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MonsieurChoc posted:Motherfucking Ghost Council!  Galestalkers is a pretty sick name too
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Apr 20, 2023 19:59
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joylessdivision posted:Indeed they have, she posted the updated tribe list with the news announce today Interesting take on their tribal duty. I guess 'a tribe of Galliards, basically' was a bit much.
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Apr 20, 2023 20:03
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I am incredibly hype for W5. More than I was even when V5 got announced. Now they just need to announce Wraith and Changeling 5e and I'll be a happy man. I have a feeling Mage will be the next new game announced (unless they curve ball us with something like Demon or Mummy the way they did with Hunter) which, as an admitted hater of Ascension, I would at least be curious to see how they change and update it for 5e. Unless Brucatto's involved, in which case, hard pass lol.
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Apr 20, 2023 23:57
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joylessdivision posted:I am incredibly hype for W5. More than I was even when V5 got announced. Now they just need to announce Wraith and Changeling 5e and I'll be a happy man. Changeling 5E would be very interesting. Possibly as much needs to be reworked as Woof had.
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Apr 21, 2023 02:35
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Dawgstar posted:Changeling 5E would be very interesting. Possibly as much needs to be reworked as Woof had. Oh absolutely, but if C20 can fix things then I don't see how they couldn't do it again. Truly I want Wraith more than Changeling now that Apocalypse is on the horizon if I'm being completely honest. Wraith spoke to my sadboy heart in a way none of the other games have.
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Apr 21, 2023 03:24
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joylessdivision posted:I am incredibly hype for W5. More than I was even when V5 got announced. Now they just need to announce Wraith and Changeling 5e and I'll be a happy man. I hope they just release Orpheus instead of Wraith as the core line with the intent of making it actually playable. Wraith has my favourite setting but I honestly think it's more difficult to manage in practice than any other TTRPG I've encountered, specifically due to the Shadow and Harrowing systems and the ways in which Wraiths generate Pathos. I've still honestly never met anyone else who's kept it going for over 10 sessions.
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Apr 21, 2023 12:22
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Tolth posted:I hope they just release Orpheus instead of Wraith as the core line with the intent of making it actually playable. Since there's already a Wraith VR video game out there, it's probably a little too late to make Orpheus the ghost-focused line in WoD5. Then again, the Orpheus Group existing as of the first book in H5 certainly leaves the door open. I actually feel that with current game design philosophies and a far more robust suite of player safety tools easily available, this might actually be the best possible time for a new edition of Wraith. Troupe-style play like Shadowguiding still isn't very common but some tweaks to the WoD5 engine might make it an easier ask. I could easily see something like Angst dice (Spite dice?) giving a Shadow's player a suite of options to push a character towards breaking a Chronicle Tenet or something like that. I'm not sure how much tables use Vampire's Memoriam system given that most of the game's preferred protagonists don't seem old enough to call for them often, but I could see that mechanic as a blueprint for how a Harrowing could work. That said, Mediums, Projectors, and Risen should 100% be playable options in a hypothetical WtO5 core rulebook.
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Apr 22, 2023 01:19
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If they go with a Stygia-has-Fallen agnle they could do a Last Legion as a new group of antagonists.
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Apr 22, 2023 02:40
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Free Cog posted:Since there's already a Wraith VR video game out there, it's probably a little too late to make Orpheus the ghost-focused line in WoD5. Then again, the Orpheus Group existing as of the first book in H5 certainly leaves the door open. I honestly think that trying to balance the core rules of a system around ghosts who live in the afterlife, ghosts possessing corpses in the real world, people in the real world who can selectively become ghosts, and people who can talk to ghosts, is basically impossible. This sort of thing is why I'm tolerant of them trimming the setting down in 5th edition, to be honest. They're all different perspectives and close to being different games outright because the perspectives of each are so fundamentally different. Shadowguiding could be redesigned and streamlined to be less painful (Orpheus kind of does this with Hues and their silent shadows) and mechanics like Harrowings could/should be cut outright. Harrowings are one of those mechanics that are far more practical to read about than actually play - it sounds fun but I definitely think very few people who discuss Wraith have ever actually done the thing where you send one person out of the room and then everyone else sets up a Jacobs Ladder style nightmare torture scene with them as the focus. Like, seriously, if someone walks in on a group doing that they'd be within reason to call the police.
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Apr 22, 2023 10:26
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After watching Jason Carl roleplay everyone's beast in LA by Night, I couldn't help but think that that's a better way to handle shadows. To be fair I've never played with a group of people who could handle PVP at the table, so I'm definitely biased against it. But it seems much more common for people to buy into the "players versus the GM" mindset, so maybe leaning into that isn't a bad thing.
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Apr 22, 2023 11:08
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Freemason Rush Week posted:After watching Jason Carl roleplay everyone's beast in LA by Night, I couldn't help but think that that's a better way to handle shadows. To be fair I've never played with a group of people who could handle PVP at the table, so I'm definitely biased against it. But it seems much more common for people to buy into the "players versus the GM" mindset, so maybe leaning into that isn't a bad thing. You CAN do 'the GM plays everyone's Shadow' which I've personally done but it is a lot of extra work.
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Apr 22, 2023 14:07
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Do what I do, have them play each others' Beasts/Shadows. Bonus if the same two people aren't playing each others' evil whisper voice. Makes it fun for everyone and pulls other players into scenes where poo poo goes sideways. Also it offloads the work from you.
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Apr 22, 2023 14:46
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There's been a pretty significant turnaround in opinions on W5 in my circles, including me. After this most recent stream, it's got me wondering if some changes were made late into production based on feedback or is Justin Achilli just really, really bad at explaining/selling his own product.
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Apr 22, 2023 23:56
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any bullet points?
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Apr 23, 2023 01:42
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Not really sure this is the right place to ask this, but is there a good place to try and find online games for vtm? My wife and I are interested in playing again, but have no idea where to search for groups.
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Apr 25, 2023 14:03
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Jeremor posted:Not really sure this is the right place to ask this, but is there a good place to try and find online games for vtm? My wife and I are interested in playing again, but have no idea where to search for groups. Ooof, we used to have lots of play by post games here. I'm running a discord pbp, but I have my own troop of players and we're already maxed at 5. I've tried the Onyx Path forums and those games die quicker than games over here. Does V5 even have forums? Maybe check in their discord? Anyways, my vampire players are psyched to announce their first job as Justicars has been a success at Elysium our next session, and are using the X-Men Hellfire Gala and like Final Fantasy illustrations as inspiration for their outfits. I love them.
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Apr 25, 2023 17:27
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Time for another recap starring our usual suspects, Augustus the Amish Banu Haqim and Thomas the Triad Tremere. Previously the coterie had been given a task by the Banu Haqim Primogen, Samira, to turn a warehouse into “something useful for the Camarilla.” This time this project was finished and Samira arrived to inspect what the players had achieved. The players had turned this warehouse into an animal hospital, named Puppy Eyes, which was secretly a back alley clinic for the down-trodden, which secretly extracted blood bags from its patients. Samira was impressed by this multi-level diversion, but was curious how the young vampires felt about preying on vulnerable people. Thomas, being a hardened criminal, didn't really care. Augustus surprisingly gave a very prosperity gospel speech about how those using the back alley clinic were most likely criminals, homeless or otherwise sinners. This earned him a stain, since one of his tenets is to not tolerate hypocrisy, and he himself is destitute and spends a lot of time with homeless people, while considering himself righteous. Samira asked some questions about how the establishment was run, did the coterie already have clients scouted, who they were trying to gain favor with, and so on. Thomas tried to be smooth and gave some generic answers, but Samira unfortunately saw through it and knew that these things had not been considered. I run Samira as a philosopher character, who is supportive but cold, and uses pointed questions to guide others to consider their actions more. She was pleased that the players had not just taken the money and run, and that they hadn’t build yet another drinking establishment. As she put it “I swear it seems that every Toreador in the city already runs a club or two.” In the end, Samira gave the coterie a grade of B+. They had done as they had been asked, but hadn’t achieved anything special. They clearly had made this place to make their own unlives easier, but hadn’t curried favor with anyone. Samira would take the clinic and present it to the rest of the Ivory Tower, but would not mention the coterie’s names, since it could be construed as implying that Camarilla vampires are incapable of hunting for themselves. The city is full of sharks. After this, Samira shared some rumors and advice for the neonates, and the players took the opportunity to learn from someone older and more powerful than them. Augustus’ ambition is to make Camarilla adhere to pacifism and he tried to pitch this to Samira. It was not a very good pitch. Luckily Samira was polite enough to suggest that he learn more about their clan and get acquainted with other Banu Haqim in the city, before trying again. After that, Samira took over the clinic and the players went to investigate the next plot hook. During the previous scene, Thomas had received a text message from his touchstone Horatio. The message included an address and a time. When we last heard from Horatio, he wanted out from this vampire business (having suffered quite a lot of mental and physical harm) and Thomas had chosen to keep some distance, for Horatio’s sake. The address led to a small burger joint in Hudson Heights. The crew aced their awareness checks so I gave them additional information I was going to make them roll streetwise for. They noticed that there were more police cars in the area than usual, though not enough to be considered exceptional, just unusual. The choice of location was also unusual, it was not an area that the Triad operated in. This was clearly a trap of some sort, but thankfully my players decided to walk into it, curious to see how the story would go. Inside the burger joint, Horatio was waiting for them, clearly nervous and pointed at the coterie to take a seat. The coterie, thanks to some more excellent awareness checks, noticed two men nearby, with handguns and kevlar vests under their jackets, trying to act inconspicuous. As the coterie took their seats opposite Horatio, he stood up and walked away, with the two gunmen moving in and introducing themselves as agents Crawford and Bigby, FBI. The agents started doing a basic good cop-bad cop routine, offered a deal and we moved to social combat. The agents had strong evidence of the coteries’ actions, a bestial murder had been caught on camera and drained corpses had been found in Brooklyn. They assumed that the coterie were just axemen, ordered to kill without their own agency. It would be unfair that they should take the fall for someone else’s orders. (Everyone the coterie had killed so far had been to protect their own hides or due to poor choices, the agents’ assumption was incorrect.) The agents offered a deal. Give them names and the coterie would be spared. The players chose to not cooperate and refused to talk. So the agents tried a more aggressive approach, telling them that this was their only opportunity and that they would be killed. The coterie continued stonewalling, though Augustus’ willpower was rapidly draining. For the third round, the agents tried a more friendly approach, maybe they would like to ask some questions from the agents and learn something. And then, instead of asking the players for dice rolls, I introduced a twist. Walter Nash entered the burger joint, sawn-off shotgun in one hand, molotov cocktail in the other. Before anyone had a chance to react, the molotov had been thrown and flames were spreading everywhere, and Nash’s ghouls had started a shootout with the police outside. Nash told the coterie to get moving, the fire brigade wouldn’t be coming but there are more cops. Everyone quickly fled the scene and regrouped at a getaway van, where they had a chance to chat about the situation. Walter Nash had previously been recruited to discredit the agents (his method had been to spread rumors that one of the agents was gay and the other was Polish), but now that he had clearly saved the coteries’ lives, their debt was settled. We also learned that his two ghouls’ main role is to say “Good one boss” and “Nyeah boss” after everything Nash says, he used to run with Lucky Luciano’s crew back in the day, and thanks to the players continued acceptance and patronage, he has returned to the Kindred social scene and he runs with a coterie of his own nowadays. The coterie consists of Balthazar, who Nash says used to be a pirate, and Valerie, who Nash says has good heritage and values. They are called the Opposition and they are united by their desire to see someone more competent as Prince of the city. Nash considers Prince Panhard incompetent purely due to misogyny and Nash would prefer himself, or any white male to run the city. Eventually everyone goes their own ways and we end the session, everyone had a great time. My players are eager to meet the rest of Nash’s coterie and enjoy how deeply unpleasant a character he is, while also one of the friendliest they have met. I also had built up Horatio’s betrayal; while complaining about all the poo poo he had been through, being questioned by the police was one of them, and they had heard from their contacts that the FBI agents were planning a big move. Anyways, Thomas has now lost his only touchstone. The rulebook is not very clear what that means 
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Apr 25, 2023 19:25
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Your players are killing it. I have a couple more days before we find the Elysium scene and then my chapter 1 will be finished.
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Apr 25, 2023 21:57
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Jeremor posted:Not really sure this is the right place to ask this, but is there a good place to try and find online games for vtm? My wife and I are interested in playing again, but have no idea where to search for groups. There's the Unofficial WoD5 server that's a little more easy to parse because it's not a clusterfuck of pubbies: https://discord.gg/wod5 Then there's the actual official Paradox WoD Discord which has a metric fuckload of people and I dunno, some people have had luck? https://discord.gg/worldofdarkness On my end, in the process of setting up and getting together a VTT game, probably in Foundry but not sure yet. Gonna run an Old West campaign with V5, set in 1864 onward and covering the end of the Civil War and rapid move to complete the intercontinental rail system, with the coterie being involved in stuff all around that route, though based heavily out of Chicago and San Francisco on either end of it.
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Apr 26, 2023 01:04
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Random thought of the day: nothing has done more to firmly slam the Technocratic Union back into being antagonists (as opposed to misguided heroes) than longtermism and creating caste-based theocractric philosophies from first principles. Smugly stating "you're welcome for vaccines, computers, and indoor plumbing nerds" changing to them trying to convince you to buy an NFT token of an ape. Fuzz posted:There's the Unofficial WoD5 server that's a little more easy to parse because it's not a clusterfuck of pubbies: God how things have changed. Two decades ago we had the modded/unmodded digichats where it was a flood of new folks constantly getting their concepts rejected, the start of the (unfortunatly necessary) excel spreadsheets emailed between women that laid out which creepy fuckwits to avoid, and players creating an ad hoc social network for downtime play via AIM/ICQ/Yahoo groups. I still game with two of the chat's old vampire STs (that i was the Assistant to) and at times the parallels between aging rock stars can be hilarious. But then we're the sort of nerd buddies that can go off on an hour+ debate about whether the Memorium system in V5 verses the Sleep of Ages mechanic in VtR means that the former has a locked in metaplot due to how the memories experienced are what "actually happened"... which then launched into a debate about the failability of memory and how one's philosophy can impact that. It was nuanced enough that my spouse, who puts up with my nerdery, went "at the start i was rolling my eyes but as you went on it got more and more thought provoking." (My stance was that no, you should not take the Ministry elder's word/written accounts as Truth because it was recounted by an indoctrinated cultist. And that no manner of Kindred historians pulling an Indiana Jones through havens could get around what is a tacit acknowledgement that game groups can make up their own back history verses the blatant version in VtR.) But then this is *also* the same nerd group where the current drama is how to handle the fallout of the cotorie's Tzimitse diabing his sire/mother to make sure she stayed dead following an epic fight involving her warpack verses the allies the group had gotten together. The nosferatu and tremere are furious and they're convinced we're going to be pariahs since the allies saw him do it, the ventrue's hurt and feeling betrayed while worrying about the fiend's emotional state, the malkavian is doing her best to keep the group together via channeling her inner kindergarten teacher, and my ravnos (who is basically Charlie Day shouting out "wildcard, bitches!") Is just going "gently caress it they'd come up with an excuse to stymie us anyway, let's focus on getting the dragon's humanity back while we have fun".
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Apr 26, 2023 14:22
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citybeatnik posted:Random thought of the day: nothing has done more to firmly slam the Technocratic Union back into being antagonists (as opposed to misguided heroes) than longtermism and creating caste-based theocractric philosophies from first principles. The Virtual Adepts would be the ones waging war against the Syndicate's stranglehold on everything by "upsetting traditional banking" via crypto and NFTs, though. That's totally a VA move. Them failing miserably at it like idiots is also basically on brand. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Apr 26, 2023 |
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Apr 26, 2023 14:47
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Definitely got the Roko's Basilisk people in there too.
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Apr 26, 2023 16:42
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Yeah the Syndicate probably just uses bitcoins to sell and buy retail amounts of weasel dust. That poo poo is all VAs. In many ways they would be the most successful tradition but also now everyone’s enemy.
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Apr 26, 2023 16:50
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I call shenanigans on VA being into crypto over the Syndicate. Their paradigm involves tapping into potentiality of money and there's no better money sink/battery than buying the rights to a certificate of a monkey or the promise of a coin (that you can never cash out). Decentraland is a psyop to discredit the notion of virtual reality and Pentex is out there cackling at the ecological damage caused by mining both literally and electronically. Ghost Leviathan posted:Definitely got the Roko's Basilisk people in there too. There's that too.
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Apr 26, 2023 17:49
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Technocracy campaigns are basically "are_we_the_baddies.mp4" and then the questions "is it possible to do good within a corrupt system? can it be overhauled, or does it need to be broken? and what are the repercussions of both?" which are all big juicy questions to hang a Mage game on.
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Apr 26, 2023 17:53
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:
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Apr 26, 2023 18:08
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To some extent this is true of Mage the Awakening too! I kinda like the premise of the campaign idea that was in one of the supplements, Diamond: The Awakened Are One Nation, where you abandon the whole 'local politics' thing, decide that The Silver Ladder Are Right (or at least, that faction of them) and go all in on having the Pentacle being a global, organised organisation.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:08
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citybeatnik posted:Random thought of the day: nothing has done more to firmly slam the Technocratic Union back into being antagonists (as opposed to misguided heroes) than longtermism and creating caste-based theocractric philosophies from first principles. The ape NFTs are clearly a Pentex/Technocracy joint venture designed to allow them to project control over the Yeren despite them now being integrated into all layers of society. This writes itself. The greed-obsessed ape shapeshifters are definitely buying those. Fuzz posted:The Virtual Adepts would be the ones waging war against the Syndicate's stranglehold on everything by "upsetting traditional banking" via crypto and NFTs, though. That's totally a VA move. Exactly like real crypto it would be an endless sisyphean cycle of the VA's getting ripped off by the Syndicate.
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Apr 27, 2023 07:58
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Basically every Tradition has a reactionary dark side that both colors its history and suggests how it's going to plug into the worst elements of the modern era and inadvertently strengthen the Technocratic agenda. Virtual Adepts are obviously going to start hyperventilating about the liberatory possibilities of the metaverse, but by the same light a Hermetic might insist with increasing fervor that no, look, this mystic symbol just stands for the sun, its meaning was just corrupted--
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Apr 27, 2023 08:20
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bits of the Celestial Chorus going full Trad Cath Fash, the Euthanatos.. uh.. they.. the Euthanatos... tbh I never really got the Euthanatos.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:51
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:bits of the Celestial Chorus going full Trad Cath Fash, the Euthanatos.. uh.. they.. the Euthanatos... They kill people who "need" to die.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:53
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joylessdivision posted:Indeed they have, she posted the updated tribe list with the news announce today Envision sucks. Corpo wyrm speak. Say Prophesy or some fantasy dork poo poo instead
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Apr 27, 2023 14:57
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fez_machine posted:Envision sucks. Corpo wyrm speak. Say Prophesy or some fantasy dork poo poo instead Yeah but they're Shadow Lords, so that tracks.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:50
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fez_machine posted:Envision sucks. Corpo wyrm speak. Say Prophesy or some fantasy dork poo poo instead They need to replace "Puzzle Out" with a single word, and if they can't think of one they should just cut every entry down to a more aesthetically pleasing three verbs instead.
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Apr 27, 2023 17:56
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"Envision" should be "Rule" (to contrast Silver Fangs' "Lead") for Shadow Lords, and Children of Gaia getting like, Solve instead of Puzzle Out creates some interesting possibilities. So do those imo
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Apr 27, 2023 18:00
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I like 'envision.' Shadow Lords as the Big Picture types (which they frequently get lost in, doing everything they can to skip from A to Z) makes sense.
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Apr 27, 2023 18:24
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:bits of the Celestial Chorus going full Trad Cath Fash, the Euthanatos.. uh.. they.. the Euthanatos... The issue with the Choristers is that folks identify them predominantly with the major religous institutions, forgetting that they were the Albigensians being set on fire by the Knights Templar. Or the poor Baháʼí. Or Sikhi. I'm sure that there's been plenty of ink spilled elsewhere about the rehabilitation of the Union falling in with line with things like New Atheism or the like, with direct comparisons to the Traditions starting off as a "drat the man" reaction to the 80s. As for the Euthanatos everyone thinks they jump immediately to "let's shank a dude" as opposed to starting with "telling someone to maybe consider not doing a thing", with plenty of off-ramps prior to taking the exit to Knife In The Eye Lane. And then MtAw did it right, with the practice/path of magic being different than the execution/order. Everyone posted:They kill people who "need" to die. Voormas Did Nothing Wrong Dot Jpg (They got about as hosed over as the Dream Speakers by having various unaffiliated groups being shoved together, which is one of the major weaknesses of the Traditions. As opposed to the Union's "what if we did An Imperialism on reality?") But due in part to them loving about in Greece when Byron was pretending to help during the war we ended up the Acharne so good on them. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 19:04
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Incidentally, they put up a two-page preview of the Glass Walkers, which is mostly what you’d expect save for a few things. First, there’s a bit in there about how the other tribes got pissy at the Walkers for helping humans protect themselves against the Impergium by teaching them how to make fences and traps. Don’t think that’s come up before so it seemed interesting. Second, tribes are getting a favor and a ban associated with their patron spirit. Walkers get an extra die to Technology/Science rolls associated with building or repairing things, but they also take a penalty to Willpower regeneration if they destroy complex machines. The penalty is related to the regeneration at the beginning of the next session so I guess that if you’re going to violate it once in a session you might as well go for broke. Based on the listed archetypes they do seem to be trying to lean away from the superhacker, cyberninja, and gun specialist ideas from earlier editions although god knows those could easily still be supported in their Gifts and Talismans.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:02
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I mean, like I'm constantly saying, if you're going to do anything with the Traditions, you need to start with the assumption that they're the protagonists and figure out how to make them work. Ascension is constantly shooting itself in the foot because it gets nervous and won't commit and keeps coming up with reasons why its protagonists don't really deserve to fight a defensive war against total annihilation, instead of either accepting what it has or changing it to something it likes better.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:31
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I mean, “we decline to be suppressed” is sufficient. The Traditions agendas rarely include mass death or service to horrific umbrood, so at that point choose your favorite magickal conspiracy and get to wizbiz. May the best wiz win (in game not on forum). I did realize that “the order of reason” was a clear “gently caress you” to the Order of Hermes, though.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:40
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