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Dawgstar posted:And the really good Demon: The Fallen trilogy which sells the game much better than the actual game. I've only ever read book 2 of tha ttrilogy cause I found it for cheap at a lgs.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:50
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The Demon: The Fallen trilogy is so good, in a better world it'd be one of the jewels of urban fantasy instead of a tie-in for a C-tier Vampire sidegame. and I am saying this as someone who really liked the Demon: The Fallen RPG
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Oct 8, 2023 17:38
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Stolze's Demon trilogy kicks rear end. A fun side detail is that it suggests that mages' avatars are just fragments of shattered angels.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:41
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Anyways, here’s another recap. Thanks for all the kind words regarding these! We continue our quest to help a local Nosferatu, Cockroach, to find out who killed her and who turned her into a vampire. As usual, our coterie consists of Augustus the Amish Banu Haqim and Thomas the Triad Tremere. Our night begins with an appointment with Calebros, the former Prince pro tempore of New York. Or more accurately, our night begins with some unsuccessful hunting and the coterie arrives late to their appointment. I copied the details from the old New York by Night book as I described their long trek across the sewers and tunnels under the city, before they met the old Nosferatu. I described a scene of decaying grandeur, Calebros was a monstrous figure dressed in a very sharp late 19th century suit and the players were treated to a fine dinner of roasted rat. Augustus can eat and enjoy regular food, though I reminded him that just because he can eat the rat, nothing will make the experience enjoyable. Thomas has no such advantage and got the old “Spend WP or puke” treatment. Throughout the dinner, the coterie explains to Calebros that they need to find Gerard Rafin. Calebros asks if their request has anything to do with Schrecknet, but the coterie denies this and explains that they suspect Gerard has sired offspring without permission. (The players don’t know this, but Gerard Rafin was one of Schrecknet’s pioneers, so Calebros assumes anyone looking for him is probably interested in vampire internet). Calebros explains his position. He knows who Gerard Rafin is and where he can be found, but if he were to sacrifice a member of Clan Nosferatu, he needs the coterie to perform a favor that helps the clan as a whole. There is a dispute between Clan Nosferatu and the rest of Camarilla about the ownership of New York underground, namely the Nosferatu believe that not just sewers, but metro stations, garages, basements and everything else under the streets belong to them. The Nosferatu are not attending Elysium until the dispute is solved and there are even rumors that the Nosferatu are planning to join the Anarchs. To strengthen their arguments, the Nosferatu are mapping these areas they lay claim to. This is where the players come in. There is an old and abandoned section where Calebros has already sent two Kindred to investigate and they haven’t returned. So now it’s the players turn to clear this abandoned area. Calebros doesn’t know what will await them, but that the players should be prepared for anything from a hunters’ trap to some Old Clan monstrosity or even the actual gates of hell. (This was me trying to give the players a hint that I’m about to throw them a boss battle and they should gear up. Thomas bought one pistol and Augustus believes that diplomacy is an option.) After meeting Calebros the players didn’t really decide on the next course of action, so much as I told them “Guys, could you go investigate the pathological report? Otherwise the order of things you learn gets messed up.” My players are polite and did so. Cockroach’s FBI partner was killed a few years before she was embraced and they have reason to believe this is connected to their current investigation. So the players travel to the city morgue and start brewing galaxy-brained schemes on how to infiltrate the place. Thomas has the obvious predator flaw, has low humanity and is extremely hungry so he needs to be kept away from any mortals. So Augustus sneaks into an adjoining hospital, steals a doctor's coat and a body bag, then Thomas gets in the body bag and is transported to the morgue, pretending to be a corpse while Augustus searches through the archives. So while Augustus is elsewhere, the graveyard shift mortician starts to perform an autopsy on Thomas. The mortician almost immediately notices Thomas’ fangs, and before Thomas has to do a homicide, the mortician informs Thomas that “Miss Zal is not here, there is no business for your kind tonight.” Thomas is so flabbergasted by this turn of events that he meekly obeys and leaves. Meanwhile Augustus has found the pathological report of Cockroach’s partner. They learn that the partner was killed by “four strikes with a paired needle-like weapon which drained the victim of blood.” Or clearly drained by several vampires. There was also a bullet casing containing traces of a dark, blood-like liquid. The casing is of a rare Eastern European caliber. There are also notes from the doctor conducting the autopsy, asking the kinds of questions which tend to lead one to learn that vampires are real, except the case had been turned over to the FBI Special Affairs Division. But now the players have investigated two deaths; the crime scene where Cockroach was murdered and her partner’s autopsy report. Both include bullet casings with traces of vitae, and both bullet casings are Eastern European in caliber. Had they asked around about the more rare caliber, they would have learned that it matches the submachine gun they had previously delivered to the Caitiff Primogen, Ivan Kuthka. But that doesn’t matter, since Ivan is already the coterie’s prime suspect for his involvement in Circulation Inc. and Russian Mafia, and Cockroach was investigating organized human trafficking with links to Russian organized crime prior to her and her partner’s deaths. Next up the players are going to investigate the tunnel labyrinth they found last session in the crypt where Cockroach was killed. And I note that while this would be an odd point to stop the session, end it we will. If the players are determined to investigate those tunnels, as a GM I feel I should give them something interesting to find and right now I’ve got nothing. So that’s it for this time, thank you for reading!
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Oct 8, 2023 22:18
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There's a vampire sub-clan that's all in-focused on mirrors. It was something like Mirror Sisters or something like that? Anyone remember it?
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Oct 9, 2023 00:25
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Your Uncle Dracula posted:There's a vampire sub-clan that's all in-focused on mirrors. It was something like Mirror Sisters or something like that? Anyone remember it? In Danse Macabre for Requiem, i think.
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Oct 9, 2023 03:25
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Hollow Mekhet?
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Oct 9, 2023 13:49
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Your Uncle Dracula posted:There's a vampire sub-clan that's all in-focused on mirrors. It was something like Mirror Sisters or something like that? Anyone remember it? The Danse Macabre had the Children of the Thorns, a covenant of vampires who have been changed by a visit to a monstrous crypt-being they call Bloody Mary. They can smear blood on a mirror and use it as a passage to her cemetery, although once they do so, they can only leave either by using another vampire's arrival to pass back through that vampire's mirror, or pushing through the thorny labyrinth that surrounds the cemetery and hoping they can wander their way back somewhere in the material realm. A sidebar notes that while this is not definitionally a Changeling crossover setting element, it intentionally can very easily be played as one.
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Oct 9, 2023 14:52
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Game night tomorrow - will my players successfully realize that the mad frenchwoman who wants to go to the moon is both mad and the pawn of a more dangerous power, or will they, as the batman of the group wanted to do last time, invite her to live with them despite having known her for all of six seconds
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Oct 9, 2023 14:55
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Loomer posted:Game night tomorrow - will my players successfully realize that the mad frenchwoman who wants to go to the moon is both mad and the pawn of a more dangerous power, or will they, as the batman of the group wanted to do last time, invite her to live with them despite having known her for all of six seconds Listen to your heart.
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Oct 9, 2023 15:05
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Loomer posted:Game night tomorrow - will my players successfully realize that the mad frenchwoman who wants to go to the moon is both mad and the pawn of a more dangerous power, or will they, as the batman of the group wanted to do last time, invite her to live with them despite having known her for all of six seconds Or?
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Oct 9, 2023 16:59
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They should all live together on the moon obviously.
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Oct 9, 2023 17:39
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idigam spotted
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Oct 9, 2023 17:47
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Oh yeah, in Mythologies they also had a ghost vampires could summon in mirrors like Bloody Mary, and they could even deal with him to elarn a mirror-based discipline.
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Oct 9, 2023 19:36
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CaptainRat posted:idigam spotted Yes please come live on the moon it is fine and good here and the known laws of physics definitely apply. We even have euclidian geometry, it was installed last week.
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Oct 9, 2023 19:48
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MonsieurChoc posted:Oh yeah, in Mythologies they also had a ghost vampires could summon in mirrors like Bloody Mary, and they could even deal with him to elarn a mirror-based discipline. Oh hey, on skimming through the book again looking this up I also found that Mythologies has the Underworld as a labyrinth of caverns and mausoleums patrolled by Reapers who are charged with ensuring that no ghost escapes. Three years before Geist First Edition.
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Oct 9, 2023 20:59
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Kurieg posted:Yes please come live on the moon it is fine and good here and the known laws of physics definitely apply. We even have euclidian geometry, it was installed last week. Well that sounds grea- waaaaaait a minute...
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Oct 9, 2023 21:00
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Lord Hypnostache posted:Next up the players are going to investigate the tunnel labyrinth they found last session in the crypt where Cockroach was killed. And I note that while this would be an odd point to stop the session, end it we will. If the players are determined to investigate those tunnels, as a GM I feel I should give them something interesting to find and right now I’ve got nothing. So that’s it for this time, thank you for reading! I don't have anything to add (I mean, parts of the cathedral of flesh are always a good option to add something spooky in the NY underground, but probably not quite tied to the investigation), but I always appreciate these play reports. NY By Night is a pretty cool setting book. So, Mage game is wrapping up, then I am going to spend three weeks living as a monk IRL and then I'll be back to running Vampire. This is a series of campaigns set in Tuscany that we began in Dark Age: Vampire, then Sorcerer's Crusade during the Black Plague and next game will be set during the Anarch Revolt as vampires. So I rolled randomly for some stuff to happen around the rest of the world (50% odds of history as it happened, then several scenarios with 10-20% odds and a 5% really crazy one), there is some stuff I'd like ideas on, I don't care much for sticking to canon, but I do enjoy drawing from it. Also I probably played too much CK and EU. I mostly focused on the Mediterranean and regions bordering Italy. No rolls for the Italian peninsula itself because that's the players' turf and oh boy, are they ruining the history books. -Egypy and Iberia came off as "historical". -Ilse survived her childe's attempt to diablerize her and became the dominant Ventrue in central Europe instead of Hardestadt, enforcing an early Masquerade. Results in a tamer Inquisition and more controlled revolt in the region. -Court of Love fragmented completely and violently, Anarch Revolt going full bore in the area. Also France lost to England in the Much-Shorter-Than-Hundred-Years War and London has lost all control of southern France. -The Massassa War between the Tremere and Order of Hermes became hot instead of fizzling out, so that's keeping both factions busy this century, not sure on the consequences from the Mage side, but I ruling that Salubri are not quite as exterminated, though still relegated to the fringes of cainite society. -Setites made a big push in North Africa, effectively taking over the Marinid sultanate (which historically suffered from viziers holding the actual power) and using it as an instrument against the Ashirra. -The Latin Empire survived, but is losing ground to the Ottomans. The Dream is dead and the city is primarily a shared domain of the Lasombra, Giovanni and Nosferatu. -Cainite Heresy survived and while not well liked, is nonetheless accepted as part of the night society as the Church of Caine, mostly present in the Balkans and Portugal. -Oh yeah, Malkav's twin sister, Malakai, woke up in Jerusalem. I am, hm, not sure what to do about it, but I guess there's an active Antediluvian during the Anarch Revolt.
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Oct 9, 2023 22:41
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ZearothK posted:I don't have anything to add (I mean, parts of the cathedral of flesh are always a good option to add something spooky in the NY underground, but probably not quite tied to the investigation), but I always appreciate these play reports. NY By Night is a pretty cool setting book. Nothing bad ever happens when a powerful Malkavian shows up. Nope. Nothing bad at all! 
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Oct 9, 2023 22:51
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 Probably my favorite thing in the new book, which is overall actually pretty light on Rituals and has no powers at all, it's all themes and concepts and crazy poo poo. poo poo rules. Baali can go eat a dick, they suck. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 00:53
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A moon base is good enough for Dracula after all
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Oct 10, 2023 02:55
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I'll get around to her in the AAR eventually but the moon-mad Frenchwoman, Rosaline d'Armagnac, is a Questing Orphan whose awakening was tied to the experience of wishing for a better, easier world while staring at the moon. She has prophetic visions of stepping foot on it, whereupon it will 'crack open as though it were an egg, and from it will crawl a thousand thousand monsters, each beautiful and terrible in unique ways, and descend upon the earth'. So we've got a Changeling tie-in in her in fact - she shares descent with the Sidhe of House Scathach that also works as a metaphor for the blossoming of political ideology that's about to kick off post-1848. To further tie her in, the cause of her madness links it back to the Nephandi plotline though she was already mentally ill, she had the great misfortune to fall for a dashing hussar officer - Jodi Blake, in masculine visage, who heroically saved her from an arranged marriage to an old lecher. Blake in turn was drawn to her by the glimpses she has forward and backward in time letting her know that Rosaline has an immensely powerful avatar waiting in the wings, and set to twisting her up so that when she did Awaken, she'd be able to lure her into accepting spiritual decay and degradation as her just deserts. Rosaline already suffered bouts of depersonalization disorder (which, this being a Victorian game, is ambiguously tied to said powerful Avatar manifesting - she routinely considers herself only the Dream of the woman who will be reborn by stepping foot on the moon, not a real person at all. It doesn't help the belief you aren't real when some blinding vision manifests to try and overwhelm your will and drive you to do things you would never think to do otherwise.) before Jodi got to work on her. Jodi in turn worked on her by tapping into Rosaline's repressed bisexuality (which Rosaline is convinced is a dire sin, her father being extremely devout) and allowing one of her femme guises to peek through in mirrors, in the dead of night, etcetera, coupled with a rather ugly helping of domestic violence and gaslighting to intensify the strain. Now she's a rattled ghost of herself, appearing by turns as though she might commit suicide as a simple matter of practical escape from a purpose so vast and consuming she can feel it ripping apart her actual sense of self and as a bold, dynamic woman driven by that very same unshakeable faith and clarity of purpose. So naturally they're probably going to abandon the main plot to help her build her moonship and accidentally kickstart Changeling: the Dreaming in 1848.
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Oct 10, 2023 03:43
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MonsieurChoc posted:Oh yeah, in Mythologies they also had a ghost vampires could summon in mirrors like Bloody Mary, and they could even deal with him to elarn a mirror-based discipline. Oh poo poo. Thanks for bringing this up, gonna try and adapt it for my V5 game.
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Oct 10, 2023 03:51
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Loomer posted:I'll get around to her in the AAR eventually but the moon-mad Frenchwoman, Rosaline d'Armagnac, is a Questing Orphan whose awakening was tied to the experience of wishing for a better, easier world while staring at the moon. She has prophetic visions of stepping foot on it, whereupon it will 'crack open as though it were an egg, and from it will crawl a thousand thousand monsters, each beautiful and terrible in unique ways, and descend upon the earth'. So we've got a Changeling tie-in in her in fact - she shares descent with the Sidhe of House Scathach that also works as a metaphor for the blossoming of political ideology that's about to kick off post-1848. 
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Oct 10, 2023 04:32
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I want to do a session in the Astral Realm in my ongoing Mage the Awakening campaign, but I'm not really sure what a good hook would be to get people in there. Honestly I'm having trouble with how mages even find unclaimed Mysteries anyway, I've had to basically deliver adventures straight to their sanctum for the first few sessions.
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Oct 10, 2023 06:50
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TheKingslayer posted:Oh poo poo. Thanks for bringing this up, gonna try and adapt it for my V5 game. No problems. Mythologies is a pretty fun book.
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Oct 10, 2023 14:00
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Whirling posted:I want to do a session in the Astral Realm in my ongoing Mage the Awakening campaign, but I'm not really sure what a good hook would be to get people in there. Honestly I'm having trouble with how mages even find unclaimed Mysteries anyway, I've had to basically deliver adventures straight to their sanctum for the first few sessions. I did do the 'adventure delivery' thing but the main hook should be around what their cabal is actually about. In-world, what is the cabal's mission goal? Then NPCs can dangle hooks in exchange for doing them a favour, and that gives you a nice little web of intrigue. As far as getting into the Astral, a very simple hook is "one of us or a close NPC [preferably sleepwalker] is having weirdo dreams that aren't readable with Mind while they're awake". This is also a good excuse to go find a cabal that maintains some kind of dedicated meditation room and get into a favour-trade with them; bonus if you want to include a fellow mage to act as a "first timer's astral guide" so you can do some diegetic tutorialisation.
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Oct 11, 2023 23:39
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Thanks for the advice. My players are sheepish about owing favors, so maybe I should just make up a new condition called "Obliged" or something that gives the user some social penalties if the person they owe comes calling but (like all conditions) grants a beat when resolved. I hope dangling XP in front of them is enough of an enticement.
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Oct 11, 2023 23:44
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Whirling posted:Thanks for the advice. My players are sheepish about owing favors, so maybe I should just make up a new condition called "Obliged" or something that gives the user some social penalties if the person they owe comes calling but (like all conditions) grants a beat when resolved. I hope dangling XP in front of them is enough of an enticement. Just let the choice to not ask for help have a bad outcome! If players don't want to engage with the narrative, bribery can only do so much.
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Oct 12, 2023 00:03
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Have Steve AdamArrow say "yeah hey guys just as a head's up, people trust your cadre way more if you actually entrench yourself in the community by doing and asking for favors. It's kind of our way of making sure nobody gets too estranged and crazy by forcing them to help each other out."
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Oct 12, 2023 00:12
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Just let the choice to not ask for help have a bad outcome! If players don't want to engage with the narrative, bribery can only do so much. I dunno, that feels punitive considering 2/3 of my players are very new to the setting. Your Uncle Dracula posted:Have Steve AdamArrow say "yeah hey guys just as a head's up, people trust your cadre way more if you actually entrench yourself in the community by doing and asking for favors. It's kind of our way of making sure nobody gets too estranged and crazy by forcing them to help each other out." I'll give this a shot.
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Oct 12, 2023 01:27
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When I ran Mage for people new to the setting, I got a lot of mileage out of "Your mentor wants you to do this thing for her", "Your sleeper friend / local spirits / ghost familiar thinks something weird is going on", and "That NPC you met at an Assembly/Consilium gathering and liked/hated talked about their research, go give them help/steal their thunder." When it comes to early game Mage with new players, I don't think it's unreasonable to give them some firm direction and obvious plot hooks until they get into the swing of it. During character building, I gave everyone a free social merit of their choice + a mentor for the whole cabal, and that helped with plot delivery in the early games too.
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Oct 12, 2023 01:34
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If having that discussion in-game doesn't work out, there's also the option of starting a session with a renegotiation of expectations. There's only so far that gesturing can take you. I've had players reveal to me that interactions I thought were mundane if flavorful scared the bejeesus out of them and conditioned them to avoid NPC's I had designed to be regulars.
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Oct 12, 2023 01:37
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If you're newbie mages then you basically need to have: 1. A mentor 2. An order and either of those will come calling and ask you to do stuff for them. You don't get to chill doing your own thing forever unless you want to be at Status 1 forever; you should communicate to the players that the PCs are expected to be part of the mage community based on the backstories they already have. Only one of my PCs in my chronicle actually had the 'Mentor' merit; but that meant that they actually had a mentor that was useful and they could ask for help asking nothing in return; as opposed to the other mentors who were active NPCs but expected them to fulfil obligations in turn. Yeah your undead-hating, living-human-soul loving mentor can help you untangle this soul problem - what are you going to do for her to free up time in her diary? Every other cabal is doing stuff that, to them, is just as important as what the PCs are doing.
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Oct 12, 2023 06:34
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The way I'm handling it in my game has worked out rather neatly - we have two relatively established mages and a couple of apprentices, but the established mages both work for a bigwig, who's charged them with a very broad, open-ended task. Once you've given them that initial hook, you should be able to build what follows to pull them forward again and again without needing to directly deliver-to-their-door much. In my case, that's gone: Step 1: The murder mystery creates the cabal and leads to them getting their first mission. Step 2: Investigating their first mission brings them into contact with five other plotlines (The Defectors, the Device in the True Observatory, Frenchwomen on the Moon, Good Duke Humphrey the Nosferatu, and Infiltrating the Pekin), all of which they begin following up on because completing their first mission requires them to work out which approach is best. Step 3: Each of these then spawns connections to the next major plotlines - the Defectors into investigating the murder of one PC's father; the Device into the Rise of the Technocracy; the Frenchwomen on the Moon into a two-part plot involving the French Order and the Nephandi Jodi Blake; Good Duke Humphrey to war with the Giovanni; the Pekin to the Great Sacrifice That Is Empire. By the time they hit Step 3 proper, there's no longer a need at all to spoonfeed them hooks: they've hooked themselves on what drew their interest. In my case it helps that I'm doing a grand sprawling game of intrigue and conspiracy, but fundamentally the same structure lies at the heart of a good campaign - each plot contains the hook of the next installment, and ideally more than one (and time spent prepping the one they don't follow up on isn't a waste as you slip it in later when they follow up a related plot beat), and the need for answers to the weird poo poo they saw resolving it or allies to handle the fallout etc etc etc leads them naturally into that next plot beat.
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Oct 12, 2023 07:00
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Baby Broomer posted:If having that discussion in-game doesn't work out, there's also the option of starting a session with a renegotiation of expectations. There's only so far that gesturing can take you. I've had players reveal to me that interactions I thought were mundane if flavorful scared the bejeesus out of them and conditioned them to avoid NPC's I had designed to be regulars. What was it that made them so scared?
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Oct 12, 2023 10:25
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Flakey posted:What was it that made them so scared? betting it's Mind related
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Oct 12, 2023 14:36
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Flakey posted:What was it that made them so scared? He was a Nosferatu Sheriff, and two out of three players were very involved with their mortal touchstones. Like, every session involved incredible breaches of the masquerade. All he was there to do was offer an in road for the vampire detective player to become a Hound, should he choose to, and they all assumed that he was stalking them, waiting for the right time to pop out of Obfuscate to chop said detective's boyfriend's head off.
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Oct 12, 2023 15:14
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Fuzz posted:
So how much of this book, as kick rear end as it might be, is mostly aimed at the four clans (and thinbloods i guess) with innate access to magic and how much of it's a free for all? The snippets mention the Brujah and Malkavians and I'd personally love for my dude to get into some nagual-related shenanigans.
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Oct 13, 2023 01:14
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This is an excellent video essay on vampires and queerness, even if it's not directly World of Darkness related.
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Oct 13, 2023 16:15
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