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Nessus posted:Yeah, that book has like four Crinoses on the cover, we ain't seen any Crinoses in W5. They're in the preview art for the opening of the book though? Like it's literally on the Renegade page.    
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Jun 7, 2023 22:07
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joylessdivision posted:They're in the preview art for the opening of the book though? Like it's literally on the Renegade page.
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Jun 7, 2023 22:14
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Well yeah, it's hard to trace photos of Crinos form werewolves when there aren't any that aren't just people in terrible fursuits.
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Jun 7, 2023 22:25
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Fuzz posted:Well yeah, it's hard to trace photos of Crinos form werewolves when there aren't any that aren't just people in terrible fursuits. Screenshots of Dog Soldiers would beg to differ.
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Jun 7, 2023 23:14
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Fuzz posted:It won't necessarily carry over at all since W5 is a reboot. I've read the backer PDF. From what we know of W5, it wouldn't be difficult at all to use this to transition a game from W20 to W5
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Jun 8, 2023 00:23
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I think they're tryign to do more of a clean break, like, the wendigo have never been a thing, it's always been the new name, just try to scrub all the gross poo poo out of the game rather than drag it forward yet another edition.
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Jun 8, 2023 01:37
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Kurieg posted:I think they're tryign to do more of a clean break, like, the wendigo have never been a thing, it's always been the new name, just try to scrub all the gross poo poo out of the game rather than drag it forward yet another edition. And that's for the best, really. Given the run up I'm sure they'll step on several new rakes but they're at least not stepping on the old ones.
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Jun 8, 2023 03:09
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It always feels a little weird for me when it comes to making up splat governments in these games (like the local Consilia or Vampiric courts); I think I'm hung up on the fact that even in the most populous cities you're gonna have like 100-200 supernatural people at most spread out across five organizations, so I can't really draw on my own experience with political parties and other groups like that because there's such drastically fewer individuals that the vibes are totally different.
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Jun 8, 2023 22:47
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Whirling posted:It always feels a little weird for me when it comes to making up splat governments in these games (like the local Consilia or Vampiric courts); I think I'm hung up on the fact that even in the most populous cities you're gonna have like 100-200 supernatural people at most spread out across five organizations, so I can't really draw on my own experience with political parties and other groups like that because there's such drastically fewer individuals that the vibes are totally different. This is why I often treat them more like gangs who claim political power than actual governments, because that's basically what they are. When you basically view all of it as Supernatural turf wars, it becomes much more manageable. Something like the Carthians or Camarilla are now just an organized crime gang with a capo than any true form of government, and they have the same limitations of being beholden to keeping a low profile on their activities. The rest of the groups become either small terrorist cells or just upstart gangs carving out their own turf to either protect, wield power, build a power base from which to challenge the organized crime group, etc. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jun 8, 2023 |
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Jun 8, 2023 22:59
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Whirling posted:It always feels a little weird for me when it comes to making up splat governments in these games (like the local Consilia or Vampiric courts); I think I'm hung up on the fact that even in the most populous cities you're gonna have like 100-200 supernatural people at most spread out across five organizations, so I can't really draw on my own experience with political parties and other groups like that because there's such drastically fewer individuals that the vibes are totally different. I feel like a good option whenever you're making a new WoD ecosystem is picking one or two covenant-level factions and making them practically or literally nonexistent in the city/region. Especially in nWoD, parceling interesting characters, leads, and resources out equally over five factions can stretch them really thin, and the asymmetric relationships can prompt some interesting ideas for hooks.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:28
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Yeah the game I'm running has all five, but it's mainly the invictus and carthians, with a healthy ordo presence. The circle is doing their own thing and just populous enuogh to hold their own territory, while the lancea only have like 10 vamps left. But I'm also cool with their being 1000 vampires in the city.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:42
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It's really only vampires and mages that have significant overarching, ongoing political organizations, and even midsize cities are depicted as having very uneven distributions of both supernaturals and the factions within them. It's not unbelievable to me for there to be many dozens of various supernaturals even in poo poo holes like Topeka KS. Sure there probably isn't a prince's domain and whole-rear end consilium in Nicodemus at the same time, but one or the other could be a fun "wtf is this doing here" moment for some players.
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Jun 9, 2023 01:13
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While nearly every werewolf or mage is going to be In their social splat to the extent of having at least one Status dot, partaking of the special bonuses and powers that are conferred by membership, etc, I think it's safe to assume that formal Covenant membership is not actually a social default and that a lot of vampires aren't organized in that way even if they're part of the social universe that the Covenants serve as tentpoles for. That is to say, vampires who actually have Status: Lancea et Sanctum are specifically the priests and sorcerers who put on and maintain the infrastructure for midnight mass, but plenty of uninitiated vampires might well come to church regularly because that's just what you do, or because they're true believers, or because they need the charity. There might be the same priestess/lay worshiper division in the Circle. There's a difference between being an oathbound member of the Invictus and therefore someone's liege-lord or vassal or something and just being a guy who makes sure to attend Elysium regularly to keep abreast of what's happening, or even claims a few blocks of territory for themselves. That the Ordo Dracul's membership is small and potentially even secret is pretty obvious. Even active as opposed to "paper" membership in the Carthian Movement is probably fairly rare because you're not going to be able to pull down favors from the network unless you're able to provide your own.
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Jun 9, 2023 01:23
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There's a reason that vampire power structures are pretty much feudal because that's about what the actual numbers and power dynamics track to. Of course the Changeling game I'm in goes the other way where there's Seasonal and Directional Courts, though it IS a major city. It works out for the most part better than you'd think.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:24
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Soonmot posted:Yeah the game I'm running has all five, but it's mainly the invictus and carthians, with a healthy ordo presence. The circle is doing their own thing and just populous enuogh to hold their own territory, while the lancea only have like 10 vamps left. But I'm also cool with their being 1000 vampires in the city.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:47
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Fuzz posted:This is why I often treat them more like gangs who claim political power than actual governments, because that's basically what they are. Sure, but what are Mage orders then? Research gangs? An aggressive book club? I jest but also I feel a little lost on what the day-to-day life would be like in a Consilium.
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Jun 9, 2023 05:14
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Whirling posted:Sure, but what are Mage orders then? Research gangs? An aggressive book club? I jest but also I feel a little lost on what the day-to-day life would be like in a Consilium. Yes, all of them (except the Seers, obviously)
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Jun 9, 2023 05:17
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Nessus posted:Leftist political clubs, I believe. Oh no so if we're going with this analogy, I guess the Seers are more like fascist groups, where its less about splitting over ideological differences, and more about various idiots trying to be the Fuhrer at any given time and killing each other constantly to get that seat Whirling fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 05:42
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Whirling posted:Oh no
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Jun 9, 2023 05:57
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Nessus posted:I am not certain if the Seers all get along with each other at the Stonecutters lodge or if they are also fractious assholes, just fractious assholes inside the walls. I can't say I'm an expert on the deep lore of Mage, but what I've read suggested that the Seers are absolutely fractious, backbiting assholes. I mean, if nothing else that's literally how it shakes out in any given real-world fascist government.
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Jun 9, 2023 07:07
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Whirling posted:It always feels a little weird for me when it comes to making up splat governments in these games (like the local Consilia or Vampiric courts); I think I'm hung up on the fact that even in the most populous cities you're gonna have like 100-200 supernatural people at most spread out across five organizations, so I can't really draw on my own experience with political parties and other groups like that because there's such drastically fewer individuals that the vibes are totally different. Yeah I love the Requiem covenants but siloing everybody is a real problem, especially since 3 of the 5 groups are apolitical on paper. I think it's better to imagine membership in the covenants as a lot looser than in Masquerade. Like, Ordo puts on scientific demonstrations and shares certain knowledge with the entire Kindred community in a town, but only card-carrying members get to learn coils. Carthians show up at Invictus events to keep abreast of what's going on. Everybody goes to church on vampire christmas and vampire easter. It's a single community with factions, not exclusive clubs that hate each other. Not sure how well that works in Mage.
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Jun 9, 2023 07:15
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Yeah I think the 5x5 nWoD splat paradigm is a lot better at efficiently covering story space and suggesting hooks than it is at being a model setting. That's like the main thing I think of when people talk about how Chronicles of Darkness is a "toolbox".
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Jun 9, 2023 07:26
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The real problem with the Requiem vampire factions, to me, is the often repeated paradigm that VtR vamps apparently can't travel from city to city. I'm not super deep into VtR mechanics, but it was mentioned multiple times in Damnation City that vampires have real problems changing locations, and that there wasn't some "faction hotline" you could call up to get help from the next city over. There's also a HtV SAS adventure that's all about a vampire using hunters to move him from one city to another, because the process is so dangerous that he needs a group of well armed humans to help him do it. With that in mind, I have no idea how contiguous factions even exist, because essentially each city should be an isolated point of civilization for vampires, with very little flow of information.
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Jun 9, 2023 07:59
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Most of the problem with vampires changing locations is because the basic assumption is that they're all catty assholes hissing at each other in the shadows. Moving means setting up in a new area where they'll be the intruder, which will get all the hissy kindred to agree to be hissy at them. That of course assumes you going full brooding Darwinian bastards with it, which is something Damnation City lays on thick. You're by no means obligated to run, especially in light of things like the historical Covenant Gallow's Post which was explicitly about facilitating travel for vampires across Europe. If you're willing to entertain the idea that vampires do not in fact have to be going full asshat all the time or that a particular locale is teetering on the razors edge of its carrying capacity, then there's room for them to do interesting things.
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Jun 9, 2023 08:38
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Rubix Squid posted:Most of the problem with vampires changing locations is because the basic assumption is that they're all catty assholes hissing at each other in the shadows. Moving means setting up in a new area where they'll be the intruder, which will get all the hissy kindred to agree to be hissy at them. That of course assumes you going full brooding Darwinian bastards with it, which is something Damnation City lays on thick. You're by no means obligated to run, especially in light of things like the historical Covenant Gallow's Post which was explicitly about facilitating travel for vampires across Europe. Yeah, it mostly seemed a problem unique to vamps. I'm reasonably sure there's no reason that mages would stick to one town or city any more than normal humans do, so you don't need to have a full faction represented at every level at every location, because you might need to travel down the I-80 to meet your local [insert faction leader], but it's fairly easy to do that. EDIT: The other problem, of course, is that if you do the math the books claim then only mega cities can support any number of vampires. So essentially, they are all locked in NYC, Philly, Seattle, London, etc., because anything smaller and there's not enough people to feed from without everyone overlapping and causing the locals to set fire to their sleeping places. Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 09:01
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Omnicrom posted:I can't say I'm an expert on the deep lore of Mage, but what I've read suggested that the Seers are absolutely fractious, backbiting assholes. I mean, if nothing else that's literally how it shakes out in any given real-world fascist government. Pretty much, on top of having probably as much factionalist rivalry as the Pentacle at least and trying to carry out arbitrary and sometimes incomprehensible orders from their post-human demigod bosses.
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Jun 9, 2023 09:18
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Anonymous Zebra posted:The real problem with the Requiem vampire factions, to me, is the often repeated paradigm that VtR vamps apparently can't travel from city to city. It's not a huge deal. Make arrangements in your destination, make backup arrangements in case something happens, then just drive there. Maybe have a thrall or your ghoul follow you in case something happens to your car. It's not liks Requiem has VtM werewolves to worry about. Vampires generally have access to whatever they want as long as some other vampire didn't get to it first. Dominate someone with a plane and have him fly you someplace. Obfuscate past TSA and take a red eye. Some of the Ordo guys can even go out in the sun, so yeah traveling costs some blood and willpower, but it's not like this impossible task. I think it's mostly there to explain why vampires stake out territory and try to put up with each other instead of just being shiftless loners with no accountability.
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Jun 9, 2023 10:56
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Anonymous Zebra posted:EDIT: The other problem, of course, is that if you do the math the books claim then only mega cities can support any number of vampires. So essentially, they are all locked in NYC, Philly, Seattle, London, etc., because anything smaller and there's not enough people to feed from without everyone overlapping and causing the locals to set fire to their sleeping places. That's part of the reason why I adjusted how feeding works with regard to damage and how it maps to actual blood volume. Because I am precisely that kind of nerd. As it stands feeding is so incredibly destructive it's a miracle everyone and their dog doesn't already know about vampires.
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Jun 9, 2023 11:00
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worm girl posted:It's not a huge deal. Make arrangements in your destination, make backup arrangements in case something happens, then just drive there. Maybe have a thrall or your ghoul follow you in case something happens to your car. It's not liks Requiem has VtM werewolves to worry about. this, plus the traditional RPG divide between PCs and NPCs, it's no big deal for your character to travel, but the NPCs tend to like to maintain their comfort and only change cities if they're forced out or are on the run.
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Jun 9, 2023 11:12
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Whirling posted:Sure, but what are Mage orders then? Research gangs? An aggressive book club? I jest but also I feel a little lost on what the day-to-day life would be like in a Consilium. academic departments the Seers are the Federalist Society
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Jun 9, 2023 12:45
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Whirling posted:Sure, but what are Mage orders then? Research gangs? An aggressive book club? I jest but also I feel a little lost on what the day-to-day life would be like in a Consilium. So, despite looking kind of similar to vampire society on the surface (there are five "society" type groupings and a local city power structure), mage society is actually very different. First up, orders are global organizations (though they don't necessarily have a global hierarchy--think Eastern Orthodox Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism), generally split into mostly-autonomous chapters called caucuses, which usually cover a fairly wide region. A Mysterium Mage in Los Angeles, for example, might belong to the Mysterium caucus that covers all of southern California. So an order caucus generally does have more than enough wizards to fill all those fancy titles and positions and still have a sizable body of ordinary members. Orders are, broadly speaking, a mixture of political action groups, mystery religions, and academic departments, with the proportions varying based on the specific order. Meanwhile, cabals are generally speaking a much more important part of mage society than coteries in vampire--whereas Vampire generally assumes that only very young vampires band together into groups and that they become more isolated as they get more powerful, mages tend to remain in cabals for most of their careers, for various reasons ranging from sharing of resources to common areas of magical interest to just plain old good working relationships. Cabals are pretty varied in what they're "like"--some are like interdisciplinary study groups, some are more like secret societies at Ivy League colleges, some are like co-ops, etc. Finally, a Consilium isn't a government the way a Prince's court is--it's an arbitration council, usually set up by mutual consent of the cabals in a region (usually smaller than the area of a caucus) to mediate disputes between cabals or individual mages about things like access to resources, rights and responsibilities, and the like. There are also Assemblies, which in theory are an alternative form of local decision-making council but in practice is usually just "the local Free Council" and Convocations, which are semi-regular meetings of representatives from a bunch of different Consilia. Naturally, it's the Venn diagram of membership in these various bodies that really drives mage politics. So, generally, day-to-day life in a Consilium really doesn't involve the Consilium all that much--mostly you'll be pursuing your own or your cabal's interests, probably getting pulled into inter- and intra-order politics semi-regularly, and occasionally dealing with the Consilium when those fuckers from the Ebon Noose cabal try to redirect the 39th Street ley line so it flows into one of their Sancta instead of yours.
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Jun 9, 2023 14:08
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Anonymous Zebra posted:The real problem with the Requiem vampire factions, to me, is the often repeated paradigm that VtR vamps apparently can't travel from city to city. I'm not super deep into VtR mechanics, but it was mentioned multiple times in Damnation City that vampires have real problems changing locations, and that there wasn't some "faction hotline" you could call up to get help from the next city over. There's also a HtV SAS adventure that's all about a vampire using hunters to move him from one city to another, because the process is so dangerous that he needs a group of well armed humans to help him do it. Ultimately, this is mostly a consequence of them trying to differentiate themselves from Masquerade and over-correcting slightly. Masquerade had a vampiric Illuminati, Requiem emphasized that vampires are parasites with delusions of grandeur. Masquerade stated all the setting mysteries clearly and thus made them less scary, Requiem emphasized that there's always weird poo poo you don't understand in the night. You get the idea. And in practice, that went from "it's hard to travel between places" to "it's effectively impossible, each city is an island" because people are bad at coordinating and etcetera. Anyway, people are also bad at math, so don't read too much into the population numbers. Especially not how they intersect with the feeding rules, because they're designed to give players a specific feel for how much damage they're doing to the people around them and not designed to create a realistic ecology model.
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Jun 9, 2023 14:55
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Mages are academics. Your cabal is your (sometimes interdisciplinary) research group, your Order is your department, your caucus is all the departments of your subject in the local universities, the Consilium is the Dean and more importantly the Ethics committee of your particular university, the Assembly is the lecturer's Union and Convocations are conferences.
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Jun 9, 2023 15:03
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Mages are academics. Your cabal is your (sometimes interdisciplinary) research group, your Order is your department, your caucus is all the departments of your subject in the local universities, the Consilium is the Dean and more importantly the Ethics committee of your particular university, the Assembly is the lecturer's Union and Convocations are conferences.
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Jun 9, 2023 15:52
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And what is Tenure in this metaphor?
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Jun 9, 2023 15:56
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Skipping this year's convocation because I don't want to hear the same guy give the same talk he does every year about how actually, Veiling Forces is good for so much more than invisibility and if you would just buy my grimoire you'd understand
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Jun 9, 2023 15:57
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Kurieg posted:And what is Tenure in this metaphor? ascension e: i know it's 1E and deprecated or whatever but Imperial Mysteries paints this portrait of ascended archmages as a bunch of dorks who all have personal ideological objections to the status quo but steadfastly refuse to do anything about it, which conveniently lines up with them being nigh-untouchable demigods under said status quo as long as they don't actually threaten the Exarchs' power Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 16:06
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Anonymous Zebra posted:The real problem with the Requiem vampire factions, to me, is the often repeated paradigm that VtR vamps apparently can't travel from city to city. I'm not super deep into VtR mechanics, but it was mentioned multiple times in Damnation City that vampires have real problems changing locations, and that there wasn't some "faction hotline" you could call up to get help from the next city over. There's also a HtV SAS adventure that's all about a vampire using hunters to move him from one city to another, because the process is so dangerous that he needs a group of well armed humans to help him do it. It's probably safe to assume that Requiem (especially its early material) is simply exaggerating how hard it is for vampires to communicate and travel, but even if you take it completely at its word it's not really weird that all five Covenants are assumed to be global phenomena. While the Ordo and Sanctum really are specific, named societies with contingent origins that have presumably spread through travel, instruction, and evanglism, Crone worship probably pops up spontaneously the world over because that poo poo is real and natural in some way and the Invictus/Carthian divide can just be understood as a portrayal of hierarchical vs. horizontal survival strategies that secular vampires might choose or fall into when banding together.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:33
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I figure it's hard for vampires to move because it's a pain in the rear end to move to begin with, when you can schedule viewings during daylight hours, sign leases and collect keys while the sun is shining, partake in non-red-eye air travel, and the like. Also unless you just have Cash on Cash sitting around you're going to need to redo whatever process you did to get around a credit check last time, again. Or pay someone to do it for you (quest added: do like a dozen favors for this mid-level Carthian you loving hate so you can leave town with a better plan than 'Protean exists').
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Jun 9, 2023 17:40
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Even vampires without social disciplines can just have a ghoul take care of all that stuff for them. Both VtR and VtM Kindred have the world's most addicting drug in their veins, with the convenient side effect of absolute loyalty from their addicts, so it really isn't hard to get mortals who can take care of their amenities unless a vampire is so bad at their social game that "hey, wanna have some drugs" is too complex a ploy for them. I thought the "every city is an island" thingie in Requiem was a thematic break from the globe-throtting adventures of VtM's metaplot, reinforced by R1E's Predator's Taint making it very risky to meet new vampires, specially at a volume.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:05
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