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Free Cog posted:There's also rolling either a 1 or a 10 on a Rouse Check when using any Oblivion ability including Ceremonies when it comes to permanent sources of Stains. That always stuck me as an odd choice, but the Lasombra at my table prefers a Dominate/Potence build, so I've never seen how that shakes out in play. It's not super terrible, and ultimately the theme there is that oblivion stains away your own soul, but yeah, particularly considering it's overall actually a pretty weak discipline that rule mostly sucks rear end and every table I've played at didn't bother with it except for Ceremonies and even then it was just on a 1.
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Dec 3, 2022 08:48
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After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back with more adventures of New York Camarilla coterie stuck in Atlantic City. This was our second session of the adventure Family from Trails of Ash and Bone, spoilers for that adventure ahead. As usual, our coterie consists of Benedict the GOP Ventrue, Thomas the Tremere Triad doctor and Augustus the Amish Banu Haqim. Our previous session ended with the coterie having just met the Anarch Baron of Atlantic City and being told that they were not welcome in the domain, since they had been unwilling to tell what they were doing in the domain and had failed to convince the Baron that they were not invading Camarillas. Their task was to find out who in the city had been leaking Hecata secrets. They had learned that AC had used to be Camarilla, then Hecata and now Anarch, with the previous Hecata boss Ornella Giovanni having disappeared. They also knew where two remaining Hecata could be found. But before continuing with the investigation, Jay-Z had invited them to a party and they were not going to miss it. This was mostly a distraction and the plot was not advanced in any way, but it was nice to give the players a chance to just chill and see how they would act. The players did consider the possibility of turning Jay-Z into a ghoul, but decided against it. I should also mention that the characters don’t know much about Hecata, except that they’re an independent clan. Or more specifically, two of the characters don’t know much, Thomas has a lot of information about Hecata, since it was the Tremere that the clan secrets were leaked to. And being a shady Tremere that he is, has so far chosen not to share any of that information with his coterie, no matter how helpful it might be. So the first part of actual investigation for this session was checking up on a Hecata known as Mrs. Strand, who had shacked up in an abandoned laundry. They had received the address from Baron Edith Blumenau, who had conveniently remembered the address after claiming not to know where other vampires reside (Baron Blumenau is not a trustworthy character). The laundry had clearly been abandoned for half a century, and inside it was filled with debris and abandoned industrial washing machines, which in turn were filled with corpses and body parts. Luckily none of the characters had enough of their Humanity left to be bothered by this slaughterhouse. Just as they started to go deeper into the building, the door was slammed shut and they were ambushed by three aggressive corpses and two ghosts, a poltergeist and a screamer. The pre-written adventure doesn’t address the fact that ghosts can’t be harmed by usual means, and my players don’t have any means of doing so. So what I did was describe one ghost being blue, and another being purple, and when I described the walking corpses I gave two of them glowing eyes of a matching color. The players fortunately didn’t even bother with the ghosts and focused on the corpses and the combat was over without too much draining of resources. They still hadn’t seen any sign of Mrs. Strand, but one the industrial washing machines had been shut. When they tried to open it, the coterie was greeted by Mrs. Strand screaming in terror from inside, telling them to leave her and her family alone and to take their cannibalistic Venetian predations elsewhere. The players were confused by this and needed more information, so they forced the washing machine open to find an emaciated vampire on the brink of terror frenzy. Some Ventrue domination convinced Mrs. Strand to calm down and explain the situation. Turns out that an agent of Baron Blumenau had told her that the coterie were Giovanni assassins, coming to kill her for being a Cappadocian. She knows nothing about an information leak, nor does she know much about what’s going on in the domain, preferring to keep to herself and her experiments. She says that she never trusted Ornella, but respected her position, and lost touch with her after she took up with “those Lilith types.” Seeing that she can offer no more information and that she is not a threat to the coterie, the players respect her wishes and leave her be. Some stains were gained for letting her be. Augustus’ convictions are to never kill and to never tolerate hypocrisy, so while he did not kill anyone this session, he did allow a monstrous vampire to keep killing. Now the players know the name of someone who works for Baron Blumenau and they have heard of Lilith. They were unable or unwilling to utilize Kindred contacts to learn what the name means in vampire society, but had enough of occult skills to learn the mortal perspective; name that she is a character from Jewish mythology, appearing in the Talmud as Adam’s first wife. They had over the course of this campaign learned that other mythological figures, namely Caine and Mithras, were actually vampires, so their first theory is that Lilith is an ancient vampire operating in the city. Their next plan was to break into Frank Zingaretti’s office, the owner of the casino hotel they were staying in, former ghoul of Ornella Giovanni and current ghoul of Baron Blumenau. This was a good idea and I unfortunately managed to distract my players from it. There was an event which I had timed to happen when they next returned to the hotel or met Zingaretti, namely that someone had contacted Zingaretti and asked for a business meeting with the coterie. This someone was a Darcy Lorenza, who was aware of the characters nature and status, and wanted to offer them an opportunity to invest in a resort, known as the Venetian Casino. In exchange for 40,000 dollars to bribe city planners the coterie would get a cut of the legitimate profits, as well as use the resort to run any illegal activities they desired. The coterie was intrigued, but wanted more information and wanted to meet whoever Darcy represented. They had clearly taken the hook, so a meeting was arranged. They met a vampire named Waxman in an empty parking lot, who answered any questions the players had. He explained that Ornella Giovanni was supposed to give the money, before she disappeared. And now that Camarilla vampires were in the city, especially ones with connections to organized crime, Waxman had guessed correctly that they would be interested in the offer. Well, Augustus was not interested, since he was a pious man who disapproved of gambling, and also a poor man who did not have a single dollar to his name. Thomas was very interested, since the New York Triad that he works with was trying to expand into Atlantic City, and Thomas felt certain he could get the organization to pay him back later. So they paid Waxman, even managing to negotiate a slightly better cut of the profits. Alas, despite skilled negotiating and skeptical approach, they failed to find out that this was a con. We shall see what happens when they find out that the Venetian Casino has been stuck in development purgatory for over 15 years. The players were feeling lost and confused and decided to call Donatello Giovanni, who had hired them for this mission. Donatello was interested in results, not reports, so he wasn’t very helpful. He hadn’t been aware that Ornella was missing, but mentioned that there should still be three other Hecata active in the domain. The players caught on that this was one more Hecata than they were previously aware of, and learned the name Lia Milliner. Benedict aced a roll and thanks to his knowledge of the financial sector, was aware of Lia Milliner and her operations along the East Coast, as well as her habit of staying at the Borgata hotel. Donatello told the coterie not to call this number unless they have results, but now the players have one more lead in their investigation. So the coterie travels to the Borgata hotel and with some domination learned that Lia Milliner had rented the penthouse for the week and gained a keycard to access the area. They entered the penthouse, but unfortunately Lia Milliner was not there. Instead, her servant was there, watching a movie and eating snacks, and when he realized that three completely unknown vampires had broken into his boss’s quarters, he spilled pepsi and chicken wings all over himself in shock, and was quite pissed. Instead of kindly answering any questions the coterie had, the servant wanted to know who the gently caress they are, what the gently caress they are doing here and to get the gently caress out. The servant also mentioned that he was Lia Milliner’s wallet, the coterie really shouldn’t mess with him. The players were completely failing to de-escalate the situation, but eventually the servant took the group’s contact information, just to get them to leave. This encounter left the characters with multiple stains. One of our chronicle tenets is “Respect others and demand respect.” Breaking into Milliner’s penthouse and intimidating her servant was not only disrespectful toward the servant, but also toward Lia Milliner who he served. I very rarely give more than one stain for a single scene, but I felt this was worth two. Combined with some other stains from other actions this session, all the player characters have now reached the stage where their low Humanity gives penalties with mortals. And that was it for this session. We always have a short post game discussion to share thoughts and vibes. The players reflected and noticed that they have a bad habit of letting NPCs set the tone of a conversation, which leads to trouble. In this particular session, Mrs. Strand was not threatening the player characters, so the players did not consider the implications of letting a necromancer who had just tried to kill them and whose haven is filled with bodies go free. On the other hand, Milliner’s servant was quite justifiably aggressive toward people who had broken into his quarters, but the players completely blanked out on options other than “intimidate until information drops,” which will have consequences when they meet Milliner. I’m not sure what if anything I as a storyteller should do about this, but at least the players are aware of their worst habits. Another thing that came up in our discussion that I’m not sure what to do about, is that the players are feeling overwhelmed by the investigative nature of the adventure. A part of this was due to a two month hiatus, another part was due to the investigation still being in the early phases. They don’t know this but they have gathered most of the information that has been available so far, and I’ve subtly had NPCs slip information the players hadn’t realized to ask. But I’m slightly worried that my players might feel frustrated or dumb, since I can’t really tell them how well they are doing. Any tips?
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Dec 3, 2022 20:51
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Lord Hypnostache posted:Another thing that came up in our discussion that I’m not sure what to do about, is that the players are feeling overwhelmed by the investigative nature of the adventure. A part of this was due to a two month hiatus, another part was due to the investigation still being in the early phases. They don’t know this but they have gathered most of the information that has been available so far, and I’ve subtly had NPCs slip information the players hadn’t realized to ask. But I’m slightly worried that my players might feel frustrated or dumb, since I can’t really tell them how well they are doing. Any tips? Perhaps you could have them intercept some communication to a random mook along the lines of "Make sure they don't find out about X" or "As long as they don't find out about X, we're good", where X is a major bit of information that they already have but haven't figured out is valuable yet.
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Dec 6, 2022 10:00
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Lord Hypnostache posted:But I’m slightly worried that my players might feel frustrated or dumb, since I can’t really tell them how well they are doing. Any tips? Devil's advocate: why not? You could reassure them that their overall investigation is going well or on the right track without specifically confirming or denying anything they're hypothesizing. If they know that they're not "supposed" to have all the information they need to crack the case yet, they may not feel as frustrated with being unable to do it.
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Dec 6, 2022 16:01
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Is there a way you can send some mooks to attack them for getting to close? Searching the defeated enemies turns up the orders mentioned above. Or if you've already established an information broker character, have that character reach out saying there are rumors that the coterie is making big waves and they'd be very interested in buying any info they've turned up. With the second one stress how the info broker usually never deals in person unless it's with another power player.
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Dec 6, 2022 16:50
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Edit: this works better with play by post games, but I've also drawn up outlines and lists of what my players have accomplished, info discovered, and goals remaining. Having something like that to reference whether ic or ooc can be helpful. I *think* I have an example linked in one of my posts of you post search me, Stayed late to find it https://1drv.ms/b/s!AghVLzMOTtR_kQLcMLdyW-_hIGfF?e=TiH0F6 Soonmot fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Dec 6, 2022 |
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Dec 6, 2022 16:52
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GetDunked posted:Devil's advocate: why not? You could reassure them that their overall investigation is going well or on the right track without specifically confirming or denying anything they're hypothesizing. If they know that they're not "supposed" to have all the information they need to crack the case yet, they may not feel as frustrated with being unable to do it. This is similar to what I've done in the past. Only instead of me saying it, I'll suggest that they hit up some NPCs they haven't spoken to in a while and have it come from them instead. The NPCs can't give them the total knowledge, but they can do the reassuring part and encourage/discourage courses of action to give the characters a choice in what's coming next and how they want to approach it.
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Dec 6, 2022 17:11
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GetDunked posted:Devil's advocate: why not? You could reassure them that their overall investigation is going well or on the right track without specifically confirming or denying anything they're hypothesizing. If they know that they're not "supposed" to have all the information they need to crack the case yet, they may not feel as frustrated with being unable to do it. If all else fails, find reasons for characters to roll investigation and give them some additional information/context, as if the character had a burst of inspiration a la Sherlock Holmes. I know some groups don't like such a hard split between character and player, but the whole point of putting extra dots into INT or Investigate is to simulate that the character is better than a normal person at this sort of thing.
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Dec 6, 2022 17:44
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I had a bit of a silly moment with my Camarilla Cleanup Crew Coterie. They were charged with investigating a haunting in a library building. I had several paths pre-planned for how they could handle it, including, as a last resort option, being pointed to a local Hecata who could help them get rid of it - for a price, of course. The crux was them figuring out who the ghost was so they could send it off appropriately without the mortals realising what was going on. What I hadn't expected to happen was one of the players, during a break in the action, going "Hey, why don't we just use Google the address and figure out if anyone famous used to live there?" While they discussed this as an option, I tried this myself and found out they were pretty much on the money. Thankfully they have Coterie members with reasonable Intelligence + Academics and Wits + Investigation rolls that this course of action could be resolved in character. I actually let them do the Googling on their phones at the table, and after some confusion involving the ghost being female while the famous resident was male (the ghost belonged to the famous resident's mother) they managed to skip through a whole bunch of investigation and can now get to work on actually dealing with the issue. Of course they'll have to justify their use of the internet to the court when all this is over.
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Dec 10, 2022 01:48
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I have a Mage: The Awakening question that's one part rules question and one part thought experiment. Let's say I'm a pretty competent mage, with Fate 4, Mind 2, Matter 2, Space 3, and Prime 2. I'm infiltrating an enemy Mage's house, when I come upon an office door on the north wall that is magically enchanted to compel all those around it who desire to enter by any means to knock on it first. Assuming I have all the following Wards on me, how many will activate and I need to roll a Clash of Wills for*? 1. Prime Ward*, Potency 5 (This one doesn't Clash, it would lower the potency of the spell by 5 if it applies) 2. Fate 4 Attainment (Blocks me from taking actions against my will) 3. Mind 2 Ward, Potency 3 (Protects me from mental compulsions) 4. Fate 2 Ward, Potency 2 (Protects me from being forced to do anything foolish) 5. Matter 2 Ward, Potency 45 (Protection from Doors) 6. Space 2 Ward, Potency 1 (Protection from Turning Any Part of My Body North For Any Reason) 7. Space 3, Break Boundary (Doors are not real) Spector29 fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Dec 11, 2022 |
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Dec 11, 2022 12:46
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Spector29 posted:1. Prime Ward*, Potency 5 (This one doesn't Clash, it would lower the potency of the spell by 5 if it applies) Spector29 posted:2. Fate 4 Attainment (Blocks me from taking actions against my will) Spector29 posted:3. Mind 2 Ward, Potency 3 (Protects me from mental compulsions) Spector29 posted:4. Fate 2 Ward, Potency 2 (Protects me from being forced to do anything foolish) Spector29 posted:5. Matter 2 Ward, Potency 45 (Protection from Doors) I see no argument for creative thaumaturgy here. You're not dealing with doors or anything made of matter. You're dealing with a mental compulsion that just happens to be hanging on top of a door. Spector29 posted:6. Space 2 Ward, Potency 1 (Protection from Turning Any Part of My Body North For Any Reason) Creative thaumaturgy: Even assuming this is something Shielding Space can do (at the very least Shielding is probably not the practice, Shielding can't just do anything that you can come up with a way to phrase using the word "protection"), still irrelevant to entering a door without knocking on it. Either you can't enter the door at all or you knock on it backwards. Spector29 posted:7. Space 3, Break Boundary (Doors are not real) You are, of course, very unlikely to have all these spells on you at once. Not only is this a very specific thought exercise, but concurrent spells above your Gnosis require a linear escalation of Reach per spell.
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Dec 11, 2022 19:54
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Going by the general principle that simultaneously-active and overlapping spells only give you the best of their redundant effects rather than stacking them all up, I think several of the spells on you would entitle you to a clash such that you make one and only one clash roll based on your best available dicepool, and that one clash represents your aggregate defensive spells' ability to protect you. This probably drains one "charge" from every applicable defense per the Creative Thaumaturgy rules but I could see someone ruling that only the spell whose dicepool is actually used gets taxed. The Fate 4 Attainment isn't a spell per se and needs to be separately invoked, so it'd afford you a second chance to clash. I don't think you can use Shielding against Fate to broadly protect yourself against being to do compelled things you don't want to do, so it alone would afford you no defense. I also agree with the above post that Shielding against Matter won't let you phase through stuff. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Dec 11, 2022 |
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Dec 11, 2022 20:08
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So what's some good ideas/examples for V5 Chimeristry usage? They've dialed it back so much that it's a bit hard to wrap my head around now that my narcosaint-to-be Ravnos has it. So far I've got making it sound like there's someone behind someone else, barking dogs behind a door, flashing police lights, glass breaking, making it seem like a target has a weapon when they're unarmed, etc. Would flashing a fake badge also work? Just can't decide if I'm trying to do too much or not enough with a signature power that's also just a stepping stone towards unleashing hordes of Fortitude-empowered spiders on folks.
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Dec 13, 2022 18:33
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citybeatnik posted:So what's some good ideas/examples for V5 Chimeristry usage? They've dialed it back so much that it's a bit hard to wrap my head around now that my narcosaint-to-be Ravnos has it. If your ST allows you to do it, I'd say the power can do it. Keep throwing out weird ideas until the ST says no basically.
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Dec 13, 2022 21:05
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joylessdivision posted:If your ST allows you to do it, I'd say the power can do it. Keep throwing out weird ideas until the ST says no basically. but enough about Mage
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Dec 13, 2022 21:49
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joylessdivision posted:If your ST allows you to do it, I'd say the power can do it. Keep throwing out weird ideas until the ST says no basically. More seriously, just spitball a bunch of ideas about what Chimeristry can do when you aren't in the middle of the game. It'll give you a chance to determine what your group thinks you should be capable of without possibly interrupting a game if you really misjudge things.
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Dec 13, 2022 22:04
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citybeatnik posted:Would flashing a fake badge also work?
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Dec 13, 2022 22:18
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Skios posted:"Creating a fake ID" is specifically listed as something you can't do with Chimerstry. Fata Morgana would work however, at a difficulty of 3 Manipulation + Obfuscate. I figured that was more a fake id you could actually let other people see as opposed to a quick "this is my official wallet inspector badge now hand it over".
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Dec 14, 2022 00:13
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 I'm not sure if I'll get the chance to have another session of Mage before the new year, so I mocked up a news page for my players to remind them where things are at, and thought I'd share here. The church was a Paternoster sanctum which the player cabal recently raided. They stole the most sacred artifact the Pylon had, the crystal hand of an ascended Paternoster Minister, because the cabal Moros had to trade it to a Cthonian God to get the memories of their Awakening back. Sir Jeffrey is the Paternoster Tetrarch (Shadow Name: The First Rays of Sunrise on May Day over Summerisle), who they managed to injure badly and dump into the Astral during their escape. He's not dead, he's just very angry, and is doing weird poo poo in the Astral as he plans his vengeance. The aurora over Wellington is because of the Tremere, who are preparing to try drag the Sixth Dragon out of the abyss back into its proper place in the Supernal, and so is the mental health crisis headline. Mysterious Student Deaths are also the Tremere's fault, they were a bunch of Mysterium sleepwalkers who got killed and soul eaten a while ago. Just there to remind the players of some of the more personal stakes. The Art Gallery is being bought by a bunch of Seers, but that's a bit of a red herring, though that pylon is also in possession of the Throne of the Dethroned Queen. Dr Latimer (Shadow Name: Absalon) is the Jordan Peterson-like Seer from Nameless and Accursed, who they killed in a car accident the other day (He was in the same pylon as Summerisle) They figured it would be easier to interrogate his ghost, and also they hated him. The arrogant prick thing actually happened irl. (Fake edit: Now I'm looking at it and seeing every typo I made. Please don't judge me) cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 09:38
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That's a really cool way to recap.
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Dec 15, 2022 10:03
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Seconding that, love little artifacts like this. (I knew that "arrogant prick" headline sounded too weird and specific to be fake.)
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Dec 15, 2022 10:10
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Did you use a program to generate that, or did you mock it up yourself by hand? That's very cool and something I would love to be able to do as well.
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Dec 15, 2022 16:06
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That’s super cool, I love this
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Dec 15, 2022 17:00
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Thanks everyone!Anonymous Zebra posted:Did you use a program to generate that, or did you mock it up yourself by hand? That's very cool and something I would love to be able to do as well. Just took a screenshot of the RNZ home page and very carefully (well, not that carefully) edited it in Photoshop and InDesign. I have an illicit copy of the RNZ style guide thanks to a colleague, so I'm pretty pleased with how it looks.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:13
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Thanks for all the tips! My players were relieved when I told them that they do not have all the pieces to figure out the plot, though they were frustrated at the end of the session when I implied that now they do have most of the information found out, they just have to connect the dots. I still need some practice in accepting players not figuring out stuff. Anyways, on the latest session we had! The night started with our coterie being very hungry. So hungry in fact that Benedict and Augustus fell into torpor instead of waking up, and Thomas had to solve the situation. Some vitae was donated to Benedict to wake him up, and making him one third of the way to being bloodbound. I described Benedict waking up with a new found appreciation of Thomas, and the player roleplayed this by agreeing with even the most galaxy-brained ideas Thomas had. They had some far-fetched ideas about sneaking into a hospital in need of medical aid to get some blood for Augustus, but to keep the session from being completely side-tracked I reminded them that they were in fact in a hotel, and I gave them a short encounter with a drunk who had lost all their money gambling. This managed to give them an easy and quick solution to their hunger problem as well as some local flavor of Atlantic City’s gambling world. During this they had received a text message setting up a meeting with Lia Milliner. They had previously learned that she was a local Hecata with connections to the business world. They had also threatened her ghoul after breaking into her hotel penthouse. On their way to the meeting, the coterie was harassed by two police officers. The duo was not wearing bodycams and were clearly looking for an excuse to beat up and arrest the coterie. Benedict used dominate to tell the officers to leave, solving the situation peacefully. This was a quick random encounter, except it wasn’t random at all. Unbeknownst to the players, the officers had been deliberately told to harass the coterie. Let’s move on to the meeting with Lia Milliner. Despite the players’ mistreatment of her ghoul, she was open to business (although all social rolls were more difficult). She explained that she didn’t care for politics, only that the cash keeps flowing, so she is willing to do business with anyone, whether Hecata, Anarch or Atlantic City’s one remaining Camarilla. Specifically she helps less financially inclined Kindred with investments and money-laundering. The players were curious about the one Camarilla Kindred, who is called Felix Lodz. I told Thomas that he actually knows of Felix, since both are from clan Tremere, but none of the players had inquired about Camarilla presence in AC. But regarding clan Hecata, Lia Milliner told the players that recently she had acted as a consultant for Lubango so he can get better quality meth and heroin and expand his drug trafficking business, bargained down the rent on Mrs. Strand’s mini-domain and collected funds from Ornella Giovanni. The coterie asked about Ornella, since they had previously learned that Ornella has been missing for over a year. Milliner explained that as far as she knows, Ornella had stepped down from running the Three Bears Casino, but is still active in the domain. Electronic payments still issue from her bank accounts and personal finances are still handled in cash at a drop point. Lia Milliner hasn’t seen Ornella in over a year, but Ornella and Lia both use intermediaries often. Milliner sets up the date and time and arrives with money, contracts and documents for signing or returns with the same after meeting with Ornella’s mortal representatives. The players also get her to share the location, but fail to convince her to set up a drop-off so they could follow Ornella’s agents. While the players have learned that name-dropping Donatello Giovanni, who hired them for this investigation, opens many doors, they also absolutely refuse to tell anyone what they are investigating, so no one really trusts them. Milliner did invite them to a local Kindred activity, hunting on a cruise ship. The coterie joined and managed to smoothe over the relationship which had been damaged by rude treatment of Milliner’s ghoul. Hunting on a cruise ship is a popular activity among the local Kindred population, and the coterie met two local Anarchs on the ship. Painite, a young thinblood Augustus had previously met briefly and who had explained some of the local customs (ie. don’t hunt locals, don’t hunt on the Boardwalk) and Douglas, Augustus’ sire, who went by the name Heat these nights. Several sessions ago the coterie had been tasked with finding Augustus’ sire, who turned out to know even less about the Kindred world than the young player characters, and who then had been implied to have been executed by the Banu-Haqim primogen for breaking Camarilla laws. The coterie was quite surprised to learn that he had been exiled instead and was now with the Anarchs. The players were invited to attend the local Anarch meeting, which they attended gladly. This was mostly for world-building and to introduce minor characters in the domain. Most notable thing the players learned, that 40 '000 dollars they had paid to invest in a casino in the previous session, was part of a domain wager, where Waxman had to con suitable targets out of money. The players accepted the con graciously. They also heard the word Bahari, and with some occult rolls the players were granted general information on the cult. When they eventually returned to their hotel room, they found it ransacked. Someone has robbed them. The players ace their investigation rolls, and find out that the burglars entered using a keycard and disguised as cleaning staff. They also find something they had missed earlier; there are hidden cameras in their room. They storm into the hotel manager Zingaretti’s office and demand answers. Zingaretti is genuinely sorry and ashamed that the coterie had been robbed, it was his hotel after all, but isn’t prepared to offer any other compensation than a flight back to their home. Regarding the security cameras, the players manage to make Zingaretti spill the beans. The room is specifically designed for vampiric guests, so Zingaretti has bugged the room for leverage. He knows he is just a mortal in a world of monsters, he needs some compromising material for protection. The coterie agrees that this is fair, and lets him keep doing it, but dominate him to get rid of any material concerning the coterie, before finding a room in a different hotel. Then it was time to finally catch up with the local Camarilla, namely Felix Lodz, who was not too popular and when Camarilla left AC it was deemed easier to leave him there rather than relocate him to another domain. Felix owns a seedy and rundown bookshop, and the players quickly learn that Felix is very religious, though not part of any organized religion, and that he constantly blinks, coughs and rambles on in an exaggerated effort to appear more mortal. At first I tried to keep talking and coughing unless the players interrupted me, but my voice couldn’t take that so we fast forwarded the dialogue. Felix had a lot to say but very little useful information, but he did mention that Baron Blumenau had talked with the previous regent a few times, something about a Promise and ghosts, and shortly after that everyone else in the Ivory Tower left. There’s still some time left, so the coterie decides to finally investigate Lubango of clan Hecata. They only know the neighborhood he lives in, but they reason that they know he’s dealing drugs and Thomas has enough underworld skills to find out details locally. I ask them how they approach, they tell me that they just grab a taxi and as they step out of it, I give them a wits test to see people scattering from the streets before they are ambushed. There are a total of ten gunmen on both sides of the streets shooting at them, they are not accurate but there’s a lot of bullets and shrapnel going around. Unfortunately I spent more time prepping to run the scene smoothly than my players spent in it, opting to flee immediately through a manhole cover. Since Thomas has high levels of streetwise, I explained to the players that clearly you were expected and you made no effort at subtlety. We ended the session there and I encouraged the players to connect the dots. I feel I was a bit too forceful and hand-holdy in this and in the future I need to remember to let the players not figure out stuff. But what they know so far is that Ornella disappearing and Blumenau taking over occurred at roughly the same time. Blumenau sold Hecata secrets to the Tremere to get Camarilla to leave the city. The players also suspect that a Bahari cult is active in the domain. And that’s it for this session!
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Dec 21, 2022 13:14
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After the last session of the year, I'm thinking that the coterie has earned a promotion, going from Watchmen to Vehme. I was thinking of making them 'earn' it by setting them on a path that would lead them to earn influence with police and media. What would be a good way to go about that?
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Dec 29, 2022 13:48
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Skios posted:After the last session of the year, I'm thinking that the coterie has earned a promotion, going from Watchmen to Vehme. I was thinking of making them 'earn' it by setting them on a path that would lead them to earn influence with police and media. What would be a good way to go about that? covering up a major masquerade breech brought about by something outside vampire society. Something where they have provide the police with a mundane suspect for them to arrest and pin the blame on while keeping things plausible enough that the media focuses on that and not the more outlandish aspects of whatever happened. Bonus, if you make the instigating event something from one of the other splats instead of just a one off monster of the week, the PCs and now the defacto ambassadors to that faction.
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Dec 29, 2022 14:39
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Hmm, that's definitely an interesting thought. Given the setting my chronicle is playing out in, a mage or two would be the most likely candidate if I went down the route of using another splat. What would be some good sources to draw from? My knowledge of Mage comes pretty much entirely from browsing the White Wolf wiki. The best I've been able to come up with so far is 'One or more mages are running mass surveys of the student body from the social sciences faculty, under the guise of simple data gathering exercises for first year psychology students, in order to manipulate the consensus in some way.'
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Dec 31, 2022 12:15
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Skios posted:Hmm, that's definitely an interesting thought. Given the setting my chronicle is playing out in, a mage or two would be the most likely candidate if I went down the route of using another splat. What would be some good sources to draw from? My knowledge of Mage comes pretty much entirely from browsing the White Wolf wiki. The best I've been able to come up with so far is 'One or more mages are running mass surveys of the student body from the social sciences faculty, under the guise of simple data gathering exercises for first year psychology students, in order to manipulate the consensus in some way.'
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Dec 31, 2022 22:02
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Also, this is your standard reminder that you don't need to use the Mage mechanics to have a mage show up in your game, and you probably shouldn't. The good news is that mages are generally all weirdos so you can do whatever mechanically and it'll work fine from your players' perspective.
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Dec 31, 2022 22:20
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Also, this is your standard reminder that you don't need to use the Mage mechanics to have a mage show up in your game, and you probably shouldn't. The good news is that mages are generally all weirdos so you can do whatever mechanically and it'll work fine from your players' perspective.
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Dec 31, 2022 22:26
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Also, this is your standard reminder that you don't need to use the Mage mechanics to have a mage show up in your game, and you probably shouldn't. The good news is that mages are generally all weirdos so you can do whatever mechanically and it'll work fine from your players' perspective. In fact, unless you're planning to use this setting for a mage game down the road, it's better if you just make them whatever you need them to be!
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Dec 31, 2022 23:15
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Crossovers in oWoD should actively break the rules of the main system you’re playing. Take Vampire. The average pc wouldn’t even know all of the major bloodlines, high level disciple powers, and so on. They don’t have access to the core book. Then a goddamn wizard shows up and does wizard poo poo. What the actual gently caress?
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Dec 31, 2022 23:47
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A lot of game-specific mechanics in World of Darkness games are there to show you the behind-the-scenes materialist explanation for why a given monster does what it does when it's on camera. How come vampires keep biting people? Well, it turns out they need blood not only to fuel their powers but simply to rise from the dead every evening. Therefore, a lot of Mage-unique mechanics give players various bonuses or penalties for being circumspect, keeping secrets, squatting on places of power, investigating mysteries, etc. But if you're the Storyteller you can just have them do those things without worrying about the back end.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:04
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When I inserted a mage in my vampire game I just had him be a scary guy who could make fire and invisible barriers. I didn't really stat him up or anything because the two things he needed to do were enough to make my PCs not want to gently caress with him. If things had gone in a way that he needed to actually throw dice around I could just improvise a dice pool for 'shoot fireball' and if the PCs got past that they'd soon discover he wasn't nearly as powerful as he let on, beyond knowing that making fire is a good way to make vampires not want to gently caress with you.
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Jan 1, 2023 01:39
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ZiegeDame posted:When I inserted a mage in my vampire game I just had him be a scary guy who could make fire and invisible barriers. I didn't really stat him up or anything because the two things he needed to do were enough to make my PCs not want to gently caress with him. If things had gone in a way that he needed to actually throw dice around I could just improvise a dice pool for 'shoot fireball' and if the PCs got past that they'd soon discover he wasn't nearly as powerful as he let on, beyond knowing that making fire is a good way to make vampires not want to gently caress with you.
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Jan 1, 2023 03:36
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Thanks for the input everyone. Going through my notes, I think I found a way to get mages involved in the setting. Basically, the Ventrue primogen of the city uses the law faculty of the university as her domain. However, the building used to house the physics department (it's actually the first place in the world where helium was turned liquid). I'm thinking of having some Society of Ether mad scientist types unearthing something in the faculty's basement that blurs the lines between magic and science that the coterie has to clean up.
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Jan 2, 2023 13:40
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I'd say if a mage and a vampire are interacting, a plurality of the mage's motivation should be a desire to dissect the vampire. Maybe that's more of an Awakening thing, though.
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Jan 2, 2023 18:57
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Given that the coterie is pretty much the city's Masquerade Police right now, I think it would be a more interesting challenge for them to deal with a more general supernatural threat that isn't even really aware that they're dealing with vampires.
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Jan 2, 2023 23:08
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Well obviously if the mage doesn't know they're dealing with vampires, indeed may not even know vampires exist, it is in the best interest of the coterie to keep it that way. Unless maybe they have a rival they want dissected.
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Jan 2, 2023 23:40
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