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See the one time I got to play anything even close to a vampire was on these boards and I just straight up told my grandad that I was dead and still walking around. So he was helping me out and, hopefully, going to be able to break it to people if I ever needed to go into torpor and vanish for a little while. That and I was hopeful of driving to a nearby farm every couple of evenings for a refill that wouldn't take more than a little while. So I had a haven, a little bit of an income (I helped out in Grandads book shop/bar) and a nearby, and pleasingly literal, herd. It was never going to be easy, but it would be nice to play as a harmless old man who just didn't get older and had all sorts of interesting books. The weird thing is the hardest time to be a vampire may have already passed. Now with the internet it becomes a lot lot easier to learn how to do stuff quickly and a lot of neccesary things that had to be done in person back in the day can now be done online.
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Apr 29, 2016 14:43
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Night10194 posted:Adding in the 'teaching lessons' thing basically actually made Beast worse because it sounds an awful lot like 'And now she'll know not to burn the pot roast again!' or 'It's good for a kid to take a few knocks, it'll toughen him up.' There's a line in the book talking about how "the moment when they learn the lesson" is a tangible thing to a beast, as that's when their horror starts to actually feed. But it also describes it in such shallow terms that "you are being tormented by a supernatural force" can be the lesson. Also the idea about teaching lessons vs just feeding is mostly academic. The feeding rules don't care about lessons, just if you kill them or not. The strength of your feeding potential and how often you victimize the same people/area is what attracts heroes.
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Apr 29, 2016 14:46
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Josef bugman posted:See the one time I got to play anything even close to a vampire was on these boards and I just straight up told my grandad that I was dead and still walking around. So he was helping me out and, hopefully, going to be able to break it to people if I ever needed to go into torpor and vanish for a little while. Like I said - it's doable, and it is definitely its own reward. This sounds like a cool character! Just one who's gonna have a hard time of it and be weaker than less scrupulous vampires.
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Apr 29, 2016 14:53
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Mors Rattus posted:Like I said - it's doable, and it is definitely its own reward. This sounds like a cool character! Just one who's gonna have a hard time of it and be weaker than less scrupulous vampires. Oh absolutely. I just thought it would be a cool concept.
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Apr 29, 2016 15:07
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Mors Rattus posted:Like I said - it's doable, and it is definitely its own reward. This sounds like a cool character! Just one who's gonna have a hard time of it and be weaker than less scrupulous vampires. It's totally possible. The rules just make it so difficult because they really don't want you doing it. The idea of a vampire is by it's very nature seductive. They've gotta lay on the "I"M A MONSTER!" theme so heavily as a way of counter-balancing the natural appeal of the powers of a vampire. It is supposed to be a horror game. It could be very easy for things to tip towards a power fantasy direction, and that's just not the intended theme of the game.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:09
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I remember someone who showed up a few years ago on Shadownessence, wanted to play a Vampire but didn't want to have been embraced (it was "too rapey"), didn't want to have to drink blood, and didn't want to be vulnerable to sunlight. I think the board ran her off once her arguments dissolved into "Please turn Masquerade into Twilight for me!"
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Apr 29, 2016 16:20
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Did anyone suggest playing a ghoul instead?
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Apr 29, 2016 16:24
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Yes, but she wanted to play a Vampire. She also wanted to play a Werewolf who didn't have to fight and instead converted other werewolves to Catholicism instead of their heathen paganism. And refused to play in any game where her characters were ever under threat of death.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:27
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Kurieg posted:Yes, but she wanted to play a Vampire. She also wanted to play a Werewolf who didn't have to fight and instead converted other werewolves to Catholicism instead of their heathen paganism. And refused to play in any game where her characters were ever under threat of death. Honestly, this sounds more like she was trolling.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:41
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Wait, was that Grumpikins? Because she showed up on RPGnet and had a very similar line, although she also told us about how her vampire character had ghouled her real-life, out-of-character dead grandfather and kept him alive, and made everybody really uncomfortable.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:49
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Libluini posted:Honestly, this sounds more like she was trolling. Rand Brittain posted:Wait, was that Grumpikins? Because she showed up on RPGnet and had a very similar line, although she also told us about how her vampire character had ghouled her real-life, out-of-character dead grandfather and kept him alive, and made everybody really uncomfortable. Did she call her characters Mogwai? If so then yeah it was her.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:53
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Kurieg posted:Did she call her characters Mogwai? If so then yeah it was her. Oh, yes, wow, that's totally the same person. She went through long threads on RPGnet for pretty much every game in the World of Darkness demanding that she be allowed to ignore pretty much every aspect of the game's premise, and also insisting that her roleplaying was art and that her needs were more important than those of the ST, who was a mere facilitator.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:02
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The impression I got was that she wanted to write a story and was only using the World of Darkness as a source of ideas. Honestly compared to Blood Lore, Skeloric, and RaperofStars she mostly came off as innocently misinformed as opposed to actively malicious.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:21
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poo poo, now I want to read this thread.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:21
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Loomer posted:Clearly the solution is to be the secret vampire overlord of one of those historical recreationist sites. John Adams, embraced circa 1663, Secret Ventrue Overlord of Colonial Williamsburg and voted Most Historically Accurate Mayor for sixteen years running. Even if he only appears at night. This post needs more love.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:31
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Mors Rattus posted:poo poo, now I want to read this thread. http://shadownessence.se/forum/topic/35154-breaking-masquerade/ http://shadownessence.se/forum/topic/35105-first-character-set-up/
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Apr 29, 2016 17:35
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I meant the rpg.net one but this'll do for some light lunchtime reading.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:36
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Loomer posted:Clearly the solution is to be the secret vampire overlord of one of those historical recreationist sites. John Adams, embraced circa 1663, Secret Ventrue Overlord of Colonial Williamsburg and voted Most Historically Accurate Mayor for sixteen years running. Even if he only appears at night. I shall add this to my own World of Darkness, along with the bosses of Taskforce VALKYRIE being a bunch of patriotic monsters that put America above their respective monster societies.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:19
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MonsieurChoc posted:I shall add this to my own World of Darkness, along with the bosses of Taskforce VALKYRIE being a bunch of patriotic monsters that put America above their respective monster societies. Basically this? 
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Apr 29, 2016 18:42
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Mors Rattus posted:poo poo, now I want to read this thread. One finger on the monkey's paw closes, then another.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:55
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Playing an ethical or moral vampire requires the construction of systems. Vampires can't go out in daylight, need blood to survive (for which animal blood is incredibly inefficient, to say nothing of blood bags, which are even worse) and typically need to avoid raising too many questions about what they're doing. One of the more interesting puzzles in Vampire, if you're trying to play a good guy, is how to construct a system that gets around those limitations and still lets you feed. If grandad has a massive farm such so that you can spend a lot of time drinking cow blood (it takes more animal blood than human blood to do the job) that's awesome! The system you've constructed is vulnerable, and it gives you something to protect, which is more than I can say for players who just shrug and say they [sic] "look for a hobo in an alley". The trick is that those systems are always vulnerable. Sooner or later you need to find a way to accept a delivery during the day, or you need to spend some of your precious Vitae on Disciplines, which changes your feeding schedule. Sooner or later PETA comes knocking or whatever. How you navigate those challenges makes for great drama, I think, at least as much as the existential ennui of less scrupulous Kindred.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:57
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Monkey's paw, he says. Schadenfreude is a joy and a pleasure. E: also clearly an ethical vampire should make a deal with a rabbi and become a kosher slaughterer.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:58
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Rand Brittain posted:One finger on the monkey's paw closes, then another. Looks like she went to RPG.net after we chased her off of SNE cause she opens up with "No really my werewolves need to be christian drat it!"
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Apr 29, 2016 19:05
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Interestingly, there are some really bizarre and cool werewolf Christian legends out there. They are, however, heretical as all hell. The Wolves of God, y'see, were posited to exist by a man in the 17th century who was taken to trial for heresy. He claimed to be a werewolf who served God and who, with others of his kind, invaded Hell each year in order to steal back all the seeds the devil stole over the winter and thus allow spring to come again. By, you know, fighting the devil in Hell as a pack of holy wolves.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:08
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Yeah, Ars Magica is full of that stuff, not that you need telling.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:16
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Really though you can get functioning infinite amounts of blood from any given butcher factory. You probably have to go there and ask for it, because they have to go through extra steps to certify blood as safe to sell and a lot don't want to bother.....but it's still totally legal for you to pick it up at the factory. Considering the massive amounts of blood they go through, you could pick up functioning infinite amounts of it from any given butcher factory and never have to worry about it again. Of course in the Chronicle of Worlds, you probably are tipping off *someone* in the Union or some other drat fool group when you go to pick up massive amounts of blood from a butcher factory every month and at night.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:20
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Like I said, friendly Rabbi and be the kosher butcher. They have to kill by bloodletting ANYWAY, so why not just pay a vampire to drink the thing dead?
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Apr 29, 2016 19:27
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Boogaleeboo posted:Really though you can get functioning infinite amounts of blood from any given butcher factory. You probably have to go there and ask for it, because they have to go through extra steps to certify blood as safe to sell and a lot don't want to bother.....but it's still totally legal for you to pick it up at the factory. Considering the massive amounts of blood they go through, you could pick up functioning infinite amounts of it from any given butcher factory and never have to worry about it again. It would take an absolutely massive amount of blood to keep a vampire sated, if you're only buying old, animal blood. Still, assuming it's available, you're left with the logistical questions - do you drink it right there are the factory? Do you take it home? How do you drink literal gallons of blood? That's going to take time and probably make a mess. I think the questions it raises are actually kind of cool and I'm really tempted to run a high-humanity/low blood potency game where people struggle to be more or less human. Mors Rattus posted:Like I said, friendly Rabbi and be the kosher butcher. They have to kill by bloodletting ANYWAY, so why not just pay a vampire to drink the thing dead? If you can find a Rabbi willing to let you drink blood than you've already got a story worth telling. Cool idea.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:28
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Clearly you just make an absolute fuckload of blood sausages and do your best Joey Chestnut impression.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:50
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'Why is your fridge full of blood sausages?' 'Iron deficiency.' 'Like I mean floor to ceiling full.' '...iron deficiency.'
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Apr 29, 2016 19:53
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Mendrian posted:It would take an absolutely massive amount of blood to keep a vampire sated, if you're only buying old, animal blood. Still, assuming it's available, you're left with the logistical questions - do you drink it right there are the factory? Do you take it home? How do you drink literal gallons of blood? That's going to take time and probably make a mess. Here's one of those questions: We know that vitae is not literally blood. The vampiric body converts and condenses blood in this weird, mystical power source. Which begs the question: where does it go? And how fast does it go there? Could a vampire chug a swimming pool full of stale cow blood without stopping? By the way, don't forget the psychological effects of behaviors like these. Humans get sick of unvaried diets real fast even when they're nutritionally complete, and we don't usually subsist on ambrosia. This is pretty much the equivalent of living on nothing but a quintuple dose of unflavored meal replacement smoothies. Every day. Forever.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:53
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My vampire also imports jumpsuits from China every month because cleaning and washing new ones is inefficient.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:54
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Mors Rattus posted:My vampire also imports jumpsuits from China every month because cleaning and washing new ones is inefficient. I don't know how many people are going to get this joke, but I just want you to know I do and it's very good.
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Apr 29, 2016 19:59
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Mors Rattus posted:My vampire also imports jumpsuits from China every month because cleaning and washing new ones is inefficient. Does he still have all his gut fauna, though?
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Apr 29, 2016 20:19
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I'd quite like to work out a cool mystic way of converting animal blood, assuming it could be done it'd be a cool avenue to explore.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:22
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The only time I played Vampire, I basically played as Nosferatu Art Bell, the nighttime radio host who's secretly a vampire. As long as they couldn't see me or were also vampires I was the most effective social character in the party. And besides, who would really believe that the guy who runs the UFO / Chupacabra sighting program was actually a vampire?Kurieg posted:A moral beast is one that doesn't take the option to be devoured in the first place. Beast strikes me as being the failure state / mirror antagonist to another game, like Nephandi/the Pure/Pandorans/etc. In my own attempt at rewriting Beast's base concept like a year ago it just turned into Bloodborne: the Cronenbergening, and it ended up that the anti-splat turned out to be exactly what we got from Actual Existing Beast. The whole "you have a monster that wants to devour your soul living in a personal nightmare plane that feeds off of psychic misery and fear" should be the central conflict of the game rather than the means of empowerment.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:36
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Clan Chupacabra was hunted to extinction thanks to that guy.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:37
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Josef bugman posted:I'd quite like to work out a cool mystic way of converting animal blood, assuming it could be done it'd be a cool avenue to explore. I could've sworn I saw an Ordo Dracul thing that would let them do that. Joining the Ordo Dracul, however, is probably not a great way to be more human.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:42
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Used to be that Coil of Blood 2 let you subsist indefinitely on animal blood no matter what your BP. This was a bad idea, and was thankfully removed from 2e. Unfortunately it was replaced with really lovely niche Coils.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:44
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Mors Rattus posted:Used to be that Coil of Blood 2 let you subsist indefinitely on animal blood no matter what your BP. This was a bad idea, and was thankfully removed from 2e. Yeah the 2e coils are pretty underwhelming.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:46
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