (probably not even Ventrue) pretending to be a younger vampire. The coterie meets Ivan at JFK airport. Thomas and Benedict have stocked up, they’re carrying assault rifles and wearing kevlar vests. Ivan is basically shirtless and laughs at the overdressed fledglings. They start driving and are eventually ambushed by Edison and his three goons, all armed with handguns. They demand that the van is handed over. While Thomas and Benedict are considering their options, wondering if the situation could be solved with violence, Ivan has stepped out of the vehicle and with a combination of Celerity and Potence, moves faster than eye can follow and punches the opposing gangsters into red mist. Ivan tells the players to take care of the bodies and drives off. Thomas further mutilates the corpses to send a clear message to anyone else in the Triad getting big ideas, and takes the bodies to base so that all gangers see them. We ended the session there and the players were very intrigued how violent and brutal things became immediately when Augustus and his vow of never killing weren’t there to keep the coterie in check.
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Jun 29, 2022 16:29
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Question for the lore inclined-I'm tinkering with some setting stuff for an upcoming game and I'm coming up fuzzy on something from Cults of the Blood Gods. As I understand it, Post Family Reunion, newly Embraced Samedi, Cappicodians, Harbingers, etc. get the traditional Giovanni clan weakness and can pass for human, but the ones Embraced before still look like various stages of corpses. Is this understanding right? Or did the existing Kindred of these bloodlines start looking human too? EDIT-Samedi, not Salubri. That's what I get for posting and dog walking at the same time. DantetheK9 fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jun 29, 2022 |
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Jun 29, 2022 22:55
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Salubri aren’t Hecata, I think.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:20
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I assume they meant Samedi. And new Banes are retroactive I think - all surviving Ravnos have the new one. Auggie dying did *something* weird, yadda yadda.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:47
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DantetheK9 posted:Question for the lore inclined-I'm tinkering with some setting stuff for an upcoming game and I'm coming up fuzzy on something from Cults of the Blood Gods. As I understand it, Post Family Reunion, newly Embraced Salubri, Cappicodians, Harbingers, etc. get the traditional Giovanni clan weakness and can pass for human, but the ones Embraced before still look like various stages of corpses. Salubri are their own thing, they're not part of the Hecata. As for the clan banes, depending on the bloodline you're playing, it's your call. Some still have old banes, others do not. There's ways to still basically end up the same as the old lore via specific Flaws and Loresheet abilities, so you have a choice to go that route if you like, but if you want to shift it slightly in another direction, that's fine too. There's no "wrong" way to make a Samedi, for example, it's flexible. The only major change they've done with any of those Bloodlines is moved away from pushing the name 'Nagaraja' and instead making it Gorgons, because Nag was a gross name to anyone from South Asia and extremely culturally tone deaf and racist.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:51
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So, they've kept it vague, then? Cool, I can work with that, thanks! (And yeah, posted edited. I meant Samedi and typed Salubri because I type real good)
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Jun 29, 2022 23:58
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Fuzz posted:
The Lamia are the Gorgons - they just call the Nagaraja Flesh-Eaters. I wasn't aware that their name was a slur though. Unless it's the fact that nagas are generally benevolent?
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Jun 30, 2022 00:41
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Fuzz posted:Nag was a gross name to anyone from South Asia and extremely culturally tone deaf and racist. whoa, i did not know this, thank you!
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Jun 30, 2022 00:43
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Add it to the list alongside Metis.
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Jun 30, 2022 00:52
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MonsieurChoc posted:Add it to the list alongside Metis. I mean I feel like anything in a 90's White Wolf book that isn't from (white) North America/Europe is probably going to be a smidgen (or a lot) racist/culturally insensitive.
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Jun 30, 2022 00:54
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https://twitter.com/Cptn_Dr/status/1486190677134548996?t=Ocs-YbHv2jsT22vi_gsv6A&s=19 I ran across this from an early Awakening book a little while back (plz don't doxx me for bad WoD opinions) and was pretty unimpressed. Turns out naming a cannibal cultist after an indigenous culture who are accused of being savage cannibals by racists is... Uh... Pretty racist. (I may have posted this here at the time, I can't recall, but I was reminded of it all over again and so wanted to share) Also "Maori", while a common one, is a misspelling, and it should properly be Māori or Maaori. They missed the macron in Dark Eras as well, and I think in Mummy 2E as well. cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 00:58
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citybeatnik posted:The Lamia are the Gorgons - they just call the Nagaraja Flesh-Eaters. I wasn't aware that their name was a slur though. Unless it's the fact that nagas are generally benevolent? You're right! That was my mistake, Flesh Eaters is what they're calling them now. And yeah, it's mainly based on the fact that the WW writers applied western and specifically Abrahamic/European meaning to the Naga/Nagarajah in Vedic mysticism, and completely misunderstood basically everything about them. In western mythos snakes are tied to both Lucifer and Norse and Greek mythology - in most cases they're dangerous, a sign of evil, often represent deceit and punishment for wrongdoing, and are generally maligned. In Vedic mythos they're very much the opposite - they're protectors of life, are wise and ancient, perceptive and able to see into people's hearts, and a symbol of perseverance. One of the most famous myths in Buddhism is all about how Buddha was meditating under a tree in the rain and a cobra spread its hood over his head to shield him from the rain because it sensed his wisdom. On top of that, when the British invaded India, they had a lot of trouble in the South and in Sri Lanka, where they didn't have large Muslim or Jewish populations to turn the Hindus against to divide and conquer everyone. One of the primary bullshit lines they fed the British public to justify their wars and massacres of the Tamil and Telugu people was to claim they were cannibals and snake devil worshippers, thus it was "morally appropriate" to brutally pacify them and establish "godly" British rule. The bloodline basically dredges up all of that while also spitting on the symbology of ancient religious traditions of what has generally been an oppressed ethnic group for the last 300 years. White Wolf for the win! Fuzz fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 01:04
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Whew, alright. Culturally ignorant/inconsiderate is at least better than "hey you know that name that's a slur against the Romani? Let's make a whole game about that."
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Jun 30, 2022 01:41
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citybeatnik posted:Whew, alright. Culturally ignorant/inconsiderate is at least better than "hey you know that name that's a slur against the Romani? Let's make a whole game about that." Yeah I never knew any of this, jeez. This thread is being useful and educational for once.
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Jun 30, 2022 01:48
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Kavak posted:Yeah I never knew any of this, jeez. This thread is being useful and educational for once. Ohhhhhh friend you have no idea. This https://i.imgur.com/WJyH6Gim.jpg is from a book released in 1992. It legit made me put the book down for 6 months before picking it back up to finish it. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3898332&userid=201952 Was the resulting review which shook out to "Eh some cool stuff but yeesh the racism" joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 02:38
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citybeatnik posted:Whew, alright. Culturally ignorant/inconsiderate is at least better than "hey you know that name that's a slur against the Romani? Let's make a whole game about that."
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Jun 30, 2022 03:23
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Who had Blood Purity as their power stat, don't forget! I did a  IRL, then I got up, picked the book up off the shelf and flipped through it and yep. You are absolutely correct that Blood Purity is a thing. 1994! 
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Jun 30, 2022 03:31
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To be clear I didn't know about the Nagaraja being super racist, I know way too much about the G-word book.
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Jun 30, 2022 03:33
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joylessdivision posted:I did a A set of new abilities is introduced for their relevance to a World of Darkness: G— game. They include fortune-telling-themed swindling and alcohol tolerance. Then there are magic powers from your bloodline, which include Truth of the Rom, the magical ability to lie. That Banishers NPC is hosed. The writeup for her cabalmate Kolufo is not much better: a dark-skinned mixed-race ex-"gangbanger" who's left the gang life and quit alcohol and drugs but whose featured quote refers to "getting hosed up" and "gang-banging [this bitch we found]." But ohhh he's talking about doing the evil cannibal banisher thing instead. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 03:49
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