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Loomer posted:The basic premise is pretty gameable, right? Furious lycanthrope guerrila warfare against Captain Planet villains, hella rad evil spirits, and the cosmic forces of entropy itself! Cue the metal riff! Yeah, but the basic premise of Vampire is "trying to navigate a horrifyingly decadent and evil undead court while fighting against Bad Guy Vampires" and it didn't exactly end up being that, either.
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Feb 8, 2018 05:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, but the basic premise of Vampire is "trying to navigate a horrifyingly decadent and evil undead court while fighting against Bad Guy Vampires" and it didn't exactly end up being that, either. Was that last part ever really part of the pitch?
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Feb 8, 2018 05:43
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JesterOfAmerica posted:Dark Eras IIRC Thanks. I'd been hesitating to buy Dark Eras (since I'm not sure I'd want the extra research and higher threshold for player buy-in compared to running a modern game) but I'm glad I did, the lore side of it is incredibly evocative and the little snippets of variant mechanics are cool too. e: it's even more inconsistent about the mechanics of Angels detecting Demons than the core book is though 
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Feb 8, 2018 |
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Feb 8, 2018 05:54
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I don't want to be a debbie downer, but Cyanide Studio's résumé doesn't inspire much confidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_(company)
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Feb 8, 2018 12:26
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Kurtofan posted:I don't want to be a debbie downer, but Cyanide Studio's résumé doesn't inspire much confidence
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Feb 8, 2018 12:28
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Kurtofan posted:I don't want to be a debbie downer, but Cyanide Studio's résumé doesn't inspire much confidence Werewolf: the Pro-Cycling
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Feb 8, 2018 13:45
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Styx is a perfectly decent 7/10 game, made more special for being in a genre with very few releases.
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Feb 8, 2018 13:56
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ZearothK posted:Styx is a perfectly decent 7/10 game, made more special for being in a genre with very few releases. Styx is aggressively fine, and made more so by how it had a decent story (truthfully, one of my favorites just for what it is). It's sequel, on the other hand, makes me think that was a fluke. I wouldn't hold out hope that Cyanide is going to somehow manage to make a second good-ish game, given its track record.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:09
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The Blood Bowl games are alright, the things that are annoying about them are Blood Bowl's fault and not Cyanide's.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:31
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While we're on the topic of aggressively okay games, Deathwing is alright. It was a quick flash in the pan, notable mostly for what it isn't than what it is. Also it was optimized about as well as a toddler building an engine block.
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Feb 8, 2018 15:34
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Kurtofan posted:I don't want to be a debbie downer, but Cyanide Studio's résumé doesn't inspire much confidence Tribes will follow the same dynamic release plan pioneered by Blood Bowl II.  That's not confirmed by the way because they've shown nothing in the way of game play or basic concepts outside of "Werewolves, aroo!"
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Feb 8, 2018 15:40
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They haven't even really told us what kind of game this is going to be, right? Other than it's almost assuredly going to have RPG elements?
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Feb 8, 2018 15:42
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You’re going to rage in it. The question is when
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Feb 8, 2018 17:08
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Basic Chunnel posted:our current game is all cousins of the Simmons family: Sofie, Sasha, Skye, and Sonny (plus his daugher Savannah). Tattooed teenage alien fighters from beverly hills ? (Thats a real show btw.)
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Feb 8, 2018 17:09
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So some observations: - In the Sundered World setting in Dark Eras, it mentions that a Pangaean called the Great Mountain "enslaves a human tribe so that they might build vast and pointless earthworks that pour Essence to hungry earth elementals in the Shadow." - Later, Mountain is called out alongside Rat and Spider as Pangaeans that were killed by Father Wolf for violating the boundary between the spirit world and the material world. But it's interesting that Mountain is mentioned here in the same breath as Rat and Spider whose deaths, as we know from Werewolf, didn't really take -- they just shattered into Rat and Spider hosts. - A sidebar mentions that upon Father Wolf's death, some Pangaeans slowly transformed into spirits, while others became "of the Flesh," purely material monsters that were generally wiped out by humans over the course of prehistory. - Although the Sundered World is mainly a Werewolf / Mage setting, every other splat gets some recognition -- Geist, Changeling, even Mummy gets a callout despite the fact that actual mummies as such haven't been created yet and it's just a sidelong reference to the animal-headed gods -- but there's one notable exception. Demon and the God-Machine are completely absent from this section. - Conversely, we know from the Beneath the Skin era that by the establishment of Teotihuacan (around 100 BC) the God-Machine was already well-established and demons as we know and recognize them were around (because in Dark Eras Teotihuacan's founding was influenced by Demons trying to create some kind of weapon against or imitation of the God-Machine.) So the emergence of the God-Machine (at least in a form we would recognize) falls somewhere between 5000 BC and 100 BC, after the Sundering and long after the Fall of Atlantis. - The Sundered World includes "Shards of Time," massive, crystallized remnants of the pre-Fall world that let you see into the past and into alternate timelines. These remnants are slowly but steadily worn away over millennia by Dissonance from Sleepers, being destroyed -- or at least made less common and less obvious, because these are presumably the same pockets of alternate time that crop up regularly in Demon (and which the God-Machine is particularly adept at using.) - Flowers of Hell suggests that Idigam terrify Demons because they look like nothing so much as infant God-Machines. The God-Machine Chronicle references the moon as the tomb for a powerful Angel, while of course the moon is obviously relevant to Werewolf as Luna and as the prison of the Idigam. This suggests there's some connection between the great Spirit powers and the God-Machine, but it should be noted that the Flowers of Hell sidebar is very much as "demons think this, werewolves think this" in a context where we already know that Werewolves are wrong about their origins (and Dark Eras even spells this out -- Father Wolf is not and was never a spirit, and Luna as his "mate" is almost certainly a simplified / romanticized version of how werewolves were actually created.) So it's quite possible that demons are wrong or only have a fraction of the whole picture. - We also know from Night Horrors: Wolfsbane that Idigam have been known to desperately try to imitate Pangaeans (in that book, Father Wolf himself) with mixed results. - Lore of the Forsaken notes that the various alternate forms of werewolves are constantly in existence, they're just not all physically present in the material world at once -- viewing a werewolf in the Shadow and the material world at the same time will show you a superimposed mass of shapes from man to wolf. - The God-Machine in general is a really weird entity; it's a purely physical being, made up of the emergent properties of actual, tangible Infrastructure, but its servants are ephemeral beings. Moreover, those servants can undergo a (nearly?) unique transformation that allows them to become physical and exist as "humans" but also simultaneously as biomechanical monsters, as well as holding other human (or, potentially, animal) forms in quantum superposition, to be switched between more or less at will. Taken together, this suggests an origin story for the God-Machine -- it's a shattered Pangaean, akin to the Hosts, but one that fell on the physical side of the physical / spirit divide after the Sundering. Pangaeans use Supernal magic but spirits use Influence, so we know this ability can sort of "devolve" into Fallen forms; for spirits this presumably means Influences, but for a physical being it would mean something pretty much unprecedented -- like, say, occult physics. The God-Machine has a remarkable mastery of time, matter, and energy that is executed entirely by a series of physical "cheats;" it uses immense knowledge of how the world works but has relatively little power to directly effect change. Great Mountain enslaved human beings to power "earth elementals" to act as its servants, bridging the material and ephemeral through the construction of massive physical structures, just like the God-Machine. Through a strange metaphysical accident, its servants (or possibly even its components, in a sense) can break from the Machine and become physical shapeshifters whose other forms exist in quantum superposition -- very much like the relationship between Father Wolf and werewolves. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Feb 8, 2018 |
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Feb 8, 2018 17:38
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Basic Chunnel posted:You’re going to rage in it. The question is when when you need that last bit of strength on the climb to pass Armstrong
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Feb 8, 2018 17:53
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Hey look what finally dropped: http://theonyxpath.com/one-foot-in-the-grave-geist-2e/
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Feb 8, 2018 18:05
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GimpInBlack posted:Hey look what finally dropped: http://theonyxpath.com/one-foot-in-the-grave-geist-2e/ Is the Bound being subject to old age something that the original Geist ruled on one way or the other? If so, is it a change?
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Feb 8, 2018 18:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Is the Bound being subject to old age something that the original Geist ruled on one way or the other? If so, is it a change? It was never made explicit in 1e as far as I recall.
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Feb 8, 2018 18:12
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Is the Bound being subject to old age something that the original Geist ruled on one way or the other? If so, is it a change? GimpInBlack posted:It was never made explicit in 1e as far as I recall. It was. Gist: the Sin-Eaters, p. 173 posted:Geists can reach beyond the pale to reel the departing soul of a Sin-Eater back to his body, returning him to life and ensuring the continuation of the bond. Only the souls of Sin-Eaters that die of old age travel beyond the reach of a geist
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Feb 8, 2018 18:29
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So some observations: Interesting stuff. It does seem like there’s some overlap between Woof and Demon, and the stuff re: quantum superpositions is intriguing. The idea of the GM as a weird distant cousin of Host spirits - or a Host spirit that succeeded spectacularly in its long-term goal and re-formed - sounds like a good explanation. Also, Father Wolf wasn’t a spirit? What’s the story there.
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Feb 8, 2018 18:37
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Interesting decision to have the Bound count as dead for mystical purposes; presumably this will only really matter to Mages trying to do goofy poo poo, but. Do geister eat ghosts a lot? I appreciate the choice to make Sin-Eater a word for the actual character, even if Geist isn't. I also really like the mass death thing.
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Feb 8, 2018 18:41
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Mors Rattus posted:Interesting decision to have the Bound count as dead for mystical purposes; presumably this will only really matter to Mages trying to do goofy poo poo, but. Do geister eat ghosts a lot? The more interesting effect of the Bound being metaphysically dead is that ghosts regain Essence by being remembered by the living. Sin-Eaters have to find other ways to keep the dead from starving. Some geists definitely eat ghosts. Others have different plans for them.
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Feb 8, 2018 18:52
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Basic Chunnel posted:Also, Father Wolf wasn’t a spirit? What’s the story there. Pangaean. Sort of spirit in flesh. They got into it here. http://theonyxpath.com/the-end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end-mage-the-awakening-dark-eras-werewolf-the-forsaken/ Though the rules are in the Neolithic section of Dark Eras (The Sundered World).
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Feb 8, 2018 18:54
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Basic Chunnel posted:Interesting stuff. It does seem like there’s some overlap between Woof and Demon, and the stuff re: quantum superpositions is intriguing. The idea of the GM as a weird distant cousin of Host spirits - or a Host spirit that succeeded spectacularly in its long-term goal and re-formed - sounds like a good explanation. Also, Father Wolf wasn’t a spirit? What’s the story there. Pangaeans per Dark Eras are beings that live in the Border Marches (or Pangaea, same thing), which is basically a liminal zone between the Shadow and the material world, sort of an early precursor to the Gauntlet. They're powered by Essence, and use the rules for ephemeral beings, but they have Arcana dots and they only bleed essence in the Astral, not in the spirit or living worlds. The Firstborn are the offspring of Father Wolf and a powerful wolf spirit or spirits, and Pangaeans in general are capable of interacting with spirits in various ways, but they aren't spirits. Another thing to note is that as a creature that could interact directly and personally with the physical world and ultimately be killed by ordinary werewolves, Father Wolf probably wasn't anywhere near Luna's equal, and while it's ambiguous enough that you can't be completely certain, it's likely that Luna's involvement in the creation of werewolves was a lot closer to the Pure version than the Forsaken version -- basically Father Wolf's divine essence was bled off during fights with other Pangaeans and other powerful entities, and Luna was the one who made sure it found its way into human bodies. (Maybe, and for whatever inscrutable reason -- it's unlikely that anyone, Pure, Forsaken, or anyone else, can accurately infer why Luna does anything. )
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 8, 2018 18:57
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Pangeans were the native inhabitants of Pangea, the world between the Flesh and Shadow that got turned into the Gauntlet by the Sundering. Re: The Geist spoiler. Among other things, this means that ghosts don't get Essence from Sin-Eaters remembering them. Because it's the attention of the living that feeds them. Begone, loophole in the game's metaphysics!
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Feb 8, 2018 19:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Another thing to note is that as a creature that could interact directly and personally with the physical world and ultimately be killed by ordinary werewolves, Well, they were his bane, and according to various histories the Firstborn participated as well. And there's apparently a lot more Firstborn than we knew about. Dave Brookshaw posted:Pangeans were the native inhabitants of Pangea, the world between the Flesh and Shadow that got turned into the Gauntlet by the Sundering. And from there on: mystery.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:11
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So some observations: This was a great read and really interesting.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So some observations: I really like this.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:34
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It is also funny to me that one of the themes of 1e Geist was 'and celebrate life, because you have gotten a second chance at it' while the universe is sitting over here going 'no, you're dead, you just don't look like it.'
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Feb 8, 2018 19:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:So some observations: This checks out, nice work.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:11
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I'm just getting around to reading Beckett's Jyhad Diary and the section on the 4th Sabbat Civil War has this passage:quote:Large chunks of the Tremere antitribu are wiped out by an Assamite — specifically, the Methuselah Ur-Shulgi, who sacrifices the entire bloodline in preparation for breaking the blood curse on his Clan. Granted it's been a while, but I thought this was a result of Tremere /Goratrix /Saulout wrasslin' match?
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Feb 8, 2018 23:33
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Dr. Poz posted:I'm just getting around to reading Beckett's Jyhad Diary and the section on the 4th Sabbat Civil War has this passage: As far as I can recall, yeah - Saulot kicks out Tremere of his (?) body who then kicks out Goratrix of his bodies and the antitribu got wiped out in the process. Goratrix, I think, was shoved into a mirror or something.
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Feb 9, 2018 00:14
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Dawgstar posted:As far as I can recall, yeah - Saulot kicks out Tremere of his (?) body who then kicks out Goratrix of his bodies and the antitribu got wiped out in the process. Goratrix, I think, was shoved into a mirror or something. Yeah, it's mostly this. Originally it was heavily implied or outright said to be Tremere in Goratrix's body. He was playing musical
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Feb 9, 2018 00:20
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Yea, Tremere and Saulot were in a war for control, Saulot got the upper hand and drove Tremere out, Tremere goes into Goratrix, and says 'wait a tick, I hate this guy' and shoved Goratrix in a mirror because he was a vain bitch
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Feb 9, 2018 00:24
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Once Tremere was back in control of a body they then did ritual to wipe out the Tremere antitribu, right? So what's all this about Ur-Shulgi doing it? I know he threw off the blood curse, but the bit from the diary suggests Ur-Shulgi had a direct hand in destroying the Tremere antitribu.
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Feb 9, 2018 00:28
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It does seem inconsistent even with the rest of the book, given that the chapter that's about the Assamites is all about Ur-Shulgi breaking the curse using the blood of all the Assamites that won't worship Haqim, and nothing about Tremere antitribu, who mostly aren't in the same place as Ur-Shulgi anyway.
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Feb 9, 2018 00:39
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Dr. Poz posted:Once Tremere was back in control of a body they then did ritual to wipe out the Tremere antitribu, right? So what's all this about Ur-Shulgi doing it? I know he threw off the blood curse, but the bit from the diary suggests Ur-Shulgi had a direct hand in destroying the Tremere antitribu. Apparently V20 Lore of the Clans retconned a lot of the Tremere stuff. It has the switch happening in the Dark Ages with Saulot/Tzimisce playing tug of war with Tremere's original body. http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Goratrix#Version_Differences http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Tremere_(Antediluvian)#Version_Differences RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 00:40
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Maybe it's a retcon. That Geist previous makes me really optimistic, as does the fact that NuWW undoubtedly gives zero shits about it.
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Feb 9, 2018 00:44
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Even the narrator is tired of this poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2018 00:46
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