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Dawgstar posted:Current stuff or OWoD? New edition, but it's Reckoning, not Vigil, so it's still owod ain't it?
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Nov 15, 2022 03:21
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Nehru the Damaja posted:New edition, but it's Reckoning, not Vigil, so it's still owod ain't it? The older editions explicitly give the PCs supernatural powers, where my understanding of the newest edition is that the 'powers' are various mundane but useful abilities that generate success or other mechanical benefits, even if they are still in the broader owod. For your initial question, og Hunter was my intro to tabletop gaming and what really made it click was having the scope of the threat defined in the first one or two sessions. We had a nest of vamps and a super vamp living a rich suburb (very original). While some of the 'fear of the unknown' was lost, it let us focus on learning the ins and outs of the setting the GM had created, where the vamps were, a rough idea of the hierarchy, plans we could chose to disrupt, and it made plot surprises work a little better since we could see how the monsters were reacting to our hunting. As a result, we could make plans and spend exp in response to plans succeeding or failing and having a win condition kept the game from losing focus.
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Nov 15, 2022 04:16
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Soonmot posted:Derail: do we have a thread for storypath games or did we decide to talk about them here. I've been getting an itch to run a one shot and want to talk it through with folks who are more comfortable with the system Which game? Personally I love nuTrinity to bits.
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Nov 15, 2022 05:27
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To elaborate, Vigil 2e's non-supernatural hunter powers are *extremely* powerful, especially if you have a savvy understanding of mechanics in supplements like Hurt Locker. You can minmax the gently caress out of a Hunter, like risking willpower to regain a point of spent wp, taking Last Stand to get two actions, taking merits that lets you have rote on your attack dicepool, etc. My last Hunter PC was putting something like 23 dice out on a sniper shot that's been fully Aimed, and it didn't take a lot of xp to get there
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Nov 15, 2022 05:30
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Pakxos posted:The older editions explicitly give the PCs supernatural powers, where my understanding of the newest edition is that the 'powers' are various mundane but useful abilities that generate success or other mechanical benefits, even if they are still in the broader owod. I'm hoping to give it a little flavor of the early days where their connections to the normal world are still fraying and bill collectors are calling and the hunters know very little of how supernatural creatures work. Less Van Helsing and more precarious freelance X-Files. Sorta like iHunt.
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Nov 15, 2022 05:51
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MonsieurChoc posted:Which game? Personally I love nuTrinity to bits. I'll make an effort post when I'm back from work, but probably trinity basic for the TV protagonist powers. Gonna have the characters be tweens in a spooky apartment building
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Nov 15, 2022 11:23
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So the flavor I'm going for is a lighter suspense horror vibe, the kids won't have any supernatural powers or anything, just TV protagonist powers, which is why I was thinking of using Storypath, the Trinity core book was really fun and immediately made me think of shows like Leverage or Person of Interest when I was reading through it. What I'm looking for help with is designing a, more or less, railroad adventure that doesn't FEEL like I'm forcing the characters down a specific path. Normally when I run games, I doing play by post open world games where the characters have already been a group for a short time and have multiple goals and plots active at the same time, allowing them to focus on what feels most important while those other plots move on without the causing their own complications down the road. Doing PBP also allows me to improvise when one of the players thinks up something cooler than what I had planned or even if just a random NPC or incidental background detail catches their attention and they assign import to it. I'm going to be attempting to do this over voice discord, so I won't be able to take twenty minutes to look over my notes and decide if I can fit these improvisations in. The basic plot is: A group of tweens who all live in the same old apartment building from before the Great Fire a century back, in the historic part of the city. Over the past couple weeks, they've noticed that lots of people pets and very young children, maybe even their own pets and siblings, have been getting sick. At the same time their have been nightmares no one can quite remember, only that they woke from a feeling of intense pressure almost crushing them, but nothing has been present in their rooms. Even more recently, over the past few days, smaller pets have begun to go missing and folks have been complaining about rats in building, rarely seen, but frequently heard moving through the walls. Our kids start having flashes of their nightmares that convince them that there's something unnatural in this building, something that was asleep but is now waking and it's hunger is what's causing this. If they don't stop it, things will get much worse. I'm going to have rats as the main "bad guy" the kids fight or try to get around. Rats can be scary but they are also small so kid characters with low physicals but main character moxie can actually combat them. Adding more or less rats to an encounter is an easy way to up stakes and no one is going to blink an eye when miniboss giant rats show up to menace our heroes. I'll also have a Rat King monster as a fake big bad that is the thing actually controlling the bosses, five giant rats fused at the tail. Only after defeating this threat and taking the time to look around will the kids discover that the rat king was just a symptom of the real big bad waking up, a "vampire" that's slumbering in a crypt well beneath the building only accessible through secret tunnels. The rats had been draining blood initially as it began to wake to nourish it, until it woke enough and the rats had power enough to start bringing live animals for it to consume whole. It isn't fully awake yet, and the kids will have to find a way to kill it or send it back to sleep. Along the way I'll have encounters with weirdo neighbors, a helpful old lady neighbor who's grandparents were instrumental in sending the monster to sleep last time it woke, even some other kids who are falling under the influence of the nightmares and becoming tools of the monster. It's figuring out how to string these ideas out into an a->b->c timeline and how best to use storypath to create the encoutners that I need help with, especially ideas for what sort of custom paths would be appropriate for kids or even if the characters should get 3 paths at all.
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Nov 16, 2022 16:00
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Pakxos posted:The older editions explicitly give the PCs supernatural powers, where my understanding of the newest edition is that the 'powers' are various mundane but useful abilities that generate success or other mechanical benefits, even if they are still in the broader owod. Wasn't Hunter originally meant to be implicitly a distant sequel to Exalted?
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Nov 16, 2022 16:11
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The Werewolf board game KS launched. If it being Kickstarter immediately is a no-go, believe me, I get it. Apparently it's a dungeon-crawling campaign where your choices can determine which next mission you get thing. There is a great deal of plastic. Looks neat, maybe? (I'm not backing it for the record. I am poor and would be considerably poorer after international shipping.)
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Nov 16, 2022 16:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Wasn't Hunter originally meant to be implicitly a distant sequel to Exalted? As far as I know, the devs were willing to be cute with references to other lines but had stopped giving any serious thought to having an actual crossover by the time HtR came out.
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Nov 16, 2022 16:26
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Soonmot posted:It's figuring out how to string these ideas out into an a->b->c timeline and how best to use storypath to create the encoutners that I need help with, especially ideas for what sort of custom paths would be appropriate for kids or even if the characters should get 3 paths at all. - My Parents Are _____ (origin path); Example, "Trying their best!" - Empathy, Athletics, Integrity or "SUPER rich" - Pilot, Culture, Technology - My Favorite Class Is _____ (role path); Example, "Computer lab!" - Academics, Culture, Technology or "Lunch" - Athletics, Persuasion, Survival - What I Did On My Summer Vacation (grab-bag third path) - "We got a dog and we went camping with the dog and it was really fun but the dog didn't like thunderstorms but it's okay because I was there and we played cave explorer in the tent fort" - Empathy, Leadership, Survival With younger PCs I think the thing to highlight is inner life more than outer experience, since they don't...have much of the latter yet. But just writing out stuff for the former gets you a pretty good handle on a personality while justifying some basic skill sets.
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Nov 16, 2022 16:45
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That is loving perfect! Plus isn't the summer vacation as a writing prompt for the players to explore their character's voices while allowing me to assign the last skills as doing my favorite thing of giving each player a small unique "power" based on their background is very much my style.
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Nov 16, 2022 17:17
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There might be other game systems better suited to what you're trying to do; Tales from the Loop, Kids on Bikes, Little Fears, there's actually quite a few 'kids dealing with the supernatural bullshit because adults are useless' genres.
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Nov 16, 2022 17:45
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It's never a bad idea to replace the dragons giving the Hunters their powers with the God Machine. Yeah, I know it's mixing edition stuff, but I don't care. In my games, Hunters are Reality's Immune System, but also the God Machine is Kinda Broken and there is no way to fix It, let alone understand It. Hunters can have fluctuating levels of power based upon story needs, and some (most?) Hunters are just Bystanders with good connections like they seem to be in V5.
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Nov 16, 2022 19:09
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TheCenturion posted:There might be other game systems better suited to what you're trying to do; Tales from the Loop, Kids on Bikes, Little Fears, there's actually quite a few 'kids dealing with the supernatural bullshit because adults are useless' genres. yeah but i don't know those systems and my dumb broke brain will not let me learn them. Storypath is close enough to wod/cod that i can understand it. also I'm poor and it's already impossible to pirate the games i actually play
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Nov 16, 2022 23:23
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Soonmot posted:yeah but i don't know those systems and my dumb broke brain will not let me learn them. Storypath is close enough to wod/cod that i can understand it. also I'm poor and it's already impossible to pirate the games i actually play If you can't buy it you can't buy it, but for what it's worth, Tales From the Loop is extremely easy to learn, run, and play.
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Nov 17, 2022 00:06
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Nehru the Damaja posted:If you can't buy it you can't buy it, but for what it's worth, Tales From the Loop is extremely easy to learn, run, and play. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/305344/Tales-from-the-Loop-RPG-Starter-Set This because I'll drop 5 bucks to check it out.
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Nov 17, 2022 00:14
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Uh... so it occurs to me when looking through Hunter: the Reckoning (5e), ... what the hell equipment do the characters even start with? I legitimately can't find anything in the book to describe what new hunters would have or how we would turn background points or whatever else into equipment.
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Nov 20, 2022 21:18
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Uh... so it occurs to me when looking through Hunter: the Reckoning (5e), ... what the hell equipment do the characters even start with? I legitimately can't find anything in the book to describe what new hunters would have or how we would turn background points or whatever else into equipment. That's a shrug in V5 as well. Characters are assumed to have the stuff they use on hand - signature weapon, lockpicking set, burner phone, laptop, whatever. No Setite transhumanist with a wearable tech computer, no Not-Steve Jobs Ventrue with the latest Not-iPhone, and no Not-Tyler Durden Brujah with bars of soap like in the clan books. If it's rare/expensive poo poo there's an Int+Something or another roll. Basically it's one less thing to keep track of. My Narcosaint Ravnos always had A Car (because he's a blockaid runner, but it's not always the fanciest), A Bug-Out Bag (due to being a Roadside Killer predator and him needing to potentially have a way to survive the day), A Coyote (his familus), and A Gun (because Smiling Jack gave him a crate of guns in exchange for a courier job). If he needs something else he either had to call on his Contact (another smuggler), his Ally (a group of ne'er-do-wells in the cotorie's home turf), or his Malwa (other Ravnos from his Week of Nightmares loresheet). He has no Resources to readily buy stuff (bullets and gas are cheap, and if he needs cash he sells a gun) nor does he have a secure Haven to actually store big stuff (on account of the whole "bursting into flames" thing). Our stance is basically "if you have 3+ in an Ability or a Specialty you have the basic tool to accomplish using it".
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Nov 20, 2022 22:22
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think this is the place for all of Onyx Path's d10-based wayward children, either blood-related or adopted. I know I'll certainly post about Scion here instead of anywhere else. So I can post about Aberrant, the white wolf superhero game here?
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Nov 21, 2022 11:15
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please do it's my favorite supers game
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Nov 21, 2022 13:46
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I've always been curious about those Trinity Whatever games, would be interesting to learn more about them. Are they different game lines? Are they compatible? Are they good?
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Nov 21, 2022 14:55
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GetDunked posted:I've always been curious about those Trinity Whatever games, would be interesting to learn more about them. Are they different game lines? Are they compatible? Are they good? The last two answers are easy: yes! Or at least there's nothing stopping you from running an Aberrant in Trinity's timeline even though they hadn't yet popped up. As for different game lines, think of them as snapshots of the same timeline when the appropriate splat was on top. In Aeon, that's psions, in Aberrant it's, well, Aberrants and so on. The only thing that really stands out to me rules wise is the crafting rules are really, really bad when even the best defenses of it amounting to an awkward shrug.
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Nov 21, 2022 15:21
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Yeah they released "backwards" with Aeon being the first game set in the future where you play as a Psion protecting the universe from the Aberrants who've returned from deep space. Then came Aberrant sent in the present day where you are a Nova, someone who's Erupted and gained super powers and basically become and instant world wide celebrity. Finally came Adventure, where you're a pulp hero mystery man fighting crime and nazis. In each game line you see how things developed into the situations in the previous line. Second edition is a lot more hands off with the metaplot though. There was also a recent kickstarter for Aether which I backed that takes before Adventure for some steampunk/ mad science stuff. The stand alone Trinity core book is also real good, I mentioned a bit up thread that reading through gives you the tools to play pretty much any action procedural on TV, with my go to examples being Leverage or Person of Interest. With powers and skill tricks just strong enough to be better than reality, but not so strong it's an obvious superpower.
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Nov 21, 2022 15:35
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Soonmot posted:The stand alone Trinity core book is also real good, I mentioned a bit up thread that reading through gives you the tools to play pretty much any action procedural on TV, with my go to examples being Leverage or Person of Interest. With powers and skill tricks just strong enough to be better than reality, but not so strong it's an obvious superpower. The superpower of walking into a room full of dudes and shooting them in the knees such that all are incapacitated but none die.
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Nov 21, 2022 18:00
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Soonmot posted:Yeah they released "backwards" with Aeon being the first game set in the future where you play as a Psion protecting the universe from the Aberrants who've returned from deep space. Then came Aberrant sent in the present day where you are a Nova, someone who's Erupted and gained super powers and basically become and instant world wide celebrity. Finally came Adventure, where you're a pulp hero mystery man fighting crime and nazis. In each game line you see how things developed into the situations in the previous line. Second edition is a lot more hands off with the metaplot though. Meanwhile the guy that just stuck to doing whip and knife tricks is theoretically playable right alongside him because his niche is totally different in practice.
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Nov 21, 2022 18:20
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ZiegeDame posted:The superpower of walking into a room full of dudes and shooting them in the knees such that all are incapacitated but none die. Just like on tv!
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Nov 21, 2022 18:29
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Aether's interesting in that they manage to wring fresh blood from the steampunk / league of extraordinary gentlemen stone. I like the distinction between "mostly normal with some skill tricks," "relies on weird bullshit to power up," and "is always powered up and a 'monster' now" and how it creates a theoretical (but not mandatory!) progression from lil baby adventurer >>> oh hey what's this serum >>> this serum rules >>> uh oh now i'm hopped up on serum now a lot >>> hooray! i am the serum ogre. it's great for me but i must destroy to live. I wondered how they'd get around the usual steampunk nonsense of where it's mostly like heroic colonization and other things that don't age well in the genre when you step back and take a close look at it.
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Nov 21, 2022 19:39
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Yeah that's one of the most interesting things about it. I should check to see if I have the draft version, normally I don't read the backer stuff until the final edit pdf drops
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Nov 22, 2022 18:11
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So, I have a question re: drawing real world issues into World of Darkness games. One of my least favourite things about the WoD setting in general is taking atrocities, and then saying 'actually, it was vampires'. And yet, I'm considering bringing this notorious local serial killer back as a Kindred - while making it very clear that she was embraced after she was imprisoned for the killings, and that there was no vampiric influence that turned her into a killer. My players have already indicated during our session zero that they'd be alright with me drawing from local history, and a serial poisoner doesn't go against any of their lines and veils. I'd still like a second opinion on this idea - again, while making it very clear that this will be worked into the story as 'she was evil as a human, then was turned into a vampire' rather than 'she was evil as a human, because of vampires.'
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Nov 29, 2022 11:03
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I follow your reasoning and think it's fine. Your players agree so go hog wild.
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Nov 29, 2022 11:39
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Skios posted:So, I have a question re: drawing real world issues into World of Darkness games. One of my least favourite things about the WoD setting in general is taking atrocities, and then saying 'actually, it was vampires'. And yet, I'm considering bringing this notorious local serial killer back as a Kindred - while making it very clear that she was embraced after she was imprisoned for the killings, and that there was no vampiric influence that turned her into a killer. This isn't any different from Duke on A Stitch of Fate, in terms of line of reasoning, so I think it's totally fine.
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Nov 29, 2022 12:46
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That seems fine, yeah. JustinA has said before that while vampires might *claim* to be the root cause of major events they're actually opportunistic parasites that glom on to things and might make help them worse but aren't the major driving force for the atrocities whether big or small. (One example that cropped up was Anarchs using the Green River Killer's activities to hide the occasional body.) You're coming across as very respectful of your player's hard lines so it's cool.
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Nov 29, 2022 13:53
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Yeah, I like when a theme of a game is "part of the reason vampires are such evil shits is because, by this point, a sizable contingent of them are people who were the same kind of evil shits their whole lives, and got turned when they got busted and a vampire heard about them."
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Nov 29, 2022 15:34
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disaster pastor posted:Yeah, I like when a theme of a game is "part of the reason vampires are such evil shits is because, by this point, a sizable contingent of them are people who were the same kind of evil shits their whole lives, and got turned when they got busted and a vampire heard about them."
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Nov 29, 2022 16:26
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Serial killers have such terrible impulse control; I don't know why you'd want to turn one into a vampire, but vampires themselves must evince the same variety of motives as real people and it only takes one....
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Nov 29, 2022 18:07
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citybeatnik posted:That seems fine, yeah. In the words of Rose Bailey, "Humans run the show, vampires just buy the popcorn."
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Nov 29, 2022 18:08
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Stephenls posted:Serial killers have such terrible impulse control; I don't know why you'd want to turn one into a vampire, but vampires themselves must evince the same variety of motives as real people and it only takes one.... Alright, placing this in a little more context... She was embraced by the Sabbat Lasombra, who admired her ruthlessness and her winnowing out 'the weak' in society. The coterie is a Camarilla coterie, currently in the Masquerade Cleanup Crew stage of their careers. Most of what they've dealt with so far has been fairly low level, but as they advance, I'm planning to introduce her as the first major adversary, with a goal of trying to undermine the tenuous trust that the city's Camarilla have in the Lasombra that joined in the past few years.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:34
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Skios posted:Alright, placing this in a little more context... She was embraced by the Sabbat Lasombra, who admired her ruthlessness and her winnowing out 'the weak' in society. The coterie is a Camarilla coterie, currently in the Masquerade Cleanup Crew stage of their careers. Most of what they've dealt with so far has been fairly low level, but as they advance, I'm planning to introduce her as the first major adversary, with a goal of trying to undermine the tenuous trust that the city's Camarilla have in the Lasombra that joined in the past few years. Yeah, that tracks. Fuckin' Path of Night Lasombra....
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Nov 29, 2022 20:46
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My explanation for the "vampires did everything" phenomena is that vampires have a substantial advantage in writing histories over mortals.
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Nov 29, 2022 21:02
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