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Mors Rattus posted:How many dice are they rolling to be able to do this consistently to every foe, especially after having to take penalties for range and all that? Especially since Withstand eats Potency directly? I think the primary example is Gnosis 3, Life 4 with a Rote? Potency 3+, against Stamina, Rote...3, I think? There's no penalty for range unless they Aim, with sensory range it just costs a Reach. At this point you have 10 dice with no additional yantras, and can get to potency 6 with 4 dice. Add Willpower and that's potency 6, 7 dice. Add another yantra and you can increase potency further. It's not going to instantly kill anyone but three* mages pulling something similar will rip most humans apart quickly. This wasn't a conscious tactic on their part, it's just the easiest thing to do in combat. Thankfully my Thyrsus Guardian is having Wisdom issues and trying to improve them, so he's trying to be less lethal. *and a fourth who hasn't been focusing on Gnosis and pumping up one Arcanum, so has been less direct due to less reliable dice pools. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jul 16, 2018 |
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Jul 16, 2018 17:19
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neaden posted:How do people feel about Scion now that the Origins text is out? I didn't back because the first edition was such a mess but I'm considering preordering through backerkit. The idea of having an openly known Urban fantasy setting is appealing, do people think it's worth picking up? It is super good. I am running a CYOA of it over here at the moment.
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Jul 16, 2018 17:24
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Meinberg posted:There's also the Prime 2 spell Wards and Signs which provides bonus Withstand against all incoming spells, which when combined with Prime Armor can make it very easy for a Mage to avoid a lot of direct magical damage, which would then require some creativity to get around. Yeah at this point I'm kind of accepting that all major wizard antagonists are going to have Prime 2 just to force that kind of approach. Also I've been focusing on major antagonists having some kind of qualities that make just punching them to death like this less than ideal - rapid regeneration kept a fight going a bit longer one time until the Thyrsus blew through a stack of mana to deal Aggravates repeatedly, but I'd like something better than 'more meat in the punching bag.'
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Jul 16, 2018 17:28
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Joe Slowboat posted:Yeah at this point I'm kind of accepting that all major wizard antagonists are going to have Prime 2 just to force that kind of approach. Also I've been focusing on major antagonists having some kind of qualities that make just punching them to death like this less than ideal - rapid regeneration kept a fight going a bit longer one time until the Thyrsus blew through a stack of mana to deal Aggravates repeatedly, but I'd like something better than 'more meat in the punching bag.' The best thing I've found is to make it an even fight. I'll have one big bad, and X-1 number of less powerful lackeys that get in the way. That keeps combat more spread for a couple rounds and keeps the obrimos from just TK grappling everyone and chucking them into a wall with a combined velocity control. He still gets to do that, but it's slightly more varied and things like having the opposition have enough time to hang a shifting sands is useful stuff. The other useful bit is to make the location not advantageous for the cabal and make it more complicated to deal with (car chase, jumping over rooftops, swimming at the bottom of Lake Michigan) and things like that. Our actual combats would not be that exciting because I more or less expect them to just be able to blow up poo poo now that they're all >3 dots arcana in at least one if not two ruling. So I fall back on other cinematic tricks to make it more exciting and purposeful. I should add, they've pretty much entirely ignored mundane weapons. That may have something to do with the strength of all three of them being a whole total of 4 between them. This has led me to have to challenge them in other ways that don't always make sense until I do it.
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Jul 16, 2018 18:46
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Yeah, part of the issue is that the game as originally sold to my players is significantly more proactive (assassinating and investigating Tremere) than reactive, so they have a lot of power to choose their battlefield. That will apply less in the future as their enemies figure them out (and would really not apply to the local Seers if they picked that fight) but I should have seen that coming.
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Jul 16, 2018 19:32
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do NOT jack off posted:The Secret World is extremely Chronicles of Darkness, imo. I enjoyed it a great deal as a result. Everyone is kind of wizards, but it's more complicated than that. Legends just released a new expansion for it after years of no content updates. I liked the trailers a lot but could never get into the game. Always thought it was a shame that it wasn't a single-player RPG where your character actually got to talk and stuff. They way they wrote the cutscenes made the mute player character thing seem really weird.
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Jul 16, 2018 21:17
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Thanks for the Scion recommendation! New Geist preview is out, it's mostly the core CoD rules. It has the roles in Krewes which are pretty cool, and seem easy to adapt for other game lines like a Silver Ladder cryptopoly. New background info and rules on the Underwood as well including taking over a Domionion by supplanting the Old Laws which could be a fun campaign goal. Geist 2e continues to impress.
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Jul 16, 2018 21:58
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White Wolf posted:As we promised in our AMA we are beginning a new program to engage more fully and positively with the White Wolf community. Our first action in honoring that commitment is to announce Jason Carl as EVP of Community Development, and Matthew Dawkins as Senior Community Director, effective immediately. Hahahah. They put Carl, who was the producer behind the V5 stuff that just got called out, in charge of community outreach.
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Jul 16, 2018 22:06
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'His youtube channel the Gentleman Gamer' is fuckin' damning, none of those 'i am a gentleman!!!' guys are anything but scum that I've seen.
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Jul 16, 2018 22:08
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WiiFitForWindows8 posted:There is no satire here. Zak is unironically the single most important thing in RPGs today. I literally and factually stuffed the poo poo out of those ballots and voted for Frosbitten and Mutilated fifteen making GBS threads times, and I'm not even “Zak S cured my scurvy, saved my farm from ruin, and now I can love again. Also his farts smell like cinnamon and kiwi.”
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Jul 16, 2018 22:28
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what kind of monster is the gentleman gamer
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Jul 16, 2018 22:35
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I think the whole Gentleman Gamer thing was just a bit sarcastic. I watched a few of his videos before he started writing for OPP and WW, and they seemed okay, at least as far as video-essay style reviews of RPG books goes. He seems like an okay guy.
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Jul 16, 2018 22:41
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I know he's responsible for Eggdick Dickegg Man from Conquering Heroes. But he's also admitted that he really phoned it in on that book (along with most of the rest of the people credited as writers).
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Jul 16, 2018 22:46
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Kurieg posted:Eggdick Dickegg Man Please don’t use my real name on the forums.
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Jul 16, 2018 22:55
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Kurtofan posted:what kind of monster is the gentleman gamer I have no idea, it just smacks of fedora.
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Jul 16, 2018 22:57
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Self-identifying as a gamer is a pretty bad sign in 2018.
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Jul 16, 2018 23:59
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I just checked a few videos on his channel and he seems fine as far as the bizarrely popular "dude looking into a camera giving you GM advice" genre on Youtube goes That's pretty much all it is at a first glance beyond some reviews, an Amnesia LP back from when everyone was doing that, a Fifty Shades of Grey reading from when everyone was doing that, and who knows what else because this channel is almost ten years old and there's a lot of loving videos. I think getting on the dude's case with zero information is a weird jump to make.
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Jul 17, 2018 00:44
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Dawkins aka Gentleman Gamer is not the same level of awful that Ericsson and others are. I'm fairly certain he has a dumb edgy streak to him, and I'm not sure he 100% understands why people were upset over V5's hot button issues, but he at least was shocked like the rest of us when Zak was hired.
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Jul 17, 2018 00:44
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He mostly just seems like a clueless enthusiast rather than anyone genuinely harmful. Of course you can all screencap and emptyquote this if/when he turns out to be some horrible chud.
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Jul 17, 2018 00:51
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That Old Tree posted:I think the whole Gentleman Gamer thing was just a bit sarcastic. I watched a few of his videos before he started writing for OPP and WW, and they seemed okay, at least as far as video-essay style reviews of RPG books goes. He seems like an okay guy. Yeah, he just really loving loves WOD and delivering in-character solo monologue acting videos. Extremely harmless and vaguely amusing as far as I can tell (I'd seen a few of his videos before any of this nuWW stuff started, he's been at this for a while, and isn't associated with 'those sorts' as far as I can tell).
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Jul 17, 2018 03:20
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I'm running Requiem in the Tokyo setting described in the 2E book. Has anyone else used that setting and if so, what kind of poo poo did you do with it? I've already got the kickass Before The Bomb book that someone on the OP forums made.
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Jul 17, 2018 05:42
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Down With People posted:I'm running Requiem in the Tokyo setting described in the 2E book. Has anyone else used that setting and if so, what kind of poo poo did you do with it? I've already got the kickass Before The Bomb book that someone on the OP forums made. Are there no wacky rotpires in Requiem?
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Jul 17, 2018 11:29
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Down With People posted:I'm running Requiem in the Tokyo setting described in the 2E book. Has anyone else used that setting and if so, what kind of poo poo did you do with it? I've already got the kickass Before The Bomb book that someone on the OP forums made. I have, but, uh, that supplement is, if I recall, what a player made for my game, assuming it’s the one I’m thinking of.
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Jul 17, 2018 11:54
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Down With People posted:I'm running Requiem in the Tokyo setting described in the 2E book. Has anyone else used that setting and if so, what kind of poo poo did you do with it? I've already got the kickass Before The Bomb book that someone on the OP forums made. I wrote Before the Bomb and I'm super glad you like it. I never got to use it that much in games myself! I don't have any immediate feedback, but I'm interested to hear what you cook up with your group. I was never that interested in the shadow war with the Hototogisu as a central focus, but Tokyo is a great setting to highlight the ways in which old and new collide and transform one another in the night society.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:12
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I Am Just a Box posted:I wrote Before the Bomb and I'm super glad you like it. I never got to use it that much in games myself! I don't have any immediate feedback, but I'm interested to hear what you cook up with your group. I was never that interested in the shadow war with the Hototogisu as a central focus, but Tokyo is a great setting to highlight the ways in which old and new collide and transform one another in the night society. Oh Before The Bomb kicks rear end, let me tell you. I was kind of contemplating Hiroshima but I went for Tokyo in the end because I liked the bigger, more metropolitan feel and Hiroshima seems like kind of a small place with only the one gimmick you could use for a game. Both the extremely cash money writeup in the corebook and the quality of Before The Bomb is what sold me in the end. (I did start building a Hiroshima setting, with a radioactive Hibakusha bloodline formed by the sole surviving vampire after the bomb fell...) I'm only a couple sessions into my game so far and my players are all new to Requiem so I haven't had much opportunity to bring real poo poo in yet; they're still kind of just loving around and learning the ropes and I want to slowly nudge them into forming/pursuing their own agendas. We'll see how it goes.
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Jul 17, 2018 14:48
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Pope Affidavit IX posted:Are there no wacky rotpires in Requiem? Like the Morbus?
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Jul 17, 2018 14:53
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Or the Galloi.
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Jul 17, 2018 19:20
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I've been catching up on this thread since hearing that new classic old 20th 5th edition vampire was actively courting nazis. this thread is depressing af. so here's something not depressing: changeling the lost still totally owns, I'm hopeful the second edition will own just as much, and I probably haven't felt this excited about a pen and paper RPG since the first time I "got" apocalypse world also, basically the same paragraph as above but copy paste mage over changeling and replace "impending second edition" with "impending any new book in the line."
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Jul 18, 2018 07:16
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Digital Osmosis posted:I've been catching up on this thread since hearing that new classic old 20th 5th edition vampire was actively courting nazis. They're trying to backpedal pretty hard, and the chuds are pretty sad panda about it. https://www.worldofdarkness.com/rules_of_conduct
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Jul 18, 2018 09:23
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Liquid Communism posted:They're trying to backpedal pretty hard, and the chuds are pretty sad panda about it. I want to see neo-nazi tears, where do I see neo-nazi tears?
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Jul 18, 2018 13:27
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Digital Osmosis posted:I've been catching up on this thread since hearing that new classic old 20th 5th edition vampire was actively courting nazis. From the previews I've seen of Lost 2e, there's good cause for being excited about it. New mages books will be nice too, as there will be less looking back and piecing through what's easy to use from the stack of 1e material. The few Geist previews have me excited to run some of that too, and it's piqued the interest of a couple of my players too. So playing with all those ghosts will be super fun.
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Jul 19, 2018 05:22
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https://twitter.com/dr5bludgeoning/status/1019322548365021190
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Jul 19, 2018 05:34
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The Changeling posted:I want to see neo-nazi tears, where do I see neo-nazi tears? Facebook.
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Jul 19, 2018 06:15
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Liquid Communism posted:Facebook. You know, I looked there and a name I recognized from way back was one of the guys bitching about SJW's. I don't know his political affiliations because I thankfully lost contact, but he (29 years old then) was hitting on a mutual friend's 14 years old sister at one point. Classy dude.
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Jul 19, 2018 06:21
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Hey, let me know if this is better for another thread. I’ve been thinking about running a Mage game at work but I have no experience with the CoD systems. I haven’t bought the books yet, but I’m trying to work out how difficult this stuff would be to run, particularly if my players are RPG newbies and probably aren’t the types to go heavy into buying/reading the books (as in I will need to explain the setting and mechanics at the table, maybe with some basic stuff in emails in advance). How accessible are these lines at a systems level? I’ve recently run FATE and Edge of the Empire campaigns (with different groups) and, a while ago, D&D4e. This seems more on the FATE end but I can’t quite get a handle on how crunchy this stuff is and how deep into the mechanics players will need to get. How hard is this system on the GM and how engaged do I need the players to be on the more games side conflict mechanics for them to have a good time?
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Jul 19, 2018 08:23
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Blamestorm posted:Hey, let me know if this is better for another thread. I’ve been thinking about running a Mage game at work but I have no experience with the CoD systems. I haven’t bought the books yet, but I’m trying to work out how difficult this stuff would be to run, particularly if my players are RPG newbies and probably aren’t the types to go heavy into buying/reading the books (as in I will need to explain the setting and mechanics at the table, maybe with some basic stuff in emails in advance). Mage is by far the most mechanically complex of the CoD lines just by virtue of its magic system, and it has a pretty deep setting with a lot of jargon that can be overwhelming if you dump it all on new players. If you're running a game for first-timers, you might be better off running a game of normal humans investigating the occult with the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook. (That said, I've run Mage for total newbies in the past, and as long as you don't try to explain the entire cosmology in one go it's not impenetrable.) The basic CoD system is pretty simple (roll d10s equal to, usually, an Attribute + a Skill, each die showing 8 or higher is a "success," and 5 successes is an "exceptional success," which has an additional benefit), and by and large you can fall back to that for a lot of things. Fights are way less mechanically complex than 4e, but a little more than Fate--and there's an optional system for resolving fights in a single roll if you want to focus on other elements of the game. There are some other wrinkles and subsystems for things like investigations and long-term social maneuvering, but overall I'd classify the system as "rules medium."
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Jul 19, 2018 08:51
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GimpInBlack posted:Mage is by far the most mechanically complex of the CoD lines just by virtue of its magic system, and it has a pretty deep setting with a lot of jargon that can be overwhelming if you dump it all on new players. If you're running a game for first-timers, you might be better off running a game of normal humans investigating the occult with the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook. (That said, I've run Mage for total newbies in the past, and as long as you don't try to explain the entire cosmology in one go it's not impenetrable.) Thanks very much, that’s very clear and helpful. Maybe I will start with ordinary humans, I’ve done something similar in other systems with pregen chars as a system teaching approach (and maybe they can “discover” the main characters, or reveal some of the setting before coming up against a threat they can’t handle, leading into chargen for the PCs as investigators or something).
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Jul 19, 2018 10:58
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Blamestorm posted:Hey, let me know if this is better for another thread. I’ve been thinking about running a Mage game at work but I have no experience with the CoD systems. I haven’t bought the books yet, but I’m trying to work out how difficult this stuff would be to run, particularly if my players are RPG newbies and probably aren’t the types to go heavy into buying/reading the books (as in I will need to explain the setting and mechanics at the table, maybe with some basic stuff in emails in advance). CoD is a bunch of loosely integrated systems, not all of which you need to use for the game to make sense. Using all of them makes for a very complicated game, especially when mechanics unique to a particular supernatural splat get added on top of that. I've spoken before about how much I hate the beat / experience system in CoD, and that's a good example. There are often seven or eight things that can cause a player to gain beats (think fractions of an XP point, basically), a ton of them depend on the player going "aha! I did X!" because the GM is never going to remember that poo poo for 3-5 different players; a lot of them depend on the GM actually using Conditions (status effects that grant a small mechanical bonus or penalty to certain types of action, and a beat reward for "resolving" the condition narratively) as a core element of the game instead of ignoring them, and then of course there are aspirations which require the GM and the players to be actively communicating about what they want to happen (which requires both sides to be proactive and is generally the first thing to go when you're distracted or pressed for time.) All of this basically adds up to "you earn one, maybe two XP per session if absolutely everything is done right." You could achieve virtually the same thing by just trusting that your players will roleplay their characters' motivations, and then giving them one XP every session and an extra when they finish a major story goal.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:10
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Also designing NPCs / enemies for Chronicles of Darkness games is a lot of work. The tools you're given for creating unique monsters are honestly very limited, and while there's much more support for creating supernatural NPCs (of the same type as the players, or other kinds), mechanically speaking, they're often fully-fledged characters just like the PCs. If you want to have a Werewolf in your Vampire game then you either need to come up with a good simplified approximation of the Werewolf rules (this exists in at least one book, but I forget where) or use a fully statted Werewolf (which is cool and mechanically distinct, but now you have to understand how two game lines work!) I don't mean to discourage you, because I think the CoD games have an interesting niche of being rules-heavy / mechanically rich games that are still focused on telling a story (and use their mechanical levers and incentives to encourage a certain kind of story.) But they require a lot of prep work and as a GM there are a lot of things you need to keep track of at once.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:17
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Conditions are great and you should use them, though.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:18
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