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Previously I did a sort of very mini-review here and here of Contagion Chronicle. It's only about the main book. I don't think the players guide was even out at that point, but unless it's a revelation I doubt it would change my opinion.
That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 16:53
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That Old Tree posted:Previously I did a sort of very mini-review of Contagion Chronicle. It's only about the main book. I don't think the players guide was even out at that point, but unless it's a revelation I doubt it would change my opinion.
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Jul 25, 2022 16:58
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I just got both since they’re so cheap. Haven’t looked at the actual contagion chronicle yet but I skimmed the players guide and it seems like it’s worth $0.50 if you’re running a mage game and planning to use one or more of the other splats as an antagonist or gently caress about in the hedge or whatever. Not that any of the “how supernal magic interacts with splat X” is at all surprising or particularly difficult to come up with on your own.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:04
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Full WoD Superfriends games get bandied about a bit as a talking point in online spaces but I don't know anyone who's actually played one. A Mage, a Vampire, a Werewolf, and a Changeling all solving spooky mysteries together sounds neat
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Jul 25, 2022 17:39
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Froghammer posted:Full WoD Superfriends games get bandied about a bit as a talking point in online spaces but I don't know anyone who's actually played one. I'm putting this togeather in my head and it's gonna be the elevator pitch to my D&D group. Basically a Buffy the Vampire Slayer style world of darkness game. I'm gonna be selling mage pretty hard, but I know a few of my players would find tearing poo poo up as a wearwolf more appealing than esoteric research into the nature of reality.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:44
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Froghammer posted:Full WoD Superfriends games get bandied about a bit as a talking point in online spaces but I don't know anyone who's actually played one.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:49
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The game I'm in right now is two mages, a demon, a (very contagiously transmissible) deviant, a changeling, and a sublimatus pandoran. It HAS been very neat! Do you end up glossing over a lot of the splat-specific rules or is it not as hard as I'm imagining to keep those all straight?
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Jul 25, 2022 17:56
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Berkshire Hunts posted:Do you end up glossing over a lot of the splat-specific rules or is it not as hard as I'm imagining to keep those all straight? Yeah I'd like some insight into this. The Vampire 20th book has all of the different types of monsters stated up as "psudo-vampires" with vampire powers used to simulate the abilities of mages and werewolfs etc. I thought this might be the best approach to me as a new storyteller to these systems.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:01
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Um obviously please us me all about the Sublimatus Pandoran Is he an angry flesh blob
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Jul 25, 2022 18:13
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Berkshire Hunts posted:Do you end up glossing over a lot of the splat-specific rules or is it not as hard as I'm imagining to keep those all straight? Really the biggest outlier is the deviant (who I'm playing), and that's mostly been a combination of, that splat's rules hate if you aren't constantly pursuing at least one Conviction touchstone or defending one Loyalty touchstone (but my ST's done a great job tying enough hooks and yarnboard-strings into the plot as a whole that I'm almost always in pursuit or defense of something anyway), and also the instability rules are a hot loving mess that we mostly ignore in favor of just bumping up my xp costs from "4xp buys you a variation of <level of any open scar you mutated into>" to "4xp / new variation dot" which I feel is a more than fair trade-off, given my ST is also already having to do conspiracy rolls on the side AND keeping track of transmission of his deviancy (28d later style rage zombie power suite, with transmissibility modeled using the "one resistance trait roll requiring a single success with a 30 second onset" option for transmission). Which even then we minimize exposure because 1. my character doesn't know IC the full parameters of what makes him infectious and errs on the side of "wear PPE all the time" and 2. the good news about a mega-mixed-splat game is, very few untemplated mortals who could potentially get it (but he doesn't know that shhh). Froghammer posted:Um obviously please us me all about the Sublimatus Pandoran She also completely derailed pun intended our first, PCs-get-together session because she went to recharge off a subway's third rail and the ST extremely blew the "check to see if the power system can withstand this shock" roll the PtC rules recommend. Like "sigh heavily, tell the players I need like 20 minutes to figure out what we do with this" level blew it. But it's been fun! Chernobyl Peace Prize fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 18:25
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I think we actually had to make the sublimatus rules harsher on players because as-written they made being one too easy. Specifically, instead of electrical damage just freely refilling the pandoran's pyros and health bar, the sublimatus can heal via electricity like prometheans do but needs to spend 1 willpower to turn a point of electric bashing into a point of pyros, which is pretty onerous for a creature that doesn't actually have a virtue or vice. My favorite recent discovery in our near-future post-apocalyptic WoD game is that, for complicated setting reasons, the Forsaken had to switch from Luna to Helios, so they've got glowing yellow tattoos and Solar caste marks now.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:43
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Rutibex posted:Yeah I'd like some insight into this. The Vampire 20th book has all of the different types of monsters stated up as "psudo-vampires" with vampire powers used to simulate the abilities of mages and werewolfs etc. I thought this might be the best approach to me as a new storyteller to these systems. Ehhhhh, that's more for just using them as enemies. My understanding of how doing cross splat games (as pitched by Ascension 1e) is basically "Here are a couple of rules for how to translate X's power meter to Mage, or just use whatever works for you  " It's incredibly dumb and expects the ST to have a solid knowledge of each game and then expects you to figure out how to actually make the various fiddly bits of each splat play nice with each other. I'm sure it can be done, but I feel like either you'd have to work out some kind of blanket rule for everyone that simplified the fiddly bits or expect the players to have an ST level understanding of the splat they're playing so they can mange their own fiddly powers. I have a feeling NWOD/CoD by its design as more a toolbox game probably makes running a crossover easier than classic WoD did.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:49
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joylessdivision posted:I have a feeling NWOD/CoD by its design as more a toolbox game probably makes running a crossover easier than classic WoD did. Ferrinus posted:My favorite recent discovery in our near-future post-apocalyptic WoD game is that, for complicated setting reasons, the Forsaken had to switch from Luna to Helios, so they've got glowing yellow tattoos and Solar caste marks now.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:53
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Fundamentally, you can't actually do cross-splat games in the oWoD because oWoD games are set in superficially similar but fundamentally different universes. You can kind of make them fit together (Demon: the Fallen made a heroic attempt, for instance) but someone's going to lose out or get rug-pulled somewhere and, completely separate from these narrative considerations, the actual rules are not consistent with each other. One of the big appeals of the new World of Darkness is that it actually is a single world (of darkness) that you can drag and drop the different things into and basically see them all function together. They're not necessarily balanced or possessed of custom-made reasons to hang out with each other but they're mutually intelligible.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:58
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Ferrinus posted:Fundamentally, you can't actually do cross-splat games in the oWoD because oWoD games are set in superficially similar but fundamentally different universes. You can kind of make them fit together (Demon: the Fallen made a heroic attempt, for instance) but someone's going to lose out or get rug-pulled somewhere and, completely separate from these narrative considerations, the actual rules are not consistent with each other. One of the big appeals of the new World of Darkness is that it actually is a single world (of darkness) that you can drag and drop the different things into and basically see them all function together. They're not necessarily balanced or possessed of custom-made reasons to hang out with each other but they're mutually intelligible. You could say Mage is the meta-game and any inconsistencies are just different points of view 
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Jul 25, 2022 19:14
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Rutibex posted:You could say Mage is the meta-game and any inconsistencies are just different points of view No, Demon actually has Mage beat when it comes to oWoD syncretism, but it doesn't really matter since the syncretism itself still ends up sweeping some games or others under the rug. It's for good reason that the monster manual in the back of the Vampire book is like WEREWOLF: (dog with a lot of dots of potence and celerity), MAGE: (guy with a lot of dots of auspex and thaumaturgy)
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Jul 25, 2022 19:19
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This week's CoD sale at DTRPG is the core CoD 2e line (the core rulebook, the Dark Eras books, Hurt Locker, and the Contagion Chronicle). I guess the Contagion Chronicle + its Player's Guide might be worth it at three bucks total, or fifty cents for just the Player's Guide. It looks like the original WOD: God-Machine Chronicle book was pulled from sale at DTRPG at some point? I get why they'd do that, given how much of its was reprinted in the CoD core, but still, it'd be nice to have it there (especially since, IIRC, some material related to the titular chronicle wasn't reproduced in a later book).
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Jul 25, 2022 22:19
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The player's guide has the actual Q&A of "ok well how does X interact with Y" like what arcana influence which groups, do Deviants have souls, what happens to vampires who drink the blood of <insert splat>, etc. Just basic technical expectations you assume would and should come up in a crossover game. That part is useful, if definitely not worth the price of admission. It makes some really weird calls though, both on what to spend word count on (a quarter of a page on "what is Willpower?" and another half page on "which templates recover Willpower from sleeping and which don't?" which is very wishy-washy and "decide for yourself" without presenting any direct answers or default condition) and what rulings it actually makes (at one point it contradicts both Demon: the Descent and itself on a later page by saying demons have souls; it makes a call on how contested actions work that reverses how it always worked before).
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Jul 25, 2022 22:34
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aren't there parts of the contagion chronicle seemingly written as if the author had no idea it isn't an owod book and so it starts talking about target numbers and botches
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Jul 25, 2022 22:45
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Mister Olympus posted:aren't there parts of the contagion chronicle seemingly written as if the author had no idea it isn't an owod book and so it starts talking about target numbers and botches I believe the actual oWoD system terminology got removed in the errata pass, but it still has rolls with the granular structure of oWoD resolution, i.e. "you must roll at least X successes to actually succeed on this non-contested roll"
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Jul 25, 2022 22:52
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my favorite splat is still Geist 1e/2e after 10 years and my least favorite is still Mage. feel like im setting myself up for tragedy being as invested in nwod/cod as i am. got a soft zoo style game going though which is fun.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:43
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Does Exalted count as Chronicles of Darkness?
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Jul 28, 2022 12:49
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Rutibex posted:Does Exalted count as Chronicles of Darkness? It has nothing to do with it
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Jul 28, 2022 13:05
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Covermeinsunshine posted:It has nothing to do with it I wouldn't say nothing. I guess I was just asking if here is the place to post about it, but I found the big Exalted thread so no worries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgsKqMqT7zM
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Jul 28, 2022 14:00
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Hurt Locker has some fun fighting styles in it, there's one or two that help make non physical characters not useless in combat.
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Jul 28, 2022 14:21
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Everyone should adopt the Savage Worlds thing where non-fighters can do stuff in combat with maneuvers like Taunt and Trick. Possibly the only good idea that ever came out of the Masterbook system.
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Jul 28, 2022 14:34
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Good news: The H5 book is now on DriveThruRPG. Bad news: It's 50 bux CAD.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:48
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TheCenturion posted:Good news: The H5 book is now on DriveThruRPG. I'll wait for the supplements that adds back the Imbued and/or all the crazy mortal organizations.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:54
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Soonmot posted:Hurt Locker has some fun fighting styles in it, there's one or two that help make non physical characters not useless in combat. I patently just don't use fighting styles in anything that isn't hunter or mortal based. It has always had the tendency of making combat take longer without really being cooler than they could have been just normally because they're supersplats. Hunters are great fun with fighting styles though, and I always liked the team styles from Vigil 1e.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:19
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Jhet posted:I patently just don't use fighting styles in anything that isn't hunter or mortal based. It has always had the tendency of making combat take longer without really being cooler than they could have been just normally because they're supersplats. Hunters are great fun with fighting styles though, and I always liked the team styles from Vigil 1e.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:30
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Changeling 2e's got some decent ones for filling the numerical gap between "forsooth! we shall duel, knave! Have at thee!" in the expectation based on the various melee powers, and "I use Gun" in the reality. Ahh cool. I haven’t read most of Lost 2e in depth. Fighting styles have just normally felt either straight broken or theme breaking in ways that could have been covered with a much smaller group of individual fighting merits. I think it probably has something to do with each FS feeling like it had 2-3 levels of filler.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:37
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Jhet posted:Ahh cool. I haven’t read most of Lost 2e in depth. Fighting styles have just normally felt either straight broken or theme breaking in ways that could have been covered with a much smaller group of individual fighting merits. I think it probably has something to do with each FS feeling like it had 2-3 levels of filler. The third one kind of hits on a problem I feel like 2e across CoD has, which is combat's swingy and explosive enough that a lot of granularity just won't happen. You're either getting missed entirely, maybe taking 1L/1B after armor, or you're getting absolutely loving exploded. And unless you want combat scenes to really drag on, you're probably going to have enemies behaving closer to the first and third. Or you're using rules that involve Beaten Down, in which case: it doesn't matter, first blood's all you need (which is good! I like this setup! It's smart!).
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Jul 28, 2022 17:53
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Mister Olympus posted:aren't there parts of the contagion chronicle seemingly written as if the author had no idea it isn't an owod book and so it starts talking about target numbers and botches Not just Contagion Chronicle. It's been a problem ever since the oWoD got revived. EDIT - Actually, scratch that. It's been a problem since the nWoD started up. It's just that the number of gaffes slipping past Developers has increased as those Developers are increasingly disinterested in the nWoD. My very first book back in 2008, I wrote a bit referring to ghosts as having arcanoi. It made print and has never been corrected! Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 18:29
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TheCenturion posted:Good news: The H5 book is now on DriveThruRPG. I don't really want it but here I am to say that this is in fact how much all RPGs should cost.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:43
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Not just Contagion Chronicle. It's been a problem ever since the oWoD got revived. lol nice
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Jul 28, 2022 19:22
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TheCenturion posted:Good news: The H5 book is now on DriveThruRPG. Holy poo poo, I thought you meant the printed book, but they are selling the pdf for almost $40 US. Rand Brittain posted:I don't really want it but here I am to say that this is in fact how much all RPGs should cost. I completely agree...for a bound and printed book (and not that dubious printing that DriveThruRPG uses), but for a pdf that's insane.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:22
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Anonymous Zebra posted:I completely agree...for a bound and printed book (and not that dubious printing that DriveThruRPG uses), but for a pdf that's insane. I mean, that's the point. For the amount of work that goes into a high-quality RPG book, pdf or hardback, it really should be more expensive if you want to actually pay people what they're worth. But capitalism is what it is, and the rest of us aren't being paid what we're worth so the idea of spending $50 on a book that isn't completely guaranteed to get us $50 of enjoyment gives us all heart palpitations.
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Jul 28, 2022 20:48
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I mean, that's the point. For the amount of work that goes into a high-quality RPG book, pdf or hardback, it really should be more expensive if you want to actually pay people what they're worth. But capitalism is what it is, and the rest of us aren't being paid what we're worth so the idea of spending $50 on a book that isn't completely guaranteed to get us $50 of enjoyment gives us all heart palpitations. There are too many good rpgs to pay that much for a PDF. The real problem is everyone's rent is too drat high.
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Jul 29, 2022 01:10
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It looks like Justin Achilli and Karim Muammar are the only ones who've done rules for tabletop RPGs before. Otherwise there's someone who made a board game and wrote for the Hunters Hunted II anthology. And three people from D&D's new Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. No reviews yet but the Discussion tab is all negative. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/404271/Hunter-The-Reckoning-5th-Edition-Roleplaying-Game-Core-Rulebook Looks like the Proofreaders were also all part of the "World of Darkness Team."
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Jul 29, 2022 01:22
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Yeah I'm going to try out h5 next week at gencon. Definitely a "try first" price range.
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Jul 29, 2022 03:39
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